A glimmer of hope has emerged for police reform and weed decriminalization advocates in New York: Last week, anonymous sources t​old the New York Post that the NYPD is halting its buy-and-bust operations, which pinch low-level pot dealers through controlled purchases in an effort to make arrests up the drug-trade ladder. Adding to the intrigue are new reports from the New York Time​s and Daily​ News suggesting that City Hall is changing its policies and priorities when it comes to low-level marijuana arrests, which have become increasingly controversial in recent years.

The new buy-and-bust plan is apparently to concentrate on drugs that can actually kill you—like heroin and pills—and the new pot possession policy is reportedly to replace cuffs with tickets when nailing people for smoking or holding the stuff.

According to the Post, borough commanders are miffed at the buy-and-bust orders, which they believe also came down from Gracie Mansion. After all, de Blasio has come under fire lately for a citywide rise in marijuana arrests—86 p​ercent of which target black and Latinos—despite running on a platform of reining in NYPD excesses.

"It's the kind of reform people like me wanted to see," Reverend Al Sharpton, a close ally of de Blasio, sai​d about the buy-and-bust move. "This is a step in the right direction."

Finally, some good news from the birthplace of the notoriously regressive Rockefeller Drug Laws, which once represented a national model for mandatory sentencing in the war on Drugs. right?

Not so fast.

"There has been no finalized policy change in which the Department makes low-level marijuana arrests," an NYPD spokesperson told me on Friday. "The assertion that marijuana operations conducted by the Narcotics Division will be discontinued is not accurate."

So far, Mayor de Blasio has not spoken publicly about the decision to halt buy-and-bust operations—a move supposedly intended to silence his critics. Nor did he comment for the reports suggesting low-level marijuana arrests are on the way out. Wouldn't we expect his office to cheer these decisions? (The Mayor's office did not respond to VICE's request for comment, but a press conference on the topic is scheduled for today at 3 PM at One Police Plaza.)

As usual when it comes to reform, there's already plenty of opposition to changing the status quo. "If the current practice of making arrests for both possession and sale of marijuana is, in fact, abandoned," Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins said to the Post, "then this is clearly the beginning of the breakdown of a civilized society."

Apocalypse aside, Gabriel Sayegh, the New York state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, argues that halting buy-and-bust on its own wouldn't do much to the arrest numbers. And that makes this situation even murkier.

"Even with buy-and-bust gone, it's not gonna have any impact on the number of marijuana possession arrests, because the buy-and-bust operations are for sales," he told me. "Of all the things you can do to address that problem, why do something that's not gonna address the problem at all?"

Sayegh says buy-and-bust operations benefit the NYPD by providing the cops with glowing PR on the rare occasion that arresting young black and Latino small-time dealers actually amounts to something larger. "If you go to look at who's incarcerated, it's never the kingpin," he said. "You have an ocean of big fish who never get caught, but it certainly serves the police when they catch the big fish.

"When that happens, you have the big press conference and the whole, 'We're getting drugs off our streets,'" he continued. "Meanwhile, in essence, it's a black market entrepreneur who just stepped in to fill that void. We've been doing this roundabout cycle for 50 years."

The NYPD's two-step on marijuana arrests speaks to the complicated relationship between Commissioner William J. Bratton, who is arguably the second most powerful man in New York, and the mayor. The dynamic made headlines last week when the NYPD's Chief of Department Philip J. Banks ​resigned when asked by Bratton to become Deputy Commissioner—a move that would've curbed his actual policing powers. Mayor de Blasio reportedly liked the idea of Banks, at the time the department's highest-ranking black official, assuming Bratton's position one day.

De Blasio and Bratton clearly disagree on weed, too.

In July, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson ​announced he would no longer prosecute suspects for pot possession in his borough, which led the rest of the city with 20,413 marijuana arrests in 2010. In an immediate response, Bratton said the change in policy "really does not change the working circumstances of police officers who are in the field."

The Commissioner reiterated that notion this weekend when he "expressed concern" over the mayor's new plan to curb low-level arrests, telling the Times's Joseph Goldstein that "in order to give the public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system, these cases should be subject to prosecutorial review."

After calling Bratton "the finest police commissioner in the world," Mayor de Blasio—who, according to the Times, is set to gather the district attorneys to discuss a revision of the city's pot laws—told reporters this summer that "each moment where a police officer encounters a citizen is individual and officers must use their discretion. And there is absolute consistency in the district attorney's position." Then he went on to say low-level marijuana arrests had gone down under his administration (which we now know is not true).

The reality is that low-level marijuana arrests under de Blasio are piling up even faster than they were under Michael Bloomberg's administration. And of course Bratton is pissed about that changing, because the rise in arrests is directly linked to his notorious "broken windows" policing p​o​licies.

To drug law reform advocates, the important thing is that we're still having this conversation in New York City. If last Tuesday taught us anything, it's that most Americans are in love with Mary Jane: You had three more states legalize, the state of California on ​track to defelonize, and a shit-ton of municipalities decriminalize weed. Yet New York City is still arresting people like it's Prohibition.

"At this point, [not arresting people for weed] wouldn't be progressive; it'd be catching up with the mainstream," Sayegh said. "We're beginning to connect these dots nationally, but nobody in New York City has connected them yet. And we should be. New York City should be showing the country the exit strategy for the war on drugs."

Follow John Surico on ​Twitter.

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Emily Quinn. Photo by ​Chloe Aftel

Emily Quinn is a 25-year-old animator who works at Cartoon Network. She is also ​intersex. For her this means that, while she has a perfectly normal-looking vagina, it's not a uterus and ovaries she has inside—it's a pair of testes.

Like the rainbow flag, there are many shades to being intersex. The term refers to people born with differences in their sex characteristics, which can occur in genes, chromosomes, genitalia, body hair or reproductive organs. ​Quinn—who doesn't respond to the testosterone that is produced in her testes (her body turns it into estrogen for her)—reckons she represents about 1 in 20,000 births, with intersex people generally representing about ​one in every 2,000 in North America. 

For many intersex people, the condition is still shrouded in shame and secrecy. ​Children often have their genitalia removed or "tided up" at birth, obviously without being able to give consent. Because of this, there is little research into the longterm effects of being intersex, but those who have either had their testes removed or their enlarged clitorises mutilated often have longterm hormone problems.

Striving to stop the perpetuation of false information and general prudishness, Quinn recently came out as being intersex in an ​open letter after MTV's show ​Faking It brought on an intersex character that Emily consulted with them on. 

VICE: Hey Emily. Why have you come out as intersex now?
​Emily Quinn: It all came about with Faking It. This is the first time that intersex people have had representation, ever. It's a main character on TV show—not just one for shock and awe value. This is the first time that there's been a series regular who tells a story that is "normal," that being intersex is something people live with every day. I've been consulting with them since June. I have wanted to speak publicly about it but it never felt like the right time. I wanted to come out in a way that made an impact rather than posting on Facebook one day. 

What has been the public reaction to both you coming out and the show itself?
​Generally the public reaction has been good. On Reddit you get a lot of... well, let's say people on the internet aren't always the best. But people on there are also really supportive. Whenever it would get rude or out of hand, there would be people who would get on those commenters, which was great. Public support has been really good for Lauren, the character in Faking It. Everyone's responded really well to her. Being intersex is something that most people don't know about—it may not even be a word they've ever heard—and they've been excited to learn about it and support of her character. It's really normalised it, which is exciting.

How did MTV initially approach you?
​I work with ​Advocates for Informed Choice, a legal group that deals with stopping surgeries on intersex children. When MTV decided to do an intersexed storyline they contacted ​GLAAD, who contacted the legal group, and since I lived five minutes from the studio and already worked in Hollywood, they connected us. They had no idea what they were going to do. I'm still going in and consulting as they don't know much about our lived experiences. 

Going back, what were the initial indicators that you might be different?
​In my case, there weren't too many when I was first born. They would have had to have done a chromosome test to find out. As I was growing up there were small indicators, like, I was always tall with big feet. I have an aunt who has AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) as well, and she told my mom that she thought I might have it, so mom took me to the gynecologist when I was ten and that's when we found out. 

But there was nothing visible about me in particular—which is usually the case with complete AIS. If I had responded to the testosterone in my body at all then my genitalia would have "masculinised" a little. But for me that wasn't the case.

Right. So, there's ​CAIS and ​PAIS. What's the difference?
​AIS is on a spectrum. You could be completely insensitive, which is pretty much what I am, all the way down to just partially insensitive. So there are—albeit not a lot of—AIS men. I fall under CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) so I present as female, but I have male (XY) chromosomes and testes.

What's the AIS community like? Is there a pecking order?
​For the most part it's very supportive. We all go through a lot (of valid, varied experiences). And so to bring pettiness like that to the community, well, it's just not helpful. Although when I was doing my ​Reddit AMA there were people who were like, "Why do you need to do this?" Because, in my case, I present as fully female and I feel female. A partner wouldn't know. So why would I need to bring it up? 

In times like that I'm not "intersexed enough", but that's also part of the reason why I feel like I have to be an advocate for it. Because, like me, there are so many people who either do have AIS or are intersex and are dealt with differently. It's also different because I am one of three or four women I know who have their testes. I could give you a list of 300 women who don't. Sometimes it feels like I don't fit in because I haven't been operated on, but I understand how close I've come to that happening.

That's interesting. Would you ever have them taken out?
​At this point, only if they became cancerous. But I don't see that happening. I have them checked once a year. But I don't really want them taken out and it's also hard to find a doctor who is OK with it.

If it ain't broke...
​Right. There's no point in having them removed. Unless they herniate or something, or, like I said, become cancerous. But if I get them removed I'll immediately have to go on hormone replacement therapy until I'm 60. The testes are what are making my hormones, so I would need to replace that or I'd develop osteoporosis or go through menopause. I'm very stable right now, health-wise.

So why might some doctors say you should have them removed?
​People want to "fix it." Doctors want to fix the problem that they imagine is there. That's the biggest hurdle, that doctors are uncomfortable with the idea that a girl could have testes. A lot of them believe that they have a high risk of becoming cancerous, because there is not a lot of research on women with AIS with their testes.

