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A Dick-Drawing Prank Allegedly Drove a Man to Arson

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Dick art is unavoidable. From the skies to the screen, some people seem unable to stop themselves from making almost anything phallic. Most of the time, dick graffiti is pretty harmless—until the canvas becomes somebody's face.

According to the Aspen Times, 25-year-old Stephen Elmore was drinking with a few friends at a house in Aspen, Colorado, before ending up passed out in the living room. That's when one of his friends decided to throw it back to high school and pull one of the oldest pranks in the book—drawing dicks all over Elmore's face.

Apparently Elmore didn't handle it too well and decided to try to find out who drew the dicks. Fingers were pointed, and a fight broke out after Elmore accused one of the fellow revelers of "drawing dicks on his face." Finally, the homeowner, a 37-year-old woman, fessed up to the crime, saying that, actually, she just drew "balls." That's when Elmore disappeared into the basement and, according to the cops, set the garage on fire.

"I asked Elmore what started [the fire], and he said, 'It was just like by her… drawing penises on my face,'" a local cop wrote in an affidavit. "I asked Elmore if he was just really pissed off and he said, 'Yeah come on man… this is bullshit.'"

Luckily, no one was hurt in the blaze and it only damaged a small portion of the garage. Police and firefighters quickly responded to the scene, where Elmore, who was reportedly slurring his words, tried to tell the cops that it really wasn't that big of a deal.

"Elmore told me, 'Can't you just work with me, bro? I was thinking irrationally,'" a cop wrote in the affidavit. "'I had no intention of burning down the house or anything. If we could just put this in the past, I would really appreciate it.'"

But given that this didn't seem like some kind of weird, bug-fueled accident, the cops didn't bite. Elmore was arrested and now he's facing a first-degree felony arson charge for allegedly starting the blaze.

The whole fiasco sounds like the premise of some bad, vaguely ski-themed 90s movie—or, even better, a workable premise for the next season of American Vandal. Maybe Elmore could try hitting up the showrunner and selling his story as a script to help cover those legal fees.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.


We Tried Tide Pod Pizza and We're Still Alive

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For the past few weeks, it seems like everyone in America has been asking themselves one question: Why the hell are teens filming themselves biting into Tide Pods? Inexplicably, the poisonous laundry globs have been munched, cooked, and, because there is no God, vaped for internet fame. What started as a joke about the detergent balls being mysteriously appetizing has officially gone too far.

Luckily, one Brooklyn pizzeria has offered a solution: an edible "Pied Pod" aimed at saving the teens.

"Listen. We're concerned about the youths. They're eating laundry detergent pods. We needed to do something," Vinnie's Pizzeria in Brooklyn wrote on Instagram Thursday. "Our Pied Pods have [those] bright, alluring colours that youths crave BUT are 100 percent edible and 100 percent not poison."

As soon as we saw them, we felt the same inexplicable urge that's spurred countless teens toward bodily harm and YouTube glory. So we called up Sean Berthiaume, the co-owner of Vinnie's and inventor of the Pied Pod to try some for ourselves.

For Berthiaume, the idea to transform one of the world's most delicious memes into an actual delicacy came to him in a dream.

"It's pretty boring, actually. It was just me coming into work and figuring out to do it," he said. "So I woke up and rushed to work to actually make the Pied Pods. If I'm not at work, I'm usually thinking about work and, I guess, dreaming about it."

Unfortunately, the Pied Pod isn't a full-time member of the Vinnie's menu, but Berthiaume humoured us and whipped up a few for us to try. Instead of mini pizzas, each one is a tiny calzone, boasting that signature Tide swirl. They're stuffed with pepperoni, cheese, and Italian seasonings, and topped with orange-and-blue-dyed mozzarella—and won't require you to call Poison Control after taking a bite.

"I think what makes the pods so appetizing is the swirling hypnotic colours," Berthiaume said.

While they might not have the same gooey consistency as a package of caustic chemicals, the dry, bready pockets are great dipped in marinara sauce. The highlight of eating them, though, is definitely living out your Tide Pod fantasy without suffering internal organ damage.

Sean Berthiaume shows off his creation.

These little masterpieces might not be easy to get, but Berthiaume says, "If people start coming in and asking for them, then I'll put them on the menu." So if you're in the Brooklyn area, it's worth giving the place a call, especially if you want to help the "kids to get back into actual food." As Vinnie's says, "Hope, not soap!"

Follow Beckett Mufson on Twitter.

Bill Cosby Prosecutors Want 20 Accusers to Testify at His Retrial

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When Bill Cosby went to trial last June for allegedly drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004, it was in many ways a test of how much the judicial system had caught up with rapidly changing public opinions about sexual assault in America. When a verdict couldn't be reached, it was proof that a gulf still exists between average jurors and the media world that disgraced the legendary comedian.

Now, Cosby will face a retrial in Pennsylvania on April 2, and his prosecutors reportedly want to make a major change to their strategy the second go-around. According to the New York Times, the Montgomery County District Attorney's office has asked that 19 accusers—of the roughly 50 who have publicly accused Cosby of assault—join Constand in testifying against the comedian. Judge Steven T. O'Neill, who presided over the first trial, only let one additional accuser testify last year.

When prosecutors asked for a second trial, experts speculated that it might be a bit of a fool's errand. The thinking was that if they changed their strategy too significantly, it would be obvious grounds for an appeal later on. But the national conversation has about consent has progressed immensely since even last summer, with accusations against people like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey illustrating to the general public that powerful men sometimes have a bevy of victims who don't come forward for years. Perhaps in light of that, the government's new goal is to establish that the comedian allegedly exhibited a predatory pattern of behaviour toward women he often had a mentor relationship with.

"This evidence is relevant to establish that an individual who, over the course of decades, intentionally intoxicated women in a signature fashion and then sexually assaulted them while they were incapacitated, could not have been mistaken about whether or not Ms. Constand was conscious enough to consent to the sexual contact," the District Attorney’s Office argued in a court filing.

Should Judge O'Neill allow all 20 women to testify against Cosby, he still would only face punishment for allegedly assaulting Constand. According to the Times, his ruling is expected in the next few weeks.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Murder Charges Stoke Toronto Gay Community’s Serial Killer Fears

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Toronto police have finally confirmed the gay community’s worst fears: Two men who disappeared from the Church and Wellesley village were murdered, and police are investigating whether there are more victims.

The announcement appears to confirm what many in the neighbourhood have long suspected, that a serial killer was targeting gay men.

The stunning announcement came on Thursday afternoon, the culmination of a four-month investigation by a special task force charged with investigating the mysterious disappearances of two men.

It also came after years of outcry from the LGBTQ community, asking why police haven’t taken missing persons cases from the village more seriously.

On Thursday, police charged 66-year-old Bruce McArthur. He now faces two first-degree murder charges in connection with the deaths of Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman.

Both men have been missing since the summer. But they’re not the first to disappear from the village.

From 2010 to 2012, three men—Abdulbasir Faizi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, and Majeed Kayhan—vanished. All three were village regulars, all three were brown-skinned, and all three were of similar age. Police failed to find any leads that explained their disappearances or pointed towards a suspect.

“We are trying to identify whether they may have become victim to Mr. McArthur as well,” homicide detective Hank Idsinga said.

But police, repeatedly and consistently, played down connections between the five men. In December, Police Chief Mark Saunders told the public that “the evidence today tells us that there is not a serial killer.”

Toronto’s gay village saw things differently. Facebook groups were set up to share information about the missing men and to keep tabs on future disappearances. A town hall was organized in the village itself to share stories and to try and illicit information from the public and to put pressure on the cops to take the cases more seriously.

The media, too, has long raised the possibility of a serial killer. Xtra!, which covered the first three disappearances at the time, repeatedly asked Toronto police about the possibility, as did VICE News. Last summer, I published a lengthy investigation into the three men, finding that police simply did not conduct extensive searches for at least one of the missing men.

Over the last five years, police have fallen back on the idea that these men simply took off or ran away, given their sexual orientation and their ethnicity. But friends of the missing men, Kinsman and Navaratnam in particular, never accepted that theory.

Even at the end of 2017—even, as cops say, they were looking at McArthur as a suspect—police suggested that Esen’s disappearance was not the result of foul play, highlighting parts of his past to suggest that there was no pattern or connection linking him to the other disappearances.

With Esen and Kinsman’s cases now linked, the next steps for police will be to find out if McArthur is connected to the first three missing men.

“We believe he is responsible for the deaths of other men who have yet to be identified,” added Idsinga. “In other words: We believe there are other victims.”

Many have been quick to draw the parallels to Robert Pickton, the infamous serial killer who targeted sex workers on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

While no bodies have yet been recovered, and police have remained tight-lipped about exactly what evidence they’ve unearthed, Idsinga told reporters simply that they found “some evidence” that “pushed us over the edge” to obtain a warrant for the arrest of McArthur. He had been a subject of the investigation for “months,” the detective added.

Idsinga said Kinsman and McArthur had been in a sexual relationship for some time leading up to his death, but couldn’t say how the accused killer might have known Esen.

Police reported that McArthur’s business was in the Thorncliffe Park area of Toronto—just a 10 minute drive from where Faizi’s car was discovered, abandoned, and from an oft-trodden cruising path where I believe he was last seen alive.

McArthur is set to appear in court on Friday morning.

Follow Justin on Twitter.

I Tried Out a Bunch of Natural Highs to Make Dry January Less Boring

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Though it was only started five years ago as a UK charity campaign, the Dry January challenge is rapidly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. With a reported 3.1 million Britons and countless others around the globe now in their third week of teetotaling, I worried that the monotony of clean living might be starting to frustrate the participants.

I based this worry primarily on the mood of my own roommate, who’s giving the challenge a go, and cited Dry January as the source of his recent irritability. It seems that it’s in our very nature as humans to seek out consciousness-modifying experiences, and too much time facing the bleakness of existence head on can be a lot to deal with. So, to help my roomie and all other Dry January folk present and future, I decided to explore alternative, all-natural, and substance-free ways of getting fucked up that might provide them some mental escapism in this trying month.

