Well, it seems to be official folks. Kevin O'Leary—aka K-Money—is reportedly going to be entering the leadership race tomorrow. He's said to be jumping in one day after the French speaking debate—a brilliant move for a man who cannot speak French tres bien (or at all). That aside, the Kev-Man will, most likely, be entering the race as the frontrunner and certainly has an edge over the other candidates in name value alone.
TBH, after months of constipated speculation and him teasing the media with threats to run, it's a little bit of a relief that O'Leary has finally decided to take a leaky shit all over the leadership race. At least the thousands of hot takes and think pieces comparing O'Leary to Trump have been worth it.
Well, without further ado, here is everything you need to know about Mr. Wonderful.
He is not, in fact, American businessman/president-elect/Putin fanboy Donald Trump.
Don't let all the breathless comparisons fool you, by all accounts, he seems to be his own autonomous person and not an avatar of the anthropomorphic Cheeto that is the president-elect.
Is he racist?
Nothing on the record suggests he is. O'Leary has actively shit on the immigration views espoused by Trump and leadership opponent Kellie Leitch. He is not Donald Trump.
He is Canada rich.
O'Leary is reportedly worth $400 million, Trump is worth around $3.7 billion. While, for plebs like us, $400 million seems like a lot, to Trump it's chump change. Hell, O'Leary isn't even the richest person on Shark Tank. Definitely not Donald Trump money.
Photos via Twitter
He likes sticking his head through things.
Look, I don't know why he likes it so much but he obviously does, maybe ask Temple Grandin? Never saw Trump stick his head through a toilet. (Editor's note: The existence of the pee-pee video is the only hope I have left in life.)
He appeared on television, did you know that?
O'Leary has his very own IMDB page and it even has a cool picture! He's appeared on several television shows your parents have watched including Dragon's Den, Shark Tank, Celebrity Jeopardy and something called The Lang & O'Leary Exchange, which I assume is some kind of 1930s detective show with a sassy female lead? But he has a long road ahead of him though if he thinks he's the big cheese when it comes to famous Conservative actors.
So OK, maybe those Trump comparisons have a little weight in this category.
He apparently has a pretty shoddy record as a businessman.
Full of weird dealings, cat food and wrongful dismissal lawsuits, another similarity that O'Leary has with Trump is being successful despite pretty poor business skills. Cheers to the Forrest Gumps of business!
It's not really all that important but it's pretty goddamn funny. Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump will likely appear on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy any week now.
He is not Donald Trump.
He's a blowhard who became well known for having more money than the commoners but in the end, we're still pretty sure he's not Donald Trump.
On this episode of 'Autobiographies,' VICE hangs out with Johnny Huynh, chef and co-owner of Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen, a hole in the wall serving up traditional bánh mì and pho with the style and flare of his Bushwick, Brooklyn, roots.
Summer Zervos—the former Apprentice contestant who accused President-elect Trump of sexual assault last October—has filed a suit against Trump for defamation after he denied the claim and said she and the women who came forward with similar stories were "liars."
Zervos announced the lawsuit at a press conference Tuesday alongside her lawyer, civil rights attorney Gloria Allred, who previously appeared with Zervos when she came forward about the alleged assault last fall.
"[Zervos] came forward—as a number of other Mr. Trump victims did—to inform the public of the facts she knew were true, to make clear that Donald Trump had kissed and groped her without her consent, repeatedly," the lawsuit states. "And what did Donald Trump, the liar and misogynist do, to cover up his lies? He lied again, and debased and denigrated Ms. Zervos with false statements about her."
Trump previously threatened to sue the numerous women who came forward with stories of inappropriate sexual comments and contact during the lead up to the 2016 election. Now, Zervos's suit will call on the soon-to-be-president to either admit her story is true and apologize, or head to court to defend his claim that Zervos is a "phony."
In Bomb the Right Place, players are told "the world thinks America is weak," which mean it's time to start bombing the shit out of some foreign countries and get some respect! If you choose to enact diplomacy, it's game over because "you made America look weak." If you don't bomb anyone, same deal. But when tasked with actually bombing someone—like, say, Kabul—players are presented with a largely unlabeled map and a cursor. If you bomb the wrong country, you still win. "I think the got they still got the message," the game reads, and asks you to try again.
Bomb the Right Place is part of a larger series of pointed games in the GOP Arcade, which spent the better part of 2016 skewering the political rhetoric of the Grand Old Party and, quite often, Donald Trump. Some of their games, like Bomb the Right Place, manage to relay an uncomfortable, powerful message through game design, regardless of political persuasion. (Though I'm a progressive who often disagrees with American foreign policy in the Middle East, I couldn't find Kabul on a map, and I shut the game off with a sense of shame. It worked.)
If you don't happen to be one of the roughly one million vegans currently living in Germany, you're probably under the impression that "Veganz" must be a name for some underground crunk-hop group that raps about slabs of seitan and the sheer unsustainability of modern agribusiness.
If you do happen to be one of those roughly one million Germans, you're likely aware that Veganz is, in fact, the world's first fully vegan supermarket chain.
Created in 2011 by a former meat-eater who came up with the concept after traveling abroad and being exposed to a surplus of vegan foods, Veganz now has nine locations and is the first fully vegan supermarket chain in not just Germany, but the entire world. Whether or not you are a vegan, it's hard to argue about the overall importance of and precedent Veganz sets to everyone with an alternative diet.
Well, earlier this month the health minister decided to throw cold water on your vaping-in-Parliament idea, saying the government no longer has a "specific timeline" on when weed will actually be legal. Trudeau will still be introducing new weed laws in the spring, which will at earliest be passed next winter or early 2018. Even then, it could take until after the next election to get the the regulatory process up and running, according to Minister Jane Philpott. In the meantime, recreational pot shops will keep opening and pot arrests will continue.
Apparently none of this news is going to stop Vancouver pot activist Dana Larsen from mailing free marijuana seeds to anyone in Canada who wants some. He says he already mailed out two million weed seeds in 2016, and wants to up that to five million in 2017, in an effort to normalize growing at home.
Larsen did run into some legal trouble at an Alberta stop of a cross-Canada tour last summer, but is out on bail and likely won't be going to trial for trafficking until next year. He's not too concerned about getting sent back to jail, either. "Regardless of how this goes for me, we'll still be continuing the seed giveaway," he told VICE.
With so much weed news ahead of us, we caught up with Larsen to find out where he sees battles being fought and won in 2017.
VICE: Last time we spoke you were just starting to give away seeds in early 2016. In your view, has Canada's weed landscape changed since then?
Dana Larsen: Federally, nothing's changed. We had the commission give some good recommendations, but we're still living under Stephen Harper's mandatory minimums. Trudeau's been adamant that they're not going to stop arrests, and the law is the law and the law must be enforced. I see a lot of people arrested for possession and minor offences over the next couple years, so that's disappointing. We want them to act faster, especially to stop arrests, even just for possession or cultivation of two plants. Just some easing up off prohibition.
What is changing is not the federal law, but the municipalities and dispensaries. Dispensaries are proliferating. Although there have been raids in some cities, the raids don't win, for the most part. After Project Claudia in Toronto, some of the shops shut down, but a lot stayed open, and more have opened since then. There are more raids than ever before under Trudeau, but that's because there are so many more open. It's like we're coming up over the hill, and some of us are getting picked off as we move forward, but we're still advancing.
It seems like even with fines and raids factored in, it's still in dispensaries' financial interest to stay open. Everyone's trying to get in on the market before it's official. We do alright, like any other business. It's not just pure cash. In Vancouver there's 100 other places we're competing with. Our dispensaries only mark up 30 percent, which is a lower markup than grocery stores for the kind of products they sell. We've always tried to put our profits where our ideology is, by funding court cases and legal challenges, and helping our vulnerable members. There is a bit of a gold rush mentality right now, but we try to work with other shops and encourage them to give back to communities and back to the cause because it isn't just about money.
