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What It's Like to 'Go Travelling' When You're from a Country Everyone Fears

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Just a young lad who really loves his travelling and that (Photo by Unsplash via)

By now, it's an inarguable, middle-class rite of passage. "Going travelling" has become one of those things that you're supposed to tick off an imagined bucket list by the time you hit your thirties. And with travel pic hashtagging, travel's becoming a sort of social media battleground.

But it isn't always that easy to get involved. Take the average young person living in Iraq, for example. Despite being in one of the world's most conflict-ridden areas, their country's seen internet access reach even the most distant of marshlands. The sorts of hashtags more often dropped by lifestyle bloggers paid to post—#wanderlust, #instatravel, #travelgram—leave Iraqis to live vicariously through each photo of a coconut on a pristine white beach. This is the post 9/11 world, after all.

"I would just love to see what the world has to offer and to experience the freedom of travel," says Zahraa Ghandour, a young media presenter based in Baghdad, "but when I think about the time, money and effort that I've lost on failed visas, I'm not sure I'll have ever a chance to travel freely."

For any twentysomething, the appeal to travel is largely understandable; the freedom, the chance to see new cultures beyond stereotypes in mass media and the lure of partying with like-minded people can feel like a dream. Now, multiply that with a desire to escape a nagging awareness of constant war and devastation and you can start to see where "wanderlust" goes beyond a hashtag for some young Iraqis.

When the country you're from is currently perceived as unstable, it tightens the constraints placed on just where you can go. According to the global Visa Restrictions Index, the Iraqi passport is ranked third-lowest in the world, providing visa-free or visa on-arrival entry to just 30 countries. Sarah Collinson, a research associate at the Overseas Development Institute writes that the concept of a visa is "inherent in the very nature of sovereignty."

But John Torpey, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, expands on the idea of visas as being "the 'first line of defense' against the entry of undesirables." The very notion of jumping through hoops for visa restrictions depending on where you're from is inherently racist—you're presumed "undesirable" until proven otherwise. Basically, a lot of people are tarred with the same brush.

Ghandour finds herself torn. "I love my country. I never think about leaving it permanently, but I need to see the world," she says. Many of her friends have already fled Iraq as refugees—almost the only way for young Iraqis to leave the country. "I am not happy here," she continues, "and as much as I went to help others, I need a break for myself to be able to appreciate life."

Zahraa Ghandour, probs checking the 'Gram (Photo by the author)

She says that she's previously spent thousands of US dollars on flights and hotels only to have them go to waste when her visa was rejected. She's also missed out on prominent international courses due to failed visa applications. "I have no interest in applying for asylum on arriving in a country," she continues, "so I have to follow travellers on Instagram to give me a taste of the world outside of Iraq."

As a British citizen, I have the privilege of travelling with relative ease, thanks to the strange power held by my passport. The British empire's obviously officially died, but the frameworks of parts of its legacy haven't been quite dismantled.

When I think about the time, money and effort that I've lost on failed visas, I'm not sure I'll have ever a chance to travel freely — Zahraa Ghandour, from Iraq

It's a point that award-winning Iraqi filmmaker Mohanad Hayal furiously makes, retelling the story of how he missed out on a visa to Australia. He says he'd been invited to take part in workshops to develop his next screenplay, among a group of prestigious international filmmakers, but was denied entry to the country. "How many of the 2,000 Australian soldiers needed a visa when they invaded my country in 2003?" he asks, speaking to me. Already grappling with his own obstacles, such as the lack of electricity while scriptwriting back home in Iraq, Hayal describes how the struggle to enter the international film scene was reinforced by travel restrictions. "I feel like I'm being treated as a terror threat, not as a filmmaker," he says. "This is bullshit man. How can I be fucking creative and share it with the world if they don't let me travel? I feel so trapped."

Travel within Iraq can be tricky too, on top of the simmering security threats caused by ISIS. Sectarian divides have made it difficult for groups to travel across the various rifts. Dilshad Yousif, an Iraqi photographer of Kurdish descent, was born in Baghdad and only speaks Arabic. He was denied entry into Erbil, the capital of Kurdish Iraq. "They kept me in Erbil airport for three hours, only to send me back to Baghdad," he says. "Why? Because they saw me as a traitor for not being able to speak Kurdish."

To call it complicated feels like an understatement. The generation that's grown up in the shadow of war since 2003 is one that's finding it harder to escape, even when just temporarily. In a country where sectarianism is rife, imagine the benefits to multiculturalism if young people got to experience new worlds through travel. For many, travel can start with as simple a process as booking a flight online – but for Iraqis, this rite is rarely even a consideration let alone an option.

@twaiji

More on VICE:

How To Go Travelling Without Being a Dick

When Tourism Turns Into Narcissism

What Would the World Be Like if We'd Never Invaded Iraq?


Meet the Feminist Comic Artists Who Draw Porn in Public

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Comic book pornographers Maxine Frank and Robin Bougie. Photos by Jackie Dives

As both artistic collaborators and friends, Robin Bougie and Maxine Frank have a mildly cartoonish origin story. Though Maxine knew of Bougie's exploitation film-inspired porn comics long before she turned 18, they thankfully connected when she was legally allowed to buy them, at a screening of a Turkish Spider-Man reimagining in which Peter Parker is an evil mobster. They've been drawing porn together ever since.

"We first started meeting at coffee shops," Bougie told VICE. "I'd draw part of a panel, hand it over to her, and she would draw the other half. Or I would pencil it and she would ink it, or the other way around." Frank and Bougie both remember the awkward lean-overs, strange glances, and people pretending not to eavesdrop. "We were almost always doing porn."

Over the next decade, the two have shared pages on several comic projects—the latest being a forthcoming 40-page woman-led adventure called Cyborg Sex Surrogate. "She was created by a weird nerdy guy to be his ultimate girlfriend," Frank says of the lead character. "She's finding her own identity, but with a lot of sex."

VICE caught up with the pair in Vancouver to chat about women-driven narrative, oversharing fans, and what bodies actually look like.

'Cinema Sewer' artist Robin Bougie inks 'Cyborg Sex Surrogate'

VICE: How do you describe what you do?
Robin Bougie: I'm kind of proud to be a pornographer, I don't have any sort of shame about it. I think it's just another genre—if you work within the confines of the genre of porn you're still expected to come up with something that's fun to read aside from the sex part. When I'm describing the work I almost take on a carnival barker voice: "Step right up for the most outrageous sights!" That's how I want it to come across—like a circus midway sideshow.

Maxine Frank: To give people an idea, I like to start with a premise. The one that sells best is Sleazy Slice #5, with the comic "Big Girls, Big Battle." It's basically giant naked girls battling each other in Vancouver. You just show the panel of one of them holding the Skytrain like it's nun-chucks and people say, "OK here's my money please."

Robin: That was a fun comic to do when we were getting inspiration. We just walked around the city, got reference pictures of the various buildings and streets and part of our hood, and got home and started working it into the comic. So you have these two women fighting naked in the streets of Vancouver and they're 20 storeys tall. I think people like to see that. They like to have a comic that reminds them of home, even if it's something outrageous and crazy like that.

"Big Girls, Big Battle" by Robin Bougie and Maxine Frank

The women are really powerful in this comic, and they don't look like women in other porn. Is this a statement?
Maxine: Some of the women have rolls on their stomach because that's how real bodies look... I think there's an assumption that women don't create or consume media like this, and I obviously don't think that's true. It's just not talked about because people still think it's weird when women express any sort of sexual autonomy. We're not trying to say anything big about human nature or anything, just that porn can be a genre, it's not just a thing that serves a utilitarian purpose, it can be a whole different way of expressing ideas.

What is your take on feminist porn, and would you describe your work that way?
Maxine: I'm interested in the idea of feminist porn and telling from a woman's perspective. I tend to focus on women characters and what they want in a situation rather than drawing a parade of women for the male lead to fuck. I don't know if I would describe it as feminist, but if someone said "here's a feminist interpretation of it," that would be very interesting. While I don't necessarily consider the comics feminist, I am myself a feminist. Some people have this very 80s idea of the anti-porn feminist, but there's so many ways to be one.

Why include violence with porn?
Robin: I think it works narratively because it does titillate the audience in the same way having a sex scene does, but in a more dramatic way.

Maxine: It's the same way action and horror are interesting. It can be fictional and outwardly exaggerated, the same way an over-the-top 1980s ninja movie will cut someone's head off, and more blood than would ever be in the human body shoots out. It just becomes extreme and funny.

Does that fit with your view of feminism? Is there a negative aspect?
Maxine: You can't predict who is reading. And they project the values they have onto your work. So if they already have a negative view of women, they'll look at this and say "yes, this confirms my crazy beliefs"—even if that's in no way shape or form what we're going for. I've always said looking to porn for ways to deal with your sex life is like looking to an action movie for conflict resolution. It's just a fantasy, and applying it to real life isn't going to work.

Do you think people have preconceptions about who is making this kind of work?
Robin: Yeah, I do actually. People are surprised I'm good natured and outgoing. We're not very pervy, really, in our day-to-day lives. We kind of get it out on paper... I do wonder who's reading, because I know when I'm sitting there working and I have a specific person in mind, but then when I hear back from people it's totally different.

Do you guys ever get any pervy fan art or mail?
Maxine: TMI stuff, like, I didn't want to know that, dude.

Robin: Nobody's sent anything illegal yet, so that's good. I did a zine one time, it was all about adult incest—incestual experiences that adults have had. And I especially say adult because people always think you're talking about child porn when you're talking about incest. But suddenly people are emailing me things that have happened to them, and I wasn't asking for that, but OK. I guess that's what happens if you have an online presence and you put stuff out there—suddenly the world comes to you.

Do you think there's a need to talk about stuff like that? Are you open to hearing these things?
Robin: I would say I am, yeah. I'm not judgmental in terms of that kind of thing, I do want people to open up to me. I'm quite a voyeur, like I want to see my friends naked, for instance. Someone else might be like "Gross, no, don't send me that" and I'm totally into it.

Interview has been edited for clarity and style.

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Tim Coppens's Latest Clothing Line Is Athletic Wear for Fashion Heads

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Photo of Tim Coppens by Reggie McCafferty

New York Fashion Week was hot last month, literally. At menswear designer Tim Coppens's presentation of his new collaboration with Under Armour—a series of sweat-repellant, water wicking, and generally slick sportswear designs called UAS—the perspiring attendees likely wished they were wearing the collection instead of their best couture.

Coppen's designs have always seeped with sports-influence, so his work with Under Armour comes as no surprise. The clothing is the result of what one might expect the CDFA award-winning designer to do with a pile of neoprene and spandex: UAS has the same air of seamless downtown cool as Coppens's eponymous brand, but the designs are a bit more practical. The jackets have necklines that zip all the way up under the chin, and each piece is made to be layered under or over one another.