As luck would have it, I’d just been given an updated copy of The Book of Highs: 255 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness Without Drugs. First published in 1973, the compendium lists every conceivable means, positive or negative, of soberly blowing one’s mind. While some of the examples included were a bit of reach (e.g. sleep, movies, golf) or just plain unobtainable (space travel), there were enough promising entries in the tome to keep me busy for a few days while on my quest to aid the sober.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't always add much scientific or cultural information to explain or support why a particular activity is included. For instance, one of the entries suggests writing and reading haikus but never actually delves into what makes them mind-altering or differentiates them from poetry, which is included in the book as its own separate entry. With so little instructional assistance, it seemed that, if I wanted to know for sure what does and doesn't make for an all-natural high, I would have to choose a sampling to test and analyze myself.

Zen Morning Laugh/Zen Power Yell

I began with some moves cribbed from Japanese Zen masters. With hands on the back of my hips, palms up, I stood straight up and forced a roar of laughter out of my throat. It felt both stupid and disrespectful to my neighbors, but, as per the instructions of the book, I kept this forced laugh going for a good five minutes like I was watching a close friend at an open mic.

Doubling down on fishing for a noise complaint, I next attempted the "Zen power yell," which involved me sitting cross-legged and doing a countdown before jumping up and roaring like a lion. I felt more foolish than anything.

Long Time in the Desert

With dunes and cacti a mere two-hour drive away from LA, I had no excuse to not try one of the biome-based suggestions from the book. Still self-conscious about that Zen stuff from earlier, I hoped that the relative isolation of the desert would also provide me the perfect opportunity to attempt some of the other loud and antisocial entries that might get the cops called on me back in the city.

While the book doesn’t specify what constitutes a “long time,” I did find myself spacing out here and there over the course of the afternoon I spent aimlessly hiking through the brush just outside of Palm Springs.

Mask Wearing

"The wearing of masks is a definitive device for the altering of consciousness," the book boldly asserts, before suggesting I might "gather the strength of" the creature represented on my face.

With that in mind, about halfway into my desert time, I put on a polar bear mask and strained to let it imbue me with powers as I wore it for the remainder of my hike. The only ability I seemed to pick up from this transformation was a higher likelihood of tripping over rocks, courtesy of my newly reduced field of vision.


Watch: meet a man who has been getting high off snake venom for 20 years

Rock Throwing

Speaking of rocks, the book suggests that simply throwing some around could be enough to fuck me up. Dubious but open-minded, I rocketed some small stones off into the distant tumbleweeds and heaved some boulders a few feet away. Despite my attempts at variation, I felt more winded than high when all was said and done.

Fervent Prayer/Chanting/Mantra

The prayers drilled into me from my Catholic upbringing were still tucked away in some brain folds so, while still isolated, I repeated Hail Marys until the words became alien to my ears.

Repetition of both “Om” and my name produced similar outcomes where, eventually, I was only hearing hypnotic sounds.

While on this vocal bender, I also tried out the book’s suggestion of holding an “aaaaa” like I was opening up for the dentist and continuously modifying the pitch to produce an atonal song.

Though all these auditory illusions felt a bit parlor tricky, they were successful in fucking with my head a bit, so I'm willing to give them the "W."

Spinning

I like to point to the fact that little kids from every corner or the globe like to spin around until they fall over as proof of mankind’s propensity for mind-altering experiences so this entry seemed like a slam dunk. After watching a few Whirling Dervish YouTube videos for inspirations, I found a soft looking patch of sand and began my spins, making sure not to disrespectfully mirror the Dervishes religiously motivated rotations too closely. As anticipated, I indeed became dizzy.

Nudity

Not willing to risk this one outside the confines of my apartment, I drove back to LA and rinsed off the day’s grit, remaining nude after drying off. For the next 18 hours, I stayed in the buff. Mercifully, my roommate was gone the entire time, so I wasn’t confined to my bedroom for the entire experience.

While it was nice to temporarily shed some of the hang ups I, like so many others, have about nudity, I retained my usual mental faculties.

Prolonged Masturbation

Though I hadn’t engaged in a marathon wank session since my early teens, I figured muscle memory would carry me through the process and decided to take a stab at it. Being compelled by journalistic obligation rather than insatiable teenage hormones made the session a rather joyless affair. As you might have guessed by now, rather than laying out an optimal number of orgasms or minutes to strive for, the book only offered "drive on and find glory" as motivation so I tapped out early on, rather than needlessly chafing myself

Pain/Self-Flagellation

Still naked, I whipped myself on the back with a belt. It sucked and didn't get me high. Pain is more sobering than anything for me.

Metronome Watching

I didn’t have a metronome to hand but, as you might expect, there’s an app for that. I watched the pendulum tick at a speed I imagined a hypnotist would use and tried to fall into a trance. I made it about five minutes before the boredom and lack of change in mental state was too excruciating to continue.

Haiku

Is it possible
to get high with a haiku?
All signs point to no.

Binaural Beats

Who knew that something as simple as playing extremely close frequencies at the same time could have such a dramatic effect? This shit put me in another dimension maybe just 20 seconds in, and I legitimately feared for my sanity were I to be subjected myself to this for a longer stretch of time.

Thankfully, this was one of the rare entries of the book that got into the scientific weeds about what was happening. Basically, our brains have a hard time processing tones where the frequencies are less than 40 Hz apart and split the difference by conjuring up a phantom third tone.

Electronic Dance Music

“The melody and rhythm build and build, until breaking in an orgasmic release” is how the book lovingly describes the genre of music currently being represented by a man who wears a marshmallow helmet on stage.

Still, I’ve been to enough festivals and shows to know this suggestion has some merit so I put on a 10-hour cut of “Sandstorm” and let Darude's seminal beat work its magic. I didn't make it through the entire length before switching to an EDM mix with more variety, but the overall experience from the tunes could be rounded up to mesmerizing. They call it "trance" for a reason, after all.

Augmented Reality

The book entry for this began as hopeful prognostication about AR's potential before taking a sharp turn into caution about the other side of the coin where AR contributes to the "shrinking world of personal privacy." We get it. You watch Black Mirror.

The mobile “game” I downloaded to test out this entry resulted in dinosaurs stomping around my workspace and doing not much else. As I watched the PS1-era graphics lurch around my phone screen, my belief that we’ve got a ways to go before AR earns the label of “mind-altering” was reaffirmed.

Floating/Sensory Deprivation

I put on some clothes and made my way to a float tank spa where I immediately disrobed again so that I could lay out in a shallow tub of salt water with the lights off. Of all the things I’d tried, this proved to be the natural high most comparable to an actual illicit substance experience.

Once my body found buoyancy and my eyes had fully adjusted to the pitch black void in front of me, I started to lose my sense of space and time. My internal motion sensors told me I was spinning and drifting, though my lack of contact with the tub walls proved I was not. Before long, I started visually hallucinating. Off-white flickers popped in front of me before a blob of faint light appeared, swelling and shrinking in harmony with my breath. I pulled myself out of the tub after what felt like four hours but, in fact, was only 40 minutes.

Hot and Cold Baths

The final stop of my journey was to my neighborhood Korean spa where, after reacquainting myself with the joys of unabashed nudity, I took a few dips in the building’s searing hot and icy cold tubs. Both were a shock to my system, the cold one even bringing me dangerously close to a full mental shutdown. That said, as refreshing as they were, I’d feel dishonest calling these soaks “consciousness-altering.”

Sleep Deprivation

Having stayed awake for entirety of this challenge—at this point, more than 40 hours—I was starting to see in tunnel vision with spots blipping in and out of my periphery. Rather than take another dip in the tubs and risk drowning, I took this as a sign to pack it in and go home and sleep, hopefully with some immersive dreams in store to perfectly round out the project.

Though my dreams that night were either nonexistent or not very memorable, I woke up the next day rested and clear-headed, ready to report my findings to my roommate. I didn’t have much to offer him by way of natural high suggestions, but I made it clear that I was proud of his dedication to a booze-free month. And if the stresses of sobriety ever became too heavy for him to handle alone in the remaining days of this challenge, there are some EDM playlists queued up to help push him to the finish line.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

Alleged Murderer of Two Men from Toronto’s Gay Village Was a Mall Santa

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The man arrested for two homicides in Toronto Thursday was a mall Santa Claus several years in a row, according to his Facebook page.

Bruce McArthur, 66, of Thorncliffe Park, was charged Thursday with two counts of first-degree murder related to two missing men from Toronto’s gay village—Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman. Their bodies have not yet been located but police are searching five properties—four in Toronto and one in Madoc, Ontario.

According to Toronto Police, McArthur, a self-employed landscaper, had a sexual relationship with Kinsman, 49, who went missing last June. They did not say what McArthur’s relationship was with Esen, 44, who disappeared in April. Police believe there are more victims, and the community has long suspected a serial killer was operating in the area.

McArthur’s Facebook profile indicates he was a Santa Claus at Scarborough’s Agincourt Mall for at least 2015 and 2016, though an Instagram photo from a mall-goer appears to show him playing the role of Santa this past Christmas. In 2015 he posted a photo of himself with the caption “Back in the Santa Chair for another year.”

Accused murderer Bruce McArthur dressed as Santa Claus. Photo via Facebook

Several of the photos depict him dressed up as Santa and holding small children and babies.

By Thursday evening, comments relating to the murders began to pop up alongside those pictures.

“This santa made it to the naughty list,” said one man on Facebook, while another commented with the hashtag “#killersanta.”

Agincourt Mall has not yet responded to VICE’s request for comment.

McArthur appeared to be active online, though by Thursday night he had lost more than 20 Facebook friends.

VICE revealed Thursday that he appeared to have had a profile on the gay dating site silverdaddies.com, on which he said that he was “a bit shy until i get to know you, but am a romantic at heart.”

McArthur's silverdaddies.com dating profile. Screenshot via silverdaddies.com

In 2016, he posted a photo of police at Toronto Pride with the caption “Happy Pride.” A photo of him from Halloween shows him dressed up in black robes and handing out candy to a little girl. His other posts include puppies eating bananas and he appears to be well-travelled.

As recently as December, Toronto police dismissed concerns about as serial killer in the gay village. At a press conference Thursday, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said that information was “accurate at the time.”