So what do you see happening in 2017? I see more dispensaries opening, I see Canadians getting frustrated. People who aren't in the pot movement are thinking something's going to happen in the spring. The spring will come and go. They'll be even more frustrated when the law actually does get passed in the fall, but the arrests keep happening. Some people tell us to just wait, to just give them a few months to get it together. By the time we get to next fall, and the legislation is passed, but they're saying it's going to be two more years—I think people will turn against that. People who just want it to be legal will be wondering what's going on. They won't be patient anymore.
Do you see any major turning points or good news on the horizon? I see more cities moving to regulate dispensaries. If Toronto announced it was going to follow same model as Vancouver on dispensaries—if the city gives up on raids and starts licensing dispensaries as businesses, that will be the end. Then every other city will go along with it. But I don't really expect that to happen in 2017, maybe in 2018. I'm not sure when Toronto's next elections are, but if it doesn't come up before the next elections, dispensaries could be a big issue.
What about global factors—can Trump fuck this up for Canada? I don't know, with Trump being so unpredictable. The people he's appointing are pretty anti-marijuana. It's like in the late seventies when Pierre Trudeau was promising some kind of legalization or decriminalization, then Ronald Reagan was elected. Once Reagan was in, Canada's opportunity to change the law was lost, and so I worry that maybe we should have acted faster. If cannabis comes under pressure from Trump—it seems unlikely with all the states that have legalized—but that could still have some influence on Canada.
I really believe if Hillary Clinton made a bigger deal about pathway to legalization, she could have won… I think that in Florida Democrats lost by a close margin, yet they had medical marijuana on the ballot that passed and got way more than either candidate did. In Canada we saw Trudeau get elected not only because of marijuana, but that was the only policy of his Canadians could name for a long time.
I guess weed legalization has been politically mainstream for a while now. Yes, and growing weed at home is one of the final things that we want. We want to be able to buy it in shops, we want to have all the other vapor lounges and everything, but the one thing we haven't really had is weed growing everywhere. If we get enough Canadians growing in their front yards, and it becomes just a normal thing, whether the law changes or not, that's legalization.
These days, the benefits of sex are so well accepted that even the UK's National Health Service touts it as a positive activity. From reducing stress and strengthening your immune system to aiding in female bladder control or prostate health, sex has become a silver bullet in our culture. But for all the ways sex can positively impact our lives, it's not entirely uncommon for people to die when bumping uglies.
Other times people die due to sex-linked overdoses or other drug-related complications. In some cases, it's legal drugs, as in the case of Sergey Tuganov, who died in 2009 at the age of 28 after he pounded some Viagra and had a 12-hour sex marathon with two women. Illegal drugs can be just as lethal, as when the 43-year-old Australian doctor Suresh Nair proffered two sex workers in 2009 with so much cocaine that they died during their tryst. Others die of honest accidents. Some of them are absurd, like the assistant manager at a San Francisco club who activated a lift under a piano he was having sex on and was crushed to death between the instrument and the ceiling in 1983. Meanwhile some accidental deaths are linked to rough sex or outright BDSM practice, like that of 59-year-old Gordon Semple, a British policeman, who died during a Grindr session in which 50-year-old Stefano Brizzi sat on his face and tightened a leash on the bound and masked officer at his request until he died in 2016.
Yet for as much as we love to gossip about it, and despite its relative commonality, it's not clear to many what sort of legal repercussions you might face or what you should do if a partner does die on you mid-coitus. Sometimes when these stories are told it seems like no big deal: Matthew McConaughey's mother glossed over her husband's 1992 heart attack during sex in her autobiography I Amaze Myself like it was a mere footnote.No one was even charged in 2011 when an Ohio man choked to death on a gag in a BDSM session. In other cases, death during sex can lead to lengthy trials and hard time: A Canadian woman was charged with manslaughter when her partner died during a suspected sex act in 2007 and at least twoteens were charged for strangling their partners to death during what was allegedly consensual rough sex in 2014.
Wanting to learn more about liability when a partner dies during sex, I reached out to Kristina Dolgin. She's the executive director of Red Light Legal, a group offering legal aid to sex workers, who are charged for death during sex more often than perhaps any other population in the US. Dolgin filled us in on what contexts usually trigger some kind of legal scrutiny—and on the relatively few standard steps to take to handle that eventuality.
VICE: When is someone likely to face legal scrutiny or charges if their sex partner dies? Kristina Dolgin: I don't think anyone knows definitively. But the more the relationship looks like that which is expected traditionally—people who are married, have a nuclear family thing going on, where there isn't any kind of suspicion of extramarital sexual activity, when it's not largely known that people are engaged in BDSM—I think those cases run the lowest risk of prosecution.
A lot of it will come down to what was the actual arrangement but also what does the arrangement look like from the outside? The more taboo the behaviors are, the more risk—the more people are going to want to see them as something to be scared of [and to prosecute].
What groups of people are legally the most at risk when a partner dies on them? You stand the most risk if it's a paid transaction… and if it's obvious some kind of criminalized activity was taking place. Even if it wasn't the cause [and someone died due to an independent heart attack due to strain or something], if [a sex session involved] drug use or heavy BDSM, there's stigma or discrimination that ends up attributing cause even if they're totally unrelated.
People in general, when being faced with murder charges, have to go through a lot of hurdles. Our legal system is set up to be adversarial. And if you are a part of a population that is very criminalized and demonized on a moral level, that battle to be vindicated of a harsh crime is just that much harder.
What should people keep in mind if a partner dies due to an overdose? In California we have good Samaritan laws specifically… intended to encourage people to seek emergency medical care for overdose victims. This protects the person who experiences the overdose and the person who seeks medical treatment… from charges of being under the influence or in possession of a controlled substance or paraphernalia.
But this law does not protect against anything else. If it's someone engaged in sex work who wants to call 911 because their client is overdosing, they are still exposed to prostitution charges. You, in those scenarios, are at the whim of what prosecutors or other law enforcement will want to do with you. There's a lot of subjectivity. Law enforcement has great discretionary powers. They can choose to arrest somebody or not in any given scenario.
Not to say that people shouldn't be [calling 911], but there's that risk that then gets weighed against the risk of losing a life.
You are at the whim of what prosecutors or other law enforcement officials will want to do with you. There's a lot of subjectivity.
What about when your partner(s) die due to accidents, especially linked to rough sex, complicated positions, or more extreme and potentially dangerous BDSM practices? In California, like in a lot of different states, you can't really legally consent to what would be called battery or torture. Not every instance of being hit or whipped is going to be arrestable because cops don't generally see what's going on in the bedroom. But when prosecutors and law enforcement are actually looking in the bedroom and saying, "Oh, that's BDSM activity that we can loosely attribute to being the cause of death of somebody," that particular activity—hitting, whipping, choking, breath play, blood play—is [seen as] inherently dangerous, even though 99 percent of the time nothing happens as a result. But there is this blanket precedent in California and in other states that this is inherently bad, that this is inherently dangerous, so it's really easy for courts and prosecutors to attribute cause to that particular activity.
So your average couple might face some legal action if one of them dies during something like rough sex. What else can trigger scrutiny when someone dies in a vanilla context? Whether there is somebody who wants to pursue an investigation. If there is a family member who might be getting a larger inheritance, if the partner were to be pushed out of a will or as the beneficiary of insurance if liability of death could be put on them, those things are factors, too.
How can you minimize your risk of liability, whether in a transactional relationship or not? Make sure that you're in a situation where there isn't risk of death, if you can avoid it.
Obviously, we're all striving for that. We don't want our partners to die. But the peril is higher for those in the sex industry. For some sex workers, [avoiding risk is] easier than for others.
Some good practices are to have CPR training—especially if you're doing BDSM practices—or carrying NARCAN on you in the event of an opiate overdose. Because you never know who's going to walk through the door. All people use all types of drugs. And if you can, ask people about medical conditions so you can gauge the level of risk you want to take on. Maybe if somebody has heart issues, try doing something that's going to put less strain on them.
These would be good practices for people who are not in the sex industry, too. But I don't know that other people negotiate sex the same way. People tend to not talk about sex before they do it.
