Photos by Pat O'Malley

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

In the middle of breaking up—the middle of being broken up with—he got thirsty. I think I need some water, he told his girlfriend. He pointed toward his throat so as to make his intentions perfectly clear. His girlfriend had said they needed to talk. It was just like you hear about: the quote-unquote talk. They went around and around, with her alternately telling him she had nothing left to say and then asking what his vision was for them, if he even had one. My vision? he said. He couldn't believe it. His vision. What was vision anyway? She told him she wasn't in the mood to parse it all out. But he had questions still. He didn't understand, he said. He was trying to think back about what had happened. He asked for examples, and she said to please tell her they weren't going to play the example game. They talked for an hour, maybe longer. They sat in the front room, she on the edge of the futon—her futon—and he perched atop the ottoman that went with this chair his aunt had given him.

In the kitchen, he got a glass and some ice and then he stood at the sink and let the water run over his fingers. That was when he noticed the knives were gone. The knives were hers, a gift from her parents. They came with one of those big wooden blocks where all the knives go. The block was beside the sink, right where it always sat, but it was empty. Even the sharpener was gone—and those scissors they hardly ever used, because they didn't know what they were for, whether they were special scissors or what. Had she packed them? Nothing else was packed, nothing he could see.

He thought of her too of course, and sometimes he called and she didn't answer, or she did answer but after asking how he was doing and how their friend was, she said she was sorry but she couldn't really talk. It was the knives he kept coming back to though.

He took his place on the ottoman and looked at her. Better now? she said. He let the sarcasm go, if it was sarcasm. Most of the time he couldn't tell. Sure, he said. I guess. He asked her where she was going, where she'd live. Asking was a way of finding out if there was someone else. She was moving in with a friend, she told him. He knew this friend, sort of. He had met her. She lived down the street in another apartment complex. More like town houses. Probably expensive, he thought. He didn't like her friend much. She liked commercials was the thing. She'd always just seen some commercial on TV and wanted to talk about how hilarious it was, or cute, and had you seen it too? So your friend, he said, she knew we were breaking up before I did? He thought this was proof of something. Deceit perhaps. His girlfriend shrugged. She had to arrange to live somewhere, didn't she? What was she supposed to do, just show up with a suitcase? He said he was just asking. She didn't have to be defensive. He was going to mention the knives then. Putting them away like that, it really made him burn. It was just so insulting. What did she think he was? Was he supposed to go berserk and pull a knife on her? Was that the thinking? Maybe her friend had suggested it. Maybe she'd seen something on television in between commercials. Or her parents, it could have been her parents. Not that they weren't good people. He didn't mean that. He loved her parents. Or maybe her sister had given her the idea. Her sister was dating a cop. The cop could have said, Make sure you tell your sister to put all the knives away before she breaks up with him. Seems like a nice guy and all, but you never know. Can't be too sure. He could hear them saying these things, talking about him, strategizing. Was everyone in on the planning? That was the other thing that bothered him: He didn't know when she had packed the knives. Had she gotten out of bed in the night, last night, and quietly stowed them somewhere? Or had she woken up early, before he did, and done it then? And where were the knives anyway? Pushed to the back of a cupboard? Hidden behind the cereal? Or had she taken that extra step and removed them from the premises? Maybe she carried them down to her car.

He wasn't the violent type. He had walked off on her once, left her, but that was different. He wasn't even threatening. They were coming back from dinner and she asked him a question, and it just ticked him off, how she asked him, how she had put it. He tried to answer but then he walked away. The question had to do with the holidays. She had asked where he was going to spend them that year, and he didn't know and he wasn't ready to think about it yet, even though he knew he probably should. It was just always a thing with them, friction over the holidays. Anyway, it didn't matter. The point was he walked away, and that was all he did. He figured she had her keys. She'd let herself in, and then he'd come back in a bit, after he'd worked through whatever it was, and they'd just forget about it, watch TV or something. He certainly didn't expect to get home and find her sitting on the stoop. That had not been his intention. Was that violent though? Sometimes she said his words were violent, his language, but he could never understand that. They were just words. He had pulled a knife on his brother once, but they were kids, and it was just stupid. Plus, he'd had his bed between them, a double bed at that. He just opened his knife, this pocketknife, and he told his brother to get out. He didn't lunge at him or chase him or anything.

A few days later, she called and said she would like to come get her things. He said that was fine, of course. Whenever. She didn't want a scene, she said. She was hoping he could leave while she packed. She would have help, she said. So, he said, a few hours are we talking, or what? He looked around the apartment. Between them they didn't have a lot. Should only take a few hours, if they were focused about it. She said maybe he ought to go visit someone, get out of town. Had he thought of that? Just take a little time. She mentioned a friend of theirs, but he hadn't talked to him in a while. Call him, she said. It would be good for you to talk to someone.

For various reasons, he took her advice. Because she was probably right; that was one reason. But mostly he just felt it was important at this stage to be agreeable. That if there was any chance of their getting back together—and he did still think of that, despite everything she'd said to the contrary, he did still hold out that hope—the least he could do was try to be halfway agreeable. So he went, he saw his friend, and the rest doesn't matter, except for the fact that while he was gone, he thought about the knives. He thought of her too of course, and sometimes he called and she didn't answer, or she did answer but after asking how he was doing and how their friend was, she said she was sorry but she couldn't really talk. It was the knives he kept coming back to though. Not that he mentioned them. He never did, not to her or anyone, but the thought of them was always there, the knives and the assumptions behind them. One night, he started to wonder if maybe she didn't have a point, putting the knives away. He stayed awake worrying about what it was he'd done or said, but then he slept, and the next day he thought nothing of the knives for several hours, until they were there again, on his mind, he wasn't sure why. He wasn't a bad person. He told himself that. He hadn't done something awful and then conveniently forgotten it. He'd done nothing—he knew this—and yet there lay inside him a small but unappeasable doubt.

He pictured the wooden block on the counter back in his apartment. All those times he'd reached for it to get a knife, or the times he'd held a knife when they were both in the kitchen, cooking together. How careful he was, how mindful of where she stood, just to maneuver around, get to the cutting board or whatever, because it wasn't a large kitchen by any stretch and they'd liked to work together.

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

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

President Obama holds a moment of silence at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks at the Pentagon. Photo via Getty Images

US News

Obama to Veto Bill Allowing 9/11 Families to Sue Saudi Arabia
The White House has confirmed that President Obama will veto the bill that would allow 9/11 victims and their families to sue countries like Saudi Arabia for any role they may have played in the terror attack. The bill passed in the Senate in May and in the House on Friday. —The New York Times

Clinton Didn't Think Her Pneumonia Was 'That Big a Deal'
Hillary Clinton said she did not reveal her pneumonia diagnosis earlier because she didn't think it was "going to be that big a deal." In a brief telephone interview on Monday night, the Democratic nominee said she was "feeling so much better" and promised to be back on the campaign trail in "the next few days." —CNN

Arsonist Sets Fire to the Florida Mosque Attended by Nightclub Shooter
A Florida mosque where Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen had prayed was deliberately set on fire during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, police confirmed. Fire crews put out the flames at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce on Monday. St. Lucie County authorities are investigating the possibility of a hate crime. —The Washington Post

NCAA Pulls Championship Events from North Carolina
The NCAA has announced that it will relocate seven championship events from North Carolina in response to the state's controversial new law requiring people to use public bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificate. The college championship events moved from the state include basketball, soccer, and tennis. —ESPN

International News

Israel Denies Claims Syrian Forces Shot Down Aircraft
Israel has denied a Syrian army claim that Syrian forces shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone. The Israeli military says it struck artillery positions in southern Syria overnight after a projectile from that country hit the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. —CNN

At Least 133 Killed in Floods in North Korea
The UN and the International Red Cross say the North Korean government has reported 133 deaths and nearly 400 people missing due to floods brought by Typhoon Lionrock. The UN said 140,000 people are "in urgent need of assistance," but rescue teams have been unable to reach areas cut off by flooding. —BBC News

Brazil's Lower House Expels Former Speaker
Brazil's lower house of Congress has expelled the lawmaker who engineered former president Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. Former speaker Eduardo Cunha has been stripped of his seat for lying about secret bank accounts in Switzerland and also faces arrest now that he has lost his congressional immunity. —Reuters

Russian Company Admits to Turning River Red
Russian company Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel manufacturer, has admitted it was responsible for turning a river in the Siberian town of Norilsk a deep shade of red. The company said heavy rain had resulted in a spillage but claimed the discoloration "does not present a danger for people or fauna." —The Guardian

Everything Else

Ryan Lochte Attacked During 'Dancing with the Stars'
Two audience members attacked Ryan Lochte during Monday's live premiere of Dancing with the Stars. The men, wearing shirts with Lochte's name crossed out, stormed the stage before the show's security intervened. The Olympic swimmer became widely disliked after falsely claiming he was robbed by men dressed as Brazilian police. —USA Today

Ohio University Removes Roger Ailes's Name
Ohio University's senate has voted to remove the name of former Fox CEO Roger Ailes, a donor and school alumnus, from its walls. In the light of sexual harassment allegations, the university will also return a $500,000 donation. —The Columbus Dispatch

Michelle Obama Turns Down 'Simpsons' Role
The first lady turned down a role playing herself on The Simpsons with a two-word note. Show co-creator James L Brooks revealed: "We finally got a note that said 'good try,' because we were so aggressive."—TIME

Trump Puts $2 Million into 'Deplorables' Attack Ad
Donald Trump's campaign has unveiled a new ad attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton for her comments about half of Trump supporters falling into a "basket of deplorables." It runs this week in four swing states with a $2 million ad buy. —VICE News

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Says Privacy Violations Are 'Scary'
The actor playing Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone's new biopic said he's worried that government accountability is "slipping away." Gordon-Levitt described US government violations of constitutional rights on privacy as "scary." —VICE

Landlords Use New Digital Tool to Screen Tenants
Landlords are using a new tool to screen wannabe tenants: Naborly, a startup that analyzes up to 500 data points on each potential renter. It checks everything from credit scores to media mentions and Facebook profiles. —Motherboard

On this episode of VICE Talks Film, VICE News reporter Jason Leopold sits down with Academy Award–winning director Oliver Stone, a filmmaker who never shies away from political controversy, to talk about his new biopic, Snowden. The director discusses exploring the personal story of Edward Snowden, the polarizing NSA whistleblower who leaked classified documents to the public, as well as the importance of privacy and the reforms his past films have brought about.

NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. Photo via Wikicommons

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Following in the footsteps of President Obama, the NBA, and a porn site, the NCAA is protesting North Carolina's notorious "bathroom bill" by pulling seven of its championship sporting events from the state, WUNC reports.

The athletic organization announced in a press release Tuesday that it plans to move two rounds of March Madness games—as well as women's soccer and golf championships—out of the state because the current bathroom legislation doesn't "promote an inclusive atmosphere."

"Current North Carolina state laws make it challenging to guarantee that host communities can help deliver on that commitment if NCAA events remained in the state," the organization said. President Mark Emmert added, "Fairness is about more than the opportunity to participate in college sports, or even compete for championships."

North Carolina passed its HB2 back in March, and it requires people to use public bathrooms that correlate with the gender on their birth certificate. Critics say the law ignores the basic civil rights of transgender and non-binary individuals.

North Carolina's GOP had a different take and slammed the NCAA in its own press release, calling the decision "an assault to female athletes across the nation" and somehow made the whole thing about Baylor's college athlete rape problem.

Read: A Porn Site Has Started Blocking North Carolina Users Over the State's Anti-LGBT Law

In life we are divided into three: we are gangsters, we are gamblers, or we are geezers. The producers of Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers know this¹, which is why they have made the film Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers: they know that fuck your horoscopes, fuck your love line, fuck your Hufflepuff and your Gryffindor, that the only way to split the population neatly in three like a finger pushed endways down a banana is to divide them up as so: as gangsters, as gamblers, as geezers. We are all ever thus.

Please take a moment to watch the trailer for Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers, which – as I am about to argue – may well turn out to be the most important British movie of all time. If you're currently on the fence about this – "Eh, I'm not sure I actually really want to spend one minute 27 watching this, I mean I'd have to find my headphones and angle my laptop around so my boss can't see me not working, I mean that truly is a lot of faff to clog up my day, is it really actually worth it," &c. – just know that Richard Blackwood is in it doing every accent from Barbados to Africa and, baffling and topless, the looming presence of what I can only assume is an insanely stoned Big Narstie in there as well. Yeah, now you're sold. Now you're listening to me. Press play:

I just want to say I am excited for you. I am excited for you for being about to enjoy this for the first time. This is a big moment for you. I am proud of you for getting here.

This is, of course, as so many things are, Guy Ritchie's fault. In Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels², Ritchie proved that all a British gangster movie really needed was i. some bloke with an exceptionally broken nose wearing a polyester-rayon zip-thru saying "cunt" really threateningly and ii. a diverse cast of characters who will help the clueless two co-leads on their journey to not getting their bollocks kicked in by a henchman (And so here are some lines that I can pretty much guarantee already are going to be in Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers based off this trailer alone: "You've got three days to get me my money"; "Listen here, CUNT!"; "*extremely Big Narstie voice* I've been shot, boss"), and now here we are. In this case, the case of GGG, the colourful cast of characters is instead represented by 'an erratic handful of cameos, presumably done to really drive down exactly how many actors needed paying day rate out of the film's meagre budget', a tactic I truly admire.

Here is Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon aggressively doing airquotes in a way that suggests to me she is playing the key role of 'hard girlfriend of a nightclub owner, furious that his complex plan has yet to come to full fruition':

Here's Dave Courtney almost certainly about to say "fackin' mags":

Here is my new phone screensaver:

Here's Richard Blackwood doing 'angry while in a car', a look you assume he perfected after every single audition he did between the years 2001 – 2014:

Here is Jessica-Jane Clement, you remember, the girl w/ the shoulder tattoo from The Real Hustle, on BBC Three in 2006, you remember, who here plays 'girl dancing in car to music that has clearly been added in during post, because nobody dances that far off the beat of anything outside of a Rebecca Black video, unless they have a near-medical lack of rhythm':

Here's Richard Blackwood really having fun with it:

Here's a bag of prop money with exactly one visible £20 note in it, which really suggests to me that bag of prop money is actually filled with envelopes and scrunched up Tesco bags and exactly one £20 note that the gaffer on this particular shoot happened to have in his wallet and, now he thinks about it, never did actually get back:

Here is a van with the number plate 'GYP5Y5' which I can only assume belongs to the character – and this is a direct quote from IMDb – 'Paddy the Thieving Gypsy':

Here's Jodie Marsh, who is brilliant – Jodie Marsh once wore two belts as an outfit, is hencher than you will ever be, has maintained a decade-long beef with Katie Price AKA Jordan and has spent the past half-a-year slagging her ex-husband's dick off on Twitter, if that doesn't convince you Jodie Marsh is brilliant then nothing ever will do – and I can only assume that she is here to kick off a montage scene where she teaches the two main characters, Krish and Lee, to be hench, and think about it for literally one second: is there a single film on earth that could not be improved by a montage of Jodie Marsh making the lead character hench? Titanic: Titanic could be improved with a montage of Jodie Marsh making Leonardo di Caprio more hench until – finally, straining – he lifts the car he shagged Kate Winslet in. Jurassic Park: Jurassic Park could be improved with a montage of Jodie Marsh and a Tyrannosaurus doing kettle bells. Citizen Kane? Citizen Kane would be improved if, instead of going slowly raving and dying alone in Xanadu, Charles Foster Kane did burpees while Jodie Marsh, in a flouro tank top, shouted in an ever broader Essex accent that he was a "wet fucking rich twat". By extension, GGG is already primed to be the best film ever made:

And then there are a few, final, tantalising glimpses of one of the most lo-fi car chases ever committed to film, kind of car chase they didn't actually bother finding a closed road for, sort of thing you feel could have feasibly be done by a few of those squabbling dads who cycle around satellite towns with helmet cams on hoping a mum on the school run passes a bit too close to them so they can wind their window down and yell about the Highway Code. I'm going to guess at the plot here, guess with 100% accuracy: Krish and Lee managed to piss off and/or owe money to six separate gangs of person who all deem it necessary to chase after them very slowly in a vehicle. I'm going to guess this climactic chase takes up the last 30 to 40 minutes of the film. And then the gangs erase each other out, negatives wiping out other negatives, until the lead car hits a lamp post and everyone gets out and there is an exceptionally shitty Reservoir Dogs-but-with-one-camera show-down at the end where everyone has double-barrelled shotguns, for some reason, and our two heroes emerge unscathed, and yada yada yada the last scene is them both smoking cigars in a strip club, two girls in bandage dresses hanging off each of their arms, and they throw a wad of £20 notes (production secret: 100 pieces of note-sized paper + one actual £20 note, at the front) into the air and shout "GEEZERS!", freeze frame, The End.

The romance of shit British gangster movies. Because we try, don't we, but there's never any gloss. Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers is just one in a long line of mostly straight-to-DVD films about gangsters and geezers and gamblers made in the UK, this one being notable mostly for not having Tamer Hassan in it. And we keep making the same movie, over and over and over, again, and again and again and again, like a boot stamping on Dave Courtney's face, forever.

Most of the greatest and highest-regarded films ever made are about gangsters, too, which only serves to underline the key difference between American gangsters and their QVC-quality British equivalents. US gangster movies always involve some really wide guy eating a whole mess of pasta in a darkened room; British gangster films always involve someone in a leather blazer whispering and looking around in a greasy spoon café. US gangster movies always have visceral scenes of violence; British gangster movies always have a bald guy shouting, "I'LL NUT YOUR CUNT THROUGH YOUR FUCKING CUNT, YOU CUNT!". US gangster movies have a slow-mo shot of a supermodel walking down some marble stairs; UK equivalents have a glam cockney mum screeching the word 'OI!' as a car peels off a roundabout. US gangster films quietly pad around threats of injury, death; there is always a silent henchmen standing in a corner, cracking his knuckles against each other, extremely giving you the vibe that he's taken people's testicles out with pliers before; British gangster movies always have a large man called Tiny pointing a finger and saying he's going to run your mum over, you fucking nonce. I suppose this – inelegant, clumsy, low-res gangster movies – is our legacy, our culture, and we should embrace it. Passion project gangster movies funded by actual gangsters that say how great and fun being a gangster is: these are the future of our film industry. Gangsters, Gamblers and Geezers is a hall of famer waiting to happen.

@joelgolby

^{1. What they don't know, unfortunately, is how exactly they want to present the title of their film: the trailer is tagged as 'Gangster Gamblers and Geezers', no comma, word "and" spelled in full, which was uploaded by the account 'Gangsters Gamblers & Geezers Movie', which note has the ampersand in lieu of the "and"; the IMDb page, meanwhile, has run entirely out of punctuation and has just gone for the breathless 'Gangsters Gamblers Geezers', which just sounds like someone describing the crowd at a British boxing match while simultaneously jumping from a bridge to their death. If the producers of GGG would like to get in touch I would be happy to sit down with them and discuss commas. ↩}

^{2. Now THERE'S a film that knows its own comma placement! ↩}

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A new trailer for the long-gestating Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me, dropped Tuesday on the 20th anniversary of Shakur's death.

Named after the legendary rapper's fourth studio LP, the film has been in the works for a decade, with a troubled production seeing the departures of high-caliber directors Carl Franklin and Boyz N the Hood's John Singleton. Music video veteran Benny Boom took the helm late last year, and from the look of the trailer, he's crafted a stylish affair full of popping colors and shiny visuals. Tupac is played by saucer-eyed, high-cheekboned newcomer Demetrius Shipp Jr., who's not a bad likeness for his subject.

Following in the footsteps of NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton—which swiftly became the highest-grossing music biopic of all time—All Eyez on Me seems like it will pack in a great deal of action and incident. The trailer finds time for shocking instances of police brutality, Shakur's jail stretch and dealings with imposing Death Row Records honcho Suge Knight, nightclubs filled with barely clothed women, and even some music.

Yet the most intriguing element of the trailer is Shakur's relationship with his now-late mother Afeni, played by The Walking Dead star and award-winning playwright Danai Gurira. This dynamic may well be the most effective route the film has to interrogating Shakur's mythical status.

