Last year, the price of a two-pack of EpiPens—the lifesaving medication used to treat severe allergic reactions—jumped to more than $600, a 450 percent increase in cost since 2004. The price hike came just months after the cost of another medication, called Daraprin, was controversially raised from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. People who rely on these medications pointed out that price gouging created an undue hardship, forcing them to pay unnecessary sums for the drugs they need to survive.

Dr. Mixael Laufer agrees. Laufer is a doctor of mathematics—not medicine—but he moonlights as a pharmaceutical hacker. He says these corrupt practices are irritatingly common in the modern pharmaceutical market, and ethical and legal violations to include fraud and price gouging have cost consumers billions of dollars over the years.

"The flip side to that," Laufer told me, "is me."

Two years ago, Laufer was in Costa Rica when he was diagnosed with MRSA—a severe drug-resistant bacterial infection that's notoriously difficult to treat. Doctors prescribed him a medicine called Doxycycline, which healed the infection. But when he returned to the United States a few months later and his health declined again, he found that he couldn't get care or a prescription for the drugs he needed. Laufer ended up buying Doxycycline on the black market.

Not all Americans have the same means to avert a preventable death. "If I'm in a hospital town with plenty of cash to spend, and I can't get care, something's really wrong," he said.

Laufer had already been working through the idea of how to provide free medication to people in need, but the close call with his own health deepened his conviction to solve the problem. So in 2015, he launched the Four Thieves Vinegar collective—a group of guerrilla hackers and scientists working to reverse-engineer critical pharmaceuticals and provide assistance with the synthesis of the compounds with the goal of providing "open-source" healthcare. The collective's goal is to shift the balance of power for making crucial healthcare choices back into the hands of the individuals, empowering people to make DIY versions of drugs and medical devices in their own homes.

Open sourcing isn't new: Projects based on free and transparent development have been around since at least 1969 with the introduction of the Unix operating system, a computer operating system developed by collaboration and multiple users. But applying the open-source methodology to pharmaceutical consumers is a relatively new idea.

There's a thought experiment called the Heinz dilemma, which goes like this: Heinz's wife is dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors say a new drug, discovered by a local chemist, might save her. But when Heinz tries to buy the drug, the chemist asks for ten times the amount that it costs to manufacture the drug. Heinz can only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends, so he explains to the chemist that his wife is dying and asks if he can get a discount or pay the rest of the money later. The chemist refuses, saying he discovered the drug and has the right to make money from it. Heinz, in desperation, breaks into the chemist's lab and steals the drug.

If you ask Laufer, he'll say Heinz—and the millions of other Americans who are in a similar position—have every right to access the medicine they need without being extorted. "If denying people access to lifesaving medication is murder, then to go through an act of theft instead of justifying an act of murder is righteous," Laufer told me.

Of course, while access to lifesaving medication might trump the ability to profit on a moral scale, the law doesn't always see it that way. Intellectual property laws in the United States say that not only can we not steal a finished product, but we also can't steal the method for making that product. For many industries, intellectual property law is the cornerstone of their businesses. How these rules translate to situations about life and death, however, is a bit more thorny.

"I take great exception to IP law because you have someone who's dying, and you say, 'I know how to save you, but I'm not going to tell you because that's my idea and I'm not going to share,'" Laufer said.

What Laufer intends to do is provide the means for the public to create their own pharmaceuticals when no alternatives are available. At the heart of his philosophy is the idea that healthcare is an inalienable human right that supersedes any laws of property. As Laufer explained, "There shouldn't be anything keeping anybody from any query. What is the most fundamental human right? The rights we have over our own bodies and minds. We should have the ability to explore intellectually and treat our body in whatever way we see fit."

Last summer, the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective released plans for a $30 version of the Epi-Pen, which it calls the Epi-Pencil. In 2016, it also released the outline for Daraprim, the drug made famous by Martin Shkreli, who jacked up the price in 2015. Laufer said he doesn't track how many people use the plans, since his objective is simply to make them available to those who want them. "I don't know, and I make a point not to make it my business," he told me.

Some, including members of the medical community, have warned of the dangers of self-producing pharmaceuticals at home. "It's all fun and games until your product gets contaminated and you get a giant abscess in your muscle," one chemist told the Daily Beast. Others have criticized the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective for making it easier for drug manufacturers to produce illegal substances.

But as Laufer sees it, if people find themselves in a place of desperate need, the consequences of home-brewed medications may be a calculated risk. Earlier this year, when it became clear that the Affordable Care Act would be under threat, Laufer said he started hearing more from people with serious health issues who were desperate for his help. "I got a flood of emails from people asking, 'How do I make this work?' and 'I'm gonna die in 19 days if I don't get this to work,'" he told me. "It's been hard."

Will open-source pharmaceuticals be the answer for all Americans? Probably not. But it could be a potential option for people without any other options.

"I feel like there have been these moments in history where there's an impasse between morality and economic interest. The most pointed place where we saw it in this country's history was during the Civil War where half of the country was saying, 'People shouldn't be considered property' and the other half of the country saying, 'Yeah, but this is our economy,'" Laufer said. "Ultimately, we decided no economy was worth the compromise of human life. Now, some of us are saying, 'Ideas shouldn't be property,' while others are saying, 'Yeah, but this is our economy.' It's going to come to a head, and I think that something's going to have to give at some juncture and I hope that our work will help to push us ever closer to that future."

Follow Emily Crose on Twitter.

She's been Miss American Dream since she was 17, and while many had hoped (or feared) that the former Mouseketeer would fizzle out soon after being crowned a pop princess, Britney Spears has remained a staple of American culture for close to 20 years.

