Judging by the clothes I have on in the memory (jeans with legs as wide as salt shovels and an adult-large System Of A Down hoodie), I must have been about 12 when I watched three boys I'd never seen before kick the shit into my friends.

I say "System Of A Down" hoodie, but it could have been any earnest metal band Kerrang! had on rotation in 2002. I say "three boys", but there could have been anywhere between two to 20 of them. I say "never seen before", but they had approached us in the park a few minutes prior and called us greebos or something equally devastating. We shuffled away, they followed, and beat up all the boys while a female friend and I stood on the perimeters, pointlessly waving our arms about in a confused panic. I wouldn’t call it a fight, per se (that would have required some fighting back), but it was the first time I saw violence break out that way right in front of me, and I thought, 'Well, this is shit.'

The same park would become the scene of many other formative experiences. After a brief Year 8 romance, my first break-up took place underneath the huge chestnut tree near a statue honouring the two heroes who composed the Welsh national anthem (in a pub across the road, no less). The football stands became the centrepiece of my first summers of underage binge drinking. I feigned enthusiasm through a pleasureless fingering on a bench in the flower garden. A bunch of us got driven home by the police for hiding in a bush, waiting until the park closed, and creeping out to sit in the paddling pool doing poppers. All of which is to say: growing up somewhere remote literally turns your childhood into a series of Ed Sheeran songs – but also, that parks play a central role in British adolescence and beyond.

If you grew up in Britain, "the park" probably means something to you. Is there a phrase containing more layers of emotion than "The Park"? Can any other combination of words elicit a greater or more diverse bubbling-up of feeling? No. The Park is unique. It is both one specific place at one specific time, and a collection of places you will experience over the course of your entire life. It is as much a geographic location as it is a state of mind. The Park is the realm of eternal summer – always sunny, always searching for filters, always bolting onto your feet, shrieking, making everyone else scream as well, and then saying "sorry, wasp". It is a lush, green slate onto which we project all our fuck-its and fuck-ups. It is where you go when everyone collectively agrees to drop all responsibility and put in a day shift's worth of nothing but aggressive pleasure-seeking.

The Park can be a place of solemnity and reflection, sure. Somewhere to walk alone and notice a leaf and think about death, like a character in a Jonathan Safran Foer novel. But mostly it is a place to drink precisely five-and-a-half very flat, very warm cans of cider and then piss yourself or be sick. This is The Park I wish to discuss here.

The concept of The British Park rests entirely on two unwavering premises: that you can do whatever you want (within reason), and that nobody will stop you from doing it. It is essentially the middle ground between a music festival and actual childhood. Nobody really cares about how loud your music is, nobody really cares if you’re only wearing pants, nobody really cares if you’re drinking straight vodka and are clearly a teen, nobody really cares if you’re doing poi (I mean, they do, but they politely agree not to say anything). At most, the park police might arrive on bicycles and shout over the tinny sounds of Fall Out Boy farting through someone’s phone speakers and ask you to stop setting fire to McDonald's toys. Or, if you're past that sort of thing, tell you to put your nipples away.

Whatever age you are, The Park is always the most democratic option. No average human lives within convenient reach of a park. There is no "come to mine and we'll mosey over together". There is no half-arsing it. There is only everyone trekking from their respective postcodes with a carrier bag of shite hanging off every possible limb to sit in a big circle and shout at each other in shorts. It is everyone putting aside the usual ebb and flow of their respective days to plonk themselves cross-legged on the filthy earth. It's like a UN summit of fun. Especially outside of cities, where there is literally nowhere else to go except the corner shop, and only so many people can stand outside one of them at any given time.

Just as relationships begin and end, as people come and go, one park will enter your life to be replaced by another. There are and always will be First Parks, era-defining Long-Term Parks, and many Casual Parks in between. All containing different memories, but all playing the same foundational role. The Park is like IKEA or the buffet at Pizza Hut, offering you the core ingredients to create basically anything you want. And the British public have perused what is on offer and have unanimously decided upon: getting shitfaced and kicking off.

At some point you may find yourself back at your First Park. Perhaps you’re 18 and sitting on the swings with a friend, both on the precipice of leaving your hometown for the first time, life yawning cavernously open in front of you while you hoof the last of some bad coke off a National Insurance card and reflect on all the times you kissed the same people over by the cricket pitch. Perhaps you’re 37 and complaining about your own dumbass kids who are off somewhere else in the park eating dog poo (IDK what adulthood involves, I’m guessing one mortgage and various kinds of poo). Either way, a great realisation will occur. You have not truly contemplated your place in the world until you have revisited The Park you used to smoke weed in as a teenager and realised that it is actually way smaller and more run down than you remember, and all those older kids you hung out with were definitely huge creeps, and actually didn’t your friend once blackout from drinking, knock a tooth out and have to get their stomach pumped? That wasn’t great. Also: the fights. They weren’t very nice either. And the fingering... Was. So. Dry???

That said, the good tends to outshine all the bad here, like stars to dark matter. For every punch thrown, a Big WKD was passed around a group of friends like a ceremonial cup; for every crap snog, a nickname was forged and never forgotten. And they tend to get better, The Parks, as you get older. Less awkwardly figuring out how to be a person for the first time and getting picked on because of your jeans, more selecting the right brand of crisps and making sure you’re sitting within seven minutes walking distance of a public toilet. Less fights and fingering, more roaring laughter you will forget the source of by the end of the day because you’re older, now, and your brain retains information like a paper bag retains piss.

Sure, we could consider The Park for what it is: the place you went to get dehydration headaches during the four days of summer in which it was actually sunny. But to do that is to miss the point entirely. You will truly never appreciate The Park unless you have sat in the same place for a duration so great that time ceases to exist and your shoulders begin to fizz with sunburn like a Berocca. Nothing matters now, only cans. Cans, toilet proximity, crisps and the total pursuit of happiness for the rest of the day, safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of your heart devoted to it. Parklife.

@emmaggarland

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Once more, the western "anti-war" movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria.

This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime's military capability (but didn't) following chemical attacks – considered a "red line" – in 2013. The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. The third was on the 14th of April, as the US, UK and France took limited military action (targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities) following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements from bombing.

The first thing to note from the three major mobilisations of the western "anti-war" left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been through the use of conventional weapons. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, by the war’s sixth anniversary, 94 percent of these victims had been killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance.

There is no outrage or concern feigned for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators.

There is no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organised communities or target hospitals and rescue workers.

Civilians are expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact, the slogan "Hands off Syria" really means "Hands off Assad", and support is often given for Russia's military intervention. This was evident at the weekend at a demonstration organised by Stop the War UK, where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.

This left exhibits a deeply authoritarian tendency, one that places themselves at the centre of political analysis. Solidarity is therefore extended to states (seen as the main actor in a struggle for liberation) rather than oppressed or underprivileged groups in any given society, no matter that state's tyranny. Blind to the social war occurring within Syria itself, the Syrian people (where they exist) are viewed as mere pawns in a geo-political chess game.

They repeat the mantra "Assad is the legitimate ruler of a sovereign country". Assad – who inherited a dictatorship from his father and has never held, let alone won, a free and fair election. Assad – whose "Syrian Arab Army" can only regain the territory it lost with the backing of a hotchpotch of foreign mercenaries and supported by foreign bombs, and who are fighting, by and large, Syrian-born rebels and civilians. How many would consider their own elected government legitimate if it began carrying out mass rape campaigns against dissidents? It is only the complete dehumanisation of Syrians that makes such a position even possible. It’s a racism that sees Syrians as incapable of achieving, let alone deserving, anything better than one of the most brutal dictatorships of our time.

For this authoritarian left, support is extended to the Assad regime in the name of "anti-imperialism". Assad is seen as part of the "axis of resistance" against both US Empire and Zionism. It matters little that the Assad regime itself supported the first Gulf war, or participated in the US illegal rendition programme where suspected terrorists were tortured in Syria on the CIA's behalf. The fact that this regime probably holds the dubious distinction of slaughtering more Palestinians since 2011 than the Israeli state is constantly overlooked, as is the fact that it’s more intent on using its armed forces to suppress internal dissent than to liberate the Israeli-occupied Golan.

This "anti-imperialism" of idiots is one which equates imperialism with the actions of the US alone. They seem unaware that the US has been bombing Syria since 2014. In its campaign to liberate Raqqa from Daesh, all international norms of war and considerations of proportionality were abandoned. Over 1,000 civilians were killed and the UN estimated that 80 percent of the city was made uninhabitable. There were no protests organised by leading "anti-war" organisations against this intervention, no calls to ensure that civilians and civilian infrastructure were protected. Instead, they adopted the "War on Terror" discourse, once the preserve of neo-cons, now promulgated by the regime, that all opponents to Assad are jihadi terrorists.

They turned a blind eye to Assad filling his gulag with thousands of secular, peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators for death by torture, while releasing militant-Islamists from prison. Similarly, the continuing protests held in liberated areas in opposition to extremist and authoritarian groups such as Daesh, Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham have been ignored. Syrians are not seen as possessing the sophistication to hold a diverse range of views. Civil society activists (including many amazing women), citizen journalists, humanitarian workers are irrelevant. The entire opposition is reduced to its most authoritarian elements or seen as mere conduits for foreign interests.

This pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin. It combines identity politics with egoism. Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners – only white men have the power to make history. According to the Pentagon there are currently around 2,000 American troops in Syria. The US has established a number of military bases in the Kurdish-controlled north for the first time in Syria's history. This should concern anyone who supports Syrian self-determination, yet pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of Iranian troops and Iranian-backed Shia militias now occupying large parts of the country, or the murderous bombing raids carried out by the Russian air force in support of the fascist dictatorship. Russia has now established permanent military bases in the country, and has been handed exclusive rights over Syria's oil and gas as a reward for its support.

Noam Chomsky once argued that Russia’s intervention could not be considered imperialism because it was invited to bomb the country by the Syrian regime. By that analysis, the US's intervention in Vietnam was not imperialism either, invited as it was by the South-Vietnamese government.

A number of anti-war organisations have justified their silence on Russian and Iranian interventions by arguing that "the main enemy is at home". This excuses them from undertaking any serious power analysis to determine who the main actors driving the war actually are. For Syrians, the main enemy is indeed at home – it's Assad who is engaging in what the UN has termed "the crime of extermination". Without being aware of their own contradictions, many of the same voices have been vocally opposed (and rightly so) to Israel’s current assault on peaceful demonstrators in Gaza. Of course, one of the main ways imperialism works is to deny native voices. In this vein, leading western anti-war organisations hold conferences on Syria without inviting any Syrian speakers.

The other major political trend to have thrown its weight behind the Assad regime and organise against US, UK and French strikes on Syria is the far-right. Today, the discourse of fascists and these "anti-imperialist leftists" is virtually indistinguishable. In the US, white supremacist Richard Spencer, alt-right podcaster Mike Enoch and anti-immigration activist Ann Coulter are all opposing US strikes. In the UK, former BNP leader Nick Griffin and Islamophobe Katie Hopkins join the calls.