"Like all black leaders, you have a bullseye on your back," Afeni, a political activist and Black Panther, warns her son. "They are going to give you the tools you need to destroy yourself."

This isn't quite the first Tupac biopic—this bizarre Chinese-made affair got there first—but it's the one people will be talking about once it's released in theaters on November 11.

Follow Ashley Clark on Twitter.

Read: How Tupac and Biggie Went from Friends to Deadly Rivals

Some things are pretty much guaranteed to happen during the British summer: our national football teams will be wildly disappointing; it'll be the hottest July on record, again; and crowds of young people will flock to safe rural Tory seats up and down the country, to sleep on roll-mats and shit in holes for three or four days.

From police officers' kids to the politicians of tomorrow, millions of us go to festivals every year, and some 22 percent of us take drugs while we're there. Despite the dogs, the warnings and the security searching you on entry and sweeping the campsites, people manage to get their pills and powders in. From Glastonbury to Creamfields, Boardmasters to T in the Park, they're a fixture of essentially every British festival, bar maybe Camp Bestival and Jamie Oliver's Big Feastival.

So last year, when I went to Bestival to test the purity of the drugs that had been smuggled in, it wasn't a huge surprise that people had armed themselves with a large range of illicit substances. What did surprise me, however, just how dodgy a load of them were.

This year I headed back to the Isle of Wight, not to see how pure the drugs were, but to find out how people had managed to get them inside in the first place. A Bestival spokesperson told me they work closely with Hampshire Police to keep the festival safe, and they're not wrong: the evidence is there to show they confiscated a huge amount of narcotics over the course of this past weekend. £175,000 worth of drugs and psychoactive substances were seized by police officers and security staff, with £62,518 worth of that figure collected in amnesty bins before festival-goers entered the site – almost double the amount submitted to amnesty in 2015.

Still, as with literally every single other festival throughout the UK, people will find a way to get their stash in undetected – even if it's via the most rudimentary method going. "Normally I just shove the drugs in my balls, to be honest, and I won't shower for a few days to help cover up the smell," explained one guy I met on the ferry on the way over, who'd just done a big bump of K in the toilet.

By the time I arrived, I'd already clocked another way of sneaking contraband onto the site: nab yourself an artist wristband. "The thing is, we get driven straight to our stages, and we've got huge amounts of kit in the van," a band member from Saturday's line-up explains. "We get whizzed past security and nobody ever stops you – else half the bands or more at any festival probably wouldn't make it."

A security guard searching someone's wallet

Walking past the amnesty bins and sniffer dogs at Bestival's main entrance, beady-eyed cops and hired security were on the prowl for anything suspicious. I stopped for a while to watch. Occasionally, a look of panic would hit the face of a fresh-faced teenager, or a 20-something posh kid for whom the idea of a police caution was just too much to handle. Here, a beeline would be made to the nearest portaloo / amnesty bin / bush to dump whatever they'd been hoping to hide.

"I just couldn't risk it," said a teenager I spotted dropping a gram of coke into a bin. "It's my first festival, and I'm sure I'll be able to buy something inside."

Meanwhile, hardier looking arrivals – the ones who clearly had some experience of K-holing in £30 Argos tents – strolled straight on through. Plenty of people were searched, but the queue kept on moving.

Thursday might be the warm-up night at the last great festival of the summer, but the ground inside on Friday morning was already covered in empty baggies. It was time to get to work. Over a couple of hours I snaked through the various campsites, asking one simple question: how did you get your drugs on site?

The most common answer I was given was a simple: "I shoved them in my socks." It was hardly Ocean's Eleven, but I guess there's no need to fix what's not broken.

"I've got a special pair of knickers that I can slot a massive wrap into," a 19-year-old from Sussex proudly told me, grabbing the black lacy pants from her tent. "They always suspect boys might have something shoved up their pants, but girls? Less so."

Later, a guy who introduced himself as "party-boy Patrick" had a sneaky zipped up slot in his sweatband, which he assured me had, at one point earlier, been brimming with pills. A guy slouching opposite him just yelled: "Weed in a sleeping bag!" vaguely in my direction.

From shirt pockets to cigarette boxes, bra straps to snapbacks, everyone I asked seemed to have a failsafe drug smuggling routine. More inventive techniques included NOS canisters tied up into belt form with masking tape to keep the noise from giving the game away, and GHB poured into a hair lotion bottle and placed in a toiletry bag.

The most ingenious, however, came from a 21-year-old woman from Kent. "What I do is take a tampon in a plastic case, cut it in half and empty out the inside," she explained to me, exactly like a Blue Peter presenter. "Then all you need to do is fill in the bottom half with cotton wool and place your drugs in the middle, before topping it up with more cotton wool and resealing with an iron."

In a real "here's one I made earlier moment", she dived into a tent behind us to show us what she meant.

By the time I stopped marvelling at her creativity, the sun had started to set. No longer were drugs hidden or stashed in secret; darkness was cover enough. One guy decided he didn't even need to lock the portaloo he was in, leaning out to offer me a bump of MDMA off a debit card (which I declined, of course).

What seemed most concerning to me wasn't the fact that people were taking drugs at Bestival. Go to any British festival – or nightclub, or park, or house party, or suburban bus stop – during the long summer season, and you'll be confronted with an extremely similar sight. People will continue to take drugs at every festival going; it's a reality that's out of the hands of promoters and the police.

However, how safe we are when we take these substance is an issue that authorities can very much have an impact on. While experienced drug takers knew how to slip in their own supply, it was the most vulnerable – first-time users and younger people – who on the most part told me they were unwilling or unable to take the risk of bringing their own supplies in, and so were more likely to buy a mystery pill off some guy called Chaz stumbling through their campsite in flip-flops and shouting "pills pills pills". With the number of deaths at British festivals sitting at an alarmingly high rate, we've all got a responsibility to make sure there's a change of direction.

The Loop's drug testing tent at Secret Garden Party was a great start, but wholesale reforms – like those detailed by Max Daly on VICE – are needed across the board if we want to properly reduce harm. Because if we don't – well, people will keep on dying.

@MikeSegalov

More on VICE:

Inside the Secret World of a British Undercover Drugs Cop

We Went Drug Testing at Secret Garden Party to See What Weird Shit Ends Up in Your Drugs

A Drug-by-Drug Guide to a Rational UK Drugs Policy

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Here's what VICE Gaming was playing in August 2016.

Austin Walker (@austin_walker)

As we get closer and closer to launching our shiny new site, I've had less and less time to play stuff. But when Titanfall 2's tech test went live in the middle of August, I made the time I needed to climb back into a mech. Because, listen, I like mechs. A lot.

I've watched hundreds of hours of Gundam, Macross, and other mecha anime. I've hosted an actual play podcast set in a homemade mecha universe. I've spent money (real money) on dashboard accessories in Mechwarrior Online. Don't get me wrong, mechs are the military-industrial-entertainment power fantasy given humanoid shape. But also, I really like mechs. So if you're making a game with giant robots and ace pilots in it, I'm going to find the goddamn time to play it.

The thing about Titanfall 2's tech test, though, is that I think it felt more ambivalent about mechs than even I do.

On one hand, Titanfall 2 has taken a step toward giving the building-tall mechs (the titular "Titans") more personality. In place of the first game's blank-slate machines, Titanfall 2 offers robots a bit more in line with the ability-driven "heroes" of games like Overwatch. Ion, for instance, is a mid-size mech with a set of energy weapons, including an explosive Laser Core attack; Scorch is a heavy mech with—you guessed it—lots of fire powers. Four other Titans have been revealed on the game's official page, and each offers super attacks, special traps, and a unique, distinguished identity. Plus, new visual customization options should help pilots feel closer than ever to their machines.

At the same time, though, these mechs are a lot less important on the battlefield than they were in the first Titanfall. A handful of major changes have decreased how often they show up, the length of time that they stick around for, and the impact they have on the proceedings. Here's one big change that helps illustrate this fact: In the first game, each Titan had a recharging shield that ensured some degree of longevity, so long as you weren't piloting it like a battering ram. Because of this, engagements in Titanfall felt lengthy, tactical, and survivable in a way that they never do in Call of Duty or Battlefield. Not only was it distinct, it allowed for hefty, mech-on-mech battles that felt pulled from the very best of Gundam.

In Titanfall 2's tech test, though, Titan shields don't recharge unless a friendly pilot loads a special item into your machine for you (which they have to first get by yanking it from of an enemy Titan). It adds a layer of complexity that great players will be able to use to some effect, but that most players will never wrap their heads around. The result is that the Titans feel paper thin, which isn't something you should ever say about something called a "Titan."

Though Respawn Entertainment did make some buffs to the mechs between the first and second test weekends, I still never felt anywhere near as powerful or dynamic as I was as in the first Titanfall. Maybe that's because of the limited map and Titan options in the test, or because the modes up for play were largely built around pilot-vs-pilot combat (instead of the fantastic "grunt"-focused modes of the first game), but by the end of the second weekend, I was pretty worried. If Respawn disempowers the game's most distinguishing components, Titanfall 2 will need to compete in the realm of human-scale combat, a field that Battlefield and Call of Duty already do so well.

Still, when I see videos like this one (made by a fan), I can't help but get excited.

Titanfall - Anime Style, by YouTube user bot_alex

Also playing: Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (Vita), No Man's Sky (PC), Reigns (iOS)

Mike Diver (@MikeDiver)

Much like Austin, my August was a lot of work with little time for play—at least, play of meaningful substance. Attending Gamescom meant I could get my hands on early builds of Nier Automata and Yooka-Laylee, and I enjoyed both immensely—but I've already put words down on those, here and here respectively. A lot of travel has kept me plugging away at Persona 4 Golden, and I dipped a toe into the seemingly limitless horizons of Monster Hunter Generations, but not to the extent that I can really comment on it beyond what Luke Shaw covered in his piece from early August.

Which leaves me with only a couple of significant experiences from the few days I've had at home, surrounded by these machines and devices that supply us with the good stuff. Reigns, on iOS (and also PC and Android, but I've been playing it on a broken old iPad), is a terrifically addictive balancing act of regal responsibility, with a wickedly dark heart. Cast as one king, and then another, and then another—every death is followed by a new heir—you are faced with a never-ending onslaught of binary decisions ranging from whether or not to marry a princess from a neighboring territory (and therefore bring the two nations together), or to send either the army or the church into town to deal with an outbreak of nuns mewling like cats. It's like a text-adventure endless runner of crude jokes and concentrated cajoling, backdropped by outbreaks of plague and all-too-brief periods of prosperity. And damn, it's brilliant.