It's clear that Coppens had a dynamic city dweller in mind here, maybe the type who goes straight from the gym to the bar and still looks fresh. His clothes have always looked like gear you can both live and move in, regardless of setting or even weather. In other words, they're pragmatic and elegant. His latest athletic-minded body of work (he's previously designed sportswear for both adidas and Ralph Lauren) is true to his oeuvre while still a knockout in its own right.

"The starting point is really how do we make clothes that maybe already exist and optimize them, think about where they come from, what the roots are, what's the function, the inspiration, and how can we translate that in a way that doesn't look like just 'a tracksuit'?" the designer told me when I visited his Chelsea studio to talk about the UAS collection. Below, we talked freely about topics like his teenage love of skating and how brands often lazily misappropriate subcultures, as well as Coppens's goal of ensuring his projects never feel like a gimmick.

Photo of Tim Coppens by Reggie McCafferty

VICE: What's your life like right now?
Tim Coppens: Right now it's like... busy. But it's normal. I don't mind. Usually I work seven days a week. Of course I enjoy going to dinner but I think there's always sort of a link to what I do. But that's interesting to me. There's always a conversation, or there's always a meeting, or there's always something that you see and I would be unable to separate like, OK now I go to work, and now I sit home and then don't do work. Even if I watch the news there will always be a link, but I guess that's normal. I think that it's important that you're tuned in with reality as well. This is not just like, OK, I do my job and then the office closes at 5. And I think that as long as I feel that I have a happy brain that likes to do this then I'm good. And sometimes it's a lot. Sometimes you have to tune out a little bit.

What do you do to tune out?
I do a little bit of sports. A little bit of very intense sports. I go boxing or I go cycling or something. There's not a lot of time, so I plan going to the gym. Plan, plan, plan... I want to have control over a lot of things.


Image courtesy of UAS

You skateboard, right?
I did do a lot of stuff in that world. I skate like once or twice, once a month or something. I don't have a lot of confidence on a board right now. I just feel like I'm a little more careful, you know? I can't afford to break my wrist or go be stupid. I think one of the last times was when I met my now-wife. The first date that we went on was me with my four ligaments torn up, so I don't want to have that.

How do you feel about the skater style that's appearing in the fashion world these days?
I guess I'm pretty old school when it comes to that. Listen, I think you have the old school and the people that have been doing it who have a lot of respect for guys in their 50s who are still skating. It's amazing what I see on Instagram—like what's being pulled off these days. It's crazy.

You mean with regard to clothing?
I'm not talking about clothing. A lot of the kids that skateboard don't know what's going on with what people in fashion take from their culture. They don't have visibility toward that; they don't care. Maybe they care. But not as much as the people that actually go and buy the stuff that takes inspiration from that. I think it gets a little tricky when you have a brand that jumps on every trend every six seasons and uses a culture as a way to communicate—it loses authenticity in a lot of cases. And the real skateboarder that sits here will not believe that, but that does not mean that the consumer out there will think that's cool. I think that's the difference.

But a lot of things start as subcultures and they grow up. They get taken out of context and that's what I'm saying. I'm still old school and I still very much believe in authenticity. I think that is super important in a brand. You can be as big as you want, but if you pick up a culture that's a part of like a 15- or 16-year-old who goes out there and like breaks his legs, he's not going to feel the authenticity in what's happening when a big corporation takes that. Unless they do it in the right way.

Photo of Tim Coppens by Reggie McCafferty

Why do you think skate culture and fashion evolved like this?
I think the reason why it developed into such a big thing is because certain things got corporate and people structured the business around it. I think that might have changed certain things about skate culture and about graffiti and street culture in general, but I think it also brought a spotlight on certain things and also gave opportunities to people who would not have been able to build a professional life out of what they did as a hobby. You know, when you've tried 50 times and you finally land it—that experience is amazing. It's not just looking like a skateboarder, it's really doing that. And that is not something that you will be able to show on a catwalk. You can pull references and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a sport, it's an activity, it's a lifestyle, it's not just about the clothes.


Image courtesy of UAS

What sort of technology is involved with your designs?
It's simple things, you know? Simple things that maybe we have thought about but maybe haven't worked through entirely. A chino pant with a water repellent finish on it, for example: I'm sure it exists, but we did it on a whole range of sweatshirts—a crewneck, a hoodie, sweatpants, and all that. Simple things like that, that are not actually that simple to achieve but they are just simple solutions. When I go out and I want to wear my nice hoodie inside and I want to wear it outside and it's dripping a little bit when I go from point A to point B, then I don't have to wear an extra layer because the hoodie is going to keep me dry. Or stretch in certain areas where I need it when I'm on the bike, especially when other pieces that I have in my closet don't offer that.

Integrating that technology—not space technology—that level of technology might be something that we think of going forward for the coming season, but that takes time to develop. That's not something you do overnight. I would hate to do things that become a gimmick. I don't think we need the shoes with the lights when we walk. But, it's maybe an interesting idea to work on something like that, you know, that is integrated, that is not a gimmick, that could help you.

It's like using new technology for something that is useful and not just for the sake of using it.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, simple solutions like where is the pocket? Where does the pocket have to be? Is there an easy way of accessing the pocket? Just simple solutions, that is what the first collection was really all about. And a suit jacket that is like made out of a knit that looks like a suiting. All these things might not be revolutions but we tried to do it in a tailored way, in a fitted way. Work around the fabric and work around the construction so that we deliver a collection where all these things are integrated in each piece as much as we can. It's not just a beautiful product but it's also a product with a function that is subtly integrated into it.

Did you see this trend coming of changing the way that we dress in formal settings, in office settings, and make wearing these garments crafted out of materials originally intended for athletic apparel?
I guess a lot of people grow up, and my generation grew up, but it doesn't mean that they're going to wear a suit and tie to the office. That's not going to happen anymore. Look at the way people get married, look at the way politicians are dressed, not for presidential debates, but just in general—the world has changed. You know, when people started wearing denim in the 80s to work, that was a shame. So I think there's kind of a lot more acceptability in those kinds of things.

I was never going to go work for a big house in Paris, that was never really my goal or my dream. I don't think it would be exciting for me. I think the exciting part that did happen was when I started creating the more functional, the more athletic , and watched those worlds merge. It kind of happened when I was doing my brand, and now it's like all over the place. So, I don't know, maybe I did help in that.

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This 'Anti-Fashion Shoot' Explores Bodily Functions

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Steph Wilson is a regular contributor to our sister channel, Broadly, and recently photographed a playful series on potential masturbatory tools for our all-female photography issue. Her work seamlessly navigates the lines between still life, portraiture, and high fashion. She shared a new editorial just for us below, and I also got the chance to speak with her about how she pokes fun at a sometimes-tired fashion industry.

VICE: What was your inspiration for this shoot?
Steph Wilson: It had been a while since I'd picked up my camera and shot a series for the sake of it. As much as I love my editorial teams, it can get quite frantic when you've got seven other people on set. Hands are always in model's faces, tweaking them, and it's hard to really let loose. You also lose that connection with the subject when there's a trillion other people fussing over them... So I had no hair, no make-up, no styling. Just me and Lily , the model.

Why did you cast her in specific? Lily is a friend of mine. We're both rude and gross and love to get naked. We wanted to do a fun shoot together that was basically just us hanging out and having a laugh.Where did you shoot?Woodberry Wetlands in London is where the grassy images were taken. I loved how it looked like a post-Soviet setting with the brutalist buildings in the background and the "no man's land" feel of the dry grassy banks. We got really hot and sweaty and were covered in blackberries and pee from pissing in the bush, so Lily suggested Shadwell Basin. I'd never been before and it's fucking amazing. It's filtered Thames water, right in the center of the city, but it's totally quiet, with unapologetically attractive young people dismantling the chained fencing to dive in from the cement walls that, seemingly, keep it secret.

When shooting fashion do you think it's important to have a narrative ?
Yes, or it's just fashion. Pretty pictures aren't enough anymore, and so much imagery bores me shitless these days. Starting out as a painter, I feel I have to transfer the idea of permeating an image with at least something. I like to focus on sex, etiquette, bodily functions—generally all petty restrictions that deserve to have the piss taken out of them, yet, hopefully, remain aesthetically engaging as an image. I guess it's the age-old "turning the ugly into something beautiful or interesting," or shining a different light on things. Lily and I joked that we should name this series "Expensive Fashion Shoot," as it's kind of an anti-fashion shoot, a bit like a very failed attempt of a 90s Ukrainian fashion team trying to make something "avant-garde."

Your images always have a subtle humor behind them—do you intentionally inject his mood?
I like to take the piss out of topics that either take themselves too seriously, or are taboos that are so ridiculous or dated that they deserve to be laughed at. It's a balance between wit, aesthetics, and understanding. I wouldn't pair humor with a subject that humor has no right to be part of; domestic violence or FGM, for example. However, stigmas based around nudity, body hair, periods, sex, language, social media, etc. are all things that could benefit from being picked apart and seen for what they are: deeply rooted abasements created by a system that wants people to feel shamed into being "normal," and, following that, a regular consumer.

Steph Wilson is a photographer based in Hackney, London. You can follow her work here.

Inside a City Reeling from the Murder of a Fostered Schoolgirl

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A plea for information outside Marsden State School earlier this year. Photo by Mimi LaMontagne.

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia/New Zealand

It's been nearly three weeks since Tiahleigh Palmer's foster father was arrested for her murder. In photos of him being led to the police station, Richard "Rick" Thorburn looks far older than his 56 years. He's handcuffed, deep bags under his eyes, face fuzzed with stubble.

Just as ubiquitous have been the Instagram shots of Rick's son, Trent Thorburn. It's hard to imagine he's the same guy who's been charged with incest, perjury, and attempting to pervert the course of justice. In every selfie the baby faced 19-year-old poses with a blonde fade slicked to perfection. He wears an unreadable expression.

The mood in Brisbane swings between disgust and fascination. Incest and murder are crimes on a Shakespearean scale. We aren't really used to this sort of drama. Obsessively unpicking the details of this strange story, it's easy for a city to forget that a school girl has lost her life.

The section of the Pimpana River where Tiahleigh's body was found by fisherman. Photo by Mimi LaMontagne

Twelve-year-old Tiahleigh Palmer went missing on October 30, 2015. Six days later her remains were found on the banks of the Pimpana River, far from where she'd been dropped off at school.

By the next morning, the front page of the Courier-Mail read "Failing Tiah: An Unfolding Tragedy." Papers across the country printed her picture—Tiahleigh, dressed in her favourite colour, purple. Tiahleigh wearing a floral backpack and apparently on her way to school. Neither her backpack or school uniform have been recovered.