The place where the alt-right and alt-left frequently converge is around promoting various conspiracy theories to absolve the regime of its crimes. They claim chemical massacres are false flags or that rescue workers are Al Qaeda and therefore legitimate targets for attack. Those spreading such reports are not on the ground in Syria and are unable to independently verify their claims. They are often dependent on Russian or Assad state propaganda outlets because they "don't trust the MSM" or the Syrians directly affected. Sometimes the convergence of these two seemingly opposite strands of the political spectrum turns into outright collaboration. The ANSWER coalition, which is organising many of the demonstrations against a strike on Assad in the US, has such a history. Both strands frequently promote Islamophobic and anti-Semitic narratives. Both share the same talking points and same memes.

There are many valid reasons for opposing external military intervention in Syria, whether it be by the US, Russia, Iran or Turkey. None of these states are acting in the interests of the Syrian people, democracy or human rights. They act solely in their own interests. The US, UK and French intervention is less about protecting Syrians from mass-atrocity and more about enforcing an international norm that chemical weapons use is unacceptable, lest one day they be used on westerners themselves.

More foreign bombs will not bring about peace and stability. There’s little appetite to force Assad from power, which would contribute to ending the worst of the atrocities. Yet in opposing foreign intervention, one needs to come up with an alternative to protect Syrians from slaughter. It’s morally objectionable, to say the least, to expect Syrians to just shut up and die to protect the higher principle of "anti-imperialism". Many alternatives to foreign military intervention have been proposed by Syrians time and again, and have been ignored. And so the question remains, when diplomatic options have failed, when a genocidal regime is protected from censure by powerful international backers, when no progress is made in stopping daily bombing, ending starvation sieges or releasing prisoners who are being tortured on an industrial scale, what can be done?

I no longer have an answer. I’ve consistently opposed all foreign military intervention in Syria, supported Syrian-led process to rid their country of a tyrant and international processes grounded in efforts to protect civilians and human rights and ensure accountability for all actors responsible for war-crimes. A negotiated settlement is the only way to end this war – and still seems as distant as ever. Assad (and his backers) are determined to thwart any process, pursue a total military victory and crush any remaining democratic alternative. Hundreds of Syrians are being killed every week in the most barbaric ways imaginable. Extremist groups and ideologies are thriving in the chaos wrought by the state. Civilians continue to flee in their thousands as legal processes – such as Law No.10 – are implemented to ensure they will never return to their homes. The international system itself is collapsing under the weight of its own impotence.

The words "Never Again" ring hollow. There is no major people’s movement which stands in solidarity with the victims. They are instead slandered, their suffering is mocked or denied, and their voices either absent from discussions or questioned by people far away, who know nothing of Syria, revolution or war, and who arrogantly believe they know what is best. It is this desperate situation which causes many Syrians to welcome the US, UK and France’s action, and who now see foreign intervention as their only hope, despite the risks they know it entails.

One thing is for sure – I won’t lose any sleep over targeted strikes aimed at regime military bases and chemical weapons plants which may provide Syrians with a short respite from the daily killing. And I will never see people who place grand narratives over lived realities, who support brutal regimes in far off countries, or who peddle racism, conspiracy theories and atrocity denial, as allies.

Leila Al Shami is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (Pluto Press) and you can read her blog here. This article originally appeared on the author's blog and is reposted with permission.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Adam Bierman, the bullishly confident 36-year-old CEO of MedMen—the first American cannabis company to be valued at a billion dollars—thinks Donald Trump is very good for business.

“This administration is the best we’ve had in a very long time for our cause,” he told me last week as we spoke in a spotless white conference room inside his company’s new $15 million marijuana factory, near Reno. “This administration have said that they’re a champion of states’ rights. They’re a champion of business. When people say, ‘The last person in the world that would sign a marijuana bill into law would be Donald Trump,’ I don’t think it’s that crazy. I think it makes perfect sense for him to be the person that would sign it.”

What about Jeff Sessions, the famously anti-marijuana attorney general? What about the fact that it’s largely been Democrats, rather than the Republicans actually in control of the federal government, who have backed marijuana legalization?

Bierman waved all of that away.

“In the United States, Congress makes the laws,” he said. “What’s important to remember is that in November 2016 we elected Donald Trump president of the United States. We also legalized marijuana in California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts on the same day. That means the day after the election, congresspeople from those states showed up in DC representing constituents that voted to legalize marijuana. The real momentum has very little to do with the White House. It has everything to do with Congress.”

It’s true that support for marijuana legalization seems to be growing across the country—a recent Pew poll found that 61 percent of Americans support legalization. The Trump administration gave assurances last week that it will not go after states that have legalized marijuana, thanks to pressure from Colorado’s Republican Senator Cory Gardner. Democrats have signed on in droves to a bill from Cory Booker that would end weed prohibition, a show of support that it more likely that the party will tackle the issue should it take power. The same week that MedMen’s Nevada factory began production, former Speaker of the House John Boehner joined the board of Acreage Holdings, a cannabis-centric investment firm—seven years after the Republican said that he was "unalterably opposed" to marijuana legalization.

If federal law does change within the next few years, MedMen will be ideally placed to profit. Bierman and co-founder Andrew Modlin started the company in 2010 after their PR agency, ModMan, was called in to build a website for a small weed shop. They couldn’t believe how much money the business was bringing in, so they decided to scrape together $13,000 to start their own cannabis company. Eight years later the pair now runs 11 dispensaries that look like Apple stores in California, Nevada, and New York—with a 12th due to open this Friday in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. In the next few months MedMen set to become a publicly traded company in Canada, where federal legalization is on the way. Last month, Canadian investment firm Captor Capital Corp. announced it had bought 2.3 percent of the business for $23 million, valuing MedMen at a billion dollars—which gives it the status of a "unicorn" company. It is already a major player in the national marijuana market, which took nearly $9 billion in sales last year and is predicted to hit $21 billion by 2021.

The cloning room. Photo by Ortal Dahan.

Now the company is opening what Bierman calls “the most high-tech marijuana factory in the world” here in Nevada. The site features a sterile tissue culture lab where plants are sliced up and multiplied, a purple-lit cloning room where weed grows in test tubes out of agar jelly, a $4,000 Futurola grinder capable of shredding three pounds of flower in two seconds, and a 26,000-square-foot Dutch-designed warehouse that will soon be home to 25,000 plants. Manufacturing manager Jeff Spinder says the factory will be capable of producing 10,000 pounds of marijuana every year.

MedMen are also currently building exact replicas of this factory in Desert Hot Springs, California, and Utica, New York. This isn’t just a facility I'm touring, it’s the birth of Big Weed.

Companies like MedMen have an open field because existing giant corporations are reluctant to get involved until marijuana finally becomes legal at the federal level, said Troy Dayton, CEO of the Arcview Group, the largest investor group focused on the cannabis market. “Part of the great strategy in companies like MedMen and others is that they’re getting a chance to take a crack at a multibillion-dollar market which is growing with a 27 percent compound annual growth rate before they have to compete with the big dogs, and as a result they’re becoming a big dog in their own right,” Dayton told me.

Bierman agrees with this assessment, and says the current federal uncertainty is both an asset and a cause of anxiety. “I feel like I’ve got a race to run and, yeah, I’m ten laps ahead of everybody else but the other guys—that in a moment’s notice could lace up their shoes—are way faster than I am,” he said. “I have to keep running hard and fast and not take a break because I have to assume that at some point they’re going to let them come run.”

Chris Walsh, the founding editor of industry journal Marijuana Business Daily, says that the reticence of big money to get involved won’t last long. He pointed out to me that Constellation Brands (the $42 billion multinational that brings you Corona and Modelo) announced in October that it's bought a 9.9 percent stake in the $2 billion Canadian marijuana firm Canopy Growth. (There are unicorns north of the border too.)

“The stigma is rapidly eroding,” said Walsh. “But it’s still there, especially if you’re tied to a mainstream investment firm who might worry that its other clients would get upset, or that they might face some kind of backlash, or just that maybe they personally still view this industry incorrectly and think it’s a bunch of hippies running businesses. It’s not. This is becoming a very professional industry, so that stigma is going to evaporate fairly quickly in the next year or so.”

Bierman is no hippie. He’s never made any secret of the fact that he’s a business guy more than a weed guy. But while his company may not have deep roots in the decades-old marijuana culture, he plans to make the MedMen brand synonymous with the new era of American weed.

“This isn’t some serial entrepreneurs that started a business to go flip to private equity. We’re building an empire,” he told me. “The biggest marijuana company in the world is going to emanate from the US. Being the biggest marijuana company in the US, it’s mine to screw up.”

MedMen founders Adam Bierman and Andrew Modlin

This era of Big Weed corporatization will not be exactly what the more utopian legalization activists once dreamed of. Even as companies like MedMen thrive, half a million people, disproportionately black men, are still being arrested each year for marijuana possession; people of color have been largely frozen out of the legal industry. But from an investors’ viewpoint, Dayton thinks there are still plenty of people in the business who are there for moral reasons.

“It’s a unique industry in that so many people are involved in whole or in part because they want to see a better world,” he said. “They want to see cannabis legal because they care about the medical benefits, or because they care about freedom, or because they care about the racial injustices of the drug war. But if you want something done in this world you’ve got to figure out how to make it profitable.”

For now, MedMen finds itself in a perfect position. Trump has said that he won’t back a federal crackdown that would wipe out the industry, while at the same time the major food and beverage players won’t start competing until it’s legal across the whole country.

Cornering the market pre-legalization is a play with historical precedence. The last time prohibition ended in America, Joseph Kennedy was already in business thanks to some medicinal whisky import licenses. Kennedy made a lot of money from that deal, and his kid became president. Don’t think Adam Bierman hasn’t already considered this.

Follow Kevin E.G. Perry on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Our society has an anxiety problem, in that we have now ascribed the word "anxiety" to such a broad spectrum of feelings and situations that we're not really sure what anxiety means anymore. The two of us writing this right now have anxiety, and even we don't know what it means!

It's all relative and all miserable, really, but there is definitely a scale: there is a diagnosable "state of panic so bad it is frequently mistaken for a heart attack", and there is "too many emails". Then there's depression, which seems to cover everything from being physically incapacitated, stewing in your own oils, to how you feel after having an argument with your girlfriend.

We're all guilty of disregarding this scale, because when you're experiencing it – whatever "it" means to you – it feels shit. But whether it's a Kardashian saying they've got "anxiety" about literally anything that makes them nervous, to the raft of websites insisting it's "time to talk" every single Mental Health Week, the media is especially guilty of conflating the mild and manageable with the chronic and life-impeding. Most recently, The Metro ran a piece detailing how "6 people with mental health conditions" found "the one", which seems to do just that.

What begins as well-intentioned encouragement to remind us – the anxious and depressed – that we're not doomed to die alone, as previously assumed, quickly becomes a series of frankly demoralising tales suggesting that we should be grateful not to be dumped for not wanting to go to a crowded bar. It's quite difficult to discern exactly what’s going on with any of the interviewees because none go into specifics beyond "my partner is not an arsehole to me". Suffice to say, the information offered reads like "6 People Describe The Bare Minimum Required From A Relationship".

