When Baker Skateboards pro, Dustin Dollin, first came over from Australia he was instantly dubbed "Devil’s Spawn" for his torturous, drunken lunacy. And as crazy as he was off the board, he was even more of a nut riding it. I remember seeing him for the first time at the tail end of the 90s at a BMX park in Tom’s River, New Jersey, throwing his body down a two-story drop for shits and giggles, and I feel like everything he’s done in the past 15 years since turning pro has been equally death defying and absurd.

Every video part he’s ever put out has been legendary, every photo memorable, everything that comes out of his mouth is classic and he’s still on a tear. After six ACL reconstructions he recently got the cover of Thrasher, a new Vans shoe, and is working on three new video parts in the upcoming years (full disclousre: I work for Vans). He claims to have mellowed out over the years, but by the sounds of things ole Dusty is just as crazy as he’s ever been and that, he claims, is why kids love him.

VICE: Sorry I couldn’t make it to Paris for your wedding last month. Is it true that you had a sex-room at the reception?
Dustin Dollin: The reception was at a restaurant called Le Derrière, the Ass, and I believe there was a room upstairs that people used for a bit of an orgy—some very prestigious, rich drug addicts. I didn’t see it first hand we were too busy taking photos and looking pretty. My wife did tell me a few people had sex upstairs and partook in the festivities of love. The whole day was cool, my mum was double-fisting mojitos that people had left sitting around, and when I tried to ask her to put one down she wouldn’t. I think one was spiked with MDMA. And we had a tattooist that only did tattoos that me and Emilie had, and then my friend Kieran Callahan played in a different room. Everyone was spread out all over the place. It was kind of like chaos but controlled chaos. Everyone behaved.

How does it feel to be a kept man now?
It’s way better. No more fucking random bitches. It sucked. Especially if they were trying to be with me. It’s better to wake up with someone you love instead of having to throw a chick out naked into the street who sucks.

Has that happened often?
It happened a couple times to the Devil’s Spawn back in the day. I remember this one chick had three strikes and she was out. Basically, we went to the movies and she got us kicked out of the theatre because she was being too loud and then she puked in the cab and then after we fucked she changed my music mid-song and I hate it when chicks change my music so she got escorted out of the house and her clothes were thrown over the balcony. But that was a long time ago.

Didn’t you get out kicked out of your recent house you were living in with Chima [Ferguson] for pissing on someone off the balcony?
No, no, no. No way. One time these cops came over and they banged on the door, and there were drugs all over the kitchen counter and shit. Everyone hustled and got it all hidden. Everyone was smoking weed inside and they were about to say something but everyone had weed licenses and so they were just like, “Oh. Well next time can you invite us to the party?” So we got lucky.

You recently got the coveted cover of Thrasher skating the Hollywood Bowl. How are you able to skate at that level after all your surgeries?
I don’t know. I still I just don’t really have a fear level. I guess with the skill level you just get lucky. It’s more about not being afraid and having a couple beers and just going for it than skill. But that was only like ten tries. I kind of destroyed my ankle half way through it but I didn’t notice.

Are you still boozing before you go for it?
Oh yeah, I like to have a few beers before I go skate, for sure. It’s easier like that. Then you don’t get scared. You don’t puss out.

How many surgeries have you had in all?
I’ve had six ACL reconstructions, and the last one was to get rid of my fake ACL ligament that was jammed in between my kneecap and shit. Now I don’t have an ACL, and it’s way better. It’s just bone on bone. It feels good because I got this Kobe Bryant injection that rebuilds your cartilage. They thin your blood and then shoot this liquid back in with your blood and it rebuilds your cartilage. Ever since my knee has been fine. Now everywhere else hurts.

Isn’t your blood thin enough with all the booze?
Yeah, I think it made my blood thicker.

Is six ACLs the most in skateboarding?
I think on the same knee, yeah. I know Danny [Way] has probably had seven but I think it’s on different knees. Arto [Saari] had five. But I think it’s the most in the world. I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sure people that have been in car accidents have had to get a ton of different shit but I think just for ACL reconstruction that six is probably the winner.

How’s it feel skating though now?
It feels fine. Sometimes it locks up a little bit but you just twist it to the side and it snaps back in.

That sounds so shitty.
The knee is the least of my problems. I’m having a little bit of foot and ankle drama right now. It’s all good, we’re on deadline for the Vans video so I just have to man up.

Deadline is September. How is that coming along for you?
Alright. I think I’m half done. I think the old guys get a little longer. Greg [Hunt] said there won’t be any more trips after that but we can chuck ourselves down some shit local if we want. We’ll see what I can conjure up. I have some scary stuff in mind that I’ve been waiting until the end to do.

I hear rumor of Baker 4 right after the Vans video.
I don’t know what’s going on with that. I know Skate Tank for Shake Junt is about to come out in a month and I’ll try and chuck something in there. After that I know Volcom is trying to do a new video and then probably Baker in the next couple years.

Damn. How much more do you have left in the tank?
Oh fuck, I feel fucking great right now. I feel better than before all the surgeries. If my knees aren’t bothering me then I’m good. I always try to land a fakie now and putting more pressure on the back foot. I have to try and land forward again, I think. But as for me, I have heaps more in the tank because the fear level doesn’t go down. As soon as I start getting scared of shit too much and then I’ll be backing off.

Have you had any recent instances where you were shit-scared?
No. Maybe in the next few weeks but usually I’m pretty willing to get at something.

You’ve been pro 15 years now. How’s life and skateboarding changed in that time?
Skating has kind of cleaned itself up a little bit. The rough patches of crazy drugs and alcohol are getting filtered out by the corporations cleaning up the mess and trying to sell people’s skill rather than their images, which makes it tough selling some of the piles in the industry. Sometimes I look back and I’m like, “Wow! Some of the shit was so out of control that happened.” I doubt it’ll ever go back to that unless Nyjah [Huston] cops a fucking 8-ball before the next Street League. But there was a time I remember when you’d go to contest and people were completely wasted, out of control, and there were drugs floating around. It’s funny that it was that wild at a “sports” event.

Seriously! I remember one time at an X Games on Lake Havasu like 12 years ago where Choppy Omega somehow got the microphone away from Dave Duncan and was like, “Yo! This is the Chops! Choppy Omega! You need coke this weekend come see me! I got you!” And everyone heard him! It was beautiful.
Yeah, the Globe World Cups in Melbourne were pretty much the pinnacle of me and Jake Duncombe and Ali Boulala all being pretty fucked. People taking ecstasy at the contest and tripping, and kids are trying to get your autograph while you’re so fucking high.

Ever skate a contest on acid?
No, but I think Shane [Cross] and Jake probably did. I don’t think I can handle that. I usually like being in nature for acid.

What was the story on our Midwest tour two years ago when you got lost and shit your pants?
Ha! Were we in Chicago?

I think it was Kansas City.
Yeah, I was really wasted and we went to this after party in this warehouse that was 8-stories of darkness and I couldn’t find a toilet and I was lost in the dark so I sat shitting against a wall; I didn’t actually shit my pants. Maybe some of it got on my pants. Then the dude that owned the warehouse tried to fight me because I was being rude to him probably because he wouldn’t give me any drugs. And then I got in a taxi downstairs and somehow got back to the hotel and there was a crazy chick fight in the parking lot. They were beating each other up outside the car and then one chick jumped in the other chick's car and she had her by the hair and ripped her hair out as the other chick stole her car. It was crazy. I filmed that shit! Sometimes you don’t know how you got back to the hotel and you have to look at your video footage.

Dustin and the author

I love that you always have a video camera running for your Seven Day Weekend web show.
Yeah, I always have a little Cannon with me and always run those videos of raw footage. One of them has a drive by shooting in it I caught in Seattle (16:40) but it didn’t get much controversy. I feel like the stuff I put up should be getting millions of hits but there’s no babies falling over or cute faced cats. But it’s hard to tell what’s crazy anymore. People are so desensitized on anything. Look at that dude that just got beheaded. People weren’t even making a shock over it because they were too busy watching the fucking bucket challenge. People are dumb.