And like many of the female pop stars who have come before her, Ms. Spears owes much of her continued success to a legion of gay men who came of age at the turn of the millennium, saw a diva worth celebrating, and will do nothing less but stan for the "Holy Spearit." Today, her music remains a gay-bar staple, has plenty of drag impersonators, and has made an appearance on Will & Grace. Plus, her career just received a horribly camptastic Lifetime biopic film, Britney Ever After. But all that queer adoration begs the question: What draws gay men to Spears?

The question was, perhaps, easier to answer back in the early 2000s. With record-breaking albums, outrageous live performances, and a tabloid-ready romance with Justin Timberlake, she was an alluring presence in the pop-music scene. For Jordan Miller, founder of Breathe Heavy, a music site that began as a Spears fan blog in 2004, the pop icon harnessed this gargantuan presence that captivated him as a kid. "Her star power was blinding, and everything she did—the iconic performances, publicity stunts, the music... the untouchable music—it was an intoxicating combination," he said.

The facile (if PR-ready) liberation narrative she wrote as she went along was revelatory, where each single and album showed a more sexual, less squeaky-clean, PG-rated Spears. It was a template many of her contemporaries used quite successfully—Christina Aguilera did, after all, turn heads and earn accolades when she released "Dirrty" off her third album—but there was something more relatable and more subversive in Britney's strategic deployment of her liberated sex drive. Perhaps it was the way it remained couched in metaphor and performance, giving gay men coming out in the TRL age a taste of role-playing as key to one's identity and central to one's pop music tastes.

In her early aughts heyday, Britney built her career on radio-ready singles that flirted with transgressive messages about frisky sexuality. But there was always something lurking beneath that characterization of the pop princess. As B. Pietras, who wrote a touching essay on his conflicted relationship with the pop idol for BuzzFeed late last year, told VICE, "Britney's appeal for gay men rests in the way she brings together this sense of empowered sexuality with an essential vulnerability. The '…Baby, One More Time' music video is a perfect example—it's full of all this naughty schoolgirl imagery, and yet the song is all about loneliness." That image of a lonely (if lucky!) girl trapped within the glittering façade she projected onto the world would follow her through what became the most tumultuous era of her personal life.

Amid scandals and tabloid headlines, and despite the release of what was arguably her best record so far (2007's Blackout), only her die-hard fans stuck by her. "We watched a woman hit rock bottom," remembered Miller, "yet she never surrendered. Britney found the strength within to stand back up and continue sporting the role as a bombshell pop star." The infamous head-shaving incident, the dead-eyed VMAs performance, the lackluster "Gimme More" video: All signs pointed to an impending career-ending train wreck, the kind that Hollywood adores. But Spears endured. Her perpetually hinted at vulnerability now seemed ever present, and those who'd seen a beacon in Britney now saw themselves as her caregivers.

The most infamous example came in the instant-viral YouTube hit "Leave Britney Alone!" where a teary-eyed gay fan lashed out against those piling on his adored diva. To stan for Britney is to endure the world alongside her, and today, there's a protectiveness to her gay fans' relationship with the performer, which leads them to excuse her latest video misfire or "basic" live performance, as if her mere ongoing existence were proof of her tenacity. Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears's fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga.

That fragility is further complicated by her father and lawyer's conservatorship (which continues to provoke questions about whether she can stand on her own, as the New York Times asked last May), but since her first post-meltdown album (2008's Circus), her fragility has become the bedrock on which her persona stands. She blushes and stumbles in interviews. In performances, we're encouraged to buy into the image of Spears as a pop star whose signature line ("It's Britney, bitch!") suggests a fierceness worth celebrating and imitating.But in reality, that fierceness seems depleted now. Her most memorable line from Blackout, "Gimme More," has always seemed a more appropriate catchphrase, because rather than a reflection of Britney's own agency, it's hollow—one her fans can make their own. And that hollowness may also be a key driver of her gay fans' adoration.

After all, Spears's career sometimes feels like a vessel on which our cultural ideas about pop stars and their sexuality could be projected. For all we know about her personal life, the "very boring" mother of two remains a removed figure in our imagination, and her shifts from coy schoolgirl to toxic seductress, from diner gal pal to kinky suburbanite, aren't quite the type of convincing and thorough reinventions that Madonna has mastered and Lady Gaga has come to make her own.

But her gay fans even have their own playful lingo for her universality, using quippy portmanteaus to refer to specific Britney eras (Circusney, Gloryney) while praising various aspects of their favorite pop star. She's Godney above all else, but she's also Sassney when she gets testy, Danceney when she reminds us why she's a great performer, Fierceney when she's serving it, even Starbucksney when she hits up her favorite coffee franchise. All these Britneys speak to the variety of personas Spears can embody, seemingly at the drop of a hat. She merely projects endless possibilities. Perhaps that's why Britney continues to find a place in gay clubs around the world—she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.

(Top photo: Pixabay)

Today is a great news day for people who want to continue living for as long as humanly possible. A study published by The Lancet and funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the US Environmental Agency has predicted that life expectancy will soon exceed 90 years. The life expectancy was 71.4 as recently as 2014, but the study predicts that the average lifespan will increase by 2030. The average for women in South Korea is highest, at 90.8, but the expectancy for women worldwide is expected to exceed 85 in many countries, coming in at slightly less for men.

The study utilises 21 different models of life expectancy, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the findings; nothing is definitive. Not only that, but it comes with many caveats: it is impossible to forecast disease outbreaks, natural disasters, climate change, nuclear war, etc – all of which could have an impact on how long people live. It also raises concerns about the kind of toll these kind of high life spans could have on countries due to the amount of health and social care needed.