Police arrested McArthur after launching a task forced called Project Prism in August to look into the disappearances of Esen and Kinsman. They are also investigating the disappearances of three other men—Abdulbasir Faizi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, and Majeed Kayhan, who vanished from 2010-2012.

McArthur appeared to have been Facebook friends with Navaratnam.

Homicide detective Hank Idsinga said Thursday “We are trying to identify whether they may have become victim to Mr. McArthur as well.”

In light of the arrest, members of the LGBTQ community are speaking out about what they see as a massive oversight by police.

“So, in a press conference where homophobic officials could not bring themselves to utter the phrase "LGBT community", it was announced the SERIAL KILLER targeting Toronto's gay village that @TorontoPolice assured us did not exist has indeed been caught: Bruce McArthur, 66,” tweeted queer artist John Richard Allan.

Last summer VICE News published an investigation into the three missing men, highlighting police shortcomings.

—with files from Justin Ling

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

My First Job Out of Prison Was Back in Prison

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This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

I was released in 2015, after serving 20 years for murder in New Mexico. While inside, I worked as a baker in the cafeteria at the Corrections Department. Then, when I got out, my first job was in that same kitchen, serving green-chili cheeseburgers and burritos and chicken-fried steak.

I was the first ex-prisoner allowed to work in the state system as part of something new called the Returning Citizen Program. The idea was that the Corrections Department would hire guys back after they got out. The goal was to reduce recidivism, to give people the skills they need to be successful.



They needed someone who would represent the new program well, and I think it helped that I had interacted with the public already, selling bracelets and earrings I’d made at a prison craft fair. I donated the profits to the Ronald McDonald House, and the program officials had let me be interviewed by a newspaper while I was still inside.

I was a bit apprehensive about going back to the same place I’d been incarcerated all those years. But this was different, since I wouldn’t actually be living in a prison. Mostly, I was afraid of small things: What if I did my taxes wrong, and the IRS sent me back to prison for real? What if I accidentally violated my parole?

After I was accepted, but before I was first released, I was so careful, following every little regulation to the letter. It felt like all eyes were on me. I made sure I didn’t have one too many blankets in my cell. I said to my bunkies, "You do your time, and I'll do mine. You want to have an extra blanket, you knock yourself out, but if they try to shake you down, don't throw it on my bunk.”

Once I got out, I was just as careful: I wasn’t allowed to have alcohol in my house, so I asked my girlfriend to get rid of her cooking sherry.

My “new” gig in the kitchen went smoothly, for the most part. A lot of the prisoners working with me were really supportive, since they hoped they might get a similar opportunity. Still, I could tell some had lost their respect for me for what they saw as “switching sides,” though they wouldn’t actually say anything since it might get them in trouble.

A lot of officers didn’t have all that much respect for me, either. A few said, “Hey, I want extra,” trying to get me to give them another portion of food for the same price. “Well, extra costs me,” I’d say, “so it costs you, too.” They’d try to exert the same authority they had over me when I was locked up. I wouldn’t let them.

After about nine months, my boss quit, and I was elevated to running the kitchen. I got to design meals and work out the profit margins. A few more ex-prisoners were hired. One of them called me a few times, and I tried to talk him through the anxiety that came from being watched so closely, even as a free man. It never gets better, I said. A lot of prison employees did not believe that an inmate should ever come back and work inside a correctional facility, that we were just going to smuggle in drugs and contraband.

Then a local news station ran a story on me. I watched it with trepidation: You never know how the media might spin something. But the story was very positive. I was hurt afterward when I read some of the comments online—they said I didn’t deserve my job, sometimes using nasty language—and I carried that hurt with me. But someone at the department recalled telling the reporter that I was the kind of person she would entrust to babysit her 3-year-old daughter. That she might put that kind of trust in me made me feel a lot better.

Still, being the first person to participate in the jobs program was stressful at times. One day, a high-ranking corrections official stopped me in the hallway and said, “Just so you know, if you hadn’t been successful, that would have been the end of the program.” Gee, thanks, I thought. No pressure!

After a couple of years, I left the program. I had some medical issues and didn’t show up for work, but it wasn’t meant to last forever. Now I’m looking for a job again.

Some inmates say, “When I get out, I’m just going to file for welfare; I don’t know how to function in society.” I get the attraction to being lazy, to having Uncle Sam pay the bill, but I don’t think it’s right. There are so many of us trying to find work, and I’m proud to have played my small part.

David Van Horn served 20 years of a 40-year sentence for the 1995 arson murder of Norma Clouse, and for shooting two law enforcement officers, crimes he committed while high on methamphetamine. He was released on parole in 2015. More on his case, and the wider practice of ex-prisoners rehired to work by corrections agencies, can be found here.

How to Take the Perfect Instagram Selfie

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Last night, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron hung out at London's V&A Museum after discussing a whole bunch of Brexit-related stuff.

They were there, said May, celebrating "the extraordinary values and the talented people who link" the UK and France. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that they commemorated the moment with a selfie. This selfie. This deeply questionable selfie.

As the Guardian points out today, politicians seem to have only recently discovered the concept of posting selfies to social media. Perhaps they're hoping that candid shots will help the electorate think of them more as "regular people" or "actual human beings" than aloof automatons. Perhaps they've realised photos get more faves than announcements about marine management policy. Perhaps there are no ulterior motives, and they – like many of us – just like to share their happy moments with families and friends.

Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure: they're not very good at it. Take the Macron x May photo: it's blurry, the lighting's bad, bits of people's faces are being cut off and the caption is rubbish.

To lend a helping hand, we asked some Instagram models – selfie connoisseurs – for their thoughts.

@vanessaohenlen

VICE: First impressions?
Vanessa: You probably never see Theresa take selfies, so it’s funny and rare. But the selfie itself is no billion-dollar selfie. It’s blurry and the lighting isn't that great.

How would you make it better?
They could definitely choose a different location, where there's better light, or they could have someone use their phone flash to make the selfie brighter.

Talk to me about angles.
I would have had someone with the longest arms be at the front to take it. I would get them to take it from the top side; you'd easily be able to get everyone in the picture.

Would you post this selfie?
Probably not. But there are some big faces on there, so I’d probably just post it on my story.

@kristianwilkes

Thoughts?
Kristian: They’re all smiling and seem to be in very high spirits, but the camera is shaky. I don’t think Macron is the best photographer in the world.

Does that make it a good selfie?
I think the happier you seem in a selfie, the more attractive you are to others.

What about the lighting?
It’s got a red tint, so either everyone’s a little sunburnt or it was taken inside or in the evening.

Did they pick the right angle?
Well, it’s only taken from that angle to fit as many people in as possible. Unfortunately, Macron’s arms aren’t long enough, but he’s done a great job.

Any advice for them?
Maybe Macron should get one of his bodyguards to always have a selfie stick at hand.

Would you post this selfie or not?
I try to keep my Instagram quite bright and colourful, so judging on the quality of the photo, my answer would be a no.

@chanellygirl

First impressions?
Chanelly Girl: Blurry. High quality selfies should always be the aim.

Is it a bad selfie?
Quality wise, yes, but I think it captured the atmosphere well.

What about the lighting and angle?
The selfie-taker seems quite inexperienced with taking selfies.

What advice would you give to Macron, the inexperienced selfie-taker?
Well, lighting is very important, preferably natural lighting, and focusing the camera on the parts of your face that you want to brighten.

Would you post this selfie?
Only if it was with a famous person. Sometimes blurry photos indicate how much fun you had.

Thanks!

@nanasbaah


Which Is the Coolest Drug?

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Drugs are the epitome of cool. It's an infallible truth that's held true through the ages. De Quincey, Ginsberg, Basquiat, ODB, Hedberg, Moses—they were all at it. Granted, they mostly all died of drug-related causes, but drowning before your time, face down in an opiate-induced septic tank of your own vomit is waaaay cooler than dying of boring, old pancreatic cancer anyway, right? Natural causes might be nature's course, but it won't get you on many tributes.

From the beatniks getting hot rock burns in their polo necks, to the current generation with their Benzo Fury, and triangular deep-V sunburns, every generation has had its own drug of choice. In this post-everything world of recyclable music, art, fashion, and culture, how do you tell which drugs are genuinely cool, and which ones are just an ironic homage to whatever decade people are currently fadding-out over?

One thing I want to be absolutely certain of when I'm taking drugs is that I'm going to look cool to strangers. Because what's the point in flirting with heart attacks, respiratory arrest, and coke babble if you can't fool younger and more impressionable people into thinking you're the shit? No one wants to be the martyr that dies with no disciples.

WEED

Let's start with weed, because it's probably what you started with, too before you discovered that other drugs can also be a lot of fun and don't kill you nearly as much as you thought they would. And if you're the kind of person who claims that weed "isn't a drug, it's a plant, man,” go fuck yourself. Try smoking a juniper bush and see if it makes you wanna listen to SpaceGhostPurpp.

It's kinda hard to summarize weed, because it's essentially got the same demographic as alcohol: everyone. That means there are as many people ruining the 'erb as there are making it seem like a fundamental lifestyle choice that you'd be a freak not to adhere to. For better or worse (almost definitely worse), I've been smoking weed since I was young enough to find Dre profound, so I'm coming into this with a hefty bias.

That said, people who have never smoked pot are always desperate to tell me that it'll ruin my life and leave me brain-dead, infertile, and alone, perpetually slumped over a sofa and covered in crushed Doritos, which wouldn't be cool. The only thing is, that's complete bullshit. That sort of thing only happens to smokers who had next-to-no drive to do anything in the first place, much like the fact that kids don't shoot up schools because they play video games, they shoot up schools because they're criminal sociopaths.

Anyway, I'm beginning to sound like someone on the "free the leaf" Facebook page. The whole point of this guide is to alert you as to which drugs will make you feel and look cool to people who don't necessarily know you, as there is literally nothing more important in life than the approval of others. Weed has its cons, but it's also a pretty solid, low-risk way of letting people know you're down to party and don't get hung up on the little things, like work, and school, and all that other shit that happens between tokes.

Cool Rating: 7/10

PILLS/MDMA

Ecstasy's heyday is now nothing more than a tedious anecdote barked at you by somebody who used to co-host MTV’s Remote Control in the 90s. A chemical reminder that it was once deemed socially acceptable to idolize Danny Dyer in Human Traffic and regularly use the phrase, "Pop a coupla pills and fuckin' get on it, my son." Totally not cool.