Speaking of crazy, would you say you’ve mellowed out over the years?
Yeah, for sure. I’m way mellower now, I think. But if it comes down to it I’m down to do anything or go anywhere. And can turnt up whenever I want.

Well you married into a pretty gnarly family. Talk a little about your in-laws a bit.
My father-in-law got kidnapped by Hezbollah for a year. Not for any political reasons, he’s just a doctor. And then my mother-in-law is a journalist and she goes up to Syria often and she’s put out a bunch of books on Feminism and how the burka sucks and the hatred of these religions that are really against women. And her mother was a journalist who ran a radio show for 20 years during the war in Beirut. It’s crazy because coming from Australia we don’t really have much to do with politics and now I know what’s going on everywhere. It’s pretty crazy going to Beirut. I’ve been there four times now and people are so into politics and I’ve learned so much about religion. I don’t know if I want to know so much but it’s not like I’m going to fight the power for any religion or anything that has to do with human society ever.

Like I mentioned, you have 15 years being a pro skater, a bunch of classic video parts, and you’re working on one now for one of the most anticipated videos in years. It’s a hard question to answer but where do you think your place is in skateboarding history?
Fuck that! I’m a legend, bro! Give me that legend shoe! No, I’m kidding. I don’t know. I think kids identify with people that don’t change. And that’s something that I’ve never done. I’ve never sold out, I’ve never done some stupid, goofy shit. I think my longevity, skate-world wise, is because of my loyalty. All I’ve ever tried to do is put out the best parts I possibly could for my sponsors for my whole career which I guess just leaves me as the crazy, drunk, flip in rail guy.

There’re worst things to be remembered as.
Yeah, exactly.

Follow Dustin on Instagram

More stupid can be found on Chris's website and Twitter. Full disclosure: Chris works for Vans.

A demolished building in Xintiandi. All photos by Peter Pan

Xintiandi is one of Shanghai’s most affluent districts, but one of its blocks will soon be razed to rubble. In fact, much of it already has been. There are still some buildings standing, but most of their doors and windows are bricked up, ready to be destroyed—the fluorescent orange uniforms of the demolition crew acting as the only splash of color among all the sad grays and browns.

The block is one of many being knocked down across Shanghai, as old houses—mostly home to poor people and taking up valuable central city real estate—are leveled to make way for modern construction. The residents are compensated and usually moved to newer houses in suburbia. Many are pretty happy about upgrading to places with working toilets. However, some members of the older generation, accustomed to cramped and basic conditions, are less pleased—they value the communities they spent their lives in above showers and shiny kitchen counters.

A tiny percentage of these people remain in the blocks today, refusing to leave as buildings fall around them.

“Responses [to the demolition] can be mixed, because each family has different circumstances and reasons for wanting to stay or leave,” said author and photographer Sue Anne Tay, who documents Shanghai’s development on her website Shanghai Street Stories. “Some are happy to do it because the places are cramped and facilities are old. Others have been renting their houses out, and they earn money from relocation/demolition, and others already have an alternative housing set up. People who are less willing to leave are the older folk used to living in the area and the poor, who can only afford alternative housing in the unfamiliar suburbs.”

Protesting is illegal in China without a permit. So, to voice their anger without incurring the wrath of police, some people here hang Chinese flags from their increasingly isolated houses and drape poignant, but technically apolitical, flags bearing messages along the lines of, “I love my country, I love my home.”

These vocal few are often subjected to harassment by hired thugs and demolition crews. One man I met had installed security cameras throughout the alleys at his own expense to try and catch the alleged violence on film. Another was carrying a stun gun as he strolled to a friend’s house, saying he kept it as protection having been beaten up for refusing to give up his home.

Xintiandi at night

Compensation rules are incredibly complicated, with hukou (household registration record) information affecting the amount each resident receives. Some facing eviction have hastily built indoor walls to increasing their room count or moved in relatives to increase head counts. “I know a family who told their daughter to marry her boyfriend of six months and move him in so they could register him as living there,” one man told me.

Some who’ve stuck around have been accused of being motivated by money, of attempting to squeeze more compensation from redevelopers via campaigns of stubbornness. But meeting the residents, I felt more a sense of injustice, not greed—all of them bound together in barely bottled-up frustration. Here’s what four of them had to say.

Xue Jinshan, a 58-year-old salesperson for the Bao Steel company who moved into his current house in 1993 after being relocated from his previous home.

VICE: Why haven’t you accepted compensation and moved out?
Xue Jinshan: If I were to move to the house they want to give to me I would have to spend ten hours on the road every day to get to and back from work. The new place is in Songjiang district, but I work in Baoshan district [the two areas are on opposite sides of Shanghai].

The noise of buildings getting knocked down here must get pretty annoying.
Yes. I had two elderly people in this home, they couldn’t stand the demolition noise so I had to move them somewhere else. My son was taking the college entrance examinations last yearl I begged them to turn down the noise, but they didn’t.

How long will you hold out here?
I don’t know. It depends on them. Once they stick a red paper notice on your door you have to move within ten days. Then they start demolition, regardless of whether there are still people living inside.

Can you honestly not get a decent place with your compensation?
With 1.5 million yuan [$244,000] I could only go to the suburbs. But life is not convenient in the suburbs. My mother and mother-in-law need to go to hospital often; here we have the Number Nine Hospital close by. A house is for people to live in, not for decoration. Better facilities mean nothing to me.

Could you find a new job nearer the suburbs?
I’ve worked at my job for over 40 years. Now, at my age, how can I find a new job? It’s impossible.

Does the violence reported in the area concern you?
I have only my life to lose. Whenever I think of that, I have no fear. There’s no one to depend on; I only rely on myself. I have this one life to fight against them. If death is the final result, so be it.

Has the crisis brought the remaining community closer?
No. They divided us. Some people give in for a house, some for a certain amount of money.

Ge Bao Ling, 58, is a former shop owner who moved to the area when he got married at 28. He ran a grocery store until it was torn down.

What kind of compensation were you offered for your house and shop?
Ge Bao Ling: They proposed to give me a new shop so I could maintain my livelihood. But they didn’t give me the shop. I resorted to court; my house was torn down during that period. The reply came from the State Council in April, but that might be a fake one.

What happened on the day the shop was taken?
They came on December 26, 2013, at 1:30 PM. They drove my wife and son out; my wife’s feet got injured. They started demolishing right away. My son has hepatitis B, so he can’t find another job; we relied on the shop. What they did was inhumane. I'm willing to move, but the shop put food on the table.

But you’ve kept fighting for a new shop?
I wrote to the Legal Affairs Office in Beijing—they said they were going to find me a shop. On December 17 they told me they’d found me one. I waited for them to come to me but they didn’t show up. On December 20 I got a notice; I went to all relevant departments in Shanghai but nobody intervened. On December 30 a policeman came and told me that I had done nothing wrong and that they would solve my problem. But nothing happened after that. The goods in my shop all went missing.

Where are you living now?
I borrowed a house from my parents. It’s small and near to this area.

Will you buy a place to live with your housing compensation?
I haven’t got the compensation. I am still waiting.

Zuo Lian Ying, 60, is a retired cab driver who lived in the area for 30 years with her husband before her house was torn down.

Did you enjoy living here?
Zuo Lian Ying: Life was normal. It’s very convenient here, with hospitals nearby. I'm disabled. I have a certificate for that. I have problems with my eyes; I should be protected.

When were you evicted?
The demolition took place on June 18. My husband was prepared to jump from the building [in protest]. At 6 AM the next day they surrounded my house, just like the Japanese used to during wartime. After that people came in and started beating people up. I was injured on my arms, hands and feet. I’ve kept the clothes with bloodstains on them.

Where are you living now?
I’m homeless, so I stay at relatives’ houses. My stuff got lost in the demolition process; everything we had in the house is now missing. We were kicked out of our house without shoes on.

But you have been given compensation…
They offered 1.5 million yuan, but that's not enough even for a toilet.

