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Martin Shkreli May Be Going to Prison for a Decade

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When Martin Shkreli was convicted of fraud back in August 2017, it was far from certain he'd spend much time behind bars. Sure, a federal jury agreed he lied to hedge fund investors and cooked the books to pay some of them back from the coffers of a drug company he founded. But Shkreli's entire defense was predicated on the fact that, while he might have misled people, none of them ultimately lost money. And the general rule of thumb in federal fraud cases is that sentencing is principally determined by the what's called the "loss amount" of the crime in question.



But on Monday afternoon, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto determined the loss amount in Shkreli's case was $10.4 million. According to federal guidelines, that could mean a decade or more in prison for a man who became infamous in 2015 for jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug more than 5,000 percent. Dubbed the Pharmabro, he also earned the moniker "most hated man in America" for pulling stunts like buying a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album and threatening to put it on top of a mountain. Although none of what he will almost certainly go to prison for has to do with all that trolling, his high profile—coupled with the fact that did not seem to show much (if any) remorse during trial—could influence sentencing.

Shkreli's former lawyer, Evan Greebel, also faces up to 20 years in prison and is himself awaiting sentencing. The Pharmabro, meanwhile, has been in a Brooklyn federal jail since September, when he had his bond revoked for offering a bounty on a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair. He's reportedly not very popular in the Metropolitan Detention Center, and has advised people to "avoid" jail if possible. Although his access to social media has been restricted, the 34-year-old is reportedly now bearded and buff. He's set for sentencing on March 9.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.


Ryan Seacrest Is Still Set to Work the Oscars Despite Misconduct Allegations

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Months after dozens of women attended the Golden Globes sporting #TimesUp pins to call attention to Hollywood's toxic culture of sexual misconduct, E! News has confirmed that Ryan Seacrest will still be manning the red carpet at the Oscars on Sunday following reports that he sexually harassed a former personal stylist, the Cut reports.

On Monday, Suzie Hardy detailed years of working as a stylist for Seacrest with Variety, allegedly fielding unwanted advances and even groping at the hands of the host. Hardy, who worked for Seacrest from 2007 to 2013, claimed that he grabbed her vagina on the set of E! News and would rub his erection on her in his underwear when she was helping him get dressed for events, among other demeaning behavior. Shortly after Hardy reported the alleged abuse to E!'s human resources department, she was let go.

After Hardy's attorney contacted E! in November, the network's parent company, NBCUniversal, launched a third-party investigation into the alleged misconduct. This month, E! said that it had found "insufficient evidence to support the claims against Seacrest."

"Over the course of a two month process, our outside counsel interviewed more than two dozen people regarding the allegations, including multiple separate meetings with the claimant and all firsthand witnesses that she provided," the network said in a statement Monday. "Any claims that question the legitimacy of this investigation are completely baseless."

For his part, Seacrest has called the allegations "reckless" and penned an op-ed for the Hollywood Reporter saying that it was "gut-wrenching" to "have my workplace conduct questioned." After Variety's report, the television personality didn't mention the allegations on Live with Kelly and Ryan, instead chatting with his cohost Kelly Ripa about teeth whitening procedures.

Now, according to a rep from E!, the Oscar red carpet program is scheduled to go on as planned. At least for now, the network is going to send Seacrest back out to talk to celebrities, just a few weeks after he asked actresses at the Golden Globes about the importance of the #MeToo movement.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

We Asked Queer 90s Kids About Their Pop Culture Crushes

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Do I love her or do I want to be her? An age old question which, if you listen closely enough, is the sound of baby gays growing their rainbow wings. This pondering pretty much sums up what it’s like to grow up queer. Especially from the 00s, 90s and earlier when gay representation was pretty minimal and the best you could do was project your own budding queerness onto anyone or anything in mainstream media.

Since the noughties and nineties though there has been an increase in pop culture featuring queer female characters (finally) with shows like The 100, Orange is the New Black, Sense 8 and Orphan Black proving popular amongst queer teens. None of these have fully documented what it’s like to come out though. And until Netflix’s recent release of queer-centred show Everything Sucks, this was fairly unchartered territory.

Everything Sucks is a show dedicated to showing the awkward and stressful experience of coming out as a young teenager. It tells the story of Kate who is coming to terms with her sexuality, falling in love and navigating her way through high school all in the heteronormative 90s—she’s one brave lady.

Kate’s struggle to find representation and her infatuation with queer figures in her life feels like a serious #tbt for anyone who grew up queer in that time period and for anyone who looked to TV and film to find their homo inspo (and no, Marissa’s brief lezbo phase on the OC doesn't count). If only we had characters like Kate back then; it would have made the strange lesbian compilation corner of YouTube almost redundant, and would have meant our experiences, and the experiences of our queer contemporaries, were out there to openly see, talk about and normalize.

In light of Everything Sucks I wanted to throw back to our ultimate queer crushes of the 00s and 90s to celebrate the not-so-gay-but-we-wanted-them-to-be-gay icons of our youth. I asked around to find out the most popular crushes from back in the day—those who inspired the silent coming outs of a generation. So let’s reminisce about the stifling heteronormative world we grew up in and hopefully bid it farewell one last time.

And to answer that eternally baby queer question—“Do I love her? Or do I want to be her?” The answer was probably neither, you just wanted to fuck her.

Julia Styles in 10 Things I Hate About You

She was just the coolest. I knew I definitely wanted to be like her when I was younger, but it wasn't until rewatching it recently that I noticed she truly sent my fanny a flutter. — Rose

Meg from Hercules

I know she's just a drawing of a woman but Meg from Hercules was a real turning point for me. — Lauren

Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet

I'm bisexual so the Romeo and Juliet with her and Leo was very overwhelming for me and possibly what started my puberty — Indra

Ashley Spinelli from Recess

She was just so cool and rebellious. Her outfit, she was tough, she was really fucking funny. She was my perfect lady. — Ruth

Hallie from Parent Trap (aka the cool twin)

My perfect woman; she was American, she was older than me, she was a sexy redhead, she painted her nails, she was a preteen body piercer and (be still my little gay vagina) she GAMBLED in an all-girls poker league she appeared to have started herself...fucking lesbian icon don’t @ me — Lily

Nala from The Lion King

Don’t judge me I know she’s a cartoon animal but she was so feisty and strong and always wooped Simba’s ass even though he was king of the pride lands. “Pinned ya! Pinned ya again!” I remember watching The Lion King and thinking I fancied Simba and wanted to be Nala and now I look back and I’m like nope just fancied both of them. — Marcella

Xena Warrior Princess

Not just Xena—all of the women in Xena. They were all super strong and looked like they were actually fighting which was cool/sexy. And I liked their tiny boob-cup leather armour haha. Awkward because the woman who played her main enemy is now my yoga teacher. — Jessica

Wednesday from The Addams Family

Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams with pure DNGAF attitude. What more could a confused girl ask for? I remember telling my mother (who I no longer speak to) that I wanted to marry Christina Ricci and was told that being gay was wrong and that I’d never get a wedding if I was gay! — Chloe

The spider from James and The Giant Peach .

She was sexyyyyyy! — Kim

Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus

I dressed as a witch, rode a hoover round my kitchen and wore red lipstick for over a year and at the time I think I thought I was just really into that aesthetic. I was in fact fully smitten. For me Hocus Pocus wasn’t just a 90s classic, it was an astute guideline for a wonderful lesbian life; three single women/witches living in the forest where they party, plot world domination and turn local boys into cats. Where can I sign up? — Iggy

Rita from Sister Act 2.

Lauryn Hill as Rita is such a captivating character—she has an unapologetically fierce, playful vibe and holds her own, yet there’s this vulnerability that comes out when she sings. And holy shit, her voice! It gave me goosebumps the first time I watched it and it still does to this day. — Zoe

Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

She looked a lot like a friend I had a crush on IRL at the time—AND she kicked ass and did a job that nobody else could, and usually the asses she was kicking were men’s. — Annika

Sugar from Sugar Rush

Sugar was cool, and charming and took risks and I don’t think looking back I was sure whether I wanted to be her/be with her I used to stay up to watch In secret; under the covers with a torch as it felt like it needed to be a secret cos it was about lesbians! Definitely found the programme hot! But also just relatable, and it gave me a love for Brighton and taught me about sex shops and experimenting etc and I genuinely think it was an important sort of right of passage thing. — Katy

Peyton from One Tree Hill

I just loved her general tomboy vibes, her creativity, and her “fuck you” attitude. I think I thought I wanted to be her but really I wanted to be with her. — Lee

Sarah from Cheaper by the Dozen

She was a tomboy, she was good at sport, she was ballsy and I knew in my gay heart of hearts she was a budding gay just like me. The day would have come when she realised that she liked beanies, skateboards and boy stuff, not because she hates girly things but because she in fact loves girl(y thing)s, baby me is just sad I wasn’t around to see it. — Sonja

Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Still not over her. — Alice

The Pink Power Ranger

Kimberly (Amy Jo Johnson). So gorgeous, but so damn badass. I was obsessed with her from the age of three and it's been a life-long crush. I dressed up as her for many a Halloween. I wish I still had that outfit. — Erin

Sabrina from Sabrina the Teenage Witch

She was super femme which I'm into and also she was really confident, was a good friend and cared about everyone around her. And she had a talking cat, so, it’s a yes from me. —Nicole

Arwen from Lord of the Rings

Arwen had me from about age 8. I’m still in love. — Aisling

Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted

What a combo—be still my little gay heart. — Tara

Justine from The Story of Tracy Beaker

Justine was the bad gyal from Tracy Beaker and was my ultimate crush. She was bitchy, she was cold, she was damaged; she was the OG 90s UK TV rebel and I was wild for it. Oh boy. Adult Justine if you're out there, look me up. — Crystal

Carmen from Spy Kids

I cried daily because I “wasn’t her” and I “needed to become her.” I know now it’s because I “needed to become her (girlfriend)” — Ellie

Missy from Bring It On

The scene where Eliza Dushku licks her finger and puts her middle finger up whilst rubbing the tattoo off her arm?! Oh boy. Was she the reason I started wearing chains and drawing upper arm tattoos? Absolutely. Is she the reason I now look for upper arm tattoos in the women I date? Also correct. — Tej