The scenarios are the most accessible iterations of anxiety and depression – those most often portrayed by the media, where "choosing the right images for Tinder" is the perceived height of stress. Which, fair enough: "tfw bae dabs away your underboob sweat with a face wipe because you’re too depressed for hygiene" probably isn't all that relatable to a mainstream audience.

Of course, nobody deserves a negging for "only" having mild anxiety; all poor mental health sucks. And regardless of where you fall on this ~spectrum~, one thing we do all have in common is the feeling of being an inconvenience, which means we devour every act of basic human decency like it's the last hatchet in a zombie apocalypse – as is often the case in the Metro's examples.

Far from one publication reinforcing this notion, though, internalised fear and shame about being an unlovable shit is sadly a common feeling among many people dealing with chronic mental health problems – and something we're already pretty good at reinforcing ourselves. Still, we all deserve someone to love us. Here, we've come up with some common relationship scenarios and listed how you might react to them, depending on where you fall on that sliding scale we were talking about.

1. YOU FEEL ANXIOUS AND THEY BRING YOU A TEA

METRO VERSION

Chris, AKA "this one", has been with you through the ups and downs, offering hugs or stoic and slightly baffled silence. Honestly dunno what you’d do without him! Now your man has only gone and brought you a box of Yorkshire Tea (your favourite!) because you got home before him and had run out and you've been really anxious recently. He makes you both a cuppa and asks if you feel better, and you have to say "yes" or you’ll hurt his feelings.

SHITTY REALITY BECAUSE METRO, IT IS P’RAPS FAIR TO SAY, DOES NOT REFLECT THE AFOREMENTIONED SCALE:

Pack of 40 Yorkshire Tea bags: £1.65. Therapy session mostly spent talking about your relationship problems: £55 (rate of 44 per annum).

You know you shouldn't, but you make a weird resentful joke about the tea making you feel better and it doesn’t land, and now Chris is sad. You've broken Chris. You apologise, you're just tired, and the night moves on. By the morning, all is well, providing you’re not too depressed to have sex.

EVEN SHITTIER REALITY THAT NEVER GETS A LOOK IN BECAUSE IT'S NOT VERY FUNNY TBH:

Chris: "What time do you wanna meet up later? Table is booked for 8 :)"
You: "Actually do you mind if we don’t hang out tonight? Really not feeling great x"
Chris: "Aw :( Np, shall I come over?"
You: "No."

Photo: Guy Corbishley / Alamy Stock Photo

2. YOU HAVE A PANIC ATTACK AND THEY GOOGLE WHAT TO DO

METRO VERSION

I told my boyfriend I occasionally suffered from the mental problem "depression". He went out of his way to google "depression" and we're still together two years on. One of a kind, so lucky to have met my best friend.

SHITTY REALITY:

They understand, can possibly even relate, and you muddle forward under the philosophy that all relationships require "work". Their initial enthusiasm to engage with pop psychology and the Mind website begins to dwindle as your taxing symptoms become fairly trying personality traits. When you roll over one night and see him smoking a cigarette, staring at the ceiling, you can’t help but wonder if he's calculating the cost in years taken off his life through the stress of your relationship.

EVEN SHITTIER REALITY:

You’ve had so many misdiagnoses at this point that not even you know what’s wrong with you. But hey! Your partner has just seen Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive and has some thoughts about bipolar. "At least you’re never bored!" they offer, cheerily. "At least you have stuff to write about." Five minutes later they are looking at you helplessly as you scream about wanting to lobotomise yourself with kitchen utensils. ARE YOU BORED YET, BABE!

3. YOU CHANGE A PLAN AND THEY DON’T DUMP YOU

METRO VERSION

"We were planning to have our sixth date at a busy cool new cocktail place in town and I felt really anxious getting ready. He didn’t know about my problems with anxiety, which just made me even worse. But I asked to meet somewhere that wasn’t the bar he picked, and explained sometimes I have panic attacks... We had a seventh date!"

SHITTY REALITY:

Since day one, Mark has been reasonable about where we go. If I’m experiencing high levels of anxiety he is prepared to meet me at alternative location within a 30-metre radius. I’ve been known to dart into a shop and have a rolling panic attack on the way to events. Sometimes he shouts at me in frustration when I start hyperventilating and I wonder whether passersby think we’re in an abusive relationship. When we’re late to meet friends he looks like he’s about to have a hernia suppressing a passive aggressive reference to my behaviour. He takes it all in his stride, though. All in all, utter sweetheart tbh.

EVEN SHITTIER REALITY:

Dates, lol! We meet at the house. Always at ol' base camp. Casa del Miseria. He probably doesn’t mind waiting in my room for an hour while I try to get into the shower to wash my vital body parts in case we have sex (ha ha ha, sure).

READ:

4. YOU HAVE A BAD TUMMY BECAUSE ANXIETY DOES THAT SOMETIMES

METRO VERSION:

Here comes Chris, right back at it again with a nice peppermint tea in a Keep Calm And Just Breathe mug to settle your nerves. Angel.

SHITTY REALITY:

You WhatsApp the love of your life from the loo in Spoons, having been gone for objectively Too Long. They respectfully don’t dump you for mentioning the faecal body function, but you can tell it’s made them nervous about doing butt stuff now.

EVEN SHITTIER REALITY:

You believe you will shit yourself. Like, right here, right now, on the 149 bus. You say as such to your partner. By some miracle, you don’t shit, but you may as well have because you’ve cried and hissed loudly, "Can you see anything?? I swear I can feel something" while presenting them your arse in their tracksuit bottoms (not a "real clothes" day, today).

5. LITERALLY JUST TALKING

METRO VERSION:

I’ve never been good at expressing my feelings, but thankfully I feel very supported by my amazing, considerate partner who doesn’t take the piss out of me when I’m expressing a negative emotion.

SHIT REALITY:

Looong. Every small interaction requires at least a two-hour emotional debrief to make sure we’re both on the same page. Which, ultimately, is better than no communication at all. The other day they made a joke about how we’ll be near-on dead before we get through a day without having one of our big chats, and I go "haha" but we both know they’re being serious.

EVEN SHITTER REALITY:

Depending on who you are today, communication could land anywhere on a scale of "silence" to "incoherent string of 48 texts about your dad" to "eschewing verbal communication and furiously banging it out, thus eviscerating the foundations of your sex life". Sometimes silence is golden. Sometimes silence is golden for a weekend.

And yet, through it all – importantly, we must drive this point home here – I am, they are, you are worthy of the one. Everyone deserves a Chris. Even if you did shit yourself.

@hannahrosewens and @emmaggarland

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last Thursday, two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks for trespassing while they were sitting in the store waiting for a friend. After footage of the incident surfaced, people were outraged, with some calling for a boycott of the coffee chain. Starbucks has since apologized and scheduled an anti-bias training day, but people are still coming out to protest.

On Tuesday's episode of Desus & Mero , the hosts talked about the ongoing response to the incident, including unique picket signs, CEO Kevin Johnson's apology video, and the Starbucks employee who's the star of a new meme.

You can watch the latest episode of DESUS & MERO for free, online, right now. New episodes Monday to Thursday at 11PM on VICELAND.COM.

To stay up-to-date on all things VICELAND Canada, sign up for our newsletter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Smoking weed inside is great until you want to rid your home of its lingering scent. But before you go out and buy a fancy candle or douse your space with air freshener, know that you can neutralize the smell for cheap. On this episode of Smokeables, VICE's Trey Smith explains how you can cobble together your own DIY artisanal sploof using just a few household items, some sage, and crushed-up flower petals to get your home smelling just like "an artisan workplace with like a cool coffee shop in the back."

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Memes have finally caught up to the age-old adage, "Whoever smelt it, dealt it" with a little help from human enigma Eric Andre.

You may have seen the episode of The Eric Andre Show in which a stiff set about climate change segues into Andre pulling out a gat and emptying two clips into co-host Hannibal Buress. Andre looks at the camera and, seemly perplexed, wonders aloud, "Who killed Hannibal?"

Andre defies all logic as he not only shirks responsibility for the crime, but actively hunts the criminal. Now that moment is a meme to point out all the toxic people and institutions who fuck shit up and try to pass the blame on to someone else. In an early example posted to r/memeeconomy last night, Andre is labeled "Baby Boomers" as he shoots "America" in the form of Buress. His perplexed question? "Why would millennials do this?"

It's the perfect meme to express how young people feel about the laundry list of crimes we've been accused of, from killing industries to taking handouts from our parents, while the previous generation scorched the earth and had much better support systems. With quality like this, it's hard not to agree with the r/memeeconomy user who commented , "Investing in Eric Andre is always a safe, smart, and underrated meme stock. "

The Who Killed Hannibal? meme isn't only for scathing cultural commentary. It lends itself very well to conspiracy theories. Since the internet is a very dark place, it should surprise no one that this meme's first use was the equivalent of "Bush did 9/11," coincidentally a common comment on VICE's Facebook posts. Another early one is about the JFK assassination.

The latest iterations are more wholesome, like this OC from an r/prequelmemes poster referencing the recent war between that subreddit and r/sequelmemes.

In short, "Who Killed Hannibal" is the meme of the oppressed, the wrongly accused, and anyone skeptical of the official narrative. It can get dark, but it lends itself naturally to the underdog of any community, from Star Wars fans to anime nerds. It's time to Bird Up your portfolio and invest in Eric Andre memes. Some of our favorite investments below.

Template:

Enjoy the meme while you can before the Russian bots get their hands on it.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Tweet your "Who Killed Hannibal?" memes to @VICE, and send hot meme tips to Beckett Mufson on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The Icelandic man police say is behind a multi-million dollar bitcoin computer heist escaped prison this week and managed to flee the country, hopping on a plane with the Icelandic prime minister en route to Sweden.

The protagonist of this truly modern crime story is Sindri Thor Stefansson, who was arrested back in February for allegedly helping to steal 600 computers in what's been dubbed Iceland’s "Big Bitcoin Heist." According to police, Stefansson and ten others stole the computers to set up a major bitcoin mining operation, the Guardian reports.

But Stefansson caught his break about eleven days ago, when the alleged thief was moved to a small, low-security prison in rural Iceland, complete with internet access and phones. Because apparently some of Iceland’s prisons work on the honour system, the one Stefansson was at reportedly didn’t have fences, either. On Tuesday, he managed to escape through a window and high-tailed it to the airport. According to the Guardian, the guards didn’t even realize he was gone until his flight had taken off.

Using a fake passport, Stefansson then boarded a plane headed to Sweden—the same one that the country’s prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, was also aboard. The Guardian reports that an international arrest warrant has been issued for Stefansson, but he hasn’t been arrested in Sweden yet.

In March, Iceland’s Police commissioner Olafur Helgi Kjartansson told the Associated Press that the crimes Stefansson and his crew allegedly pulled were "a grand theft on a scale unseen before"—lifting around 200m kronur ($2,059,883 USD). Unlike a some kind of Soderbergh heist film, though, police in Iceland don’t believe this crime was pulled off by a ragtag group of handsome scoundrels. According to Kjartansson, “everything points to this being a highly organized crime."

Now, I’m no criminal expert, but if a man’s been arrested for "a grand theft on a scale unseen before,” it might be a good idea to at the very least put him behind a fence.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Gun violence in New York these days is relatively mild in comparison to the record-breaking bloodshed of the early 1990s. That was a rough era in which the city’s annual murder rate exceeded 2,000, thanks in large part to a proliferation of violent gangs battling for turf in which to sell drugs. Among them was the Sex Money Murder (SMM) crew, one of the city’s most notorious drug gangs who went on to serve as some of the founding members of the east-coast Bloods.

Headed by “Pistol” Pete Rollock, who became a sort of twisted deity in American crime lore, SMM rose off the back of an epidemic of crack, chaos and killing to export its brand of gangster culture from the Bronx’s Soundview housing project across state lines. The gang’s inner core imploded in a blizzard of bullets and betrayal, but SMM is still operating today, in towns and small cities up and down the east coast, from strongholds like Newark, New Jersey, to Georgia.

Until now, relatively little has been known about the inner-workings of the crew that became a template for the modern, east coast street-gang scene. But the forthcoming bookSex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal dangles exclusive insights into the gang’s origins, offering a fresh perspective on street violence in modern-day America—and the battle to end it. I spoke to the book’s author, British investigative journalist Jonathan Green, about the men behind SMM and the evolution of gang life in America's largest city.

VICE: What made SMM stand out in New York’s larger street-gang world?
Jonathan Green: They set a new benchmark for violence. The violence around New York’s late 1980s crack epidemic gave birth to a homicide epidemic in the city. Out of that grew some really violent crews who had been born and raised in these extremely dangerous, poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Soundview in the Bronx was one of the most notorious, alongside places like Brownsville in Brooklyn. So the SMM guys grew up used to gunfire and murder from a very early age.

Pipe, one of the two former SMM lieutenants I spoke to for the book, was only 11 when he carried out his first shooting. I’ve spent time on assignment in the favelas of Brazil and the killing fields of Colombia and it was amazing that in New York City these boys were born into a life that was just as dangerous.

...street crews like SMM were more dangerous than the mafia in a way, because they were so much quicker to shoot.

What was also unusual about SMM was its leader, "Pistol Pete" Rollock. Usually the violence gets delegated, but he really didn’t mind carrying it out himself. So his reputation spread in the clubs and through the music. People saw him as this dashing guy at the head of this very violent clique.

When the United Blood Nation on the East Coast was formed in the mid-1990s, SMM were considered so formidable and notorious that these founders of the Bloods wanted them involved because it gave this new organization a whole violent edge.

How did SMM sit with other crime gangs in New York, such as the old-school mob?
SMM modelled themselves on the Italian mafia, although you can’t compare their power. Street crews and their petty beefs are very different from major organized crime and the Bloods are nowhere near as powerful as the mafia, although they are more prevalent. But Pistol Pete and the others had a fascination for Italian organized crime. They saw it as being very glamorous, but also a poke in the eye of authority. Yet street crews like SMM were more dangerous than the mafia in a way, because they were so much quicker to shoot. Personal slights would escalate into a murder. If the mafia rubs anyone out, it’s generally about money or business. With SMM it would take nothing.

Were the SMM really one of the first crews to set up sophisticated drug-dealing lines out of New York?
They were one of only crews in the Bronx at that time who were going “out of town,” as they called it back then, to sell drugs. Other crews stayed in their neighborhoods. Pipe and Pistol Pete were going up to places such as Kingston, New York, setting everything up there. When they got arrested, they fell back to the Bronx and started sending out the youngsters. They stayed off the radar to look for other places to open other franchises. The further out of New York they went, the more the drugs were worth, and the less gang violence there was. Crews could make a lot of money with minimum aggravation—they went down the east coast to Virginia and North Carolina among other places. People heard of SMM through music and they adopted the name like a franchise.

What’s interesting is that when they started going to places like Buffalo in New York or Springfield in Massachusetts, they not only exported drugs, but Blood gang culture. In 2013, Newburgh, a small city in upstate New York, was one of bloodiest strips in America for some time because the Bloods had come up there to sell crack and the gang culture took hold. This is how all these small towns all over America start to have a gang problem.

For the book, you spent five years hanging out with two of SMM’s former top lieutenants, Pipe and Suge, both extremely violent men who were feared in the Bronx in the 1990s. How did that go day to day?
Very often we would meet up and I wouldn’t ask them anything, just hang out, play music, and chat about stuff not related to the book. Pipe was very guarded. He’s the big OG, not the sort of guy who is used to trusting anyone. He reminded me of an old mafia godfather. Suge was very voluble, he speaks a million miles a minute, and is extremely volatile. He will make you laugh but if anything is on his mind, things can turn very fast. If you were to meet them in a bar I’m sure you’d be on edge a bit. They were in the higher echelons of a major crew, and they carried themselves accordingly.

Book cover/jacket photo courtesy W.W. Norton

You’ve alluded to music more than once. How was or is SMM involved in New York’s music scene?
In the early 1990s, hip hop on the east coast was [still] in its [relative] infancy, while famous crews like SMM were ascendant, and the two worlds mixed and fed off each other. The rappers Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, raised in Bronx, used the exploits of the gang to drive their music, and [Pistol] Pete gets a mention on one of Nas’s songs. If you were a young, up and coming guy at the time, you would head down to Mecca, New York’s biggest hip-hop night, where everyone, the gangsters and the musicians such as Sean Combs and the models, hung out.

What was the relationship between SMM and the local community in Soundview? It seems like it was hot and cold.
It was a very complicated one. In the first place, most people in the neighborhood were scared of them, so they weren’t going to talk badly of them, as there could be retaliation. Because they supplied all the drugs in the neighbourhood, and a lot of people in Soundview at the time were using them, they were dependent on the gang to get their drugs. SMM was huge, it had so many members, especially when Pipe was running it, so, in a way, they were the community. Then when the gunfire starts and you get kids hit in the crossfire, people start to take a stand.

The big turning point was the murders of two fellow SMM members at an annual Thanksgiving football game in the Bronx in 1997, on Pistol Pete’s orders. Everyone was there watching this game with their kids and the bullets started to fly. Enough was enough. People felt SMM had turned on their own neighborhood. So these long-held conspiracies of silence about not saying anything to the police really broke down.

New York in 2017 had the lowest number of homicides in decades. How did police get a handle on gangs such as SMM?
The NYPD flooded these areas. In the Bronx, FBI detective John O’Malley, the NYPD’s Pete Forcelli and the federal prosecutor Liz Glazer took so many of these violent crews off the street and sent so many ring leaders away—that obviously helped to bring some kind of peace. This was aided by trends in drug use: people stopped smoking crack as much as they were in the 1990s. SMM were formed in 1991 and it took the police ten years for most of the leaders to be taken off the streets. There is no way that would happen now because the NYPD has a hold of the city. Now, most of the crews are caught within a year or two.

Have the gangs changed or adapted?
The big thing with gangs now is they all turn on each other. In SMM in the 1990s, although they were all in it for self-interest and money, there was at least some sense of a code of loyalty to each other. It took a while for Pistol Pete to order the Thanksgiving murders and inevitably turn on his own crew and for others to start snitching. But now I hear about Blood sets that are warring with each other all the time, even killing each other in their own sets. There is no loyalty whatsoever to each other. You hear about that code of omerta and no-one snitching anyone out—it’s a complete myth. The fact of the matter is they are snitching each other out all the time. When they end up facing 40 years no parole, these guys are more than happy to turn on each other.

Is there a modern-day gangster legend in New York like Pistol Pete?
I don’t think so, because drug dealing crews now have such a short run, there’s hardly any time to build up a reputation before you end up in handcuffs. Also, it was interesting to me how people still lionize the mafia and yet crews like SMM hold little romanticism to the outside world—they are just seen as a menace to society. Maybe in the same way that The Godfather is still huge, but New Jack City never crossed cultural lines that much. Occasionally, you hear about guys in the Bronx who are able to last a few years—they hang out with small time rappers, get mentioned in a song. But now police are looking at social media and rap songs so much, who’s talking about what, that if they get any sense you are looking for publicity, then they are on you. That was Pistol Pete’s major downfall. He loved the spotlight, he was a very charismatic dude, you can see why these young guys followed him. In the end he just became too murderous but also, too well known.

You’ve reported on violence before. What shocked you in writing this book?
The level of violence and the lack of respect for human life. But looking back, how close this dangerous world was to where I was living in New York at the time: just a mile away from where people are sitting in Starbucks, this crazy gang violence is going on, just bubbling under the surface of everyday life. It was all going on in the background, I just never knew it, because I wasn’t involved.

What is SMM’s legacy?
Well, it’s a terrible one. It’s just violence. Because SMM were on the street for as long as they were, Pistol Pete has this Robin Hood reputation among young guys in projects, who really don’t know the reality of this world. If you talk to young Bloods in the street now, they’ll revere SMM and have no idea of treachery and how they all turned on each other.

Pipe told me people enter these gangs because they want the brotherhood, but he said they don’t understand that the very brothers pledging their lives to you are the very ones who will murder them or snitch them out.

At the end of the book, you talk about the intergenerational element in all this; how Suge’s son is being arrested while O’Malley, the main cop’s son, is becoming a detective. Was this a pattern you saw?
It’s what drove the book: this perpetual cycle. Unless society can find a way of breaking it, it will keep on going. If your dad is in a crew, very often the son goes straight into the family business. With Pipe, his grandfather was involved, his dad was, and him. So you have to give credit to him, Pipe, that he’s tried to break the cycle. He’s worked hard to turn his life around and hold down a steady job, because he doesn’t want his kids becoming involved in that stuff. And that’s enormously difficult as a felon with background like that, so I think you have to give him props there.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Learn more about Green's book, out next month from W.W. Norton, here.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, who has now been charged with eight counts of first degree murder was reported to have used the a lot of the popular of gay dating apps and sites. Everything from DaddyHunt to Growlr (an app aimed at gay bears), and even the fetish site, Recon. It’s unclear whether he’d met any of those eight victims online but it’s likely given the haunting report of one man, who met McArthur using gay dating apps. The man was bound by McArthur while unconscious and put in what he described as a “kill position” without him knowing.

Toronto police have been criticized for not taking the missing persons’ cases—which date back to at least 2012—seriously and dismissing the community’s fear there there was a serial killer hunting gay men, particularly men of colour. While certainly a company is not responsible for customers that abuse its services, was there anything dating app developers could have done to further protect Toronto’s LGBT community? And can they do anything now to protect future communities from violent predators?

I reached out to gay dating app and sites like Growlr, Grindr, Recon and SilverDaddies but none of them would respond to me.

McArthur reportedly used popular dating app, Scruff, in search of kinky men, like so many others on there However, in the context of what we now know, his profile does seem disconcerting: “Enjoy finding a guys (sic) buttons and then pushing them to your limits.”

Scruff’s founder and CEO, Eric Silverberg, declined to answer specific questions relating to the McArthur case as well but wrote that they encourage users with concerns about the app to contact a support representative who will respond within 24 to 48 hours. He added that they have worked closely with law enforcement officials in the past with issues of public safety. The Toronto Police have yet to reach out to Scruff about the McArthur case, according to Silverberg.

On December 5th, 2017, the Toronto Police had issued a warning to the community about online dating apps, which included three safety tips for meeting people online. This information would’ve been emailed to those who subscribe to their news releases and shared through their social media accounts. Even if someone is active in the scene, it’d be easy to miss this (in this instance, I’m guilty of that myself) and on the apps themselves, there was no warning from police or the companies about an alleged serial killer since the news release wasn’t shared with any of the dating apps or sites.

“I think the other big gap is the police should’ve come to the social apps and asked people to send warnings,” says Sean Howell, president and co-founder of Hornet, a dating app which has over 25 million users worldwide. Howell says that if his app had been notified, they would’ve issued a PSA, something they’ve done in over 100 countries, dealing with a variety of issues..

That said, Howell warns: “I think we can point to [the PSAs], I think maybe once in a while they’re effective, but I think it’s definitely not something that solves all the problems.”

In Toronto, The Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP) have taken a different approach, launching their SAFE program. When meeting someone online, it’s smart to tell a friend or family member the details but for those who have nobody to tell because of cultural reasons or otherwise, SAFE fills in the gap. ASAAP has a dedicated email address set up that people can send their date or hook-up details to, along with their contact information. If the user don’t follow-up within 72 hours, ASAAP will contact the authorities.

Sign up for the VICE Canada Newsletter to get the best of VICE Canada delivered to your inbox daily.

There are other standalone apps and sites that operate in similar ways. bSafe has several safety features including an SOS button: when pressed, it alerts friends that the user is in danger and sends their GPS location to them, while recording audio and video of the situation. Kitestring is another, which checks up on users via text message; if they don’t respond within a given time frame, a selected contact will be notified with an emergency alert.

In terms of adding safety features to their existing app, Howell said that it was something he would look into and think about but at the same time it’s not the thing he wants “to build everyday” and gay men have other stresses and issues. The things he worries about in the community are access to health, mental health, entrapment, violence against LGBT people and HIV prevention.

“We do live in a world where there are crazy people and this will happen and I don’t want it to happen if I can do things to prevent it,” Howell says. “But I think one of the worst things I can do is also give people a false sense of security. Like, oh, I did this so that means I’m safe. No, that’s actually not going to mean that you’re safe. That’s going to mean that we known that you were murdered sooner and we have a chance to catch the murderer.”

Whether the police had worked with other gay dating apps or sites on this case is unclear. Toronto Police spokesperson Meaghan Gray says that an online component has been a significant part of the investigation, but no other details can be released.

Obviously, the odds of being murdered by your online date are miniscule. But that's little solace for Toronto's LGBTQ community who’s odds seemed much higher for much too long. Particularly knowing what we now know—that an alleged serial killer was just a click away. There’s an element of risk in everything we do in life though and it’s a matter of how much one is willing to take. It’s silly to think that an app will eliminate the risk of encountering a violent predator completely. It won’t. But with better coordination by the police, apps could warn and inform us so we can better assess the risk that we’re taking.

Follow Mike Miksche on Twitter.

Westworld is coming back this month, and though the show's creators didn't exactly make good on their promise to spoil the season ahead of time, it's not exactly hard to imagine what season two's got in store for us: more parks, more timeline mindfuckery, and of course, more robot hosts hell-bent on slaughtering us feeble human meat bags. And so, to celebrate the return of all those terrifying things to come, the UK's Now TV decided to do something unusual—namely, to build a terrifying host-like robot of its own and release it on the public.

The British network dropped the humanoid robot, nicknamed "Fred," off at a London bar to do a little PR for the new season. In a short video of the stunt, Fred makes some light small talk with bar patrons about Westworld, the weather, and the impending robot apocalypse, before he appears to malfunction and smash a pint glass inside his herculean robot fist.

The robot was reportedly built over the course of 12 weeks by a company called Engineered Arts and modeled after an English dude named Tedroy Newell, who lent his likeness to Fred down to the moles on his face. According to one guy interviewed in the video, Fred looks "very, very realistic" and almost makes you forget you're "talking to a robot." But that guy must not have a lot of experience socializing with real humans, because Fred actually looks more like a horrifying automaton from a nightmare version of the Hall of Presidents than any of the realistic androids from HBO's hit sci-fi series—save for maybe that old cowboy host Ford hung out with sometimes.

Do Fred's soulless robot eyes and rubbery flesh get you excited for the premiere of season two? Is he the kind of thing you want to stumble across in a bar when you're trying to unwind after a long week? Do you think any of these bar patrons will ever be able to watch Westworld again, or has the sight of Fred's quivering, silicone lips scared them off of all robot shows for good?

Either way, it looks like humanity is still a few years away from having the technology necessary to craft our own flawless, Westworld-style hosts, since Fred has found himself lodged deep inside the Uncanny Valley like that stray host who fell in a hole in season one. Until our world gets better at robotics and the inevitable mechanical apocalypse dawns, you can check out the new season of Westworld starting April 22 on HBO.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

4/20, which should be a federal holiday, is days away, and this week, we're asking our readers to vote on the best way to get stoned. We are down to the Elite Eight, and now it's up to you to decide on the Final Four.

The polls have opened, and it's your duty as a chill-ass citizen to vote:

PIPES FINAL

Water Bong vs. Glass Bowl

DIY FINAL

Joint vs. Blunt

EDIBLES FINAL

Weed Brownies vs. Weed Gummies

23RD-CENTURY SHIT FINAL

Oil Vape vs. Dabbing

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter and Instagram.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Breaking Bad has been off the air for five years, but some fans haven't really been able to let go. The hit drama has gone on to inspire RV tours around set locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, pizza-throwing maniacs, and now, to Sony Pictures's dismay, an award-winning beer.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the company has come knocking after California craft beer company Knee Deep Brewing Co. over its "Breaking Bud" IPA, filing a lawsuit over the alleged similarities between the hit AMC show and its branding. A complaint filed with the US District Court in California accuses Knee Deep of copping the show’s logo and “other design elements” such as Walt and Jessie's hazmat gear, the RV, and the desert landscape on the beer's label.

Suing for trademark infringement and other copyright-related claims, Sony’s lawyers stated: "Simply put, rather than investing the time, effort, and resources necessary to establish their own reputation and identity, Defendants have instead opted to hijack the famous brand identity associated with SPT and its BREAKING BAD show for Defendants’ own intended benefit."

According to the Auburn-based manufacturer’s website, Breaking Bud took the bronze medal for American IPAs during the 2016 Great American Beer Festival. But Sony is now demanding Knee Deep stops slinging it at festivals, or anywhere else for that matter, along with asking for monetary damages.

The beer company is not the first food manufacture facing legal action over branding that appears a little too familiar. Grumpy Cat Limited—owners of a lucrative brand based on the glum-looking feline—successfully sued the makers of "Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino" over unlicensed roasted coffee and T-shirts. And Starbucks triumphed in a legal battle over the makers of a clear bong with a green pipe called the "Dabuccino."

But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Even the show's protagonist shares a very similar story to a former meth cook in Alabama who also just so happens to be named Walter White.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Adam Forrest on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, producer Jane Rosenthal and her husband, philanthropist Craig Hatkoff, joined actor Robert De Niro in inaugurating the Tribeca Film Festival. Since 2002, it has become one of the world's premiere festivals. It attracts cinema's best and brightest talent—and it's a catwalk for some very interesting fashion choices. With the 17th edition kicking off this week, we dug through the archives to find some of the best throwback photos from the festival's red carpet.

December 6, 2001: What do you call three GOATs in one photo? Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, and Meryl Streep get chummy during the press conference announcing the creation of the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Tom Kingston/WireImage)

May 12, 2002: We hope to one day be as goddamn happy as Macaulay Culkin meeting a Stormtrooper at the premiere of Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. (Photo by Evan Agostini / Getty)

May 9, 2002: The thin eyebrows! The flip phone! The lack of bra! Scarlett Johansson gets a call during a party for the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Richard Corkery/NY Daily News)

May 7, 2002: Alan Cumming in the most Alan Cumming outfit Alan Cumming has ever worn, partying it up at the Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair Party. (Photo by KMazur/WireImage)

May 9, 2002: Frances McDormand in a bucket hat surrounded by firefighters?! Iconic. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)

May 11, 2002: Tweed blazer, feathered bangs, and a bejeweled belt? Must be 2002. Actress Hilary Swank attends a screening of 'Insomnia' at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage)

May 1, 2003: Kevin Bacon's blue tinted lenses and Kyra Sedgwick's chain belt make quite a pair at the Tribeca Film Festival launch party at the State Supreme Courthouse. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

May 2, 2003: Hilary Duff at the premiere of the Lizzie Mcguire Movie, which somehow came out 15 WHOLE YEARS AGO. (Photo by Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images)

May 1, 2004: Will Smith at the premiere of 'Raising Helen' at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic)

April 19, 2005: Wait a minute, Robin Wright and Sean Penn were married? We're shook. This photo is from the 'The Interpreter' premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

April 19, 2005: Would it be safe to say that 2005 counts as the waning days of capri pants? Mariah Carey attends 'The Interpreter' premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

April 20, 2005: This photo of Iman and David Bowie canoodling is really tugging at the heartstrings. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

April 20, 2005: Robin Williams celebrating 4/20 in the most Robin Williams way—by stealing a DSLR from the paparazzi. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

April 24, 2005: Does anyone else think Kristin Stewart looks a little like a potato in this all-beige knee length skirt and blazer combo at the 'Fierce People' screening? (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

April 24, 2005: Honestly Liev Schreiber looks like a colorblind alt-right bro in this skinny 'stache and camo combo. She was hanging with Anthony Mackie at the 'Fierce People' screening. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)

April 24, 2005: Another one that tugs at the heartstrings—Miss Piggy and Ashanti at 'The Muppets' Wizard of Oz' premiere. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)

April 24, 2005: David Hasselhoff looks like an absolute zaddy in this insane leather trench. (Photo by Gregory Pace/FilmMagic)

May 3, 2006: Of course there are photos of Tom Cruise taking a selfie with a burner phone from 2006. He was at the 'Mission: Impossible III' premiere. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)

May 3, 2006: Tom Cruise and Laurence Fishburne climb on top of an SUV and wave at the teeming masses like a couple of princes at the 'Mission: Impossible III' premiere. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)

April 25, 2006: 9/11 truthers protest outside of hte premiere of 'United 93' at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images for TFF)

April 30, 2007: Thomas Haden Church looking very unhappy to be attending the 'Spider-Man 3' premiere in Queens, NY. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic) April 30, 2007

April 22, 2009: Bradley Cooper sporting a questionable tweed newsboy cap at the premiere of 'Whatever Works' during the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

April 20, 2010: Martha Stewart taking photos on a digital camera out the window of her SUV with this grinning woman in the backseat is a total MOOD. It was shot at the 'Vanity Fair' party for the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

April 28, 2010: Yoko Ono looking fierce as ever at the Tribeca Film Festival Artists Awards Program. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for CHANEL)

April 25, 2011: Adrien Brody in a bafflingly shiny suit in front of some topiary at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Artists Dinner. (Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMag)

April 28, 2012: Robert Downey Jr. having more fun than anyone else in his shiny blazer at the premiere of 'Marvel's The Avengers.' (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

April 21, 2013: Rosario Dawson takes a selfie at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

April 21, 2013: Doug Jones, aka the fish man in 'The Shape of Water,' several years before someone would manufacture dildos that look like fish-man dick. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

April 24, 2014: Dear Jeff Goldblum, who told you to wear those glasses to the TFF Awards Night. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival)

April 27, 2017: Sean 'Puff Daddy' Combs performs at a concert celebrating 'Can't Stop, Won't Stop' at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This article originally appeared on Creators.