Why not just buy a house in a cheaper area?
The nature of this demolition is commercial. They should negotiate a price with us. They only gave us 23,000 ($3,700) per square meter. Filthily huge profit margin.

Ms Gan, 26, works for a logistics company and lives with her family in a three-story house with a courtyard. They have lived there for around 40 years and protested against eviction by hanging a Chinese flag from their roof and playing music.

How did you feel when you heard your home was to be torn down?
Ms Gan: I was young, so I wasn't really against it. If the government wanted to improve our living conditions, I could accept that. But what distinguishes this neighborhood from others is that the neighbors are friendly to each other. This makes me feel a little bit sad.

You don’t seem as angry as some residents. Why has your family not accepted relocation?
The nature of this is commercial. If I can't buy a house in a similar area with the price they offer, how do they expect me to accept it? Asking me to move to places that are so far away with insufficient and inconvenient transportation… what would I do if my mom or grandma required medical help?

How have you protested?
We played music from the house to voice our discontent. We were harassed many times. Later we dropped it because we were concerned it might evolve into something out of control. The police said that someone across the street complained. We asked them to measure the volume; after that they could come to us with evidence. Instead, they cut off our electricity. Now our house will be torn down within one or two months.

Have you seen violence in the area?
People in the demolition company are like hooligans. If they can't fool you into moving they threaten you. Violence does happen. During forced demolitions they would deploy migrant workers to surround the houses to be torn down.

How do you feel about moving away?
I’m still talking frequently to my former neighbors. I have a good friend who was my neighbor; she was like my big sister. Our relationship goes deeper than many real siblings’. The night before she moved we had a long night of talking about shared memories. Sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth I can’t help but imagining how wonderful it would be if there hadn't been a plan to tear down the house. Our house is bright and fresh air can come in easily. Once there was a film shooting team who chose to film here. We have a very big balcony; sometimes in the summer we didn’t turn on the AC—we could sit on the balcony and feel the cool breeze.

Follow Jamie Fullerton on Twitter. 

Image via Flickr user mariehale.
In 2011, Thunder Bay police reported that on average, deer were struck by cars approximately 1.6 times per-day. When you consider the damage that deer can do to a car and the people in them (I was once told a story in North Bay about a guy who got decapitated when he hit a deer, after its antlers came through his windshield), 1.6 collisions per day in a town of 110,000 is a lot of potential tragedy, auto-insurance, or venison—depending on how you look at it.

Besides the collisions, deer can just be a real pain in the ass. They eat through people’s gardens carrying ticks that give people lime disease; they attract wolves and other predators that might attack babies, family pets, or garbage cans. They shit all over the place, and there’s no end to the damage they can do to farmer’s crops that might be planted in, or on the boundaries of, a city’s limits.

To deal with the nuisance and probable perils of urban deer overpopulations, the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario, along with the towns of Hampton, Quispamsis, and Rothesay in New Brunswick’s Kennebecasis Valley, just north of St. John, have proposed an intrepid idea to curb the cloven-hooved critters. They plan on expanding the fall deer hunt’s boundaries not further into the outskirts—but moving it into more populated areas, where deer are actually causing the most problems and effectively creating semi-urban hunting grounds.

With a new policy and bylaw that addresses the “problems and health risks involved resulting from the increased number of deer within the city limits” the city of Thunder Bay released its Deer Management Strategy, which allows permitted and licensed hunters, between September 1^st and December 15^th, to hunt deer on private property within the city of Thunder Bay.

In New Brunswick, The Kennebecas is plan is similar, and offers 200 special deer permits for hunters to kill one doe each within the valley. Normally, hunters would only be permitted one deer per season, so this by-law doubles their harvest. There’s also a big difference between Kennebecasis and Thunder Bay’s law; In Kennebecasis, hunters can still gun down their deer, while urban hunting within the city limits of Thunder Bay is limited to a bow and arrow.

Even with these changes, as this map of T-Bay illustrates, hunters and huntresses aren’t going to be running through downtown back alleyways, chasing stags. The urban hunting by-laws do have some restrictions. For example, archers still have to shoot from stands that are at least a few metres high, and can’t be posting up anywhere within 75 metres of a highway or residence, lest someone mistakenly get caught up in some kind of Sherwood Forest drive-by.

While the sanctions are measured, logical, and actually sound kind of fun, there are always going to be some detractors. Who else but PETA decided to try and rally 60,000 Canadian members this week, resulting in 6,000 spam emails that all had the same copy and pasted message, directed to three New Brunswick Councillors who were none too impressed.

Through a national lens, considering that last week there was a bear in downtown Calgary, Rob Ford is squealing about raccoons in Toronto (which, fucking eh, Rob, we finally agree, can we start squashing these masked gang-members with shovels? Remember this dude who almost went to jail for it?), quelling urban pests through seasonal culls isn’t a bad idea.

Photo via the White House's Flickr account

Barack Obama has finally realized that the men running the US Senate are such nihilist blowhards that they will never approve a legally binding treaty to combat global warming. So as the New York Times reported earlier this week, the president’s new plan is to name and shame the rest of the world into cutting carbon emissions.

The problem is that shaming others, whether individuals or countries, usually requires that you—the one doing the shaming—have some modicum of moral authority. Or at least credibility. Unfortunately, Americans like Obama have neither. Whether it’s the cascade of police brutality across the country this summer, the ongoing lawless detention of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, or the general chaos left in the Middle East in the wake of decades of adventurist and oil-hungry foreign policy, our reputation is in tatters. So it's not exactly an ideal moment for the president to be leveraging America's image abroad, even if negotiations in New York this fall ahead of treaty talks in Paris next year mean he can't wait any longer.

Leaving all the national security excesses aside, as we’ve been saying around here for a while now, Obama has been mediocre at best on climate change. He refuses to halt fracking on public land, has accelerated coal exports, and generally continues to insist on an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy production—which means hastening the demise of the atmosphere. Certainly, it’s good news that his Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed aggressive new rules to rein in emissions at coal-fired power plants, which are responsible for much of the greenhouse gas output in the United States. But why they waited until the summer from hell to do so—that I couldn’t tell you.

This isn’t entirely on the Obama administration: George W. Bush refused to build on the Kyoto Protocol (which the Senate refused to ratify), and energy companies have plenty of congressmen in their pocket. It doesn't help that environmentalists have been getting dismissed as annoying hippies since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out in 1962. What's changed is the relative corruption and dysfunction of our key institutions, like Congress—essentially, the stranglehold of big money over the political system.

“There’s a strong understanding of the difficulties of the US situation, and a willingness to work with the US to get out of this impasse,” Laurence Tubiana, French ambassador for climate change to the UN, told the Times. “There is an implicit understanding that this not require ratification by the Senate.”

That the rest of the civilized world is apparently content to accommodate our ineptitude is awfully nice. But what some are calling a new tack in response to the steady stream of terrifying missives emanating from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change looks, to many seasoned observers of international climate negotiations at least, like more of the same old tune.

“I don't see anything new here,” said Karen Orenstein, an accredited observer of international climate talks at the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth. “This is the continuation of what they've been doing in the climate negotiations for many years and it's basically leading the world in a race to bottom." Avoiding a legally binding treaty will make it easy to stop helping poor countries whenever convenient, including those island nations facing the most imminent risk of being swallowed up by rising sea levels.

Of course, this is all assuming Republicans in Congress don't launch some kind of coup to prevent our doing anything that smacks of solidarity with the rest of the world. As Zoë Schlanger reported for Newsweek, there's an obscure provision of the Clean Air Act that gives the federal government authority to regulate pollutants in states doing harm to other countries. This would appear to give Obama a card he can play at international climate talks, one that's a bit more substantial and compelling than the blame game. But given his administration's systematic cowardice when it comes to the climate, it's hard to envision him pursuing something so controversial and promising. 

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Martha Dreher (allegedly)

Screencaps via KVUE

The incident: A woman didn't like the kids she was babysitting.

The appropriate response: Quitting.

The actual response: She allegedly set their house on fire. 

Earlier this week, the Williams family of Austin, Texas, returned to their family home to find that there had been a fire in the bedrooms of their two daughters. The fires had been contained and eventually burned out, but not before causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. 