Kids at Tiah's memorial service. Photo by Vincent Chen

In November, hundreds came together for a candlelit vigil, leaving tributes outside the gates of her school—Marsden State. They arranged flowers, photos, letters, and candles to spell out "Tiah" as she'd been known to friends and family.

At Marsden State High School, she was active in dance and cheerleading groups. When she disappeared, her face was plastered onto the back of local council buses. The picture showed her wearing a lime-green dance outfit. A former foster parent described Tiah as "a gorgeous, gorgeous little girl."

But for police the case quickly cooled. It took more than 3,500 separate lines of enquiry and 11 months to gather enough evidence against the Thorburns. Now it's a case of coming to terms with what happened.

The Thorburn home as seen from the driveway. Photo by the author

Tiahleigh lived with the Thorburns in Chambers Flat, a rural suburb about 40 kilometres south of Brisbane. There was Rick, his wife Julene, 54, and their two sons Trent, 19, and Joshua, 20.

Originally a truck driver, Rick had retired with a back injury and opened a food van business. Both his sons helped to operate the food van on weekends.

Josh and Trent described themselves as dancers. Until recently, Josh even had a profile on Starnow.com. Trent was halfway through a metal fabrication apprenticeship.

The entrance to the Thorburn property in Chambers Flat. Photo by the author

The Thorburn property is now empty. An incongruous remnant of police tape flaps from the front gate, the only indicator the property is a crime scene. Stretches of greenery are dotted with sheds, tractors, and cockatoos. It's a quiet community and the locals are reluctant to talk. "We're all on acreages, so we keep to ourselves," one tells me.

A few days after Rick's arrest, police brought in earth moving equipment to search the Thorburn's property. Media speculated they were searching for Tiahleigh's missing school uniform and backpack, but nothing was found. A few weeks on, when I visit the house, the tarps and excavators are gone and nothing looks amiss. It's very quiet.

A few months before she died, Tiahleigh had the chance to leave the Thorburn's. "She said she wanted to stay because of ," explained Sue Palmer, her biological grandmother, in the Courier-Mail. "We didn't have any idea as to what was actually happening there—just that she had a crush on the boy and that was the main reason she wanted to stay."

When Trent faced court on September 21, prosecutors alleged he had sex with Tiah in the week before she died. A Facebook message was revealed to the court in which Trent told his cousin he was worried he might have made her pregnant. Under Queensland law, sex between step or foster siblings constitutes incest.

Rick can be seen carrying Tiah's coffin, second on left. Image via Wikipedia

Rick Thorburn was a pallbearer at his foster daughter's funeral last year. In a now-deleted Facebook post on April 8, he invited friends and foster families to an event "to remember her on what would have been her 13th birthday." He also wrote of plans to start a foundation called "We Won't Forget You."

Prosecutors now allege that Rick killed Tiah in an effort to bury the entanglement between her and his son.

Media scrutiny intensified after Rick's arrest, when he collapsed in custody in the Beenleigh watch house. He had reportedly swallowed a handful of pills and was taken to the Princess Alexandria Hospital, where he was put in an induced coma. The following day, Trent fronted court without his father.

On the same day, Queensland Child Safety Minister and local Waterford MP Shannon Fentiman announced that the Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC) would review the approval processes for foster carers.

"The death of any child is a tragedy and the allegations relating to the death of Tiahleigh Palmer are abhorrent," Fentiman said in a statement to VICE. "While we have strict approval processes in place for foster carers and Blue Card holders, we will do everything we can to strengthen and improve the systems."

The Thorburn family. Trent is on the far right. Image via YouTube

Rick and Julene were both approved foster carers, and all four Thorburns held valid Blue Cards. But while no foster children were placed with the family after Tiahleigh's death, the Thorburns continued to run a family day care centre from the property. It was only suspended in April when police tipped off Fentiman's department and the Queensland Department of Education and Training that the Thorburns were under investigation.

Rick has since awoken from his coma. His case has been adjourned until December 21—some two months after his wife and oldest son are expected to face court. Julene and Joshua have both been charged with perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Most recently, on September 27, Trent Thorburn was bashed by prisoners at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre where he is awaiting trial. He received only minor injuries.

Tiah's school friends at her vigil last year. Photo by Vincent Chen

"Tiahleigh will always be fondly remembered as a member of the Marsden State High School family," said Marsden State High School's executive principal, Andrew Peach, in a statement. "As a school community our thoughts are with Cyndi Palmer and her family at this difficult time."

Back in July, the community had organised a memorial "Walk 4 Tiahleigh" event. Hundreds of supporters left the gates of Marsden State High School on a Sunday morning, snaking through Waterford West streets. They ended the walk by releasing balloons in Havenbah Park, where candlelight vigils had been held the previous November. The balloons, of course, were Tiah's favourite colour: purple.

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Will Extremist-Only Prison Units Actually Prevent Radicalization Behind Bars?

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Anjem Choudary, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of inviting support for a proscribed organisation, ISIS. (Screenshot from the VICE film 'Jihad Milkshakes')

Towards the end of last month, extremist Tanveer Ahmed managed to release a promotional video for violent jihad from behind bars, thrusting the corrosive influence of radicals in Britain's prisons once again to the forefront of public consciousness.

The powers-that-be might not be able to get a grip on hate spread via the internet, but they are taking steps to try to prevent other inmates from being radicalized. Last month, it was revealed that the country's most dangerous convicted extremists will soon be kept in special high-security units reserved for extremists. The logic behind this is that isolating them from the general prison population will help to prevent them from spreading their ideologies to other inmates.

The move has provoked mixed reactions, with some believing it's a necessary precaution, and others holding the view that there's no point trying to insulate people from corrupting influences in prison, because you know... it's prison! Critics of the plan have also pointed out that when different wings were allocated to paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, terrorist inmates then just organized along military lines, running their respective units.

At the height of The Troubles there were numerous hostage-taking situations in Northern Irish prisons, and wings would frequently descend into chaos. The fact that all of the inmates on the units shared a common cause and identity meant that they were far better organized and more dangerous than your regular common or garden criminals. Prisons were ransacked, officers were killed and staff were bullied into making concessions for inmates. The situation became so bad that guards were instructed not to confront prisoners. Former IRA member Shane O'Doherty is all too familiar with the dangers of such wings, having spent time on one while serving a sentence for terrorist offences.

"The segregated area of the prison can quickly become effectively a no-go area for the prison authorities at times when these prisoners are out of their cells and associating," he told me. "It allows for regular barricading of the interface between the segregated area and the rest of the prison, and for protracted negotiations and even hostage situations involving prison guards."

Religious extremism expert Syed Zaidi believes that the lack of dissenting perspectives in such wings also reinforces radicals' existing stances. According to him, extremists need to be engaged in organic dialogue ‎so that they interact with contesting world-views and see things differently. He also believes that seeing the potential for decency and dignity in every human being should be the foundation for challenging extremism.

The notion that even the most hardened of radicals is capable of change appears to be conspicuously absent from discussion of the segregated wings. All of the information that has been released about them so far indicates that the main emphasis will be on preventing the spread of extremism rather than rehabilitating those who have already been radicalised.

I spoke to professor of criminal justice Chris Menton, who has studied the effects of prison facilities centred on specific crimes, to find out if giving extremists their own wing would be likely to help or hinder rehabilitative efforts.

He pointed out that housing perpetrators of similar offences together can be useful for facilitating courses aimed at altering their behaviour and patterns of thinking. This suggests that segregating radicals could be a viable strategy, providing that the main emphasis is placed upon changing their perspectives rather than merely isolating them. Menton did, however, question whether the or not methods that are used in facilities reserved exclusively for crimes like sex offences and domestic abuse could be applied to hardened radicals. "With zealots, it's hard to say if the mental capsule can be cracked," he said.

A terrorist-only prison wing aimed at enabling rehabilitative courses for extremists has already been set up in Nigeria's Kuje Prison. A study of its effectiveness concluded that it appears to be successful, although it hasn't been running long enough to draw any concrete conclusions. There have been reports of participants in the courses crying and proclaiming that they have been wasting their lives – but whether or not this was just a means of ingratiating themselves with the prison staff remains to be seen.

Rather than going to the drastic length of establishing special terrorist-only prisons, which may or may not make a situation worse, you could argue there are additional steps that could be taken to ensure extremists aren't capable of converting inmates on regular prison wings. Extremism and counter-terrorism expert Dr Imran Awan claims that overcrowding is acting as a barrier to preventing radicalization. "Any measures to tackle radicalization within prisons must start by addressing the issues of overcrowding and understaffing," he said, "which lead to a potential risk of prison staff being under-resourced and not well trained in understanding the issues around faith, radicalization and integration."

Sixty percent of prisons in the UK are currently overcrowded, and the number of people behind bars is still increasing . Prison staff numbers have been reduced by a third since May of 2015, and earlier this year the Prison Officers Association warned that funding cuts are placing vulnerable prisoners at risk. So it's unlikely that staff are finding time to keep an eye out for signs of extremists indoctrinating other inmates, what with them already being pushed to the limit as it is.

All things considered, there seems to be a high potential for things to go wrong with extremist-only prison wings. If managed badly, they could pose additional safety risks to staff, become universities for terrorism and be viewed as safe havens by vulnerable prisoners and those wanting an easy ride. There's also the issue of whether the danger of an extremist radicalizing others is really a greater threat than that of a heroin dealer recruiting runners, or a gang prospecting for new members. When it comes down to it, drugs and violent criminals kill more people in the UK than terrorists each year.

That said, the devil is in the detail. If accompanied by preventative measures within the general prison population, effective rehabilitative courses and engagement with the wider Islamic community, it's possible that such wings might prove successful. Whether or not this will be the case remains to be seen. They might make prisons a place in which radicals can no longer exert control over impressionable minds, but then again, they might exacerbate the very problems they were put there to solve.

@nickchesterv

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The Video Series That's Updating Sex Ed for the YouTube Generation

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A still from a trailer for the AMAZE sex ed video series

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"No parent wants to talk to their kids about sex," John Oliver said on Last Week Tonight last year, "and no kid wants to talk about sex with their parents. That's why when you're watching a movie together, and there's a sex scene, everyone becomes motionless and silently begs for the merciful release of death."

But as his segment on the dismal state of American sexual education went on to describe, the alternative—sex ed in public schools—is a patchwork system of programs that sometimes barely provide youth with any rigorous overview of sexual health at all. As Oliver pointed out, only 22 states mandate sex ed, and only 13 require that the information presented be medically accurate. On top of that, despite the fact that abstinence-based sex ed is ineffective at preventing pregnancy and the spread of STIs, 26 state programs require information on abstinence be stressed. And according to a 2013 Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network report, only 24.9 percent of LGBTQ students surveyed reported being taught any LGBTQ topics in health classes.