Drew Barrymore in Charlie’s Angels

Tbh, it was all of them. — Grace

Sebastian/Viola from She’s the Man

Amanda Bynes was the ultimate gender bending football playing queer and I really digged it. She looked like a little baby butch which was wildly exciting for me. After I watched She's the Man I started playing football so I could “be a bit like Viola" and we all know how that normally turns out. — Em

Pamela Anderson in Baywatch

I think it was the red swimsuit and big lips that did it for me. — Kimmy

Debbie from The Wild Thornberrys

She's the cool older sister; super deadpan, very intimidating with sick af style—what more does a girl want?! — Tamsin

Drippy from Wild Child

I pretended I watched this film every night for a week because I just really really wanted to go to an all girls boarding school and have sleepovers with my friends, it’s no big deal! Now I can admit that Juno Temple is a straight up hottie and I didn't want to be her “friend”—unless friends can fuck their friends? — Vanessa

Kelly from Saved by the Bell

Ummm, she was head cheerleader and captain of the volleyball, swim, and softball teams. She played for ALL teams, I wished every day she would one day play for mine. — Hellie

Tai from Clueless

Brittany Murphy in anything actually—my numero uno. — Iona

Jess from Bend it Like Beckham

I think she straddled the line between being my idol and being the love of my life and I don't think there’s a feeling more common in all the world when you grow up queer. — Nadine

The Definitive Ranking of the Most Savage Lines From the #HurtBae Sequel

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We were all mesmerized when #hurtbae dropped last year. The seven-minute video saw ex-lovers Kourtney and Leonard face off about what went wrong with their relationship—namely Leonard being a cheating pos.

It was emotional, it was raw, it was relatable, and we all really felt for Kourtney aka #hurtbae, who was clearly not over Leonard. Though he was being polite, Leonard did not seem to give a single fuck. In the aftermath, the internet rallied around #hurtbae—whose modeling career has since taken off—and dragged Leonard to pieces.

The sequel—a catch-up with the exes one year later—was posted last week by Iris and Leonard dropped all pretense of being a decent guy. Instead he delivered insult after insult, making many of us question whether or not he is now the #hurtbae.

Without further adieu, here is a ranking of his most savage one-liners.

10. “When you approached me to do the video, you were not exclusive, I was not exclusive. You did your thing, I did my thing.”

On its own, this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it sets up the rest of the bombs Leonard is going to drop, and implies that Kourtney was either lying or in denial about the true status of their relationship.

9. “We did this to get exposure as entertainers.”

I mean, a lot of us were wondering if this was the case. While it does seem plausible, it moreso just comes across as an attempt to discredit Kourtney and cheapen her emotions.

8. “I kinda think that the cycle with me and Kourtney might’ve continued and part of the reason I did the video was so that, you know, Kourtney would be able to move on.”

This one stings because Leonard is subtly suggesting that Kourtney was the one who needed closure and that he was—and still is—completely over her.

7. “You still wanted to be with me after I didn’t want to be with you.”

Getting pretty blunt about that last point now.

6. “You don’t want to face the truth. You put me in fucked up situations and then you play the victim every time. The whole time we messed around, I told you ‘Hey Kourtney, I really like you, I love you, but I don’t want to be in a relationship.’ That’s never what I wanted.”

Clearly, Leonard is bitter about how he was characterized as the villain after HurtBae 1 went viral and he’s snapping at Kourtney for playing the victim card. But it’s also rude because again he’s stressing how much he never actually wanted to be with her.

5. “What is there to talk about? We were never together.”

This is just fucking harsh. Obviously, he’s bullshitting to a certain degree. While we don’t know if they were officially calling each other boyfriend-girlfriend, the fact that he even bothered with the first video tells us that they did at one point have a very close relationship. So saying “we were never together” is a cop-out and a dick move.

4. “Come get some truth.”

Lol.

3. “I actually was in a relationship when we shot the first time. It’s not your business, I don’t have to tell you everything.”

This is around the time when Leonard starts looking more and more like the real #hurtbae. He seems pissed than Kourtney has a new man and is now retroactively trying to hurt her by revealing that he was dating someone when they had their first viral heart to heart.

2. “I’m happy you finally found someone that can give you what you deserve, sis.”

You really have to watch how he says this to get the full scope of how insincere and bitter it is. He heavily emphasizes “sis” and does this weird sassy head shake thing too. Suffice to say, what he really seems to be thinking is “go fuck yourself.”

1. “I hope I never see you again.”

Leonard, Leonard, Leonard. Goddamn dude. Is this really necessary? Leonard makes this comment in response to Kourtney’s, “I was in love with you, I wanted to be with you, but that’s all in the past now.” Even though she’s saying it’s behind her, her eyes are still searching for a kind or apologetic word from him—anything to justify how long she’s kept him in her life. Instead he hits back with this flaming turd. Icy cold turd, actually.

The pair wrap up the video by physically acting out the motion of wiping their hands of each other. It's all very high school drama class. Leonard actually does it twice for good measure.

Afterward it was published, he made a Twitter thread with text exchanges that “prove” Kourtney was always more into him than he was into her. Everyone already knew that, so the texts just make him look like even more of an asshole. Excellent job repairing your reputation, Leonard.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Sandy Hook Families Are Still Fighting

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As survivors of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High demand answers from pro-gun politicians across Florida and the country, the families forever connected to a similarly infamous school up North are still waiting for a chance at justice. A little over three years ago, several relatives of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, filed a lawsuit against AR-15 manufacturer Bushmaster—the parent company of which is Remington—seeking both monetary and punitive damages, as well attorney's fees and injunctive relief. At at the time, the suit seemed extremely unlikely to go forward because of a federal law protecting dealers and manufacturers from liability over gun deaths. But in a remarkable move, a judge said more than a year later that discovery could proceed, and even set a tentative trial date of April 3, 2018.



The families hit another roadblock when the same judge dismissed the suit in the fall of 2016. But the plaintiffs kicked the case up to the Connecticut Supreme Court on appeal, where a panel of judges are still waiting to decide if a creative legal argument might get the claim around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA.)

Basically, the lawyers for the families have tried to claim two exceptions to that law. One is that the sale of the AR-15 to shooter Adam Lanza's mom violated a state law; the second has to do with how the gun has been advertised. Although the judges could decide whether the exceptions are valid at any time, Remington recently announced it was planning to file for bankruptcy, adding another wrinkle to an already-strange legal saga.

After Parkland put school shootings back in the national conversation and raised the prospect of the NRA actually facing political pushback from corporations and politicians, I caught up with one of the attorneys for the Newtown families, Katherine Mesner-Hage. We talked about the latest developments in the case, and how Remington's apparent financial problems might affect it. She told me that although she's still trying to sort out all the details with bankruptcy attorneys, it doesn't seem like an insolvency declaration would get Remington entirely off the hook for the suit—if it goes forward. (For his part, Remington lead attorney Jonathan Whitcomb has previously said the case has the potential to hit "those who simply manufactured and lawfully sold legally owned firearms that were later used in crimes" with "limitless liability.")

Here's what else Mesner-Hage and I talked about.

VICE: So the last time you and I chatted, we were waiting to see if you could get Remington to open up their books for discovery. And you were also trying to depose the head of marketing at the company. Did either of those things happen?
Katherine Mesner-Hage: We basically never got into discovery. The judge opened up the doors to discovery just before she ended up throwing out the case and we went on appeal. So a limited number of documents were turned over. But it was really just the very, very beginning stages of discovery. We did not in any way do any sort of comprehensive discovery. We did not get to do what we intend to do if the Supreme Court reverses and if the families get to proceed.

Can you talk a little bit about how you think they're marketed to young men?
So the advertising, first of all, is explicitly linked to the military. They advertise that the branches of the military special forces, SEALS, Green Berets, Army Rangers have used this AR-15. They say the barrels are the same ones found on an M-16, and the slogans are, "Military proven performance," "When you need to perform under pressure," or, "The uncompromising choice when you you demand a rifle as mission-adaptable as you are." And one of those slogans that has gotten a lot of attention is, "Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single handedly outnumbered."

You've also mentioned Call of Duty as being part of the problem. Can you explain how your argument here is a bit different from the people who pointed at video games like Doom after Columbine?
It all kind-of dovetails with product placement in these highly realistic first-person shooter games like Call of Duty that feature AR-15s, including Remington AR-15s. And they're explicitly violent—you get rewarded for head-shots and kill streaks. And so the idea is that the weapon really isn't anything other than a weapon to kill people rapidly and efficiently. And the complaint really lays that out. It's not good for hunting. It's not good for self defense—it's good for killing. So that's of course the basic foundational principle of our case.

But, on top of that, Remington is not taking a very dangerous weapon and being very careful to sell it as, you know, a sport rifle. They're not being very clear about this being something you should use on the range. They're saying this is a weapon for mass killing. And then of course, it is used for mass killings over and over and over again.

Ok, so what are you hoping to find that would prove your thesis? A Memorandum of Understanding between Remington and Activision, the company that makes CoD?
We're interested in anything having to do with Remington's marketing practices. So, not only are they working with video game companies, if they are, what advertising firm are they working with, if any? What are their advertising plans? What is their target demographic and why? What research they have on that demographic. Are they targeting young men? And if so, why? What is it about young men that makes them an appealing demographic for Remington, and what are they saying among themselves about mass shootings and about the relationships between young men and AR-15s. You can't be living in 2018 or 2016—or even 2013—and not be thinking about that relationship. It's too much a part of all of our lives.

So the internal dialogue, whether they had any of their own doubts, is important?
Maybe someone at Remington spoke out and said, "I think this marketing is unethical after everything we've seen so far." And that's something we would want to know. So all those types of things and a lot more. But discovery is a truth-seeking tool. And that's what we think these families are entitled to at a minimum—to conduct that investigation in a search for the truth.

What's up with the fact that Remington is planning on declaring bankruptcy? Is it because of the suit, or a way to get out of it, or what?
We can't say for sure why they're filing for bankruptcy. Flagging gun sales are clearly one explanation. Remington, like all gun companies, I think, was expecting a surge in the ban under the Clinton administration, and it may be that they ramped up production in anticipation of that. And then when Trump got elected and declared his allegiance to the NRA, all of a sudden no one was worried about regulation. There was no rush to stockpile guns, and it may be that increase in production was met with all of a sudden zero interest in demand.