According to police, when the family checked the security cameras, they saw their babysitter, 57-year-old Martha Dreher, drive up to the house and let herself inside. When she left 20 minutes later, there were allegedly flames visible in the girls' bedroom windows.

According to Glenn Williams, the father of the family, Martha had previously told him that she was unhappy with her job and wanted to quit. "She said that it was horrible, that the girls—my oldest—had been very disrespectful," he said. He believes the fire was started as an act of revenge. "They could have set the whole house on fire, and they actually closed the doors so the fire was maintained in those rooms and burned itself out. So it was definitely a vendetta against the two girls," he said.

Martha was arrested and charged with arson. Much like Billy Joel, she maintains that she didn't start the fire. Speaking to KVUE, Amber Bode, Marha's attorney, said, “The thing that we are going to be pushing for—in addition to, obviously, lie detector tests and everything else that we can do to prove her innocence—is evidence." 

Cry-Baby #2: The UK legal system, FACT, and Universal Pictures

Photos via Google Maps and Facebook

The incident: A guy got caught illegally sharing the new Fast & Furious movie.

The appropriate response: Some kind of fine, I guess. 

The actual response: He was sent to prison for 33 months. 

Earlier this year, 25-year-old Philip Danks from Wolverhampton, England, filmed Fast & Furious 6 from the back of a movie theater near his home. 

He posted his recording of the film to a torrent site, putting his tag, "Thecod3r," in the filename. It was downloaded more than 700,000 times. 

Because Philip also uses Thecod3r as his username on the dating site PlentyofFish, investigators were able to trace the movie upload to him. 

He was arrested at his home and charged with three counts of distributing pirate copies of films. 

He appeared in court earlier this week, where he plead guilty to all three charges. During his trial, the court heard that Philip had made over £1000 ($1650) from selling pirated films. 

According to a BBC report, the judge who sentence Philip said his behavior was "bold, arrogant, and cocksure."

The ex-boyfriend of Philip's sister was also charged for uploading a second copy of the film to the internet. He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service. 

The Federation Against Copyright Theft, which is a UK-based trade organization that fights piracy, claims that Universal Pictures lost out on "millions of pounds" due to Philip's upload. 

It is unclear how the makers of Fast & Furious 6 are going to cope with this massive financial loss. 

Which of this lot is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A guy who called the cops because a stripper wouldn't have sex with him vs. a woman who called the cops because she heard a woman say "fucking"

Winner: It's a draw!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter

The lethal injection room at San Quentin State Prison. Photo via Wikimedia

“I personally oppose this terrible, awful, unjust thing that I’m doing,” only really works as a defense of one’s terrible, awful, unjust behavior if the alternative to working at, say, the local cat-skinning factory is starvation. Capitalism requires us all to sacrifice a bit of our moral integrity to put food on the table so, while it’s nice to be pure, it’s also nice to eat. There’s a line, though, which I’d draw at: killing people. You really shouldn’t kill people—and in the case of California’s most powerful elected officials, all liberal Democrats, no one is forcing them to do anything of the sort.

But kill they shall.

Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris both profess to oppose the state-sanctioned killings, of course. For Brown, “repeal of the death penalty has been a lifelong cause,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and Harris “personally opposes the death penalty.” Both, however, have refused to let their very personal opposition to capital punishment get in the way of their very public defenses of it, so much so that they declined to endorse a 2012 ballot measure that would have fulfilled their lifelong missions and abolished it.

In July, though, a federal judge appointed by former President George W. Bush gave these liberal leaders in liberal California another chance. In a scathing ruling, Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the death sentence of one Ernest D. Jones—convicted in 1995 of rape and murder—and ruled that California’s system of capital punishment is broken beyond repair.

"Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment,” Carney ruled.

Over 900 people have been sentenced to death in California since capital punishment was reinstated back in 1978—including 55 since the anti-death penalty attorney general took office in 2011—yet only 13 people have actually been executed, the last in 2006. Though about half of all murderers are white, most of those on California's death row are people of color, with the vast majority of them sentenced to die for killing a white person, the severity of a crime determined by the victim's melatonin. And after arbitrarily being put on death row—less than one percent of homicide convictions lead to a death sentence—they wait around for years not knowing if they will be one of those arbitrarily selected to try out the state's latest lethal drug cocktail, with more than 40 percent of those sentenced to die having been on death row for at least two decades.

“[T]o be executed in such a system,” Carney wrote, “where so many are sentenced to death but only a random few are actually executed, would offend the most fundamental of constitutional protections—that the government shall not be permitted to arbitrarily inflict the ultimate punishment of death.”

Here it was: a chance for California’s liberal leaders to use the cover provided them by a conservative justice to do away with a punishment they decry as barbaric. In a state where nearly half the electorate backed replacing the punishment of death with life without parole, it would not be political suicide to finally act on that personal opposition. As attorney general, Harris is not obligated to appeal decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court. She could accept the judge’s ruling and move on. She could hold a press conference and say, “My job is to uphold the law, not defend violations of the Constitution.”

Alas, no: In an August 21 press release, Attorney General Harris announced she was “appealing the court's decision because it is not supported by the law and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.”

California Attorney General Kamala Harris speaks at a press conference. Photo via Wikimedia

When I called Harris’ office to ask how, specifically, throwing out the death penalty violates defendants’ rights, I did not get an answer. So I turned to Matt Cherry, executive director of Death Penalty Focus, an organization which opposes capital punishment. “I do not know what Kamala Harris meant,” he told me, as it’s the status quo that sees death row inmates languish for years in overcrowded prison cells—or torturous solitary confinement—waiting for execution that the state doesn’t even have the drugs to carry out (though Governor Brown says he’s working on a concoction that can kill prisoners without torturing them to death; such is the kinder, gentler face of liberalism).

“It is important to emphasize that the cost and length of the appeals process, which Judge Carney highlights, is not a flaw in the system,” Cherry said, “but is an inevitable outcome of the requirement for due process in the use of the only punishment that is fatal and irreversible.” The system can’t be fixed, in other words: it’s fatally broken and must be thrown out.

In California, it’s not Republicans preventing that from happening, but liberals who claim to oppose what it is they are doing. That’s classic Democratic Party strategy: telling the base, “We have the same moral convictions as you, we just can’t act on them.” And that’s enough for some people.

“Recently, I mentioned that California’s current attorney general, Kamala Harris, is anti-death penalty,” author Rebecca Solnit, inventor of the term “mansplaining,” wrote in a 2012 essay on those to her left explaining the failings of her liberal idols, a phenomena she termed “leftsplaining.” Immediately after she noted Harris’ “anti-death penalty” stance, Solnit wrote that a “snarky Berkeley professor” pointed out that Harris had actually “condoned the illegal purchase of lethal injection drugs.”

That claim was true: California, under Harris’ watch, purchased lethal injection drugs from a foreign source, violating federal law. But what mattered to Solnit were not the morally compromising deeds, but the spiritual uplift she received from believing someone who shared her values was now in elected office. Why take that away from her?

“Apparently, we are not allowed to celebrate the fact that the attorney general for 12 percent of all Americans is pretty cool in a few ways or figure out where that could take us,” Solnit wrote. “My respondent was attempting to crush my ebullience and wither the discussion, and what purpose exactly does that serve?”

Two years later, the liberal Harris has staked out a position on the death penalty that is to the right of a judge appointed by George W. Bush. Perhaps if ebullient liberals had paid more attention to actions than pretty cool words, liberal politicians might now feel some pressure to act on the personal convictions they espouse when asking for campaign contributions.

Then again, ending the death penalty is itself a rather liberal cause. It should of course be done, but it’s not as if life in an overcrowded prison, or in solitary confinement, without the possibility of parole is much if any more humane. There were also just under 40 executions last year, compared to the well over 400 people killed by police, most of them black, so even if we were to do away with capital punishment, we’d still have the death penalty—just administered by cops without the formality of a trial.