It's not just an American problem: A recent global study reported that teens around the world find sex ed is delivered in awkward, technical and moralistic ways, with scant discussion of consent. And while American sex ed is often problematic, the rise of digital alternatives—a new class of YouTube sex educators, who aim to make taboo subjects fun and digestible for an audience that grew up online—often fail to deliver medically accurate information, and can sometimes emphasize style over substance.

AMAZE, a new series of sex ed videos produced by the youth health organizations Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Youth Tech Health, may provide a happy medium between accessible, engaging sex ed materials that don't deviate from the purpose of sex ed in the first place: To provide accurate, non-judgmental answers to curious questions.

Eight animated videos have already launched, including "Expressing Myself, My Way," by the animator Dee Boyd. Thirty-five more will appear at AMAZE.org throughout the year, with online supplementary learning guides. AMAZE's videos break down difficult sexual topics into digestible, quick stories with colorful animation and catchy songs without sacrificing complexity.

"I think AMAZE.org hooks kids and teaches them something they are interested in in a way that is real, engaging, entertaining, and in their space," says Brad Troeger, an AMAZE consultant and a sexual health and physical-education teacher at Janesville Craig High School in Wisconsin. "We wanted to create short videos that were entertaining and educational but didn't 'feel' like school: a Schoolhouse Rock kind of vibe. I use the videos as supplemental media in a flipped classroom. I now view my role more as a manager of the material rather than a teacher of it." It's a resource I wish I had 30 years ago, when I began working as a sexuality educator. AMAZE is designed to supplement traditional sex ed, not replace it; it could prove to be a boon for educators looking to bolster their current in-class curriculum.

The videos are available online, accessible from anywhere. Information about consent and "the ABCs of STDs" are presented with dead-on accuracy. And the video series never assumes that sex is the sole province of heterosexual or cisgender Americans. On the contrary, tweens, parents, and educators who use AMAZE as a resource learn about adolescent sexual life as it truly is: a boisterous and sometimes confusing melange of curiosity, doubt, and exploration.

In "Expressing Myself, My Way," two gender-nonconforming anthropomorphic birds try on clothes that are normally reserved only for boys or girls. A hand-clapping song in the backgrounds repeats the phrase "all girls don't wear dresses!" Given that 48 percent of teens now identify as LGBTQ, the message is more relevant than ever.

"Growing up and trying to figure out my sexuality has been a struggle because sex is hardly talked about—let alone sex between two men or two women," said Daniel Nava, a 17-year-old gay, Latino, cisgender male from Aurora, Colorado, who serves as one of AMAZE's youth consultants. "But having a website for help eliminates that stigma."

Nava also points out that AMAZE's inclusivity extends to ethnicity. From a brown-skinned, purple-haired animated narrator featured in "Talking Sexual Orientation With Jane" to a red-haired, fair-skinned, pimply boy wracked by puberty in "How the Boner Grows," characters of all skin colors, body types, and creeds populate the videos.

AMAZE's videos work best when used with "involved parenting," says Amy Lang, an independent sexuality and parenting educator. Parents, guardians, and teachers should never simply "stick their kids in front of a screen and think their children are 'sex educated,' because they are not."

But some low-income single parents struggle to guide their children's sexual discoveries while working long hours to make ends meet. According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, young people who received the least sex education tended to be low-income black youths from single parent homes. Such "non-intact parentage" is the strongest predictor for an STD diagnosis for teens.

For many of those teens, AMAZE's videos may have a hard time competing with Vine or YouTube for their attention. But the videos may certainly represent a step up from American sex ed as it exists today—and for most, an online, inclusive video series like AMAZE goes where other sex ed programs won't.

Cleis Abeni (first name rhymes with "dice") is a veteran journalist and editor dedicated to harm reduction and compassionate living.

A Meth Dealer Talks About Dodging Death in the Philippines

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The Philippines intensifies its war on drugs. An Al Jazeera image via Flickr user Prachatai

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia

Since July 1 Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs has seen around 2,500 people executed. That's about 38 every day. The Filipino president argues he's weaning the nation off methamphetamines, but a recent visit showed me that's not the full picture.

It started in inner-city Manila where I was trying to convince a street vendor I didn't want Viagra. After a lot of back and forth, Marco (let's call him Marco) gave up, leaned in, and made it clear he could supply me with anything.

Marco was obviously high. His swollen pupils told me he hadn't slept in days, but I was fascinated. On an impulse I offered to take him out to lunch, and over beers and a plate of chicken, the 47-year-old practicing Muslim explained (in pretty good English) how the local drug market struggles on, despite the bloodshed.

VICE: So you sell meth?
Marco: Yes, but we call it shabu.

And you use it yourself?
I have to. I work three or four days in a row without sleeping because if I stop the money stops. I can't let the money stop. I have four children and a wife I need to feed and take care of them. My eldest child is only 13 and three of them are at school.

Is this why you take the risk with dealing, for your family?
Of course. I want them to have the opportunities I didn't have, like education, and this is the only way I can do it. This is why most people are still doing it. We have to take care of our families. I'm a poor man. I sleep on the streets and send what I can back to my family living in the province. I didn't go to school and there aren't many options for people who don't go to school. You just have to do what you can when you can't read or write. It's really hard in the city.

Are there many people like you who are still selling?
You know all those people on the street who are trying to sell you things like watches and sunglasses? All of them will sell you shabu too. Everyone around here is selling; it's just more hush-hush since the new president. We have to be more careful about who we offer it to.

Does everyone know the street vendors are also drug dealers?
All the locals know. All the people working in the hotels, bars, and shops around here—even the local police know. Everyone knows me, they see me every day. I've been in the area for 20 years doing the same thing. But it's hard to know who to trust now. The police in Manila are killing but before some were helping. I don't know about the police around here. I just try to not talk to them anymore.

Illicitly synthesized crystal methamphetamine. Image via

Where does your shabu come from?
My boss. He is a vendor who works around here too. He has a house nearby and if I get a customer I go to the house to collect the order. Most of the shabu in this country comes from China.

How much has your business changed since President Duterte declared war on drugs?
At first everyone went quiet. We were hearing about people getting killed so everyone got scared and stopped selling. Two months ago I wouldn't have spoken to you but it's starting to get back on the streets now. It's like people have become immune to the fear.

So you're not scared anymore?
I am still scared, everyone is still very scared. But I don't have a choice. There isn't enough money if I don't sell. I just have to be careful.

Has anyone you know been hurt?
Dealers around here haven't really been affected because there are so many tourists and lots of CCTV, which makes it harder for them to take people. I've heard of some suppliers who have disappeared though.

Who do you sell to?
I sell to a lot of tourists but my main customers live in Manila. I have customers from Australia, America, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. They are the best customers because they work in office jobs and have money to buy large amounts. But a lot of my Filipino customers are taxi drivers and other people who work more than 24 hours and need to stay awake to feed their families.

How much profit do you keep from what you sell?
I only get a small amount. I give profit to my boss and he pays his boss and he pays his boss, it goes all the way to the top. This is why the president has it all wrong. If you want to get rid of a problem, you have to dig out the roots. You can't just cut off a tree's leaves and expect the problem to go away. We are just the little guys and the leaves will grow back.

Do you think shabu is harming your country?
I think the real problem is that people have to look for ways to survive. There aren't enough jobs or money for every Filipino. There are 25 million people in Manila and we have to work very long and hard to get by. Shabu makes people feel good and helps them stay awake to work more.

Do you consider yourself a good person?
God didn't give me a lot but I'm lucky he gave me a good brain and heart. All I can do is try to be the best person I can with what I've got. But now I'm even losing even that. The president is taking away the only thing I was good at.

Check out more of Jess' work at comfortisforwimps.com


This Guy Says He'll Teach You How to Beat the House at Craps for Just $1,600

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Photo via John Howard/Getty Images

Dominic "The Dice Dominator" LoRiggio is the greatest craps player to ever live, a complete huckster, or both—it depends who you ask.

According to the 63-year-old gambler, his method of "dice control" has won him so much money he's been banned from most casinos in Las Vegas and Mississippi, and the many disciples to whom he's taught this method regularly make tens of thousands of dollars shooting bones.

If you believe him, he's used hours and hours of practice to turn the random act of rolling dice into a game of skill. And, allegedly, you can too.

"Craps is a simple physics problem; it's a moving projectile in the air," LoRiggio told me when we met in Las Vegas. "A bunch of people who were taught by me are out there now playing professionally, beating the game of craps with the throw that I developed."

LoRiggio's company, Golden Touch Craps, recently hosted a two-day seminar in a drab ballroom at the Fortune Hotel, east of the Las Vegas Strip. There, his team of instructors coached eager-faced gamblers—each of whom had paid $1,595 for the privilege—on setting, gripping, and tossing plastic cubes.

Mastering the Dominator's coveted throw is an eight-step process that involves commandeering a specific table slot, holding the dice a certain way, and releasing them in a manner intended to eliminate lateral spinning, minimize bouncing, and encourage the dice to tumble in unison so they don't show 4-3, 5-2, or 6-1—a "crap out" seven.

"I'm not Einstein. I'm not going to rewrite the ideas behind physics," said LoRiggio. The goal of dice control, he explained, is to alter the odds of landing a seven from one in six to one in 6.23 rolls, the point at which shooters gain an advantage equivalent to that of card counters at the blackjack table.


It's a tantalizing theory—one I wanted to buy. And clearly I wasn't alone. Golden Touch's two dozen students had flown in from around the country, some to take the class for a second or third time. They practiced on full-sized tables fitted with lights and cameras that allowed instructors to scrutinize each student's form through slow motion replay.

The mentors—"certified" instructors who've proved to the GTC board they can do the roll consistently—went by noms de guerre like Golden Arm, Alligator Rose, and Mr. Fineness. The company had dice-rolling practice rigs (available for $499) and a snack bar that included chocolate-covered cannolis. Everyone knows the house has an unbeatable edge at craps. But what LoRiggio's apparently profitable business presupposes is... maybe it doesn't.

He told me that traveling the country with a team of "rhythmic rollers" (as dice controllers call themselves) in the early 2000s got him banned from most high-stakes resorts, including Caesars Palace, the Paris, and the Bellagio. So, his story goes, he went public with his technique, selling books and videos on dice control. In 2002, he launched Golden Touch Craps to win vicariously through other shooters—plus, of course, to collect from those willing to pay to win.

"If I can't play, I want my students to beat the hell out of them," LoRiggio told me. "One texted me just last week. From here in Vegas actually. He bought in for 500 bucks at the Bellagio and cashed out with $28,000."

LoRiggio's attributes his rarified skill to loose wrists and strong hand-eye coordination gained playing piano as a child. He said musicians, athletes, and other people with experience developing muscle memory tend to make the best dice controllers, though he insists anyone can learn "precision shooting."

LoRiggio isn't the first or only gambler to claim he can control dice enough to win at craps. According to a glowing 2004 History Channel documentary about him, he learned from Chris Pawlicki, who wrote the book Get The Edge At Craps: How to Control the Dice under the name Sharpshooter. LoRiggio said that portions of the documentary were dramatized, though, and that he honed his take on the craft independently before forming a dice control team.

But as long as there have been dice controllers, there have been dice-control skeptics. Every casino requires craps shooters to hit the table's wall of a roll, and those walls that are textured with raised pyramids, making it extremely difficult, to say the least, to actually control how the dice land. Casinos generally aren't worried about these people the way the are blackjack card counters or players smuggling in loaded dice. LoRiggio believes that is because dice control rejuvenated an interest in craps, and superstitious players insist on setting dice if they'll play all.

But more likely, as he attests, the reason casinos often allow craps shooters to practice rhythmic rolling is that most supposed dice controllers are actually terrible at controlling dice. Chances are they'll do it wrong, and the house wins again.

It's next to impossible to definitively prove that dice control doesn't work. But most gambling experts who aren't trying to sell you books or courses on it say it's a waste of time.

"I don't believe in it," Bill Zender, a gaming consultant who advises Las Vegas casinos and a former manager of one, told me. "There are too many variables... If the dice turn just a fraction of an inch, they're going to roll off that axis. I hate to say it, but I think it's a big scam."

"No one has ever done dice control in a laboratory condition; they always say their arm would get tired after a hundred throws," he added. "But they're not tossing fastballs here... My feeling is they write the books and sell the program and that's how they make the money."

For his part, LoRiggio said he's never refused to demonstrate his throw, and can prove its effectiveness through GTC's own tracking software.

"I say yell it from the treetops that dice control doesn't work," he added. "Why? Because then my students and myself can play to our heart's content doing what we do... If it wasn't true I wouldn't be banned from the Bellagio, I wouldn't be banned at the Paris, I wouldn't be banned from every casino in the state of Mississippi."

But practicing dice control isn't officially prohibited in casinos, though pit bosses can ban people at their own discretion. According to Alan Silver, a former casino executive and professor who focuses on the gambling industry at Ohio University, "Casinos are aware that craps players are superstitious, and if it takes certain idiosyncrasies to get players to play and play longer, they let them do it because the house knows it has a huge built in advantage."

LoRiggio wouldn't let me watch him play in casinos, where he says he'll go as far as to disguise himself as a homeless man or tattooed biker to get a few turns in at resorts like the Bellagio. So I had to rely on former students who'd caught him in action for anecdotes on his skill. One, an airline pilot who preferred to remain anonymous, said he thinks GTC is "sort of a scam" because of its aggressive pricing, but that dice control is real.

The pilot said that when he spotted the Dominator and his cohorts shooting dice at the Rio in Las Vegas, they rolled 20, 30, and 25 times before crapping out. This student went on to take advanced courses and says he practices their technique in his basement for an hour each day. He claims to be one of 50 or so people in country who can consistently execute the Golden Touch roll—one in 50 out of thousands who've tried.

"Business is great," LoRiggio told me, adding that every seminar in 2016 was full and the first one in 2017 in Atlantic City has already sold out. The company will soon publish a new book about the Dominator's exploits. Despite the skeptics, he says his method of dice control is real, and it's spectacular.

"I've always said this is going to be on my gravestone," he boasted. "That I'm the guy who developed the throw to beat the game of craps."

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Comics: 'Three Pigs and Big Head,' Today's Comic by Ben Montero

Photos of the Georgian Families Living Inside an Abandoned Military Hospital

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A man looks out the fifth floor window of an abandoned Soviet military hospital, now serving as shelter to over 400 people, 80 of them children.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Georgians are still adjusting to life in the new economy. On the outskirts of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, an abandoned military hospital from the bygone era serves as a refuge to some 150 families unable to find jobs and affordable housing. Refugees from the Abkhazia War in the early 90s have used the seven-story complex as shelter for the past two decades. Local government pays little attention to the building, and when they do it's to cut off electricity and water, which residents have diverted through a jerry-rigged lattice of wires and pipes. Modern Georgian society as a whole seems to willfully overlook the Soviet architecture littered across the city, trying to forget a past which still crumbles before their eyes. Photographer Jacob Borden documented the decay and ruins.

Follow more of Borden's work here.

What I Learned from Three Months as a Sex Club Tour Guide

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Not actually a sex club. Photo via Flickr user Toni Protto

When it comes time to update my resume, "swingers club tour guide" is a job I tend to leave off.

But over the course of three months in the suburbs, that's exactly what I was: the friendly face introducing new couples to the rules and layout of one of the region's busiest adult-only venues. I can't tell you where it is. Or who goes there. Or who runs it. I can't even tell you how I ended up with the job, although that's because I'm not totally sure myself.

Go ahead. Throw as many jokes at me as you can. I've heard them all before.

"Did you sleep your way to the top?"
"Tell me about the ins and outs of the business!"
"I bet you got so many tips!"

The hours varied. There was no job description ("Visit Exotic Suburban Locations! Meet Interesting New People! And Fuck Them!"). I'd start with some icebreakers. Show people around. Play the orientation video (that's right). And answer any questions people might have. I met hundreds of people of all ages, from all walks of life, taking their first tentative steps into a world that was generally waaaay outside their comfort zone. And in the process, I learned a lot—not just about people, but about romance, life, and the business of sex.

And for reference, the wage was okay, but the perks were amazing. (Sorry).

Everybody's Nervous The First Time

It doesn't matter: young or old, male or female, locals or out-of-towners, the first time you set foot in a swingers club, you're nervous as hell. And fair enough. swingers clubs are weird. You're in a strange new place for the express purpose of checking out, fooling around with, or boning other people's partners. There aren't a lot of social situations that can prepare you for what is essentially three floors of naked strangers. You have no idea what to expect. Keys in a bowl? Moustaches and track-suits? Gold masks and red robes, a la Eyes Wide Shut? The first time my partner and I set foot in the place, we were skittish as fuck (luckily we ran into a couple we knew from our regular lives that night, which was actually really helpful after it stopped being weird).

And of course, everybody deals with it differently. A lot of couples go through that orientation holding onto their partner's hand like grim death. Some people laugh a lot when you show them the hamper for used towels or the dungeon or the lube station. Some people talk too much. Some people ask a lot of questions about etiquette and protocol (for the record, during our orientation, my partner and I were somewhere between the "laughing too much" and "grim death" subtypes). And the job of a tour guide, aside from familiarizing people with the rules and giving them an idea of the layout, is to make the whole thing a bit less terrifying. Explain how a typical night goes. Play them the aforementioned orientation video (I've since run into one of the actors in that thing, and believe me, it was an incredible act of will not to bring it up). Lay out where the "play spaces" are, and where they're not. Introduce them to a few couples who are already there, to the bartenders, etc. Here's the mouthwash. Here's the water cooler. Here's the basket of condoms and rubber gloves. Yes, as a matter of fact, we do have dental dams.

I suspect that's why I was offered the job in the first place; newcomers need a friendly face, someone nonthreatening, inoffensive, and polite to ease them into a strange, new world. Someone who they could also have sex with.

Swingers Clubs Are a Business

Just because there's at least one sweaty fuckfest going at on at any given time doesn't mean that swingers clubs are a free-for-all. In fact, creating an environment that makes everyone feel safe and comfortable takes a hell of a lot of work on the business side of things: contracts, decor, logistics, staffing, and rules. The club itself was (and is) open to folks of all different ages and proclivities, but its clientele tended be a bit older, folks with a few years of marriage behind them, along with careers, kids. Folks who had already outgrown the downtown club scene and were looking for something more relaxed and upscale. In a space like that, rules set the mood.

Ours were fairly simple: No single dudes. No full frontal on the bottom floor. No photos or cell phones. Guys in "play spaces" had to be accompanied by a woman at all times. Ask for permission first. And before they even set foot in the club, couples were required to fill out and sign a four-page form which laid out all of their responsibilities; behavioural standards, dress code, even a clean bill of sexual health. In the interest of managing the experience, new couples also have to send photos—although I've never heard of anyone being turned down for membership on the basis of a picture (if that outrages you, let it be known that at least one club in the US requires couples to send their BMI).

At the parties themselves, payments needed to be taken and contracts signed. The lineup out front needed to be managed. DJ sets were meticulously worked out beforehand, to build to a climax an hour or two before the place closed. The photo booth needed to be set up and staffed. Decor and themed decorations needed to be set up (basically all the parties are themed). And of course, security needed to be on hand to make sure everyone was playing nice. I never witnessed anyone being thrown out, but I'm told people have been banned for drug use in the past. Generally speaking, though, during the time I worked there, people were always very well behaved.

Well, apart from the obvious.

Some People Totally Bring Sex Workers

Yep. Even after all the vetting, and contracts, and precautions, I once gave a tour to a couple that I'm 98 percent sure included a sex worker. I could be wrong, but when there's a portly, balding dude with questionable dental hygiene who looks at the floor throughout the tour, and the woman he's with is fit, gorgeous, personable, fawns over him unnecessarily, and talks openly of her past beginnings in the sex industry, it certainly raises some questions. And even in places geared toward sexual freedom, the presence of sex workers is a pretty big no-no.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't a condemnation of people who work in the sex industry. No doubt she was there to help this squat little bald dude fulfill a fantasy, and get paid for it, and good on her for it. But swingers clubs in general—and the one where I worked in particular—aren't really the place for that. They're specifically for couples and single women, and coming into that environment under false pretense raises some serious concerns—safety and informed consent among them. What happens if they start being sexual, and somebody else wants to join in, unaware of the situation? Considering that the forms ask detailed questions about the nature of a couple's relationship, how much information on those forms can be trusted?

In any case, the woman was lovely, and the sweaty little dude made me nervous. But a tour guide's primary job is to make people feel comfortable, and nothing says "uncomfortable" like outing some guy in front of seven other couples. Ultimately my detective work didn't go much further than asking "So, how long have you two been together?" (He stared at the floor and mumbled "Not long," and that was that).

I let it go after that. Later on, I wondered if I should have.

Also not a sex club, but you get the idea. Photo via unsplash

Sexy Parties Aren't That Sexy for Staff

No question, swingers parties can be sexy as hell for the people attending. For staff, though, even a "sexy" environment can end up being just another day at the office. You're bussing glassware. You're cleaning up spills and puke. You've heard all the music a billion times (if I never have to suffer through Ke$ha's "Take It Off" again, I'll die a happy man).