Why else might the company be in trouble?
I would like to think that Remington's inability to meet its debt obligations, which has led to this restructuring, has at least something to do with their grotesque pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else: public safety, school safety, children's lives. The trauma to all these communities where mass shootings occur, the people who are wounded. We're always talking about the body count, but also the trauma to the numbers of people who are wounded in these shootings. Remington sells these guns for exactly what they are. After not only Sandy Hook but San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, and now Parkland.

I would like to believe that there are lenders out there who would feel morally conflicted about getting into bed with Remington. So I can't say that has anything to do with the bankruptcy. I would wish for that to be true. And it is not true now. But they should look out for those those high school students, because they are really something to be reckoned with.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Tinder Is Fighting to Get Interracial Couple Emojis in Your Phone

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Later this year, emoji users around the world will finally have a symbol to text about emotional support peacocks, anatomically correct lobsters, and gingers. But there's one group that hasn't received any love from the emoji creators over at the Unicode Consortium—interracial couples.

On Tuesday, Tinder announced it would be launching a campaign to champion this group, working to get the folks over at the Unicode Consortium to design a new batch of emojis that would be representative across numerous skin tones and genders. The dating app sent over an official proposal detailing 21 different designs, including three skin tone additions to the "Couple with Heart" emoji.

The proposal is co-authored by a team that includes Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Jennifer 8. Lee, who helped get the dumpling and hijab emojis into our phones. They wrote that "the lack of representation for diverse racial identities is a significant issue in an increasingly globalized society."

Alongside the proposal, Tinder has also kicked off a campaign asking people to sign a Change.org petition to move the process along and post pictures of their own interracial relationships. The project follows a recent survey that suggests the surge in dating apps since Tinder's 2014 launch correlates with an increase in interracial marriages. There's also a study that suggests people who use emojis have more and better sex, so this is firmly in Tinder's wheelhouse.

"At Tinder, we believe that no one should ever feel unrepresented or unseen," the campaign reads. "Love is universal, and it’s time for interracial couples to be represented in our universal language."


Tinder's campaign follows the many others aimed at getting the Unicode Consortium to include more representative symbols, like the Muslim teenager who called for a hijab emoji in 2015. That year, the emoji lexicon added same-sex couples and five different skin tones, so you'd think Tinder's proposal wouldn't be too big of an ask. Maybe the folks over at Unicode Consortium can find some time to stop fighting over the frowning poop emoji and work on getting couples of all kinds represented in the burgeoning digital language.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This Flaming Carry-On Bag Is Proof We Should Just Stay Off Airplanes

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If you're searching for yet another reason to swear off flying forever, enjoy: A carry-on bag burst into flames on an airplane last weekend, forcing airline staff and passengers to wage a bitter war against the flames with liquids from the drink cart, New York Post reports.

According to the Post, the fire started on a China Southern Airlines flight in Guangzhou, China, just before takeoff. Passengers reported smoke billowing out from an overhead bin, and when flight attendants went in for a look, they uncovered a carry-on bag already engulfed in fire.

In a passenger's video of the mayhem, you can see a flight attendant in the aisle, valiantly flinging water from open bottles in an attempt to extinguish the blaze, before a man hops up on a seat to get a better angle and goes to town on the fire with a container of orange juice, which appears to do the trick.

Luckily, the plane was still on the runway and hadn't begun its three-hour flight to Shanghai, so passengers were able to deplane and wait for another less on-fire airplane, according to a statement from the airline on Weibo. Fire officials were able to board the flight and deal with whatever smoldering ash was left after the OJ bath and no injuries were reported.

The carry-on bag appears to have caught on fire thanks to an exploding portable phone charger, likely the same kind of lithium-ion battery that got Samsung phones and hoverboards banned by TSA a few years back. As the Post notes, you aren't allowed to check lithium-ion batteries in your luggage, but it's still chill to bring them in your carry-on. Unfortunately, you can't bring a couple pints of juice along too, for safety's sake, since large liquids aren't allowed through security.

Why are we still subjecting ourselves to the horrors of air travel? Planes are farty, miserable sky prisons that drive even the most serene among us to the breaking point. What kind of punishing guilt do we all secretly harbor that makes us continue to put up with this? Why aren't we content to just stay here, on the ground, where we belong? How much more will it take?

Unfortunately, most of our other travel options are pretty bleak now, too, so it's probably best to just accept defeat and never leave the house again. Get comfortable, everyone.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Drone Captures Snowmobiler's Terrifying Fall into a Frozen Lake

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Months after a drone helped rescue two swimmers struggling for their lives off the Australian coast, another was instrumental in helping a snowmobiler who found himself sinking through a frozen lake, armed only with two screwdrivers to help him claw his way out.

The drone pilot, Jordan Brandt, caught the near-death spill on camera after following the unnamed snowmobiler out on his ride across a patch of frozen ice. His drone was circling overhead the moment the ice gave way, watching as the man's snowmobile sunk beneath the surface.

For a few brief seconds, the drone loses sight of the guy before swiveling around to the horrifying sight of the snowmobiler submerged in the freezing water. Struggling for leverage, he whips out two screwdrivers for a pair of makeshift ice picks, clawing his way out of the slush like a mountain climber.

Before we can tell if the guy makes it out, the drone swivels back around and flies toward land, back to the pilot onshore. Brandt told Shock Mansion that he called 911 once he saw the man fall through the ice, and according to the Daily Mail, the fire department was ultimately able to rescue him.

For all the questionable shit drones can be used for—from spying to messing with airplanes—it's nice to see that the technology is being put toward saving people's lives. Without the drone or Brandt's watchful eye, our nameless snowmobiler could have easily ended up in one of the countless fatal accidents that result from people falling through frozen lakes. Just two weeks ago, authorities found the body of a snowmobiler submerged under an icy pond in Connecticut. He had reportedly been missing since December.

And while the terrifying footage might encourage you to stay inside until the winter is over, it's important to remember that outdoor summer activities can be just as dangerous.

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Related: Drag Racing with DIY Drone Engineer Zoe Stumbagh

This article originally appeared on VICE US.


I Tried to Cure My Smartphone Addiction Using My Smartphone

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Smartphones have put us in quite a pickle. These devices are explicitly designed to be addictive, but because we rely on them for so many quotidian activities and tasks, quitting cold turkey would mean forfeiting a place in modern society. It’s like if heroin was cut with the ability to check your work email.

If you own a smartphone, chances are it’s affecting how you think. A recent study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research says that “even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity.”

But I don’t need a peer-reviewed journal to tell me my brain is broken. I can feel it breaking. I’d say it has turned to Play-Doh, but Play-Doh at least retains the written information it rolls across. My brain has become off-brand putty, mealy and dried-out from years of smartphone hypnosis.

I really shouldn’t be so susceptible to the lure of my phone. I’m too lame for Snapchat, too slow-witted to play HQ, and too married to cruise Tinder. My temptations are extremely limited, but that doesn’t seem to matter; I find myself drooling before the screen’s glow time and time again, often without even realizing I had taken it out of my pocket in the first place.

So, how does one cure smartphone addiction? To find out, I asked my phone, as it surely has my best interests in mind.

If my phone—the device I keep near at all times, the last thing I look at before I fall asleep and the first thing I gaze upon after I wake—doesn’t have an answer for how to wean myself from its liquid crystal display, then where can I turn for guidance? The App Store, naturally.

So many of the recommended treatments for smartphone addiction come in the form of smartphone apps. It’s called fighting fire with fire, which is why firefighters always show up at burning buildings with flamethrowers.

I tried Forest, the most popular productivity app for iOS. To use it, you click a button that plants a little virtual tree. The longer you stay away from your phone, the bigger the tree becomes, and the goal is to make your tree grow as big as possible. There is one major flaw, however. I didn’t give a shit about my tree. I’m from the generation that gleefully watched our Tamagotchis starve to death. A sad little virtual tree isn’t going to move the needle. Despite this, and despite the fact that it costs $1.99, Forest has a solid five-star rating. It’s anyone’s guess how, exactly, all those reviewers managed to rate the app without stunting the growth of their little trees. Life finds a way, I guess.

After that failure, I tried following the New York Times’ advice and made my screen grayscale. I have terrible eyes that get worn down by my phone’s normal vibrancy, so all this trick did was make it easier to look at. Had I not changed it back to full colour, I don’t think I would have ever been able to look away.

To get an idea about the severity of my smartphone dependence, I downloaded Checky. It is probably the worst app I’ve ever used. All Checky does is tell you how many times you’ve looked at your phone. While you could do this with a pen and a pad of paper, Checky needs to be on and running in the background in order to work. It tracks your location for some reason, meaning the app is constantly (and suspiciously) using your device’s GPS.

Checky is like a bouncer with one of those little clicky things to monitor crowd size, but, unlike bouncers, it can’t break up fights or throw sand on sidewalk vomit. It also can’t do what it was designed for, and didn't keep me off my phone.

Unlike Forest, which incentivizes keeping your phone out of sight, Checky seems to do the opposite. (After all, the programmers wouldn’t have made room for banner ads if they thought no one would look at the app.) When I opened it late this morning it read “47,” meaning that was the 47th time I had looked at my phone since downloading Checky the day before. Unless you are an avid golfer or suffer from hypertension, you’ve probably been conditioned to value high scores. That’s why, upon checking it again 45 minutes later, I felt a burst of pride when I saw “67.”

In a sense, this is what apps are explicitly designed to do. We know this because many of the men and women behind them have sounded the alarm. Loren Brichter, the designer of Twitter’s pull-to-refresh feature, told the Guardian about his regrets. “Pull-to-refresh is addictive,” he said, “Twitter is addictive. These are not good things.”

Facebook engineers who developed the “like” button have been outspoken about the dangers of their creation, and former Google designer Tristan Harris now gives TED Talks about technology’s potent psychosocial effects. Silicon Valley is full of Dr. Frankensteins who have watched in horror as their monsters crawled from the operating tables and into town. (“But the monster was good in that story,” you may say. "It was the people who were cruel!” You are probably right, but all the specifics and nuance I had gleaned from that book back in middle school have been completely washed away thanks to years of smartphone use.)