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'Hermaphrodite' by Nadar. Image ​via Wikimedia Commons. The term hermaphrodite (which was previously applied to intersex people) has, thankfully, been phased out—it's incredibly misleading and stigmatizing

Why?
​Well, some women might not know they're AIS because they have been lied to, or because they didn't find out until they were a lot older. That's when doctors might persuade them to have the testes removed. The statistics that do exist on internal testes are for men who have theirs inside the bodies, and they are at a higher risk of being cancerous. But they have no statistics on it for women.

You're not only pushing medical boundaries, then. You're also questioning the profession altogether.
​A lot of doctors have outdated medical practices. That was the problem with my recent doctor—she's older and her medical training was a long time ago. When you're a doctor going through medical school you're trained to fix things. It can come from a place that's good, but I know people who have had them removed and have had so many consequent problems arise from it. And because my body is naturally at a place where it's OK—I don't need to take pills to fix a problem that was never there—I do sometimes feel that some people can become a little jealous of that.

Our bodies' ability to adapt is mind boggling. So, just to rewind a little, the testosterone that's produced by your testes is turned into oestrogen?
​Yes. All bodies do it, actually. It's called ​aromatasing. 

I had no idea.
​Well, my body is running fine—why mess with it! Especially when it's dealing with something like hormones, which are so crucial to your every day needs as well as your development. There's a woman in Australia who I'm about to email my medical records to because she's trying to recreate what the doctors tried to take away from her. 

It must be difficult for some people because, if surgery happens when you're a kid, you have no way of knowing or any choice in the matter.
​Right. I grew up in Utah, which is a very conservative state. My doctors literally had no idea about me or what AIS was—like, to the point where they couldn't find my testes. I only found them this year. My doctors didn't know what to look for or where to look. They knew from my blood work that there was something there making testosterone but they could never find out what.

And where were they?
​They were right where they were supposed to be! Right where my ovaries would be in my pelvic cavity. But because my doctors could never find them, they could never remove them. So I was lucky. They scheduled a laparoscopic surgery to have a look but I never went through with it because it seemed scary. It turned out to be a good thing.

How helpful is it for you to have an internet community?
​It's so helpful. If you had asked me ten years ago I might have answered differently because, when you're a pre-teen searching for sexual disorders on the internet, it's terrifying. I turned to the internet for information and clarity, because the doctors didn't know what was going on and my parents weren't very proactive. Being connected to people is so empowering, though—it's the reason we can finally all talk about this stuff. 

We are realizing we are not alone. Doctors tell you all the time, "You're the only one like this," or, "You'll never meet anyone else with this," which makes you want to talk about it. Having the ability and resources to connect with others is so vital to make you feel like you're not a freak and you're not alone. You're different, but it's OK.

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Protestors in China. Image via Flickr user Shih-Shiuan Kao

Why is it important to have the I and T in LGBTI? They're not sexual minorities.
​I mean, L, G and B are about sex. T is about gender and I is about biological sex. But one of the new acronyms that I keep seeing is GSM, which is Gender and Sex Minority. I think having the I in LGBTI is important, though, because we go through a lot of the same things. We feel ashamed. A lot of people are bullied and do feel like they're different, and being in a minority that's related to gender, sex and sexual orientation, they're connected in lots of different ways. That's not to say that all intersex or LGBT people feel like that. 

It's hard because, with LGB people, there's nothing medical that you can fix (as much as some people like to think their is). And with us, because of a medical diagnosis, a lot of people who are LBGT don't think we belong in the LGB community. But I think that the important things that a lot of LBG people go through—feeling stigmatized, being closeted—are important binders that we can take away from the LGBT movement. They are things we feel on a daily basis, too.

Why is it important to you to be such a visible presence for AIS people?
​I was told I was the only person like this when I was growing up, and it was very lonely and scary. I wanted to look into the media for somebody to say that they were the same as me. I remember reading about certain celebrities and wanting them so badly to say that they have AIS, just so that I didn't feel like I was such a freak or a horrible person. So that's the main reason. I don't want any kids going through this to feel like that.

I'm in a place where I'm very comfortable with my body, but not a lot of people are, and that's not a good place to be. But more than that, it's about all of these surgeries that happen without consent, on babies, on children that are two or three, even on adults. If people become more accepting about it then we will get more doctors who think twice about operating to try and "fix" us, to try and take away the thing that is making someone else uncomfortable. We're not broken. 

Follow Hanna Hanra on ​Twitter

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

​​ It's a little known fact that every year on Remembrance Sunday, just after the Queen, the Prime Minister, and other members of the British establishment and military have finished remembering those who fought and died in the two World Wars and later conflicts, a bunch of neo-Nazis march past the Cenotaph to pay their own respects to "our glorious dead," many of whom died fighting the Nazis.

The extreme-right National Front's (NF) Remembrance Day parade is the climax of the white nationalist calendar every year. Suits are dug out of cupboards, boots get polished, and members of the NF try their best to look like respectable members of the public. It's an opportunity for them to hide their racist ultra-nationalism in plain sight—behind the general patriotism on one of one of the few days of the year you can march down the street carrying loads of union jacks without looking like a racist street gang.

The theme for their event is "no more brother's wars"—they're anti-war, but only when it involves white people killing other white people. Basically it's an annual attempt to sneak some more overt racism into an event rooted in British nationalism.

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Usually the NF are held back and made to march behind all the other marches that take place on the day, long after the crowds have gone home. This year it was a little different. "We're going to be looked at by a lot of people this year because we're not the last one[s] to march. Normally when we march, the streets are empty, but this time they are going to be thick with people," said Simon Biggs, head security of the event, at the NF's recent annual general meeting.

This is presumably due to a split in the NF. Some of the Nazis have fallen out with each other, meaning that there are now not one but two National Fronts (hooray). The factions are vying for control of the party. This created the need to accommodate two competing racist marches instead of one, which seems to have meant it was logistically easier to let those groups march in closer proximity to normal, non-racist marches. The Metropolitan Police didn't tell me why the two groups were being kept apart when I asked.

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I was in Westminster yesterday a few hours after the main Remembrance event had been broadcast to the nation. People were still ambling about—there were clinking and glinting medals stuck to veterans' chests, regimental berets worn by men with beer bellies in ill-fitting suits, smartly dressed poppy wearers, soldiers in full dress uniform and tourists.

Down the road from the crowds, the NF started to form up. There was a steady trickle of supporters but many fewer than the 300 that attended last year. The number included members of the South East Alliance, an EDL spin off which seems to think it's patriotic to march with Nazis. There were also a handful of skinheads—regulars at the neo-Nazi Blood & Honor shows which used to fund Combat 18—in probably the only time they'll take to the streets all year.

When they finally moved off, I counted just under 130 on the march, followed by five or six police vans. The NF march was led by two drummers, followed by chairman Kevin Bryan, described by one anti-extremist body as "a loud, middle-aged street thug," and Dave McDonald, the NF's Scotland organizer, who allegedly quit the BNP because it wasn't right-wing enough. The NF were marching in rows of three or four, with nearly 60-odd flags at the front.

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In the run up to the march, Simon Biggs, expressed his concern about people turning up in tracksuit bottoms or not holding flags straight. He told members at the NF annual general meeting, "We must be on our strictest behavior here. This is a very dignified and proud moment for nationalists." At the same event, London NF organizer Tess "Nazi nan" Culnane expressed her fear that the police were looking for any excuse to ban the march ever happening again, warning members not to respond to any provocation and remain as dignified as it's possible to be whilst attending a Nazi rally.

As the march approached Westminster Abbey it started to encounter crowds of bemused onlookers. When it reached the Abbey there appeared to be a large group of veterans holding a silence in the Field of Reme​mbrance. The drums stopped beating momentarily while the march continued silently.

After passing the Abbey they entered Parliament Square. There were still crowds, filming whoever went past, taking selfies with dozens of fascists in the background. At one point I saw an Orthodox Jew filming the NF on his phone—I'm not sure he knew who they were. I don't think many people did at this point. Apart from the police presence, NF tattoos, and obvious neo-Nazi types, the only things to indicate this was an NF march were the name on the side of the drum and on the back of stewards vests.

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This changed as they approached the Cenotaph where the streets were heaving with onlookers. As they formed up by the Cenotaph and get ready to lay their wreaths, I overheard two women talking on my right. "You know who it is?" one asked. "The National Front, I know, I know," the other replied as they walked away.

The crowd appeared to be upset by the fascist presence and people muttered things under their breath but nobody was up for breaking the solemn atmosphere with full-on heckling. "What are they doing though?" In the few minutes they spent at Cenotaph I saw several families leaving, whispering in disgust to each other.

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Then they reached the Monument to the Women of World War II, and "Nazi nan" Culnane gave a reading. As they announced the conclusion of their act of remembrance, a poppy wearing man in the crowd shouted "Nazis!" at them. I asked him to expand on his comment, but he said, "Listen man you've heard everything."

The march reached its conclusion on Whitehall Place. They then trooped into Whitehall Gardens where they listened to further speeches from Bryan, Culnane, and veteran South London-based fascist Richard Edmonds .

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I decided to ditch them at this point, and head to the other National Front march. Watching two racist marches in one day was a real treat. The second was basically the same as the first but even smaller.

It was led by Ian Edward. Edward was former chairman of the unified NF who resigned, decided he had not in fact resigned and then declared the meeting which elected the new chairman Kevin Bryan unconstitutional—causing the split.

Edward had been happy to answer my questions over email in the run up to the march. He optimistically told me he was expecting anything up to 500 fellow nationalists to join him and reiterated that the point of the march was to say, "no more brothers' wars"—ones in which white people slaughter white people.  Then for some reason he told me that the first two British fatalities of World War II were members of Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists.

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I counted 46 fascists on the second march and recognized several familiar faces from the London far-right scene—and not only from the NF. This included people with links to the Chelsea Headhunters and the bizarre group who  burn crosses in the woods. People on Bryan's side of the split claim ten of those on the second march were from the Racial Volunteer Force—a Combat 18 split the members of which have been arrested in the past for distributing a race hate magazine with instructions on how to make a bomb.