While you might not know his name, you've almost certainly seen the work of Polish illustrator Pawel Kuczynski. Known for political cartoons that stick in your mind as much as your social media feed, Kuczynski's work is constantly circulating Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. Yesterday he tapped into the weariness the world is feeling with Pokémon Go in a new work, depicting Pikachu, bright and yellow and happy, perched on the bent neck of a dronelike mobile gamer. The title is simply, Control.

With over 30 million views and a half million likes and shares from his page alone, Kuczynski has once again struck a nerve. The illustrator's other works address issues as diverse as authoritarianism, party politics, cruelty to animals, and social media addiction. Karolina Prymlewicz, curator of the Museum of Caricature and Cartoon Art in Warsaw, describes Kuczynski as, "deeply involved and uncompromising in his political judgements and social diagnoses. He exploits the aesthetics of surrealism, makes skilful use of visual metaphors… and black humor is definitely his element." This combination appears to be something like social media wildfire, and is completely present in his new coloured pencil and watercolor illustrations. Contextualized by the sensational stories of distracted teens being hit by cars, a girl finding a dead body, and implied government surveillance, the weariness in Kuczynski drawing is just as applicable to the game's presence in the news cycle as its own addictive qualities.

The artist responds modestly to the huge response his drawing has received. His works are always based on observation to political and social conflicts plaguing Poland, the internet, and the world. It was only a matter of time before he reacted to Pokémon Go: "It's a hot subject now. It's not my best drawing and it's not my best idea. It's just my response to the big success of Pokémon," Kuczynski tells The Creators Project.

As the app deploys in more and more countries, it's projected to surpass Twitter in daily active users, and more mixed-reality games are likely to emerge in its wake. That said, Pokémon Go hasn't conquered everybody's hearts and minds yet—Kuczynski included. "I don't play Pokémon Go," he reveals. "I haven't got a smartphone. Maybe now, after I did a drawing, I'll have to check out this game?"

See more of Kuczynski's haunting works below.

See more of Pawel Kuczynski's work on his website.

Related:

Dalí and Miró Meet Digital Art in Surreal 3D Illustrations

These Vintage Melting-Face Portraits Will Trip You Out

"The Mondays" | Monday Insta Illustrator

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This article originally appeared on VICE Arabia

It's still taboo in much of the Arab world for women to openly admit that they don't want to have children. But in recent years, more and more young women are actively pushing back against the accepted wisdom that says their main purpose in life is to become a mother.

I spoke with ten Arab women and asked them to describe why they've decided not to have kids. The responses ranged from fears about not being able to keep them safe in an often politically unstable region, to simply not wanting to give in to what society and their families demand.

"It's almost selfish to bring a child into this reality."

"I don't want to be a mother because Yemen – and Arab countries in general – cannot guarantee basic human rights for all children, such as quality education and a decent home. It's almost selfish to want to bring a child into this reality. And as our population continues to grow at an incredibly fast rate, our essential resources are only decreasing. So if things continue at this pace, we could see the day when we simply do not have enough food in the world to feed everyone."

- Marwa, 26, Architect

"I don't think I'd be able to face my son or daughter the day they decided to ask me why I decided to bring them into this world"

"Why would I want to raise a child in Egypt, amid all this injustice and indecency – eating unhealthy food, drinking poorly treated water and inhaling all this polluted air? And no matter how well educated and skilful the child might become, they will never achieve their dreams because they won't be the child of someone who is rich and powerful.

Another problem is that even if my child grew up to be a decent person, they could easily end up being imprisoned on false charges by an angry, inhumane tyrant. If that happened, I really don't think I'd be able to face my son or daughter the day they decided to ask me why I decided to bring them into this world, because they certainly didn't ask for this life."

– Israa, 27, Businesswoman

"I don't want to have children because I won't have the answers to 70 percent of the fundamental life questions they'll ask me."

"Sure, the idea of having children is appealing – a little person created from your genes and the genes of the person you love most. But I don't want to have children, because I won't have the answers to 70 percent of the fundamental life questions they'll ask me. What do I tell them when they want to understand issues of faith and philosophy, for example? When they put their trust in me to know the right answers, should I admit that I don't have a clue or should I share what I think I know, which could be completely wrong?

"I would love to experience what it's like to have a family – to leave a footprint in this world alongside a partner who is cultured, beautiful and knowledgeable. But I just don't think I can take full responsibility for another life. And I'm sure they won't be fully satisfied anyway with the environment I do provide them.

"Of course my heart melts when I see my nephews and nieces, but I know raising a kid is not that simple, and I don't want to selfishly trial it out just to test my skills as a mother or as a basic human being."

- Nada, 22, Writer

WATCH: Malala on Refugees, Advocacy and the Girls Power Trip

"I won't be able to afford to send my children to a decent school"

"I want to carry on working, and juggling that with being a mother would be incredibly difficult. Also, I know that I won't be able to afford to send my children to a decent school. And even if I could, it would mean that I was working day and night to pay for it, leaving no time to actually look after them as a parent should."

- Mai, 27, Journalist

"The world is too harmful and destructive a place"

"So much pressure is placed on women because the accepted wisdom is that motherhood is a natural instinct inside all of us. But there's no scientific proof to backup that claim. I think more women choose to become parents because they feel pressure from their family and society to conform. Personally, I see having children as being selfish and inhumane – the world is too harmful and destructive a place to raise a child."

- Nour, 19, Student

"I'm not prepared to take care of someone else"

"I don't want to have children because I'm not prepared to take care of someone else and I have no real interest in children in general. For example, I don't want to have to choose between buying myself a dress or getting diapers for a baby."

- Jihad, 32, Producer

"Even if the entire world depended on just me to reproduce, I still wouldn't have a child"

"I just don't feel that urge to be a mother. Everyone says I will regret it and that motherhood is a natural instinct inside all women. They push this romantic notion that women are the bedrock of all humanity and it's our responsibility to raise children in order to make the world a better place. And then there are those who look at it from a purely biological perspective – insisting that I have children because that's my basic function as a human. But I don't share any of those views. Even if the entire world depended on just me to reproduce, I still wouldn't have a child because I simply don't feel like it."

- Lama, 33, Accountant

"The world is a cruel place that's full of horror and pain"

"I don't want to have kids because the world is a cruel place full of horror and pain – wars, hunger, poverty, disease, crime. It all makes me question if this really is an environment that I would want to raise a child in. Forcing a human to exist in this world is almost cruel. If you really love your kids, then don't bring them into this. And if your natural instincts become too overwhelming then you should really consider adoption."

- Nesreen, 23, English teacher

WATCH: Cardi B on Pregnancy, Offset and U.S. History

"I'm afraid something will happen to them and I'll lose them"

"I'm scared of having children because I'm afraid something will happen to them and I'll lose them. I lived in Syria through much of the war, and even though I didn't lose anyone close to me, I cannot imagine the pain that other families felt after losing a child. I personally could not bear feeling that much loss. So to make it easier on myself, I've decided not to have children in the first place."

– Dana, 26, Teacher

"I don't believe that my genes are so extraordinary that I have a duty to pass them on"

"I think we should all be focusing on the children that already exist and the inhumane conditions many of them are living in. I don't believe that my genes are so extraordinary that I have a duty to pass them on to another generation, and I don't possess the kind of specialist skills that humanity depends on to survive. Finally, I'm just not careless enough to simply hope for the best and ignore the fact that I, like most people, lack the necessary abilities to raise a healthy child."

– Janna, 30, Dentist

This article originally appeared on VICE AR.

Jenkem is a skateboard website for skateboarders who don't take skateboarding too seriously. Where a lot of skate media concerns itself with contests and who did the best trick on what thing and which guy is riding for which company, Jenkem ponders skateboarding's deeper questions. Questions like, Is Too Much Skate Content Bad for You?, What Does a Real Art Critic Think of Skate Art?, and What Determines Your Skate Stance? For the past seven years, it's built a dedicated following, even serving at times as a matchmaker for its readers.

But the internet can only do so much, and if you like to hold stuff, or be able to consume content in a bunker without WiFi, its shortcomings are painfully evident. That's why on May 7, Jenkem will release its second book, Jenkem Vol. 2. Unlike its first foray into the world of analog content, which featured repurposed blogs, this book is 300 pages of original articles and shenanigans never before seen on the web. Inside you'll find everything from explorations of the Sony VX 1000's impact on skateboarding, to a spotlight on the queer skate crew Unity, to Dustin Dollin's thoughts on being the last of the Piss Drunxs, to intimate snapshots of skaters' bedrooms.

Ian Michna, Jenkem's founder and editor-in-chief, was kind enough to answer some of our questions about the book via email.

Ian Michna. Photo by Mac Shafer

VICE: This is the second IRL book Jenkem has made in under two years. Are you guys pivoting to print?
Ian Michna: Just with the intangibility of the web, I've had the urge to do more and more real life stuff over the last two to three years. No pivots, just adding more and expanding beyond the website and socials. When I envisioned Jenkem as a 19-year-old, it was never like, "I wanna have a website with 10 million uniques a month!" That sounds miserable and almost pointless. It was more: I wanna make skate videos, zines, records, throw parties, make books, collaborate with my favorite artists, etc. The website is the hub, the gathering place for like-minded friends and readers. It's the nucleus of the entire project but now that we have the platform, let's see what can we really do with it. Where we go from here and what we do with the community is completely up in the air (and the exciting part).

What were you trying to accomplish with this book? How has Jenkem changed since Vol 1?
The expectations have gotten higher especially after the last book. It's funny being referred to as a big skate outlet now, since we continually feel like the underdog, being independent, 100 percent self-funded, and on the East Coast outside of the skate bubble among other things. But we've grown a lot—our network of contributors is way more established and streamlined. Day-to-day we have twice as many hands on deck trying to make things happen. We're official, but also still just a couple of guys picking our noses in the back of an office in a co-working space.

Ian Michna, hard at work at Jenkem HQ. Photo by Alexis Castro

The first book featured a lot of stuff that had previously been published on your website, but this one is 300-ish pages of all original content. Why did you decide to do it the hard way this time around? And will this stuff ever live on the internet?
With any Jenkem project, we usually end up doing it the hardest way possible. That's mostly due to our naivety, which ironically has become one of our biggest assets.