Still, there is something particularly evil about premeditated state killing; of keeping hundreds of people on death row for decades and arbitrarily killing a handful of them with a torturous mix of undisclosed chemicals. Just be aware that abolishing that form of state-sanctioned vengeance is far from the only thing that must be done to make the “criminal justice” system more just. Way too many people are imprisoned in America—more than two million, the most in human history—for way too long, the vast majority for nonviolent drug and property offenses.

We ultimately need to kill the policy of mass incarceration, which has devastated poor communities in this country, disproportionately those of color. Just don’t expect any liberals to lead the way.

Follow Charles Davis on Twitter.

“I miss my son,” said Mosef Abedi as he looked straight into the camera. “If you’re holding my son, I beg you to return him to me.”

Mosef is a 64-year-old man with an untrimmed beard, thick moustache, and a web of wrinkles under his eyes.  He sat next to his wife in their living room with a Qur’an in his right hand and a frame of their 16-year-old son in his left. Like many teenagers from El Kef, a modest town in the north west of Tunisia, their son Seddik spent mornings in school before heading to the neighborhood mosque to study the Qur’an. On the morning of February 2, 2014, he left for school and never returned.

“He clutched my hands and kissed them gently before he left,” said Seddik’s mother Saida, as she sat next to her husband on their living room sofa.

Seddik had told his parents that he would be home at 6:30 PM. When they received no word of his whereabouts hours later, they called the police to report their son missing. The police waited 24 hours before initiating their search. When they started, they traced Seddik’s phone and found that he had dialed a Tunisian Spanish teacher eight times on the night he disappeared.

When the police arrived at the suspect’s house, his family said he had already left to fight in Syria shortly after communicating with Seddik.

Following Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, men once affiliated with the Tunisian Islamic Front (TIF)—a militant movement repressed under former dictator Zine Abidine Ben Ali—received amnesty from prison and returned from exile after fighting for decades in distant conflicts.

The end to autocratic rule and rising poverty throughout the country enabled networks of militant Islam to establish influences in local mosques and assist communities neglected by the government. Since militants returned, thousands have departed to extremist groups abroad, and a local film maker has sought to document the fates of the families left behind.

On July 23, I traveled to El Kef to meet Seddik’s parents with Youssef Ben Ammar, a 25-year-old Tunisian filmmaker.

Youssef located Mosef through first contacting the Rescue Association for Tunisians Trapped Abroad, a domestic NGO established in August 2013 to help families find relatives who have taken up arms in foreign conflicts. When Mosef received word about Youssef’s proposal, he thought that someone with knowledge of his son’s whereabouts might see the film. Youssef refused to make such promises, but Mosef’s faith inspired the title of his project.

“The film is called Condemned to Hope, because as Youssef told me over coffee, “Seddik’s family has no choice but to expect the return of their son.”

Mosef and Saida insist that religious teachers brainwashed their son since the revolution. While their community has offered moral support through their despair, they are convinced that their child is fighting in Syria.  

In 2011 Seddik traveled to Ben Guerdane—a town in the south of Tunisia on the Libyan border—with the intention to partake in the Libyan civil war.  Without knowledge of his son’s whereabouts, Mosef and Saida panicked for hours until border police notified them of Seddik’s arrest.

“After he arrived home, he refused to tell us anything,” said Mosef as he placed Seddik’s frame on the table next to him.

“Seddik was the flower of the house,” said Saida, as she folded his old clothes in his bedroom. “I can’t understand why he fixed jihad as his objective.”           

Three years later, due to a new law restricting travel to persons under the age of 25 without parental consent, Seddik asked his father for his passport and a letter of permission to visit his cousins in Algeria. With the incident long behind the family, Mosef prepared his son’s travel documents without suspicion.

Seddik went missing the following month.

Michael Ayari, a senior Tunisian analyst for International Crisis Group, said that because militant Islam first and foremost represents a refusal of authority, movements have received added popularity from Tunisians isolated from the country’s democratic transition.

“Everyone has their own incentives for joining such groups,” said Ayari. “For some, I think becoming a jihadist fulfills a romanticism to find an identity.”

“Perhaps Seddik was searching for a new way to exist,” said Youssef, as he shifted through footage of his film on his computer.

As Seddik’s parents deal with his disappearance, thoughts of their son killing innocent people have grown most disturbing. Before praying on the carpet of his living room, pleading to God for the return of his son, Mosef told Youssef that he always wanted Seddik to follow the path of God, until now.

Today, Condemned to Hope is scheduled to view at a national competition hosted by the French and Goethe institute in Tunis on October 10. By capturing the misery of a family who fears their son has abandoned them for jihad, Youssef’s film intends to challenge the perspective of his viewers in the same way he has challenged his own.

“Is Seddik a terrorist or a runaway child?” Youssef asked me rhetorically. “I hope my audience ponders the same question.”

All photos via Kieran Oudshoorn.
After a man-made lake full of mining waste spilled in the central interior of British Columbia, security guards have been blocking entry to the subsequently contaminated lake and creek. Residents hoping to see first-hand what millions of cubic metres of tailings sludge might have done to Polley Lake or Hazeltine Creek are met with gates, guards, and blocked off roads.

(As of right now, the much larger Quesnel Lake remains accessible, despite it sporting a mysterious waxy film.)

Eight kilometres down the entrance road to the breached Mount Polley mine, a First Nation camp burns tobacco offerings in memory of the land traditionally called Yuct Ne Senxiymetkwe. Over the course of yesterday afternoon, the roadside checkpoint—dotted with tents and flying three First Nation flags—drew visits from Green politician Andrew Weaver, RCMP patrollers, hereditary chiefs from surrounding nations, former and current mine workers, and me.

When I arrived at the camp, Secwepemc elders offered me tobacco to throw on the sacred fire; I added beef jerky out of my backpack to the offering as a sign of respect. Along a table stacked with food and supplies, a banner reads “no surrender.” At first a group of about 30 gathered to sing, drum, and together make sense of the massive environmental disaster.

“It’s really hard, it’s incomprehensible,” says Kanahus Manuel, member of the Secwepemc Women Warrior Society and co-founder of the camp. Manuel and others living in the camp since August 17 have monitored the freighters and buses coming out of the mining site, collecting what information they can from workers willing to stop and chat. “We’re all dealing with something catastrophic. The workers we’ve met have deep concerns.”

As the mining company and government make assurances about the safety and containment of the spill, locals’ eyes and noses tell a different story. “It was a big raunchy stink, like battery acid,” former Mount Polley worker Larry Chambers says of his first boat trip to the mouth of Hazeltine Creek on August 5. “We all came back with sore throats.”

Chambers worked at the mine last year, but says he was dismissed after pointing out what he felt were neglectful, dangerous practices. Not feeling satisfied with the company’s consultation at local meetings, he and his partner Lawna Bourassa parked their trailer at the Secwepemc camp last week. “We didn’t hear about the camp until it was here two days,” says Bourassa. “The feeling I get from the camp is we’re not alone.”

The camp follows at least two other First Nations actions against Imperial Metals—the mining company responsible for the spill containing arsenic, mercury, and other chemicals. On August 8, a group of Tahltan elders blocked the entrance to the soon-to-be-opened Red Chris mine near Terrace, BC. The Neskonlith Indian Band, part of the same Secwepemc Nation camping at Mount Polley, also served an eviction notice to Imperial’s nearby Ruddock Creek development.

As the crowd swelled to 40 and then 50 people, a second fire began searing a salmon feast for the camp. The meal reminded campers that the stakes on this year’s sockeye salmon run couldn’t be higher: with an expected 845,000 to 2.95 million salmon expected to rush through Quesnel Lake, officials still aren’t sure how all that mining sediment is going to affect the multi-million dollar fishing industry.

The most recent Ministry of Environment statement on aquatic life says fish tested had “an elevated level of selenium in the livers and gonads—exceeding guidelines for human consumption.” However, after consulting with Interior Health, the media statement goes on to say: “the flesh of the fish remains safe to eat.” Okay then.