Lead author, professor Majid Ezzati, said, "It is important that policies to support the growing older population are in place. In particular, we will need to both strengthen our health and social care systems and to establish alternative models of care, such as technology assisted home care."

Traditionally men have had a shorter life expectancy than women due to their unhealthier lifestyles, and even with these new findings there's a gap between theirs and that of women. However, a study by Imperial College London and the World Health Organisation has found that British men are closing the gap. Previously, British men born in 2010 were expected to live until 78.3 and women until 82.3. Now, says the study, for men born in 2030 there will be a gap of just 2.8 years. This is thought to be not only due to men changing their lifestyles to become healthier – cutting down on drinking and smoking heavily, in particular – but because of a general growing similarity between men and women's lifestyles.

Ezzati said, "Men traditionally had unhealthier lifestyles, and so shorter life expectancies. They smoked and drank more, and had more road traffic accidents and homicides. However, as lifestyles become more similar between men and women, so does their longevity."

@marianne_eloise

A version of this article appeared in the February issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

On November 17 of last year, 450 members of the SAG-AFTRA union picketed developer Insomniac Games in Burbank, California.

Some of the faces marching up and down the street with signs in hand were familiar, like Clancy Brown, who played Sgt. Zim in the movie Starship Troopers, but who, on that day, stood up for his rights as a voice actor in popular video games like Call of Duty, God of War, and many others.

After nearly two years of negotiations, SAG-AFTRA's Interactive Negotiating Committee and video game companies failed to agree on a new contract. They're split on many issues, but the negotiations eventually boiled down to one clause on which both sides refuse to budge: secondary payments.

It's a price that the multibillion-dollar video game industry can afford to pay, so why is it refusing with what Phil LaMarr, a voice actor and a member of SAG-AFTRA's negotiation committee, described as "fundamentalist resistance"?

According to the game developers, voice actors, and labor scholars who study the game industry, it's not the 450 people picketing outside Insomniac that game companies are worried about. It's the developers inside the building, and the lessons they might be learning from the organized workers outside.

Read more on Motherboard

Nancy Shomin first came to Standing Rock back in September after a stint in recovery for alcoholism. She was born in Flint, Michigan and had been the only native girl in her elementary school. Her father couldn't stop Nancy's classmates from bullying her, but he tried to balance his daughter's loneliness with a steady exposure to tribal customs and rituals. Her life had been spent in and out of institutions—prison, rehab, therapy. In rehab, Nancy tried to process what had happened to her during a violent childhood, but she found that she was constantly doubting the veracity of her memories. She decided to head to Standing Rock because a friend had put out a call on Facebook. When Nancy first saw line of tipis by the Missouri River, she felt the neurosis of recovery melt away.

Nancy quickly committed herself to life as a water protector. She went on marches to the pipeline construction site, got arrested, and spent time in jail. Whenever she would leave camp to see her family back in Michigan, she would feel a creeping unease—what was she missing back in camp? Did the resistance still need her? She kept coming back to North Dakota and started picking up the camp's dual languages of activism and spirituality. She was no longer at Standing Rock to block the construction of the pipeline and protect the waters of the Missouri River from contamination but also to decolonize herself in a sacred space of prayer. At the front lines, where water protectors faced off with Morton County sheriff's deputies and the National Guard, Nancy played the role of a "watcher"—she made sure the situation was in some semblance of control.

Read more on VICE News

(Top photo: Steven Depolo, via)

"Chicken shop" is a funny colloquialism for the thousands of fast food places that litter Britain's high streets. It's completely accurate, of course, but there's something odd about the message it conveys: it makes it sound like the food you're buying isn't ready to eat. To many, that holds true: the fare sold in these shops isn't ready to eat under any circumstances. To many others, though, it's a childhood staple, a necessary night out pitstop.

The stores themselves have remained the same for years: they all steal each other's logos and branding, and they are, by and large, still unbelievably cheap. Chips and wings – a filling meal – comes to no more than £1.50 in some places. Dimensionally they're all basically the same, too, with a bar dividing a single room; tiles, mirrors and sometimes seating on one side, giant metal glass-fronted cases filled with chicken and ribs on the other.

But in 2017, the way chicken shops are viewed is changing.

Like betting shops and charity shops, chicken shops occupy both a specific place on the high street and in the collective consciousness. Unlike the first two, in the age of the meme, chicken shops have been co-opted – their subtleties overblown and turned into gags. What was a staple of a night out, or of a kid's after school ritual, is now becoming the latest British institution to receive the ironic treatment.

A few years ago, Chicken Cottage – one of the biggest chicken shop franchises in the UK – was immortalised in a T-shirt worn by middle class trendies. It was the mirrored, interlinked Cs of the Chanel logo, this time standing for "Chicken" and "Cottage" – the tee being the first real sign that arty types who'd moved to the deprived areas chicken shops tend to serve had started to show their appreciation, via merchandising marketed to and bought mostly by other middle class arty types.

(Photo: VICE)

What followed was a greater social media presence from many of the bigger brands, and more engagement with consumers, allowing those in management roles to become better aware of how the shops were being perceived.

One chicken shop company that seems to have really capitalised on this is Morley's, a chain exclusive to south London. They've gone on the social media offensive, gauging interest in T-shirts, setting up events with local trendy internet radio station Balamii and going as far as hosting a "pop-up" Valentine's Day special restaurant, where they served southern specialities like chicken and waffles.

It's clever stuff. The clientele in some cases – particularly around Peckham, New Cross and Elephant & Castle – has changed. As social housing is demolished to make way for luxury flats, and the rents of surrounding properties are raised, families are being forced out of the areas they've lived in their entire lives, and the people replacing them tend to be younger and more affluent – young professional implants from the Home Counties who see chicken shops as quaint emblems of their new lives in the big city.

Owners have discerned that guffawing art students are enamoured with the notion of the chicken shop – the concept of it, rather than the reality. So they're moving to exploit exactly that. I've personally already seen price hikes in certain places, and seen others complaining online (and at least one person claiming owners are charging hipsters more than school kids), though this could be to do with Brexit or adjusting prices for inflation – as one Morleys branch told me it was on a drunken Friday night.

Regular customers are noticing a sea change. A popular tweet last week pointed out that many chicken shops are starting to look like VICE articles, which – to be fair – is absolutely true. Students and media workers have decided chicken shops are now worth their time, if as much for the whimsy as the cosy interiors and the low, low prices. It's easy to draw parallels here with the "cheeky Nando's" meme: a normal thing utilised by normal people, the normalcy of which is seen as a curiosity to outsiders.

An episode of 'The Pengest Munch'

And so the chicken shop becomes a cultural icon that doesn't really have a personality, but rather has had personality thrust upon it. "Chicken Shop Date", the T-shirts made by this man and numerous articles about the (to be fair, quite interesting) work of this man are all good examples of the chicken shop's elevation in popular culture.

But one thing that's spurred on this change more than ever is YouTube show The Pengest Munch, a wry review series hosted by "The Chicken Connoisseur", which comes from a knowing place of affection for these ostensibly crap eateries.

Twenty-three-year-old Elijah Quashie has taken to the streets, dressed as a schoolboy, to evaluate the merits of these chicken shops for his YouTube channel. It's a fun attempt to ward people off bad wings and fillet burgers, to tell them whether the two-for-two deal is really worth it. The show was a nudge and a wink to those who grew up wondering if the chicken shops near north London's schools were any different to the ones in south

Now, though, through the industrial machine of content aggregation and social media promotion, it's become a point of fun for people who never had those experiences in their youth, but like what they see and want to get involved. Inadvertently, the reviews may be causing a price hike themselves, with enterprising owners riding their 15 minutes.

Pushing all this to its ultimate conclusion is the above video uploaded by Goldsmiths University London – a university with a reputation for pretentiousness, and students using its surroundings as fodder for their art and sociological study – in which a lecturer discusses his upcoming "sensory ethnography" of chicken shop culture. He opens his bit with "Lots of people are revolted by chicken shops."

Quite who the type of person revolted by chicken and chips is, I will leave you to deduce. But when a moustachioed sociology lecturer chooses to pay such close attention to something that's been a staple of London's streets for decades, it starts to become clear that we're entering a bold new era of the chicken shop.

So what's next? Well, the fetishisation of these places will no doubt continue unabated, making them merely the latest addition to the long conveyor belt of ubiquitous and relatively uninteresting things that can't quite be left alone by London's creative class. Tracksuits, fried chicken, grime music, dingy locals' pubs that people want to drink in because they're more "real" than Wetherspoons – it's all there for the plunder.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

What's More Important: Fried Chicken or Animal Rights?

Cardiff Fried Chicken Van Sparks Controversy with Its Quite Graphic Phallic Logo

A Bone To Pick: Why Do Pigeons Eat Fried Chicken on the Street?

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

US News

Homeland Security Denies Plan for 'Mass Deportations'
A senior official at the Department of Homeland Security insists new immigration directives are not intended to lead to "mass deportations." Two memos issued by the DHS on Tuesday include a series of measures likely to escalate deportation, but the anonymous official insisted, "We do not have the personnel, time, or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses."—The Washington Post

US Could Commit More Troops to Syria, Says Commander
The commander of US forces in the Middle East says more American troops may be sent to Syria to fight ISIS. General Joseph Votel noted the US might "take on a larger burden ourselves" in supporting local forces trying to retake the pivotal city of Raqqa from ISIS, adding they "don't have as good mobility, they don't have as much firepower."—CBS News

Muslim Activists Raise $60,000 for Jewish Cemetery
Muslim activists have launched a crowdfunding campaign to repair a damaged Jewish cemetery in Missouri, raising more than $60,000 in a matter of hours. Police are still investigating who is responsible for toppling nearly 200 headstones at the University City cemetery. The activists who launched the fundraising drive said Muslim Americans "condemn this horrific act of desecration."—Al Jazeera

Texas Judge Protects Planned Parenthood Funding
A federal judge in Texas has ruled that the state cannot cut Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood on the basis of dubious videos recorded by anti-abortion activists in 2015. US District Judge Sam Sparks said the state's health commission was relying upon "unsubstantiated and indeterminate allegations" in its bid to deny funding.—AP

International News

Malaysia Names North Koreans Wanted for Questioning
Malaysian police have named three North Koreans wanted in connection with the death of Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam, including a senior embassy official. Police have written to the ambassador of the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur about questioning Hyon Kwang Song, the embassy's second secretary. Another one of the men wanted by police works for North Korea's state airline.—BBC News

Pope Francis Demands Aid Access for South Sudan
Pope Francis wants humanitarian aid for the millions of people facing starvation in South Sudan. The UN has struggled to access areas worst hit by famine because of conflict in the country, so the Pope asked for "a commitment by everyone to not just talk but contribute food aid and allow it to reach suffering populations."—Reuters

Former Hong Kong Leader Handed 20-Month Sentence
Donald Tsang, the former leader of Hong Kong, has been sentenced to 20 months behind bars after being found guilty of misconduct. Chang failed to disclose a plan to rent a luxury apartment from a property developer whose company was seeking a broadcasting license. The judge said: "Never in my judicial career have I seen a man falling from such a height."—The Guardian