Any club environment brings with it a fair pile of logistical challenges. When you stack two floors of sweaty naked people on top of that, the challenges multiply accordingly. One minute, I'd be running an extra bottle of vodka to the bar next to the stripper pole. The next, I'd be replenishing towels and lube upstairs, or wiping down the plastic cushions on the top floor. Somebody's looking for the dungeon! The door to the sex-swing is locked! The lineup outside is getting unruly! On one occasion, I watched a patron in precarious heels fall down the stairs, and spent the next two or three terrifying minutes checking to see if they were going to need an ambulance. There can also be staff conflicts which, with the wrong people, have descended into the realm of slut-shaming (I once saw a caterer throw a stack of plates and scream, of the boss, "She can fuck all she wants, but that doesn't mean she can run a party!")

All told, it can add up to a pretty unsexy evening of work. In addition, staff are contractually forbidden from having sex while working (single tear), something the club's owners took very seriously—and for good reason. Engaging in sex while being paid to work blurs the distinction between work for pay and sex for pay, potentially opening the business up to all kinds of legal trouble. I certainly never attempted it myself, but never fear, wannabe swingers club tour guides: there's nothing illegal about taking a couple on a tour, getting their number, and then taking them out the following weekend for an in-depth tour of your genitals.

Author's name has been changed.

Here's Why You're Addicted to Clickbait Articles About Changing Your Life

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If there's a image like this, I'll click on it. Image via Flickr.

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia/New Zealand

I have more Facebook friends than I'm proud of. Many of them I likely wouldn't speak to on the street—several I might need to re-introduce myself to—but boy, do I read the articles they share.

These aren't just any kind of articles. These are the "self-help" ones, those that thrust you deep into a spiral of self-evaluation. Even if I have very little in common with the person who shared How To Ruin Your Life (Without Even Noticing You Are), if it has a photo of some girl looking out at the water and the caption "too real," I'm going to read it.

I'll read it if it has significant "likes," I'll read it if doesn't. I'll even read it if I don't recognize the name of the person posting it­—because what if I'm one click away from happiness? What if Matilda, online contributor and horse enthusiast from Wisconsin, knows something I don't? What if all of Matilda's rhetorical questions make me realize what I've been missing?

Articles like these, which continuously analyze and evaluate our own existence to explain things like why you're anxious, why you were ghosted, or why you're afraid of your own heart, are the reason sites like Thought Catalog, funneled through social media, have achieved such rapid popularity.

The exploration of how-to articles and first-times exist because, as the site's founder Chris Lavergne explained to Time, "even the most jaded, cynical people feel things intensely." So what's driving millennials, in all their youth, to be so indulgent in sentimentality?

Psychologist Munira Haidermota attributes our continuous need for self-improvement to our hyper-awareness of our own self-image.

"This appears, to a degree, to be a new phenomena. Millennials were raised in an atmosphere of co-decision making and equal relationships, so evaluations from others is really important to use as a yardstick to evaluate sense of self." Haidermota also explains that there is a "collective confidence" in our generation that makes millennials feel particularly special.

"They're digital natives, making them a social generation. They are also a value-based generation and have been praised and sheltered and as such they do not like to consume anything in silence. They will review and compare."

Life coach Caitlin du Preez, 28, believes millennials are trigger happy when it comes to sharing information. but it doesn't translate to action. Image supplied.

Millennial life coach Caitlin du Preez says the main reason other millennials seek her help is job dissatisfaction. She's noticed young people will stay in jobs they don't enjoy because they perceive pressure from external sources, such as friends and family.

The proliferation of articles like I Quit My Job to Travel the World on our timelines seems to echo this sentiment, but this kind of content is something Du Prez doesn't support.

"I think following your dreams is important, but having a realistic method for how you're going to get there is just as important. Articles like 'I Quit My Job to Live in Barbados and I've Never Been Happier' is fine, but if that's what you want, you need to have a plan in place to achieve it."

Du Preez does believe millennials are particularly "trigger happy" when it comes to sharing information, which generally doesn't translate to IRL action. "During the age of the internet, where there's so much information being shared, we're needing to be increasingly discerning about what's true and what's false."

Haidermota agrees that over-analysis can have a debilitating effect. "Over-analysis may stop us from taking an action as we are looking for a 'perfect solution.' It can have a paralyzing effect on performance."

However, both experts agree that it's positive for mental wellbeing that millennials prioritize their personal life over career ambition, unlike previous generations. "I've noticed now when young people know they're unhappy in their current situation, they realize they don't have to do what their parents did. They don't have to stay in it for 30 to 40 years," Haidermota says.

Our affinity for self-evaluation and improvement is also making us better people, according to Haidermota and Du Preez.

"Millennials have at times been described as the 'me, me, me generation,' self obsessed and narcissistic," says Haidermota. "But this also makes them more progressive in their views and value diversity. They are overtly passionate about equality and conscious of self-improvement, so as to not offend any specific group or values."

Du Preez also says exploring ourselves via comparison is a way of dealing with the extreme social pressure enforced by our predecessors. "I think the system was created for personal gain and power, with little to no emphasis on the environmental sustainability or mental health.

"We see millennials often attacked in the media for not following previous generations, but kudos to us for shifting our focus. For exploring our feelings... and wanting to be something different."

Feel better about your life. Follow Beatrice on Twitter.

Writer's Block: The Cleanup of Detroit Has Erased Graffiti History

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Dequindre Cut, 2013

All photos by the author

I was shocked when I drove through Detroit earlier this year. Throughout much of the city, the buff had advanced like an unstoppable disease. Blotchy gray, white, and brown stains of paint covered up almost every bit of graffiti in sight. Even side streets and back alleys all the way out to 8 Mile Road, the city's famed northern boundary, were covered in fresh coats of buff paint. What happened?

The city's plan for exiting bankruptcy protection at the end of 2014 included provisions to eradicate "blight." Mayor Mike Duggan, a long-time graffiti foe, created an anti-graffiti task force which stepped up prosecutions. The city also started fining business owners for failing to remove graffiti from their properties. "Graffiti is a business in Detroit now," legendary Detroit graffiti writer DONT told me. "City workers get paid to paint over it, property owners pay fines for having it on their buildings, and the city government makes money off all of that."

Packard Plant, 2014

From the point of view of many residents and property owners, the eradication of graffiti may be a sign of Detroit's much-touted rebirth, but for many writers it spells the end of an incredible cycle of creativity. Not long ago, Detroit was considered by many to be the graffiti capital of the US, and perhaps the world—a vast playground with a near-unlimited supply of walls where writers could paint undisturbed in broad daylight.

"Detroit was a huge ghost town growing up," Detroit native DROID told me. It looked "like a person having a mental breakdown. If you were white and driving around residential streets, you were there for only one thing: drugs. There literally was no other reason to be in most of the city except to buy drugs, scrap metal, or paint walls."

Eastern Market, 2013

Eastern Market, 2016

In a city teeming with corruption, violence, and arson, catching kids with spraypaint was not a priority for law enforcement. The freedom to paint made for an amazing sight—there was once graffiti everywhere, and since it took some effort to get to Detroit if you weren't from there, the local competition was high, the risk was low, and much of the work was pretty damn good.

I first visited the city in early 2013 on a quest to find and document as much of its graffiti as possible, and was immediately hooked. I returned three more times, witnessed the city's rapid transformation, and explored its buildings and neighborhoods with a rotating cast of other photographers and graffiti writers.

Abandoned building, 2016

It was generally understood then that the police only responded to violent crime calls. One time, as a friend and I climbed over the crumbling ruins of a house in the Black Bottom neighborhood, a sedan with two serious-looking young men stopped by the road. One was black and the other white, so it was logical to assume that they had to be either graffiti writers or undercovers. It turned out to be the latter. "We know what you're doing," one of them yelled at us from the car. "Make sure to make some noise when you go into any buildings. There are crazy people around here and you don't want to surprise them." Then they drove off.

We ignored their advice. Better to go in quietly and to see than to be seen, we figured.

ELMER, GASM, 2014

Inside the city's abandoned factories, warehouses, schools, and recreational facilities, I documented the work left behind by waves of graffiti writers: Locals like PORAB, TURDL, ELMER, and DONT, who had discovered their hometown's potential long before anyone else; trailblazer's like REVOK MSK from California, whose skill and connections elevated the game in Detroit; ambitious all-around writers like BEGR and HAELER, as well as worldwide vandal PEAR, whose epic beef with Detroit's GASM scarred walls all over the city; outlaws like DROID and his fellow 907 crew members, whose giant roller paint letters and fire extinguisher tags covered entire buildings. Sometimes I'd even stumble upon the work of the phantom-like KUMA, whose charismatic throw-up characters popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

KUMA, 2016

For the most part, the out-of-towners were welcomed by local writers. "I really never thought I would see writers I looked up to, such as CES, WANE, RISK, and FUTURA come here and get down," Detroit-bred writer SEKT recalled.

"Detroit's relationship to graffiti has changed quite a bit in the last few years," said DONT. "When I was growing up painting graffiti in Detroit, there were five active writers at best. I felt like I knew where every piece of graffiti was, and if there was a new one I could almost smell it. In my early years of writing, I really had to sell people on coming to Detroit to paint. All that changed a few years ago when we saw a flood of writers from all over the world come here; there was graffiti three-levels-high on most walls."

Packard plant, 2013

The mother of all abandoned buildings was once the Packard Automotive plant. It consists of 3.5 million square feet of facilities spread out over 40 acres. Auto manufacturing was shut down in 1958, and gradually all of its buildings were abandoned by subsequent manufacturers. The Packard was the site of the infamous flight of the garbage truck, served as a set for TV shows and movies like Transformers, and became a prime destination for urban explorers, graffiti writers, and other misfits. Over the course of several decades, a vast amount of graffiti had been painted throughout the complex in a race with nature's elements and scrappers looking to extract anything of value by knocking down its walls.

Packard plant, fall 2014

I made a point of visiting the Packard whenever I was in Detroit. To me, its ongoing decay and, recently, the more attentive presence of security guards, was symptomatic of the city's transformation. There are so few walls left in the complex that it's hardly worth sneaking around security to get inside. Other major abandoned structures around the city have also become increasingly inaccessible. Dequindre Cut, formerly a forlorn jungle-like trench along Detroit's Eastern Market neighborhood, now features a family-friendly bike path that leads all the way to the waterfront, and illegal graffiti at Eastern Market has been replaced by legal murals. The Brewster houses, an emptied housing project that had been painted to look as if the buildings were wearing tribalistic war paint, had been razed completely. So had tens of thousands of other structures across the city. In their place, a new stadium and low-slung housing developments have sprung up.

Brewster Houses, 2013

The city's ongoing tear-down of abandoned structures, its graffiti clean-up campaign, and stepped-up law enforcement have largely succeeded in stamping out Detroit's graffiti history, much like the whitewashing of New York's subways in the 80s. As a result, the graffiti circus has, for the most part, left Detroit. Out-of-towners rarely visit the city to paint anymore, once again leaving what few spots remain to the locals.

Has Detroit perhaps become too safe for graffiti? "Make no mistake, in most neighborhoods it's the same as it ever was," DONT clarified. "There are a handful of neighborhoods on the up and up, and those areas offer safety and convenience, which is great. As far as art goes, there are more opportunities than ever these days, and as far as graffiti goes, well, that's up to graffiti writers."

See more photos from Ray's Detroit visits below.

Ray Mock is the founder of Carnage NYC and has been documenting graffiti in New York and around the world for ten years, publishing more than two dozen limited edition zines and books. Follow him on Instagram.

AFRIKA, REMIO, HAELER, 2016

AFRI, TOUCH, MNC, 2013

AFRI, TOUCH, MNC, 2016

BEGR, CHUB, HAELER, 2014

NEKST

DONT, SWAY

KUMA at Packard plant

PEAR, ADZE

Dequindre Cut, 2016

We Watched People Protest Against the Death of London's Nightlife (Again)

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

If London's nightlife is destined to go down, it won't do it without a fight. Or, rather, a walking rave. This Saturday, protesters gathered in east London's Hoxton Square to show their support for now-shuttered Fabric and the city's endangered clubbing culture. For those who hadn't heard, Islington council revoked Fabric's license on September 6 after two tragic drug-related deaths this summer. Next, the club will appeal the decision on November 28.

In the meantime, I joined an initially-small gaggle of people who swelled in number and wound their way along the streets of east London, ending in London Fields park. DJ Normski led the colorful crowd, as they carried disco balls, peace signs, and bore signs and t-shirts carrying the message to #saveFabric. It was a tightly run ship, with an emphasis on sticking to the pavements—some vigilant volunteers even steered the march around dog poop. People of all ages congregated holding smiley flags, a testament that this protest concerns not only our generation, but also our future's right to a freedom of expression.

"Operation Lenor you are taking the mickey," Normski shouted, referencing the rumored codename of a police operation that some believe led to Fabric's closure. "Open the bloody club up!"

Some of Fabric's 250 staff were there, as several sound systems on wheels blasted out jungle and drum n bass down Shoreditch's Columbia Road. The protest then ended, in the usual style, with a series of heartfelt speeches.

"Both the police and the council have gotten into a narrative that nightlife is a problem," said Alan Miller, from the Nighttime Industries Association, addressing the crowd. "We refute that narrative. Nightlife is not only a £66 billion per annum industry in the UK, but also it makes our cities better and it transforms them. It is about urban landscape management. We need to work together in partnership." Not quite the most rabble-rousing words, but fair and vital points.

Normski, getting ready to lead the crowd through east London

Festival owner and promoter Rob Star told the crowd that he moved to London 20 years ago for one reason: the clubs. "When I started opening venues, people wanted to close venues, and I mean the police. If we don't fight we will lose this."

As you'd expect, the march saw a mixture of optimism and a sort of raver rage. Eleanor Wilson, director of now-closed independent east London venue Passing Clouds highlighted that eight years ago, the UK government spent £500 billion bailing out the banks.

"Why can they not spend any money bailing out the institutions of our creative industries," she asked, pictured above, "which is the second biggest industry in the UK?" Well, because governments haven't tended to adore counter-cultural nightlife. From the state's approach to quashing free parties and raves to the licensing battles fought by bars and clubs, that part of our cities—the improvised, the grimy, the left-field—seemingly makes them less appealing to investors. And that, apparently, just won't do.

Fabric co-founder Cameron Leslie told me this isn't just a fight for his club. "Our case shows how under threat UK nightlife is right now, and the statistics on the number of venues closing in recent years really speak for themselves. This goes beyond our club—we want to safeguard the whole industry, so that safe, well-managed venues are celebrated rather than treated as scapegoats."

Alan Miller, addressing the crowd at London Fields

Not everyone was as optimistic. Producer Halogenix says he practically grew up in Fabric and brought his mom and dad there for his first set in 2012. He isn't shocked by the council's decision. "I'm surprised it's lasted this long. For someone who spends weekend after weekend visiting clubs, speaking to promoters, club owners etc you get to know that it's a tough climate out there, especially in London. Property prices are through the roof, luxury 'affordable' housing is popping up all over the place and space is at an all-time premium."

I spoke to 18-year-old Clementine, who had a different view from the nostalgic crowd. "It is just a bit shit really," she said. "Soon our generation aren't going to have a space to express ourselves. Though, to be honest, I fucking hate clubs anyway. They are overpriced and full of men looking to get laid with anyone who's drunk enough. I go to squat parties mostly. Save our culture? What fucking culture?"

An important one, for those who don't want to see it disappear. "Everybody is talking about how this is the end of clubbing culture as a whole," said Bristolian producer Troy Gunner, when we chatted in the lead-up to the protest, "as if there's nowhere else to go and everybody's gonna end up in fields repeating the tragedies that have happened. I think the nation is wiser than that, and I'm optimistic that this isn't the end of all things."

Follow Sophie and Chris on Twitter.



The VICE Guide to Right Now: Is Trudeau Really Revoking Citizenships at Record Rates?

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Civil liberties groups claim Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef's citizenship could be revoked under current rules. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Under Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government has revoked 184 citizenships. According to a CBC report released today, that's nearly as many revocations as the previous 27 years put together.

These numbers may come as a surprise to anyone who has heard the prime minister speak on refugee and immigration issues. The CBC story sets Trudeau up as an opponent of citizenship revocation in the context of Bill C-24, which came into force in June 2015, and gave the government new powers to strip citizenship from Canadians convicted of terrorism.

But Howard Anglin, former chief of staff to Jason Kenney's immigration ministry from 2011 to 2013, believes the uptick in citizenship revocations has little to do with Bill C-24 or marching orders from Trudeau. Anglin told VICE the jump from an average of 2.4 to 13 revocations per month under Trudeau is likely a holdover from the previous government.

Immigration spokesperson Nancy Caron told CBC the revocations are due to large-scale residency fraud investigations in partnership with border services and the RCMP. VICE reached out to the ministry but did not immediately hear back.

Anglin says those investigations began under Kenney's watch, and apply rules that have been on the books since Canada's first citizenship laws. He suggests many cases are non-refugees applying for citizenship that have provided false proof of residence in Canada.

"This was an effort to tackle crooked immigration consultants, and on the other hand make examples of some people who were lying their way into the country," Anglin said, adding he "strongly suspects" those years-old investigations are finally coming to an end. "Investigations take ages. There's a natural slowness that comes with bureaucracy and a desire to get it right."

In the midst of this, civil liberties groups have launched a constitutional challenge against citizenship revocation without legal hearings, particularly in cases where applicants misrepresented facts. The case has been linked to Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef's confusion over her birthplace—a mistake to be taken in context of challenging conditions. The BC Civil Liberties Association has said her citizenship could be revoked without a hearing under current rules.

Read More: Is the Controversy Over Maryam Monsef's Birthplace Just a Racist Witch Hunt?

While Trudeau may not be totally responsible for starting the recent wave of citizenship revocations, he did decline to stop it. On Friday, the Liberal government filed documents stating it would not heed demands for a moratorium on revocations in cases of misrepresentation until the case is settled in court.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

Qatar, Futurism and Fortune-Tellers

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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

While Christto Sanz is originally from Puerto Rico and Andrew Weir hails from South Africa, the two photographers now work and live in Qatar. Operating from their studio in Doha, they make colourful and slightly surreal still lifes and portraits, reflecting on the rapid societal changes in the oil state.

Last month, they exhibited their new series Glory of the Artifice at the Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam – the images from that series were also the campaign images of the event. The series was inspired by Qatar, futurism and fortune-tellers. "We're interested in how the past, present and future are presented and understood in today's contemporary society," Weir explained to VICE Netherlands over email. "There is a strong focus on the future and futurism in Qatar, which doesn't correspond to the mentality of the place. That creates an interesting contradiction."

Although Qatar is a big source of inspiration for the duo, their photos show a fictionalised and exaggerated version of the country. "The bizarre things that you experience here every day inspire us. But everything here is so grey and monochromatic that we had to create a new reality of Doha – our experience mixed with colour and characters who seem to be somewhat uncomfortable and make you look twice."

Find more work by Christto & Andrew on their website

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I Spent Seven Months Inside Brazil's Most Notorious Red Light District

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Photos from a Festival for Ugly People

The Intense ‘Thumper’ is Equal Parts Horror and Music Game

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Image courtesy of Drool

My palms are sweaty, my heart is pounding, and the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. These reactions are usually reserved for a piece of horror, not a music rhythm game. But there's a reason Thumper's developers have described it as "rhythm violence." Thumper is sensory overload, an experience ripped from the pages of H.P Lovecraft and the trippy, unnerving visuals of David Argento's Suspiria, all driven by a thundering soundtrack.

The best word to describe Thumper? Intense.

Thumper takes place on a single track that winds only left or right, as the player, represented by a shiny beetle, zips along at breakneck speeds. In combination with a single button, you hold left or right to lean into turns, forward to leap over objects, and crash through whatever's in your way. Timing these changes correctly increases your score, missing them chips away at your health. It only takes a few miscues before death comes knocking. Markers on the track, often timed to the music, are necessary to build up score multipliers, refill your health, and, in some cases, attack bosses—yes, bosses—with charged shots.

It's difficult to convey the experience of playing Thumper in words. You have to sense it:

The core mechanics are simple, but the experience is complex. You can't disconnect the game's atmosphere from gameplay; they work in lockstep to generate tension. You know how a good shooter makes the act of pulling a trigger feel weighty? Thumper achieves something similar as you speed through its world. The soundtrack isn't just loud, everything is loud. The game feels loud. When you make a turn, your beetle slams into the siding, as if you could fall off the track at any moment. Crashing through gates makes your controller go thump-thump-thump as the music goes thump-thump-thump as well.

When you make a mistake, a meter doesn't go down; a cacophony of noise, both seen and heard, sears through your speakers like a jackhammer. It's controlled chaos, one that makes every moment you stay alive feel significant. The problem, of course, is that the game moves so fast that if you stop to appreciate what you've done, it's game over. Even when you finish a stage, the game doesn't let up; it moves right onto the next one. (Thumper features worlds that are broken down into interconnected, nonstop stages.) I can't remember the last time I've had to pause a game to catch my breath, but in Thumper, that's often necessary to maintain your composure.