Adding software to my phone was clearly not the answer, so I took the opposite tack and deleted Twitter and Instagram, the apps I use the most. This fix just led me to my laptop where I mindlessly scrolled through the browser-based versions of those social networks. When away from the computer, apps I had long since forgotten about started to command my attention. I found myself looking up hotel rates when I had no travel plans or using the level app I downloaded ages ago and never used to determine how flush my dog’s ears are.

Rather than freeing myself to embrace the outside world, I dove deeper into the recesses of my phone. I fiddled with these hitherto unused apps with alarming dedication. This, combined with Checky’s relentless GPS-aided battery drain, bled my device dry. Come late afternoon, the screen flashed the death knell of a blood-red power icon and went dark.

I was free so long as I could resist charging it. With no apps to scroll through or poke, I went to the dog park with the dead weight of my device tugging at my pocket. The low sun cast long, beautiful shadows across the dirt—a jagged skyline that would have gone unnoticed had I been looking at my phone. Birds flew in formation overhead and branches creaked in the wind.

Oh God, I thought, what if someone’s trying to text me right now?

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

No Man Can Compare to This Boyfriend Made of Boxed Wine

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Men are great at catcalling, ghosting, and living in filth, and they are absolutely flawless at being pretty shitty boyfriends. When Mike Schneider's trash boyfriend dumped him in 2015, he gave up on looking for some worthless new dude to date. He figured—why not just date literal garbage?

Schneider told VICE he "self medicated through wine" after his breakup, and wound up with a shit ton of empty boxes of Franzia. Looking for something useful to do with them, he decided he'd build himself a new boyfriend—and thus, after a few months of work, his hunky, boxed-wine bae Franz was born.

"Though I'm over the breakup now (and the copious consumption!) I always thought it would be sad, funny, and a little sweet to make a companion from the empty cartons left over," Schneider told VICE. "Franz is great. He’s better than a regular boyfriend because he’s the strong, silent type, but also sweet and caring at the same time."

From the looks of Schneider's Instagram, the relationship is a dream. He and Franz spent a recent morning eating breakfast in bed, and finished out the day by making a nice, home-cooked meal together.

Sure, Franz might not be able to speak, feel human emotions, or move autonomously, but he's up for anything. Most boyfriends might think doing a couples photoshoot is cheesy. Franz, however, poses for the camera like a champ.

Photo via Mike Schneider

As good as things are going with BWB (boxed-wine boyfriend), Schneider can't help but worry a little bit about whether they've got a real future together. Mr. Merlot doesn't make for a very talkative dinner party guest, and while he's a joy to have around, he winds up sidling Schneider with a lot of the housework.

"What happens next?" a conflicted Schneider asked VICE. "Do BWB and I move in together? Do we go shopping for furniture? What happens when he meets my friends, my family?"

Only time will tell if Schneider and his captain cabernet can stick it out. There might be a few drawbacks to falling in love with a shell of a man made out of soggy cardboard—but at the end of the day, that hunk of garbage probably makes a better partner than most dudes out there.

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Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter, and check out Mike Schneider's website.

Related: Meet the Real People Behind Your Virtual Boyfriend

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

YouTube’s Parkland Conspiracy Crackdown Not Enough, Says Sandy Hook Parent

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On Valentine’s Day, a 19-year-old man walked into Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with an AR-15 and killed 17 people. It was the ninth deadliest shooting in modern US history and, as with other recent tragedies, many worried it would only amount to a blip on the news cycle radar.

However, more than a week later, this one feels different thanks to the students of Stoneman Douglas.

The teens who suffered through the tragedy are mad as hell and standing up to keep gun control in the mainstream press. President Donald Trump held a meeting with survivors of the tragedy, teens marched for gun control across the country, and some companies have been pulling their support from the NRA.

The conspiracies surrounding the event feel different as well. It appears the lasting power of the Parkland shooting has led to increasingly intense conspiracies. Led by the usual idiot brigade of the conspiracy movement, the “false flag” theories surrounding the Parkland shooting are littered across social media but, unlike many other times before it, there have been consequences. Just today, InfoWars had their account frozen on YouTube after pushing conspiracies regarding the Parkland shooting and going after the teenaged survivors.

Noah Pozner who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. Photo courtesy of Lenny Pozner.

Lenny Pozner, who lost his six-year-old son in the Sandy Hook shooting and has been plagued by truthers ever since, knows these conspiracy theories all too well and he’s not at all surprised they popped up after the Parkland shooting. Even years removed from the murder of his son, Pozner is still dealing with Truthers—one conspiracy die-hard was sentenced to five months in prison last summer for threatening Pozner. After his experience dealing with truthers, Pozner founded Honr, an anti-hoaxer organization, where he works to combat online truther movements and the people affected by them.

Pozner is adamant that, at the end of the day, the responsibility for these conspiracies rests on the shoulders of the platforms. He told VICE that some are responsive (Google) while some ignore complaints (Wordpress). VICE called up Pozner to talk about the similarities between the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings, what lasting damage “false flag” conspiracies leave behind, and how to combat them.

VICE: America has been reeling from a steady stream of gun violence. Does the Parkland shooting in Florida feel different?
Lenny Pozner: It's very similar to Sandy Hook as far as conspiracy theorists and people’s outrage for gun violence. I don't know if this is a tipping point but this last tragedy has hooked a specific age category to get involved in gun control advocacy and I hope this will be lasting but it's hard to tell.

What was it like watching this shooting unfold?
It's a little closer to home because it was a school but with that in mind this stuff usually unfolds in the same way. The press starts paying attention and everyone starts looking for the number injured. That's usually how a shooting is remembered, by the number of fatalities. I knew because they weren't releasing a fatality count it was a large number, not just one or two. I felt for the parents who were waiting to be in touch with their kids.

What about the conspiracies afterwards that targeted some of the survivors?
That's par for the course now, there is no surprise there. It's normal in the state of the world right now. I expected them. I've always suggested that this hoaxer reality show revolves around whoever they see on television. So whether it's a sheriff or someone representing the school or witnesses those become part of the conspiracy narrative. That's the way these things unfold.

There are a couple of kids that are really outspoken and gun control has become their mission and that's great, but those are the people that are visible and those are the people who get the hoaxer attention.

That's incredibly depressing.
Nowhere near as depressing as the parents who sent their kids to school that morning and then had to make funeral arrangements as they're being called liars.

What kind of steps can be taken to curb this?
I think everyone has a responsibility to report online content because that's how platforms are operating right now—they depend on a volunteer base to report content. The general public needs to spend a few minutes reporting when they come across it. Harassment, abuse and bullying of people connected to a mass shooting should not be ignored.

A lot of people have family members and friends who follow these ideas and they need to call them out. We come across these individuals all the time and people just ignore them because nobody wants to confront these people. They might be our cousins, our uncles, siblings and so on. We all know who they are. There are volunteers who work with (my anti-conspiracy organization) Honr that have severed their relationships with family members who follow these beliefs, even to the extent that children have severed relationships with parents.

It comes down to the regulators, right?
Yeah, YouTube and Google have been a thousand times more proactive than Facebook and Twitter who are still years behind Google. WordPress (owned by Automattic) is the absolutely worst online hosting platform because they ignore copyright claims and requests to remove images of children.

The platforms are the main issue because they’re not regulating themselves. The reality and the inevitability is that these platforms will be regulated. Within five, ten years at worst they will be regulated. They are utilities like a phone company, like an electric company, we use them for information, we use them to communicate with one another, they are absolutely a utility and they are not regulating themselves so the government will step in.

What would you say to people who say it's a free speech issue to have this hoaxer content online?
That's the idiot’s understanding of freedom of speech, that's from the University of YouTube. Hate speech isn't free speech, free speech is to criticize your government and have an open press but to target and harass people is not free speech.

Because this is a new platform and laws haven't caught up to it. If someone were to do this in the real world—say someone stood outside your apartment with a portable billboard sign over their head, making all these accusations about you—that you're a traitor, that you should be hung or killed. If someone was doing this on the sidewalk, in an open public space, the police would be called and the person would be told to go away. That doesn't happen in cyberspace, there is no one policing it.

Movements like this don't just end when Alex Jones or another conspiracy theorist decide to shut up. They last, right?
Once these ideas are introduced they cannot be undone so that's a lot of what we see with hoaxers. We will see one unbalanced person with a distorted model of the world creating an idea and then planting that seed of this thought virus in this network of equally unbalanced individuals who are sharing these ideas. It takes on life of its own and it won't just disappear.

I've been trolled by people who are conspiracy minded but they acknowledge that Sandy Hook was real and the children died but they still targeted me because I was outspoken. They've made Department of Children and Family Services reports against me that were wholly disqualified. These people have made reports with the CPS, the FBI and several local police departments against me as a form of targeted harassment because that's what they do since they have zero compassion.

These ideas are permanent when they are introduced. It's like if there is a photo of someone on the web it will live on forever once it's been posted.

What are your thoughts on Alex Jones having his account frozen for two weeks?
I don't think Alex Jones getting strikes is anything new—the media just picked up up recently. I've given him many strikes in the past.

What advice do you have for these kids dealing with these hoaxes?
Well, the first advice would be to reduce your online footprint and lock down your social media, as everything you do and say will be used against you and every image of you will be turned into memes and twisted into hoax theories. It's important to lock down social media—even that of relatives. Controlling your social footprint is very important.

Some people are outspoken though, they're in the press. They're being driven by this event so unfortunately it's a double-edged sword. They're getting a lot done but at the same time their character is being assassinated online and that won't go away.

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This $25 'Attack of the Clones' Remake Is Better Than the Prequels

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Attack of the Clones had a lot going for it: It showed us the beginning of Anakin's downfall, it was a chance to finally see the Clone Wars, it even had a Boba Fett origin story subplot. But, good lord, was it a mess. The whole thing looked like a PS2 cutscene, Hayden Christiensen was somehow a worse actor than Jake Lloyd, Boba was a punk-ass little kid, and the movie's main villain had a flaccid lightsaber.

Thankfully, we will never have to subject ourselves to the horrors of the original Attack of the Clones again, because some kids just made what George Lucas never could—a version of Episode II that's actually enjoyable to watch.

On Tuesday, a guy named Tim Hoekstra released his full-length remake of Attack of the Clones starring his friends. It's over two hours long and recreates just about every scene from the movie, sometimes shot for shot, using toy lightsabers, bad wigs, and what appears to be someone's parents' two-car garage.