If cool is fixies, post-dubstep, and talking like a child on the internet (and, btw, it completely is, I work at VICE, I should know LOL), then ecstasy and the culture that surrounds it are the exact antithesis. "Paranoia not euphoria" is our generation's motto. Nobody's going to think you're cool if you spend your whole night talking about how you really need to spend more time together. Come on, guy—quit the gurners, grow a beard, Shazam every record posted on Noisey and you might (just about) be able to fool people into thinking you're hip.

Cool Rating: 3/10

INTERNET DRUGS

If real class-A powders are the knowing, worldly cool of Bill Murray, then internet drugs are Piers Morgan's birthday party at Jamie Oliver's house, jamming out to some Snoop Lion. The problem? Tabloids did exactly what they did with ICP, Marilyn Manson, and emo and made mephedrone et al the scourge of every parent-of-young-adults in the world, therefore making it super popular with every 16-year-old in the world.

From joyriding to Limp Bizkit, if the media says something is bad then the kids will say it's good. So yeah, I guess it's cool with that demographic, but we're trying to appeal to people who stay on top of their taxes here. Never even think about publicly snorting any disco plant feed because you won't have a hope in hell of getting laid.

Cool Rating: 0/10

KETAMINE

The basic concept of ketamine has to be the coolest of all the drugs. I mean, you're snorting something to help you party that's usually used to sedate full-grown horses, and if you've really got a good connect, rhinos. How subversive! It could almost have been in an Andy Warhol movie, or something—it's that profound. Unfortunately, K itself has now become the preserve of people who ride their skateboards to bro-step nights and people who can't pronounce the names of the DJs they're going to see, which is really uncool.

One definite plus, however, is that it's probably the quickest drug to give you that glazed, nothing-behind-the-eyes look, which is exactly what you want out of any drug experience. The experience itself is but a minor detail, actively alerting people to the fact that you're ON DRUGS is what it's really all about, and K is a winner in that respect. K has the unique ability to make even Danny Brown look like your mom taking a bong hit, which scores it highly on this list.

Cool Rating: 6/10

COCAINE

You can probably tell from this picture that cocaine is, BY FAR, the most glamourous drug on the list. Such hero-worshipped figureheads of cool as Kate Moss, Axl Rose, Lindsay Lohan, and Alice Dellal have been pictured doing it. I mean, Alice Dellal, you guys! How cool is that! Then again, it's also synonymous with those sleazy, handsy kinds of douches who wear dinner jackets with Converse and lurk around every club or party, trying to get wide-eyed young girls to touch their dicks with offers of free bumps, which nobody thinks is cool. Except for, like, Colin Farrell (maybe).

A definite plus is that even if you're doing two percent-purity blow bought from a part time drum 'n' bass DJ, people will think you're rich. But you've got to be nonchalant about it. Because being really rich but kinda jaded about it all is a surefire way to make strangers think you're cool. HYFR.

Cool Rating: 6/10

CRACK

Believe Keith Haring, De La Soul, and youth center workers across the world: Crack is wack. As much as Pete Doherty spent most of the last decade trying to convince us that it's the 21st century equivalent of opium—something that's intrinsic to any creative endeavor (and he's usually so spot on in capturing the zeitgeist: rosary beads, trilbies, etc)—it's not washing. The only things that ever seem to come out of freebasing are poverty and constant restlessness, neither of which are very cool, unless you're a well-adjusted, middle class student desperately trying to appear damaged. Plus, smoking out of a crackpipe isn't exactly conducive to looking cool—you're all hunched up and overly intense the whole time, which, as any laid back cool cat will tell you, is certainly not cool, brother.

Although there is something rather tempting about smoking it in front of the people that go in eight ways on grams of mephedrone before an Avicii show. It's a statement that says, "This is what drugs are really about. They are dangerous and they are ugly. What you are doing is not drugs." But then you realize you're so fucked up that you're trying to impress people who go to Avicii shows. Fuck that: crack is the wackest.

Cool Rating: 1/10

METH

Weirdly, I've never smoked meth (I know, right?), but as I've learnt from reputable media sources like Breaking Bad and World's Scariest Police Chases, doing so seems a historically terrible idea. Unless you're actively seeking out the quickest route to a rotted mouth, paranoia, and inescapable prostitution—in which case, have at it—it is not for you. Half your face scabbed over from the incessant, tweaked-out scratching? No. You'll be riding the lame train all the way to Tribal Tattoo County, Loserville, no matter how well-defined your new cheekbones.

Cool Rating: 2/10

HEROIN

Much like UFC and internet pornography, people who get into heroin always end up getting into it hard, which must mean there's something pretty cool about it. I suppose it would be a bit like falling in love with a film and getting covered in tattoos of minor characters that have some emotional relevance to you, which at the very least is a good conversation piece at parties. Good conversation pieces also equal cool, by the way. Although if you are addicted to heroin your conversation topics could be limited to how much you love it and how much you're trying to get off it.

Cool Rating: 7/10

PRESCRIPTION PILLS

There's something quite sexy about the abuse of prescription drugs. People who are addicted to oxy or adderall or vicodin are tortured enough to be cool, but still functional. Able to accompany you to a gig and buy their own drinks, but likely to slink off at some point, before wandering back all nonchalant and mysterious, like a character in a Bret Easton Ellis novel, only less annoying and self-obsessed. They're a higher class of drug addict, sat atop a pharmaceutical block party of legally prescribed fun, where every man is depressed in that appealing, world-weary way and every woman is on just the right side of damaged.

Also, because very few famous people die from taking recreational drugs any more (goddman you, sophisticated rehabilitation programs and methadone courses for starving us of our martyrs), prescription drugs retain a kind of dangerous glamour. And people thinking you might die soon is always a good way to get them to kiss you.

Cool Rating: 9/10

ACID/MUSHROOMS

I'm currently signed up to receive Google alerts for drug trend forecasts, and let me get you in on this: Psychedelics are making a comeback. Rejoice, the 60s are back, make friends with some Japanese hipsters.

Think about it: You're strolling through the park on Sunday afternoon, the busy hum and visuals of your surroundings washing over you, when you spot a group of friends chewing on some mushrooms, having a better time than you, letting those visuals dictate their movements, and opening their minds to the fact that hey, maybe belly buttons aren't just for your fetal months? Maybe we're supposed to be using them somehow now, but we just haven't worked out why yet? Pretty cool, right?

Cool Rating: 8/10

NONE

After all that, one thing you must remember is that, as a rule of thumb, all drugs are cooler than no drugs. Even if you're smoking month-old hash crumblings from a pair of jeans that turned Polish stonewash in the machine, you're still cooler than the "high on life" crowd. If nobody's actually seen you do them—as is often the case with hallucinogens and pharmaceuticals—just go and tell them you've done them, wave your arms about, and talk about states of consciousness, things like that. People will think you're cool if you do that.

Cool Rating: N/A

How Much Do 'Tell All' Political Thrillers Really Tell Us?

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With the publication of Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff has achieved a state of journalistic career nirvana beyond the wildest private dreams of even the most ruthlessly ambitious broadsheet intern. It's a piece of rare publishing magic: a book so immediately famous in pre-publication that the entire world knew the main plot points before a single punter had even read it. Donald Trump: walking cataclysm-in-waiting, publishing house panacea made flesh.

At this point, there can’t be a single watercooler in the country that hasn’t witnessed titillated mewings about its contents. Sure, it’s best to couch them in tones of appalled sobriety. Steve Bannon in the wilderness waving thick chipolata fingers and screaming treason. Pissgate, Pussygate and sterilised Maccy D's Double Cheese Burgers by the jet load. The paranoid 25 stone baby, frightened at its own shadow. A hideous, particularly American tableau of accumulated horrors in both major and minor keys.

Yet, while the bombast of the content might have been turned up to match the tenor of the incumbent, Fire and Fury doesn’t exactly mark a departure or witness the birth of a new, shocking political sub-genre. Indeed, tell-all insider dispatches from the heart of government are something akin to political publishing gold dust, guaranteed a snug perch on bestseller lists from Wisconsin to Wakefield. Who doesn’t love to read tales of government dysfunction, sleaze or venality? Of titanically petty fallings-out and long-nursed personal grievances.

Who couldn’t, for example, read with delight Andrew Rawnsley’s novel-paced evisceration of the New Labour fag-end days, 2010’s The End of the Party, or be unmoved by the sheer bitchiness on offer. Of Blair "writing emotional blank cheques" to Brown and George W Bush. Or of the revelation that Peter Mandelson never seems to break character as the Middlesex Richard III ("I love you, but I’ll break you! If you do that, I can destroy you!").

Or, in more noble moods, the outlines of late-night struggles and earnest attempts at reform to a corrupt, blighted system, as with James Mann’s The Obamians, a bracingly "gee wizz, boy isn’t this kinda like the West Wing" rattle through the foreign policy agenda of the Obama administration. In short, it’s a corner which holds something for a reader of any persuasion from either side of the Atlantic, left, right, centre or Monster Raving Loony, alike.

What’s more, you can actually feel good reading it. This isn’t just idle gossip and the settling of poisonous scores by baffled junior ministers or Chiefs of Staff booted into the long grass (or back to Breibart, in the case of Steve Bannon). This is a peek behind the fraying curtain, a hand-in-hand tour down the corridors of power.

The barriers of entry for the writer involved tend to be both fairly achievable and utterly remote. First, enough baseline talent to be able to transform the vast hours of observed boredom into breezy airport newsagent spy thriller prose. Then, some sort of "in" to the government in question. For Rawnsley, this was attained via a distinguished career as a somewhat sympathetic political journalist. For Wolff, decades of political and cultural reportage combined with once having written a vaguely friendly Trump profile and saying that his hotels were quite nice, actually. Crucially, they have to possess a gift for simply hanging about. Of sitting in the right canteen at the exact right moment that some shell-shocked staffer stumbles in with a wobbly lip and a grievance to screech. Of listening while others babble – a talent as rare in political journalism as it is in life itself.