Every choice is made with a swipe, left or right, yes or no, kill or be killed—I've never used Tinder, but I'm told it's essentially that, but with high-fantasy role-playing stirred into proceedings instead of easy one-night stands (although, Reigns lets you have a few of those, too). Made by developer Nerial (who I'd never heard of prior to this release), Reigns is both dastardly simple and delightfully savage, laugh-out-loud funny and in its own ways rather harrowing, and I really wish my kids didn't use CBeebies apps on this iPad, or I'd carry it with me everywhere I went.

I also played a decent chunk of Bound, the surreal ballerina platformer from Plastic. I like its looks and the simple story it tells, wrapped in a relatable metaphor. But there's not a lot to it, and while that's true, too, of the likes of Journey and Abzū, personally Bound didn't come close to leaving the same emotional impression on me as those comparably (for want of a better word) artsy titles. I'd have finished it, but for whatever reason, the game has bugged out on me, and my dancer is essentially cemented into position. I can spin the camera around with the right stick, drop in and out of the impressive photo mode, but that's it—I've become a statue, and it's happened so late into the game that I don't really want to start over. So that's where I'm leaving Bound, because there's simply too much to see to in September to be replaying the past.

Patrick Klepek (@patrickklepek)

Though I may never join the circus, I've never been more confident in my ability to juggle than I am right now. A little over two weeks ago, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world, a job that's mostly involved learning to cradle a newborn and a video game controller at the same time.

It's nearly 10 years since I graduated college, the last time I had extended periods of time to grossly indulge in a video game for hours on end without consequence. The days of staying up regularly until the sun emerges, repeatedly demanding that chocobo have sex to unlock the Knights of the Round summon in Final Fantasy VII, are long gone. (What a weird quest.)

The way I play games is a little peculiar, too. Part of my job is to keep up with the latest releases, so I play them differently than when they were purely a hobby. So while I poke, prod, and explore, I'm often more interested in reaching the credits than exploring every alleyway. At worst, it's a dishonest way to play games that meaningfully impedes my ability to judge them the way an average player would. (This criticism comes up all the time, one with merit but not much substance.) Realistically, it means I'm probably prevented from enjoying them as much as I might want to.

Image courtesy of CD Projekt Red

And so, for two weeks, I decided to flip the script. I should have played more No Man's Sky, since it's the game of the moment. But I didn't. I accepted that it's not the game I wanted it to be and moved on. I should have checked out the next big game on Steam, PlayStation Network, or whatever, and kept pace with the games coming out during my absence. But, again, I didn't.

What I did do was play a shitload of The Witcher 3, diving into the game's wonderful expansion packs. What I did do was explore every single side quest I could find in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, my favorite part of the game. What I did do was enjoy games in the same way I did as a teenager.

It was lovely—to a point. The difference between 16-year-old Patrick and 31-year-old Patrick is that sitting on the couch exclusively for two weeks, with no genuine reason to move, isn't as satisfying these days. I love to run, play golf, watch TV, read a book—my palette isn't what it used to be, in a good way. I found two weeks of video games exhausting, to the point that I was taking my child and dog for a walk simply to give myself an excuse for a gaming break.

But if I'm honest, that intoxicating overindulgence was, itself, refreshing. My fellow adults will know such moments come few and far between; you cherish each one. You can only have too much of a good thing when you've gone the distance—and have finally had too much of a good thing.

Joel Fowler (@freemagic)

Hey I'm Joel, I'm the publisher of our soon-to-be-named gaming site. The crew asked me to write this, but my mentality toward games is a bit different than theirs. I couldn't tell you half of the games that are out right now, and this editorial crew has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of the space (as they should). On the other hand, I play a few things at a time with a group of friends, mainly as a backdrop to catch up and shoot the shit. We go pretty hard into one or two games and then move on, although Destiny year one kind of ruined us. If I never farm another piece of spinmetal again, I'll be better for it.

This past month, I've been craving something I could turn on and play for a little while, without feeling like I wasn't accomplishing anything. I think that's all life allows for sometimes, and longer, quest-based games just don't fit. Rocket League still has the top spot there, with Overwatch in close second. As the community has gotten better in Overwatch, it's been tougher to enjoy without a solid crew. Rocket League is just as frustrating when your teammate doesn't understand who should go for the ball at kick off, but it remains much more manageable to find a decent enough pickup group—though I did recently rage quit a duel, the first time I've done that since the first day I spent in The Division's dark zones.)

Image courtesy of Hello Games

I don't think I'm playing No Man's Sky exactly "right," but that's probably why I've been enjoying it. I did the land grab toward the center at first, collecting Atlas stones, farming toxic planets, maxing out inventories, but then it felt like work. Then I found "Super Tite." Super Tite is a giant world with beautiful trees, a perfect environment, and cool summer breezes at night. I have been happy tromping around here for almost three weeks, trying to find the last undiscovered species, but happy just walking around all in the same.

No Man's Sky is the closet thing to relaxation that I've gotten from a game since Minecraft, with no rush and complete freedom to do as I please—it's really awesome to put on and listen to music or catch up on a podcast. There are a few flying predators but nothing too scary, besides these weird mutated Pokémon.

On the other side of that spectrum, Patrick recommended I check out Inside, which I can now only play when my girlfriend is home and the sun is out, because it makes me freak out—and it's still way too hot outside for getting sweaty right now, so maybe I'll finish it up when it cools off.

Read more gaming articles on VICE, and follow VICE Gaming on Twitter. We're also on Facebook.

Justice Robin Camp. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

He's been called a misogynist. A disgrace. The most dangerous kind of rape myth propagator. And Justice Robin Camp, the Federal Court judge who asked a sex assault complainant in court: "why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" is deserving of those criticisms.

But there's another very pressing reason Camp, 64, shouldn't be allowed to oversee criminal trials anymore: he appears to be totally incompetent.

Camp is currently facing an inquiry before the Canadian Judicial Council to determine whether or not he should be removed from the bench. To recap: in 2014, when he was a provincial judge overseeing a sex assault trial in Calgary, he made a number of horrifying comments to the 19-year-old complainant in the case, including posing the "knees together" question, suggesting that "sometimes sex and pain go together," and asking the woman, "Why didn't you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn't penetrate you?" (She was allegedly raped over a bathroom sink.) Camp acquitted the accused, Alexander Scott Wagar, but in light of the judge's apparent bias, a new trial has been ordered.

Testifying at Camp's inquiry, the sex assault complainant said the judge "made me hate myself."

"He made me feel like I should have done something ... that I was some kind of slut," she said.

Read more: Judge Apologizes for Asking Woman in Sex Assault Trial Why She Couldn't Keep Her Knees Together

His insensitivity is even more incomprehensible considering that his own daughter, Lauren-Lee, has been raped—a revelation she made as part of the inquiry.

But misogyny aside, the proceedings have raised serious questions about Camp's ability to do his job.

For starters, his comments show that he was either unaware or indifferent to Canada's rape shield laws, which are designed to protect sex assault complainants from being discredited based on stereotypes about victim behaviour.

"His articulated disrespect for these legal rules was, in some instances, combined with a refusal to apply them," reads the 11-page complaint about Camp which launched the inquiry. Written by four law professors, the complaint notes that Camp dismissed the rape shield laws as "contemporary thinking."

Camp, who is from South Africa and moved to Canada in 1998, also admitted at the inquiry his background in criminal law prior to becoming a judge was "non-existent."

According to the Canadian Press, as a lawyer, he focused mainly on contractual, bankruptcy and trust law, and oil and gas litigation. When he became a provincial judge in 2012, "my colleagues knew my knowledge of Canadian law was very minimal," he said, noting he had consulted other judges and read up on the 50 most important criminal cases cited by provincial judges to prep for the new gig. "I think it's become apparent that I didn't know what I didn't know." Despite that, former Conservative justice minister Peter MacKay appointed him to the Federal Court last June.

On a very basic level, Camp can't seem to grasp the difference between "the accused" and a "complainant." Throughout the 2014 trial, he referred to the complainant as "the accused"—a mistake he repeated while apologizing for his behaviour at the inquiry last week, before correcting himself. One would maybe expect this kind of error from a newbie reporter covering court for the first time. But a federal judge? And even if we could chalk it up to a slip of the tongue once or twice, it's troubling that two years later—with Camp's job on the line—he still can't get it straight.

In light of the scandal, Camp was assigned three mentors. One of them, Justice Deborah McCawley of Manitoba, testified at the inquiry that Camp was unaware of the history of sex assault law in Canada and how rape myths work against complainants.

She claimed he's not a misogynist and is "very amenable to learning." (It seems he's done a bunch more reading lately.) Again though, not particularly reassuring for a man with Camp's level of authority.

For his part, Camp has said he wants to keep his job and will "ask for help when I need it."

"I was and will always be vigilant ... perfect I will never be."

No one is expected to be perfect, but a judge should be held to a higher standard than the average person. It's clear that Camp failed miserably to meet that standard once. Sex assault complainants don't deserve to be a part of his learning curve.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Volumes of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Photo via Flickr user mrpolyonymous

Once again, the Oxford English Dictionary has been updated. Among its most recent additions, it revealed yesterday that "yogalates," "YOLO," and "clickbait" can now all be certifiably used to win a game of Scrabble.

Like naming the crying face emoji the word of the year in 2015, these additions could all be construed as the desperate search for an ever-receding relevance among a generation that doesn't even seem to need words anymore—a generation that can communicate almost only using tiny images of eggplants. But there must be more to it than that, surely?

In an effort to understand how this mammoth, centuries-old institution has found itself demanding its doctors of lexicography to define the word "moobs," I asked Jonathan Dent—editor of the New Words department—how and why they add new words to the dictionary every year.

VICE: Why does the OED seem particularly keen to include slang and even emojis lately?
Jonathan Dent: While OED updates do typically include additions reflecting recent developments in colloquial English, this is one small part of all new material that accompanies our quarterly batches of entries from the whole history of English. YOLO, one of yesterday's new additions to OED, has been added as just one part of the revision of a batch of entries beginning with "Y" in this update.

So how do new words come to your attention? Is there a person whose job it is to monitor new words on Twitter and Instagram and that kind of thing?
We have various ways of keeping up-to-date with developments in the language: our reading programs, which read books, newspapers, and magazines; electronic corpuses and databases of texts, which we can use to track and automatically identify new words; examples submitted by the public; and personal observation by Oxford editors, researchers, etymologists, and bibliographers. And yes, since the beginning of the project to revise the dictionary and produce an updated third edition, OED editors have been making use of online sources such as newsgroups, websites, blogs, and, more recently, Twitter.

So how do you go about tracking down the earliest possible recorded use of a word that started its life somewhere deep on the internet?
Although OED is, in essence, a record of the written language, the tendency of novelists, songwriters, screenwriters, etc. to represent modern colloquial English makes it relatively easy for us to find easily citable example slang. Even in the earlier period of English, poets and playwrights provide evidence of contemporary spoken usage, and slang dictionaries have a long history, stretching back to the 17th century. These days sources such as hip-hop lyrics or sitcom or soap-opera scripts frequently provide evidence of colloquialisms.

So how long do you spend on one entry? Does it occasionally happen that by the time you get around to including a very current piece of slang, the common usage of the word has fallen out of fashion?
OED tries to avoid including short-lived items—flashes in the lexical pan—by requiring evidence of continued use before considering the word or phrase for inclusion. Most contemporary words added to the OED have to have at least ten years of demonstrable use—in some cases, five is acceptable; in a very few, slightly less than this—before they're drafted. Of course, it's part of the role of a historical dictionary to also record extinct or obsolete items of vocabulary, as well as contemporary new words. It's hard to quantify how long it takes to draft an OED entry: A first draft of a single takes half a day to a day for a single editor to complete, but this draft then spends six months to a year being revised, refined, and improved by other editors, etymologists, and bibliographers.

Your inclusions seem to represent shifts in political, cultural, and social spheres—"afrofuturism" and "gender fluid" are two good example additions. Do you think inclusion in the OED gives these words a sense of extra legitimacy?
Because of our inclusion criteria, OED reflects the social shifts and trends represented in the language rather than authorizing them, although I think it's very understandable that any increase in the visibility of a new word that expresses something that people feel to be important to their own identity or experience will be viewed by them as positive. It's also a testament to the adaptability and power of English that it is constantly evolving and accommodating changes in the way we think about ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us.

Baltimore cops in training last year. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun/TNS via Getty Images)

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Somehow, the policing nightmare in Baltimore keeps getting worse.

In July, charges were dropped against all the officers responsible for 25-year-old Freddie Gray's death, a massive defeat for police accountability in a city crying out for it. Just weeks later, the feds released a scathing report finding Baltimore cops engaged in systematic racism and callousness toward victims of sexual assault. And perhaps most spectacular of all, a magazine story late last month revealed cops have been running a secret aerial surveillance program in city skies.

All of which is to say that just as cynical and frustrated residents began to plot the long road to reform in a city wracked by gun violence and shady policing, experts and reform advocates now find themselves at a loss to explain how one city is wrapped up in just about every kind of police excess there is.

The aerial surveillance program consists chiefly of flying planes more than 8,000 feet in the air and gathering video footage across a roughly 30-square-mile radius, as Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The program was funded secretly by Texas billionaires, Laura and John Arnold, who say they are looking to support new tools that can help police departments more effectively solve crime. The planes have flown about 300 hours in Baltimore since January.

For its part, the police department denies that officers have done anything wrong, or that the planes even amount to a form of surveillance. TJ Smith, media relations chief for the Baltimore Police Department, told VICE the aerial program "doesn't infringe on privacy rights" because it captures images available in public spaces. "We do not feel like citizen's rights were violated because they weren't," he said. "This phase is a trial run to see if this is technology would be useful in the city of Baltimore. We are constantly searching for creative ways to solve crime in a city that saw 344 murders in 2015."

An evaluation of the program's effectiveness, also funded by the Arnolds, is expected to come out later this month.

Meanwhile, last week, in the final days available for public comment on the feds' blistering appraisal of Baltimore cops—the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings hosted a town hall for residents to share their thoughts on police reform. Michael Wood, a former city cop turned reform activist, attended, and while he expected racism to be at the top of the list, the surveillance bombshell was clearly overwhelming residents, too.

"I haven't spoken to a person who isn't furious," Wood told VICE of revelations about the program.

Remarkably, the mayor and the city council were both unaware of the surveillance experiment's very existence, namely because it was funded secretly through a local foundation. The foundation's leadership has claimed it did not realize what the Arnolds' money was going toward, and in a statement, Laura Gamble, board chair, and Thomas Wilcox, the foundation's president and CEO, said they have "learned valuable lessons from this experience."

Baltimore public defenders were also kept in the dark and argue that the police's and prosecutors' failure to disclose—in court documents—when video footage came from aerial surveillance is a serious problem. Defenders have called for a suspension of the program.

Meanwhile, state and local politicians are looking at legislative responses to the city's latest police scandal. At the next session, Curt Anderson, the head of Baltimore's delegation to the Maryland House of Delegates, is considering introducing surveillance regulations that would apply to all Maryland police departments. He told the Baltimore Sun that lawmakers need to figure out "how and where would be used, where you keep the information, how much it would cost to store that information, and how much it would cost someone if they made a request for that information." On the local level, the ACLU of Maryland plans to craft legislation for someone on the Baltimore City Council to sponsor, which would limit the scope of police surveillance and/or increase the level of civilian oversight.

Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California Davis who specializes in policing and technology, told me that while police secrecy is nothing new, the kind of dragnet surveillance that Baltimore has engaged in—where officers aren't necessarily looking for one particular person, or conducting a specific investigation—raises serious political issues. "You need to balance some legitimate police needs with the idea that police may just have too much information on innocent people," Joh said. "And that's a real struggle for people in a democracy to figure out. Police can go as far as they want, but what do communities want?"

Baltimore police officials maintain the aerial surveillance program is just an extension of CitiWatch, its street-level closed circuit television system. But according to Anne McKenna, a visiting law professor at Penn State University and a national expert on technology and surveillance, the "breadth and scope" of Baltimore's aerial surveillance program raises new questions that are nowhere near settled in case law. And when you take the department's reported aggregation of social-media posts, overlay it with aerial surveillance and closed circuit TV footage, "Well, you've really created Big Brother," McKenna said.

But Tara Huffman, director of Criminal and Juvenile Justice at the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, actually sees the city's police commissioner, Kevin Davis, who took over not long after Gray's death, as someone who genuinely understands the importance of reform. Which makes the surveillance revelations all the more surprising. "It seemed completely contradictory to the actions we've seen Commissioner Davis take," Huffman told VICE.

Baltimore, of course, is continuing to struggle with gun violence—the Sun reports there have been 215 homicides already this year, and the police's clearance rate for solving murder cases has tended to be dreadfully low. But the connection between aerial oversight and catching violent criminals isn't always so clean-cut.

"I think what is alarming—and I think it's fair to say uniquely alarming about what we've seen going on in Baltimore—is there's been a massive investment of resources to monitor speech and protest," said Lee Rowland, the senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "Exercising your First Amendment right is not probable cause, it's not reason for suspicion. That the police would be directing their investigative resources to fly over protests or spend their days on Facebook looking for speech when there's been no complaint or evidence of a crime, that is a use of power we should call out as wrong."

Challenges remain for Baltimore residents, as the deadline for a consent decree with the Department of Justice draws near and opposition from the police union looms large. But most glaring of all to some residents and experts is the fact that the police department continues to argue that tracking social media and conducting aerial surveillance shouldn't even bother people.

As Huffman put it, "The community's reaction to the surveillance helps to underscore just how fractured the relationship is, just how deep the distrust, the resentment, the suspicions run."

Follow Rachel Cohen on Twitter.

Firefighters clear rubble in Amatrice, Italy. Photo via Antonio Calanni/AP

Following last month's tragic earthquake in Amatrice, in which 290 people died and thousands were displaced, the head of Italy's National Anti-Mafia Directorate Franco Roberti was quick to stress the need to prevent the Mafia from becoming involved in reconstruction efforts. Speaking to La Repubblica, he said, "Post-earthquake reconstruction is a tasty morsel for criminal organizations and business interests."

That's not an unfounded fear. A European Parliament report found that, following the L'Aquila earthquake of 2009, a part of the approximately $555 million provided to the region following the earthquake, went to companies with "direct or indirect ties" to organized crime, with the head prosecutor of the National Anti-Mafia Department, Olga Capasso, declaring that "Aquila is one of the biggest problems at a national level" when it comes to Mafia activity.

However, articles covering both the L'Aquila and Amatrice earthquakes shed little light on how the Mafia engage in these practices.

The 1980 Irpinia earthquake was the first Italian crisis that truly spurred on Mafia involvement in reconstruction and public works. John Dickie writes in Mafia Republic that just two weeks after the earthquake, members of the Camorra Mafia murdered a town mayor because he tried to block companies with ties to Mafia organizations winning contracts to clear rubble.

At that time, there was little accountability for agencies involved in contracting, which led to corruption and disastrous results: More than 28,500 people were still living in canvas accommodation ten years after the earthquake. The methods the Mafia used back then—coercion, violence, and corruption—to acquire contracts were largely in line with the Godfather clichés about Mafia activity.

Today, though, the Mafia is far less visible and its tactics have changed. Dr. Felia Allum is one of the UK's foremost Italian Mafia experts, whose latest book The Invisible Camorra, traces Neapolitan crime families across Western Europe. Speaking by phone from Bath, she outlined how she believes Mafia tactics have evolved to make it far harder to prove their involvement.

It's not necessarily these criminal families going into local councils, shooting everybody, and saying, 'Give us the contracts.' It's much more subtle.

"When you ask about the different Mafia methods, perhaps in the 1980s I could have drawn up a list: They're going to set up a very specific clientelistic exchange, etc. Whereas, now, they don't need to do that because they're already there. They have the political contacts, and they have the businessmen in place, so they just have to be the invisible partner. They don't have to do anything spectacular, and that's when it becomes more difficult to trace. It's not necessarily these criminal families going into local councils, shooting everybody, and saying, 'Give us the contracts.' It's much more subtle. They've managed to impose themselves on specific markets, perhaps by previously using violence, corruption, or lending money to companies in need, but they're now an established force. They don't need to do anything particularly Mafia-like."