Sure, Hoekstra's version is maybe a little hard to follow if you don't know the original already, but Attack of the Clones barely makes sense on its own.

This is the second time Hoekstra and his pals have remade an entire Star Wars movie from scratch, following a brilliant Revenge of the Sith remake that reenacted the entire climactic Anakin/Obi-Wan fight scene on a beach at low tide or whatever. This new one doesn't have as many iconic moments as the first, but the low-budget remake of Clones drastically improves on that wack-ass battle between Dooku and Yoda and, somehow, manages to sell those wooden romance lines better than Natalie Portman. The arena scene is also particularly transcendent.

"The entire film was once again shot on a Samsung J5 and our total budget was $25," Hoekstra wrote about the new remake. "All the props were junk we had lying around... our main motivation was to have some fun and hang out."

Well, sure, yeah, all that fun and hanging out is what made this version so much better than George Lucas's overly serious drek, but come on, man—it's time to focus and get moving on a Last Jedi remake, because the world needs to see how you'll tackle that Luke milking scene.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Nature Is Not as Beautiful as My Instagram Feed

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VICE's most online writer is currently disconnected from the internet in a small town outside of New York City. She will be logged off for five days, during which time she will chronicle her adventures in nature through daily dispatches. Her first correspondence is below, and you can read more about the project here.

Aside from the internet, the only other things I’ve successfully quit are dating assholes and drinking alcohol. The former happened almost accidentally, but the latter was my decision. When I quit drinking, I did it cold turkey because I feared I would imminently die if I didn't change my behavior. When I quit the internet, yesterday, I did it because the web had started to feel like a parasite that was slowly eating me alive.

I eased myself into these dark days of disconnect gradually, deleting Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook from my phone before getting on the train that took me into the woods. On the train, I deleted more apps—Slack, BuzzFeed, Reddit, Chrome, Gmail—and rearranged my home screen with the few apps I still gave myself permission to use (basically just Messages, phone, and the camera). “Look out the window,” my boyfriend said, laughing at how obsessively I was checking my essentially bricked phone. As the train journeyed up the Hudson, he said, “Look how beautiful the water is.” He was right, it was beautiful; but was it as beautiful as my Instagram feed?

When we arrived at the train station, I was close to being completely logged off. Before heading to our lodging, we sat by the river, all sparkling and sunny, as I anxiously peered into my now very boring phone, silently scolding myself for forgetting my sunglasses and headphones at home, sucking down a cigarette like my life depended on it, while my boyfriend, much more adept at not being connected 24/7, paced around the park, reading plaques and looking at a weird sculpture of an upside-down bronze man donning a swim-cap and goggles, diving into the marble base.

My last taste of the sweet, infinite information flow was calling an Uber from the train station to my “cabin”—which actually, as it turns out, is more of a sweet suburban house in a town close to Westpoint. To me, a Manhattan native whose idea of the Great Outdoors is getting lost in Prospect Park, the locale seems "woodsy." To my boyfriend, a total nature buff, it was not “really” in the woods. I say tomato, he says to mato. Maybe we should just call the whole thing off?

“I miss Instagram,” I complained, lying on the bed of my temporary home, away from the stresses of urban life, reading a tabloid, imagining all the funny moments I would be posting in my story if only I could, giggling at an item about Brooklyn Beckham supposedly dropping out of Parsons. (“He gets an F in friendship!” the magazine declared, detailing how his alleged “massive ego” and “diva act didn’t fly with other students.”)

“Why don’t you read a book?” my boyfriend suggested.

“No thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes.

I was anxious, already concerned about what I was missing. “Stacey Dash is running for congress,” my friend Sarah texted me. “You’ll never know if this is real.” I laughed, unable to decide whether such a news item was just bad, a sign of our crumbling political system, or whether it was so bad it was stupid enough to actually be good.

The consequence of a life with no internet isn’t necessarily pain, but rather a nagging sort of loneliness that comes along with cutting yourself off from the thing that connects you to everyone else.

I haven’t had a sip of alcohol since I swore it off entirely. But with the internet, it hasn't been so easy. When my boyfriend showed me a Facebook video of Fiona the Hippo, I wondered if that was cheating. Is texting cheating, since I have an iPhone and use iMessage? [Editor’s note: yes] Is it even possible to completely log off without downgrading to a flip phone and throwing my computer out the window?

I started reading a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto, which I brought with me mostly as a joke, but also because it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of major anti-technological works. “There is no way of reforming or modifying the [industrial-technological] system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy,” Kaczynski wrote. “If the system breaks down, the consequences will still be very painful.”

But the consequence of a life with no internet isn’t necessarily pain, but rather a nagging sort of loneliness that comes along with cutting yourself off from the thing that connects you to everyone else.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dead Dog Twice

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Celebrities are mostly kind of boring these days. Gone are the fabled Hollywood eccentricities of yore: 2018’s famous people are mostly just high-key Instagram influencers with beauty lines and vague political causes.

Enter Barbra Streisand, the eternal diva. The woman who wrote, directed, and starred in Yentl, and who lives in an opulent mansion with a shopping mall in its basement. The woman who, according to Variety, cloned her dead dog Samantha. Not once, but twice.

In an incredible feature-length interview titled “Barbra Streisand on Oscar Snubs, Sexism in Hollywood & Her Clone Dogs,” Streisand casually explains that two of her three Coton de Tuléar terriers are clones of a beloved pet who died last year. Before Samantha departed this world, Streisand, a woman with a lot of money, asked scientists to harvest cells from the dog’s mouth and stomach. These were used to produce two clones: Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett.

“They have different personalities,” Streisand tells the magazine. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her [Samantha’s] brown eyes and seriousness.”

In order to avoid confusion, Streisand dresses the identical dogs in different colours.

The frankly incredible interview, timed to run before the upcoming Academy Awards, also touches on sexism in Hollywood—particularly the snubbing of female directors.

You can read the whole thing here.

This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

Cold Weather Is Actually the Best, an Explanation

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When I was a child there was a field behind my house. Colloquially, this field was known as "The Field". The field was bisected into two half-fields by a hill (on the upper field: a small grey concrete path, a children’s play area, a bin) (the lower field was a law unto itself: a more-or-less flat area where we played football and, twice a summer, a council mower would come and shave it all down to dirt), and this is what we sledged down when snow fell.

Children with plastic sledges, six children crammed onto one sliding blue tarpaulin. Children snowballing and making thin, weak little snowmen with the few centimetres that had managed to stick. And then me, on my proud little sledge: my dad had made it out of offshoots of wood, and a little cutoff piece of carpet to pad the seat, and, as blades, two excess carpet rails. It was a very handsome sledge I vividly recall mindlessly throwing into a skip some years later, after a house clear-up, the thin rope handle skidding in the wind. But: "Dad," I asked him, one day, amongst the snow. "If we pour cold water on my sledge blades overnight, will it freeze into ice and go faster down the hill tomorrow?" And in soft tones he explained: no, son, my sweet idiot boy. But if we pour hot water on the sledge, it will, through the magic of science, freeze faster. And I remember waking up early that day, carefully boiling a pan of water on the hob, and pouring it over my upended sledge, ready for a full day of skidding down a hill on my arse.

Was that the best day of my life? I don’t know, but maybe: the air steaming out of my lungs like a train, the cold tight on my ruddy little face, that freeing feeling of falling and accelerating all at once, tipping and the ground coming up to meet me, faster that I could ever go on my own. Home in my mittens to chug down a Hot Ribena. I mean, maybe it was the peak of my life and everything has been sledging down a metaphorical hill ever since. Maybe that snow day really was as good as it gets, and I'll never get a day as pure and good as that back.

No. Wrong. Look outside, idiots. It’s snowing. And thus begins the greatest day of my life, anew: The Adult Snow Day, Where I Can Go And Buy Hot Chocolate From Chain Cafés All I Want And Nobody Can Say Shit About It

WHY SNOW + COLD IS COMPLETELY EXCELLENT AND GOOD, A FULL AND EXHAUSTIVE LIST

IT IS STILL A VERY THRILLING THING TO WAKE UP TO

Obviously the most piss-yourself exciting thing beyond Actual Christmas Day for me as a child was a snow day, of tweaking those curtains on a cold winter morning and looking out at a world, white and transformed, docile and peaceful, a crisp layer of snow ready to be stomped on, thrown, sculpted and skidded down, a pure day of frolicking without the concerns of work or school. Is there anything better, really, than that first welly-step out into virgin snow, that first imprint you and you alone make on it, a dusting of pure angelic white stomped and moulded by a five-year-old you? No. There is not. Not even heroin, I’m guessing.

Obviously things are different now – the first thing I did this morning was groaningly checked train delays and messed around under my bed, trying to find my boots so I don’t end up trying to skid my way to a train station in Classics again (there is a particular shade of green-purple your arse goes when you fall on it hard while skidding on snow in Classics, and it takes about five entire weeks to fade) (don’t! ask! how! I! know! this!), and then doing that thing where you have to kind of edge your way to the end of the bed to grab a dressing gown and put it on before you get out of bed, so the adrenalin-shock of stepping out into the cold doesn’t stop your heart dead in your chest, but still: making my way out of the door this morning, pure-press snow beneath my feet, cars calmly and silently greying down the roads and fresh powder falling from the sky around me, I was filled with a sense of childlike wonder, peace and glee. YOU DON’T GET THAT FROM HAIL, DO YOU.

THERE’S NO BETTER SELFIE LIGHT IN HISTORY

I don’t need to tell you right now that your Instagram feed is made up of two photos: i. the morning view from someone’s flat (or in some cases high-storey office), which is a photo of the snow falling and a photo of the rooftops and gardens around them looking all pure and white, and there is some ironic caption about how basic and obvious it is to do a snow picture when it has snowed, which I personally hate because just embrace it, mate; it’s snow, stop pretending you don’t love it. And ii. photos of people looking absolutely bang-gorgeous while wearing a knitted hat in a park somewhere.

What is it about snow that makes selfies amongst it so flattering? It’s because the daylight out there is studio quality, so it makes everyone out there walking around in scarves and mittens look amazing. Look, here’s VICE photographer Chris Bethell explaining better than I could: "Snow is great for the selfie taker as nature has decided to be your photographic assistant for the day. For one day only, nature is holding the world's largest reflector for you – bouncing light from every direction into your wrinkles and wiping away the bags under your eyes. Your selfies will look like you were trapped in purgatory ten years ago." SCIENCE.