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There's also an argument to be made that reading these political equivalents of the Mean Girls burn book is almost a civic duty, a true guide to the vanities, chaos and the very strong, stable genius of the burbling – at best – mediocrities who govern us. And, as in the case of Wolff on Trump, their genuine competence and willing to even do the job itself. And this argument is correct, in its own small way: it is important to know the machinations of the powerful and their disasters of morality or diet.

But it takes a neck of brass to pretend these are the main motives in tearing through the pages of these political true-crimes. Sure, the minutiae of the PR middle managers' coup d'etat of the Tories does make for mildly diverting reading in Call Me Dave. But would you really bother reading it without the knowledge you were eventually going to reach the section about Davey allegedly fucking a pig? Doubt it.

As much as we might like to believe in the self-improving powers of such books, and as profound and necessary as we like to believe their insights to be, it’s a mistake to value them too highly above their first sugar rush highs. As Trump himself would enthusiastically attest, junk food is fine, in moderation. And to call these kind of books journalistic junk food isn’t a slur; they're full of quick, astonishment-filled dopamine hits that spark the same parts of the brain that make you stop and leer at a National Enquirer headline about Lindsay Lohan being abducted by aliens. And that’s fine. But man can’t live on Big Macs alone.

@DrLimes99

We Are Only Just Realising That Facebook Has Lost All Meaning

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For our grandparents, having a job and a family, putting food on the table and not dying in a war was normally enough. But we’re looking for something more: we need to know we're not just another Jake or Sarah floating around in the millennial milieu – we need meaning in our lives and to know we meant something to the world.

Facebook Inc. is the first half-a-trillion dollar company to profit not from steel, oil, products or hardware, but from our quest for meaning. It takes experiences, thoughts, ideas, lust and fear, and turns them, with the help of targeted advertising, into money. With the brands it owns –Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – it has something near a monopoly on the meaning economy.

It is, of course, far from the first company to profit in this way. Since the dawn of advertising, giving meaning to our lives has been a way for companies to sell more product. It’s why Coke sells more than Pepsi, why people trust German cars no matter what. But in the Facebook era it has been supercharged: they aren’t just reaping financial gain from hollow aspirations like wanting a nicer watch or a better body. Their success stems from something deeper: an in-joke between friends; a 2AM status from someone who can’t get to sleep; some thigh revealed in a new profile pic; a desperate, lonely scroll through photos back from when you still had fun. That is the Facebook business model – it tries to convert the messiness of your life into meaningful moments, which it can then sell on to other companies.

The fact that Facebook has become so rich so quickly has obviously interested other companies. How can they jump in on the meaning economy? Certainly, many have tried. Traditional brands have moved from advertising a product into branded content in which they try to connect at some deeper level with our sense of id. Take Lynx, which once sold a horny teenage fantasy of their product attracting women like flies, but in 2016 released a series of black-and-white YouTube ruminations on modern masculinity.

Heineken made a series of videos about people who have fundamental political differences, and infamously Pepsi tried to co-opt the rise of street activism in a spot featuring Kendall Jenner. These videos, mostly too long for television, rely on Facebook to be spread, and so advertisers started to act like your friends, posting videos for you to share with others – which a surprising number of us were willing to do.

There are also new companies that have sprung up as parasitic feeders in the meaning economy. Some existed before Facebook, and found the platform a useful tool to spread the journalism and entertainment they were already creating. Others, like Uproxx, Now This and AJ+, have refined this process further, by industrialising the meaning industry. They will take a video of a woman shouting at someone on a train and turn it into a tightly packed piece of feelings called "This woman went viral after shutting down a racist rant on the subway".

The fact the video is filmed on someone’s phone, that the follow-up interview is a little grainy, that the words appear over the video hinting at how you should feel – it’s all part of how you make something meaningful on Facebook.

This video feels righteous, important. It's not clickbait, but it's also not news; it sits in some magic middle spot: the professionalisation of social interaction. There are millions of other examples: "Hidden camera captures greatest dad ever", "A Picture of a Refugee Staring Into a Gym Went Viral. Now He Has A Lifetime Membership," "This Woman Shut Down a Fuckboy Who Wouldn’t Stop Texting Her and His Response Is Everything That’s Wrong With Modern Dating." These stories aim to ape real social interaction, but supercharge it, so they are actually more interesting than anything our friends have to say.

Indeed, our friends mostly stopped posting their own statuses and just started sharing these posts instead. That was the dirty secret of Facebook's "social" media: it wasn't really social in the traditional sense of having a conversation; it was more like Gogglebox, an audience watching someone else watch and react to someone they didn't know. The companies which distributed these sharing focal points were allowed to grow so rapidly because Facebook allowed them to, delivering them millions of humans if their content proved to be "shareable" enough.

Facebook has never been neutral in this process: it guides you to the things you should be feeling, the friendships you should value, the thoughts you should have. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced a huge change at Facebook, perhaps the biggest since the company opened up beyond university campuses and became available to everyone. He is going to remove nearly all the content created by brands, publishers and news organisations, he revealed, and make Facebook more about interactions between real people. The reason for doing this, Zuckerberg says, is to create "more meaningful social interactions".

The theory behind this, like everything Facebook does, is research and consumer-tested. Zuckerberg says the company has found that:

"when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos – even if they're entertaining or informative – may not be as good."

The changes are already being rolled out, and Facebook says they will be felt by everyone in the next couple of months. But in my news feed, at least, they seem to be in full effect.

To demonstrate what I've currently got going on, I've just screenshotted everything appearing in my feed (except for links to VICE articles, which are being shared by my colleagues, which I imagine is quite unique to my particular circumstances).

Wow. I have ~feels~

The problem with the new Facebook is that there is simply not enough meaningful content being generated by users to fill the gap left by brands and publishers. Granted, every now and again there is an engagement announcement, a "SUMMER 2017" film developed, an incredible thread after someone quits their job and does a 600-word status on how bad the toilets were. But mostly it’s just people asking for accountants or holiday recommendations. Most of us stopped handing over our real selves to Facebook a while ago, and let publishers take over. Now they’re gone, there are no meaningful social interactions, just a dull bulletin board.

VICE is of course not a neutral participant in this debate: it relies partly on Facebook for readers, and like many publishers will likely take a traffic hit from the changes to the algorithm – a shift our colleagues at Motherboard pointed out might not be such a bad thing for the media in the long run. But where does this leave Facebook? Leaked data from 2016 showed a huge drop-off in people posting anything personal on the site, and without either publisher or meaningful personal content, what's left? Not much, according to a Verge survey published last year, which found that among the big five tech companies, Facebook had the lowest percentage of people who liked its products and services, the lowest number of people who would recommend it to a friend, and the highest percentage of people who distrust it.

For a while now, with its "On This Day" feature, Facebook has been trying to remind you of a time when the site really did play a part in your meaningful experiences, when you would upload whole photo albums and write on your friends' walls. But look at your notifications and what do you see? One mate from school who became a promoter still inviting you to the club night you’ve never been to, and a thousand alerts from a "room to rent in London" group you’ve forgotten to mute.

Facebook has been fooled by its own creation myth – that it is still a place bubbling with individuals creating incredible moments that have to be shared. In reality, it’s a place most of us are becoming weirded out by and distrustful of. A platform on which we're less likely then ever to share. Publisher content – from advertisers, traditional media and the new feelings industry – was a smokescreen for something that has probably been true for a long time: Facebook doesn’t mean anything any more.

@samwolfson

Desus and Mero Usher in the Future of Male Sex Robots

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Experts tried to warn us that there would soon be a day when sex robots would be so good, they'd ruin civilization as we know it. Now, it looks like that day is rapidly approaching. After the rollout of a few female companions, one inventor is working to create a male sex robot, complete with a bionic penis he says will be "better than a vibrator."

On Thursday's episode of Desus and Mero, the hosts talk about the latest in robot technology and air a few of their concerns about the angry-looking sex cyborg. Then they check in with SLUTEVER's Karley Sciortino to see how one of these hyperrealistic sex toys works, firsthand.

You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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US News

Shutdown Looms Ahead of Major Senate Vote
House Republicans pushed through a short-term government spending bill late Thursday and were hoping to compel Senate Democrats to pass the measure before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. But nine Democratic senators who voted for the last stopgap bill said they could not back this latest measure, with some leaders citing the lack of funding for DREAMers, disaster relief, and opioid treatment.—The Washington Post

Trump Appointee Quits After Horrific Remarks Surface
Carl Higbie, appointed chief of external affairs at the Corporation for National and Community Service by the Trump administration, has resigned after comments he made on an internet radio show resurfaced. Higbie made derogatory remarks about African Americans, Muslims, women, and the LGBTQ community, claiming black women believe “breeding is a form of government employment.”—CNN

Supreme Court Halts Ruling Against Gerrymandering in North Carolina
Justices placed a temporary block on last week’s federal court ruling against Republican state lawmakers who redrew voting boundaries in favor of the GOP. The lower federal court had ordered lawmakers to come up with a new map by January 24, but the Supreme Court decision means the midterms are now expected to be fought using the existing boundaries.—The New York Times

White Supremacy Linked to Majority of Extremist Deaths in US
Violent white supremacists were behind 18 of the 34 deaths attributed to extremists in the US past year, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Its latest report found Islamist extremists were behind nine deaths in 2017. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt warned against underestimating “the effect of an increasingly visible alt-right.”—NBC News

International News

Car Strikes Crowd at Rio Beach
An infant was killed and at least 15 people injured when a motorist drove a car into a busy promenade outside Rio De Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach. According to local reports, the driver had an epileptic fit, with medication found at the scene. A police official said the incident was not believed to be a terrorist attack.—BBC News

North Korea Could Hold a Military Parade Prior to Olympics
Diplomats in Pyongyang claimed international officials have been invited to a military display marking the 70th anniversary of the North Korean army set to take place on the eve of the 2018 Winter Olympics despite plans for a joint Korean team. An analyst for the NK Pro monitoring site said satellite shots appeared to reveal North Korean soldiers preparing for the display.—Reuters

Ukraine Says Russia Occupying Eastern Provinces
The Ukrainian parliament passed a bill asserting parts of the country’s Donbass region were under “temporary occupation” by Russian separatist forces. The legislation allowed Ukrainian citizens to sue the Russian government for property damage. The Russian foreign ministry responded: “You cannot call this anything but preparation for a new war.”—Al Jazeera

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Is Pregnant
The Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, who became prime minister in October, has announced she and her partner are expecting their first child in June. Ardern said she would take six weeks of parental leave before returning to work. She explained on Facebook that her partner, Clarke Gayford, would be a “stay at home dad.”—The Guardian

Everything Else

Colin Firth Refuses to Work with Woody Allen
The British actor, who starred in Allen’s 2013 movie Magic in the Moonlight, has said he not appear in any of his future films. “I wouldn’t work with him again,” said Firth. His comments came around the same time as Dylan Farrow’s first TV interview in which she claimed her adopted father sexually assaulted her as a child.—The Guardian

Machine Gun Kelly Starring in Mötley Crüe Biopic
The rapper will play drummer Tommy Lee in a Netflix movie based on the 2001 autographical account of the metal band called The Dirt. Jeff Tremaine will direct the film, and members of Mötley Crüe will act as co-producers on the project.—Variety

Cosby Prosecutors Want 20 Accusers to Testify
The prosecution team is making moves ahead of Bill Cosby’s retrial for his alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand, set to begin in April. Lawyers want 19 fellow accusers to testify, whereas only one other woman was allowed to speak during the first go-around.—VICE

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we’re discussing the creative ways doctors treat patients who refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds.