Rather than threats in dark rooms, accidents on building sites, and briefcases bursting with bills, the modern Mafia employs more business-like tactics. Instead of images of The Godfather, a better analogy might be the Panama Papers. Massive, billion euro businesses hiding their influence and money in a complex web of companies until you're unable to tell where the legitimate economy ends and the illegitimate begins. With reconstruction and profiting from earthquakes, Dr. Allum suggests this infiltration comes from a slightly surprising source: cement.

"It's not that all the big cement businesses are Mafia businesses, but a lot of these criminal organizations—and we're talking since the 1980s—saw the potential in cement. They invested money, got close to businessmen, and were therefore able to invest in an invisible way, so that now they don't necessarily need to do anything heavy-handed. It's quite sophisticated; they don't necessarily need to target the politician, or they don't need to target the local administrator, because the Mafia is so involved and intertwined in the cement sector that they probably have a hand in lots of people who provide cement and therefore are in a win-win situation."

That's why the Mafia has also been blamed for the level of disaster caused in the recent earthquake. The cement and reconstructed buildings were not built to withstand earthquakes, meaning more houses collapsed and more people died than should have. That said, Dr. Allum stresses again that this is not as simple as the Mafia blatantly breaking the law. There is a further political level that needs to be investigated, as suspect companies use poorly defined regulations to avoid prosecution.

"One of the ongoing debates at the moment is a lot of the houses that came down were rebuilt because of the L'Aquila rebuilding program," she said. "Now the ministry gave indications and measures about how they should be rebuilt, and there were two levels. One level was just mere 'upgrades,' and the other was reinforcement against earthquakes. A lot of them just had to have upgrades, and 'upgrades' could be interpreted in any way. If the contractor comes in and has been told to upgrade it, then they might not have actually broken the law. Even the sub-contractor may have technically not done anything wrong if he's been told to come in and just put a lick of paint on. It's a whole system from that perspective. It's not just a few dodgy criminals coming in and badly rebuilding; it is also the lack of political rigor and the need for stricter legislation to make administrators and businessmen more accountable."

In regards to whether the Mafia has already begun attempting to capitalize on the disaster, Dr. Allum is firm in suggesting they are. "Franco Roberti, the head of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, said steps must be taken not to let them infiltrate the reconstruction efforts—but if it's already seeped in, how do you undo that?"

Giuseppe Saieva—chief prosecutor in the provincial capital of Rieti, and one of the people tasked with proving Mafia involvement in shoddy construction—summed up the task ahead of them. "Everyone suspects such a tragedy was not just a question of destiny," he said. "Our duty is to verify if there was also responsibility, human culpability."

Of course, that increasingly seems like an impossible task, when the Mafia is so entangled with the institutions of Italian industry and government that it's become almost invisible.

Alexis Arquette at the Sundance Film Festival party for 'Wigstock: The Movie.' Photo courtesy Mark Tusk

On Sunday, it was reported that Alexis Arquette—sibling to Patricia, David, Rosanna, and Richmond Arquette, who was made famous through celebrated performances in films like Pulp Fiction and The Wedding Singer—died at 47, allegedly from an AIDS-related illness.

Writing about Alexis following the news is difficult, not because words could never sum up all that Alexis had to offer the world, nor because, in my deep fondness for Alexis, I find it hard to find the language to capture their life so soon after its end. Rather, the problem lies in the limits of English itself. They were limits which Alexis highlighted and exploited in their work, and limits which they rejected, along with the certainty of fixed gender identity and other kinds of black-and-white thinking.

Alexis came out as transgender in 2006. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of trans issues knows to use pronouns matching a person's elected gender as sign of respect. For years, I trained my partner to refer to Alexis using "she" and "her." But he recently retorted with gleeful indignation that "Alexis is now referring to himself as male," and indeed, this February, David Arquette is quoted as saying that Alexis had become "gender suspicious," rather than identifying as one gender or another. Such contrarian thought was delightfully typical of Alexis, who carried a whimsical and belligerent disregard for the rules of language or identity. As my sign of respect, I'll thus use singular "they" here as Alexis's pronoun.

In their acting work, Alexis refused to take on demeaning or stereotypical transgender characters in film roles—but, beyond the performances they chose, Alexis never let the world forget exactly what gender non-conformity can mean. On myriad red carpets, they dazzled in outfits that combined Grey Gardens–quirkiness with Warholian pop-culture-meets-visual-art sophistication, outfits that taught the world exactly how to laugh at the boxes that society tries to cram us all into.

Alexis's unique kind of commentary was not limited to fashion. For example, when Michael Musto, in an interview for OUT, asked them to talk about how trans people are represented in the media, Alexis insisted that things aren't black-and-white, saying that they "don't have the answers." Rather than resort to a press-ready spin about equality, Alexis turned the conversation to how the media had mishandled a recent controversy: The response to a quip they'd made in an interview with Frontiers Magazine—that they'd slept with Jared Leto before identifying as a woman and that the actor was, to put it lightly, well-endowed. The claim lit a fire in the press, but rather than let it burn down, Alexis threw gas upon the flames by telling Musto that Leto had also slept with a trans woman they knew.

At the time the interview was published, activists and commentators were hotly debating whether casting Leto as a transgender woman, Rayon, in Dallas Buyers Club, was appropriate, rather than hiring a trans performer. And to those who could read between the lines, Alexis's controversial remarks to Musto felt like an oblique comment on that debate. By redirecting the focus away from trans representations in media to Jared's genitalia and sexuality, Alexis opened the actor's body to the kind of scrutiny that celebrities like Laverne Cox, Caitlin Jenner, Anhoni, and Alexis all routinely experience—speculation that turns the bodies of trans people into a site of spectacle.

Alexis arguably helped to teach the world what it means to be visibly transgender in the entertainment industry, while simultaneously achieving delicious retaliation for that Hollywood double standard in which straight men can win the industry's highest accolade for playing transgender characters while actual trans performers struggle just to get work. Playing court Jester to Los Angeles's celebrity elite, Alexis kept Hollywood on its toes, even as Hollywood failed to fully seize the opportunities that Alexis offered its writers, casting directors, and producers with their talent.

Don't get me wrong; a filmography of 70 enviable roles is nothing to sniff at. But the achievements I want to highlight don't easily comport with typical obituary fare. Despite the red carpets, Alexis was never destined to have a portrait taken with Hillary Clinton or be on the cover of Time. No disrespect to Laverne Cox—we have good reason to love her—but I feel Alexis engaged in a maverick breed of trans activism.

Alexis made flouting entertainment-industry norms into a fine art of words, outfits, and postures. By turning LA's club scene into their creative laboratory, Alexis cultivated a flair for red-carpet gender-fashion bombing and interview repartee. Through intoxicating Punk-Glam outfits, and as a cabaret circuit favorite, Alexis was able to distill the style they brought to underground film projects. Flaunted as an on-screen narrator in Wigstock: The Movie, and paraded on TV talk shows, Alexis was a Leigh Bowery of celebrity culture and learned to deal with notoriety in a way that blazed a trail for transgender celebrities and actors who came after.

And in their genre-bending documentary, Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother, Alexis refused to let their body become a site of spectacle. The film depicts Alexis fighting on camera for medical treatment on their own terms, in which they claim a female identity but refuse to reveal to the audience whether they have or would ever surgically transition. If audiences left theaters a little bewildered, they took with them the gift that Alexis offered to LA and the larger world: With Alexis, you learned to expect to get what you needed, instead of what you thought you wanted.

Doran George is a social historian and performance artist who writes on sexual culture and avant-garde dance. Their artwork and scholarship is represented in art books, Oxford University Press anthologies, and journals, including a piece about how trans artists, including Alexis, navigate visibility for Transgender Studies Quarterly.Doran currently lectures in Disability Studies and LGBTQ Studies at UCLA.

Photo via Flickr user David Beyer

In Yes, It's Hot In Here: Adventures in the Weird, Woolly World of Sports Mascots, former NY Mets mascot AJ Mass documents the strange trajectory of this perennial lucky charm. Mass' stories involve everything from dealing with ballpark security (and potential sniper fire) to mascots getting assaulted by the fans of opposing teams to generally feeling like they never get the respect they deserve.

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

A child who uses medical cannabis, from our film 'Stoned Kids'

Hopeful news if you're one of the estimated 1 million medicinal cannabis users in the UK: A group of MPs and peers is campaigning for medicinal weed to be legalized, allowing people who suffer from chronic pain and symptoms such as anxiety to grow a small amount of weed and have access to doctor-prescribed bud without the risk of being charged for possession.

If the campaign is successful, it would put the UK among 11 European countries and 24 US states where cannabis has been decriminalized for prescribed consumption.

The campaign was put forward this Tuesday after the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform analyzed evidence from 623 patients, medical professionals, and legally savvy people with knowledge of cannabis regulation in other countries, and reached the conclusion that weed can, indeed, be helpful and therapeutic in many ways—and is actually not a terrifying nightmare drug. The group proposes that herbal cannabis be put in the same category as steroids and sedatives, meaning that it could be prescribed by doctors and dispensed by chemists.

The study—which analyzed more than 20,000 medical reports and was led by expert in rehabilitation medicine, Professor Mike Barnes—also showed that almost 70 percent of patients who currently use weed for the relief of symptoms, such as nausea after chemotherapy, tried conventional medication before going green.

The study also acknowledges that there are instances in which cannabis is still not proven to be the best option, such as in the treatment of depression and epilepsy. According to the report, regular use could lead to putting some people at risk of developing psychotic disorders, which doctors should be aware of when prescribing.

Even though the weed market has already become as corporate as any other in the US, most MPs already back the legalization of medicinal marijuana, and campaigners say cannabis is doing wonders for their ailments. In response, the Home Office said that it doesn't plan to decriminalize the "harmful drug."

Nice to know that the people in charge of making our laws are so receptive to the opinions of experts and don't just, you know, continue to ignore all logic and common sense.