THERE IS SOMETHING UNIQUELY SATISFYING ABOUT MAKING YOURSELF COSY

Right now I am wearing a roll neck jumper and, in a bit, I might put a scarf on indoors. When I go out to get my lunch I’m going to wear a coat that is essentially a large green duvet with some elastic chords running through it that make it into the vague shape of some sleeves. Got my thermal T-shirt tucked in and my thickest socks on under my boots. When I get home later? In bed by ten with an extra blanket on, beans on toast for dinner. All I need is a roaring fire and a large sturdy dog to go on a walk with and come back from, ruddy-cheeked and exhausted, to someone making me a hot toddy in a farmhouse kitchen, and that’s me: maximum cosy, the cosiest man alive.

COLD WEATHER CUISINE IS THE BEST CUISINE

Ah yeah, big thing of stew in a big red bowl? Yes please. £3 box of soup w/ an entire sliced and buttered baguette on the side? Absolutely. Four hot chocolates in one day? Yeah. Just, like, eating marshmallows? Standing up? Yes. Pint of Guinness by a roaring pub fire. Thing of whisky in an armchair while resting your feet on a rug. And, perhaps the best cold weather food of all: making a Domino’s pizza delivery boy bring you a Pepperoni Passion and not really tipping him that much.

I AM CANCELLING EVERY PLAN I HAD WITH YOU SORRY BUT I DON’T CARE NOW

Main thing about adult life is it's very exhausting because to know people is to do things with them, and to do things is to plan things, and what I’m saying is I thought I had "quite a quiet week" ahead of me, but then I checked and I’m actually doing something every night from now until Wednesday. Or at least I was, before the snow fell out of the sky, and now everyone I know is getting a text about how I’m "snowed in" and "absolutely can’t make it mate: can we rearrange?" and "let’s raincheck… OR SHOULD I SAY SNOWCHECK, AHA!" and they are all fine with it because they just want to go home, kick snow and eat warmed-through tinned food too.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BE EXTREMELY LATE TO WORK AND NOBODY CAN SAY SHIT

I waltzed in 40 minutes late today and came in holding a hot chocolate, get on my level.

YOU CAN JUSTIFY UBERS WHEREVER YOU WANT

I mean it’s 2.8x surge – those fuckers know how to get their pound of flesh off us, don’t they – but if I have to walk in this snow I will, as aforementioned, bash my arse into a month-long green-purple bruisefest, so I’m getting an Uber to Nando’s for lunch and that's completely fine.

SPOONING IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES IS ESPECIALLY GOOD – I DON’T WANT TO GET TOO HORNY ABOUT IT, THIS IS A FAMILY WEBSITE – BUT YEAH, IT IS

Sorry if you’re pathologically lonely or alone right now, because very truly negative temperatures are the best time to take all your clothes off and clench close to another naked body. But then I suppose the flip-side of it is that Tinder et al is absolutely popping off right now as everyone desperately clamours for someone warm to hold them close as the storm sets in. Proper "day before Valentine’s Day" vibes. "Christmas Eve in your hometown" realness. Enjoy the sexual war zone.

EVEN YOUR TIGHTEST HOUSEMATE WILL ALLOW YOU TO BLAST THE HEATING ALL DAY

There are two kinds of people in this world – and I’m not going to pretend the distinction doesn’t form along a rough north–south divide, nor isn’t informed by economic restraints – but there are two kinds of people in this world and they all, seemingly, are magnetically attracted to living together in an uneasy house-share situation in south-east London.

There are people who have absolutely no qualms about putting the heating on when it’s cold because that’s what it’s there for, and there are people who go absolutely al dente when the temperature of the house creeps anything past 20 degrees, and start storming around and clanking with the boiler and saying "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THIS COSTS? PUT A JUMPER ON", and then they make their own porridge with water not milk for breakfast. And what I am saying is even your tightest housemate – the one who nominated themselves "in charge of the bills" and sends you that curious pass-agg email at 12:01 precisely on the first day of the month asking you for the exact amount, to the penny, you owe for bills – even that housemate is like: yeah, alright, put the heating on. Let’s all get our duvets and make a big sort of tent-den in the front room.

ABSOLUTELY NO WAY YOU WON’T SEE AT LEAST ONE CAR SKID QUIETLY INTO A CRASH BARRIER OR WATCH ONE PERSON FALL OVER AND SHATTER IN THIS SNOW

Am I too old to get excited by snowfall? No, absolutely not, never. Am I too old to find people falling over in the snow and really, really hurting their arse and arms about it funny? Also no.

IF YOU’RE HAVING A PARTY YOU CAN CHILL BEER OUTSIDE

Closest I’ve ever got to feeling the warm glow of a life hack is filling a bucket with water and leaving it outside, filled with Foster's, at a New Year’s Eve party once, and I don’t even particularly want to get pissed tonight but I might just do this trick again anyway because: how often do you get to, you know? How often, truly, does nature provide you with an all-natural fridge? Just feels foolish not to take advantage.

IT’S REALLY FUN DRAWING DICKS ON CARS DO NOT @ ME

That truly is the benefit of snow: if you get up early enough you can pencil out, with one outstretched finger, a perfect jizzing cock shape on an entire row of parked cars. I used to know a guy – you know one too, one of those lads who is Really Into His Car – who always went absolutely ballistic when anyone drew a frosty dick on his windscreen, because he was convinced the friction of cold and snow and ice, when pushed into the glass beneath it, would irreparably scratch and etch a cock permanently into his car.

I can tell you that nothing motivated me to draw cocks on cars more than that fact. It’s like telling someone they can eat ice cream while having sex. A thing I enjoy (drawing cocks on cars) results in another thing I enjoy (winding people up so much they have a heart attack)? Thank you for this gift, Based Snowfall.

@joelgolby

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.


The Best Oscar-Nominated Movies New to Netflix in March

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With the 90th Academy Awards kicking off this Sunday on ABC at 8:00 PM EST, it’s a good time to be binge-watching movies. New movies on Netflix in March include late-night staples Wet Hot American Summer, 300, and Jackass: Number Two. Alongside the best Netflix movies and shows to watch when you're stoned, and movies on Netflix that pass the Bechdel test, we’ve combed through the new Netflix additions and found the films that didn’t quite win the golden statuettes, but are still more than worthy of your attention.

Casino (1995)

But one humble entry in the cabinet of Academy snubs against Martin Scorsese, Casino didn’t even score a nomination for De Niro or a never-better Joe Pesci. Sharon Stone, however, got the Best Actress nod in 1996 for her ice-cold portrayal of casino queen Ginger McKenna. Want a masterclass in how to hustle? Watch Stone’s performance carefully.

Ghostbusters (1984)

As someone who does not care about Ghostbusters (don’t worry, I also don’t care about Star Wars or Harry Potter in equal measure), the only things I remember are the ectoplasm and the theme song. Well, apparently that puts me in the same league as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1985, because that’s all they cared about when it came to Ghostbusters’ nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Sam Mendes’s achingly tender period piece reunited Titanic megastars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, and neither one of them got much recognition for it. Michael Shannon, however, scored his first nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 2009, while art director Kristi Zea, set decorator Debra Schutt, and costume designer Albert Wolsky all scored nominations for creating an air of 1950s suburbia so authentic, it’s practically carcinogenic.

Up in the Air (2009)

A talky film that you might file in the “adult-contemporary” section of a video store (if video stores were organized like record stores, and either still existed), this Sideways-on-air was predestined to be the biggest “almost” of the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010. From Best Picture to two Best Supporting Actress nominees (Vera Farmiga and a pre- Pitch Perfect Anna Kendrick), Up in the Air is a movie that’s genuinely just glad to be here. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Little Women (1994)

I’ll admit I’ve never seen Little Women, but I did watch the trailer and it was all I needed to know why Winona got a Best Actress nomination in 1995. People also really cared about the costumes, and the septuagenarian voting members of the Academy dug the music. And there you have it.

Here are a few other movies coming to Netflix in March that didn't win the coveted golden statue (but should have!):
Adventureland: Arguably Kristen Stewart’s magnum opus.
Les Affames: French-Canadian zombies—oui.
Layla M.: The Netherlands’ entry in the Foreign-Language Oscar category.
Cruel Intentions 1, 2, and 3: Return to a time when teens certainly weren’t woke, but they did make being popular look sexy AND cool.
Moon: Watch it, and then watch Mute.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Repealing Net Neutrality Could Kill Indie Porn

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In 2004, Shine Louise Houston launched independent film studio Pink & White Productions with the intention of making porn for a diverse audience. “The goal was to create... content that reflected queer sexuality, respectfully, and represented a diverse range of body types, sexual expressions, and sexual proclivities,” Houston told VICE.

A typical scene might feature a threesome between cis and gender queer performers. The camera lingers on shots of tangled tattooed limbs, natural breasts, and butt cheeks dappled with stretch marks. The participants smile genuinely at one another, making the scene feel less like a staged encounter and more like strangers enjoying spontaneous group sex—an altogether unusual viewing experience when it comes to internet porn.

Pink & White films, like The Crash Pad and Snapshot, stand in sharp contrast to mainstream porn, which tends to compartmentalize diversity in racist, sexist, homophobic, and reductive terms. (Take, for example, the title of one of the most popular videos currently on PornHub: “Fucking This Asian Bitch Without a Condom After the First Tinder Date.”) Casting genderqueer, transgender, and lesbian performers, Houston doesn’t actively direct her scenes. Instead, she empowers the talent to choose their own sexual menu. Sexual encounters unfold naturally with performers’ enthusiastic participation, which makes for a more progressive view of sexuality.

Producing this content can be a challenge. As an indie filmmaker, Houston runs her two-person company on tight margins and competes in an internet porn market monopolized by a few key players who control major studios and the most popular viewing platforms. With net neutrality’s future thrown into chaos that monopoly only stands to grow stronger, while small producers like Pink & White question if they can survive at all.