Netanyahu Thanks Australia for Support
Welcoming Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told a local newspaper his government would not support "one-sided" UN Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel's settlement building. Netanyahu, in turn, said Australia had been "courageously willing to puncture UN hypocrisy more than once."—ABC News

Everything Else

Future to Release Another New Album on Friday
Having released a new album only last week, Future will drop yet another this Friday, entitled HNDRXX. Tags used by the artist on Instagram suggest Rihanna and The Weeknd will feature on it.—Noisey

Chinese Companies Want Ivanka Branding
At least 65 Chinese companies, including one sanitary towel business, have now applied to use "Ivanka" in product branding. It remains less than clear whether China's trademark regulator will allow the use of the name.—Fortune

Gucci Mane Announces Tour
Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane has announced his first legit tour, scheduling a series of shows in major US cities in April and May. "I'm a hell of a recording artist, but I want to be a better live performer," he said.—Rolling Stone

Tom Hanks to Release Short Story Collection
The actor Tom Hanks will release a collection of 17 short stories, each one related to a different kind of typewriter. The book is to be published by Alfred A. Knopf, and Hanks will also narrate Uncommon Type: Some Stories as an audiobook.—Entertainment Weekly

Researcher Collates Images of ISIS Drone Attacks
A military analyst has collated more than 100 images of drone attacks apparently conducted by ISIS in February. Nick Waters of research group Bellingcat said the images only show successful attacks. "There are many more drone missions we haven't seen."—Motherboard

Gay Marriage Linked to Fewer Suicide Attempts, Study Suggests
A new research study indicates a strong link between legalizing same-sex marriage and a drop in attempted teen suicides, particularly among LGBTQ youth. Reported suicide attempts among LGBTQ high schoolers fell by 14 percent in states that legalized same-sex marriage.—VICE

A Calgary police officer is on trial for charges of theft under $5,000, possession of controlled substances, and breach of trust after he was allegedly set-up in an anti-corruption sting, the CBC reports.

According to testimony given at his trial Tuesday, 44-year-old Const. Robert Cumming was arrested June 3, 2016, after he was caught in a sting in which he was given a backpack full of marijuana by undercover officers.

The paper trail that lead to Cumming was actually discovered during a separate investigation—dubbed "Operation Gumshoe"—in which six Calgary Police Service (CPS) officers were being investigated for corruption and bribery.

One of the cops investigated, Const. Bryan Morton, had his text messages with Cummings and other CPS officers intercepted. According to Det. Timothy Fitzgibbon, the head of Operation Gumshoe, those texts provided enough suspicion to begin organizing a separate investigation, called "Operation Smoke."

Fitzgibbon testified that between 2013 and 2015, the text messages that raised red flags were related to drug busts that Cummings was involved in. In 2016, Fitzgibbon's team set up a sting operation that involved undercover officers giving Cummings a backpack full of marijuana, and having the undercover officers tell Cummings they thought the backpack "belonged to a high school girl."

Staff Sgt. Jeff Macqueen says that police then trailed Cummings and watched as he stashed the backpack at a garbage bin behind his home. Cummings then returned to work, finished his shift, and came back to the garbage bin to recover the backpack. Hours later, the police showed up with a warrant for his arrest.

Read More: In One 90-Second Video, Toronto Cops Managed to Piss Off Nearly Everyone

According to Macqueen, Cummings appeared to be drunk upon his arrest, telling police he was "fucked" and that his "life was over." Cummings' lawyer, Paul Brunnen, has challenged the admissibility of the evidence, and the Crown is now tasked with defending its legitimacy in a voir dire hearing. Brunnen also said that he is going to argue that his client was entrapped.

Court cases for four other CPS members—including Morton, Gerard Brown, Steve Walton and Heather Walton (husband and wife respectively)—also began Tuesday. The judge-only cases will be presided over by Judge Jerry LeGrandeur, from Lethbridge, and headed up by Edmonton prosecutor Richard Tchir. The CBC reports the lack of a jury and local legal authorities is to avoid any possible conflict of interests the police might have with Calgary-based individuals.

Follow Jake on Twitter.

Lead image via Flickr user kashmera.

I am a balding man.

Not a bald man. Not yet. There is still enough hair left on my head that, as long as I'm not too sweaty or shorter than everyone in the room and the lighting is right, I can maintain the facade that I am one of the haired. The haired, those with a robust hairline that spans straight across their foreheads like a railroad or the horizon. The top-back part of their head still covered in luscious locks instead of a naked skin, a reverse forehead staring out like Sauron's unblinking eye. Sometimes, like some sort of hairline perv, I catch myself staring at a particularly thick hairline and imagine how much better their life must be, the confidence, the opportunities.

I am not one of them. I am on the other side of the divide. A balder, an illusionist, one who practises in the dark arts of the combover. The key ingredient in my spell is what I affectionately call my tuft. The tuft is the last remaining shreds of my bangs, a lonely, sparse island of hair surrounded by the inevitably rising seas of my forehead. I am in awe of this brave soldier, how it averts the eye from my veiny forehead and acts as a hair curtain, suggesting a lush head of hair behind it even though there's little more than a willowy horn. It is my Potemkin village. Behind the tuft lies ravine. An ever-widening, near-hairless gully that runs to the bald spot on the crown of my head, like a river of skin draining into the pool of self-loathing.

And of course the sides and the back of head continue to flourish, growing with the youthful abandon they always have, unaware of the carnage at the top. They remind me of industrialized nations indulging in our wasteful, carefree ways as the Arctic melts us into oblivion, unable and unwilling to adjust to a changed reality.