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As this mob started going up Whitehall and near the Cenotaph, four or five guys started clapping, but they looked like they might have been planted there. A passing black guy was less impressed. "Fuck the National Front," he shouted as he walked past. The drum kept beating and the fascists carried on up Whitehall to finish their march.

Overall, the event seems to be simultaneously everything that they love and hate about modern Britain—on the one hand, it's a day glorifying war and militarism. On the other hand, some of the attending people were not white, and the war that defeated Hitler is one of those being remembered. Still, presumably the gaggle of washed-up Hitler worshipers will be back next year to tag along, assuming they haven't all fallen out so badly that they can no longer organize a walk.

Photos by Gavin Cooper

Follow James Poulter on ​Twitter.

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Julien Blanc, shown with a horrible T-shirt to the left, and with his hand around his woman's throat to the right. ​Photo ​via Facebook.

​Over the weekend, a movement to #KeepJulienBlancOutofCanada gained enough momentum to be reported in the mainstream press. If you're not familiar with Julien Blanc, he's a so-called "dating coach" whose Canadian business partner Owen Cook (who calls himself Tyler Durden, since Fight Club is really cool) is well known for his role as the pick-up artist (PUA) villain in Neil Strauss's bestselling PUA bible: The Game
​
​Cook and Blanc are part of a PUA posse called Real Social Dynamics. The RSD gang fly all around the world to teach men about getting women into bed. According to their website, they are holding a PUA bootcamp (where men " go out into nightclubs, bars, cafes... and m​eet girls" with an instructor who monitors them) in Toronto in January, but there are no details about a location or any other specifics that would indicate it's a real event.

Blanc, who owns the domain pimpingmygame.com, also sells a package of instructional videos called Pimp. He claims that once a man has learned all there is to learn from Pimp, he will have a "PHD in female attraction" and will "develop panty-dropping masculinity." On some level, it sounds like the kind of love potion you would buy out of the back of a 1960s comic book.

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A screenshot from the Pimp website, showing Blanc with various women.
​
​While the idea of PUAs in general is enough to make most rational people feel uncomfortable, Julien Blanc ratchets up the awfulness of gaming and manipulating women to such a degree that his behaviour veers into the lane of abuse and harassment. In it, Blanc is show​n telling a room of men:

"[In Tokyo]... if you're a white male, you can do what you want. [My friend told me] just grab her... So I pull her in, and she just laughs and giggles. And all you have to say, to take the pressure off, is just yell 'Pikachu, or Pokemon, or Tamagotchi or something.'

So I'm romping through the streets, just grabbing girls, and my open [PUA-speak for pick-up line] is just [grabbing a girl's] head [and putting it] on [my] dick. Head on dick. Yelling Pikachu with a Pikachu shirt."

He continues:

"It's the happiest I've ever been. What's fucked, too, is that every foreigner (who's white at least) does this. You'll be roaming through the streets, and there's Japanese people everywhere, and you'll spot that one foreigner. And your eyes will lock. And you know that he knows, and he knows that you know, and it's like this guilty look—like you both fucked a hooker or something. And you just wait for him to pass, and then phew, you're back at it. It's awesome."

Where to begin, here... First of all, dummy, I'm willing to wager that the guilt you're experiencing isn't the result of something even remotely similar to "fucking a hooker." Rather it's the guilt from rampantly sexually harassing women in a strange country; and you're feeling guilty somewhere in the messy swamp of your subconscious because you're taking advantage of your boorish white guy size in order to abuse strangers. 

Second, it's clear that Blanc has become so enraptured by his own insane, abusive philosophy and inflated ego that he assumes all other white men in Tokyo are also grabbing women by the head and rubbing the unsuspecting women's faces into their presumably pre-ripped and unwashed jeans. This kind of thinking takes the ordinarily offensive mantras of PUAs who try and manipulate women into sleeping with them from the category of creepy, to full-on abuse.

The video of Blanc concludes with actual footage of him doing exactly what he brags about in the hotel conference room—just in case you couldn't actually believe that someone would be capable of such awful behaviour. Numerous Japanese women, with their faces blurred, are pictured being grabbed forcefully by Blanc as he laughs it off.

On top of all that, a tweet scraped from Blanc's now-deleted Twitter account shows a chart detailing the symptoms of a physically abusive relationship. In his tweet, he refers to it as a "checklist" for how to make a woman stay with you.

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After more than nine women came forward to disclose their allegations about Jian Ghomeshi abusing them, with the vicious online misogyny of #GamerGate still percolating in the media, and given abusive and harassing sexual scandals emerging in sports—like the Ray Rice debacle or the lesser-known ​OHL Tind​er fiasco—the level of media coverage paid to men abusing and harassing women may be at an all-time high.

I'm not so naive to think, however, that this necessarily indicates a sea change is coming. The effort to ban Blanc from Canada, for example, has its own counter-movement in the form of a Facebook page called " RSD J​ulien Official Fanboy Page." It boasts a whopping 24 likes. On it, statuses like the "Japanese girls were loving it, otherwise he would have stopped" and "Stopping sexual assault is definitely supported, but stopping people from developing as a person is an even bigger crime" have attracted the ire of understandably angry people.

Underneath the bad grammar and unwavering support of Blanc on that Facebook page, however, is the argument that groups like RSD help depressed and unconfident men meet women. And to some extent, with well-intentioned advisors, I'm sure some PUAs can provide that kind of support. In an article that we ran earlier this year, where our own Sarah Ratchford spoke with a PUA​ who wanted to clear the air about his craft, Ratchford was told many men approach pick-up artistry honestly: 

"...let's say a man turns up without any experience [with women]. So he doesn't have any sisters, he grew up in a single-parent home, his cousins [are male and he has] all brothers. He doesn't have a lot of examples of how to interact with women. And the only times he interacts with women are in public spheres, like school, or college, and women exist more on the periphery. So the discussion becomes, 'Well, how do we interact with them?' Some people get very lucky and they learn how to interact, but some people never do. And they get to the point where it's like, 'This whole thing of a man meeting a woman, it's not working for me, so what's going on?'"

But obviously the tone and behaviour of Blanc's teachings are a different beast than the type of sincere assistance for clueless men that the PUA above is describing. The change.org petition to keep Julien away f​rom Canadian soil has over 1,800 signatures at press time. Its stated mission is described partially as such: "This individual's presence in Canada would be a clear danger to our women and a destructive influence towards our youth. Julien Blanc coaches seminar participants to dominate women using vile, manipulative techniques such as economic abuse, isolation, coercion and threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, and 'male privilege.'"

The petition is addressed to Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Blanc has already caught the attention of Australia's police force, who notified the world via Twitter when Blanc left the country after having his visa revoked following a  ​string of protests at his seminars. And a recent report questions whether or not Blanc can be banned from Japan as well.

While it does not appear as if Blanc has been charged with a crime pertaining to his abusive behaviour, his attitude towards abusing women, along with video proof that he engages in said abuse, should be enough to keep him out of Canada. We certainly don't need any more abusive men here, and if the Aussies gave him the boot, Canada should keep him away too. I mean, we turn people away at the border for DUIs or for being great rappers, so why not add Blanc to the pile as well?

Julien Blanc and his partner Owen Cook did not respond to multiple requests for comment from VICE.
​
​​@patrickmcguire

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The Bible is generally considered a pretty good book, but one of its biggest criticisms has always been that it's just too damn long. Who has time to read all those words? If it were a bit more user friendly it would really have the chance to go viral—maybe even on a level with that ​​"Too Many Cooks" video. Kamran Kastle understands this problem and is trying to fix it by translating the entire thing—both Old and New Testaments—into emojis. Kastle, a USC graduate, has started a kickstarter page for the project, simply titled ​​The Bible Translated Into Emoticons.

​This isn't a totally revolutionary idea, of course. Moby Dick has already received a similar treatment in a project titled Emoji Dick.  But while editor Fred Benenson completed that massive undertaking by hiring Amazon Mechanical Turk workers to translate the text, Kastle plans to translate the Bible entirely by himself (although he says he might reach out to Mel Gibson and the Pope for a bit of help). 

He will also be designing his own emojis for the project, as the Unicode Consortium (the shadowy creators of the original emojis) doesn't have enough characters that accurately illustrate common Biblical stories. He says he'll be creating 5,000 of them, and project backers on his Kickstarter will receive each one. So far he has raised one single dollar, so here's hoping we can change that.
​

VICE: Hey, Kamran. So, to be clear, you are translating the entire Bible, correct?
​Kamran Kastle: Yes, both the Old Testament and New Testament.

Have you thought about translating other iconic religious texts as well? 
​Yes. Some suggested I translate the Koran and Torah next. I imagine one day a lot of classic texts will receive the emoji treatment.

Will you call the Koran version the Emotiqur'an?
​Brilliant idea. Emotiqur'an. I love it.

Tell me about the logistics of translating the Bible into emojis. How is this going to work?
​It involves reading the Bible... and simply translating it line by line. I read a line and then figure out which emoticons I should use to represent that Biblical verse. I chose not to use standard emojis because there are a limited number of characters. I just invented a lot of my own. I had to. There are too few emojis for Biblical purposes.

Right, I hadn't seen a Jesus emoji before; just prayer hands.
​There isn't an emoji for the Red Sea parting, either. So I invented it. There isn't even a Jesus emoji, so I created that one, too. I am not only translating the bible into emoticons, I'm also designing the emoticons myself.

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An evil emoticon created by Kastle

Do you think churches or religious figures will use the emojis you've created?
​In the future, I believe lots of places/things/people will use emoticons so that people who speak other languages will be able to comprehend something. The most common international symbol might be the cross for churches, or the red cross for hospitals. Red crosses are used in hospitals all over the world, and every culture understands what a red cross means. In World War II, medics wore red crosses and neither the Nazis nor the Allies killed them, regardless of what side they were on.