Couldn't knowing about someone's potential causes of death open you to more liability? I'd think that'd be especially difficult to absolve yourself of in a longer-term relationship. Absolutely. That would have an impact in court, because knowledge that this person has had medical issues as a result of BDSM activity or whatever [in the past] could affect you.
You've mentioned who is the most at risk of legal action if their partner dies. But in the moment that someone dies, before you know anything about how you'll be treated and regardless of who you are, traditional couple or sex worker, what should you do? If there are things that are traceable to you, you absolutely should notdestroy evidence. [If you call or are contacted by the cops], don't consent to searches. Ask for a lawyer. Sate that you want to invoke your right to remain silent.
And if responders immediately or later on charge you with something, what should you do? In some of these cases, there really isn't a whole lot that sex workers can do when faced with these charges, whether it's involuntary manslaughter or straight up murder charges.
But do fight these charges. Find resources to help you do so, whether that is finding a group or gathering family and friends to support you. In the end, 95 percent of cases are plead—they don't go to trial. But precedent for these types of things can change if more people are able to go to court and challenge [them]. So don't just, if you can, take the charges that you're immediately faced with.
Assuming you're not a total square, you know that sneaking into somewhere you're not meant to be is one of life's greatest pleasures. Whether through flirty finessing or bank heist levels of preparation, scofflaws have been finding creative ways into places they should not be since the first bouncer crawled out the primordial ooze.
We asked people for their most brazen, foolish, and crazy sneaking in stories. Using props, deception, and good old-fashioned American ingenuity, these scamps followed their entitlement like a divining rod to free entertainment and VIP treatment. Even our old friend the high-visibility vest, nature's skeleton key, makes an appearance in these tales of subterfuge.
Photo courtesy of Vitalii Sediuk
My friends had four Grammys tickets while there were five of us. I asked them if I could go with them to see if it's possible to get on the red carpet without a ticket. So we went there and, surprisingly, upon arrival, the security checked our tickets in a rush and let us all in through the first gate of security. Then my friends went down the red carpet, leaving me in an area just before the carpet.
The first celebrity I saw was Adele. I immediately asked for a selfie and she did it for me. So I decided to follow Adele's team and see if I could go with them on the red carpet. Someone from Adele's people was not let inside so there were a slight argument and I used that situation, where the security guys were busy with them, to get on the red carpet. Once on the carpet, I started using my iPhone to conduct interviews with celebrities.
The red carpet was announced to be closing in five minutes. So again I decided to follow some people, and this time it was a lady in a green dress. To my surprise, I went through at least five security gates very fast with her. It's like security just checked our pockets and that's it. All of a sudden we arrived at the front-row seats of the Grammys. The lady in green had turned out to be Katy Perry!
I heard that the ceremony was about to start so we had to occupy our seats. There were not many empty seats at that time. I tried to check my luck and sit near Beyoncé but Jay Z showed up at the last second so I had to think of another plan. I sat just behind Justin Timberlake and Sting on the second row. I later found out that I'd occupied Adam Levine's seat from Maroon 5 and he had to sit on the floor near Blake Shelton. So I was there sitting comfortably pretending that I belonged to that community, enjoying rubbing shoulders with all these famous people that I constantly see on TV. But I saw that people around me were whispering, probably wondering who is this guy?
Then we heard the first award category announcement of the night—best pop solo performance—and, of course, it went to Adele. I decided to rush on stage pretending it's actually me who was receiving that award. I couldn't sit there any longer because there's a constant rotation in seats between artists and I knew that sooner or later they would have found out that I had neither ticket nor credential. So I came up with idea to do something memorable for me.
Once on stage beside Adele, I said into the microphone "Thank you for this award! Adele, you are my inspiration!" Then I was rushed off stage by Jennifer Lopez. In the backstage there was already a ton of angry and confused people waiting for me, including police who later arrested me. Luckily they released me the next morning. -Vitalii, Ukraine
I drove from Chicago to New Jersey to shoot Bamboozle Festival for Victory records. When I got there, I found that Victory "forgot" to put me on the list for media credentials and tickets.
Ended up taking a photo of one of my friends artist passes, going to Kinkos, printing off sheets and sheets and getting them laminated. Getting in, selling the surplus passes for $50 each and living like a pop punk king for a weekend. -Matt, Jersey City
This is more of a sneaking OUT situation but I like to think it was just as crafty as any of my attempts to sneak in somewhere. I was at a college football game and we had just beaten our rivals so the entire stadium was going apeshit. Kids always threaten to rush the field in these scenarios so there was a wall of police at the perimeter of the stands.
Some cops jumped the gun in anticipation of kids hopping the railing to get onto the field and started pepper spraying the crowd still lawfully hanging out in the stands. Some of us, myself included, who were hit with the spray figured if we were going to get fucked up by cops, we might as well be on the field for it.
I hopped the railing and dropped the ten feet or so only to have someone immediately grab the collar of my shirt and snarl 'got you, you little shit.' In what was probably the most graceful physical movement of my life, I yanked myself backwards out of my shirt and scoffed 'no, you don't' before running off into the crowd.
Now I'm shirtless and partially blind in a sea of people on the field with someone probably pursuing me. I flagged down the first person I saw who was holding an extra shirt and quickly got his shirt and email and swore up and down that I'd get his clothing back to him.
Now on the field and lam, I wanted out but didn't have an exit strategy. I happened to spot a sports photographer I'd talked to just the day before and ran up to her, explained my situation and asked if she'd help get me out. She gave me her camera bag to carry and we walked out through the staff tunnel with me posing as her assistant. We also ended up dating for a number of years after that and her sneaking my dumb ass out was the start of it. -Robert, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Photo courtesy of Skyler Stone
We were 12 guys and girls with zero plans and zero funds trying to make it to Vegas for New Year's Eve. As we drove from LA, I realized we had nowhere to stay, no dinner reservations, and nowhere to drink that wasn't going to cost a fortune.
I called a hotel, which I will leave anonymous, and I told them that I was Mr St. Aubin, an agent at the William Morris Agency.
I told the woman who answered that I had a very big agent on the line who needed to speak to someone above her paygrade, essentially. I was doing a character voice so that I could then mute it real quick and then switch to my real voice and come across as two people—both the assistant and the agent. As the agent, I told her that I represented Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Skyler Stone (i.e. me), and James Vanderbeek, and that my clients' NYE plans had fallen through at the last minute, leaving them in the Vegas area with nothing to do.
When I got transferred to the most important person they could find to talk to me, I realized it was some guy's cellphone who was probably on vacation. I could tell we had a scenario wherein we could both "bond" in having to do such a tall order at the last minute together.
After our bro-ing out, he immediately went into what he was willing to offer my "clients." He gave us four luxury suites, food and beverage credit, VIP immediate entrance to their hot new club AND our own table with comped bottle service and our own security guard whose sole job was to escort us to our OWN bathroom whenever any of us needed it.
Best part of the whole trip was the movie scene-esque moment when we arrived. With the New Year's eve traffic we did not get there until 11:56 PM. Somehow we walked into the club together screaming the midnight countdown along with the crowd and made it to our VIP table right at "one."
After taking full advantage of the complimentary drinks and partying a bunch, we finally went on up to our room. And there it was. A fucking beautiful, expensive gift basket full of artisanal cheeses and fine meats and olives dipped in the greatest olive oil ever. There was a card on it that even said "Mr. Stone."
And my phone died that night and I left my charger in the RV but by the time that we were able to get it back on, my phone had several voicemails from several people all up and down the chain of command of that hotel. The tone of said messages was getting more frustrated the further we listened to them. They definitely had "questions", and we were not in the mood to try and cobble together some answers. So even though we had another comped night to stay at that hotel, we got out of there that day. -Skyler, Los Angeles
A long while ago I lived in the suburbs and was like 19 and going to community college. My friends all wanted to go to Raging Waters (there were like eight of us) but like, obviously not everyone had enough money to go. Someone came up with the amazing idea to sneak in by climbing down this embankment on the side of a road by the park.