For instance, when I started Jenkem, I didn't have a photographer or access to the pros I was interviewing to shoot photos of them, since they lived in California and I had a $0 budget. So to fill out the interview with not just text I found an illustrator to draw caricatures and do original art for each Jenkem interview instead. It was way more work and took a long time, but that ended up being our signature aesthetic and made us stand out among other content and mags because everyone else just used photography. That initial obstacle became a strength rather than a weakness.

Jaws. Photo by Sam Muller

Anyway, we always wanna top what we did before. For Vol. 2, we decided to do all new unseen content, get artsy with the layout, and design each feature to reflect its voice. We also asked our friends and some well-known skaters we've come to know to contribute to the book. It’s basically a giant vanity project, especially in 2018 as all print continues to die, but a fun one nonetheless.

I really wanted to bring in the amazing pro skaters we’ve befriended in the course of running the site and we were lucky to get some really great people. Brian Anderson, Pontus Alv, and Al Davis all contributed pieces as well as skate media legends like Dave Carnie, Chris Nieratko, and Jonathan Mehring, among many others, who all helped make the book really special.

What's the most glamorous part of owning your own skate media empire?
Mostly nothing. Free beers, not knowing if a person is looking at you funny because they recognize you from a video or because you just have food on your face.

Maybe not the most glamorous, but the best part is the fact that we can just dream up anything, act on any silly impulse and somehow justify it for the sake of #content. Since Jenkem is so open ended, as long as you can convince me or the crew that your idea will be good content at the end of the day, it's greenlit. Want to try to buy weird stuff on the Dark Web? Do a bunch of shots with Fred Gall? Destroy a pair of $750 Yeezys? Travel to a convention for adults dressed as ponies? Tie 40 ounces to your hands and ollie a big street gap? Yeah, those are all serious business expenses.

Kevin Rodrigues. Photo by Manuel Schenck

Last time we spoke, we touched briefly on skateboarding's less-than-stellar track record with LGBTQ issues. Since then, things seem to have gotten better. One of the most legendary skaters in the world came out. And, as explored in the book, a queer skate collective called Unity is getting much deserved respect and attention. What do you think is pushing the needle here?
I think it's a combo of forces happening all at once but the main driver is the shift in recent years of LGBTQ issues and conversations becoming more mainstream in general, especially through the media. I think as that continues moving forward, some of the skate and shoe companies that may have been hesitant to publicly market or celebrate their riders’ sexual orientation or preferences (and maybe even discouraged them from talking about it in the past) now feel like it's more of an asset and want to promote these skaters even more.

An illustrated guide to skateboarding's biggest gaps

We've also had skaters break ground. Brian Anderson, being the role model that he is and coming out had a huge impact on skating and our culture, and Hillary Thompson sharing her story as a transgender skateboarder was amazing to see. Since then, there has been a snowball effect of acceptance and openness that has helped skaters and companies within skating to join in and not hold back who they really are or who they want to be.

The all-guy circle jerk, cliquey high school version of skateboarding that has made up skateboard culture until recently is on the decline. Skateboarding is already more diverse, weirder, broader, and more inclusive than it's ever been and we'll continue to see that develop more in the coming years.

Jaws. Photo by Matt Price

In the book's interview with Aaron "Jaws" Homoki, Nic Dobija-Nootens asks him if he's ever done jenkem. He has not, but have you, or do you know anyone who has?
We made some in the old Jenkem house about ten years ago in an Olde English 40 ounce bottle. One of my roommates at the time, Bryan, was a guy who could pretty much shit on command but he couldn't get the turds in the narrow 40 ounce bottle neck. So he shit on an old pizza box and chopped up the poo with a plastic spoon. After jamming the turds down the narrow bottleneck we sealed it up and left it marinating on the front lawn for about two months after peeing in it too. I'd like to say after two months we all huffed the gas and got high and traveled through time, but really what happened was Bryan opened it up and the smell was so putrid that when he got his mouth close to the bottle he immediately started to dry heave and threw up. It was like a sewer punched him in the face.

Besides that, the only person I know who's actually tried it (and documented it) was Brandon Novak when he was still on drugs. I think Bam Margera filmed it and the footage is in an archive somewhere.

A Jenkem board game, included with every book.

There are a lot of really great, introspective articles in the book with aging skaters. Skating has always been about progression and moving forward, but do you think now, with the people responsible for making skating what it is today approaching midlife or beyond, that we should make more time to reflect on the past?
The skaters of the 90s and early 00s are really interesting to me because they truly created something that wasn't there before—a thriving industry where people could actually make a living off of riding a toy through the streets and documenting it. These are all legit pioneers who are still with us and so accessible and young. I think skateboarding already does a pretty good job of respecting our history and cherishing these characters, so I don't know if we need to make any more special time to keep reflecting on the past, but these are the characters that captivate me the most.

What else is planned for Jenkem?
Finding more things to do bigger and better and that make even less financial sense. Those seem to be the most fun. Last year we made a record. This year we made another book. Maybe next year we'll invent skate hieroglyphics and try to sell it to you carved on a giant stone. OK, not really, but you get the idea. The next actual thing we're working on is a Jenkem block party this summer. Skating, music, tequila nutcrackers, vodka squirt guns, friends, and neighbors. You're invited! Feel free to bring your ex-BF, stoner roommate, or favorite parent.

Buy Jenkem Vol. 2 here.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Jonathan Smith on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

As soon as I walked in the room, I burst out crying.

The place was shockingly white—neon white. And so small. There was no clock, and no books besides a Bible. The window was too high to see out of. And it was freezing.

Before my first stay in solitary confinement, I didn't think "the hole" sounded all that bad. I like spending time alone—I thought I'd just read quietly and maybe even enjoy the break from human interaction. But I quickly found out that solitary confinement felt a lot less like spending time alone and a lot more like being buried alive in a bright, white hell.

When I walked out of isolation less than a week later, it felt like I'd been there at least a month. With every step I took away from the cell, I was flooded with relief. I thought the mental agony was over. In some ways, though, it was just beginning.

I landed behind bars in 2010. After nine years battling a drug addiction that began in the depths of depression, I was arrested during my senior year of college with a large amount of heroin. I'd been shooting up daily and selling to support my habit—and generally doing all sorts of things I would come to regret.

During my 21 months in the system, I only ended up in solitary confinement twice, and just for a few days each time. The first time was non-punitive: There just wasn't enough space in my "home" jail, so I got shipped off to another one, where I was put in routine isolation for a few days before being cleared to mingle with the general population. The second time was punitive, the result of what seemed to me like a combination of a dubious accusation and paperwork error.

Both times, I had no idea how long I'd be there. I remember wondering: Will I actually get out? Will they forget about me in here? Meanwhile, I cried. I talked to myself. I banged my head against the wall.

Once, I poured milk on my head just to check that I could still feel things, that I was still alive.

Then I contemplated whether I still wanted to be alive—and whether I could figure out a way to kill myself. Was the corner of that desk sharp enough if I fell on it at the right angle? Could I shove a noose through the vent?

The second stay I handled a little better than the first. But they were both some of the worst days of my life. And after all the highly questionable to downright awful things I did during nine years of addiction, that's really saying something.

When I finally got out of solitary—after what seemed like an eternity—I quickly realized it wasn't really over.

At first, I was just shaky and nervous, afraid of offending the jail gods and landing back in the hole. Eventually, whenever there were new inmates and a chance of getting boarded out and put in solitary, I would pack up all my stuff, ready to go, and then rock back-and-forth, waiting anxiously. I developed rituals to ward off fear of isolation. And eventually, I went to the jail mental health staff about the possibility of anti-anxiety medication.

But at that point, I was still locked up. I assumed that as I moved to the exits of the criminal justice system, things would be better. Instead, I starting having dreams about solitary confinement. Sometimes, I woke up screaming.

Eventually, the nightmares faded, even if the anxiety lingered. It follows me still, though—all day, every day. And sometimes I feel like I left part of me in that cell, the part of me that remembered how to worry and obsess just a little bit less.

Mine is not an entirely abnormal reaction, according to Terry Kupers, the Wright Institute professor and psychiatrist who penned the upcoming book Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It. After exposure to solitary, high anxiety is "one of the most common symptoms," he told me. But the other effects vary from one person to the next.

"It's a little like PTSD," Kupers said. "A lot of people go to war and have traumatic experiences, but only some develop the symptoms of PTSD.

"I would say maybe a quarter of the people have full-blown isolation panic," he continued, referencing a term coined by his colleague, Hans Toch, to describe immediate, intense reactions to solitary.

According to Kupers, other symptoms include anxiety, disordered thinking, difficulty with memory, concentration problems, sleep issues, and anger.

On the other hand, some folks in the criminal justice system still don't seem that bothered by solitary confinement.

Check out James Burns's solitary confinement project.

Regina Hufnagel, a former federal corrections officer who now works with the drug-policy-reform group Law Enforcement Action Partnership, only remembers seeing one inmate in nine years who really "freaked out" in solitary confinement.

"One day he said to me that his pink frilly dust ruffle was doing something," she recalled. Of course, his cell bed didn't have a dust ruffle—and if there was one, it certainly wouldn't have been frilly or pink.

But part of why Hufnagel does not seem to have witnessed a slew of negative effects from solitary confinement may stem from the fact that the facility she worked at "didn't use it that often," she conceded.

"I think there is an overall recognition that putting someone in the hole has detrimental effects," Hufnagel told me, stressing that she still feels it could have value as a disciplinary tool when used appropriately.

Right now, in the United States, at least 65,000 people are in solitary confinement on any given day. But the details of what that means can vary considerably from one facility to the next. VICE recently wrapped up a solitary confinement project where James Burns, a filmmaker who spent time in and out of the criminal justice system as a young man, voluntarily entered into a month of isolation at La Paz County Jail in Arizona. VICE rigged up cameras inside the cell to document it all.

But as harrowing as Burns's ordeal might have seemed to an onlooker, solitary confinement can be even worse. Sometimes, the cells are even more barren. Sometimes, there are no books or paper on hand. Sometimes, solitary lasts for years, rather than days or weeks.

That's not to say Burns somehow had it easy. If he's anything like me, no number of jailhouse privileges or amenities would make that kind of isolation a walk in the park.

And even if they did, it's just the start. There's still life on the outside to deal with.

Follow Keri Blakinger on Twitter.

This article was originally published on 1/26/17.

Read James Burns' article on why he chose to go into solitary confinement HERE.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Martin Shkreli, famous for jacking up the price of a drug used to treat AIDS patients and hoarding a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, cried after receiving a seven-year sentence for fraud in March. But as the Associated Press reports, his time behind bars might not be as painful as anticipated. As it turns out, Shkreli will be serving out his time at a low-security prison in New Jersey with lots of rich-guy amenities.

"These prisons, by the way, are like dorms," the 35-year-old told me after his indictment.

On Tuesday, the so-called Pharma Bro was moved from the notoriously rough Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center to the much cushier Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix, where he'll apparently be able to enjoy racquetball courts, pool tables, bocce ball lanes, and horseshoe games. The minimum-security prison, which also offers classes in art, music, and leather craft, has also been home to high-profile inmates like former Providence, Rhode Island, mayor Buddy Cianci and George Jung, the cocaine kingpin who inspired Blow.