Some might find your project irreverent or even demeaning to religion. How will you respond to that?
​I have had people tell me that certain individuals may be offended. I find that odd, because the purpose of my emoticon bible is to make people who do not typically read the Bible, read it.
​
​Who are the translators you're working with?
​I have not hired or met with any translators thus far. I will do that after my Kickstarter fundraising concludes. I'm going to contact the following people to help me translate the bible into emoticons: Mel Gibson, Mark Burnett, the Pope, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Denzel Washington (who translated the audio book for the Bible Experience), and Anschutz Entertainment Group founder Phillip Anschutz.

Those are big names. How do you plan on getting in touch with all of them?
​Email. The worst that can happen is they will say no.

Follow Spencer Madsen on ​Twitter.

​ [body_image width='640' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/10/' filename='art-selfies-dis-interview-876-body-image-1415616209.jpg' id='2412']#artselfie with my new massive beautiful print of Birth of Venus!! #botticellirocksmyworld #venus — by @olivarose (Birth of Venus, Botticelli)

All images courtesy of Jean Boites/DIS

​No offense to Jay Z, Bey, and the Mona Lisa, but #artselfies have been around for ages. So long, in fact, there's enough material to turn them into a book. 

As part of their Follow Me series, which examines digital phenomena, Paris-based publishing house Jean B​oîte joined forces with New York-based collective DIS and put together a compendium of #artselfies taken from social media outlets. 

Just what is it about our generation that deems art hard to appreciate unless we become part of it, though? I got in touch with DIS members Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, and David Toro for a chat on the fickle nature of digital matter, the surge in cultural tourism, and the irregularities of museum photographic policies. They all insisted on being quoted "collectively," which makes sense since they're part of a collective.

In his intro to #artselfie, Douglas Coupland laments the loss of analogue photography, yet the book is a compendium of printed images. Why did you feel this phenomenon should be a book?
​DIS: It's funny because, maybe five or six years ago, everyone just thought digital made things last forever, you know? Now, we're realizing that things are really ephemeral with digital. Obviously as technology changes formats change, too. Things will actually disappear. As our information clouds get larger and larger, there's a sense that things will disappear into the ether, so there's something nice about putting them into tangible form.

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There are so many artists working with digital video and stuff like that, and the process of archiving is kind of intense. How can you be sure that you can keep your work safe—that you will have it later?

There's a risk factor.
​​There's a fragility to it all. Nothing is permanent, and we've only just begun to realize. 

[body_image width='640' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/10/' filename='art-selfies-dis-interview-876-body-image-1415616255.jpg' id='2413']#artselfie by @eminem (Mona Lisa, Leonardo daVinci)

​Do you take #artselfies?
​It's the only time I take selfies.

In the book you mention that you researched the photography policies instituted at different museums. Was there anything particularly interesting about them?
​We were really surprised that the Brooklyn Museum was so forward-thinking. They're, like, suggesting hashtags as wall text. Also, policies even changed from exhibit to exhibit. It wasn't a uniform thing. And some were very specific—to the point of differentiating between video and JPEGs.

Most museums allow their permanent collection to be photographed, but not their traveling exhibitions. Which I guess makes sense, because they have a certain authority. But I also feel like one artist in a group show can ruin it for everyone.

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I guess taking pictures of museum art democratizes it. More people get to see it.
​We have also discussed the sense of the enhanced or enriched museum experience—you're able to remember a work long after you've left the gallery. Otherwise, you just walk through things and forget them.

But of course this doesn't really serve all artists. A tiny 200x200-pixel JPEG doesn't capture it at all—maybe there's a sound element, but in the end you just get this flat image that you want to be more protective of. Which we sympathize with.

The #artselfie book was about 1GB—which is a really small file weight—after upsizing and decompressing everything. It still doesn't look bad, though.

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#saicorientation #artselfie #metaselfie #americangothic — by @plevack (American Gothic, Grant Wood)

​How did Simon Castets, Douglas Coupland, and Marvin Jordan—who all have texts in the book—become involved?
​Simon initially brought the idea of #artselfie to the attention of Jean Boîte, so it seemed logical to have a conversation with him in the book. And then with Douglas Coupland, well, we're just huge fans. We thought he'd have something intelligent to say about it all. Marvin Jordan is someone who does a lot of work for DIS, and has a drastically different tone from Coupland.

Does an #artselfie become different in Europe where the relationship to art and art history is a little more intense?
The book is partially about tourism and the compulsion to document constant connectivity. It's about other people you know seeing an image too, it's not just for yourself. It's so your friends know you are there. If no one saw it, it never happened. 

Also, the pictures included in the book weren't just taken in the States, but also at Frieze London, the Art Basels, and many museums around the world.

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How did you comb through the image selection?
It was an extremely tedious task. We have seen about 13,000 to 14,000 images tagged with the #artselfie hashtag now. And then there are plenty of photos that haven't been tagged.

It also became apparent over time that #artselfies could be categorized. There were funny ones, serious ones, ones where people are imitating sculptures, etc. We tried to have a nice overview.
​

[body_image width='640' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/10/' filename='art-selfies-dis-interview-876-body-image-1415616470.jpg' id='2417']#artselfie @jeanettehayes x @kritbangkok very denim much flames — by @chloewise_ (Untitled (History Painting), Korakrit Arunanondchai)

​What's the most common #artselfie?
​The Mona Lisa. There was probably, like, 30 of those in our original selection. Ten made it in the book.

Is there an #artselfie etiquette?
​Don't bump into people. Don't walk. Don't touch the art.

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Photo courtesy of the Hotel Commonwealth

The Rat, Boston's legendary rock 'n' roll shithole, has been gone for 17 years now, meaning nostalgia for its dank environs has firmly taken hold of everyone old enough to remember it fondly. That nostalgia has manifested itself, weirdly enough, in the "Rat Suite," a room in the elegant Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square, just down the street from where the Rat once stood. If you're willing to drop several hundred dollars a night, you can now bask in the faded glory of memorabilia donated by the club's owner, Jim Harold, as well as local musicians Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys—two of the dozens of local bands who launched themselves from the Rat's cramped basement into the national spotlight.

As with any change in the eternally fickle punk rock scene, grown adults on the internet have been crying "BLASPHEMY" in caps-lock fury ever since the suite's announcement. Different people have all sorts of different—and loud—views on what constitutes "punk rock," but a high-priced hotel room is almost certainly not punk.

I was curious about the suite, though, and how it stacked up to the original. I not only saw some of my first—if not best—punk and hardcore shows at the Rat, but I also got to play my very first gigs there as a 15-year-old kid while my parents thought I was going to shoot hoops. (Thankfully they never questioned why I was playing basketball in tight rolled-up jeans, handmade band shirts, and my grandfather's combat boots.)

My parents' aversion to me going to the Rat  (officially known as the Rathskeller) was fairly well founded. My mother herself had been a semi-regular during the club's early days in the 1970s, back when Kenmore Square was a homeless haven rife with drugs, muggings, and stabbings. She saw bands like the Cars, Talking Heads, the B-52s, and the Ramones in the Rat's dank basement beneath the bar. She was in attendance when the Police played their first American show there, as well as the memorable night when David Bowie—in town for a concert at the Boston Garden—jumped on stage for an impromptu jam.

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Sonic Youth. Photo courtesy of Suburban Voice Fanzine 

A dizzying number of notable bands, both local and national, would wind up at the Rat during its heyday, such as Blondie, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies, R.E.M. and even Metallica in their early years. "I loved the Rat," Thurston Moore told me recently. "But the bouncers were fucking awful. They were these macho assholes wearing bowties." Recalling Sonic Youth's 1986 gig at the venue, he said, "They wouldn't even let me in the club!"

Moore's description of the Rat staff was an understatement. During that period, one of the Rat's doormen was Paul "Polecat" Moore, a South Boston boxer and drug dealer who was loosely tied to James "Whitey" Bulger. By the late 80s, when the Rat was a breeding ground for the hardcore movement, the club's patrons had a nasty reputation as well. Vinny Stigma, guitarist for legendary New York stalwarts Agnostic Front, once remarked in an interview that the Rat had the most violent dance floor he'd ever witnessed. "Crazy kids and hard dancers," is how he described it to me recently. "As a New Yorker, I felt right at home there."

Few people can verify the brutality of Rat's crowds like Rob Lind, founder and chief songwriter for Boston's most infamous hardcore band, Blood for Blood, which got their start at the Rat. Their shows often ended in horrific and bloodied brawls. It was not uncommon to see pool balls in handkerchiefs, chains, and even cinderblocks in the hands of fans as they kicked the crap out of each other in the club and outside on Commonwealth Avenue. Incredibly, these shows were rarely shut down, though one incident, where a man ripped up an industrial fan and beat someone savagely with it, did bring some heat onto the club. 

"There was always a base level of aggression associated with hardcore music itself," Lind recalled. "Some bands brought out a nastier reaction than others—Blood for Blood brought out the worst. The same applied to the many clubs we played around the country then. The Rat was also the worst."

When I mentioned to Lind that there was a Rat Suite on top of a club where he was once the musical conduit for violent mobs of savages, he grinned. "There'd better be human blood all over the floors of the room, syringes in the wastebaskets, herpes on the toilet seat, urine and feces in the sink, and shards of glass floating in the mini-bar beers."

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Rob Lind. Photo by Tommy Von 

A few weeks ago, I headed into the Hotel Commonwealth to see the Rat Suite for myself. Kenmore Square is barely recognizable from the days of the Rat—the land where the hotel stands was once home to a dingy strip of liquor stores, an Army-Navy surplus, and 99-cent shop.

I was greeted by the hotel's concierge, Nicholas MacDonald, an affable young man with a thick Boston accent, who told me what a "classy" job they had done with the Rat Suite. It was hard not to smile, since the Rat was anything but classy. I remembered how, in the spring of 1997, a flood put the club underwater and, desperate to have the Rat open by the weekend, the club hastily threw kitty litter down on the floor to sop up the rancid water. The end result was a crowd of youngsters—myself included—choking on noxious dust clouds and moshing around the room. Just about everyone in attendance was hacking up black globs of phlegm for the next few days.

The concierge introduced me to Carly Siegel, who led me into the Rat Suite itself. As we entered the two-room suite, which is close to the actual size of the club, I asked if I could use the bathroom. The Rat's women's bathroom was once the greatest underage speakeasy in Boston, mostly because it had a door, unlike the piss- and puke-covered men's room next to it. Thankfully for the Rat Suite's guests, this gleaming bathroom was not an historically accurate replication, though it did contain a framed photograph of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Dropkick Murphys member Ken Casey's bass was in the hallway, along with framed LPs from the Police and Talking Heads and an actual papier-mâché rat that was once fastened to the club's jet-black walls. The rat is a rare piece of memorabilia—I remember kids wrenching the fake rats off the walls during the venue's last all-ages matinee before being ejected for the last time. Perhaps most poignantly, there was a picture of Mr. Butch—born Harold Madison Jr.—a local homeless legend who was long considered the "Mayor of Kenmore Square" for the decades he spent in and around the Rat. He would regularly buy us 15-packs of Black Label beer and smoke joints in the graffiti- and trash-strewn alley behind the club. Butch tragically died in 2007 when he rode his scooter into a telephone pole in Boston's nearby Allston neighborhood, where he took refuge once Kenmore Square became more gentrified in the years after the Rat closed down.

The suite's second room, facing Commonwealth Avenue, is supposed to look like a mock backstage area. There's local cult favorite Willie "Loco" Alexander's well-worn keyboard, drumsticks signed by Marky Ramone, Ric Ocasek's framed guitar pic from a 1979 tour, and the Rat Suite's centerpiece: the mirror from behind the Rat's bar, still festooned with stickers of bands that had played there.

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The author playing at the Rat in 1997

Carly Siegel pointed out that one of the suite's windows has a direct view to where the Rat once stood, now the acclaimed restaurant Eastern Standard, which opened in 2005 with the help of James Beard-awarded chef Jamie Bissonnette, himself a Rat regular at hardcore matinees before he found international acclaim as a chef and restaurant owner.

Siegel told me that the suite opened in late September, and despite its $850-a-night price tag it's been booked solidly ever since. Their clientele is quite diverse and enamored with the history and memorabilia of the club, though she couldn't positively say that anyone who regularly paid the five- to eight-dollar cover at the Rat would be staying there. One thing's for sure: The suite's a lot more genteel than its namesake used to be.

"I remember standing on stage one day watching a good friend of mine beat this big oaf's head with the very same cinder block–anchored mic stand I'd just been yelling into," Rob Lind said. "This was seriously the 14th or 15th attempted murder during that set alone, and this shit happened every time we played, which back then was as often as twice a month. I said to myself, Again? Shouldn't I eventually become desensitized to this shit?

"Another time I personally beat some biker guy with a cue ball in a sock in full view of club security after he and his friends jumped me a few weeks prior, and I swore to myself I would avoid going [to the Rat] for a few months to be safe. Of course, I showed back up at the bar a few days later, when I ended up jumping into this brawl and beating some dude unconscious with a dog leash."

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Vinny Stigma. Photo courtesy of Jenn Sawyer

In the oddest paradox of the club's history, the more violent the shows became, the more new people flooded into the scene every weekend. In its final years, the Rat regularly sold out all-ages crowds for hardcore, punk rock, skinhead, and pop-punk shows. Those kinds of diverse but dedicated crowds can be few and far between these days, and not just in Boston.

As I left Hotel Commonwealth and walked back to Mission Hill, the same way I did every weekend 20 years ago, I was left with my conflicting feelings. Many feel that the club's passing was a death knell for the Boston rock scene, which has been plagued by an epidemic of nostalgia recently. The Rat was a place where I made some of my best friends. It was where I first got the chance to play music while the other kids in my neighborhood played baseball at the local little league field and chugged their fathers' beers.

"The Rat was the first and probably last place that I felt truly at home," Rob Lind told me. "I felt comfortable there. I felt accepted. These warm, fuzzy feelings conflicted and yet somehow coexisted with the fact that I was constantly on edge. Something terrible could happen at any given moment and often did." 

He shrugged. "How can a Rat-themed hotel capture any of this? And why would anyone want to?"

Follow John Liam Policastro on T​witter.

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​Photo ​via Flickr user​ kn0ttyn3rb.
​
​​As public discourse regarding Jian Ghomeshi in particular and sexual assault in general has progressed over the past few weeks, the questions being asked are slowly evolving. At first, in the initial flush of support for Ghomeshi, people snidely wondered aloud why a woman (or, in this case, four women) would choose to disclose an alleged sexual assault to the media instead of going to the police. Along the same vein of that line of reasoning, people also questioned why a woman bringing forth allegations of sexual assault would want to remain anonymous (the implication, of course, being that a desire for anonymity must means that a person is lying or has something to hide). And then, as more and more women came forward with allegations, several of them going on the record and allowing the media to publish their names, the discourse started to change.

Instead of asking what kind of woman would anonymously accuse a man of abuse and sexual assault through a major media outlet, people began asking why women don't report.

In response to that question, statistics about sexual assault, compiled and published in reader-friendly infographics, have been shared widely on social media over the past three weeks. One popula​r graph, created by the YWCA, shows that out of every 1,000 sexual assaults in Canada, only 33 are reported to the police, and out of those only 6 are prosecuted, and then again only 3 result in any kind of conviction—as a reminder, we are talking about 3 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults. The unbelievably low ratio of convictions versus number of assaults, coupled with the fact that survivors face cross-examination from lawyers who, like Ghomeshi's lawyer Marie Henein, are known for their ability to "find a person's d​eepest frailties and exploit th​em," makes it easy to understand why a hashtag like #beenrapedneverreported gutted twitter like a house fire. There are so many survivors of sexual assault who have chosen not to report, mainly because the cost-benefit analysis of reporting sexual assault tips heavily towards the cost side of the equation. There are many costs to reporting sexual assault—it can cost a woman her job, her friends, her privacy. The benefits, unfortunately, are slim to non-existent.

In light of all this, the tone of the public discussion about sexual assault is changing once again. Instead of wondering why women choose not to report, many people are instead asking how. How do we ameliorate things for survivors of sexual assault? What needs to be changed in order to make reporting sexual assaults an easier and safer process?

What has been equal parts funny, disheartening, and infuriating is that many people seem to believe that there's some kind of quick fix to this situation. Funny, because the fact the idea that just switching up police procedure will solve this enormous problem is completely absurd. Disheartening, because so many people honestly believe that the issue is mainly institutional responses to rape and sexual assault, and not a system of deeply ingrained behaviours, thoughts and beliefs that affect almost every aspect of our society—thoughts and beliefs like those, for example, that lead to the Toronto Star's recent cartoon implying that women experience harassment and sexual assault because of their willingness to "take crap," as if these things happen because women just don't fight back hard enough. These thoughts and beliefs have created a society that places the responsibility on women not to get raped instead of t​elling men not to rape. This is the same society where many people, especially men, are in deep den​ial about how normalized rape is; the same society where narratives that celebrate and even fetishize lack of consent are a mainstay of our popular cultu​re. All of this is infuriating not just because of all of the reasons above, but because whenever a woman tries to speak up about our culture's problem with rape, she's shouted down, intimidated, and finally often threatened into sile​nce.

Creating an environment where women feel safe disclosing the fact that they've been raped and are not afraid to name and report their rapists is something that needs to happen from the ground up. It's not just the justice system that has to ameliorate how they treat sexual assault survivors; everyone needs to examine and shift their beliefs surrounding rape and sexual assault. "The first and most important step," says Lynne Jenkins, Director of Counselling Services at Toronto's Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, "is believing women when they choose to disclose that they've been assaulted. Validate the survivor's feelings, and make it clear by what you say and how you speak that you believe that she is not to blame. Disbelieving or questioning a survivor's story adds a secondary trauma to what they've already experienced; minimizing what they've gone through is equally harmful."

According to Jenkins, in order to implement any kind of change regarding how sexual assault is handled both in terms of public discourse and institutional response, we need to begin having a much broader and more in-depth conversation about rape and consent and all of the dangerous myths that exist about those subjects. One of the most prominent of these myths, which Ghomeshi tried to use in his initial defence, is what Jenkins calls the "Hell Hath No Fury myth," which she explains is the idea that "when women are jilted or scorned, they make up stories or misrepresent facts." We see this myth play out in the way that our culture talks about false rape accusations, the percentage of which is no higher than false reports of other types of crime—a meagre 2 to 4 pe​rcent. Combatting persistent cultural ideas about rape like this one will likely prove to be the most challenging part of changing how our society views and treats survivors of sexual assault.

What we need is a huge sea change in what Jenkins calls "the attitudes, values, and beliefs that continue to create a culture where women are not believed." While public education campaigns can be useful, they are still ultimately limited in how much they can accomplish—a few posters and a neat hashtag won't change the fact that, as in the case of Jian Ghomeshi, our society's knee-jerk reaction is always to blame or disbelieve the victim. Education about rape culture needs to start when children are young, beginning with age-appropriate discussions about consent and boundaries. We need to rethink everything we teach kids about sex, from the ways we continue to perpetuate the age-old lie that girls like to play hard to get right up to the still-pervasive and very flawed idea that if she doesn't say no, it's not rape. We need to teach boys that, in spite of the Hollywood tropes they've absorbed, rejection doesn't mean that they should pursue the person harder until they say yes. We need to start explaining to children that consent is an ongoing conversation, not a one-time statement of yes or no; we need to emphasize that a partner needs to obtain an enthusiastic 'yes' and not just a lack-of-no before going ahead with any kind of sex act. A woman might never have said 'no' to being struck across the face and then choked until she was nearly unconscious, but her silence doesn't imply a 'yes.'

We need to raze almost every cultural belief that we have about sex, women, and rape and create an entirely new foundation from scratch.

All of this sounds daunting, but it's the only way to create real change on a systemic level. We don't just need to want this change; we need to admit that it's both urgent and necessary. I'm hopeful that the public discussion surrounding Jian Ghomeshi and sexual assault is enough to make people sincerely believe in our ability to grow and evolve as a culture; I hope that it has been shocking enough to convince people of how very much that evolution is needed. Like Denise Balkissoon, I'm not convinced that we've hit a watershed moment in the f​ight against rape and sexual assault; but I'm optimistic enough to think that maybe a seed has been planted. And I think that if we nurture that seed, if we work hard to make sure that it has an environment in which it can grow, then maybe change will start to happen.

To borrow a Churchillism, I don't think that anyone can say that this marks the end, or even the beginning of the end of violence against women. But maybe it could be the end of the beginning, if we're willing to see it through.

​@anne_ther​iault

Like many countries in the Middle East and beyond, Bahrain erupted with anti-authoritarian protests in 2011 when the Arab Spring took the region and many of its repressive leaders by surprise. While Arab Spring uprisings found favor with many in the West, unfortunately for the people of Bahrain, their own revolution was largely forgotten. But it never went away—for three years, near-nightly protests have been brutally quashed by militarized security forces.

Earlier this year, VICE News correspondent Ben Anderson traveled to London to speak with Nabeel Rajab, the unofficial leader of Bahrain's uprising, and then headed undercover to Bahrain, where he met activists, protesters, grieving parents, and alleged torture victims.​

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Australian photographer ​Nicole Reed has gained a reputation in print and online for shooting artists, musicians, and designers in their creative spaces. But her compulsion to photograph people in their natural habitats extends to her personal work, too, and can be seen in her shots of drunken revelers in Sydney's King's Cross and Hong Kong shop owners in crumbling store fronts. It's a hobby that's taught her to navigate the awkward conversations around asking strangers for a photo. No Slam Dunks is a personal project exhibiting at Melbourne's ​2014 Independent Photography Festival involving her basketball-obsessed friends on their favorite courts. The series is a pretty good representation of Nicole's obsessions: pals, sports, and abandoned spaces. 

VICE: Hey, Nicole. Who are the people in the photos?
​Nicole Reed: I've got a bunch of different portraits going in. They're all people I know, just friends who are really into street ball. They're actually all people I've known for a few years. For example, I've know Ben for a very long time—he's the one who's spinning the ball on his middle finger.

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How did the project start?
​I wanted to involve a few particular friends. They chose where to be shot. I said: take me to where you want to shoot hoops or play basketball. So I shot them on their favorite courts. They talk about basketball a lot and we watch basketball on TV. I do have a thing about sports fields. I love photographing them, particularly empty ones. I thought it was a good way to combine all the things I like into a project. It wasn't a project I thought I'd ever exhibit, so it's kind of cool getting a chance to do that.

When you're not shooting your hoop-shooting mates, you make a lot of travel photos. Lots of them are of empty spaces that would normally be packed at any other time of day. Is that something you've been consciously doing? 
​It's something that I didn't really pick up on until ​Crumpler featured some of my photos of Hong Kong in an interview on their blog. I was explaining how I found Hong Kong really hectic. There are so many people on the street that I got a little claustrophobic. The guy interviewing me then pointed out that none of my photos of Hong Kong have people in them. It's something that I haven't consciously been doing, but it's definitely been running through my work for a long time.

Ironically, you're also great at shooting strangers on the street. How do people respond when you shoot them candidly? Do you talk to them beforehand?
​Sometimes, particularly in travel photos. You can kind of tell the difference in the ones where I've asked someone to take their photo and where I haven't. I haven't had anyone yell at me or react badly yet. Particularly when I'm in Japan, I generally always ask just out of politeness. But sometimes in other cities I'll try and be a bit more covert and just snap something.

Do you ever have any reservations about shooting people who maybe aren't aware of you?
​Sometimes I do. It depends. I guess it's one of those dilemmas that all photographers have. You want to have a photo that's natural and you want to document something that's happening on the street, but you don't want to take advantage of someone who doesn't know what you're doing either. I guess it's OK if I'm not going to use that photo for anything other than my personal use. I might use it in an exhibition or on my website, but I wouldn't sell it to an advertising company to use in an ad or anything like that. 

'No Dunk Shots' is ​showing from 13 November as part of the 2014Independent Photography Festival.

Follow Emma on​ Twitter.

Every day, America must find a place to park 5 billion gallons of human waste, and we're increasingly unable to find the space. We wake up in the morning, brush our teeth, and flush the toilet, thinking that the waste water disappears into the center of the Earth. If only that were the case.

Every morning between 8 AM and 9 AM, the waste output of Manhattan's West Side  swells from 70 million to 150 million gallons per day. This is known as "the big flush." The sewage will eventually end up on a NYC Department of Environmental Protection Sewage boat, which will take the sludge to a dewatering plant on Ward's Island, where the sludge will become "biosolids"—reused to create golf courses, cemeteries, and fertilizer for the human food chain.

Biosolids have become a financial asset worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's still possible that we'll go back to dumping our waste in the ocean. In this new documentary, VICE traces the trail of waste from butt to big-money biosolid and beyond.

Final Fantasy and I go way back. We used to hang out at school, when we were both a bit awkward and ugly and out of place. I'd fake a cold so we could spend hours on a weekday grinding the same battles over and over again, until finally unlocking a character's legendary weapon. We spent a lot of time together at university, too, when we both went through phases of trying out obnoxiously loud hairstyles and experimenting with different party tactics. We were inseparable. 

Nowadays, though, it feels like we've grown apart. The times that we do meet up are punctuated with confused, irritated stares as I wonder how its fashion and music tastes have changed so dramatically—from the Cosmo Canyon th​eme to Leona ​Lewis—and struggle to feign interest in any of the vapid stories it tries to tell. The whole time it's showboating and trying to convince me things are just like the good old days, I'm thinking back to the times we used to cross-dress and snowboard and play Blitzball and not give a fuck, wondering when exactly it all went wrong. Then I'd go and bitch ab​out it beh​ind its back

Lightning—unpopular enough to feature in a whole trilogy of Final Fantasies

Like some sort of pink-haired Yoko, personality void Lightning came along and ruined everything. I know Final Fantasy XIII and its follow-ups (collectively referred to as the Fabula Nova Cr​ystallis) aren't without their fans, and admittedly, their share of great moments. But as someone with such a huge love for the earlier FF games, I just couldn't understand developer Square's thinking behind stripping away the classic menu screens and replacing them with battle systems that, effectively, played themselves while you mindlessly pressed X as your brain turned to Moogle-d mush and seeped slowly out your nostrils. 

To me, there seemed to be a not-altogether imagined arrogance about the way Square disregarded FF's old-school fans, repeatedly clamoring for more traditional, turn-based experiences, and instead served up games more redolent of Final Fantasy's action-oriented, RPG contemporaries while telling everyone, "No this is what you want. You'll take Lightning, and by God you'll like her by the time we're done. Look, we've dressed her up like Clo​ud! You like Cloud, don't you? And hey, now she's dressed up like Yu​na! That's fun, right? Here, now she looks like Lara​ Croft. Ha ha ha, how silly and irreverent. No? Alright fine, put her in a pair of as​sless chaps and be done with it."

'Final Fantasy XV,' Tokyo Game Show 2014 trailer

I had long ago given up on Final Fantasy XV. Starting off life as another entry to the Drabula Nova Crystallis series, it's gone through countless iterations and teams, and been in and out of development for the last eight years. Not exactly the most auspicious of beginnings. But now it's back again, seemingly for real this time, and with the latest gameplay trailer to come out of this year's Tokyo Game Show, it's looking—dare I say—kind of alright, actually. 

The title has a new(ish) director, Hajime Tabata, and with him, predictably, comes an all-new direction. Tabata acknowledges more western influences for FFXV, including, of all things, Grand Theft Auto—and it shows. The central characters are apparently on a road trip to save the world. They own a car that looks like they stole it from this​ guy. If you want, you can have the car auto-drive around as you drink in the sights as a free-range, open-world tourist. I'm not entirely sold on Grand Theft Gran Pulse at the moment, if I'm honest, but after the laborious, straight-laced corridor that was Final Fantasy XIII, the rolling green hills glimpsed in the TGS trailer for FFXV are a welcome sight. And these are punctuated by neon-laced Blade Runner-like cityscapes, the result of Square's intention to make XV a more modernized Final Fantasy than ever before. Hence the Dude-bro-mobile as well, I guess.

Fighting also appears to have changed. It's still not the more gently paced, turn-based battle systems of old, but now at least it goes full-on action in the same vein as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta (the sequel to which is previewed her​e) rather than occupy a weird middle ground somewhere between the two approaches. Now it's a gorgeous flurry of sparks, strikes and teleport moves as main character, Noctis, darts between allies and enemies alike and throws around what looks like a cross between a Keyblade and a chainsaw sword.

Noctis: XV's leading man and hopefully less dour than Lightning

But while I'm ready to keep an open mind, I'm less than thrilled about the fact that FFXV's entire playable cast, for the moment, appear to resemble B-team body doubles for Busted, right down to their carefully corresponding outfits. There's the pristinely scarred and tattooed bad boy with his pecs out; here's the specs-wearing, no doubt smart and sensitive one who nevertheless has to stand near the back for any and all group pictures. And of, course, we've the generically handsome, bland-as-balls leading man. And don't even get me started on bargain bucket Cloud Strife. 

Their design ties into the more mature, realistic take on Final Fantasy Square is currently going for—you can well see these guys in a convertible rather than on a chocobo—but I'm not convinced their patter won't make me want to claw my own eyes out as we kick it around XV's open world and they chatter on about the girls they like. I grew up on FF games that featured talking cat people, adorable faceless mages, and doe-eyed thieves sporting monkey tails. If I wanted to gawp at a load of vest-wearing pouting pretty boys with improbably beautiful hair, I'd just stick on my Super Junior YouTube play​list again. 

I'm not saying I want wacky for wacky's sake, but past Final Fantasy characters often told interesting stories or gave away details on their personality through their character design—think W​akka's Besaid Aurochs Blitzball uniform, or L​ulu's badass belted black mage dress. The outfits of XV's characters don't tell me a thing about them, save that when they aren't out saving the world they're probably holed up in their bedrooms listening to My Chemical Romance and scowling at their mum every time she comes in with their dinner.