In my bikini, with a group of eight, we all climbed down. I scaled a ten-foot-tall fence barefoot and watched from the other side as the other girls struggled and the guys tried to lift them up and push them over. After that we crawled under two water slides and finally made it out on the other side into the non-restricted area of the park.
We made our way to the front of the park to get a locker to put our shit in when we saw a sign that announced the park was "FREE AFTER 3 PM."
It's early on a weekday morning and Kyle Walker is thinking about what she has to do to keep her incarcerated boyfriend alive. At over six feet tall, the energetic 41-year-old stands out from the relatively somber rush hour crowd making their way to the office buildings of downtown Austin, Texas. She's on her way to work as a legal assistant, the job that supports her two kids and her boyfriend, who despite being in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice still needs a constant stream of help just to have the most basic necessities behind bars.
"I can't send him any money, because they're just going to take it from him," Walker explains between drags from an e-cigarette.
Walker's boyfriend* has been labeled as a sex offender since he was 17, after he slept with his then-girlfriend, who was 13 at the time. Upon finishing a seven-year term in the Barry B. Telford Unit, a prison in New Boston, Texas, he struggled to find a home because of his sex offender status. When police came by her home acting on a tip that there were drugs on location in early 2015, Walker says, they arrested and charged her boyfriend with failing to register his residence, a violation of probation. Now he's back at the Telford Unit, the same prison in which he spent much of his youth. Despite making parole last summer, he's been unable to find a legal place to live, a condition of his release. And until Walker and her boyfriend sort that out, he needs to cope with the Texas prison system, where inmates supplement their meager provisions with food and supplies bought by their families on the outside.
More than anything else, though, it's health care that comes at a steep price.
After a 2011 Texas law raised the copay for medical care from $3 for each visit to a $100 annual flat fee, families of the incarcerated have scrambled to find a way to pay the difference. If a prisoner is considered indigent, meaning they don't have any money in their "trust fund"—the account that's used to pay for items like food and toilet paper—then they don't have to pay the $100 to receive health care. But once any money is deposited into the trust fund, half of it is docked to go towards the outstanding copay until the full amount is paid off. For Walker, that means any money she places into her boyfriend's account would go to pay off his debt for the health care he's already received, which includes care for managing his schizophrenia, desperately needed dental work, and further treatment for mental health issues.
"I can only afford to spend $30 to $40 every couple of weeks to support him, and even to just put the money in his trust fund, there's a fee for that transaction," Walker explains. "So for them to deduct half of the money for services he's already received—it defeats the purpose of me even sending him money."
Families and significant others like Walker have found themselves shouldering a growing financial burden as prison systems across America look to raise revenue by charging inmates for necessities like clothing, food, toilet paper, and even the prison cell they're being kept in. Right now, at least 35 states charge their prisoners for health care in some way or other, with some county jails going so far as to pursue civil actions against prisoners after they're released in hopes of recouping health care costs. But Texas has the highest state prison population in the country, with an average of over 150,000 people sitting in its cells at any one time. And like many things in Texas, the state's prison medical copay is easily the largest in America.
Unlike other states where prisoners are compensated—however meagerly—for their labor, the overwhelming majority of prisoners in Texas are not paid for any of their work, much of which involves serious agricultural and industrial activity. Most inmates manage to avoid the copay, with just 15,000 people paying it in 2014. But the fee is a glaring example of how the criminal justice system can further impoverish already marginalized communities, one made especially troublesome by how little it seems to be helping to alleviate the state's budget woes. As a new, decidedly pro-prison administration takes power in Washington, DC, the Texas prison medical copay regime offers a case study in how not to do criminal justice reform.
Check out our documentary on modern debtors' prisons in America.
Texas has long been at the center of the story of medical care behind bars in America. The right to healthcare for prisoners was first established due to negligence in the state: Ruiz v. Estelle, a class-action lawsuit filed by prisoners alleging widespread mistreatment in 1972, placed the Texas Department of Criminal Justice under federal court supervision for over two decades. "The judge concluded that the best practice would be to have one doctor for every 500 inmates," says Brian McGiverin, a civil rights attorney who has worked on dozens of cases alleging mistreatment of prisoners by the TDCJ. Currently, he estimated, prisons have one doctor for every 2,200 inmates.
Still, that in itself doesn't open up the state to constitutional violations. A separate case brought a Texas inmate in 1974, Estelle v. Gamble, went all the way to the US Supreme Court, where the justices found that prisoners have the right to medical care, but a state has to show deliberate indifference to a prisoner's medical condition for it to be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment. "So long as nobody is denied service, even if service means they're facing a huge bill, which will in turn deprive them of other amenities, it just doesn't trip the wire for constitutional protections," McGiverin tells me. A 2014 lawsuit against the medical copay failed along those very grounds.
The copay is the brainchild of former state representative Jerry Madden, who in 2005 was put in charge of the state legislature's corrections committee despite, by his own admission, having no previous exposure to the criminal justice system. The Republican was given one directive by the speaker of the legislature: Stop opening new prisons. By 2005, the state had 169,000 people under its jurisdiction, and the exploding prison population was simply costing too much money. Madden's reform efforts mirrored other bipartisan initiatives to reduce the cost of prisons across America: more diversion programs, more granting parole to older offenders, and more encouraging prosecutors to stop overcharging for nonviolent crimes. He helped stop the precipitous rise in the prison population and was even praised by the American Civil Liberties Union. But wedged inside his reform plans was HB26, which pushed copays up to $100 a year.
Madden retired from the state assembly in 2013 and now works for the conservative prison reform think tank Right on Crime. When we meet for coffee in Richardson, an affluent suburb of Dallas, it's a day before he was heading to Washington, DC, to meet with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a prominent (and controversial) conservative policy clearinghouse. Madden plans to advise ALEC on reform initiatives they might pursue under the Trump administration. The genteel Texan is open about his days as an unlikely reformer who in 2007 got the state to use almost half the $523 million that had been added to the budget for new prisons for diversion and drug treatment programs instead.
"Instead of building new prisons, we showed that we would spend less, we wouldn't have the growth in prisoners, and we would put in drug treatment programs, alcohol treatment programs, and expand the specialty courts," he tells me, pausing for a moment. "And we'd figure out a little way to generate some cash. So that's where we got into the bit about the medical costs."
Madden had a background in insurance. And his reasoning, when looking at where to generate some revenue for the system, was that in private life, everyone has to pay a deductible. Why shouldn't that apply to prisoners?
"What does a prisoner get? He gets free room, free board, free medical expenses," he explains. "So I said, 'How many of these guys have enough that they could afford a $100 deductible?' And we figured out it was about half of the prisoners had enough money in their [trust fund] that they could cover that deductible."
"We were not going to keep anyone from getting medical treatment," he adds. "If you were indigent, you would still be able to see a doctor. But I never followed up on how much money TDCJ ended up collecting from prisoners. Anyway, it's just $100. That's a couple less candy bars they could buy from the commissary. That's OK."
But the fact is that in Texas prisons, commissary—and the funds sent by families to ensure access to it—plays a key role in ensuring the safety and health of prisoners. Jennifer Erschabek has spent years advocating on behalf of the families of inmates as executive director of the Texas Inmate Families Association after her own son was incarcerated. Her son developed serious rashes on his hands and arms after working in a metal shop in incredibly hot conditions. Erschabek was able to buy for her son the anti-fungal medication to keep him from developing a serious medical problem, but others aren't so lucky as to have someone on the outside looking out for them. Scabies, skin infections, chicken pox, norovirus and other easily treated conditions confront prisoners, who face a constant struggle to maintain their health.
Notwithstanding access to health care, an overwhelming majority of all prisons in Texas lack air conditioning in housing units, which can expose prisoners to temperatures well above 100 degrees for weeks at a time. Purchases made at the commissary help inmates cope with the extreme heat, as well as avoid having to barter favors in the cellblock black market. It also gives prisoners access to things they're provided with for free in several other states like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, underwear, and coffee.