You've probably seen Thumper mentioned alongside PSVR, and while Thumper is part of Sony's virtual reality launch lineup, it's both totally playable on a PlayStation 4 without strapping on a headset and also available on PC. (The developers have said news is coming "soon" regarding support for PC VR devices.) The ideal conditions for playing Thumper are in the dark, headphones cranked up, and with a massive screen—VR just enhances that.

Though Thumper is technically a score-based game, I've found myself wishing there was a way to turn that metric off—survival is often satisfying enough. But I'm already anxious about what lies ahead. (The titular line from Clive Barker's Hellraiser—"We have such sights to show you"—feels appropriate, as would the sudden appearance of a floating Lemarchand box in the game.) I've completed two of Thumper's nine worlds, and it's hard to fathom what tricks might be in store in the remaining seven. I needed a break from the game after an hour of play; it's hard to imagine what Thumper will throw at me as I dig deeper. Wish me luck.

Follow Patrick Klepek on Twitter, and if you have a news tip you'd like to share, drop him an email.

This Radical Feminist Poem Is Now a Giant-Ass Art Installation

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'I Want a President' by Zoe Leonard at the High Line in New York. Courtesy of the High Line Art

On September 11, 1991, poet and activist Eileen Myles sent out a letter formally announcing her run for president as an "openly-female" candidate. This was in the midst of the first iteration of the American culture wars, an era in which George Bush gave campus speeches railing against the dangers of political correctness, despite the fact that the three main people vying to be leader of the free world at the time were all old white dudes with a lot of money.

"What scares me in politics, in public life, in 'leadership,' as it is presented to us is that it is all one face, grim and determined, it never changes, " Myles later wrote to her supporters that November. In contrast, she offered up a "moody campaign."

As a gay artist with no assets or health insurance at the time, Myles was basically the opposite of that face. She was also the inspiration for the poem that's going to be blown up to 20 by 30 feet and displayed on the High Line––forcing tourists and New Yorkers alike to consider lines like "I want a dyke for president"––from October 11 through November 17.

"In Zoe's own words, the stakes are too high this year to fuck around."

The poem, "I Want a President," written by Myles's friend, the artist Zoe Leonard, was originally meant to be published on the back of a queer magazine that went under. Instead, Xeroxed copies were passed along to friends, who put them on their refrigerator doors, and then later replaced them with postcards after the art journal LTTR printed some in 2006. There was another resurgence in the work's popularity when, during Sweden's 2010 election, a group of artists held a collective reading; other groups have since used it for writing workshops, allowing people to reinterpret the text as they saw fit. Given the way that the piece spread organically, it's something like a pre-internet meme––something shared, copied, and re-interpreted starting way before most Americans had internet connections at home.

Robert Hammond, the co-founder of the High Line, told me that he thinks of each line as a GIF even though they were written in 1992. As a whole, the piece is a manifesto on Leonard's desire to see an outsider––someone with AIDS or without air conditioning, a person who's had an abortion but has learned to live without money––as an elected leader.

Given that the piece sprang from the first wave of anti-PC backlash, it makes sense that its reemerged in 2016. As part of Dazed Digital's 25th anniversary, the online magazine decided to do several pieces about freedom and what it means in a world of Brexit and Donald Trump. Editor Thomas Gorton told VICE he wanted to work with performance artist Mykki Blanco and so he asked himself, "What would Mykki's presidential manifesto be?"

The result was a video of Blanco reading the poem, which was uploaded to YouTube and, according to Gorton, racked up something like 3.5 million views in two days. The video also got picked up on various music sites, including Pitchfork, which means that Leonard's message is probably reaching a young male demographic that it certainly eluded before. It's gone viral again––the apotheosis of that being its impending installation on the High Line, where it'll be seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors over 37 days.

Eileen Myles currently endorses Hillary Clinton––someone who's hardly disenfranchised. But Melanie Kress, assistant curator at High Line Art, says that the poem based on Myles's 1992 campaign shouldn't dissuade anyone from voting for the current Democratic nominee.

"While there is a great power and beauty to calling loudly for the kind of leadership you truly yearn for – a kind of leadership that extends far beyond what we are told our available options are – it's also important to acknowledge the limitations of the system within which we all live," says Kress. "In Zoe's own words, the stakes are too high this year to fuck around."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

We Asked People About the Worst Fight at Their School

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Old school fighting in Grange Hill. Source: BBC

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Fighting is a big part of school; not just the punch up itself, but the theater, the braying crowds cheering, "Fight! Fight! Fight!", the half-hearted attempts to break it up and the underlying divisions of race, class, and coolness. Sometimes fights settle petty scores of stolen pencil cases or stolen boyfriends. At their worst, they reveal a brutal, feral side to otherwise charming schoolchildren.

Mostly, break-time fights are forgotten by fifth period. But some stay logged in your psyche for a little longer. I spoke to some people about the most memorable fights they witnessed or partook in during their time at school.

LAURA, 25

VICE: What was the biggest fight you ever saw at school?
Laura: It was about four months into year seven. I had made friends with the most popular girl in my form and she had started dating this guy who was 17, which was a drama in and of itself.

One morning, we were supposed to be going on a school trip to Kew Gardens and were all waiting in our form room to do the register when this girl from year ten who was a renowned bully and hard as nails stormed in screaming, "Who the fuck is this bitch who's fucking my man?"

A huge slanging match ensued and eventually they both just ran at each other and were slapping, biting, hair pulling, proper nasty fighting. The year ten girl clawed out a massive chunk of my friend's hair, like a bloody clump! Then my friend picked up a chair, and slammed her around the face with it. She went flying through the air and was flung into a wall.

Woah. Was she okay?
At that moment teachers ran in and an ambulance was called. The girl was knocked out.

Did anyone try to stop it?
Mostly people did fuck all but it all went so quick—there was definitely some "Fight! Fight! Fight!" chanting though. The older girls were pretty intimidating and everyone had stepped back because we all thought it would go the other way, that the older girl would smash her up and leave having taught her a lesson—but then she pulled out the chair. I grabbed her arm to try and stop her because that was way too much, but she was in beast mode and I made absolutely no difference.

Were there any repercussions?
The school trip was canceled for the whole of our year and everyone in our crew got weekend detention for a month, even though we were nothing more than innocent year seven bystanders. Everyone was so scared of us after that, just by association. My mad friend got internal suspension but got to keep the boyfriend, though he was an idiot so I don't really know who got the last laugh.

DALLAS, 31

VICE: When did this fight take place?
Dallas: When I was 15 I was really naughty. I'd run away from home and lived with my boyfriend in his trailer and just sat around smoking weed all day. I hardly went into school and didn't really care about making any friends. I wasn't scared of anyone.

Who did you fight?
There was a group of "tough girls" in my school that everyone was afraid of but I don't think I was at school enough for them to care about me, so we were cool. The fight was all over some bullshit: one of my friends had been hanging out with a cousin of one of the tough girls and they started bullying her, shouting really horrible stuff at her. I was hanging out with her in the common room one day and the girls came up to us and started chatting shit to her. I told the tough girls to shut the fuck up. Then one of them just went for me.

Did she beat you to a pulp?
I was smaller than the other girl but I'm also really wily and good at fighting, so I actually smashed her face in pretty good. It wasn't long before her friends broke it up but it was vicious while it lasted.

Did you get in trouble?
They called our parents but I'm really lucky in that my dad has always got my back. I told him that I didn't start the fight and was just sticking up for a friend so he stood up for me, but the head teacher told him that she didn't think it was safe for me to come back to the school. It was the last week of school and I missed out on our graduation assembly which kind of sucked.

Was there any further retaliation?
The girl who I beat up turned up to one of my friend's houses looking for me and smashed her car windows with a baseball bat. I was at my boyfriend's, obviously.

JAY, 25

VICE: You went to a boys' school so you must have seen a lot of fights—what was the worst one?
Jay: We had a new student in school who had managed to escape the war in Afghanistan. They had a special assembly to introduce him. He was new to the country by about a couple of days, spoke no English, and we were all told to be great school ambassadors, welcome him in, and help him integrate with everyday school life. By lunchtime, a helicopter ambulance had landed in the middle of our playground. It airlifted the kid out on a stretcher with a pencil stabbed firmly into his neck.

That is fucked up. Who was involved?
It was pretty much a free-for-all between some of the local misguided goons in school and some of the other Afghan students. They had a lot of anger and a lot of baggage that they decided to direct towards this kid.

Did anyone try and step in?
Nah, as with any school fight, if you're not involved or someone who isn't your mate isn't in it, you generally just stand around looking at the action, enticing it on, and routinely putting a closed fist to your mouth muttering "oh shit" whenever you saw a deep connection land.

So how did it end?
The new kid got helicoptered out and never came back again.

Did anyone get expelled?
There were a lot of expulsions. Our school had a history of violence and a lot of students had run-ins with the police both before and after this incident. Also Ofsted were in that day—I can't say they were impressed.

DOLLY, 26

VICE: Tell me about this fight: what went down?
Dolly: School had been over for about half an hour and I was in my form room with some other dweebs and my form tutor, when we heard a hell of a lot of noise and sirens outside. Turned out all hell had broken loose on the road outside school—there were police vans and police everywhere trying to manage a huge scrum of people fighting.

What the hell was going on?
I don't think anyone really knew what had happened until the next day—loads of kids came into school badly beaten up. One lad in my year had to have stitches in his face. It was pretty gruesome. It turned out it was a planned fight with some kids from the "rival" school. The police had been tipped off when someone found chair legs with screws hammered in, in the bushes near the school. God knows how it got so out of control.

So it was just a free-for-all on anyone from your school?
Basically, yeah. I don't know if that was the original intention but it's certainly how it ended. The police were very heavy-handed too, so anyone trying to make their way through basically got caught up in it one way or another.

What were your two schools like?
My school had a bad rep which I always thought was unfair as I loved it there, it was really diverse and people got along for the most part. I remember being put off by the signs in the classrooms reminding me that it was illegal to bring a knife to school when I first started, though. The other school was notorious: it had always had a really bad reputation and looked like a prison from the outside. I don't think anyone ended up there by choice, when I was little I was always told that if I was naughty I'd be sent there.

Were there any arrests?
There were some arrests made but I don't think anyone was charged. No one was in trouble as far as I'm aware. We had a new headmaster and I remember feeling so sorry for him having to deal with this shit in his first year at the school. He held an assembly about it but the main focus was on how badly the police had handled the situation. I know he took it to the IPCC, but I'm not sure what the outcome was in the end. He was really supportive of the students, which was lovely.

VICE does not condone violence. It's not cool. Don't do it.

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