A man who has embraced his baldness. Photo via Facebook

Admittedly, "my balding head is the distressed globe" is a very narcissistic metaphor. But it adequately captures the immense narcissism that is involved in my balding process. Over the decade I have cumulatively spent days looking at my head in the mirror. I have literally spent an hour craning and stretching my neck in an attempt to see just exactly what is going on up there. Lord help me, when there is a vanity mirror lying around a bathroom I'm in, a quick pee break can turn into 15 minutes of hairline inspection. Back when I had a smartphone I would come home drunk and attempt to take photos and videos of the top of my head, strafing over my bald spot with my phone's camera like a surveillance drone.

I know that I'm not alone in this behaviour. I was in the office at my restaurant day job a little while ago and on a monitor there were all the views from the surveillance cameras and one was positioned just perfectly to highlight my bald spot, which I proceeded to highlight to my co-workers. After justifiably stating how awkward that made them feel, one told me about her friend who had recently began transitioning and how the injections of testosterone had caused her friend's hair to begin falling out. "He is always demanding that I look at it," she complained as I couldn't help but to reflect about all the times I had put friends in that shitty position, demanding they acknowledge the events occurring on the top of my head.

Why do I do these things? Why do I humiliate myself and prostrate my neediness in front of my friends' graciousness while obsessing over my fallen locks like an ex-lover I cannot get over? I suspect that underneath bruised vanity lies the specter of death. When I peer into the mirror, tugging my hair back to see how far the abyss extends I feel like some sort of diviner attempting to peer into the future, rolling some bones and interpreting the results to see what kind of death awaits me. Because that's what it represents to me, a death. A death of my youth, a death of my virility, a death of any potential of me ever being described as "strapping." A loss of hair seems like the death of potential, locking you into the type of guy you will be until you die. As I would stare into the mirror it was like I was trying to peer into the journey fate had planned for me, and I would stare and attempt to ferret out what kind of man, what kind of ignominious schlubby failure of a life fate had lined up for me before my death which would probably be from heat loss from the top of my head.

Because there seem to be only a few paths to deal with hair loss. You can fight it and take hair loss drugs like Propecia which makes your dick stop working, forcing you to ask yourself what is a more important part of your masculine identity, your vanity or your sexual proclivities. Then there is the tight shave, where you shear it close to the scalp. This is the power move and is the territory of movers and shakers: stock brokers, athletes and Jason Statham. People who dominate fate, the ubermensch who says, "You can't de-hair me Time because I never wanted hair in the first place. It was weak and I am strong and now stare upon my gleaming blackstar of a head and tremble as I calmly sip on this strong espresso and contemplate hedge funds."

Another esteemed bald man. Photo via Flickr

Then there are those who manicure and groom the sides of their heads, crafting a perfect ring like a puffy altar around their bald spot. This is the worst look. I call these men death-worshippers, this is the move of craven sycophants and petty, cruel sadists. This is what Stephen Miller will be rocking when his hair loss is complete.

The final move is the "I'm going to let this shit ride." This is when you don't panic. You keep the hair short because at a certain point in the balding process the longer your hair the more you look like you just escaped from some sort of government lab. But you don't treat it any different. You don't shorn your head, instead you honor your remaining strands, letting them remain on the top of your head in all of their pitiful glory. This is the look that says, "Life is suffering and I now understand this and submit to it and in submission I have found freedom."

You can also wear a hat.

Whenever I start to overthink my hair loss, I try to remember an insight I had a year ago when, in a depression motivated move of rashness, I shaved my own head. I was tired of the anxiety of waiting, tired of merely trying to foretell what fate had in store for me. The desire for answers overcame me. And as I stood there amongst my recently shorn hair I discovered two things. One, thankfully my skull is pretty good. It's not pointy, bumpy or gooey in the slightest.

The second thing I realized is that balding can be a sort of death, yes, but a death to things that I don't really want to hold onto. A death to this ideal of masculinity and manliness that I've embedded in my head and constantly compared myself to. This ideal of a man with a robust hairline and a fat wallet, who is strong and powerful, assertive and confident, a man whose success is measured by all these horrible metrics: objects owned, women slept with. When I buzzed my head and saw what I looked like without hair, it showed me I was wrong about balding locking me into a path.  Instead, embracing my hair loss was embracing the scrawny, bald, weirdo man that I am and always will be until I pass onto that great barbershop in the sky.

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US district judge Sam Sparks ruled Tuesday that Texas cannot cut Planned Parenthood's access to Medicaid funding, the AP reports.

Texas health officials claimed that hidden-camera videos recorded by pro-life activists in 2015 allegedly showed Planned Parenthood attempting to sell fetal tissue for profit. The "heavily edited" recordings have been discredited and resulted in a series of indictments against the activists, but that hasn't stopped the videos from reinvigorating a Republican push to defund the health provider.

"No taxpayer in Texas should have to subsidize this repugnant and illegal conduct," Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said of the tapes. "We should never lose sight of the fact that, as long as abortion is legal in the United States, the potential for these types of horrors will continue."

Judge Sparks ruled that Texas was unable to provide "any evidence" that Planned Parenthood did anything illegal or unethical that would warrant losing Medicaid funds. The state is now at least the sixth in the country to have attempted to cut Planned Parenthood funds and subsequently been blocked by the federal government.

"A secretly recorded video, fake names, a grand jury indictment, congressional investigations—these are the building blocks of a best-selling novel rather than a case concerning the interplay of federal and state authority through the Medicaid program," Sparks wrote in his 42-page ruling. "Yet, rather than a villain plotting to take over the world, the subject of this case is the State of Texas's efforts to expel a group of health care providers from a social health care program for families and individuals with limited resources."

According to Planned Parenthood, Sparks's decision will allow around 11,000 low-income women in the state to continue to have access to birth control, cancer screenings, and other health services.

The 1990s produced a ton of millennial-friendly nostalgic relics, but none encapsulate the decade more than the movies of the Disney Renaissance. A period of time that stretched about ten years, the Disney Renaissance was a golden era of children's films that produced a flawless run of critically acclaimed animated movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.

The only thing wrong with the way some people remember the Renaissance is that, in most cases, they only include the ten films that were produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation (now known as Walt Disney Animation Studios). In their oversight, they leave out a few gems like 1995's A Goofy Movie, which is hands down blackest Disney film of that era.

Despite not being accepted by extremely picky Tumblr nerds as a Renaissance film, as it was produced by DisneyToon Studios, A Goofy Movie is largely considered a cult classic among black millennials.

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(Top photo: Ruth Hartnup, via)

Pineapple pizza is a strange and polarising food, to say the least.

Some hate it, while others are completely obsessed with it. Some use it as a weapon of political dissent, and its fruity topping may even have been the motive behind one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American history.

And now, pineapple pizza is back in the news in characteristically bizarre fashion. According to local news site Visir, President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson of Iceland said that if he had the power to do so, he would ban the dish across the Scandinavian island nation of 323,000.

Intrigued, MUNCHIES Denmark editor Lars Hinnerskov Eriksen reached out to Jóhannesson to find out why the hell he went on a pineapple tirade in front of a bunch of high school students, and received a prompt response.

Read the rest over on Munchies.

While federal legislation now allows for medicinal cannabis to be grown, manufactured, and prescribed in Australia, it's still in fairly short supply. Victoria is the only state to have successfully harvested its own cannabis crop, but this will only be distributed to a select group of young epilepsy patients. With low domestic supplies and restrictions on imports, many patients are still forced to obtain their treatments illegally.

That may be about to change. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced today that action has been taken to speed up the delivery process to supply more Australians with safe medicinal cannabis products from overseas. "We have listened to the concerns of patients and their families who are having difficulty accessing the product on prescription while domestic production becomes available," the Minister wrote in a Facebook status this morning.

"We are now making it easier to access medicinal cannabis products more rapidly, while still maintaining strict safeguards for individual and community safety."

Several measures have been taken to help speed up the legal weed supply chain. Firstly, domestically grown medicinal cannabis products will no longer be allowed to export outside of Australia. Secondly, the Department of Health will now allow domestic cannabis importers to source supplies from overseas without an authorised doctor specifically asking them to do so for a specific patient.

The Office of Drug Control estimates that within as few as eight weeks, Australians will be able to purchase from a surplus of imported medicinal cannabis from "approved international sources" until domestic suppliers catch up.

Of course, even though this means that Australia's supplies of medicinal cannabis will be on the increase, you'll still need a prescription from an approved doctor to access treatment. Different states have different medicinal marijuana frameworks that will affect a patient's ease of access, varying from Queensland's relatively flexible laws to Victoria's fairly strict ones.

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The owners of a Toronto clothing brand accused on social media of exploiting the idea of poverty and homelessness told VICE Wednesday that critics are jumping to conclusions, and that they are not profiting off the misfortune of others.

HOMELESS, a Toronto clothing brand founded by Erny Anchata and Trevor Nicholls, received heavy online criticism this week after the brand began advertising itself as a clothing line for the "underdogs" of society.

"Disgusted by #Toronto hipster clothes brand exploiting the #homeless," Sarah Shephard, a vocal critic, said on Twitter.

"Honestly, I don't know what to say," Cathy Crowe, a prolific Toronto homelessness activist and street nurse, replied to the tweet.

The items on the HOMELESS website consist of everything from coffee mugs and simple graphic tees, to distressed and dip-dyed hoodies. Some of the items range as high as $155, and some are as low as $20.

Read More: A Men's Clothing Store in Toronto is Appropriating #BlackLivesMatter to Promote a Black Friday Sale

The brand's owners claim that a portion of all proceeds of sales will be given to local anti-poverty initiatives, but that the system is in the very early stages and that they just made their first sale last week. Both Nicholls and Anchata have said that they are trying to work with local poverty organization Eva's Place, but that nothing has been finalized, and that they have been trying to offer homeless individuals on the street toiletries and clothing in the meantime.

Some of the items sold on the HOMELESS WEBSITE.

During a call with VICE, an Eva's Place spokesperson said they were not aware that any conversations between HOMELESS and their organization had happened, but that they are immediately looking to find out if someone had unofficially suggested the idea to the brand.

On Facebook and Instagram, Nicholls made a personal post, stating that he has and continues to endure significant financial hardship, and argued that the issue is one he is passionate about.

Trevor Nicholls. Image via Instagram.

Speaking with VICE on Wednesday, Nicholls doubled-down on this sentiment, saying that he was angry with how people had jumped to conclusions about his life, and his motivations with creating a brand called HOMELESS.

"I totally disagree with the idea that we're exploiting homelessness," he told VICE. "I'm gonna be straight-up: I currently don't have a permanent place to live, I work full-time, this was a way I thought we could give back and make a living."

When asked if he felt like the name was offensive, Nicholls said it was meant to be controversial.

"Look, we wouldn't be talking about it right now if we named it something else," he told VICE. "If it gets people talking and gets attention to the issue, then I don't care."

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A version of this story appeared in the February issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

In 2011, Alfredo Salazar-Caro smuggled a mini projector into Mexico City's Museo Soumaya and cast a GIF onto the wall next to a Joseph Beuys piece. The digital graffiti got him kicked out of the museum, but two years later, Salazar-Caro co-founded the Digital Museum of Digital Art (DiMoDA), where he could put whatever the hell he wanted on the walls.