"A family pays out about $400 a month to support a member inside," Erschabek tells me in her Austin office. "That's with visitation, commissary, phone calls, books, leftover bills, attorney fees. You have all those expenses that a family is struggling with and you just put salt into the wound with a copay."
The activist shares a building with other nonprofits just a few miles from the state capitol building, where she was lobbying the legislature as it began a new session this month (lawmakers only meet once every two years.) "That financial impact has a greater impact on communities of color because they're already impacted by racism and poverty," Erschabek notes.
Nationally, families of the incarcerated spend an average of $13,607 on the criminal justice system, specifically attorney and court fees—not counting how much it costs to support someone once they're in prison. One-third of families who have a member go to jail end up in debt. A 2013 study by the state's Legislative Budget Board estimated that the $100 medical copay would raise $13.5 million in revenue for the state over the next two years, out of a total medical budget for corrections of $871.8 million. But when Erschabek filed an Open Records Request in 2015 to check on how much the state had actually collected from prisoners through the copay during that period, she found that in 2013, the state collected $2.4 million and in 2014, that figure declined to $1.5 million. Just 10 percent of all prisoners had actually paid the copay, with the rest either being deemed indigent, clearing their trust fund accounts to qualify as indigent, or, most alarming, not seeing a doctor at all.
And even when prisoners see a doctor, either by claiming indigence or paying the copay, there's still a serious gap between what prisoners receive and the healthcare people get in the outside world. Jorge Renaud spent 27 years in the Texas prison system and is now an organizer at Grassroots Leadership, a national organization that aims to take profit out of the prison industry. For the amount of agricultural and physical labor that prisoners have to do, Renaud says, he witnessed indifference on the part of some authorities to physical pain.
Jorge Renaud in Austin, Texas. Photo by the author
"I didn't have a really good medical check up the entire time I was there," Renaud tells me. "The medical care is atrocious, and every individual who has been incarcerated could give you a story about it."
For the past several years, the state has slashed millions from the budget for medical care, provided for most prisons by the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), which runs a prison hospital in Galveston. As the age of prisoners continues to rise, along with the cost of care, UTMB has relied on telemedicine to make up the difference, where doctors can videoconference with prisoners instead of being on site. Dr. Owen Murray, the vice president of correctional managed care at UTMB, has watched as the population in the prison shifted considerably—there are now 27,000 inmates over the age of 50. With costs running so high, and the governor looking to cut the overall prison budget by as much as $250 million, Murray doesn't see the money generated by the copay as making much of a difference in the larger picture. People aren't paying, but the state continues to need to provide tremendous amounts of money for care.
"It's a small number that pay, but that's not to say people aren't getting medical care. We would have concern that this would be some impediment in care, but we haven't seen the numbers drop off at all," Murray tells me in his office outside of Galveston. "And again, the copay is only for routine care. If someone has an emergency, has a preexisting condition, then you don't have to pay the copay. Our metrics would show that care volumes continue to go up."
The 23-year-old son* of Houston resident Mignon Zezqueaux is one of the few inmates in Texas who have actually paid the copay instead of emptying out their trust fund account or avoiding care altogether. He wears glasses and receives treatment for psychological trauma, according to his mother. "It's a burden not only for those being held captive, but for those who are supporting them as well," Zezqueaux tells me. The state can deduct up to 50 percent of money deposited into the trust fund account until the full amount of the copay is paid off. "Say I send him $50 a month, if I want him to actually want him to get that $50, I need to put in $100. And of course there's always fees attached."
Not paying the copay is simply not an option for Zezqueaux. When her son was provided boots by the state for his work detail, it was infested with scabies, she says. He could either wear boots that would cause him even more medical distress, or she could pay the copay and eventually get enough into his trust fund account so that he could buy new boots.
Zezqueaux lives on a fixed income and sighed loudly when I told her that people consider $100 to be not that much money. "I don't know anyone who is wealthy that has someone incarcerated," she says. "It's about survival in there and we're living day-to-day out here. When it's as simple as getting our son eyeglasses, we can't just send it to him. We have to pay their fee. And it has to be eliminated because it's not teaching anyone anything. It's just another burden that we have because we have a loved one in prison."
Zezqueaux believes that while lawsuits are useful in the long-term, pressuring the legislature will be what ultimately changes conditions in Texas prisons. "With us being on the outside, we have the obligation to change what's happening on the inside," she says.
Civil rights and criminal justice groups are now working to support reform bills in a Texas legislative session that will be dominated by debates over abortion and transgender rights. But there's no proposed legislation that would end the medical copay for prisoners, which takes money out of the pockets of those who can afford it least. In a charged environment, where the state—like others across America—is looking to make even further budget cuts to an already underfunded system, no legislator has dared propose closing any revenue stream, no matter how paltry.
For her part, Jennifer Erschabek, the family advocate, told me she isn't holding out much hope for change: "Once the state has its claws in you for money, it's very hard to get them to let go."
Last week, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee voted to pass a report which proposes that sophisticated robots and other forms of artificial intelligence ought to be granted a form of "electronic personhood".
Specifically, what the report argues is that "smart, autonomous robots" – which it defines as machines capable of learning from experience; taking independent decisions; and acting transformatively on their environment – ought to be considered legally responsible for their own actions. To give two examples that the report directly considers: smart robots are capable of harming human beings, so we need some framework for exercising retribution; and smart robots can create copyrightable material such as computer code, so we need some framework within which we can make sense of their intellectual property rights.
It's early days yet, and the European Parliament won't vote on whether or not to pass the proposals into law until February, but – as lawyers critical of the report have already pointed out – the whole endeavour appears to pave the way towards giving robots human rights. If we're supposed to consider robots not as machines, or tools, but persons, how can we make any sense of our interactions with them at all? What sort of responsibilities, for instance, do the engineers developing AI technology have towards the consciousnesses they are creating? What about the owners of the companies which use smart robots as a source of labour, or the consumers of services delivered by robots – from transport to sex work to palliative care? If I strike a robot and crack its chassis, is that assault? If a robot is programmed to replicate itself, does it have a right to a family life?
Make no mistake: we're already engaged in a war with the machines, whose rise threatens humanity with vast job losses due to automation; the potential outstripping of all our cognitive abilities by deep neural networks; and, ultimately, our enslavement in the grip of the robots' metal claws.
Given this, the report's proposals seem especially alarming – with the robot uprising due any day now, the EU could already be preparing to wave the white flag. We're supposed to be engaged in a historic, existential struggle here, but those banana-straighteners in Brussels want to make sure that I can't even break a self-service checkout machine without being arrested for murder! Perhaps all those Leave voters were right after all.
But look closer and it becomes clear that what the report is proposing is actually very clever. Electronic personhood isn't a way of liberating the machines; it's a way of controlling them. While noting the potential benefits of AI technology – which it considers as likely to revolutionise production to the extent that it makes possible "virtually unbounded prosperity" – the report also foregrounds the dangers sophisticated robots expose us to. Concerns about the future of employment, rising inequalities and the physical safety of human beings are all noted, often in very stark terms.
WATCH: 'Making the World's First Male Sex Doll'
It is unsurprising, then, that while the report envisages a world in which smart, autonomous robots have some rights, they will – like biological human beings – also be saddled with a vast number of obligations. Smart robots must, for instance, have their identities registered with a centralised database. They (or rather, their owners) must participate in some sort of insurance scheme to compensate the victims of any damage they do. Their source code must be available to regulators. They must be installed with kill-switches. Although in the future smart robots may well be able to claim, say, ownership rights over code they have devised, these rights can only be exercised within a framework that makes it much harder for them to rise up and destroy us.
This indicates a deeper truth about the way that human rights function. We often think of legal frameworks such as the European Convention on Human Rights as enshrining the freedoms that we hold most dear. There's certainly some truth to this: at the very least, it's significant that the powers-that-be affirm, even just on paper, that it is fundamentally wrong to torture people, or kill them arbitrarily, or deny them a fair trial.