Meanwhile, the government’s water quality results have been positive but pretty limited in scope. The ministry’s handful of samples taken at “shallow depths” in Quesnel Lake all passed federal drinking water guidelines.

No air quality testing has been done in the wake of the disaster, a point that residents of Likely, BC continue to question as chemical fumes waft into their homes. “The smell woke me up in the middle of the night,” says Bourassa. “I’ve had burning in the back of my throat, almost up in my sinuses.”

To catch a glimpse of the collapsed dam, Manuel motored up Quesnel Lake for an hour, beached the boat and hiked five kilometres into the site. “When we got up on land, we got there and you could still taste it in the back of your throat,” she recalls. “You can feel the headache coming on from the chemicals in there.”

With so much security and secrecy surrounding the spill, the camp has been collecting and releasing its own reporting and testimony. The group’s first 20-page report released yesterday points to long-term unknowns, and makes an effort to document the spill’s emotional toll. Manuel says the camp and the sacred fire burning at the site will continue to give a space to register this kind of local dissent.

“We lit this fire for our water, for our salmon, and to find a collective solution about how we’re going to respond to it,” says Manuel. “We pray people will come together, and people have come together.”

@sarahberms

The author with "Sarah," whose name we have changed for her protection. Photo by Samir Amrania

I first met Sarah when she asked to take a picture with me after I spoke to her student group about entrepreneurship in Cleveland. Afterwards, I started a conversation with her and the rest of her friends from Baghdad, who were visiting America on a joint US and Iraqi Embassy-sponsored trip to “develop young Iraqi leaders.” They showed me pictures they had taken on their iPhones of dead bodies laying on the streets of Iraq. “You think that’s bad?” they said, almost boasting. “That’s everyday shit in Iraq.”

After that, Sarah and I became Facebook friends. I was only two years older than her and we would chat late into the night. We eventually made plans to hang out before she left Ohio.

On one blue Cleveland afternoon, I took her out to get coffee, playing rap music in the car along the way, which she liked. Upon seeing the cafe, she got visibly excited. “I love coffee shops!” she said. “Except you can’t go to them in Baghdad because they get bombed all the time.”

Sarah spoke with the maturity and humor of that comes from being raised in a shitty situation. Over coffee, she told me about the death of her uncle (“every Iraqi has at least one person in their family who’s been killed"), the kidnapping of her relatives, and of the 28 women on her street who were dragged out of their homes and executed by Islamic extremists.

“It’s so weird," she said, talking about the women. “It’s like, I’m here in America defending my country and religion, and my religion and country are killing me?” And then she laughed, as if I should laugh with her at the absurdity of it all.

When the Islamic State (ISIS) first crossed the border with Syria into Iraq, the Iraqi army ran from the fight. “You lose your faith in your government after that,” Sarah told me. And although Baghdad appears safe for now, an ISIS invasion looms over everyday life. “When [we thought] ISIS was coming,” said Sarah, “we had a holiday for one week because the government was expecting them to come to Baghdad. They didn’t prepare their army; they just gave us a holiday. And I went out with my brother and we were walking around the area. It was just like Call of Duty. Troops were there and the streets were so empty—I was like, gosh, this is just like a PlayStation game.”

In Sarah’s world, ISIS was merely an annoyance; nothing that they hadn’t seen before. “One of my friends was like, ‘I’m just a bit disappointed, because I wanted to watch the World Cup, and we have the month of Ramadan coming up, and exams, and now ISIS is coming. Are you serious?’”

But Sarah added, “if you were born when there was war, you lived when there was war, you’re going to get married and have kids when there’s war." Over time, the constant threat of death just becomes "part of the routine.”

What surprised me the most was Sarah’s lack of anger. When I asked her about extremists in Iraq, for instance, she said she could see where they were coming from. “I don’t blame extremists, you know why? Because if your parents were killed and you’re dropped out of school—and this happens a lot in Iraq—and you lost faith in everyone… and [extremists] come and tell you, “I know who killed your parents, come with us… and the government doesn’t care about you, it makes sense to join them.”

“But normal Iraqis aren’t extremists," Sarah told me. "They don’t think everyone should wear [head coverings]. They want equality, democracy. People coming and forcing you to being an extremist? That’s not the Iraqi way.”

At one point, I told Sarah about the “Chiraq” nickname some Americans have given Chicago due to the prevalence of gun violence in the city. I spelled the word out for her, and she laughed. “The boys in my group would like that,” she said. “They’d be glad the Americans were thinking of the Iraqis.”

“But I guess people can move from Chicago, right?” she continued. “I always ask myself: is it better to stay in this war zone and try to solve it even if you die? Or should you just go somewhere else and live a good life? Because you only have one life, so what are you going to do with it? And I still don’t know.”

That morbid awareness found its way into much of my conversations with Sarah. She used to tell me how much she felt Iraqi and American teenagers were “kind of the same,” but that changed over time. “I always imagined America to be a land of dreams and opportunity,” she told me, but her tour of this country had changed that impression. “People here seem very depressed.”

“What about Iraqis?” I asked.

“One thing I love about Iraqis is that they still have hope,” she responded. “And they love life. And even though there are bombings happening all the time… you live while you can. And if you die, you die. And so they go and live a normal, happy life, but with that in mind.”

Sarah has since gone back to Baghdad. We still talk online. We “like” each other’s pictures on Facebook. She even nominated me for the Ice Bucket Challenge. Sometimes I think about her and hope she’s safe. The last time I talked to her, I told her I was moving to New York. “Take me with you,” she said. And then she logged off.

Follow Zach Schwartz on Twitter.

(Image via)

It’s tricky to accurately describe the nuances of depression. But, for those who’ve never experienced it, imagine being constantly trailed by a furious, vindictive squid, ready at any moment to latch on to your skull and squirt your brain full of cold black ink. Essentially, it’s not a lot of fun.

Of course, it has been argued that sufferers have a more accurate worldview. But realizing the Sisyphean nature of getting out of bed doesn’t exactly make that task any easier. Nor does it make it any easier to eat well, sleep properly, form relationships, or do anything, really. In short, depression’s tentacles find their way into every single aspect of your life. One aspect that’s often overlooked, however, is its effect on learning and memory.

Dr. Jim Bolton is a consultant psychiatrist and a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He said, “In my work, I often see people who have gone to a doctor because they’re having memory problems and fear they may be developing dementia or a similar serious brain illness. But after consultation it’s discovered that the root of their problem is that they are depressed.”

Vortioxetine, a new antidepressant already available in America, has been proven to have cognitive enhancing effects on rats, and preliminary trials have shown it provides similar benefits to people suffering from depression. The drug is currently being reviewed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and is expected to be launched in the UK next year.

Dr. Andrew Jones is the medical director of Lunbeck, one of the companies involved in producing the drug. He said, “We treated rats with chemicals that deplete other certain chemicals in their brain that impair their memory. What we found is that vortioxetine reverses the deficit we created.” While it’s still early days for the drug, it marks an interesting development in the treatment of depression.

As with all things cranial, the exact relationship between depression and impaired learning is complicated and not fully understood. Jones said, “The systems in the brain that could cause depression and those that are involved in cognition and memory are all interrelated, and those interrelations are very complex. A relative lack of serotonin is likely to be a factor in cognitive problems, but this could be because it has an indirect effect on other brain chemicals known to be involved in learning and memory, such as gamma-Aminobutyric acid and glutamate.”

Bolton reiterated the complexity of the subject: “Depression interferes with our ability to learn and remember information for many, many reasons,” he said, adding that the triggers themselves often seem fairly logical. “If a patient is preoccupied with how low they’re feeling—and with any worries they may have—it’s more difficult to focus. If you can’t focus, then it’s much more difficult to learn.”

This is apparent from an early age; we excel in subjects we enjoy, we don’t do so well in subjects we hate. If you don’t enjoy anything, you’re fucked.

Having difficulty absorbing and retaining information may seem like a small issue when considered next to the literally sickening emotional symptoms of depression. But it’s the accumulative effect of all the probing tentacles that truly ruins lives. Memory problems, in particular, can be fiendishly insidious. Bolton said, “They can affect small things, like not being able to remember somebody’s name after a conversation. But it can have a much greater impact—you may be unable to take in information from a work meeting, manage your finances, or even learn from your mistakes.”