The 'Super Troopers 2' Trailer Is Full of Canadian Mounties and Rob Lowe

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The trailer for the upcoming Super Troopers sequel is finally here, 17 years after the original hit theaters—and if you've spent the past two decades waiting patiently to watch Farva shoot a bald eagle out of the sky, then, well, the wait is over.

Super Troopers 2, which was funded with help from a successful Indiegogo campaign in 2015, will bring the whole Broken Lizard crew together for some good old shenanigans. It looks like Mac, Thorny, Farva, and the rest will go head-to-head with some Canadian Mounties this time around, in a nice callback to the original's police vs. trooper rivalry plot. Apparently, there's a small Canadian town that is actually on the US side of the border, meaning that it falls under the Troopers' jurisdiction, and general hilarity ensues during the handoff.

Along with basic plot stuff, the trailer is full of everything you'd expect from a Super Troopers 2 trailer—delinquent cops messing with drivers at traffic stops, jokes about liters of cola, and a solid "meow" reference right from the start. There's also a moose-fucking joke, since, you know, Canada. Rob Lowe is there, too, for some reason.

The movie was written by the Broken Lizard team and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, who also stars as Thorny. It's set to hit theaters on 4/20—naturally—but until then, relive your early stoner days and give the trailer a watch right meow.

Government Investigating After Zoo Takes Bear Through Drive-Thru

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This story has been updated with comment from wildlife enforcement.

A video of an Alberta zoo taking a bear through a Dairy Queen drive thru for a nice ice cream cone has prompted the government to investigate.

Yeah… so the bear is a Kodiak named Berkeley who lives at Discovery Wildlife Park in southern Alberta. I guess it was her first birthday a few days ago, so what we’re seeing is a bear picking out her favourite ice cream for a cake and the zoo decided to film it. The video shows the bear sticking its head out of a truck while a man feeds the bear form the drive thru window.

The Environment and Parks, and the Fish and Wildlife enforcement branch confirmed their investigation to the Canadian Press this morning with a spokesmen calling it “disturbing.” The zoo has since taken down the video but not before it was reviewed by an expert at VICE—me, an Albertan.

At first glance the ice cream cake seems like a joke but you must remember that these are a bunch of people that took a bear through a drive thru—they obviously don’t fuck around. So, it’s not that huge of a shock that there exists another video, this time posted by the Innisfail Dairy Queen, showed them feeding the bear a full ice cream cake. In the video Discovery Wildlife Park trainer, Serena Bos, feeds the bear the cake while taking questions on Facebook Live, including one about what else they feed the animal.

“Peanuts are Berkeley’s favourite treat on a daily basis, it has high protein which is important,” Bos says in the video. “Occasionally, about once a month since we found out she likes it, is she really enjoys [Kraft Dinner.]”

“I’m sure many of you out there have one year olds that really like KD too.”

This video has also been removed.

The view from the drive thru window.

The bear has never known the wild, being born in captivity to captive parents. The Canadian Press spoke to a bear expert who, among others, called the video irresponsible and said that ice cream cake is "not part of their natural diet nor is it natural for a bear to be eating an ice-cream cake in the middle of winter when they should be sleeping."

"It's a challenge every day out there in our parks and protected areas to try to teach people who are visiting these places or live here in Alberta that we don't feed wildlife, that we don't feed bears," said Bear Safety & More’s Kim Titchener, told CP.

"We need to conserve and protect them, and respect them."

Discovery Wildlife Park pushed back on the idea that their video is reckless by saying that the Dairy Queen was closed when they brought a bear in a truck through it therefore no threat to the public was occuring. In the video Bos does say that Berkley isn’t a normal bear and that it’s a bad idea to try and feed a normal, wild bear.

The Canadian Press also found that in 2015, Discovery Wildlife Park was found to have more than 50 violations after being looked at by Zoocheck Canada. These violations include them having a supervised “kiss a grizzly” attraction which “pose[s] a significant risk to the public,” and not having proper containment for some of their animals.

Discovery Wildlife Park has not responded to VICE’s request for comment but this story will updated it if they do. Nevertheless, us folk here at VICE Canada would, even though we’re not exactly bear experts, advise against feeding bears tasty frozen treats.

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Wahlberg Also Made Eight Times Michelle Williams's Salary for 'All the Money'

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On Saturday, Mark Wahlberg pledged to donate $1.5 million to Time's Up in Michelle Williams's name, the amount he was paid to reshoot scenes from All the Money in the World compared to his co-star's $80 per day. But it doesn't change the fact that the actress's salary was still a hell of a lot less than her male co-star's for her work on the film.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Williams earned an eighth of Wahlberg's salary for her leading role in All the Money in the World, despite the fact that they shared the screen for about the same amount of time. He reportedly took home $5 million, while she walked away with just $625,000.

The massive salary difference may not seem that surprising to many female performers in Hollywood, but it's worth noting that Williams has been nominated for four Oscars to Wahlberg's two, as Vulture points out. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for role in the John Paul Getty III biopic.

The two actors haven't yet commented on the salary discrepancy, but Wahlberg told Variety he "100 percent support[s] the fight for fair pay," after it was reported he made $1.5 million for the reshoots alone. William Morris Endeavor (WME), the agency that represents both actors, donated $500,000 to Time's Up in Williams's name over the weekend, but hasn't commented yet on the actress's overall salary pay gap.

The pay disparity is a particularly brutal dagger considering how passionate Williams is about the Ridley Scott project. She reportedly gave up her Thanksgiving to reshoot the scenes with Christopher Plummer, who replaced disgraced actor Kevin Spacey at the last minute.

"I said I'd be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me," she told USA Today. "And they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted. Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort."

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London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A £3 Million Fuck Dungeon in Vauxhall

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What is it? Oh we’ll get to that buddy—
Where is it? Vauxhall, or: "This Gigantic Roundabout Got Too Horny";
What is there to do locally? I’ve been to Vauxhall two significant times in my life: once to see an under-the-arches musical about bathhouses which lurched from the surreal into the manic when Su Actual Pollard stood up at the end of it to lead the audience in a standing ovation, Su Pollard turning to the rest of us, roaring us to our feet to clap, all eyes on Pollard, Pollard furious, almost, with the clapping, Pollard replete in woven clothing inked in every neon colour beneath the sun, Su Pollard stalking Vauxhall like an apparition or a ghost; and ii. I went there this weekend, got drunk on a docked boat, lost on a building site and hit my head multiple times on a low ceiling before falling fully asleep in an Uber, passing out so entirely that my rating went down somewhere so low into the doldrums that I can no longer be picked up. So I suppose the answer to the question actually posed at the start of this is: anything you want, really, in Vauxhall. Anything your tiny mind can imagine.
Alright, how much are they asking? In a rare zig from the format of "London Rental Opportunity of the Week" [*1][*2][*3][*4], this property is actually fully for sale, and will cost you £3 million. Three million pounds.

What would you do if you were rich? Would you:

  1. Fill a swimming pool w/ champagne, luxuriate in it until you die—
  2. Turn your enormous mansion-surrounding garden into a sort of exquisite zoo, full of giraffes and rhinos and men in straw boaters handing out balloons, and free cotton candy, a sort of fantastic magical Disneyworld, all for you—
  3. Buy a football club, or an F1 team, or just eat at Nobu, like, every single night, fly first class, holiday in the Maldives, pay to have Richard Branson killed by the world’s most expensive hitman, anything you want, live in a fantasy world—
  4. Chain some lads to the floor of your basement and just Fuck. Them. To. Absolute. Bits. Mate.

If you chose 4: correct, that is the correct choice to make. And may I also recommend to you this beautiful property in Vauxhall, which costs more than you will earn in your lifetime – more than you will earn in five lifetimes – which is tastefully decorated, gorgeously laid out, perfectly positioned (in Zone 1!), has both a conservatory and a spacious designer garden, modern luxuries throughout, and then also, should you choose to descend of an evening, it has an entire dungeon in it, dedicated to fucking:

Like: look how perfectly arranged this sentence is:

Additional street access.

I have so many questions about the fuck dungeon, obviously, but mainly one pure and shining concern: that the Fuck Dungeon House not be sold to someone who will not maintain the dungeon of fuck. Some young family. You know, he works in the City and went to Oxford, she has a very successful interior design blog, they have a three-year-old called "Jessamyn" and they want to buy the fuck dungeon. "Yah, great space down here," one of them is saying. "Maybe we could turn it into a nurs—" No. No. I forbid it. You keep it as a fuck dungeon. If you didn’t want a fuck dungeon in your house, why did you buy a house with a fuck dungeon in it? Exactly. For me, the fuck dungeon is a dealbreaker, the promise of its sanctity being the only condition of the sale. I fear a lot of things in this life, but some normie couple buying this fuck dungeon and turning it into anything that isn’t "a more complex and intense fuck dungeon" is highest among it.

(Side note, but, like: some dudes have taken a real arseful in this place, and you can’t escape that. You cannot get that out of a room. You can’t paper over a vibe that musky and powerful with a bit of Farrow & Ball and some £200-a-roll wallpaper. Doesn’t matter if you crank a skylight into this thing and put a pool table in the middle. Some vibes cannot ever truly be aired out. No way a fuck dungeon, once converted into and then used as a fuck dungeon, can ever be anything other than a fuck dungeon. Some doors you cannot walk back on once you’ve been through them. Putting a fuck dungeon in the basement of your house is one of them.)

Questions about the fuck dungeon, in no particular order:

  1. Once you have committed to putting a fuck dungeon in your house, how do you reverse out of that decision, i.e. by selling the house the fuck dungeon underpins? Like: does there come a time, in your life, when you look down the gloomy stairs at your fuck dungeon, hands on hips, and think: "This is a young man's game. It’s not for me any more."
  2. Are there specialist contractors who can install a fuck dungeon for you, or do you need to buy all the parts and just sort of put it together yourself?
  3. How often, once you’ve put a fuck dungeon in, do you actually fuck in a dungeon? A fuck dungeon always feels like a good idea, doesn’t it, and then eight months roll by and there’s dust on the shackles and you realise you haven’t been rimmed by a gimp for like two entire seasons. Not a perfect example, but one I’m going with nonetheless: I bought a Nintendo Switch in November. Really thought I’d use it more. Like: I love it, obviously. It’s great. Used it on the train. Mario Kart for Christmas. But now it’s there… some days, I just don’t play with it. I’ll look at it. I’ll think about it. And then I’ll go to sleep. I feel like this is very much what owning a fuck dungeon is like.
  4. The seller is trying to shift this £3 million townhouse via a free gmail address, namely dungeonhousevauxhall@gmail.com, and all this makes me think is: was dungeonhouse@gmail.com already taken? How many dungeon houses are there?
  5. Does the dungeon street access mean, and bear with me, that a pair of padlocked double-doors open out directly into the street, into which blinking pale nude boys can escape after a weekend of being rigorously fucked, searing beneath the flood of sunlight around them, and if so what are the neighbours like? Are they nice about that?

I truly think Fuck Dungeon House has ruined all other houses for me. I’m going to go home tonight and just look at all the rooms and just be disappointed I can’t be pinned mechanically to the floor of them and shagged. Please – if you have £3 million spare, and you are exceptionally horny – please, please buy this house. Do this fuck dungeon the honour it deserves.

@joelgolby


[*1] Not always in London

[*2] This is not the first non-rental

[*3] They are absolutely not weekly

[*4] Consider the sheer temerity of me calling this a "rare" zig, when it seems the format is actually adhered to almost never, and I mean I invented the format, so I should know†

† (I did not invent the format, my former editor Kev Kharas did)

The 'Leap of Faith' Was Skateboarding's Definitive Avant-Garde Moment

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Twenty-one years ago, a man on a skateboard fell down a 17-foot drop at a schoolyard in San Diego and changed the world forever.

Known as the "Leap of Faith," the stunt was featured on the skateboard company Zero’s seminal 1997 video Thrill of It All, and immediately made the sport’s history books. Overnight, the guy behind it, Jamie Thomas, a 22-year-old from Dothan, Alabama, became an industry celebrity. Two years later, he was immortalized as a character in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the sequel to which featured a level with a gap named after his famous slam at Point Loma High School. Back in real life, other skaters began gathering at the location hoping to best him. Some results are now online, including footage of Richard King, who broke his leg after plummeting like a rock to the concrete.

In comparison, Thomas’s attempt is masterful. As he approaches the handrail separating him from potential oblivion, he crouches and calmly executes an ollie melon. Then he descends. For what feels like eternity—actually just over a second—he hangs in the ether, floating on four wheels. An aura of tranquility surrounds him. Everything is silent except for the sound of photographer Grant Brittain’s camera. It’s all going perfectly. But as Thomas nears the tarmac there’s something amiss; his feet are an inch or so too close to the middle of his board. On any other day, such a small error would be inconsequential. But at this height, the impact is magnified a thousand-fold. As he lands, his board snaps, and his body folds like a tin can. Yet as he falls, he still maintains an air of grace, tumbling onto his shoulder and sliding out of frame with finesse. In the background, onlookers begin to cheer. A legend is made.

In 2005, the school built an elevator on the site, ensuring that no one would ever throw themselves down the drop again. Unlike the famous El Toro stair set, or the Carlsbad gap, with which countless skaters made names for themselves by doing bigger and gnarlier tricks than those who came before them, no one will ever throw themselves down the Leap of Faith again. The spot belongs solely to Jamie Thomas.

The story behind the event has only enhanced its status. At the time, Thomas was taking a risk with his career as well as his body. Since 1995, he’d been sponsored by the fabled Toy Machine skateboards. While there, he’d directed videos, acted as team manager, and earned the coveted final section in one of the decade’s best skate videos, Welcome to Hell. Then, in 1997, he gave up everything to start his own brand, Zero. Thrill of It All was his entry into the business, and Zero’s success rested on him. Whether he realized it at the time or not, the Leap of Faith was at once a display of skill as well as a publicity stunt. Photos of the dive—emblazoned with "JAMIE THOMAS RIDES FOR ZERO"—appeared as a full-page ad in Transworld Skateboarding. Zero was very much on the map.

Commercial concerns aside, the event seemed preordained. In a 2013 interview with King Shit magazine, Thomas recalled that prior to making the jump, he discovered someone had written his name on the handrail. Fate works in mysterious ways.

In many respects, the Leap of Faith was also the embodiment of an emerging type of street skating that combined dexterity, mortal risk, and spectacle. At the time, the discipline was evolving, and people were still discovering what their boards and bodies could achieve. Thomas’s wipeout was therefore important in two ways. Firstly, it charted the limit of gap jumping—no one has verifiably skated a drop that big since. And secondly, it solidified an era—already burgeoning since the days of Frankie Hill and the Gonz—in which street skaters focused on big tricks on big things. For at least a decade, skating (and dressing) like Jamie Thomas became one of skateboarding’s most dominant styles.

In 1998, for instance, Birdhouse released The End, a video boasting a young Andrew Reynolds frontside flipping a 13-step set of stairs, and Heath Kirchart boardsliding El Toro dressed like Michael Jackson. That same year, Jeremy Wray made history by clearing an 18-foot gap between two 40-foot water towers in Rowland Heights, California—another one-off. Fast-forward to 2002, and Flip’s equally iconic Sorry video offered Geoff Rowley’s "gnarliest" moments, as well as Ali Boulala’s failed attempt at clearing the 14.5-foot Lyon 25 (a feat that would go unaccomplished until Jaws nailed it in October 2015).

This style only became more prominent during the early 2000s, a boom era for daredevil street skating. It was during this time that skateboarding began to truly test its boundaries, and countless skaters made a name for themselves based on their willingness to jump down ever-larger staircases and handrails. The list of important tricks from this time period is long, and yet not one of these makes is as fabled Thomas’s fall. And, because of how skateboarding is consumed now—immediately, and usually on Instagram—it seems unlikely that any future trick could have the mystique and anticipation needed to make a similar impact.

In recent years, skateboarding has arguably evolved beyond the era of Big Shit. Skaters, perhaps having found the ceiling of what they can physically withstand, have largely stopped hunting for ever-bigger drops. Instead they’re bringing increasingly complicated tricks—the 90s-era technical flips and spins that fell out of fashion during the shift from fresh to hesh—to the big spots of yesterday. The slaying of hazardous landmarks is alive and well, it’s just that 2017’s Thrasher Skater of the Year did a frontside crooked grind in the same place where a lipslide was once mind-blowing.

Thomas’s influence remains indisputable, yet it still seems as if skateboarding has failed to grasp the Leap of Faith’s avant-garde significance. Skate videos may customarily exist merely to illustrate talent and promote brands, but Thomas’s exploits in San Diego were so inimitable that they are worthy of the consideration usually reserved for aesthetic objects. Skateboarders are fond of saying that their hobby is not a sport but an art, so it perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising that the closest comparison to Thomas’s Leap is not an athletic feat but a piece from the Met Museum’s collection —Yves Klein’s 1960 photomontage, Leap into the Void.

A French judo master, Klein’s work focused on representing the unrepresentable, challenging Western principles of imitative art. As a child, he began painting surfaces in monochrome blocks as an attempt to articulate the “pure freedom” of “existential space”—a place in between life and death. Later, this practice developed into his signature shade of blue. Leap into the Void, depicting the artist seemingly swan diving from a wall, was an extension of this project. Composed of two superimposed images (Klein was caught by friends who were then edited out), it was initially distributed in a newspaper alongside the demand that to paint space one must “go there by his own means, by an autonomous, individual force.” But despite having the realistic appearance of a photo, what it depicts did not occur.

In many respects, the Leap of Faith is similar to Klein’s artwork. On a very obvious level, both depict men jumping from great height and both have the same word in their titles. Moreover, both have encouraged people to make leaps of their own. In Thomas’s case, he pushed skateboarding to dangerous new heights; in Klein’s case, he enticed his audience into believing his trompe l'oeil. But perhaps the most persuasive similarity is the way in which Thomas’s jump resembles the French artist’s advice to aspiring painters. In those iconic closing moments from Thrill of It All, Thomas is figuratively delineating space through his own force, charting its unrepresentable dimensions via his body and movement. And more importantly, as he flies through the air, he is caught between life and death, suspended in the void of non-existence—the ultimate Kleinean motif.

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These Vancouver DJs Are Breaking Up the Boy's Club Party Scene

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There’s no eye rolling nor dancefloor exodus as the recognizable first few deep bass notes of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” play at Dame, an all women and non-binary DJ event held at Vancouver’s Red Gate Art Society. By the time the chorus hits, the 100-person crowd has erupted into a sing-a-long. It’s difficult to think of a time that perhaps anyone had heard this song played at a hip, all-vinyl DJ night. (Compare that to that one Wire song that’s practically mandated at other vinyl nights.)

The recently-launched night Dame (held also at the Fox Cabaret’s Projection Room) is run by DJ Paisley Eva, who brings in established local DJs as well as women new to spinning. “What they play is so different, I feel like I’ve been hearing the same things for so long,” says Eva of the rotating women DJs. “It’s cool to have a girl playing Donna Summers and another girl playing post-punk, and they go really well together.”

The night is, in part, a response to the recent wave of sexual assault allegations within Vancouver’s nightlife community. Like so many other industries across the globe, Vancouver’s club and DJ scene has been exposed as perpetuating a culture of misogyny, abuse, and exclusion. The allegations, made predominantly through social media, included numerous accounts of sexual misconduct, assault, and rape perpetrated by event organizers and DJs of prominence in the city.

In the months since those accounts, Vancouver’s #MeToo rally (part of a movement originated 10 years ago by activist Tarana Burke) brought together people in solidarity, and organizations like Good Night Out stepped up to protect vulnerable persons such as women of colour, non-binary folks, and the queer community. Though there’s disagreement on exactly how to confront the issue, most agree that the power structures that dominate Vancouver’s party scene are overwhelmingly white, cisgender, hetero, and male.

To better understand how the scene is changing, we talked to event organizers and DJs who focus on diversity and quality. They told VICE that dismantling the boy’s club will require more than a social media callout or women-run party or two. Vancouver nightlife is a small and delicate ecosystem where everybody knows each other, so callouts and criticism aren’t always taken well.

“I felt bad that this was all happening, but I also felt like I was always being told that

I was this crazy bitch and then there were a bunch of people that had been told the same thing,” says Cherchez la Femme, a longtime local DJ and promoter in regards to the allegations last November. “I think just it’s been a long time coming. It's always been really male dominated in Vancouver and I felt personally that it was OK when you were working under men, but when you are in charge you’re crazy or you’re a bitch.”

Vancouver has long been referred to as No Fun City, a reputation not helped by the bylaws and province-wide restrictions surrounding liquor sales, nightclubs, and live music venues. Major nightlife corporations such as Live Nation and Blueprint Events run the biggest clubs, venues, and bars. However, the city boasts a small but robust league of after-hours organizations and venues like Interessions and Vancouver Art and Leisure that help to support alternative and queer events that focus on equality and visibility.

Cherchez la Femme, who previously worked as a DJ and promoter at Vancouver’s popular nightclub Fortune Sound Club, recognized a shift within the culture of the organization when it was purchased by Blueprint Events. With a stronger focus on growing mainstream audiences, she found it more difficult to develop new talent with stranger taste. “I felt this overbearing ‘we know what we're doing you don’t know what you’re doing.’ One of the owners of the big company told me, ‘I’m going to show you how to make money’ and I just had an anxiety attack like I know what I’m doing.”

Organizations such as Blueprint Events and their space Fortune Sound Club have, of recent, made changes to their lineups to address concerns of representation. Cherchez la Femme points to a recent queer event, Babes on Babes, held during a lucrative long weekend at Fortune Sound Club, as being an example of such necessary change. “Babes on Babes doing the long weekend at Fortune, that would have never happened before, the long weekend is when you make money,” she says.

Within these corporate structures, and the afterhours scene, educational policies and reform are starting to gain traction. Ensuring inclusive language on party posters and promotion, harm reduction services, and naloxone kits on-site are some of the early steps taken in the city. Daniyah Angel Sh, a social justice organizer, has long been bringing her political activism into the nightlife community as a way to mediate and encourage reform. “Vancouver is ground zero for the opioid crisis, we’re in a very distinct location for a lot of things to be emerging. It really just indicates what a bubble Vancouver’s nightlife community is in,” she explains. “Things like anti-oppression and gentrification are still relatively new concepts.”

Daniyah Angel Sh. Photo by Murray Bush

Angel Sh, who has thrown events for Vancouver’s Davie Street Pride Festival and DJs gigs with Babes on Babes, has put together workshops ranging from technical knowhow shares with DJ programs like Ableton and CDJs, to classes on decolonization.

Working between politics and the nightlife scene, Angel Sh sees herself as building connections between two currently diserpate entities. Finding space to organize and education within the nightlife community becomes an issue of finding space, time, and resources to do so. As Angel Sh acknowledges, there isn’t yet a place for the work she is doing in traditional models. “I love music and I want to see this community thrive and succeed and it’s really just a matter of making a space for me to do my work,” she says. “Because what I do is such a threat to the status quo that it’s a really steep climb right off the bat.”

DJ Softie Shan, who is also part of organizations like Pep Talk and Intersessions focuses on holding the venues she plays for accountable for equality and diversity. Education, no matter where she is performing, is central to her involvement. “I play at a lot of DIY and mainstream places, as well, and I think that holds a lot of spaces I play at accountable,” she says. “Like, what are your safe space practices? If I’m going to DJ here I want to know what policy is being implemented. A lot of time venues need artists just as much as we need places to play in, and so [I can make a difference by] just letting the owners and the promoters know and taking into account peoples experiences.”

That education, Softie Shan emphasizes, has to be a community effort. “People don’t know what it’s like being a black woman making music, so sharing that I think more than ever people are wanting to listen and are wanting to be educated,” she says. “I also have a lot of supportive white friends who are willing to do some of the education for me. It’s hard and emotionally exhausting to engage with every person online who might not understand why we need spaces for people of colour. So there are a couple really great white friends with links on hand who will do that engaging, because part of educating is understanding that this work shouldn’t always fall on people in marginalized groups.”

However, there is relevant skepticism and concerns about tokenism surrounding the use of females, non-binary, and women of colour as marketing tools. Softie Shan shares these worries. “You just hope that genuinely when they get on board that they care and that they’re not just doing it now because it's trending and they could get called out or it’s bad for business.”

How these systems are integrated into larger, more structured nightlife organizations is still a question to be addressed. Implementing long-lasting and meaningful change within organizations built on ladies’ nights and objective imagery requires radical changes in leadership. To take down the boy’s club, it first needs to close.

Grace Gummer of 'Mr. Robot' Remembers Where She Was on 9/11

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In Early Works, we talk to artists young and old about the jobs and life experiences that led them to their current moment. Today, it's actor Grace Gummer, who killed it in the third season of the USA drama Mr. Robot. Catch it on demand.

My family lived in LA for about five years before moving to Connecticut when I was in second grade before moving to New York. Moving out of LA and into the Connecticut countryside was the best thing my parents ever did for us, but I was mad for probably about a week. I was leaving my friends and I didn’t understand why it snowed here, but I quickly got used to it. When you live in LA as a kid, you’re rollerblading, going to the beach, and having pool parties every day—even in the dead of winter. Why were we leaving such a nice, comfortable place? But I’m so lucky to have grown up where I did.

We moved to New York after Connecticut, and at first I was like, It sucks here. My first week of high school in Brooklyn was a few days before 9/11—that day was horrible. My school bus went along the West End highway—right next to Ground Zero—about 15 minutes before it happened. If the bus had been late, or I had been late to school, it would’ve been a different story. It was apocalyptic and so bizarre.

We got to school, and no one knew what was going on. I just remember smoke billowing over the school. Even though I went to school at Bay Ridge, which was pretty far away, you could still smell it. I didn’t know where my parents were. I couldn’t get in touch with them. I still have a little email printed out from the headmaster saying everyone was safe. My sister was down at the hospital giving blood. It was a very defining moment for me.

My first role was in House of Spirits when I was seven years old. I went in thinking I totally knew what I was doing—I was very over-confident for a seven-year-old. It was so much fun. I remember Vanessa Redgrave smelling really nice, and a scene in which I had to scream out of nowhere. I told the director, “It’s fine—I know how to scream really loud because my brother makes me scream.” I was running on my instincts.

I did a lot of black-box student theater at Vassar as part of Woodshed, a community theater program that now runs in New York City—they just put on a show called K-Pop, about Korean pop culture. We did everything: hanging the lights, making costumes, directing and acting. We’d have rehearsals until one in the morning, so I didn’t have a lot of time to do my actual work for stuff I was actually getting graded on. I graduated thinking I was going to take a break from acting and theater, but when we put on The Seagull and I was Nina, I remember being on stage and thinking, This is something I just love. It made me so happy.

I graduated and I worked in costume design in Rome; I was a design intern at Zac Posen for a little while. My friend who’s a director sent me a script asking me if I would want to design a costume for this play he was doing downtown. My first instinct was that I didn’t have any design ideas for it—all I wanted to do was be in it. I auditioned, got a call-back, and got the part.

I did this little play on Broadway called The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents and got a good little review in the New York Times. I remember reading the part and realizing I didn’t stay behind for the production meeting—I could just be an actor and do that as a job. That was an epiphany for me, because I’d never experienced acting in that way. After that, I moved to LA, was on a TV show, and the rest was history.

It was so fun working with Rami Malek on both Larry Crowne and Mr. Robot. He’s really good at improv—one of the funniest people I know. Everyone thinks that he’s a lot like the character on Mr. Robot, which is so not the case—he’s just so loving and funny and giving. We became very fast friends on the set of Larry Crowne, carpooling together from work.

I didn’t see him for a while, and I heard him on the radio talking about this show and I was like, Mr. Robot, that sounds like a sci-fi show. Then I got the audition and got the part. I texted him saying, “I think we’ll be spending a lot of time together,” and he said, “Me too, I’m so excited,” or something. We have yet to work with each other, though—our storylines don’t come head-to-head, so we don’t have any scenes together. I wish that we did.

A film can be a sprint, depending on how intense or long the shoot is. A TV show is a marathon. You’re really living in a character for, potentially, years. What’s great about Mr. Robot is that it’s such a unique show. Sam directs and writes every episode, and he’s there by your side, listening and giving so much. It lends its freedom to all of us as actors to really explore our characters—to find them as they go instead of having it all figured out and just relying on different directors every episode. Sam’s always asking us, “How do you feel about this? Do you want to say it differently?” It creates a better environment for everyone.

Because of this experience, I’m sort of spoiled working on TV. Every other TV show is amazing too, but this is the only one I’ve done where it’s shot like a movie, with because it’s one person directing the whole thing from start to finish. A film is also incredibly rewarding and fun, but it’s like summer camp. You go, do one thing, and then never see anybody again. With an ongoing TV series, you really live in the show for years.

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