In November 2017, the Federal Communications Commission announced the repeal of Obama-era regulations ensuring equal, unfettered internet access to the public. In previous conversations with Motherboard, Pornhub executives lamented the potential burdens a repeal would place on streaming speeds, while Mike Stabile—a representative for the fetish site Kink.com and communications director for the adult industry’s trade association, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC)—predicted the rise of “vanilla” content. Both outcomes could prove true, because repealing net neutrality essentially appoints internet service providers (ISPs) the gatekeepers of online content.

Ryan Singel, Media and Strategy Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, explained that on a neutral net, service providers function as common carriers, meaning they can’t refuse or prioritize access to certain sites (so long as what’s on them is legal). ISPs have long sought to extract more money from highly trafficked sites. Repealing net neutrality would allow them to impose access fees: tolls sites and hosting platforms would pay to ensure entry into the internet’s fast lane, where videos load and downloads don’t take days. Small sites that can’t pay could see their content blocked or placed in an internet slow lane. “Larger sites that have more clout [will be able to] negotiate lower rates, or even just bulk rates,” Singel explained. “With a small porn site, you don’t have any leverage over an ISP.”



Houston’s small adult operation is one such site. Houston emphasized that Pink & White has no idea what the future holds, but even in the current market, her small company operates on lean resources. From a rented studio space in San Francisco, Houston broadcasts a webseries and produces both short- and feature-length erotic cinema. She said the movie-making process can stretch between six and nine months once the script is written, from storyboarding to casting the actors to shooting and editing the film. Houston accomplishes this with a crew of at least eight people, excluding talent, and maybe a few tens of thousands of dollars. “If you’re thinking nowadays low-budget films are in the millions, we are a no-budget production,” Houston explained to me. “Not-even-a-shoestring, no-budget.”

Pink & White’s content is available only for rental and subscription fees, which subsidize continued production. Houston supplements that income with occasional crowdfunding efforts—her adult thriller, Snapshot, raised $23,000 in a 2015 IndieGoGo campaign—but her per-film budget wouldn't leave much leftover for paying off ISPs.

Meanwhile, the biggest players in the adult industry—content-aggregating tube sites like PornHub, xHamster, xVideos, RedTube, and YouPorn—pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers daily, are valued at tens of millions of dollars, and might hold considerable sway.

“If you’re a top two site, whether it’s PornHub or xHamster or something like that, you’re one of the top 100 most visited sites in the world,” said Stabile, speaking in his FSC capacity. “You’ve got more traffic than the New York Times or CNN. You’re going to be able to get in that fast lane. If you’re a small producer or an independent producer, it really constrains you.”

Stabile fears that empowering the major tube sites might only enable piracy, already among the largest challenges indie pornographers face. People constantly rip original indie content from subscription sites and post it on “free” platforms like PornHub, siphoning money out of performers’ and producers’ pockets.

Incidentally, the majority of the most popular tube sites—an estimated 8 out of 10, including PornHub, according to Slate —are owned by a single, hulking entity: MindGeek, a shady, privately held company that controls much of the porn industry, including big-name studios like Brazzers and Digital Playground. The company has a stranglehold on both production and distribution. When paid content from Brazzers, for example, is pirated and posted on PornHub, the studio loses its cut of the subscription fee viewers would normally pay to watch. But MindGeek collects either way, extracting revenue from ad sales on its sites and taking a cut of subscription profits when someone does click through to a studio site from a tube site. It’s a “vampiric” landscape, as Slate put it, sort of like “if Warner Brothers also owned the Pirate Bay.”

Repealing net neutrality seems likely to exacerbate the problem: If tube sites become the only places where viewers can expect a video to load, and if they don’t have to pay a membership fee or a charge to access content, there’s little incentive to visit the smaller sites. Cutting off subscription and rental fees means severing these producers’ main income vein while simultaneously charging them more money to stay online. Cory Doctorow, a special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told VICE the effect of repealing net neutrality would be anti-competitive: With power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies—MindGeek, along with other tube site owners like Hammy Media and WGCZ Holding, plus powerful brands like Hustler and Vivid—small players looking to make a different product won't even step onto the playing field.

“There are lots of people who don’t benefit from the current arrangement,” he said. “There are a lot of performers who would like to be able to have a more direct relationship with their audiences and keep more of the money, there are people with different pornographic practices, people producing porn by women for women, people producing porn that’s not exploitative.” On a discriminatory net, he said, “those people entering the market will not only have to produce a product that’s superior to the product that exists,” they’ll also “have to outbid companies that won last year’s market lottery.” Companies like MindGeek.

The end result of this, according to Erika Lust—who creates ethical, feminist porn for her site, xConfessions—is a big change in the kind of content that’s available online. If the tube sites pay ISPs the required fee, “everyone will still have access to their ‘free porn,’” she explained. “Except this time they won't be able to allow indie creators content to be illegally uploaded to their tubes because we will be out of business and won't be creating any.”

The end of net neutrality means “the end of ethical porn,” Lust said, and “the monopoly of punish-fucking.” But ethical pornographers aren’t the only ones who get fucked. A non-neutral net would award ISPs the prerogative to decide what kind of content is available online, leaving them vulnerable to pressure from political and special interest groups, Singel said. That opens the door to censorship, arguably the worst outcome for indie creators whose adult narratives don’t conform to heteronormative gender roles.

Houston vows that Pink & White will “watch the trends and […] adjust” if the repeal goes through. But the wide-reaching implications of the FCC’s announcement strike her as troubling: “What scares me more than how much this is going to affect our pocketbooks is how this is going to affect free speech in this country. I feel like this, once again, is shifting power even farther into the hands of people who already have the most power."

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Follow Claire Lampen on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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

US News

Foreign Powers Discussed How to Manipulate Jared Kushner, Report Says
Officials from Israel, China, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates all talked about trying to influence the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law by way of his sprawling business ties, according to anonymous officials. Kushner was told Friday he would have his security clearance downgraded, a decision reportedly reached in part because of unease about his contacts with foreign officials.—The Washington Post

Hope Hicks Admits Lying for Trump, Refuses to Talk White House
The White House communications director reportedly refused to tell the House Intelligence Committee anything related to Trump's time in office or the transition period, only answering questions about his campaign. According to anonymous officials, Hicks admitted she had told “white lies” on behalf of Trump, but insisted she had not lied about anything related to the Russia probe.—The New York Times

ICE Sweeps Up 150 People in Bay Area
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials made the arrests as part of a regional crackdown this week. Thomas D. Homan, deputy director for ICE, said “sanctuary jurisdictions” like San Francisco and Oakland had been harboring “dangerous criminal aliens." ICE said around 50 percent of those detained had non-immigration-related criminal convictions.—CBS News

Suspicious Letter Leaves 11 People Sick at Military Base
Three of the 11 people who fell ill after a letter containing unknown material was sent to a base in Arlington, Virginia, were hospitalized. All were said to be in stable condition, having reported a burning feeling in their hands and face. Initial analysis did not reveal any harmful substances, but the letter was sent for further tests.—CNN

International News

North Korea Sent Syria Equipment for Chemical Weapons, UN Says
Pyongyang provided valves, pipes, and other materials that could have been used to manufacture chemical weapons in Syria, according to a new report by the UN Panel of Experts. UN investigators believe North Korea made roughly 40 deliveries between 2012 and 2017. They also said North Korean missile experts were spotted at weapon sites in Syria.—BBC News

Afghan President Willing to Recognize the Taliban
President Ashraf Ghani said his government would accept the legitimacy of the Taliban as part of an effort to form a lasting political structure in the country. Speaking at an international conference designed to “draw” the Taliban into peace talks, Ghani said a ceasefire, new elections, and a prisoner release program were all on the table.—Reuters

Jerusalem Church Claims ‘Victory’ in Tax Row
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre opened its doors on Wednesday after closing for three days in protest of an Israeli government plan to introduce a church property tax. Parliament dropped the proposal Tuesday. “This is a victory,” said Adeeb Joudeh, custodian of the site in Jerusalem. “We’re celebrating.”—Al Jazeera

At Least 15 Killed in Egyptian Train Crash
Two passenger train carriages collided with a cargo train in Egypt’s northern Beheira province Wednesday. At least 15 people were killed and another 40 injured in the crash, according to a state news outlet.—Reuters

Everything Else

Parkland Shooting Survivors Join Demi Lovato Onstage
The star welcomed up six students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the first performance of her world tour in San Diego Tuesday night. “It was such an honor to meet them and hear their courageous stories,” Lovato said.—Billboard

Soundtrack for New Wes Anderson Movie Revealed
ABKCO shared a full tracklist for the Isle of Dogs soundtrack Tuesday, including the score by Alexandre Desplat. Released March 30, it also features music by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and Kaoru Watanabe.—Pitchfork

Looks Like Spice Girls Will Perform at the Royal Wedding
Mel B said all five members of the British girl group have been invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding. When asked about it on The Real, she implied the Spice Girls would be singing at the reception. “I’m gonna be fired,” she said.—TIME

Trailer for JAY-Z’s Trayvon Martin Documentary Drops
Paramount Network shared a first look at Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin, a new series about the unarmed 17-year-old fatally shot in 2012. JAY-Z is producing the six-part project.—i-D

YouTube Bans Neo-Nazi Channel
The move came after the Anti-Defamation League urged the company to “immediately” remove material posted by Atomwaffen Division. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the Neo-Nazi group’s videos feature “disgusting racist content” and “incite hatred.”—Motherboard

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we’ll hear from Cathy Hughes, founder and chairperson of Radio One, the largest African-American owned and operated broadcast company in the nation.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

How I Got Caught in a Terrible Personal Assistant Scam

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By now we’re all pretty familiar with the standard email scam. Usually it involves someone saying that a Nigerian prince has left them an inheritance and that they just need your banking information (or a small deposit) in order to transfer the funds, which of course never arrive. We don’t expect online scammers to know who we are, where we live, or what tragically practical opportunities we’re looking for.

As a freelance writer and photographer, I often find myself trawling job boards for one-off gigs. Late last year I responded to a Kijiji post seeking a shooter for a wedding photo booth, but I never heard back and quickly moved on. Many months later, someone named Anthony responded to my application offering $500 a week for part-time remote work as a personal assistant. Even though it was not really what I wanted to be doing, I took what seemed to be a random opportunity and ran with it.

To be clear, I did not post my personal information publicly. I applied to a private posting, and this person was either the original ad poster, or they got my info by other sketchy means. I was not expecting a scammer to know I was looking for creative work. Sometimes when a job seems to fall in your lap while you’re desperately seeking employment, it feels like a godsend. I literally thought, “Someone is looking out for me.”

Anthony told me he was a plastics engineer. I assumed he also took photos as a paid hobby. His initial responses were scattered and a little robotic, but again I assumed that was because he was disorganized and needed a personal assistant. He asked me to go to this site to fill out the form for a background check. It did not ask for any information beyond what I’d included in my original application, such as my name and address, so I figured, “What’s the harm?” Anthony then, totally unprompted, said he was going to mail me a check with my first week’s salary and some additional funds for my “first task”—which he said would be buying supplies for needy orphans. Anthony told me he grew up in orphanages and that this was his way of giving back. That's right—he used orphans in a lie. There is a special circle of hell waiting for this person.

The personal assistant scam is a less common strain of email phishing fraud which has already worked on many people before. The most significant example I found was of a North Dakota student named Kristine Dale. She apparently got an email from someone claiming to be a professor offering her $400 a week to run a few errands. When she took the job her first task was to make sure the money cleared and then transfer the money to an account she would then use for her errands. When she deposited the check it seemed to clear, so she transferred the money. When she went to make a purchase the next day, Kristine’s card was declined. It turns out the money had never actually transferred, it just had appeared to do so. Kristine lost almost $4,000 of her own money that I am sure she needed for school.

Before I had fully realized that I was being scammed (in retrospect the orphan thing really should have given it away) Anthony gave me a tracking number for an envelope containing the aforementioned check. The check was stopped at the Toronto FedEx facility. Eager to get paid and start working, I called FedEx to see what the issue was. They said about 200 envelopes from Philadelphia—all with checks in them—had been stopped and were being inspected for fraud. Game over. Not only was the envelope stopped for fraud, but Anthony had told me he was in Nova Scotia at the time—not Philadelphia.

Still, I remained deeply curious about this stranger attempting to take my money. Who was this person claiming to be a Nova Scotian engineer? I began studying our email exchange for clues. After we’d been out of contact for a few days, I received a bizarre string of upbeat rhyming platitudes: “Make a decision to enjoy this Sunday, no matter what comes your way,” Anthony wrote. “Embrace this day with gladness, even if your blue skies turn grey. Enjoy life's little blessings and be thankful for another day.” It sounded like a cross between a Hallmark card and an ad for a male potency drug.

I contacted Anthony and told him about the check situation—without using the word fraud, as I wanted to maintain contact. He tried to distract me by offering up more information about his supposed business, including a company name and mission statement. Like any sensible suspicious person would, I then decided to Google the company. I couldn’t find anything on Anthony or his engineering business, but when I plugged in part of the email that sounded technical and specific, I was bombarded by a full page of articles on personal assistant scams.

Here’s how one of these typically goes down: Someone contacts you through an old job posting, saying something to the tune of, “Hey, the position you applied for has been filled, but I need a personal assistant.” They then mail you a bogus check on “faith” stating that they are “trusting you” and when the money arrives they give the bank just enough information so that the check looks like it clears. Then they ask you to transfer the money to a different account, stating that this is an account for use in running errands. Then the money disappears, after being ‘cleaned’ and the victim of the scam then has to pay back the bank for the bounced check, assuming they had spent the money on the instructed errands as a personal assistant.

I felt raw—not only had I missed out on some needed income, but I had also been duped enough to tell friends and family about my new gig. After about ten minutes of stewing I cooled off and then my mind wandered to ways I may be able to mess with this scammer. The more time they talked to me the less they could scam other people. Plus, if they were going to waste my time I could waste their time—or at least I could have a little fun at their expense.

I emailed the scammer saying the fake check cleared. I gave a detailed account of my first assignment, adding that I had taken photos of orphans playing with the toys I delivered. As proof of my good deed, I attached a photo of Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan. When I got a confused response, I apologized saying I must have accidentally clicked on the wrong jpeg.

After a series of increasingly ridiculous wrestling photos, Anthony stopped responding. I was sad that my brief back-and-forth with the scammer had come to an end. I wanted to know more about this person—where they really live, what they’re doing at this moment, if they even like wrestling. Sadly, I may never know.

The thing that makes this so different from other scams, like the Nigerian prince scam, is it exploits a plausible situation. You would know if you were related to a Nigerian prince, but finding a potential employer who knows your work history isn’t so far fetched. The thing that twists my stomach is that it preys on people in desperate situations. Artists and writers chronically looking for an extra side-gig are such easy marks.

Follow Gideon on Twitter.

Justin Trudeau’s 2018 Federal Budget Was Aggressively OK

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Can’t believe we’re here folks: the third Bill Morneau budget. Our governments grow up so fast. One minute they’re all young and fresh-faced and promising that they’ll have the budget balanced again by 2019, and then the next they’re a grizzled husk looking to kick that debt can down the road past the next election. Time flies when you’re having fun.

The big theme of the budget this year is “equality,” which should surprise no one. This budget is the first to emerge out of the “gender-based analysis” the Liberals brought in with their budget last year. Accordingly, one of its major highlights is a commitment to closing the wage gap between men and women in the public service and federally-regulated private sector. The plan is to bring in pay equity legislation modelled after what has been done in Ontario and Quebec, although the cost of this plan and the details about how it would work still remain a mystery.

Similarly, the Liberals also plan to spend $1.2 billion over the next five years to establish a paternity leave program. Those “second parents” who take at least five weeks off to care for their children during the 12 month parental leave period will be compensated at 55 percent of their income. For those who take the 18 month leave, that compensation becomes 33 percent and runs for up to eight weeks. These new parental leave benefits will also be available to same-sex couples beginning in 2019.

Indigenous child and family services will also get $1.4 billion over the next six years, in the hopes that it will strengthen service provision enough to enable more Indigenous children to remain home with their families and communities. Although Indigenous children only make up about 8 percent of all children in Canada, they account for more than half of all children in foster care. This is part of the overall $4.1 billion pledged for Indigenous water, housing, and childcare in the 2018 budget, and the total $16.5 billion, spread out over seven years, that the Liberals have earmarked for Indigenous issues since their first budget.

There is also about $3.8 billion allotted in the budget for scientific funding. The lion’s share of which will go to fundamental research projects happening at Canadian universities, but at least $600 million will go towards upgrading federal government laboratories and coordinating scientific activity across government. A few hundred million more dollars are earmarked for “innovation,” including the Industrial Research Assistance Program, female entrepreneurs, and a new intellectual property regime.

Other things also appear in the budget: $500 million for cybersecurity; $50 million for community journalism (and maybe newspapers will become non-profits); $62 million for a public education campaign about the dangers of drug use in the wake of legal weed; $231 million to tackle the opioid crisis. They established an advisory council on bringing in a national pharmacare program, so look forward to that ahead of the next election. They’re also going to cancel the Phoenix pay system that has aggrieved millions of federal employees since its introduction. But in the meantime, they’re pumping in another $430 million dollars over the next six years to sort out all its currently-existing problems.

Anyways, that’s the sizzle reel of the 2018 federal budget. There is something in here for almost everyone. Even the deficit hawks! Team Trudeau campaigned in 2015 on running a small deficit to jump-start the country’s infrastructure before returning to a balanced budget by 2019, but this is not going to happen. Budget 2018 projects a deficit of $18.1 billion for the 2018-19 fiscal years, before eventually easing off to $12.3 billion by 2022-23. Understandably, this has given conservatives across the country a minor conniption.

Before anyone freaks out about Canada’s impending federal debt apocalypse: the sky is not falling. Even with the string of post-Trudeau deficits, the country’s overall debt-to-GDP ratio is still set to decrease. UBC economist Kevin Milligan has a good thread unpacking what this means on Twitter, but the tl;dr version is that fears about the nominal federal deficit are greatly exaggerated. In the grand financial scheme of things, these deficits are minor compared to what is produced annually by the Canadian economy, and the feds have pretty good long-term fiscal prospects.

(The provinces, on the other hand, are a very different story. But let’s not worry about that right now!)

So chalk this whole deficit thing up to another broken promise from the prime minister. (He is very bad for that.) But that too is part and parcel of a budget that is, by and large, more smoke than fire. It contains no groundbreaking measures nor expansive visions—beyond prepping some version of a pharmacare policy to likely anchor their 2019 election campaign. The budget’s ideological commitment to liberal feminism is admirable, but even most of those measures are comparatively light.

Don’t get me wrong. Subsidies for female entrepreneurs/athletes and a month or two of paternity leave are more than welcome. But if the goal is to supercharge the economy by filling the workforce with women freshly emancipated from the drudgery of domestic labour —and we’re copying Quebec anyway—why not just bring in a childcare program? As former Saskatchewan finance minister Janice MacKinnon told CBC, it really does appear like the Liberals opted for a symbolic flash-in-the-pan approach to gender equity rather than taking it soberly or seriously.

To a lesser degree, you could argue the Liberals are doing the same thing with the deficits. Given that they are comparatively small—and that the debt-to-GDP ratio is still projected to decrease—it is likely that the government’s emphasis on providing infrastructure spending (although there was little to none in this budget) or social programs with a deficit is another symbolic gesture. It signals their progressive credentials to a Canadian electorate long-conditioned to believe that the primary ideological cleavage in political life is that the Left spends money and the Right does not, which is very important in a party system with two leftish parties against a single conservative opponent. This was part of the Liberal resurgence against the NDP in the 2015 election and it’s clear that they’re sticking with it. When Mulcair promised to balance budgets, Trudeau promised to run a deficit. (For the record, Harper’s last “balanced budget” was as much political posturing as this one; the Conservatives sold off the government’s stake in the auto sector to fudge the numbers on their books. Substantive federal budgets have already joined the Sears Catalogue and Rupert’s Land as another unhappy ghost of long-gone Canadiana.)

It makes more sense, then, to see this all as a pre-pre-election budget aimed at undercutting an electoral threat from the NDP. If you’ve got a Liberal government ready to give you pharmacare and a winking “money is no object” patronage to the equity-seeking groups it targets at election time—and they’re an incumbent “progressive” government trying to hold down the fort from the scary Conservatives—why do you need a Liberal-lite NDP? But that’s a question for Jagmeet Singh to answer at some point in the next 18 months.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

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