'Ace Attorney—Spirit of Justice' artwork courtesy of Capcom

Nobody really knows what to call it; according to the New York Times, imperfect approximations include the "chunk-chunk" and the "dun-dun." Regardless of its name, the thumping audio flourish that accompanies scene transitions in Law & Order has proven to be one of the most iconic sounds in television, its popularity outlasting even the famously resilient show that birthed it.

It could certainly be argued that games have a clip of equivalent stature; perhaps the "ting" of Mario collecting a coin, or the rhythmic "cock-click-cock-blam" of Doom II's monstrous super shotgun. But while perhaps the longest-running video game procedural's signature sound can't quite match L&O's in style, it at least earns points for consistency. For 15 years now, pressing the New Game option in most every Ace Attorney game produces a slight, pixelated knock of a gavel hitting home, including the series's tenth and latest entry, Spirit of Justice, now available worldwide following its June Japanese release.

Casual observers might balk at this number—surely there aren't ten of these things clogging store shelves all over North America. (Indeed, there aren't, as only eight of the games have managed to make it to Western territories, despite the series's considerable sales.) And one could certainly forgive some confusion regarding the particulars of the individual games, since each features four or five discrete "episodes" that only occasionally depend on or add to the series's already convoluted continuity. But while there's no denying that 15 years of existence is a remarkable achievement for any franchise, the facts of this particular case reach even beyond that, bordering on utter impossibility.

Considering the enduring popularity of police procedurals and legal dramas in popular culture, the formula behind Capcom's Ace Attorney might read like a sure-fire money-maker—a game where you play as a rookie defense attorney named Phoenix Wright who shields his obviously innocent clients from the wrath of increasingly aggressive prosecutors by pointing out the holes in the state's case, inevitably producing the real culprit just in the nick of time. Or, in other words: You might not have played these games, but you've definitely flipped past this show in one of your 2 AM post-bar hazes.

Despite this, few expected the series to make inroads worldwide, least of all Capcom. Because while the game's concept might read as American as apple pie and clogged arteries, the titles themselves are essentially a novel meld of point-and-click adventure games and Japanese visual novels. And while both of those modes have enjoyed a considerable resurgence since the rise of the indie game, they were considered niche at best, and commercial anathema at worst, which is part of why the first installments of the series didn't make it to other territories until 2005, nearly four years after their original release.

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Related: Watch 'Rebel Rabbis,' our documentary about the ultra-orthodox Jews who want to see Israel dismantled

Once the games arrived stateside, however, they moved units, and have continued to grow in popularity ever since. It turns out that the very traits that made the series's appeal seem limited on paper have allowed it to thrive, even as the mobile-phone market has cannibalized the handheld consoles that have historically hosted them. (Previous games have slowly made their way to iOS, though Spirit of Justice is currently a 3DS-only title).

Perhaps the most indispensable aspect of the series's success is its trademark sense of goofy humor. Sure, plenty of video game heroes crack wise, but it usually takes the form of Joss Whedon–like gallows quippery that customarily follows a headshot, or perhaps a good knuckle-cracking. They're the kind of jokes that rely on a tacit assumption that the situation is very serious, that the world is totally fucked, and all our intrepid hero can do in the face of such unfathomable adversity is try to draw a funny face on it. While this humor is ostensibly included to give these works a temporary air of breezy amusement, such as the films of Steven Spielberg, the effect is generally the opposite—it highlights the ponderous, self-serious worldview that most video games above a certain budget (for example, Gears of War or Call of Duty) are required to exhibit.

Unlike those games, the fun in Ace Attorney isn't relegated to a single source—it emanates from every pore. Protagonist Phoenix isn't the jokester here, though he certainly isn't above the occasional jibe—instead, he plays the straight man to nearly every other character in the series. No matter their role—prosecutor, killer, or even judge—they all exhibit a wide array of flamboyant, erratic, and/or just plain bizarre personalities that reflect the wild imagination of series creator Shu Takumi.

At first, the series's signature strangeness can come off as a bit garish. For example, the opening case of Spirit of Justice has you facing off against a mellow musician monk named "Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin" who speaks in rhyming couplets and allegedly witnessed the crime. When accused of being the real killer, he—in a long-standing series tradition—drops his chill façade and shifts his personality completely. In this case, it turns out to be a Gene Simmons pastiche—he hooks up his guitar to a massive sound system that literally comes out of nowhere and starts shredding and belting out lyrics that describe Phoenix's untimely death. Soon enough, the gallery is screaming for blood.

While at first it may grate, over time one begins to realize that the weirdness that defines Ace Attorney is no mere affectation. From stem to stern, the entire game is designed around it. Where so many other games are gray and stolid, the world of Phoenix Wright is all color and movement—a baroque counterpoint to the gritty naturalism displayed by the larger medium. And once you're acclimated to it, it can be hard to go back. The characters that Phoenix meets might be exaggerated, but they're unapologetically human at their core, with real desires and real problems. One need only look at fan-favorite plotlines like the fate of Godot and that of the Fey family to see that, especially in the series's original trilogy, which ends up having an emotional heft that one might not expect.

Of course, no matter how good the recipe, the chef might get tired of making the same thing every night, and such is the problem facing Ace Attorney. The series has faced accusations of staleness since at least the third entry, 2004's Trials and Tribulations, and the cries have only grown louder as the series has gone on, and justifiably so. While it's true that the games have evolved their mechanics very little as the franchise has continued, such complaints largely miss the point; the simple logic games that make up the bulk of the courtroom action have never risen above mere competency, and frequently fall below it, even in the better entries.

Instead, the main issue facing Spirit of Justice is the virus that infects almost every large media franchise—the series's own weighty continuity, which occasionally threatens to pull the viewer into an exposition vortex that only a lengthy visit to the Ace Attorney Wiki can allow you to escape from. To be fair, Takumi saw this problem coming and tried to give the franchise a fresh face by retiring Phoenix and introducing newcomer Apollo Justice, but fan backlash prompted his return shortly after. (It's worth noting here that the one non-Ace Attorney game that Takumi has directed in the past decade, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, which flopped in the United States, remains arguably his best work.) With three different player characters and a bevy of returning sidekicks, it's fair to say that the Spirit of Justice expects you to do your homework. Worse still, it can sometimes neglect to develop these characters, assuming that your preexisting experience with them can be enough to make you care about their various fates.

Still, when you return to that courtroom and hear the sound of Phoenix bashing that table as he screams "OBJECTION," it's hard not to be taken in all over again. Traditional procedurals like Law & Order are basically just justice porn: The police investigate, find damning evidence, and arrest the bad guy; the bad guy hires a slimy, charismatic attorney to throw the proof out of court; Jack McCoy growls at the defendant until he gives it up on the stand; and the jury dutifully throws the book at him. Case closed, see you next week.

Ace Attorney offers an alternative—it's a game series where the bumbling police always arrest the patsy, and you have to prove that the obviously guilty mustache-twirling witness, is, in fact, the true culprit. Maybe it says something about the world we live in—or me—but that struggle seems a lot more relevant to all of our lives than whether or not Captain Shooty and the Boys manage to save the world from the latest alien invasion. I don't know what it's like to exhibit that kind of superhuman competence, but I think all of us know what it's like to try to shield someone from the incompetence of others—ourselves included.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney—Spirit of Justice is out now for the Nintendo 3DS.

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A pharmacist and his tech in Neosho, Missouri. Laurie Sisk /The Joplin Globe via AP

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In an unprecedented move intended to help ease America's opioid overdose epidemic, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sent a letter to every physician in the United States last month, urging them to follow Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines by avoiding prescribing opioids for pain whenever possible and treating addiction like a disease. The problem on Murthy's radar isn't exactly a new one, but over the course of a single week in August, some 225 people overdosed on opioids in four counties across four states.

It's increasingly clear, however, that the federal government's emphasis on cutting the opioid supply is failing to stem the tide of opioid overdose—and might even be making the problem deadlier.

Since 2012, opioid prescriptions have fallen by 12 percent, according to data from IMS Health, which tracks pharmaceutical sales; another, similar database operated by Symphony Health Solutions puts the drop at 18 percent. But overdose rates are still climbing. Meanwhile, many pain patients are losing access to the only treatment that works for them, with doctors fearing loss of their license—or worse—if they don't follow the newest guidelines, released in March. One online survey of more than 2,000 chronic pain patients taking opioids found that since then, two thirds had either had their dose reduced or their medications cut off entirely. At the same time, key steps that could be taken that require little in the way of new government funds continue to be ignored.

The most important of these measures consists of expanding access to maintenance treatment with methadone or buprenorphine, the only medications proven to cut the death rate from opioid addiction by 50 percent or more. Further reductions in prescribing opioids risk simply raising the death toll by shifting users from legal meds with standardized content and dosing to far more dangerous illegally manufactured ones, like super potent fentanyl and its derivatives. But in a testament to the toxic legacy of the war on drugs—and despite a kinder, gentler rhetorical approach—supply-side battles are still engrained in American health policy.

"I have deep respect for the surgeon general and his efforts," Dr. Stephen Martin, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told VICE. "We have been hearing for years about safer prescribing practices. My state of Massachusetts, where opioid overdoses are still increasing, is in the lowest quintile of opioid prescribing. recommendations as the basis for policy in 2016 can be seen as an example of generals fighting the last war."

Martin treats both addiction and chronic pain and told me that what has happened to pain patients and their doctors since the new CDC guidelines dropped has been "chilling." Basically, doctors know that if they are targeted by prosecutors for overprescribing, failing to follow the CDC's voluntary rules could put them in legal jeopardy. In fact, the DEA once set guidelines to help physicians understand what practices would keep them safe from arrest—before withdrawing the guidelines when it seemed like they might be used as a legal defense.

When the goal is cutting supply, keeping docs scared of prescribing at all is the best way to drive it down fast.

"We've been fielding desperate, predictable calls from people who have been abruptly cut off or sharply tapered down on opioids that were successfully working for their chronic pain in the wake of the CDC guidelines and accompanying rhetoric," Martin told me.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has kept in place (while slightly relaxing) a hard limit on the number of patients a doctor can treat with buprenorphine—a cap not backed by any research at all. (One independent research group, the Pew Charitable Trusts, recently wrote Congress and labeled the limits "arbitrary.") But since the patient cap is enforced by the DEA, doctors who ignore it risk not only their licenses but their freedom.

To be sure, at least when it comes to how they talk about the problem, the feds have adopted a modernized approach to addiction—a sign of progress in the national dialogue, if nothing else.

"Having the surgeon general ask physicians to step up to the plate... is hugely significant," said Dr. Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Substance Use Disorder Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital. "His call to arms explicitly acknowledges that this is a disease, and it is unacceptable for doctors to simply opt out."

Unfortunately, according to Dr. Martin, only 4 percent of all doctors have completed the required training to allow them to treat addiction with buprenorphine, and there's that pesky patient cap for those who do. The Obama administration has also done little to cut regulatory barriers to access to the other key lifesaving drug, methadone—and in fact, US officials have traditionally stressed that both medications should only be provided in the context of counseling and monitoring of urine tests for other drug use. This is at odds with the science.

"There are many paths to recovery and counseling can be very helpful to people with opioid addiction," said Dr. Robert Schwartz, medical director of the Friends Research Institute in Baltimore. "But the balance of research data does not support making counseling a requirement to receive potentially life-saving treatment with methadone or buprenorphine."

What's perhaps most frustrating is that the current crisis might have been averted with more recognition earlier on that cutting supply doesn't end existing addictions. Far from being an unpredictable result of the crackdown on use of medical opioids that started in the early 2000s, the rise of street heroin markets where they had never previously existed and the subsequent use of fentanyl to boost potency are classic examples of two widely recognized phenomena in drug-policy history.

The first is known as the "iron law of prohibition," which I've written about previously. Basically, the idea is that because illegal drugs need to be kept hidden, harsher laws will tend to promote the spread of more potent and dangerous drugs, simply because smaller quantities are easier to conceal and smuggle. Alcohol prohibition, for example, favored whisky over beer. The rise of illegally produced fentanyl and its derivatives— overdoses of which increased 79 percent between 2013 and 2014 alone—seems an apt illustration of this principle.

The second phenomenon is called the "balloon effect," which occurs whenever supply is interrupted in one location or via one major route. Like pressing on a balloon, cutting the supply simply makes the air bubble pop up somewhere else, rather than eliminating it. So the shutdown of pill mills and increasing pressure on doctors not to prescribe legal opioids has almost certainly been a key driver of America's heroin problem. (The trend toward marijuana legalization, as some have bizarrely suggested, almost certainly has not.)

What's saddest about the situation is the bevy of missed opportunities to help: Medical records at those mills tend to include names of everyone who receives a prescription. (Given that these prescriptions are for controlled substances, real ID is needed to fill them.) Though some clients certainly resell the drugs, a large share are likely themselves addicted. And every time a "doctor shopper" gets caught and arrested or dismissed as a patient, another treatment opportunity is missed.

If the government had offered immediate access to maintenance meds to every patient at every pill mil, and referred people with chronic pain to other doctors immediately, the market gap opened by the supply cut might have been dramatically reduced. Left in withdrawal, it's unsurprising that people are turning to street supplies. But research shows that providing buprenorphine access to patients in medical crisis like overdose dramatically increases the odds that they will enter treatment and also reduces relapse.

In commemoration of International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, the Obama administration reported adding $53 million in funds towards dealing with the crisis. Just $11 million of that, however, will go to maintenance treatment. If America really wants to reduce the death toll from its opioid crisis, we need to focus on reducing demand, not supply.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Warning: spoilers for episode three of 'Atlanta'

Third episodes might be the toughest in a new television show's run because they function like a hinge upon which the show's fortunes, in the short term, pivot. Consider the first season of True Detective. If you recall, the end of the third episode revealed a villainous individual in soiled briefs and a gas mask, wielding a machete—the potential arch-nemesis to Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's detectives—as a scary, yet satisfying cliffhanger. The scene everyone remembers—the tracking shot through a public housing complex riddled with bullets from white supremacists and police alike—occurred in episode four. But the show had to get you there first. It needed to deliver; it needed to keep us, the viewers, arrested.

After a strong two-episode premiere, Atlanta, the new comedy drama by actor, writer, and comedian Donald Glover, has arrived at the same point. Earn (Glover), freshly bailed out of city lockup by Van (Zazie Beetz), succeeded in getting a local radio station to play his cousin Paper Boi's single. But while attention is on Paper Boi throughout his daily life in the city, he's still not living up to his name. Rapping good is one thing, but converting your dreams into dollar bills is another.

"Go for Broke," the third episode, opens with cash-strapped Earn at a local fast-food joint, attempting to quietly order a kids' meal for himself. The cashier—newly appointed "day manager"—isn't having it, and comedic banter ensues. Denied the meal and unable to afford anything else on the menu, Earn accepts defeat and asks for a courtesy cup for water, which he then uses to filch fountain soda.

There is little happiness in Earn's life. As the camera follows him walking down the street, he holds his blazer over his head, blocking out the rain from the storm cloud that seems to follows him wherever he goes. Success so eludes Earn, he is incredulous to find out that Paper Boi—his cousin, Wayne—sustains himself financially as a drug dealer.

None of these facts are tainted by the sleight-of-hand quasi-intellect one might find in a cable drama, bereft with high-minded ideas, wooden characters, and casual racism. Earn and Paper Boi exchange a blunt as they chill and joke about their bank accounts, paltry as they may be, while the camera is suddenly trained on Darius who, in preparation for the drug deal he and Paper Boi are about to engage in, cocks a pistol hidden in a cereal box. It is what it is. Meanwhile, Earn awaits a meager direct deposit to hit his account—$96—so he and Van can enjoy a night of dinner and conversation. With this simple conceit, "Go for Broke" presents a mix of everyday struggles underscored by the threat of violence.

The deal eventually takes Paper Boi and Darius into the dense Georgia woods, winding through barely lit back roads, far away from the city. A drug deal, on its face, brings with it a level of uncertainty, danger perhaps. Paper Boi and Darius meet their contacts around a campfire (Atlanta-based rap group Migos). Before addressing Paper Boi's business, the contacts open a compartment to their RV. Out tumbles a cornrowed, whimpering man in boxer briefs, held captive for unknown reasons. The deal itself is an additional source of discomfort for Paper Boi as inquiries are made into a murder charge he might've faced at some time in the past. His contacts are curious as to how he beat a 25-year sentence. Paper Boi stutters as his phone vibrates from a frantic call made by Earn, who needs a quick deposit of cash for his night out.

Back in the city, Earn and Van have their date at a hip, modern restaurant. With a bowl of soup priced at $28, the restaurant quickly threatens to drain the remaining coins from Earn's account. Dinner specials are rattled off by their upbeat server, then added on without a glance at the price tag. The scene is a commiseration of regular people with regular-people problems doing what regular people tend to do when hardship and calamity visit: spend money they don't have to enjoy a fleeting moment of pleasure. The poor deserve fancy meals and comfort, too. Later, a rant-cum-confessional positions Earn—the confessor—as a tragic hero, a defeated man still fighting to manifest the flighty dreams in his heart. Van, patience eroded, responds, "That's some dumbass shit, Earn," and walks out. Self-delusion projected as philosophy makes for a nice sound bite, but it doesn't work when it's just empty talk.

A new show's third episode confirms its creator's intentions. Just as in True Detective when, by the end of the third episode, the viewer grasped the concept that the show was more than another police procedural, "Go for Broke" establishes Atlanta as something more than another drama from a comedian-auteur with artsy aspirations, more than a black comedy. Glover cleverly pays his respect to shows and movies before him—the dinner scene between Earn and Van could've come from any one of the black romantic comedies from the mid-to-late 90s, and the riotous scene in the woods could've come from a young Martin Lawrence or Robin Harris. The cinematography is striking in "Go for Broke," and every song selection for the episode succeeds. Small, yet significant details are revealed, and we begin to see the main characters differently. But for all that occurs in each scene, Atlanta is a quiet show. It refuses to insist itself upon the viewers with ham-fisted truisms. There is no moralizing here. It's just a community of black folks trying to figure it all out, day by day. Atlanta is onto something good.

Follow Mensah Demary on Twitter.

Atlanta airs on Tuesdays at 10 PM on FX.

Gross. Photo via Facebook

Hey Canada, we almost made it through another frosh week without having to hear the rapey slogan "no means yes," but some dickheads from my alma mater Western (of course) had to go out and ruin it.

Not particularly creative in their misogyny, some mysterious "jokesters" with a "sense of humour" decided to write "no means yes... and yes means anal" on a student house window near campus. If it sounds familiar, that's because it was infamously chanted by frat dudes at Yale in 2014—the same year students at Saint Mary's in Halifax chanted, "U is for underage, N is for no consent."

A woman named Emma Richard first discovered the shitty window sign last week. "I had no words. I couldn't comprehend what I was looking at," she wrote in a Facebook post. "This is what my neighbours appear to think is true of the English language, of acceptable actions."

Read More: Quebec University Students May Be Expelled Over a Game Accused of Promoting Rape Culture

Richard then wrote that her shock turned to anger and sadness: "I wept for everyone who has ever said 'no' only to have 'yes' heard, yes acted upon... I wept for those who will continue to suffer the consequences of a culture in which a household feels 'no means yes' is an acceptable thing to write on their window."

In the days following the discovery, the school's housing mediation coordinator appeared to downplay the incident in the local press. "I get it: the message is really bad, but students do dumb things," Glenn Matthews told the London Free Press.

The executive director of London's Abused Women's Centre Megan Walker called out the response for defending rape culture. "It's manager describes rape culture as boys being boys, kids play," she tweeted.

This week, the university apologized for the slow response time and announced an investigation into the rapey, unoriginal slogan. Jana Luker, Western's associate vice-provost of student experience, wrote that "Western takes full responsibility for not responding to the incident adequately."

"To be clear, sexual violence is not tolerated at Western. The message written on that window is a form of sexual violence. Its existence threatened the safety and security of our campus community," Luker wrote, adding that campus police have been notified.

"Glenn has since apologized and expressed sincere regret that his comments dismissed the seriousness of sexual violence and served to damage the University's initiatives to eliminate such abhorrent activity," reads the letter.

With universities like UBC set to unveil new sex assault policies in the coming days, here's hoping we'll do better next year.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.