Today, he's an adjunct instructor at New York University and a well-respected member of the Chicago Dirty New Media movement, which sets out to break software to create new kinds of visuals, and with DiMoDA, he's opted to abolish walls entirely: The museum is completely virtual. The artwork doesn't hang on walls; it is the wall—and the floor, ceiling, and everything in between. To enter, visitors don a virtual reality headset and enter a building with a crystalline façade that would make Frank Gehry drool. Inside, they visit each level by walking straight into a column.

DiMoDA's website says it's "the preeminent Virtual institution devoted to Digital/New Media Art," but for some, it may simply be a rare experience that makes strapping a smartphone to one's head worth it. Everything inside feels like a mini video game: The current exhibition, DiMoDA 2.0: Morphé Presence, includes a glitchy black-and-white landscape, an uncanny journey inside the human body, a soothing rainbow cube, and a pacifistic take on DOOM.

Read more on Creators

I couldn't believe it. At the tender age of 15—not a boy, not yet a man—my dream suddenly seemed entirely within reach. I wanted to be a fashion designer. Badly. When I wrote a letter to one of my favorite designers, Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons, I had no expectation it would go anywhere. I just wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude for the radical and transgressive beauty her clothes brought into the world. I was shocked when I received a reply.

My letter had been forwarded to the New York offices, and the people there said they were excited to hear from me. They even made me a job offer. They told me that when I turned 18, if I moved to New York City, they'd give me entry-level employment. I was elated, not quite fully understanding the slow-burn torture I was about to run head-on into. Three years feels like a very long time to wait at that age, especially for a dream so palpably close to coming true.

I thought about my future constantly, this move to the big city to work for the influential fashion house. I saved money for what felt like an eternity, continuing my work on sewing and studying everything I could about the industry. When I turned 18, I was on a train to NYC within days. I arrived with a dream in my heart and stars in my eyes.

Then, reality set in.

My job lasted about two months. I was in way over my head, and everyone seemed to know it, especially my boss. When I finally realized it too, I felt nauseous—like all the inertia and momentum that had seemed to propel me toward my destiny had instantly fallen apart. It wasn't only that I was in over my head; I didn't like the work. I wasn't making clothes. I wasn't doing anything creative. I was filing papers in a basement office on Wooster Street. It was nothing like I pictured.

Back when fashion was Andrew's passion. All photos via Andrew W.K.

The dream died, and the stars dimmed. I was deflated. Some deeper sense of purpose motivated me to stay in New York. Over the next four years, events worked out in a way I couldn't have predicted, and, earlier in my life, I wouldn't have even wanted.

The fashion chapter of my life isn't one I talk about often and isn't widely known—odd, considering how impeccably I dress today. Some are confused by the story. "Oh," they say, quizzically. "So music wasn't always your passion?"

I suppose it wasn't. But then again, I think maybe it was. I don't mean to blow your mind here, but... what if my incongruent interest in the fashion was the vehicle destiny used to get me into the entertainment industry? Into my true passion that I didn't even know I had?

What is a "passion" anyway?

The word meant something different growing up than it does now, it seems. Back then, as a student of the piano, I mostly associated "Passion" with the title of some of the most famous and moving works of Johann Sebastian Bach. His Passions commemorated Jesus's brutal crucifixion, his torturous journey to the cross. To me, the word was always closely associated with the concept of Christ's commitment to his truth: Even in the face of so much suffering he stayed true to what he felt he was on Earth to do, a love so total and complete that it transcends obsession and moves into the realm of inevitability.

Today, "passion" has morphed from that, retaining some of the meaning, but mostly stripped of it. In particular: the suffering. Highlighted instead is the unbridled devotion and optimism about what it is people think they want most to do, the dream they most wish to pursue.

These "passions" light up a person's world in a way nothing else does. Nothing else will make them happy in life. Because this "passion" is so compelling, people believe it to be a birthright, something owed to them.

It's easy for some of us to forget that the pursuit of passions is not free from struggle.

Because of this, it's easy for some of us to forget that the pursuit of passions is not free from struggle. It's most often inextricably linked with ordeals and arduous tests, showing us that it's almost impossible to be passionate about a quest without having to struggle on our journey toward it. The road on the journey to fulfillment is never straight. It doesn't necessarily have to be a physical or emotional suffering, but sacrifices of some kind are seldom avoided.

Strangely, there's also a sense that one's passion is somewhat out of one's control. These most prophetic interests have a way of choosing a person, rather than that person choosing the interest. Oftentimes we're taught that dreams and our destiny is something that we make up, that we decide based on what we enjoy the most. But in my case, fate zeroed in.

This has led me to believe your passion is thrust on you whether you particularly like it or not. This is a disorienting and challenging experience—finding out that what you're meant to do with your life is different than what you feel like doing. It then becomes a matter of whether you have the fortitude to withstand the demands this passion will put on you. Do you have what it takes to follow it? It's almost as if your passion is also passionate about you. Your destiny is trying to pep you up so that you can go and do the stuff that you're meant to do. For me that was a huge breakthrough: that what you are born to do might not even be something you completely enjoy doing in the typical personal sense, but are compelled to do nevertheless. You love it and hate it. "The only thing worse than writing," author Richard Price once said, "is not writing."

We are often told we decide our dream. But sometimes, our destiny dreams us and pulls us toward it, defying our own personal flights of fancy, plans and ambitions, and even logic and reason. It can be surprisingly comforting to realize that our true purpose in life will rarely feel comfortable, enjoyable, or pleasurable in the way other interests might. It is a calling. And answering that call—even if it means sacrificing your own self in the process—is one of the most noble efforts a human can make.

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