Originally, Shkreli's lawyer suggested that he be transferred to a minimum-security federal camp, but the request was denied by Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, who had previously deemed Shkreli a danger to the public for offering a bounty on a follicle of Hillary Clinton's hair. Meanwhile, it's unclear how Fort Dix could be much more of a punishment, given all the leisure activities available for inmates, as well as the fact that there are no bars, towers, or locks on its rooms.

Also, to be clear, Shkreli is not serving time for anything related to price gouging. The practice is still legal—and not wholly uncommon—in the pharmaceutical world. Instead, federal prosecutors went after him for lying to investors about losing their money when he helmed two hedge funds. Shkreli was found guilty, also, of paying them back with funds looted from a biotech company of his. Although he wasn't punished for limiting access to life-saving drugs, and was only taken to task for inconveniencing the inconceivably wealthy, people still saw his conviction as a sort-of justice.

But despite the fact that Shkreli will be able to play pool behind bars, his stint at Fort Dix is unlikely to be a full-on vacation.

"He will hate being locked up period," Walter “King Tut” Johnson, a New Yorker doing life at FCI Otisville told VICE. "If he cries in prison like he did at sentencing, it better be genuine, because tears in prison are taken seriously."

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Brian Tyree Henry speaks and sounds just like Alfred Miles, his character from FX’s much loved series, Atlanta. From the Atlantan accent to the slight vocal mannerisms, it’s a little bit weird to separate the two. “That’s why I love Alfred. He allows me a place to really get a lot of things off my own chest,” he tells me in our conversation, sometimes referring to his character with a “me” instead of a “him”.

On a fictional hand, his character Alfred Miles is transitioning from the regular joe to the famous hip-hop personality, “Paper Boi” Miles. And on a more true-to-life end, Brian Tyree Henry is shifting from a former probationary student to a full blown celeb with acting credits with Donald Glover, Jodie Foster and the Jeff “uh” Goldblum himself. Brian is embracing the privilege of what’s coming his way, but he also has time to talk to me and reflect on the fast movement of his career. According to him, it’s important once in a while for him to stop, and smell some of those damn roses.

VICE: You’re going from academic probation, to doing work with Donald Glover, Jodie Foster, Chris Evans...you were recently on Jimmy Fallon. That trajectory is surreal.
Brian Tyree Henry: (Laughs)That’s really the best word to use! The only word that I think makes sense, because for real, it feels like you’re out in space floating with nothing really to grab onto. You’re just floating and all these things are happening around you. Yeah, you know you’re alive and you know you’re moving, but it’s just crazy to think about. I had to sit down the other day, because I’m TV, stage, and film at the same damn time. But even with that, there’s still these kind of things that happen to me in my life that still puts me in the mode to check in and be like, wow, I neglected that part of myself. I forgot to focus on a portion. So when I hear you say these things, I’m like, yeah that’s right, that’s exactly what happened. At the same time, It’s like man, I got a show at seven o’clock (laughs), so alright, let me go tell this story and do it again the next day. Cool.

What parts of yourself are you neglecting though?
It’s really just the personal time. That personal space. Even just having the time to congratulate yourself for that is rare. I haven’t really had a moment to just sit down and reflect on what’s happened. When I hear accolades being shot back at me, it’s like damn, really?! Alright then (laughs). It’s a lot, but it’s all stuff I’ve wanted to do. It’s the people I’ve wanted to work with, and these characters I’ve gotten to play are all people that I’ve really connected to. I’m putting a lot of myself into this, but sometimes you kinda get away from yourself. There are certain projects and characters that I completely forgot about, and I never want that habit to come off in some arrogant way. I just need to find those moments to sit down and say, yeah, that happened.

You’ve obviously invested a lot into this acting thing. But hearing you in interviews, I hear some Alfred Miles in there. Like, if the acting thing didn’t work out, you’d be able to say, fuck it. When did this all really become serious for you?
Here’s the thing, I knew I was going to act, I just never put too much stock on what that was gonna look like. Was my name gonna be in the lights? Did it mean being in a movie? I just knew that this thing was a place that I felt safe in. I never wanted to give it any kind of weight to determine what my worth was on this world at all, and it wasn’t what I wanted to only be known as.

Sometimes you see these people, and they’re like, I’m an actor, producer and an activist. I’m like, how the hell are you an activist? All you do is go to the women’s march, what the fuck are you talking about!? How the hell is that even in your title?! (laughs). But we all want to believe what it is we want to believe about ourselves. For me, when you’re one thing, you’re that one thing to all people, and that comes with an expectation. When it isn’t met, you end up feeling like you haven’t done what you’re supposed to do. I’m not putting that expectation out there.

That really reminds me of Alfred’s attitude to things to be honest.
And that’s why I love Alfred, because he allows me a place to really get a lot of things off my own chest. This season, it’s like he has to literally flip now, because he took the time to do the rap thing and take it seriously like that, and how he’s being shown as someone who's good at what he does. He owes it to himself to really go as far as he possibly can, and with that comes a sacrifice. At the end of the day, it’s going to cost him something. In a lot of ways, Atlanta, being his home where he knows its nooks and crannies, feels like a different city. It’s like he went to sleep and woke up to it being shifted three feet over. He’s Paper Boi now, and he doesn’t know what it’s like to be him.

You live 25 something years with nobody calling you that, and all of a sudden, it’s the only damn way people know you. It’s hard. It’s hard for him, and it’s also hard for me because it’s happening in my world the same way. It’s like wow, I gotta move completely different through this life. And like everyone else, most of us feel like we have to have this wall up to make sure we don’t let people in. We gotta make sure that our people know that we’re doing okay. A lot of that humanity comes through with my character, and Atlanta’s characters in general.

Yeah, it’s really weird how paralleled Alfred is to you. I’m sure it wasn’t planned that way. He’s a regular guy going through a similar breakout moment with the musical success, along with you and acting. But he isn’t crazy jubilant about it.
Yeah, it’s really a double edged sword honestly. Would you rather go through life anonymously, or would you rather go through life with people knowing who you are? On one hand, you’re able to live your life peacefully, and on another, people know you, and it’s like, you can never go back to that anonymity again. It’s a weird kind of balance. When I think back on Alfred for comparison, it’s about restraint for him, because this guy had a reputation in the streets, like don’t fuck with him. He’s the guy with the gun in the glove box. But now, because of his, or my success, it’s not just about me anymore. My success is Earn’s success, which becomes his daughter’s success, and his family’s success. What I do, is important for everyone else. I constantly think about that. If I don’t this, then my cousin doesn’t eat. If I don’t do this like in the case of Alfred, Darius won’t have a roof to sleep under. You have to change yourself with that in mind. I’ve had arguments with people who say that people don’t change, but you have to. It’s not just about you. It’s not just about me. It’s about someone else at that point.

I’m curious, how much did you shape Alfred Miles vs. how the script shaped his personality?
I mean, what’s on the page is on the page. What the relationships are, are the relationships. But I’ll be damned if Alfred wasn’t going to be shown to have a heart. I’ll be damned if he wasn’t going to be shown to be affected by people. And I’ll be damned if he wasn’t going to affect people at the same time either. As black men, we get so many labels put on us, without asking for our permission, like ever. So it’s easy to see a guy like you, me or Alfred coming down the street in a gold chain, wearing Jordans and shit, and then driving around in a grand marquis, and you’re thinking...oh that’s a trap boy right there. But no one would ever bother to ask him if somebody told him that they loved him today. It’s that kind of thing. He had to have a heart.

And the beauty is in the fact that you can read it all on his face. He’s always been the quiet observer.
Most definitely. I always wanted him to come off that way. To discover things like everyone else without saying so. You damn right Alfred knew that Earns was living out of a damn storage unit. What Earns should of done was ask if he could live with him instead of just expecting to. He sees everything, and in a sense for anyone, that’s a gift and a curse. To see it all before it happens, to watch people make their choices anyway without any kind of recognition for what he himself may be going through at the time. That’s what I really wanted people to see, that he’s constantly growing. He gives a shit, and the cracks will show in some form or another because he isn't impervious to pain, but also, he could be the life of the party. He’s pretty much the parrot of the show.

If I’m gonna be honest, I just want Alfred to envision retirement, man. (laughs) My man doesn’t have to sell weed anymore, and he doesn’t have to pass out Molly at parties. But at this point, I’m pretty sure his retirement plan is either jail or death. At the end of the day, I just want this guy to feel like a human being. He’s that guy we all know. We talk to this dude everyday and we burn one down with this dude every day. But he’s also that guy that’s so used to watching people come and leave. Here one moment, gone the next. What would happen if that every day guy we know wasn’t around?

How much can you tell me about his upcoming ‘Woods’ episode then, since it’s pretty much all about Alfred.
It’s going to cover everything we just talked about and I’m dead serious about that. He goes through a lot of it here. It’s like, you can run as far as you want to, and sometimes it's hard to see the forest through the trees. That’s the best analogy I can think of when it comes to this episode. You can easily get lost on the way to being in place, and you never have to most anywhere to feel lost.

Atlanta aside, you also got this new film coming called Hotel Artemis with your fellow best friend Sterling K. Brown along with Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum.
Yean man, it’s one of those action thrillers, I guess that’s what they call them now. Of course there’s this war going on, and whenever a war happens, criminals like to get their asses out there in these streets. So things go wrong between these two brothers that are trying to get at their last heist, and so all these criminals head over to this hotel in Los Angeles that’s literally only for criminals. What I love about this upcoming project is that I get to care about the criminals for a change, and root for them. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before man. Wearing suits with gun holsters and all that shit.

It was all like a masterclass. Here’s Jodie Foster who I can’t even remember was last in front of the camera, stepping up behind the camera and in front. It was a sight I couldn’t even express. I really had to take a moment and be like, I’m in the same room with her, here we are, I see you over there Jodie! (laughs) Even being in the same room with my brother Sterling K. Brown, and getting the chance to trip out with him.

Tell me more about this friendship you got going with Sterling. You speak so damn highly of him.
Listen man, I lived in a house with four older sisters. That’s basically four different moms. My father was there was well, but I always longed for that sense of brotherhood, because it would of been unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. That fraternal thing, where you’ll protect this person no matter what, and you can be evil with this person and competitive because you guys just have a connection. I’d been longing for that. When I met Sterling, it was instantaneous. He was my brother. His wins became my wins, and I learned from him as much as he learned from me. It’s always going to be that kind of thing. In this industry, It’s so hard to find people like that, because you don’t know who wants something from you, and people become competitive and catty. With my man Sterling, it was just an understanding that, I got you. That’s my boy, and I’ll do anything for him.

Getty

I’m telling you man, when we finally got to play real brothers in Hotel Artemis, it was something crossed off my bucket list. I told him, let’s show everyone how it’s done! (laughs) Let’s show how this can be done right for a change and shift the entire scope of what brotherhood can look like out here. In the end, my gains are for him, his gains are for me, and we’ll both just continue gaining.

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

Sign up for the VICE Canada Newsletter to get the best of VICE Canada delivered to your inbox daily.