Dude-bros about to do some serious dude-bro stuff

See look, I came in meaning to be positive and I'm already picking Final Fantasy XV apart. I want to be hopeful, and by god I will be. This could be awesome. The story still bears signs of being focus grouped to death over multiple drafts, mind you. At the moment, it's all about boring political machinations and a royal family that nobody actually gives a shit about. Noctis and friends are setting out to retrieve some crystal red herring, but we all know it'll boil down to saving the world by the final act. Damn, there I go again.

Through all the latest changes to the series, I can still see glimmers of the Final Fantasy I used to love. Behind the clothes and the pomp and the affectations, it's still in there somewhere, and that gives me hope that the latest addition to the franchise, while not playing like its predecessors, might at least recapture some of their magic. We've both grown up a lot since we first met, and maybe we'll continue to grow apart, but with Final Fantasy XV, at least we might not have to pretend so hard.

Final Fantasy XV 's release date is officially TBD, but some r​eports suggest that a playable demo, at least, will be out in March 2015.

Follow Aoife Wilson on ​Twitt​er

​Following President Barack Obama's nomination this weekend, Loretta Lynch is poised to succeed Eric Holder as the next US Attorney General of the United States. Should the Senate Republicans already hostile to her nomination wind up confirming her, Lynch will become the second black person—and first black woman—to hold the position. She is currently the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a title she also held from 1999-2001, when President Bill Clinton appointed her to the role.

"It's pretty hard to be more qualified for this job than Loretta," Obama said in a ceremony announcing Lynch's formal nomination on Saturday. "Throughout her 30-year career, she has distinguished herself as tough, as fair, an independent lawyer who has twice headed one of the most prominent US Attorney's offices in the country. She has spent years in the trenches as a prosecutor, aggressively fighting terrorism, financial fraud, cybercrime, all while vigorously defending civil rights."

Political observers analyzing Holder's legacy as US Attorney General are wondering whether Lynch will uphold his ​strengths in criminal justice police reform, and inherit his weakness for Wall Street bankers. In her career, Lynch oversaw the prosecution of NYPD officers responsible for the assault and brutal sodomy of Abner Louima, and also helped investigate Citibank's sale of mortgage securities before the company reached a $7 billion settlement with federal authorities.

Whether Lynch will uphold Holder's legacy for drug policy reform is a particularly salient question, particularly in light of the growing trend toward legalization in the states. Holder oversaw the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, and Lynch is poised to usher in the legal framework in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC, which all voted in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana in last week's midterms. So far, though, her public remarks present a positive picture for the drug policies she will support as Attorney General.

As drug policy reform activist Tom Angell detailed in a post for Marijuana.com, Lynch has expressed her concern that the criminal justice system is stacked against minority groups, and relies too heavily on policing methods. "I do think that there were a lot of issues that went on with the war on drugs — its inception and the way it was carried out," she said in a 2001 PBS interview. In the same clip, she harangued the "disparate way" drug crimes affect the population, particularly how "crack cocaine is treated within the criminal system," and "has had a huge collateral consequence in the minority community."

She has also said: "Arresting more people or building more jails is not the ultimate solution to crime in our society. If there's one thing we've learned it is that there is no one solution."

Despite her strong background on criminal justice reform, Lynch's record on reeling in the financial sector is less promising. At Sa​lon, David Dayen warns against hoping that Lynch will go further than her predecessor, and start jailing bankers responsible for the 2008-2009 economic meltdown, citing her "long history [of] interacting with a certain class of corporate lawyers and executives, understanding their perspective in critical ways." In between her two stints as US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Lynch spent nearly a decade in corporate law.

"Given that we've seen in the past decade a virtual crime wave among this very class, it's just not that likely Lynch would have the will to crack down on malfeasance in the executive suites, which could implicate her colleagues and friends. It's not corruption, more like mindshare," Dayen wrote.

Liberals frustrated with the government's failure to hold Wall Street accountable are not the only ones worried about Lynch's appointment: Republicans in the Senate are not exactly cozying up to the potential new Attorney General either. Though the Senate confirmed Lynch twice—each time she was appointed US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York—GOP leaders are already trying to push back Lynch's confirmation to January, when their party will take control of the Senate, likely making it more difficult for Lynch to get confirmed.

"When reviewing a candidate to serve as our nation's chief law enforcement officer, a full and fair confirmation process is always essential, and its importance has only increased in light of the troubling abuses under the current Attorney General," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a stat​ement, "I look forward to hearing Ms. Lynch's plans for restoring trust in the Department of Justice."

Should Lynch win the support of the Senate, the trajectory of her term will probably be similar to Holder's, which is to say, that she will advance criminal justice reform, but only around the margins. While we can probably expect to see her loosen penalties for low-level drug crimes, whether she will finally crack down on Wall Street is another question altogether. 

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​An estimated 37 percent of eligible voters in the United States participated in the 2014 midterm elections. That's the lowest turnout since World War II, when people didn't vote because they were off fighting in World War II. You were listening to Taylor Swift. That's not the same. But even though, thanks to social media and ubiquitous messaging and 9,000 email lists you don't remember signing up for, there was no shortage of reminders about the midterms, the song remains the same: people mostly care about voting for president.

Lucky us, then. Because for the next two years, the only thing happening in politics is going to be the campaign for the White House. (Doubly so considering that Congress is red and the president is blue, which is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole while a bunch of people scream at you.) For the first time since 2008 and only the second time this millennium, we're looking at a presidential election with no incumbent, which means double the number of candidates to brush up on as we head into primaries. Either that, or it'll just be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush, and we can all pretend we live in feudal England.

DEMOCRATS 

The Democrats have an interesting task on their hands. Even though Barack Obama won re-election by a landslide in 2012, his approval rating is at a catastrophic low of 42 percent, which means the president is no longer an asset. Two years of battling a Republican Congress could destroy him even further or turn him into something like a martyr, but either way, Obama can't be counted on to deliver another Democrat to the White House. And that means candidates who present themselves on the left have to decide how closely they want to identify with Hope and Change.

HILLARY CLINTON
Saying Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is like saying Prince Charles is the frontrunner for the British throne—it seems like both her right and the kind of thing she'd have to give up herself if someone else were to win. But it's easy to forget that Clinton lost to Obama in 2008, and she's eight years older than she was then—at 69, she'd be the second-oldest president ever to take office, just behind Ronald Reagan, who was a slightly older 69. She's the polar opposite of Obama in 2008, an Establishment Candidate who'd promise a return to neoliberalism and the fiscal priorities of the 90s. This might appeal to the Democrats more senior contingency, but it won't mobilize youth and minorities like Obama did, and an election of elderly voters might have the same end for Democrats that the 2014 midterms did: that is, a bad one.

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Photo by Tim Pierce via Flickr

ELIZABETH WARREN
Ironically, considering they're both women—or not ironically, because women are people who have their own individual opinions and beliefs—Elizabeth Warren might be the anti-Clinton candidate. Unlike Hillary, she's brazenly liberal, with an appeal based on populist rhetoric that attacks the rich and well-to-do. Warren is an academic and a fiscal reformist. And she's a current US Senator, whereas Hillary's full-time job is basically considering whether to run. But this will be the fate of all possible Democratic candidates: They'll get compared to Hillary, and stereotyped accordingly. Warren offers the closest analogue to 2008 Obama, which is exciting for a party that wants to win. But aside from only Joe Biden, she also offers the closest comparison to the current 42-percent-approval-rating Obama, meaning that she'll need to figure out a way to define herself, and herself in relation to the president, before 2016 rolls around. Also, she insists she's not even thinking about running, so there's that.

BERNIE SANDERS
Nothing in politics is sexier than the phrase "a socialist Independent from Vermont." It's like introducing yourself as being "super into Birkenstocks." But Bernie Sanders, Vermont's indie senator who caucuses with the Democrats, is out here trying to live on that street cred. And while the word socialist might send Benjamin Kunkel into heat, it's unlikely to get any real American human past the primaries. Think of what people did to Obama over his taste for arugula. Now think of what self-identifying as a socialist means.

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Photo by Gregory Hauenstein via Flickr

MARTIN O'MALLEY
After serving two terms as governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley just watched his hand-picked successor and former lieutenant governor get his ass handed to him by a real-estate developer who had never held elected office. The American electorate has a short memory, but if — and most likely when — O'Malley runs for President, expect his opponents to remind him often of this fact. O'Malley's chances could depend heavily on whether Warren makes a run; if she does, he'll have competition for the mantle of most progressive, and if not, he'll have a clear identity.

JIM WEBB
Jim Webb was the secretary of the Navy under Reagan. He served one term as a Democratic US Senator from Virginia. And he's written a bunch of war novels that have sexy sex in them, which his Republican opponent read aloud during his 2006 Senate campaign. Webb's possible candidacy is mostly staked on his opposition to hawkishness among Democrats, but its entertainment potential is 100 percent dependent on the fact that he wrote fiction about people doing it.

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Photo by Adam Fagen via Flickr

JOE BIDEN
Joe Biden's already 71 years old. He's unsuccessfully run for president twice before, and one of those times, he was felled by a plagiarism scandal. He's inextricably tied to Obama. But he's Joe Fucking Biden, and if he wants to run for president, then goddamit, he's going to run for president.

REPUBLICANS

As Mitt Romney so painfully discovered in 2012, the two halves of the Republican Party, symbolically represented as a country-club financier in tennis whites and a man holding an AR-15 in Chipotle, have about as much in common politically as they do in real life. The GOP's 2016 presidential campaign will hinge on which side of that schism the party chooses to embrace. Or, if we're all lucky, they'll once again force a candidate to somehow skate down the middle, and some gray-haired plutocrat will have to pretend he likes killing and frying his own turkeys.

JEB BUSH
Ninety-nine percent of voters will get as far as Jeb Bush's last name before deciding what they think of him. But despite the amateur painting of a tire fire that is W's legacy, Jeb Bush offers Republicans a candidate with experience governing on a large scale, access to a colossal and well-oiled fundraising apparatus, and political leanings that put him somewhere in the middle of the party. Jeb's also an immigration reformist, meaning he could be a possible olive branch to the demographic that Republicans desperately need: Hispanics. That is, if it doesn't kill his chances with the conservative base. The entertainment value of a Bush run will be high, but the likelihood of him escaping the crossfire unharmed may keep him from even running.

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Photo by Bill Clark/Getty Images 

CHRIS CHRISTIE
The similarities between Chris Christie and Rex Ryan, the coach of the New York Jets, are both uncanny and disturbing. First, they are both large men with prodigious appetites. Second, they are residents and embodiments of the great state of New Jersey. Third, they were at one time very popular, but have since caused their stock to fall by being very bad at their jobs. Long a straight-shooting and tough-talking prototype, the political equivalent of a sitcom dad, Christie's been plagued by scandal, including the incident in which he (allegedly) shut down lanes of the George Washington Bridge in a pissing match with a small-town mayor. Even without Bridgegate hanging over his head, Christie is a fiscally oriented governor from a blue state—not exactly catnip for social conservatives.

RAND PAUL
Until the Republican Party nominates a libertarian as its presidential candidate, everyone will keep saying that the Republican Party will never nominate a libertarian as its presidential candidate. (But if you think I'd let Barry Goldwater move in next door or marry my daughter/ you must think I'm crazy.) Regardless, Paul is an intriguing option for the party in terms of galvanizing a group of voters that actually cares about voting. Now he just needs to convince the rest of the conservative electorate that he isn't some weird Kentucky spin on a pacifist hippie.

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Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images 

SCOTT WALKER
The only Republican governor who shares a name with a darkly avant-garde singer-songwriter, Walker also might be the Republicans' best option for nominating a staunch conservative who isn't certifiably insane. He's made a career out of narrowly surviving close calls—he clobbered unions in his home state of Wisconsin and then emerged from the wreckage by surviving a recall, before just barely winning his campaign for re-election in the midterms last week. Walker has both social- and fiscal-conservative bonafides, but he lacks the passionate backing of someone like Paul, or that a Tea Party candidate might be able to summon, which could work against him as he tries to out-yell his opponents in the primaries.

RICK SANTORUM
Speaking of passion and yelling: Rick Santorum might run again! He'll have to tear himself away from his Christian movie studio, but everyone's favorite Google-search cautionary tale can always be relied on to get a certain slice of the electorate all frothy and excited—namely the part that thinks ObamaCare is similar to apartheid.

BOBBY JINDAL
In 2012, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made a big show of saying the Republicans need to avoid becoming "the stupid party," but since then, he's gone neck-deep into Tea Party politics, headlined by his determination to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't help that if Jindal has any chance of making it deep into the Republican primaries, he'll have to prove that this classic moment in political speechmaking isn't representative of what he has to offer, which, in that case, would be speaking like a kindergarten teacher all the time.

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Photo by Aaron Webb via Flickr

MIKE HUCKABEE
Unless you're a die-hard fan of conservative talk punditry, it probably seems like Mike Huckabee spends his time underground, rising every four years to have his ego stroked by the Republican apparatus. Huckabee's appeal is straightforward—he's an ultra-conservative rhetorical roundhouse kick to the face. But he hasn't held office since 2007, and persuading the GOP that he isn't just running for his own edification could be a tall task.

BEN CARSON
Ben Carson's just your typical black ex-neurosurgeon who's the first person to ever separate conjoined twins at the head; be praised by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the Wall Street Journal; mention gays in the same breath as NAMBLA and practitioners of bestiality; not believe in evolution; say the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing to happen to the United States since slavery; and raise $11 million in the name of running for president. Nothing to see here.

MARCO RUBIO
Florida Senator Marco Rubio's late turn as a foreign-policy hawk is an attempt to make up for the huge hit he took among conservatives for supporting immigration reform, which absolutely destroyed his rep among his own constituents. He's still in the running for the nomination, but it's going to take an uphill climb.

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Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

TED CRUZ
If you have a conservative cause, no matter how small, Ted Cruz will come to your house and take it up for you. Need a fence built in your yard? Call Cruz. Picketing an abortion clinic? Call Cruz. Burning evolution textbooks? Call Cruz. Cruz is trying to compensate for his minimal experience as a first-term senator by being the loudest and highest-profile far-right candidate who actually holds office, and though it might take some stars aligning, he could gain the support of the Republicans' far-right fringe.

PAUL RYAN
Interestingly, the former Vice Presidential candidate's viability as a Presidential option could suffer from his integral role in Congressional politics—he takes a larger share of the criticism that is regularly and justifiably heaped on Congress, and his status as a tax maven doesn't make the stuff he's working on all that sexy. But he's a "serious" candidate, and that's not something the Republican Party always has in surplus.

RICK PERRY
Will Rick Perry's new glasses be enough to catapult him to the presidency? Who knows. But they do dovetail nicely with his turn toward bipartisanship and an intellectual brand. Whether anyone buys this maneuver after the debacle of the 2012 Republican primary debates remains to be seen.

MITT ROMNEY
Mitt Romney for President, 2016—the GOP's equivalent of sleeping with an ex. 

​We are all hackers now, apparently—or are trying to be. Guilty as charged. I am writing these words, as I write most things, not with a pen and paper, or a commercial word processor, but on Emacs, a command-line text editor first developed in the 1970s for that early generation of free-software hackers. I had to hack it, so to speak, with a few crude lines of scripting code in order that it would properly serve my purposes as a writer. And it does so extremely well, with only simple text files, an integrated interpreter for the Markdown markup language, and as many split screens as I want. I get to feel clever and devious every time I sit down to use it.

Thus it seemed fitting that when I was asked to join a "philosophy incubator" with a few fellow restless young souls, I was told the group's name—and that of the book we'd be publishing w​ith an internet startup—was Wisdom Hackers. Hacking is what this generation does, after all, or at least what we aspire to. The hacker archetype both celebrates the mythology dominant high-tech class and nods toward the specter of an unsettling and shifty subculture lurking in the dark. Edward Snowden is a hacker hero, but so is Bill Gates. The criminals and the CEOs occupied the same rungs on the high school social ladder, lurked in the same listservs, and now share our adulation.

To hack is to approach a problem as an outsider, to be unconfined by law or decorum, to find whatever back doors might lead the way to a solution or a fix. To hack is to seek simplicity, elegance, and coherence, but also to display one's non-attachment—by way of gratuitous lulz, if necessarily. Wisdom is not normally a feature of the hacker's arsenal (they prefer cleverness), but evidently some of us have come to sense that even this generation of hackers will need to pick up some wisdom along the way.

But why hack in the first place? That is, why we should always need to use a back door?

For me this line of questioning began in 2011, the year of leaderless uprisings, starting with Tunis and Cairo and ending with police raids on Occupy camps ,a civil war in Syria and a seemingly endless series of revelations spawned by Wikileaks. I followed these happenings as much as I could. I happened to be the first reporter allowed to​ cover the planning meetings that led to Occupy Wall Street, and I stayed close to those early organizers as their illicit occupation became a global media fixation, then long after the fixation passed. Through them—and their sudden and surprising success—I tried to obtain some grasp of the spirit of 2011, which was elusive enough that it couldn't be organized in some simple list of demands, but also intuitive enough that protesters around the world, in hugely different kinds of societies, found themselves saying and doing a lot of the same things.

I keep coming back to the slogan of Spain's homegrown occupation movement of that year: "Real democracy now!" This had uncanny explanatory power from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. Whether under Mubarak or Bush and Obama, young people around the world have grown up in societies they were always told were democracies despite repeated and undeniable signals that it was not: police brutality as a fact of life (whether by secret police or militarized regular ones), an unrelenting state of exception (whether by emergency law or the war on terror), and corruption (whether by outright graft or the mechanisms of campaign financing). When a system is broken, we resort to improvised solutions, jury-rigged workarounds, hacks. No wonder, then, that the mask of the amorphous hacktivist collective Anonymous became a symbol of the uprisings.

For 2011's movements, however, the initial virality and the rhetoric of direct democracy turned out to mask a generation unprepared to deal with power—either wielding it or confronting it effectively. The young liberals in Tahrir may have created Facebook pages, but it was the Muslim Brotherhood's decades of dangerous, underground, person-to-person organizing that won the country's first fair elections. Even the Brotherhood would soon be massacred after a coup unseated them in favor of the military. "The army and the people are one hand," Egyptians had chanted in Tahrir. With similar historical irony, the same might have been chanted about the internet.

In the Arab world, the 2011 endgame has included the rise of the Islamic State. Hacking every bit of social media it can get its hands on, the militants formerly known as ISIS emerged as a potent remix of al Qaeda's guerrilla anti-colonialism and Tahrir Square's utopian confidence, of Saudi-funded fundamentalism and hardened generals left over from Saddam's secular regime. These disparate apps have been hacked together into one thanks to hashtags, an elusive leader, a black flag, and gruesome vigilantism.

I reject the often-uttered claim that the 2011 movements lacked purpose, or reason, or demands. Their fascination with hacking, and the vital fecundity that enchanted them, attest to the widely felt longing for a deeper, somehow realer global democracy. But what they share also had a hand in bringing them down. The allure of certain hacker delusions, I believe, played a part in keeping the noble aspirations of that year from taking hold, from meaningfully confronting the powers that now pretend to rule the world.

Ours is a generation of hackers because we sense that we aren't being allowed in the front door. Most of us have never had the feeling that our supposed democracies are really listening to us; we spend our lives working for organizations that gobble up most of the value we produce for those at the top. We have to hack to get by. Maybe we can at least hack better than whoever is in charge—though that is increasingly doubtful. We become so used to hacking our way into the back door that we forget that there could be any other way.

I don't want to hack forever. I want to open up the front door—to a society where "democracy" actually means democracy and technology does its part to help, where we can spend less time hacking and hustling and more time getting better at being human. Tech won't do it for us, because it can't. Hacking isn't an end in itself—wisdom is.

Bio: Nathan Schneider is the author of God in Proof and Thank You, Anarchy. His website is The​RowBoat.com, and he tweets at @nathanairplane.