Currently, the only way these cognitive problems are treated is by addressing the underlying depression. Bolton said, “If somebody recovers from a period of depression, their concentration, motivation, and interest in life should improve, and so their memory and ability to learn usually also improve.”

But it’s not always as simple as that, and, of course, there is no permanent cure for depression. Jones said, “This specific feature of depression can persist even when mood symptoms have been resolved. So even between episodes of depression patients can feel that they are never quite back to their normal selves.” This statement is supported by other studies carried out by independent researchers.

Jones acknowledges that current antidepressants can improve cognitive functioning in the way Bolton described. He’s also keen to stress that vortioxetine doesn’t boost brain power above the norm, but returns functioning to the state it would be at in a person without depression. Nevertheless, the results from tests have been successful in highlighting the drug’s advantages.

“In simple terms, we assess to what extent the improvement in cognitive tests can be accounted for by an improvement in the underlying depression using a depression score,” he said. “From this we can calculate how much of that can’t be put down to the alleviation of depression. What we see is that roughly 40 to 50 percent of that improvement in cognitive function can’t be accounted for by an improvement in underlying depression.

“The next step for us is seeing if this translates into the everyday lives of patients. We’ll be carrying out more tests, but the indicators that this works to improve cognition beyond standard antidepressants are definitely there. All the studies and data we’ve produced have been closely examined by the Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, and are either published or in the process of being published in the public domain. Anyone can independently evaluate vortioxtine, and we would invite them to do so.”

When it comes to depression, the most effective treatment is—and most likely always will be—a combination of learning coping skills, talking therapy, and medication. But in light of the World Health Organization’s prediction that depression will be the biggest burden on the health of society by 2030, it seems obvious that we should consider every possible tool at our disposal, as well as working to develop new ones. After all, that squid’s never going to leave of its own volition. 

Follow Alex Horne on Twitter.

Illustrations by Ketch Wehr

Hey China, you’re welcome. When you think about your future multi-million dollar shipping moguls, innovative tech giants, and up-and-coming diplomats, please remember a small handful of them probably received their Ivy League degrees thanks to me.

I’m a black market college admissions essay writer, and over the last three years I’ve written over 350 fraudulent essays for wealthy Chinese exchange students. Although my clients have varied from earnest do-gooders to factory tycoon’s daughters who communicate primarily through emojis, they all have one thing in common: They’re unable to write meaningful sentences.

Sometimes this inability has stemmed from a language barrier, but other times they have struggled to understand what American college admissions committees are looking for in a personal essay. Either way, they have all been willing to pay me way more than my old waitressing job ever paid me.

Although I’m a second-generation Korean American like some of my clients, I never felt pressured to become a doctor or a lawyer. I majored in art history at college, and after graduation, I found myself bouncing from retail jobs to temp work. Every day, I loafed about in bed. Reading my friends’ Facebook statuses about finishing law school and starting their dream jobs, I wondered if I should ever leave my house. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or if I even possessed any skills someone could pay me to use—at least I didn’t know until my friend told me I could reap in a cash bonanza forging wealthy Asian students’ college essays.

Once I started ghostwriting essays, I quickly went from making $8.50 an hour as a waitress to making $2,000 in two weeks. In one admissions cycle, I wrote over a hundred essays and earned enough money to pay my bills for the rest of the year, pay off my car loan, and—as a treat for my hardworking hands—receive $150 Japanese manicures on a biweekly basis.

Each ghostwriting session starts with a daylong interview. I pry into every intimate corner of a client’s life: her family history, financial background, and childhood secrets. Then I try to pinpoint one relatable thread of pain or humanity, which I can make the focal point of an essay attached to a larger universal theme, like empathy or humility.

For example, one girl—let’s call her Wei—always wondered why her parents looked so much happier in their old photographs. She assumed they looked miserable because they had never wanted a child, let alone a female child, but as she grew older, she noticed her parents worked long hours to support her. Their smiles had become worry lines because they had decided to sacrifice themselves for their daughter. With this knowledge, Wei realized that love comes in many shapes and sizes.

Of course, by sacrifice and long hours, I mean that her parents owned a multi-million dollar company. Wei regularly enjoyed spa getaways with her mother as her father traveled, closing massive deals, but Wei mentioned she had seen photos where her parents looked happier—I could use this moment in an essay to show a sliver of introspection. Did I fabricate some details? Yeah. Did the story sound like a greeting card? Sure. But most importantly, did she get into her top-choice school? Hell yes she did. 

Like most black market workers, I picked up my payment at designated pick-up locations at malls and in Starbucks. Sunglasses and a trench coat weren’t required, but with every nondescript envelope of payment, I swallowed my ethical misgivings. I knew for every wealthy Chinese client I helped, there were a dozen struggling natives who needed as much of a helping hand.

Of course, I didn’t have time for moral quandaries. As my name became more popular, I found myself with more clients than I had time to help. I couldn’t interview all of them, so I needed to find a way to produce essays faster. My solution: writing about my own intimate experiences.

One December evening, I used one of my most embarrassing moments as the basis for an essay for a 17-year-old Chinese girl who had never desired something she could not afford. The event happened shortly after my father abandoned my family when I was a kid, leaving us broke. Our water and lights were turned off, and my mom was working multiple jobs to support us. Since we lacked utilities, my mother washed our laundry at the local Laundromat. One day, she left our laundry at the Laundromat while she went to finish errands. When she returned, she discovered that someone had stolen our clothes from the washer. The stolen laundry comprised most of the clothes we owned, so my mother took my sister and me to Goodwill to buy clothes. A classmate spotted me at the thrift store, and the next day at school, she pointed at me and called me poor in front of my entire English class. 

As a college admissions essay, this story was pure gold. You could wrap anything around the story, and it would work, especially since students love rags-to-riches tales.

Except, my life was still made up of rags. Nothing exemplified my rags better than me sitting in front of the laptop, preparing to sell this still wounded part of myself for $400, but without any debate, I emailed the essay to my 17-year-old client.

The loss hit me immediately. Looking at my closed computer, I felt like a stranger to myself. Every time I used my weaknesses and memorable moments in my clients’ essays, I felt a part of myself disappear. Already floundering in that directionless void of post-college life, I began to lose the one anchor I had: myself.

I don’t know what I was expecting in return from the student. Would my client feel the pain of the story and then question the ethics of using another person’s life as an admissions essay? Would she call me and thank me for cutting out a personal part of my heart for her? Later, I received a one-word email from her: “Thanks.” The message stung. I thought about the itchy Goodwill sweater and how much itchier it had felt as I cried after my classmate mocked me. I had given up a private piece of myself for the bargain price of $400. I logged off and shut down my laptop. 

The voice of a college admissions essay is very specific, especially when you’re writing from the perspective of a Chinese exchange student. You have to portray a lot of their expected characteristics while simultaneously fighting against some of their more negative stereotypes. You have to be timid yet idealistic, ambitious yet giving, and reserved yet honest. Selling personal stories of yourself written in the voice of strangers who lack empathy and humility will eventually dissolve you. At the end of every writing season, I always swear I will quit, but I’m still broke with no idea about the shape of my future. I can deny it all I want, but I know, come this fall, I will be in front of my computer at 2 AM mining my brain for another piece of myself to sell for $400.

The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, Ukraine's OSCE representative says Russian troops captured a border city, Brazil dismantles a deforestation gang, India's prime minister plans to give bank accounts back to the poor, and parents say a vaccine may have caused girls to get sick in northern Colombia.

Photo by Brandon Mieske. All courtesy of Tara Reid

Once upon a time, a young actress wore a lime green bikini as she spoke to Jeff Bridges and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars,” she whispered to Bridges in a raspy voice.

“Wonderful woman! We’re all very fond of her—very free spirited,” Hoffman replied. 