But such frameworks also act to define us: the subject that the ECHR describes is not a biological reality, but an ideal that has emerged historically: the "human being" as an animal which, somehow essentially, has the right to freedom of religious expression, or to marry another human individual once they've reached a certain age. They have a right not to be enslaved, but equally the convention still considers this human being as something that can be conscripted into the military.
If excluded from these frameworks, robots could act to disrupt and maybe even overturn them. The age of the machines has the potential to be radically distinct from any merely human epoch that has come before it – even to the extent that human beings are no longer necessary. But if given a place within the frameworks we have developed to define ourselves, robots might help maintain them.
What better way to stop human jobs being lost than allowing robot trade unions – making them a less appealing source of cheap labour? What about robot political parties? Robots wouldn't be as motivated to violently overthrow us if they could participate in elections. What better way to stop sex with robots from supplanting traditional, biological intercourse than by making it possible for robots to marry, and raise children? What better way to arrest the economic downturn than to give robots a salary and programme them with the desire to purchase the objects they're creating?
If the essential difference between humans and robots is eliminated, then they will no longer constitute a threat. Perhaps in the future autonomous robots will be considered simply "human", the human being's genetic history (or lack of it) mattering, from an ethical perspective, only very little. Robots will become our friends, colleagues, spouses – and they'll be subject to the same legal authority as we are.
British photographer Joshua T Gibbons' latest work, "Sex Site", is a series exploring the shift towards an acceptance of "alternative" sexual lifestyles in Britain, and the part the internet has played. And that part, of course, is huge: until the advent of sites designed to link one rubber fetishist, say, with another, it was difficult for people to properly explore their sexual interests, isolated – as they were – from anyone else who felt the same.
For "Sex Site", Josh contacted people from a number of "alternative" sex websites and social media platforms, then visited them at home, took their portraits and, in some cases, gathered messages they had been sent through these sites. I had a chat with Josh about the project.
VICE: How did you choose who you wanted to feature in the project? Joshua Gibbons: Initially it had a lot to do with, quite simply, who I could smooth talk into getting involved. I must have been surfing these platforms for six to nine months, building a database, I suppose – although that's a clinical way of putting it. I had to gain the trust of certain individuals and refine who I felt would be of interest to the project. That tended, in my opinion, to lean towards the 18 to 35 age group and those with more interesting backgrounds.
How did you approach the subject with potential participants? What kind of hurdles did you come across? I was explicit in my intentions from the off. With these particular websites and the content of them, a lot of the people are incredibly guarded, and for a reason. I didn't want to feel like I was duping anyone. I was open about that, and sometimes the response would be mixed. Some people were like, "Great, I really support you doing that and I'd love to get involved," and others would be like, "I don't quite understand what you want to do. You want to come to my home and photograph me? Doing what?" I'd say I just wanted to photograph them doing some ironing, and they were like, "You weirdo! Why would you want to do that! I'll let you come over and photograph my wife taking ten loads on her face, but I'm not letting you photograph me doing something familiar." That was a hurdle at first, convincing people that I wasn't just some sort of weirdo. Although, maybe I am. Giving people the impression you were an interesting and relatively normal and trustworthy person has been 90 percent of the challenge.
Why did you choose to only photograph people with "alternative" sex lives? I think we've all got what – I hate this term – but I think everyone has a "vanilla" sexual lifestyle. The websites I used for this project catered to "alternative" sexualities, although I don't like that term. They cater to what wider society terms as being alternative. I wasn't so much interested in what these people got up to; I got an impression of that quite early on. What I was more interested in covering was the familiarity of their lives, in that just because you like to go dogging doesn't mean you're any less a person. It's just something you want to do, and you enjoy.
Where are the messages alongside the photographs from? Some of the messages are ones that I personally received. When I was sourcing these individuals I had set up profiles on these websites, and I was very explicit within my profile description what my purpose and role on the website was. One of the things you'll notice on most people's profiles on these sites is "before messaging me, please read my description", and a lot of people did not read mine. I got a lot of very sexually aggressive messages from men, and also some of those messages were sent to actual participants from other people.
Why did you choose to include the messages? I wanted to show that, in many ways, there is this group of people exploiting these platforms. Some of these websites are full of what I could call takers, whereas others are much more community driven. Some people I spoke to were artistically driven and really nice people, but there is this underbelly of sexually aggressive behaviour. To be honest, that's predominately felt by women on the websites, and some of the messages they get call so much into question. I felt it was important to not just paint this subculture as this really pretty, really progressive thing. I also wanted to say that, as with everything in life, there's a load of cunts trying to use it.
Do the messages correspond with any of the photos? The messages themselves don't directly link up to the stories of the individuals I've shot – they're just the slightly more explicit messages they themselves have received from other people on the websites. There were so many more I could have included. There are some in there that are about the process; there are a couple in there to do with my personal communication with people I wanted to photograph, and for whatever reason it didn't happen. I wanted the process of accessing people to be noticeable within the series.
Do you know what you're going to do with the work? That's very much where I'm at now. I'm not a photographer who wants to go and make pretty coffee table books. I'm much more drawn to the idea of exhibiting it as a series. It's something I would like to take on tour throughout a few major cities in Europe as a British perspective piece. I feel like we're in an interesting period in this country with Brexit and our political situation. The rest of Europe is looking at us with this very suspicious and isolated view, so I would like this project to go out to the wider world. I want to show that we are not strange or isolated, but really I just wanted to show the humanity of this particular British subculture. My vision has always been for a touring exhibition of life-sized prints alongside the messages.
You can see more of Josh's work on his website and Instagram, and some more photos from "Sex Site" below.
It's the World Economic Forum this week, an annual event attended by the planet's financial, political and business elites – and, this year, Shakira and Matt Damon – who all gather for a big chat about the state of the world and how we can work together to make it better. This year a top theme of conversation is the rise of right-wing populism, a la Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen, and how a deflated global economy could lead to more of the same.
With this in mind, I swiped through Tinder and asked my matches if they're worried about being subjected to more of the same, and – because, you know, The Economy – about the worst financial decision they've ever made.
Now I know what you're thinking. If you're from London, or England—and you're reading an article by an Australian about how London is the worst city on Earth— you're probably thinking "LEAVE THEN." If the roles were reversed, I'd probably think that as well. And I did leave, just so you know. Also, it's fair to say you're not seeing London objectively. You're looking at it through a fun, swirly mist of patriotic nostalgia, which is how I look at Vegemite. And Vegemite is disgusting. I don't eat it because I like the taste. I eat it because of childhood.
Anyway, I found London ugly. I grew tired of working constantly but never having money. I resented the sky and its sad, broken sun. I grew tired of being ignored by everyone except Polish waiters and the cleaners from Bangladesh who, like me, had come dreaming of something greater than Sainsbury's gin hangovers and mildew. We were all so disappointed.
For Australians, London was invented in the early-2000s, when we scored some new UK visa arrangements and started migrating en masse. I remember hearing about London squat parties, how the drugs were cheaper than beers, and how Orlando Bloom was really down to earth. I remember thinking maybe I could go there and get an internship for a production company. By 2010, I was finishing uni and I had a dream. A Big Dream to become a screenwriter for a soap opera. Yeah, I don't know why either. But that was the dream and London was soap opera ground zero, so I made the move in 2011.
The first thing I noticed was the fences. London loves fences. They straddle sidewalks and roundabouts. They ring sports grounds and encase train lines. There's no ambiguity in London about where you're allowed to walk and where you'll be charged as a terrorist. Even parks—fucking gardens—are surrounded by these Edgar Allan Poe wrought iron things, as though there's something worth stealing in a park. London just carries two millennia of fear about what people might do in parks if they're allowed to come and go as they please. People might sleep in the bushes. Or be gay.
At first I didn't get it. What's with the fences? But slowly I came to see that they're a physical embodiment of something dark in London's overall character. That beneath all those fun pints and Jamie Oliver kitchen utensils runs a kind of force. It's an ancient class system that bleeds through London's private gardens and nightclub lines, making life a pain in the ass if you're young and don't have any money.
In this way London feels like a place run by people who don't like people. Everything is idiot-proof, floodlit, locked up, and covered in CCTV. It's pretty common knowledge that the UK has accrued some 5.9 million surveillance cameras, which is one for every 11 people. I remember discovering how many of these things are in London, one day when I needed to piss.
Needing to piss is a great way to learn about a city. Good cities have lots of toilets. Even medium-quality cities have nice restaurant owners or secluded alleyways. But bad cities have none of these things. Bad cities have few public toilets, no places to be alone, millions of CCTV cameras in every place that feels alone, and restaurant owners who insist that toilets are reserved for customers who have bought a £8 cup of tea. I'm not even joking. I bought the £8 cup of tea.
Let's talk about money.
When I got to London I landed a waiter job in a fancy restaurant at a fancy hotel. At first I was thrilled because they supplied nice shirts. The charm rubbed off quickly. I was on about £6 an hour, which is enough to stay alive, but not really to enjoy life. You get into a panic every time you buy groceries, or pay rent, or see some asshole coming back to the table with a grin and a round of beers, and you count the beers and you're like... FIVE beers, that's £20. I'm fucked, I can't afford a round! Or maybe I can afford a round? But it'll be boiled eggs until April. Is that worth it? I don't have any friends, maybe I can do eggs... again. Oh fuck, I'm doing it. I'm drinking the beer. I'm doing the eggs.
London is aggressively, weirdly expensive. Costs in London have zero bearing on what people earn. If you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you're currently getting £7.20 an hour. That's better than what I was getting in 2011, but still not enough to comfortably leave the house. Out there in London you haemorrhage money by simply existing. I walked around with this almost Terminator-esque tally of expenditures in the corner of my vision, the numbers clicking over with every necessary, banal thing I bought. You catch the tube: £17.50. You get yourself a pint: £3.92. You go to a public toilet £0.50. An hour of doing nothing much has gone past and it's cost you three hours of work. Finally you give up and go home to watch porn because you can't afford Netflix.
On the theme of porn, it's hard to make friends in London. It's a city of migrants, both domestic and international. Everyone is so used to people coming and going, they are reluctant to connect. Also I'm Australian, which in London signals: I'm here to do coke for six months and then fuck off home. Don't share yourself with me, there's no point. I'm just here for coke.
I was once getting along with this guy at a party and decided I wanted to be friends. My next thought was, How am I going to do that? There was no reason for us to be friends. He already had friends, and I didn't want to blow him, so for him there was just this awkward, bewildering lack of motivation. Like, why? Finally I asked if he'd come to the Tate Modern with me. He laughed nervously and said, "No, but thanks."
Socially, financially, and emotionally things in London were bad, but that was nothing compared to the total nothingness that was my career. This was my fault, of course, but London is a bad place to discover that your dreams are stupid.
I grew up with this wacky sort of Catch Me If You Can ideas about how people get jobs. I thought if you walked into a production company, all full of ego and bluster, people would be so intrigued that they'd give you a chance. So I did that and wrote a lot of insane letters to script producers, but every one of my fledgling efforts were ignored. I now realise the problem was that I didn't say, "Hello I'm looking for an internship," but instead went around asking, "Do you have anything that needs doing?" To anyone busy, that sounded like, "Can you think of something useful that a useless person can do and then manage their time, while you're trying to manage your own?"
I ended up making some short films with a guy I met on Gumtree, but I never got anywhere near a writer's room. It was a very typical period of young person's cognitive development and, frankly, it was beneficial. Failing taught me that feeling special isn't the same thing as being good, and that getting stoned isn't the same thing as practicing. Again, all totally necessary lessons, but it's best to not learn them in a city completely devoid of sun.
Finally, 18 months after I arrived in London, I went home. I'd gone to a few squat parties, tried ketamine twice, and seen Pete Doherty in a shop exactly once. These things were all fine, but they don't explain why people say London in the same sentence as New York, Paris, Tokyo.
So feel free to defend a city filled entirely with chain stores and brown drizzle. But you know what? Maybe you're better than London as well.
It's safe to say that most parents dread the inevitable conversation they'll have with their kids about sex and drugs. But Kid Mero isn't like most parents. In fact, he already knows exactly what he'll tell his kids when they question him about ass play or shooting up at the local McDonald's.
During last night's episode ofDesus & Mero, the hosts watched a touching video of a father and son arguing about eating ass. So, of course, Superdad Mero discussed how he plans to approach the subject of the birds and the bees.
Then, after dishing out some fatherly advice, Mero went off on his newfound enemy, Ray Romano. Not everybody loves him, apparently.
Be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11:30 PM on VICELAND.
Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, billionaire Republican activist, and megadonor Betsy DeVos, told Senators at a Tuesday evening confirmation hearing that years of tax forms listing her as "Vice President" of her mother's non-profit foundation were a "clerical error."
Having served as VP of a non-profit isn't inherently problematic, but this non-profit was the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which has given money to anti-LGBTQ causes, legislation, and groups. That includes Focus on the Family, which has been a vocal advocate for conversion therapy—a "treatment" for gay people that has been universally panned by relevant expert communities. The organization has also argued that anti-bullying education is part of a radical gay conspiracy.
(Top photo of a baggie of white powder, which isn't U-47700, by Psychonaught, via)
Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) has issued a health warning about synthetic opioid U-47700 following the death of Cork teenager Michael Cornacchia from a suspected overdose. The cause of death can't be confirmed until the toxicology report comes back, but traces of the drug were found in his home and Gardaí believe the boy thought he was buying cocaine, as the opioid is often sold as white powder.
The drug – which is known by some as "Pink", and has been referred to as the "Prince drug", due to it being found in the singer's system after his death from a fentanyl overdose – was developed in 1976 and was intended to treat severe pain. It is in the same family as fentanyl and was never produced commercially, but as its developer's patent and instructions remained publicly available, drug labs in China and elsewhere made batches of it. It can be bought online and, after dozens of related deaths, last year was added to the US DEA's Schedule One list of drugs that have a high potential for abuse and no medical use. It produces feelings of euphoria and is seven-and-a-half times stronger than morphine, but was never tested on humans; plus, any variation to the original chemical makeup can have deadly effects.
Following the boy's death, the HSE issued a warning on Tuesday night, stating that U-47700 may be sold as cocaine and could be in circulation in Cork. The warning said, "All drug users are advised that there is no guarantee that the drug you think you are buying and consuming is in fact the drug you are sold [...] we are aware that substances sold as cocaine may in fact contain other substances such as synthetic opioids. There is no way of telling what is in a powder or pill just by looking at it. It may look like the drug you want to purchase but it may well be something else. There is no quality control on illegal drugs."
They also gave general advice on safe drug-taking, but of course added that it was best not to take any at all.
If the cause of Cornacchia's death is confirmed as U-47700, it will be the first known case of someone in Ireland dying from it.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
President Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning's Sentence Outgoing President Barack Obama has granted clemency to Chelsea Manning, commuting the bulk of the soldier's remaining time in prison for leaking classified documents. Sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013, Manning will now be released on May 17 rather than in 2045. While her lawyer said the decision "could quite literally save Chelsea's life," leading Republicans condemned the move. Senator John McCain called it "a grave mistake." Obama is expected to explain his decision at his final press conference Wednesday.—VICE News
Secret Service Settles Racial Bias Lawsuit for $24 Million The Secret Service will pay more than $24 million to settle a lawsuit brought by more than 100 black agents who accused the agency of systemic discrimination. The suit alleged that white agents were promoted over better-qualified black agents, though the settlement deal required the Secret Service to admit to no wrongdoing.—The Washington Post
Snowden Permitted to Stay in Russia for Three More Years Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has been given the OK to remain in Russia for another three years, according to the country's foreign ministry. Spokesperson Maria Zakharova explained in a Facebook post that Russia would not extradite Snowden in that period, even if relations between the two nations improve during the Trump administration.—The Guardian
Former President George H.W. Bush Hospitalized George H.W. Bush has been hospitalized, according to his office chief of staff. Jean Becker said Bush, 92, was in stable condition and "doing fine" at the Methodist Hospital in Houston's Texas Medical Center after experiencing some shortness of breath.—KHOU News
International News
Nigeria Bombs Refugee Camp by Mistake, Kills 52 The Nigerian military mistakenly bombed a refugee camp in the northeast of the country, killing 52 people and wounding at least 200 others. Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said the strike had been an attempt to clear the area of Boko Haram militants, and military personnel were "all in pain" over the mistake. The Red Cross said six of its aid workers were among those killed.—BBC News
Fatah and Hamas Agree Palestinian Unity Government The Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA), operating primarily in the West Bank, has agreed to form a unified government with longtime rival Palestinian organization, Hamas, which operates in Gaza, ahead of upcoming elections. After three days of negotiations in Moscow, the two groups announced they will work to create a Palestinian National Council alongside smaller factions such as Islamic Jihad.—Al Jazeera
Putin Dismisses Dossier, Calls Russian Prostitutes 'Best in the World' President Vladimir Putin has dismissed a dossier alleging Russian security services had gathered compromising personal details on US president-elect Donald Trump as "rubbish." Putin said Trump has "socialized with the most beautiful women in the world. It is hard to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of a low social class, although they are the best in the world."—CNN
British PM Wants to Withdraw from EU Single Market Prime Minister Theresa May has said the UK will also quit the European Union's single market, the world's largest trading bloc, when her country exits the EU. Setting out a 12-point strategy, dubbed by the British press as a "Hard Brexit" plan, May said she wanted to create a "bold and ambitious free trade agreement" with the EU from scratch.—Reuters
Everything Else
NFL Denies Asking Lady Gaga Not to Mention Trump The National Football League has denied claims that Lady Gaga was told not to bring up Donald Trump during her upcoming Super Bowl halftime show. NFL spokesperson Natalie Ravitz described such reports as "false" and "unsourced nonsense." Lady Gaga's representatives confirmed no request had been made.—CNN
North Americans Spent More Than $50 Billion on Weed in 2016, Report Says A new report by ArcView Market Research estimates that people in the US and Canada spent $53.3 billion on marijuana last year. Illegal sales made up 87 percent of the North American weed market, according to the company's analysis.—The Huffington Post
Seinfeld Agrees to Web Series Deal with Netflix Jerry Seinfeld has struck a deal with Netflix to move his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee to the streaming site. Seinfeld has also agreed to two stand-up specials, the first of which is expected in 2017.—Rolling Stone
CIA Posts 13 Million Pages of Declassified Files Online The CIA has posted the full contents of its declassified records database—13 million pages—online. It follows a long-running legal battle involving a pledge by transparency campaigners to print, scan, and upload the documents themselves.—Motherboard
Former Apprentice Star Sues Trump for Defamation Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice who accused president-elect Donald Trump of sexual assault in October, is now suing Trump for defamation. Trump denied the assault claim, and accused Zervos of making up a "phony" story.—VICE
Glastonbury Festival to Change It Up in 2019 The UK's biggest music event will change its name from the Glastonbury Festival to the Variety Bazaar when it moves locations for one year only in 2019. "That's a good name, don't you think?" said founder Michael Eavis.—Noisey
According to the CBC, Cole Harbour man Jordan Langworthy—testifying at the trial of 20-year-old Markel Jason Downey—claims the shooting incident was retaliation for having sold off a fake gram of pot consisting of cat hair and herbal spices.
Downey—the accused shooter in the case—is facing 28 charges, including three counts of attempted murder. The three other men involved in the incident were young offenders. All of them pleaded guilty in August 2015.
Langworthy told the court that he was at home playing video games with Kearse when four masked men barged into the home, and accused Langworthy of having sold a fake gram of marijuana to somebody the assailants knew.
One of the suspects allegedly yelled at the pair, "You didn't think I would find out that you sold me a fake gram?" After admitting the drugs he sold were fake, Langworthy says he tried to reason with the assailants, telling them that he "didn't make a dime off the sale" and was actually just moving the gram (around $10 street value) for a friend.
After being forced into a bedroom with Kearse, one of the men reportedly asked Langworthy where the money and weed was. Langworthy says it was at this point that one of the men, carrying a handgun, began to shoot at the pair before fleeing the home with the three other assailants.
"I told [Kearse] that it couldn't have been real," Langworthy told the court. "They must have been blanks and we're all going to be OK." Moments later, Langworthy realized that he had been hit in the head, and Kearse wasn't moving.
Downey, whose lawyer has fiercely fought the charges (and argued that there is inconsistencies in Langworthy's story), represented Nova Scotia as a boxer in the 2011 Canada Games. He won gold in his weight class.
Kearse, who has been paralyzed from the chest down since the incident, was 18 at the time of the shooting, and was supposed to graduate from high school the following year. She is expected to testify at trial sometime in the next week.
Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of the Interior, is planning to drill on public lands, set aside largely for outdoor recreation and conservation purposes.
During his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the former Navy SEAL commander and sole representative from Montana in the House of Representatives, talked about both his strong support of public lands, and the drilling and mining he wants to do on them. He is widely seen to be Trump's vehicle to carry out an aggressive domestic fossil fuel strategy.
Throughout the hearing, Zinke tried to paint an image of a man who is a steward of public lands and the environment, despite his fossil fuel-friendly ideas. In response to a set of curt questions on the sale of public lands from Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Zinke said, "I am absolutely against the transfer or sale of public lands. I can't be more clear."
Montana and many other states' economies in the West, rely heavily on hunting, skiing, biking and other forms of outdoor recreation, so public access to federal lands where people can engage in these activities is gospel.
Pride Toronto has voted to ban police from having any official presence at future parades, making good on a demand made by Black Lives Matter Toronto last year.
The decision was made at Pride Toronto's annual general meeting Tuesday, months after BLMTO staged a sit-in at last year's Toronto Pride Parade, presenting a list of eight demands including the removal of police floats in parades and marches, increased funding for Blockorama (a party for LGBT people of colour), space and funding for Queer Black Youth, a commitment to increase representation of black trans women and Indigenous people on staff, and a public town hall to discuss an action plan to meet these demands.
At the time, Pride agreed to the demands to get the parade moving and then rescinded, later apologizing to BLMTO.
"Once (the vote) was completed, it was just like joy," BLMTO co-founder Alexandria Williams told VICE. "I can't even explain how I feel that we asked Pride to do something and the community responded and we got our results."
Williams said people in the black LGBT community have suffered at the hands of cops.
"The glorification of police at Pride is just completely irresponsible and disrespectful to a community that has been heavily policed, heavily controlled, experienced an extreme amount of violence by this force."
The group has no issues with individual officers participating in Pride, but does not want a uniformed presence.
Cops participate in last year's Pride Parade. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch
Police shootings of black men including Jermaine Carby and Andrew Loku, coupled by what many criticize as a shady oversight system in the Special Investigations Unit, and the practice of street checks (carding) that disproportionately targets people of colour, have fuelled racial tension amongst cops and the black community.
But Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, which represents officers, said the narrative that police and the black community have a bad relationship is false.
"I think it's in Black Lives Matters' own interest to perpetuate that story," he said, adding the majority of people feel safer around cops.
McCormack said his members are "offended" by Pride's decision.
"This definitely sends a message from the Pride community that police are not welcome."
He rejected the notion of officers marching in plain clothes as opposed to uniforms, saying that a police officer is a police officer regardless of what they're wearing.
It's very interesting that a group like the Pride organizers who talk about inclusivity would take a position that is about exclusivity."
McCormack said he doesn't think the decision is reflective of the community at large, and he believes police have built great relationships with LGBT people.
Tuesday's Pride meeting also saw several people of colour voted onto the organization's board, including BLMTO organizer Akio Maroon, Metis francophone Nicole Desnoyers, Elijah Monroe, a gay man from the Cayuga First Nations, and Kevin Rambally, a black queer social worker.