The movie was the Academy Award-winning Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, and this wonderful woman’s name was Tara Reid. Sixteen years later, Reid is the star of a less prestigious work, the Syfy channel’s Sharknado TV-movie franchise. The series about waterspouts that drop sharks on cities has become an American phenomenon: 3.9 million people watched Sharknado 2’s premiere in July. By comparison, 670,000 people watched the season three finale of Girls. The movies have also spawned merchandise, including Reid’s new perfume Shark by Tara. To many people who prefer the Coen Brothers to Syfy, Reid’s campy image means she’s no longer wonderful.

These people are wrong.

Log on to Twitter and you will find dozens of people praising the actress:

@TaraReid You make me want to be a SHARK lol #Sharknado2 pic.twitter.com/JLojJQsumh

— Johnny (@ABoltAHolic) August 27, 2014

Finally watched #Sharknado2 thought it was great and @TaraReid was brilliant as always such a great actress

— STEVE (@Kopitesteve81) August 26, 2014

@TaraReid these legs!! #killerlegs

— Sanna Duthie (@Sannad22) August 27, 2014

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Photo courtesy of Mark Barron

Unlike most entrepreneurs who make millions of dollars inventing pointless apps like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur named Mark Barron wants to use smartphones to solve one of America's biggest problems: gun violence. 

The 58-year-old inventor has created a new app called Lockdown, which he believes could decrease the country's number of gun-related crimes. The app works with a “clip” containing a GPS chip that a user can attach to his gun. The owner leaves his gun in designated areas and enters a code when he wants to remove his weapon. If someone removes the gun without entering the code, the smart chip sends a notification to the owner's smartphone. The gun owner can then cancel the alert, or forward it to police, family, neighbors, or anyone else he's chosen as an emergency contact on the app.

“We’re giving people the tools to know about it right away, so people can’t say, ‘I didn’t know the number of the police station,’” Barron said.

His vision isn’t based solely on altruism. Barron has invested $50,000 to $100,000 into Lockdown, and values the app at $150,000 to $200,000. He plans to put the app on the market when he determines it can be profitable.

In an ideal scenario, Barron said, congress would pass a law that would require gun makers to include Lockdown’s technology on weapons—legislation that could possibly piss off gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

“Let's be honest, any one of these big gun companies could do what we're doing,” Anthony Phills, one of Barron's employees, said. “But they have different priorities.”

For now, Lockdown is still a prototype, and for the technology to succeed, Barron needs media exposure, along with help from Washington.

“It’d be nice if Piers [Morgan] would say, ‘You can have as many rifles as you want, but the more you have the more responsibility you have to take,’” Barron said.

According to the New York Times, only 34 percent of American households possessed guns in 2012. CNN reports that many of these Americans own more than one gun, which means they might need an app like Lockdown to keep track of their collections. In recent years, many gun owners have become more zealous about their Second Amendment rights and have started stockpiling weapons, but this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. As far back as 2004, an Injury Prevention Journal study found that 20 percent of gun-toting households owned 65 percent of the nation’s firearms. 

Gun owners' zeal is part of the reason President Obama’s gun-control legislation failed even after the horrendous shooting in Newtown. Getting lawmakers to back Lockdown’s GPS-tracking technology is an uphill battle for Barron to say the least.

“If I had a brother who worked at a gun manufacturer, this would be done,” Barron said. “They’re the gatekeepers, gun manufacturers—we need an insider.”

Barron displays an air of eccentricity reminiscent of a James Bond character when he makes these statements, but he has a lengthy background in safety-related projects. His company, Public Transportation Safety International Corporation, creates the S-1 GARD Danger Zone Deflector, the plastic arms that extend from the front of buses to prevent people from getting run over.

Phills has also used technology for good causes and believes getting lawmakers’ attention can be difficult even if the product is a no-brainer for gun-safety advocates.

“I spent over $300,000 to build a better Amber Alert system for the government, and they still didn’t use it,” he said. “I see this as being the same thing.”

Barron agreed: “Safety’s not sexy,” he said. “Thinking of things and inventing things is not the problem. It’s marketing it.”

He's been careful about his appearances in the media.  Marketing pushes will likely come after the next Newtown or Aurora, which, depending on your level of cynicism, is either an unfortunate inevitability or a phenomenon that could be prevented by new gun laws, like the legislation Barron wants passed.

“It adds fuel to awareness,” Barron said of the mass shootings that have sparked discussions about new gun legislation. Unfortunately, new gun laws won’t pass without the support of gun lovers.

“When somebody has a medical problem they go to the doctor, but the government, they don’t reach out to inventors,” Barron said. “All we are is another think tank with a product that’s focused on gun safety.”

Lockdown doesn't have a website yet. For more information about the app, contact the Maven Firm. 

Justin Glawe is a freelance journalist based in Peoria, Illinois. He writes about crime there, and recently launched a reporting project that will address issues of child welfare on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation.

What if John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe stole a time-traveling DeLorean and teleported to the future to get married?

That’s the burning question answered in Once Upon a Dream, filmmaker J. B. Ghuman Jr.’s new art project. The photo series casts Jason Sellards (a.k.a. Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters) as Kennedy and NYC nightlife legend Amanda Lepore as Monroe.

Shot on location at the Skylark Hotel in Palm Springs (Mr. President and Sugar Kane’s rumored hookup spot) and at the base of the 26-foot-tall Forever Marilyn statue, Once Upon a Dream turns the twosome’s private tragedy into public fantasy: glitter pops, magical lighting crackles, and Marilyn shoots the paparazzi with a gray plastic gun that looks suspiciously like the one I used to play Nintendo’s Duck Hunt.

For Lepore, who says Monroe is an inspiration, it was important to bring joy to the story. “She recreated herself, which most transsexuals can identify with,” Lepore told me. “Marilyn was unhappy being Marilyn, but I’m happy like this. I feel like ‘Marilyn’s Revenge.’”

Make no mistake though: She might be Monroe’s reincarnation, but Lepore is an East Coast woman. “I loved the whole thing since I got to be next to Amanda,” Jake Shears said of the shoot. “Because I was just starting to get a little homesick for New York... and basically Amanda just straight up is New York.”

And the shoot is straight up Ghuman. It reminded me of his 2010 directorial debut, Spork. Like a John Hughes flick from another dimension, Spork followed the travails and triumphs of an intersex girl nicknamed Spork and her dancing neighbor Tootsie Roll. Despite the film’s low budget, Ghuman managed to distil glitter and trash into a sumptuous, whacked-out dreamworld where reality is optional and time is relative—an aesthetic carried through in Once Upon a Dream.

To find out more about Ghuman's newest vision, I called the director to talk about his Monroe-Kennedy fantasy. 

VICE: How did this shoot come together?
J.B. Ghuman Jr.: Reggie Cameron, who produced the installation (a.k.a. Money Bags), said Amanda Lepore is going to be here for a different function, and would I be into doing a single photo of her underneath the Marilyn Monroe statue, because she’s constantly saying that Marilyn is her inspiration. I'd met Amanda before—through Cazwell, because I've done videos with him—and I thought this could be cool.

What inspired you to create an art project about Kennedy and Monroe?
[Monroe and Kennedy’s relationship was] always looked on as this shameful thing; she was a slut and he was a playboy. I'm not saying either of those are true because I wasn't there, but I wasn't trying to put a spotlight on any truth about them. I was just trying to use their situation and flip it. Like how cute would it be if they did steal a DeLorean and said, “Fuck it, we're going to the future? Let’s get married, let’s go to this hotel, and make it public, and let's just be in love!”

What’s your broader vision for these art projects?
Buckle up, girl, cause it's bright, it's quick, and it's crazy—and it has lots of glitter. When you know you're different, no matter where you're at, you become very imaginative. Not to get too heavy on you, but my dad became stardust about four years ago. When that happened, I kind of lost my identity. When I rebuilt myself, the only thing that didn't get blown away was my childlike heart. All that stirred inside me into some mumbo jumbo until I figured: Fuck it. Let's be cool. Let's make stuff where people like it so it's a hit, but on the flip side there's an echo to it, like it creates a certain positive energy when you look at it.

Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter.