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Eleanor de Freitas, 22, committed suicide after being accused of making up a rape allegation 

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

​It's tough being a man. The traditional manly jobs have gone, you can't give female colleagues a friendly slap on the ass in the morning, and there's the ever-present risk of some woman accusing you of rape. Luckily, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service have a habit of striking down with great vengeance and furious anger those women alleged to have misled the police about sexual assault. It's good to know that the CPS have got men's backs in these PC-gone-mad times.

Or have they? The charity ​Women Against Rape ​campaigned in the House of Commons yesterday to highlight the plight of ​over 100 women who've been prosecuted for false rape allegations in the last five years. In the group's view, too many of these cases are prosecuted, too vigorously, and with too high a penalty. Their expert, Arkansas law professor Lisa Avalos, told the Guardian, "In the course of my research I have not found any country that pursues these cases against women rape complainants in the way the UK does." 

Worse still, they believe that in several cases women were pressured by police to withdraw their allegations, and then prosecuted.

It's worth putting this in perspective, though—we're talking about 20 prosecutions from something like 15,000 annual reports. The CPS itself has been active in trying to ​dispel myths around "crying rape." Its ​research, which looked at crimes between January 2011 and May 2012, found 5,651 prosecutions for rape versus 35 for false allegations of rape. For domestic violence there were 111,891 prosecutions, against just six for false allegations.

WAR's campaign is well intentioned and highlights a genuine problem, but it's probably a bit unfair to the CPS. Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was right when he said last year that, "Where false allegations of rape and domestic violence do occur, they are serious—reputations can be ruined and lives can be devastated as a result." It's quite right that people falsely accused of a crime can expect to get justice. What WAR have highlighted, though, is just how wildly out of proportion the public debate about "crying rape" is.

It's impossible to give exact figures because many cases aren't reported, and many of those that are remain unresolved, but here are the rough stats. For every 100 incidents of rape that get reported, perhaps ​two or three are false accusations with perhaps another ​600 going unreported. 

We can quibble over the exact numbers but that works out at a couple of false reports for every several hundred genuine incidents—or, to put it another way, a woman is a few hundred times more likely to not report a genuine rape than to make a false allegation. Even if you remove gender from the equation, and look at this from a purely what-about-the-men perspective, with ​9,000 men raped in the UK annually, we're more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused of rape.

It's amazing how much hand-wringing is devoted to something so rare that it's practically irrelevant to any serious discussion of sexual assault. That's not to say that individual cases aren't serious, but they're serious in the way the plague is serious—it's fucked up if you get it, but it's not a top priority for the National Health Service.

Men are more likely to be raped than falsely accused of rape.

The problem here is that widespread and unjustified skepticism about rape claims is making victims far less likely to come forward. Keir Starmer QC highlighted the  ​Jimmy Savile scandal as one example of police being overly cautious in these cases, and as Yewtree and related investigations into abuse have played out in the media over the last three years, middle-aged men with newspaper columns have been lining up to splutter about how affair this all was.

My favorite example of the genre came from Spiked! editor Mick Hume, who was ​terrible concerned in January 2013 when Max Clifford was arrested as part of the ongoing Yewtree investigation—or "witch hunt," in Hume's words. The author saw Clifford's arrest as a sinister development in which prominent critics of Yewtree were being silenced. Sixteen months later, Clifford ​was convicted of, among other things, rubbing the pubic mound of a 12-year-old girl then making her masturbate him, stopping only when his daughter returned to the jacuzzi they were sharing. 

As I ​wrote back then, what makes this skepticism easier is the media's habit of talking in euphemisms or vague legal terms like "grooming," "abuse," or "molestation." Accurate, sure, but they don't really capture the horror of the crimes committed. Historian Mary Beard was spot on when she ​complained about the media's prudishness last year, talking to the New York Times about abuse she suffered online. "You never know what it's like, because no mainstream paper will print it," she said. "Nobody on the radio will let you say it, and so it came to look as if I was worried that they said I hadn't done my hair."

Pretty much the same applies to sexual assault cases, and that makes it easy for people to minimize what really happens, to pretend that what people like Savile or Clifford did was little more than an unwanted slap on the ass. To claim, even, that the victims themselves ​are somehow guilty of getting raped.

All of this contributes to a situation where most rape is unreported, and where ​we have literally no idea how many of Britain's kids are being abused. That's a far, far bigger problem today than a few dozen false rape allegations. 

Follow Martin Robbins on ​Twitter.

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For over a decade, EA Sports' Madden franchise has been the only football game officially endorsed by the NFL—a big deal since gamers don't want to play games where they control a bunch of invented teams and made-up players. But not too long ago there was variety, in the form of Sega Sports's NFL 2K and Midway's NFL Blitz, and that competition made all of the games stronger, like some classic pro-capitalist textbook shit. But these days Madden has what amounts to a monopoly, and as any pro-capitalist textbook will tell you, that can lead to laziness and stagnation.

After this many versions of the same football video game, every update amounts to a roster update and some spit shine. Though the core gameplay rarely changes, when it does it tends to be of the "one step forward, two steps back" variety, fixing one problem area while another facet that had been seemingly fine suddenly goes to shit.

Worse is that the core gameplay as a whole is offputtingly complex, requiring a level of memorization that makes you wonder why you aren't spending your time learning a second language instead. And that's just the controls. The football strategy is just as complicated, which seems like that might be a good thing, but let's be real: This is a video game you will play with your friends while you are all stoned. The most football strategy you should need is "zone or man coverage?"

If I wanted to ask a friend to play me in Madden, they'd first need about a week or two of catching up on the Madden mechanics, and unless they're a hardcore football junkie, they'd likely also need some time to understand the various complexities and terminology of modern NFL football. It is the polar opposite of a "pick-up-and-play" game.

Recent Madden editions have been riddled with poorly designed menus, unbearably long loading screens, odd bugs, freezes—shit, you name it, it's happened in Madden.

Madden fans tend to agree the best years for the franchise were on the PlayStation 2, specifically years 2003 through 2005. I'll help jog your memory: The cover players for those years were Marshall Faulk, Michael Vick, and Ray Lewis, respectively; the pop songs playing endlessly on a loop were Andrew W.K., Blink-182, and Green Day.

And it's not merely nostalgia clouding our judgment. Those games actually were superior to recent versions. There were options, but not too many options; new features, but not too many. Everything was just right. The upgrades to the gameplay were actually helpful, like the Hit Stick, which allowed you to give an additional "umph" as a defender or running back with a flick of the PS2's dual joystick controller. The franchise mode added features like being able to relocate a team or change its name or make PR moves for the sake of the team and star players. There was depth to the gameplay in all the right places. During this golden age of course,  the franchise was feeling unprecedented heat from a new rival: the NFL 2K series.

Developed by Visual Concepts and initially published under the Sega Sports banner, NFL 2K began as an exclusive on the Sega Dreamcast because EA didn't want to invest themselves into what they assumed would be another failed piece of Sega hardware. EA was correct about that, but what they didn't count on was that the 2K sports games would become so critically and commercially successful.

After the  ​Dreamcast died in 2001, Sega became a multi-platform publisher and that's when the rivalry really began. Sega incorporated ESPN branding to establish further legitimacy, and the heat was on. Madden's status as the top dog video football franchise was not only in question, but it was looking vulnerable.

What made the 2K games great? Like the best sports games, they were immediately accessible—anyone could pick them up and be OK at them—but there was real depth to the gameplay too. It found the perfect balance between Madden's heavy sim approach and the pure arcadeyness of Midway's NFL Blitz or old-school Tecmo Bowl.

The pinnacle of the NFL 2K series was their last effort—ESPN NFL 2K5. Even ten years past its release date, the game still holds a ​legendary status among video football fans. There were innovations in only the fifth iteration of the 2K franchise that would take the Madden series wouldn't catch up to for years. One big example is the running game. Sure, running backs were still juking, stiff-arming, and spinning far more than you ever see in real-life football, but they also had added contextual animations like squeezing through blockers. There were also great additions in the presentation and feel of the experience, such as actual halftime recaps with commentary about the game you had just played. Sure, these were pretty basic, but so are real-life halftime recaps. There was also the introduction of the "Crib," which allowed you to give your professional athletes some personalized bling. (Visual Concepts continued to refine this popular feature in the NBA 2K series.)

So what happened to NFL 2K? Back then, it looked like it was going to win that particular gaming war—sensing blood in the water, Sega released 2K5 months ahead of Madden, and for half the price at $19.99. This was unprecedented and a clear declaration of war. One EA developer later told ​Grantland that Sega's aggressive move "scared the hell out of us." This forced EA to reduce Madden's price that year to $29.95 to stay competitive.

But in December of 2004, five months after 2K5's release, EA signed an  ​exclusive agreement for an undisclosed amount of money with the NFL to make Madden NFL the only series allowed to use NFL teams and player names. EA also signed an agreement with ESPN to become the only licensee of the ESPN's brand in sports games on all platforms.

Those deals essentially cut the throats of all competing NFL games. Shortly afterward, Sega sold off Visual Concepts and retreated further into irrelevance. Although it was originally said the deal lasted through 2013, it is  ​not actually known when EA's licensing deal will expire.

Ten years later, Madden remains the only option for video game football with the NFL license. The first year under the exclusivity deal, Madden '06, is widely regarded as the worst effort in the entire franchise. The releases since have been better, but are still frequently spotty. The latest innovation is Madden's version of fantasy football in which you are continually encouraged to purchase virtual cards from their online shop in order to win more games. Hey, buy our $60 product so we can nickel and dime you constantly!

Without the NFL license, versions of 2K and Blitz each made courageous attempts to compete using only the NFL Players Association branding with made-up teams and leagues. All-Pro Football 2K8 and Blitz the League both featured retired players like John Elway and Lawrence Taylor but failed to generate any kind of real competition to Madden.

EA's Madden team clearly sees this current status quo as one they earned legitimately. A ​video from this year's E3 conference showed Madden's creative director calling out challengers to "buy the license and make a game," even though that would be impossible under the terms of the exclusivity agreement.

And so Madden remains a state-of-the-art video game franchise, one of the most popular on the planet, a best-seller every year, regardless of product quality. In that way, Madden's story seems to be the perfect parallel for the NFL as a whole. For people who want to play video game football, it will have to do.

Follow Grant Pardee on ​Twitter.

On October 15, six Hong Kong police officers carried a social worker named Ken Tsang to a dark corner, tossed him to the ground, and proceeded to beat him up. His hands were tied behind his back. They kicked him as he rolled on the ground; in totla, the beating lasting around four minutes. 

That location is now ​legendary, sort of a monument to police brutality in Hong Kong that—at least in recent memory—has not made for much in the way of public spectacle. Occupy protests against Beijing's refusal to grant locals a real choice in future elections are waning, but the reputation of local police won't emerge unscathed. 

When footage of October 15 incident surfaced, there was a tremendous public outcry. The police and triad gangs worship the same warrior god, offering easy comparisons between the two. Even though the police officers involved in the beating could easily be identified, the investigation moved slowly and it wasn't until last week that seven police officers were ​arrested and accused of beating Tsang. They were charged with "assault occasioning actual bodily harm," which carries a maximum prison sentence of three years. It should be noted that, as police officers, they could have been charged with a different crime, one that punishes public servants who commit assault during the execution of their duties and carries a life sentence.

In Hong Kong, just like everywhere else, the system protects its own.

And just like seemingly every other police department in the world, Hong Kong's police force has a major public relations problem. Once a trusted entity, now anyone who wears a police uniform is smeared. They're compared to dogs and accused of colluding with gangsters. Everything they do comes under intense scrutiny. When they show up at protest sites with bailiffs to execute court orders, tempers flare.

At the peak of the demonstrations, there were three active protest sites in Hong Kong. The first, a camp in the Admiralty district, is near government buildings and the People's Liberation Army barracks. Then there's Causeway Bay, in the heart of a popular shopping area. The last neighborhood the protesters are active in, Mong Kok, is also popular with shoppers but has a decidedly rugged touch, and has been the roughest in terms of showdowns between protesters and police and between protesters and anti-Occupy elements. 

Last Tuesday, police ​cleared a small patch of the occupied area in Mong Kok, though there were more reporters and spectators than actual protesters. Bailiffs and police officers appeared at the site in the morning, but it wasn't until about 4 PM that vehicles could use the street again.

That was likely a test to see how protesters and spectators would react, as the police ​returned the next day to clear out the rest of the tents, artwork, and all other Occupy materials in Mong Kok. More than 100 protesters were arrested. Those who wanted to retrieve artwork from the trash heaps confronted the police and were finally able to do so before everything was taken to a landfill. Afterward, fresh paint was slathered over walls to cover all traces of subversion. 

Many who sympathized with the demands of the protesters were actually glad to see them gone. One business owner in Mong Kok told me, "I spent 20 years building my [home renovation] business here. These kids talk about democracy and everyone having a say, but they never asked any of us who are actually from here before they took up our roads. Rent for my business is about $15,500 a month. I understand what they're doing, but they've slit my throat by blocking my business, and they're bleeding me dry."

For him, getting the protesters to go home isn't just about refilling his bank account. It's about maintaining his livelihood and the livelihoods of his staff, and making sure that something he built doesn't wither and die. We saw this with Occupy Wall Street in the United States, when local business owners and residents were irked by loud drumming circles and unorthodox tactics of the activists, who failed to win the allegiance of the average guy on the street.

Two months into Occupy Hong Kong, everyone is a little tired. It's only getting colder and rainier, and conditions aren't ideal for a long-haul sit-in. After Mong Kok went down, cops and protesters alike were on edge. Would the police continue their sweep at the other camps? Would the clearing of Mong Kok reenergize a stalling protest movement?

On Sunday, some protesters ​launched from the Admiralty camp and attempted to encircle the government headquarters. The police rushed in with batons and ​CS spray to stop them. It was the most violent episode in the past few weeks, with riot police beating protesters to disperse them. At least 18 people were arrested.

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Dawn cracked and eventually everyone cooled down. By 11 AM Monday, the Admiralty was quiet again. Students sprawled on the road and fell asleep. Some retreated into their tents. A girl was cutting foam pads and tying them to her arm with twine. She told me that she needed body armor if she wanted to face the cops again.

At this point, Occupy Hong Kong has clearly lost steam. The political leaders in Hong Kong and Beijing aren't budging. They don't see a reason to. In their eyes, the pro-democracy protesters are only lawless hooligans. Continued agitation is only turning public opinion against the pro-democracy activists, at least when it comes to occupying public spaces and roads.

Sensing that their actions have been ineffective, one of the student leaders, Joshua Wong (who happens to be a candidate for TIME's Person of the Year), announced Monday that he will be going on an indefinite hunger strike. Two other members of his student group, Scholarism, will be joining him. The three teenagers said that they will only drink water during the strike.

One of the masterminds behind the Occupy Movement, Benny Tai, also went on hunger strike in October. That didn't achieve much, and it's unclear if Wong's action will either.

If somebody doesn't step up to readjust Occupy Hong Kong's paradigm, the movement will surely flatline soon. In fact, the three founders of the movement just ​announced that they will surrender Wednesday. They say they want the protestors to take the spirit of the Umbrella Movement back to the community.

Translation: It's time to go home.

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Photo by Jean-René Augé-Napoli

At this point, with the Islamic State's stated ambition of establishing a global Sunni-extremist nation-state and its reportedly vast coffers, it's safe to say that it requires accountants and advisors who wouldn't be out of place at the most sophisticated of Fortune 500 companies. The expertly run finances of the organization, if anything, should remind those who only first learned the definition of caliphate in late June that these sorts of things do not happen overnight.

In terms of marketing and socio-economic ingenuity, it would not be unfair to compare IS to what some of today's private-sector tech behemoths looked like in their halcyon days. Its novel use of social media and old fashioned brutality have birthed a participatory culture that, in many respects, is a true form of consumerism that has solidified the IS as a brand—an iconic banner and logo (a flag being the first hallmark of any nation's proclaimed sovereignty), a uniform (all black—both rejecting previous military references and providing an image of rebellion that disenfranchised Muslim youth can embrace on a superficial level), viral media campaigns that include severe acts of violence (just like the most popular Western TV shows), and a seemingly mandated but largely mythological lore. Even the masked, British-accented young man who is supposedly responsible for beheading a half-dozen Westerners on tape has been nicknamed "Jihad John," after the most rebellious and outspoken member of the Beatles.

It's all so well conceived I still can't decide if it's ironic that Apple, too, was built on a cult of personality and took its name from the Fab Four's record label and was spearheaded by an iconic figurehead. (Even more ironic, certainly, are shady reports that ISIS leaders banned iPhones following Tim Cook's public pronouncement that he was "proud to be gay.")

But, at a certain point, the comparison of IS to NASDAQ-listed companies with snazzy marketing departments fall flat. While on myriad levels IS may function as a prescient umbrella corporation with an in-house branding agency that aligns several subsidiaries and outside interests, it is also a flagrant criminal enterprise. At least in the eyes of international law, which is an easy enough thing to skirt when your employees and associates believe their mandate comes directly from the mouth of god. Hence any comparison to various organized mafias and cartels also falls short, as by their very nature these organizations require secrecy—or at the very least the coverage of the shadows—to thrive.

The Islamic State, in contrast, swallows all: Their mandate allows for the purported ethical acts of robbery, rape, slaughter, extortion, and the selling of hostages, all while they continue to overtake key strategic natural resources in the region (with IS-controlled oil wells in Syria and Iraq generating $1 to $5 million in revenue a day out on to the black market at peak production, according to various estimates). But where IS is unique is its regurgitation of its marauded seed money into global enterprise, having it both ways in explicit defiance, with a marketing plan and tightly managed budget to boot. Like it or not, at this moment IS is effectively running a proxy nation inside two recognized nation-states, with their eyes laser-focused on expansion.

And if their latest al-Naba (its annual military report) is any indication of IS's level of sophistication as of late March 2014, the events of this past summer only dictate that similar and more accurate auditing is happening above the line. Only the events of the next few months will dictate whether they can keep things afloat at the seemingly break-neck pace they did this year.

A new book by Loretta Napoleoni, The Islamist Phoenix: The Islamic State and the Redrawing of the Middle East, focuses on the above in a micro- and macro-level detail within its matter-of-fact and succinct 160 pages. Napoleoni's thesis is that the Islamic State is a singular terrorist organization in its uniqueness and operational procedures—and as a business enterprise in general—that should absolutely not be compared to the likes of al-Qaeda or previous statehood-driven and extremely well-financed organizations such as the PLO.

IS, Napoleoni posits, is a whole new beast. And a fully modernized—and capable—one that was long brewing under the surface, waiting for the moment with geopolitical pressure shifted a subset of largely Sunni-driven interests into a powerful alignment. The book follows a timeline established by her previous works, Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism and Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and the New Generation, which closely follows Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's rise from an uneducated blue-collar worker to the patsy for the US's tenuous link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to his ability to stir revolution within the country through groups like Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'al-Jihad and al-Qaeda in Iraq—direct precursors to what is now known as the Islamic State. It is essential reading for anyone who is curious about how or why IS came to be in its current form, and where it might be going next.

I sat with Napoleoni over the weekend, to chat about her new book and meet before the event we will both be participating in tonight, December 2, at the New York Society of Ethical Culture tonight at 7 PM. Also on the panel will be VICE Ground Zero: Syriacorrespondent Jean-René Augé-Napoli and former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges.

If you're still looking for something to do tonight, tickets are still available (if you buy tickets at the door—they are available online for $10 plus a $2 transaction fee, or $10 at the door if you mention VICE). More details can be found on the flyer below this interview.

VICE: What made you feel, with so many books and articles being written right now about Iraq and Syria and the Islamic State, that there was a void for an economic analysis of the situation?
​Loretta Napoleoni: Well the reason why I wrote this book is because I wrote a book about insurgent Iraq that Seven Stories published in 2005. So, the book turned out to be a sort of biography about al-Zarqawi, unveiling all the fake stories, the mythology that was built around him. So I had a really rich archive and I kept the archive updated as things progressed even—even after his death. So when I started seeing something happening in Syria—I mean, I didn't really know what it was, but there was something going on—but it seemed the original group [al-Qaeda in Iraq and its cohorts) had moved over to Syria, and they were still using some of the terminology that was identifiable as being used by previous groups with which al-Zarqawi had been involved. It's how these guys operate—the same kind of pattern that keeps coming back.

In your opinion, did the succession of monikers that preceded "the Islamic State" indicate a carefully calculated rebranding strategy, or was it the result of infighting... or perhaps both?
​I think the rebranding is fundamental because language is fundamental. Especially in that part of the world. So, rebranding is a way of achieving what they really wanted to achieve, which is simply the transition from an armed organization to a state.Every single armed organization ultimately wants one thing: statehood. So, in the past, they tried to reach it through the denomination of enemies because by saying, "I'm not a terrorist, I'm your enemy," you're automatically giving yourself a certain kind of legitimacy. But nobody—nobody—has ever done what these guys have done. They have actually created a state, and they're running a state in a very modern fashion. So it's a step up, a massive jump in the history of terrorist organizations. You can't compare the PLO with these guys! These guys are miles ahead in the running. So, I think the rebranding was thought out to even the level of prepositions. And then all of a sudden... all prepositions were dropped for a definite article: The Islamic State.

So you think it's always a good thing when they rebrand in terms of...no one's fighting over a preposition necessarily.
​I also think it was a very good way to suck in the opposition. For instance, the merge with Jabhat al-Nusra was clearly strategic, and semantics helps in these cases. I think that the driving force really was to find the true definition of the group, which will stick. Many people think they will rebrand again, but I don't think so. I think that's it. This is perfect. The Islamic State is the state denomination of the prophet. You can't do better than that.

In 2010, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, he reverted its name to a previous moniker: The Islamic State of Iraq. It has been reported that at the time al-Baghdadi had a falling out with the senior-level leadership of al-Qaeda proper. Do you believe this reversion to the previous name was a slight against Ayman al-Zawahiri, then and now the current leader of al-Qaeda proper? The whole thing seems very confusing.
​I think that al-Baghdadi had a major disagreement with al-Zawahiri. Forget about Osama bin Laden, because Osama bin Laden was never really involved in that kind of discussion. But al-Baghdadi is perfectly qualified—better qualified than al-Zawahiri because al-Zawahiri is a doctor. This guy supposedly has a PhD in theology, so who better?

Since Sheikh Aziz we have never had anybody at this level. This is the first one. He's perfect. So, I really think he didn't want to be a part of al-Qaeda. I think he understood al-Qaeda was on a decline, and also—although this is my speculation—he agreed with al-Zarqawi that al-Qaeda was never actually anything else but a little toy in the hands of bin Laden and his followers. If you're clever, would you knock down the two towers and then the day after, then don't put bombs in every single, underground station in this country? Think about it. These guys [al-Zarqawi, al-Baghdadi, et al.] would have done it if that were the case. You don't knock down a country like the United States by simply attacking two towers. The symbol is huge, but the action... they could have destroyed this country if they had done it in the way of true strategists. The way true generals would have done it.

Is some of this generational? Like the young punks rejecting the ethos of their elders? Except in this case it's resulting in widespread chaos and bloodshed, and not peaceful countercultural revolution?
​Put it this way... al-Zawahiri is a man of the past. I don't think he really understands what is happening, and also, al-Zawahiri has always been fixated with Egypt! That particular group of individuals who have followed him... they always thought that whatever happens in Egypt is what's going to make everything in the rest of the Arab world sway one way or another. Obviously that's not the case.

Are there any points in the mainstream media's Cliff Notes narrative regarding the rise of ISIS that you find particularly hyperbolic?
​Yes! That "[IS] is the richest terrorist organization in the world!" It's not true! It's absolutely not true. I mean, the PLO, in the 1990s—and this is according to the CIA, which I think this is a quite conservative estimate—could manage, lets call it the GDP, between $8 billion and $12 billion! The PLO had vast amounts of money, far outstripping the best estimates of ISIS's coffers. The difference with ISIS, though, is not the amount of money, it's how the money is administered. How they're actually running the business of running a state, which is very very good. The Financial Times, of all places, had an entire page, explaining that these guys were actually running their finances as a multinational company in terms of dealing black market oil—replete with nice compensation packages for their employee-recruits.

But what about the distinction between al-Qaeda and ISIS, on an operational level, that you make in your book. Can you pinpoint an X factor?
​Yes, it's that everything is seductive. So... if in the late-90s you went to Afghanistan you would have been submitted to the Iraqi structure of al-Qaeda, where Mister Osama bin Laden, born with a silver spoon... well now, there's an alternative. You go to somebody like you, or at least somebody who is making you believe they are like you. That you're identical to those who went just six months before... this is seductive. This is what people don't understand: to its followers, everything is seductive about ISIS. Including the fact that women are not a part of it. I mentioned this point at a conference we had about the yesterday, and it was a bit controversial, but they understood, it's true: it's very hard for young men to deal with women these days! Because women are difficult, in the sense of their needs. I see it with my kids.

The Islamic State, in some ways, has created a utopia where even women don't exist! You go with your friends, your boys to be a part of this amazing, beautiful experience—you're heroes, you're fighting! And there's not a woman nagging you about doing this or not doing that—if you're in your twenties, and you have a dream like this, you don't want to deal with girlfriends! You don't! They give you a wife! This is what people don't understand, the idea that there are much more important things than one's personal love life. It's like, "I am building a state! You think I can bother with my personal life?" This is at the core of IS's success.

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Image via  ​Patrick Slattery 

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

​ In 2005, a doctor giving evidence in the trial of a ​homicidal sleepwalker said that there 68 cases worldwide of sleeping people getting up in the night and battering people to death.

Since most sleepwalking activities are largely nonviolent and embarrassing, using this in your ​murder defense is generally viewed as a bit suspicious. It's a pretty convenient excuse for killing someone—since you were entirely unaware that you did it—but there are people out there who have come to in their car caked in someone else's blood and thought, Fuck. 

I sleepwalk and I worry about stuff like this on pretty much a nightly basis. My paranoia has been compounded somewhat by the researchers at Heidelberg University ​who have discovered that if you dream about murdering people, you're more likely to do a murder IRL.

I've had a recurring dream for two decades now where I murder  ​David J​ason at my childhood home and bury him in a shallow grave by the fern that grows under the pipe that has been dripping since 1989. It's not looking good for me. There's also an ever-simmering fear that I'll do something worthy of a Wikipedia entry, like Peter Buck from REM on that flight in 2001 where he ​had a fight with two stewards over a container of yogurt, which then exploded all over the cabin. (He also tried to insert a CD into the drink cart, shouting, "I am REM," and was later charged not only with common assault but also damaging British Airways crockery.)

I've not yet been responsible for a mile-high yogurt massacre, and nor have I been charged with common assault. I have woken up covered in soil, though, because I decided to do a  bit of gardening while sleeping—like a Stoke Newington version of that scene in Pet Sematary. I've crept down to the kitchen in the morning to find that I'd constructed an elaborate salad in the middle of the night. I've woken up in the shower at 3 AM. I've found tiny apples (seriously—what the fuck?) in my bed that weren't in my house when I went to sleep. Once, I tried to escape my Brixton flat completely naked, punched my then-boyfriend when he tried to lock me in the bathroom until I came to, and woke up curled around the toilet bowl, shivering, with the globes of my very, very bare ass cheeks turning a pearlescent blue in the morning breeze.

It was in my best effort, then, to try and figure out how to stop doing shit like this. Especially now they're telling us that people commit murders in their sleep. I went down a Google rabbit hole and came out the other end wanting to arrest myself like someone in Minority Report.

"Your behaviors are classic for somnambulism (sleepwalking). It's probably more likely to be sleepwalking than REM sleep disorder, the other  ​parasomnia we have to think about," said Dr. Allen Foster, the medical director of a sleep laboratory in Wisconsin, when I asked him about why I do things like grab people's shoulders in my sleep and hiss in their faces.

REM sleep behavior disorder is the kind that comedian Mike Birbiglia has, where people act  out their dreams while dreaming. He's flown out of real-life windows to avoid guided missiles in his dreams, climbed to the top of the bookshelf to accept an Olympic gold medal on the podium and ​made a pretty good film about it all. But whereas Birbiglia's sleep disorder has relegated itself to one sleeping state, apparently mine is because of a disassociation between two and, according to Dr. Foster, a bit like what dolphins do. I'm basically a dolphin with legs and long hair.

"We currently—and probably somewhat crudely—evaluate sleep to be bimodal, and comprised of NREM and REM, which differ from one another almost as much as wake differs from sleep in regards to local regional brain activity electrically, chemically, hormonally, and at the molecular genetic level."

So, while you're sleeping, your brain is going through all these cycles. My trouble starts when it gets stuck somewhere between the two, or when the change is abrupt instead of gradual. This is when I get up and wander into my roommate's room and piss in their handbag. "State dissociation is normally seen in birds swimming or flying during sleep, and dolphins and porpoises experiencing sleep in one hemisphere of their brain at a time. The other half keeps them swimming, and, most importantly, breathing."

I could ignore all this, carry on falling into nocturnal-farts-and-drool-covered-pillow land pretending that I don't have a problem. But I've read too much about people wandering off cliffs and waking up naked in the snow to go on like nothing's up. I could end up a sleep-murderer, for fuck's sake.

One of the first recorded cases of sleepwalking being used in a successful murder defense  was in Boston in 1846, when a rich guy named ​Albert Tirrell slit the throat of a prostitute so deeply she was nearly decapitated. Back then, there was no medical explanation of sleepwalking. The defense just called on his family members to lay out a history of chronic sleepwalking and he was found not guilty. 

Am I sitting on a grisly Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card here?

Likewise, in Manchester in 2004, ​Jules Lowe battered his 82-year-old father to death and was later acquitted. But in 1998, ​Dean Sokell, a Devon chef, was jailed for life after attacking his wife with the claw hammer he'd used to fix the bed the day before. He woke up mid-attack—post-31-hits-of-the-hammer—and stabbed her in the chest seven times with a kitchen knife to stop her screaming. Psychiatric reports showed he was not mentally ill and probably not sleepwalking either. He was probably just evil.

Lowe, however, was diagnosed in a series of overnight sleep studies with something called "insane automatism." He wasn't responsible for his actions and they locked him up in a psychiatric hospital instead. Given this precedent, I wondered if I could murder someone on purpose and use my history of sleepwalking in the event I ever end up in court. Could my ex-boyfriends and housemates and be dragged into the witness box, call me crazy, and secure me a not-guilty verdict? Am I sitting on a grisly get-out-of-jail-free card here?

Maybe not. Experts aren't entirely sold on Tirrell's story. The fact that he burned the brothel down, fled the scene, and went into hiding aren't necessarily compatible with the whole under-the-insanity-of-sleep argument. If he'd been on trial today, the outcome would likely be  different. It'd probably be more like the 1999 case of the devout Mormon guy in Arizona, ​Scott Falater, who tried and failed to use his history of sleepwalking to excuse the fact that he stabbed his wife 44 times before drowning her in their swimming pool with no apparent motive. 

The loose screw in his sleepwalking story, though—and the thing that led to his first-degree murder charge—was his neighbor's testimony. He said that, while moving his wife's body towards the pool, Falater motioned for his dog to lie down. Getting your dog to lie down isn't something you're bothered with when you're unconscious. Hide murder weapons and blood-drenched clothes in a Tupperware in the trunk of your car isn't particularly synonymous with innocence, either. 

Falater's story, while obviously one of a deranged, violent lunatic, still made me nervous. Given my history, how many nights of moonlit mooning am I away from plunging a knife into my sweet, sleeping boyfriend's back?

Dr. Foster says I need to get the fuck off Google, basically, and stop worrying about the sleepwalking. He says that stress, anxiety, and the very specific fear I will accidentally murder the guy in my bed is just further catalyst for sleepwalking. "People worry, they get apprehensive, and sometimes begin avoiding sleep which leads to disrupted sleep and insomnia," he says. "That only aggravates the parasomnia. People often feel responsible, like there's something wrong with them, something evil or disturbed, and that's really not the case. You have to get past that."

Fine. But if it does ever happen, I want this article submitted as defense evidence to the jury. 

Follow Hayley on ​Twitter.

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Photo via ​J.A. de Roo/Wikimedia Commons

​Sony Pictures ​finally managed to get its computer systems back online Monday after a ​devastating cyberattack late last month left the entertainment giant reeling. North Korea is increasingly ​being tou​ted as a prime suspect, which is surprising given that little in the attack—which caused employees' screens to go dark before a comically sinister red skull appeared on—could be connected to the Hermit Kingdom at first blush. (The hackers apparently went by GOP, an acronym for "Guardians of Peace.") But there's a decent case to be made for the involvement of Kim Jong-un's troops, given the dictator's steadily growing beef with the new James Franco–Seth Rogen buddy assassination drama, The Interview. 

The movie is set to treat audiences this Christmas to a controversial scene of the Dear Leader's face melt​i​ng off, Raiders of the Lost Ark–style. And despite frequent depictions of the Democratic People's Republic as a backwards hellhole, the regime has proven over the last years that it's been prioritizing just this sort of sophisticated cyberattack.

Shortly after the attack, torrents of screener copies of five Sony films showed up online: the upcoming remake of Ann​ie, the World War II pictures Fu​ry, the less mainstream biopic Mr. Turner, the dementia drama Still Al​ice, and the gritty Kat Dennings character piece To Write Love on He​r Arms. The hackers then released ne​arly a terabyte of confidential data this weekend and claimed they had loads more, suggesting either an extremely sophisticated attack or insider involvement.

Confusingly, soon after allegations started flying about North Korea, the regime told the world to "ju​st wait and see" whether they were involved while the hacker group released a statement making no mention of Kim, but so​mehow simultaneously affirming and denying the connection of the attack to a critique of The Interview. Nothing in the lan​guage or the content of the attack directly points to North Korea, and although these evasions are creepy, they may just be meant to spook and confuse the public.

Still, given the fit Kim's thrown about Franco and Rogen's little foray into Team America territory—which is pretty rich considering this was the regime that released a cheerily scored depic​tion of a bombed and burning America last year—the connection makes sense. Although the regime pretty much ignored the film when its plot was first annou​nced in March 2013, North Korean official sauntere​d out of the shadows this June to issue the ultimate trying-to-sound-like-we're-not-bothered statement ever: After admitting that Kim might watch the film, Center for North Korea-US Peace representative Kim ​Myong-chol added that the film "shows the desperation of the US government and American society," then reminded Americans that they were were responsible for the assassination of JFK and that the US military might someday want to murder Obama, before closing by stating that British films—especially James Bond—were much better anyway. 

Later that month, another state spokesperson got a bit testier, ​promising counterme​asures if the Obama administration patronized the film, and the regime followed that up with an official le​tter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stating that the film sponsored terrorism and war action. In August, Sony had delayed the film's release from October to December and attempted to mollify the regime's concerns by digitally editing a few pieces of military garb and possibly removing the face-melting bit.

Although to many this probably sounds like business as usual for North Korean agitprop peddlers, it's actually a particularly fantastic beef. North Korea protested its negative depiction in 2003's Die Anot​her Day rather softly, and only raised the issue of the death of Kim​ Jong-Il in Team America: World Police by asking the Czech Republic not to screen th​e film. 

As to whether or not Kim's forces would be capable of such an attack, it's not as if North Korea is a Stone Age wasteland. Even if the country had no electrical grid whatsoever, it's actually fairly cheap to hir​e hacker armies these days, and even the most sophisticated security software still seems to allo​w massive data breaches worldwide on a daily basis. But North Korea does have an electrical grid, not to mention a load of rather sophisti​cated software and hardware and anywhere between 3​,000 and 6,00​0 hackers on the state payroll, according to security analysts. The North Korean military's reportedly prioritiz​ed the development of Frankenstein codes, stealing the best hacker ideas and malware and combining them into unique bugs directed by a multi-pronged and well-funded cybe​r warfare division. And the nation has been implicated in successively more complex, innovative, and paralyzing attacks fo​r the last five​ years, including the total crippling of th​ree South Korean banks in March 2013.

If there's a smoking gun here regarding North Korea's involvement, we're yet to see it. But definitive evidence is hard to come by in cyber conflicts, especially when it's so easy to disperse the loci of an attack across the globe. All we know is that a regime with the capability to carry such an attack out has a plausible motive, and one or two claims of technical similarities to previous attacks closely tied to Kim Jong-un and company. As to what we can do with that information, first we might applaud the hackers on their shockingly good taste in singling out Mr. Turner and Still Alice for notoriety and distribution. Then we might as well all go see The Interview this Christmas, as it's received the best press it ever could have hoped for. 

Follow Mark Hay on ​Twitter.

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​British fashion designer John Galliano appears at the end of his autumn-winter 2007-2008 men's fashion collection presented in Paris, Friday, Jan. 26, 2007. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

​John Galliano's fall from grace was one of the most dramatic declines the ​fashion industry has seen since Coco Chanel's outing as a Nazi collaborator at the end of World War II. Galliano's trouble began with an accusation made in 2011 that the designer verbally and physically accosted a couple at a bar in Paris, making anti-Semitic and racist remark​s as well as general derogatory comments about their physical appearance. Then a video was released not long after that, which showed the designer in a drunken stupor, possibly drug-addled, proclaiming that he loved Hitler and that his verbal combatant "would be dead," and her "mothers, forefathers would be fucking gassed." In turn, Galliano was promptly dismissed from his job as creative director of Christian Dior and from his eponymous label, which are both owned by luxury giant LVMH.

A full comeback for Galliano isn't too far fetched, considering they've happened in fashion after far more egregious offenses. Chanel allegedly tried to turn her Jewish business partners, the Wertheimer family, over to the Nazis during their occupation of France in an attempt to gain complete control of her business. After the war, branded as a Nazi lover and collaborator, she spent eight years in exile before returning to France in 1954. Her comeback, paid for by the Wertheimers, was rocky at first. However, she eventually resumed her place as one of the top fashion houses in Paris while creating many of the house's signatures like the tweed suit, the quilted bag, and the cap-toed shoe. Now, Galliano is set to make his return. It was announced in October that he'll be taking over all design duties as the new creative director of the Maison Martin Margiela.

At first glance, Galliano and Margiela couldn't be more contrary in both demeanor and design. Galliano is a designer who promenaded down the catwalk after every show, gussied up and costumed as lavishly as his models. At what was perhaps his peak in acclaim and influence in the early noughties, he was a rock star who indulged in the attention and hype that his outrageous, perhaps campy, but always stunning collections earned him.

In contrast, Margiela is a designer who never allowed himself to be photographed. The customary appearance at the end of a show was out of the question. Interviews, which were rarely given, were always answered in the plural of "we," not "I." He rejected the cult of identity and celebrity that most designers have embraced in the internet age, a time when mass-marketing has redirected high-end fashion.

In terms of design, both Galliano and Margiela hail from the avant-garde. However, Galliano's subversive knack has been reduced over the years to drag queen theatrics and an asymmetrical ruffle placed here or there. On the flipside, when Margiela was hired to design Hermes' women's ready-to-wear in 1997 (the same year Galliano took the helm of Dior), his presentations and collections were a quiet affair. The clothes were infinitely classic. Margiela was discreet, while Galliano was an anything but.

But this new appointment may turn out to be an incredible stroke of genius on the part of Renzo Rosso, president of the Only the Brave, the parent company of Maison Martin Margiela. Because, if you look back far enough, the two designers have more in common than one might think.

John Galliano was a student in London at Central St. Martins in the early 80s, a time when Vivienne Westwood, having invented the punk look the decade before, was pioneering the new romantic style. Galliano was enamored with Westwood's deconstructed historical and period costumes, which would later become his trademark. His 1984 graduation collection titled "Les Incroyables" was a critical success and was bought in its entirety by Browns, the prestigious London fashion emporium.

It was around this time that Martin Margiela was working as an assistant to Jean Paul Gaultier, the enfant terrible of Paris who was known for his own rebellious designs and shock tactics. And While Westwood was inspiring young minds in London, it was Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto who made a profound influence in Paris. Their deconstructed look of voluminous, purposely tattered and intellectually challenging clothes set a new direction for fashion, particularly influencing a group of young Belgian designers, altering their attitudes on what fashion could be. Founding his own house in 1989, Margiela piggybacked off of the experiments of Kawakubo and as the 90s emerged both he and Galliano were at the forefront of avant-garde fashion, championing a more urbane and street-influenced aesthetic which would help to define the decade. In many ways the designers are a bit like estranged cousins, sharing much of the same DNA, but nurtured to a drastically different effect.

By the late 90s and early noughties, fashion began to shift. No longer a guarded and esoteric industry, it began to sway to the commercial promise of mass appeal. Galliano was a heavyweight talent, leader of a luxury powerhouse and one of the most beloved designers of the day. His shows, massive productions not seen since the 1980s, drove a booming business of bags, cosmetics, and other merchandise branded with the Christian Dior name. Though Margiela remained elusive, he sold his business to OTB in 2002, the beginning of the end of the label's insider appeal. He eventually retired from fashion in 2008 (this is a rough estimate, his departure was kept a secret until 2009). The house carried on, though editors seemed less enthused and the collections less focused. Once branded to be invisible, it began to feel empty. Though it was always maintained, even when Martin Margiela was present, that the collections were designed by a team, it became clear that without his strong leadership, the label risked falling into the fashion abyss of irrelevance. It was rumored that Renzo Rosso approached many talents to take over design duties with all declining, because they did not want to incur the wrath of the fashion cabal for their efforts failing to live up to Margiela's legacy. Design direction was eventually and quietly taken up by Ivana Omazic (predecessor to Phoebe Philo at Celine) and the line was more recently ghost designed by Marios Schwab.

​British fashion designer John Galliano acknowledges applause at the end of his ready-to-wear fall-winter 2010-2011 fashion house collection 2010, presented in Paris, Sunday March. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)

At Dior, Galliano was facing problems of his own. His collections, once powerful and provocative, became repetitive and trite. He lost influence to designers like Phoebe Philo and Raf Simons (who would ultimately replace him at Dior). It would appear that alcohol abuse and drug addiction got the better of him until his dramatic demise in 2011. Last year, at the concern of Anna Wintour, Galliano was given a job in the design studio of Oscar De La Renta, possibly a trial to see if he might take over for the aging and ailing founder. But he wasn't kept on. Then he had a job as a lecturer at Parsons. However, the students complained and his seminars were cancelled. Galliano had become an untouchable pariah, resigned to live out the rest of his life with fashion's back turned on him.

As an outcast, Galliano is perhaps the best candidate to oversee the Maison Martin Margiela. We are in an era when fashion's appeal has been diffused through fast-fashion retailers and an identity-flattening reach for a mass global market. Today's designers shift from house to house with no sense of permanence or loyalty. And the luxury industry has faltered in trying to validate itself while the market has grown saturated with sameness. In a moment like this, there is no better way for a brand like Maison Martin Margiela, which was once a beacon of rebellion and anti-authority, to make itself relevant and return to the nearly holy status it once held than through John Galliano's redemption.

Of course there is the risk that Galliano will distort the Margiela codes, that his penchant for camp and theatrics will be garish rather than graceful. But that's where Galliano's brief stint at Oscar De La Renta provides a useful key. What Galliano did for Oscar De La Renta was perhaps some of his most subtle and sophisticated work in years. The magic of the clothes was in the expert cut and the impeccable and imaginative, though totally discreet, details. It's been a long while since Galliano's clothes spoke louder than the presentation itself. They were probably not the De La Renta woman's cup of tea, but if you replaced their labels with the Maison Martin Margiela's, you could very well have a hit on your hands and a rather healthy way forward for both parties. It's been suggested in recent news that Martin Margiela, the man, has approved of Galliano's hiring—it could have very well have been Margiela's idea to begin with.

Galliano makes his debut for Margiela in January when he presents the house's haute couture collection. Perhaps Galliano's strongest medium, it will be a test of restraint, to see if he can stay true to the house and not fall back into the same traps of redundancy and indulgence that plagued his last years at Dior. The success of Galliano at Margiela will depend on whether he can turn out the same kind of nuance and the brilliant clothes that he began his career with and that he hinted at while at Oscar De La Renta. And it also depends on whether or not the public will be able forgive him. Can Galliano sway public opinion as Chanel did decades ago? We'll have to wait and see, but one thing can be sure, be it triumph or failure—everyone will be watching. 

Read more by Jeremy on ​GarmentoZine.com.

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Photo by Philip Kleinfeld

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

I'm not one for calculating the amount of my life I have frittered away on a one-note activity—I don't like how Steam calculates how much time I have lost to Football Manager, for instance, and I don't like to consider how much of my life I have wasted by sleeping, or showering, or very carefully making what has turned out to be a very underwhelming sandwich—but I would guess I have lost a solid 45 minutes to an hour of my life just watching that video of ​Russell Brand losing his shit at Channel 4 reporter Paraic O'Brien. That bit again where he furrows his brow and brings a fellow campaigner over to shout at Paraic like it's kicking out time at the pub Wood Green Wetherspoons gets me every single time.
[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/puNCzfFsfMs' width='640' height='360']

Brand, who was outside 10 Downing Street to deliver a petition about housing prices, was asked by O'Brien how much the house that he lives in costs to rent. Then he did that thing he sometimes does where he leans in and switches to "substitute music teacher who snaps about 45 minutes into a lesson and barks at you to grow up" mode. He's since ​acknowledged he was "wound up," putting it down to his "volatile" personality.

Here's the thing: I work in East London and I read the news so I have had, I would say, a decent fill of Russell Brand billboards and Russell Brand interviews and Russell Brand news in recent weeks. When you see as much Russell Brand as I have lately, it's easy to look at his Channel 4 interview and think: Please be quiet, Russell Brand, please; I cannot hear another three-syllable word come out of your mouth when a one-syllable word will do. I'd quite like to think about something else for a bit.

But he wasn't at Number 10 to very publicly boast about how he can afford his rent. He was there to champion the cause of the New Era estate in Hoxton, ​where 93 residents are faced with eviction after the blocks—originally built 80-odd years ago as affordable housing—were sold to a US private equity firm. And not a socially-minded one, either: one whose early plans seem to be to refurbish the flats, add a couple of storys on to the side, then yank the rent up to market level and offer them to whoever can afford them, i.e. not the people who currently call them home. You can't really go in two-footed on Russell Brand for being verbosely angry about that. He is definitely not the baddy in this situation.

As part of a wider whole, yes, a rich person paying rich-person rent prices to another rich person for an undoubtedly nice house is one of the facets driving the London housing market into the distant stratosphere. But then, what do we expect? Is Brand supposed to live like a divorced dad, in some kind of room-and-a-bathroom travel kettle arrangement, with a very murder scene-looking stain on the carpet, just so he spends less on rent? Would that legitimize his rage, somehow? Can Brand only speak for the people when he lives like one of them? If I had Russell Brand money, I would wear clothes made of banknotes and shoes made of gold. I would destroy supercars and make Bond villain bets in VIP casinos. I would buy Rangers. In comparison, he wears his wealth quite modestly.

I can see why people might find it tough to reconcile Russell Brand, the shouting man, with Russell Brand, the good-doer. I get that his smoke-and-mirrors essence—the constant wrestling between ego and empathy, of rich man and man-of-the-people, of Parklife self-lampoons and actual books where the word "love" is highlighted in red—makes it hard for some to take him seriously. And those accusations of hypocrisy settling like a thin mist around Brand in today's newspapers—accusations he's since ​threatened legal action over—do seem to be clouding the good, important conversations he is very loudly having at and around people. I'm just not sure who benefits if a useful and impassioned mouthpiece is shut down for renting a nice house. I'm pretty sure the New Era protesters wouldn't have made it as far as Number 10 without him—look what happened ​when Brian Harvey tried it. Yes, he might call someone a "snide" sometimes. But to the 93 people who are facing up to the prospect of being homeless, a champagne socialist is better than no kind of socialist at all.

Follow Joel Golby on ​T​witter.

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There have been some pretty weird games released in 2014. 

We had the HD remake of  ​Hatoful Boyfriend, a bizarre pigeon-dating affair. Jazzpunk was a co-production from Adult Swim and Necrophone Games that casts the player as a 1950s secret agent tasked with assassinating cowboys and murdering swine with musical instruments. Octodad: Dadliest Catch challenged us to control an octopus disguised as a family man—and believe me, just moving the slippery cephalopod is a hair-whitening mission. And then there's Goat Simulator. No words, just watch the video (just a couple of minutes will do):

But pigeons, octopuses, goats, special operatives seemingly built out of Duplo blocks: They're all (sort of) living, breathing things—not so far removed, really, from your standard gaming protagonist, Swole Bro-Dude with a Big Gun. But then there's I Am Bread, the new game from London's ​Bossa Studios.

You might recognize that name from Surgeon Simulator, a darkly comedic medical puzzle game that had me in stitches when I played its 2013 iteration on an Oculus Rift. It went a bit ​like this, only I killed my patient in under three minutes. 

I Am Bread is a brave new step into fresh madness for Bossa, though, a game where you control—SPOILER—a single slice of delicious, nutritious bread. Your mission: to get toasted. However, since bread isn't known for its kinetic properties, getting from A (lovely soft loaf) to B (essential heat source) isn't going to be easy—and Bossa makes sure that the game's controls reflect bread's inherent the Stuff Has No Legs quality. This won't be a walk in the park to play; more a wild stumble across a bathroom.

I Am Bread was born during an internal 48-hour games jam and, somehow, survived being tossed aside as something that would never sensibly work. Today, it's arrived on Steam Early Access, and further developments ​can be monitored on Facebook.

Take a look at the game in action, and if that doesn't answer all your questions about the game, read on for my exchange with Henrique Olifiers, Bossa co-founder and producer of I Am Bread.

VICE: Hi Henrique. Lots of unusual games are born of jams, but very few feature a protagonist you can spread the fruity stuff on. What was it about I Am Bread that made you think, You know what—this is mental, but let's do mental?
​ Henrique Olifiers: We seem to be getting good at "mental." Trust me, we've got much weirder stuff than that in our game jams, and Surgeon Simulator—our previous game—isn't exactly normal, either. Surely you haven't heard of many titles where a wannabe doctor performs a brain transplant inside a speeding ambulance hitting potholes while getting stabbed by anesthetic syringes?

Once we jam something like I Am Bread or Surgeon Simulator—and we have to go through a dozen ideas or so before we get something that works—we just know it's special. It's natural and immediate: You can sense it as the team becomes transfixed, entranced, when playing that special prototype at the end of a game jam. It sticks out of the pack and we just can't help ourselves, so we have to make it into a full game right away.

This one slice's objective is to be toasted, right?
​The bread's sole purpose is to become toast. Now, that's pretty straightforward in a kitchen, but not so in a bedroom or toilet. Our yeasty hero will have to find a way to satisfy its (literally) burning desires in different scenarios, all the while unaware of the havoc it's causing in its pursuit.

And you know, loaves of bread don't own homes. There's someone else there who comes back at the end of the day and finds the place trashed, with a slice of toast waiting for him. This is pretty distressing, and will slowly eat away at the guy's sanity. Things won't get better when he disposes of the loaf—he's basically setting our rampant slice free to roam in the wild. One can imagine the chaos it would cause at a gas station while trying to start a fire to become toast. Don't forget the impact on the guy, who has to live with the knowledge that he set the baked threat free.

The controls present their own challenges, too. Was it a necessity to make a slice of bread difficult to maneuver, on account of these things generally being pretty immobile?
​ We had to come up with a new control method for the bread. If we stuck to the typical "stick to move, button to jump," we'll end up with a 3D platformer featuring a slice of bread as the character. This ain't that funny nor original, so we knew right away that we had to explore other options. The process took place by imagining how a real slice of bread would move if it could: how it would walk, jump, or grab hold of things. 

We envisioned this floppy slice bending its corners around, shifting its weight from side to side. The end result is not only fun, but brings something new for players to experience, learn, and master, which is what games are all about, after all. This whole idea that games must be easy. "Completable" doesn't ring with us; we like our games challenging.

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It's obviously a funny game, and that's needed, because while there's been Jazzpunk this year, and a pretty good South Park game, generally video games fail to find their funny bones, don't they? The Secret of Monkey Island feels an awful long time ago—mainly because it was.
I know, right? Why is it that games became a medium with such a small amount of humor? Films, TV, books, newspapers, and cartoons, they all have a much higher ratio of humor in them than games. And even when we get a bit done, it's usually very self-referential. That's not right. It's probably some sort of conspiracy, surely. They must be kidnapping comedy game designers and brainwashing them into bankers or something.

When you find yourself having to look to the past to find a good example of humor in games, you've got a problem. I grew up on humorous games, from Jet Set Willy's lead character waking up hungover in a toilet, to the craziness of Maniac Mansion and the tongue-in-cheek of Duke Nukem. It's not all bleak today, though, as great games like Portal are still being made. But we need more, and as a studio we like it a lot, especially when it's emergent humor from the player's actions, rather than scripted. If it makes the game as fun to watch over the shoulder as it is to play, we may keep on paying our bills.

The bread's not going to have it easy out there, is it? My one-year-old son can tear a loaf up pretty good, so all manner of household hazards must be waiting for our hero?
​ There are lots of environmental dangers to a slice of bread. Water is the obvious one, but the list goes on to include cat litter, ants, dirt, and maybe Marmite—depending on one's taste, that is. These have to be dealt with. Other stuff not only makes bread delicious, but also confers some extra abilities: A buttered slice can slide, jam makes you stickier, and so on. Depending on what you manage to stick to the bread, you might find it tasty and useful, too. You can get heavier, stickier, and bulkier by grabbing stuff along the way, and maybe use any of these characteristics for a specific goal, but in the end all that matters is becoming delicious toast.

I Am Bread is evidently original, and that's something that indie studios can bring to gaming. But do you feel that market pressures are playing a part in restricting originality at bigger, "​triple-A" studios, where massive investment has to result in huge sales?
​ "Triple-A" is a term that will eventually fade as indies get better and better at their craft. They will bridge the gap, and the only distinction left will be sheer production size: Quantitatively, what can small teams achieve versus very large ones? Even now they're finding solutions, such as procedural generation and so on. This is where innovation takes a hit, as new concepts are riskier by nature. 

For a large studio to throw a two-year schedule of 300 people into an untested game is a big ask. Large groups are much more comfortable working in the knowledge that their game has a market waiting for it, no matter what. This is why the majority of new game designs of late come from indies—they can live with the risk as they iterate faster and fail smaller. When they get it right, it's then easier for them to grow it into something big, like Minecraft or DayZ.

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What does "being independent" mean to you? Is it more about spirit and attitude than budgets and personnel numbers?
​ It's about the freedom to do whatever we want, on our own terms, without anyone who thinks they know better meddling with it. The number of people and the revenue has little bearing on independence, and this is what allows us to make different games, to come up with ideas that would never, ever survive a traditional pitch process within a publisher. No exec would ever approve a game about a walking piece of bread, unless it featured his face in it.

Are you thinking about expanding I Am Bread with DLC options—allowing the player to control a bagel, maybe, or a croissant?
​ We had requests for gluten-free, French baguette, and those horrible crackers people on diets are fooled into eating in the hope they'll magically lose weight.

The idea is to start with a small game and keep at it that for quite some time, adding content as we learn what the players like and where they think the mighty bread should go next. Just like Surgeon Simulator, which eventually got Team Fortress 2 and Alien Autopsy free DLCs, the first version of the game is just the beginning of something much bigger before we wrap up the storyline.

In all seriousness, if you woke up tomorrow and found that a race of sentient bread was swarming over our homes, causing chaos and ultimately aiming to usurp us, and it was basically all Bossa's fault for having this idea in the first place, how would you feel? And which spread would you reach for?
​ In all seriousness? It will happen. Be sure to welcome your bread overlords with whatever spread they wish to bathe in, or face the consequences. Have toasters at hand. Be safe.

Follow Mike Diver on ​T​witter.​

Last Monday night, the Ferguson fallout spread to 170 cities across the country,​ ​New York among them. Hundreds of protestors flooded Times Square and managed to shut down major bridges, tunnels, and avenues. And, in the middle of it all, NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton was splattered with fake blood amidst chants of "No justice, no peace!" 

In a city all too familiar with police brutality, the Ferguson grand jury's decision to not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown hit home. And now New Yorkers have their own grand jury to worry about.

Sometime in the next day or two, a group of citizens on Staten Island will likely decide whether or not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for t​he tragic chokehold death of 43-year-old Eric Garner last July. The disaster left an already-hot New York simmering with tension this summer, especially as millions watched online video of Garner's last seconds of life, when he repeated, hauntingly, "I can't breathe!"

Convened in September, this grand jury has taken longer than the one in Ferguson. With ​talk of race relations and law enforcement reform now dominating what passes for the national discourse, NYC could offer up quite the sequel to last week's unrest in the St. Louis area.

"There's little to no faith that there will be justice for Eric Garner," Priscilla Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Communities United For Police Reform (CPR), told me. "What happened with Eric Garner is not isolated or disconnected; it is part of a larger systemic problem, in which these situations of excessive, lethal force consistently take place."

As if to reinforce the trends, numbers released by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD on Tuesday hewed to a familiar theme: progress for some, but discrimination for too many. The citywide crime rate is​ do​wn 4.4 percent this year, the number of stop-and-frisk searches has plummeted, and marijuana arrests have dropped 61.2 percent since a n​ew decriminalization policy was put in place two weeks ago. 

Still, the minorities remained far more likely to be stopped by cops than whites, according to sta​ts released by the New York Civil Liberties Union. And we continue to see these batshit craz​y videos of cops abusing citizens and bear witness to the deaths of "tota​l innocents" like Akai Gurley, who was shot two weeks ago in Brooklyn for basically no reason. 

"In terms of discriminatory policing," Gonzalez said, obviously exhausted, "not much has changed."

In New York City, the list of victims goes on: Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell, and now Eric Garner. All those names have a similar story behind them—a white police officer kills an unarmed black man, using self-defense as justification. But rarely do you have back-to-back decisions on two high-profile cases happening within weeks of each other, leaving little time for the nation to decompress from the first. 

Gonzalez told me that the day after the Staten Island grand jury's decision—some ​reports suggest it could come as soon as Wednesday—numerous grassroots groups will gather in Foley Square, near City Hall in lower Manhattan. Word is still not out on what will happen on Staten Island, the crime scene and home of Garner. When he passed away, Reverend Al Sharpton and his National Action Network tussled with City Hall, threatening to shut down the massive Verrazano Bridge. The beef was eventually squashed, but protests still spread across the city.

The boys in blue began preparation for Michael Brown-style protests last week, in—where else?—Ferguson. W​NYC reported that NYPD personnel were sent to Missouri to monitor the mass unrest, and Bratton later to​ld the Wall Street Journal that the mission was to "bring back lessons that might be learned from their experience to our city."

This can be read in two ways: Either the NYPD expects Staten Island to burn, or the department is simply trying to gather as much information on potentially violent protests as it can for undefined future events. Marc Krupanski, a program officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, told me he's pretty confident the recon was done as prep for the Garner decision, but that this is a normal NYPD initiative. 

"This isn't the first time NYPD—or other US police—have done this," he explained. "They've routinely sent police to mass demonstrations around the free trade pacts, World Bank/IMF meetings, or G8 meetings around the US and internationally."

When asked what the NYPD's post–grand jury plans were, a senior official in the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice referred me to remarks made by Bratton on Tuesday, in which he indicated he's met with various community and religious groups on Staten Island to ensure calm. Extra cops will be deployed to handle the situation, he added, in an effort to avoid the burning cars and looted stores we saw in Missouri.

"Will they engage in some type of demonstration no matter which way the jury goes? Certainly," Bratton told reporters. "But I think that there will be an ability—that people will get to have their voices heard without disturbances. We, on the other hand, on the police side, will naturally gear up to deal with any potential contingency that might occur."

Eric Snipes, Garner's 18-year-old son, told the Dail​y News ​this week that he didn't want see chaos in the streets, echoing the wishes of Brown's family in Missouri. "It's not going to be a Ferguson-like protest because I think everybody knows my father wasn't a violent man and they're going to respect his memory by remaining peaceful," Snipes said. "It's not going to be like it was there." He still hoped to see Pantaleo indicted, telling the jurors to "go to the video."

It is the video, Gonzalez told me, that changes everything. We can see exactly what happened in the last seconds of Garner's life, rather than ​listen to Darren Wilson recount how he felt like a five-year-old fighting Hulk Hogan. "All the focus is on one police officer, too," she added. "Three other police officers are caught on tape not doing anything, while Eric is on the floor, dying." (There's also the matter of the EMTs who ​stood idly by after Garner went down, though they do not face indictment.)

This is one of the first police brutality cases that puts the idea of ​copwatch to the test. The premise that police officers should be filmed at all times has helped fuel NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's recent decision to strap some NYPD officers with body cameras, a program ​​starting with nine officers in six precincts on Wednesday. 

The mayor is stuck in a role similar to what President Obama faced with Ferguson. He's been asked to do more, but is relatively powerless, legally. He has advised citizens not to connect the dots between Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but they will anyway. And he has a direct connection to the plight of colored communities as a parent; just as Obama said Trayvon Martin could've been his son, de Blasio has ​referenced the safety of Dante, his black son. 

So far, protests under Mayor de Blasio have mostly remained civil. Commissioner Bratton has taken a more cooperative approach to unrest than his predecessor, Ray Kelly, who was notorious for deciding to raid Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night, spelling doom for Occupy Wall Street. Thirty-one New Yorkers were arrested at the initial Ferguson protests in Augu​st, Bratton said Tuesday, and no vandalism was reported.

But according to Gonzalez, the fate of Eric Garner is more personal here—it opens a different wound, one that has been deepening for decades. If anything, Ferguson just reminded New Yorkers that their city is bleeding. "In terms of how the new mayor responds, we will see," she said. "New York City is at a moment where we've been waiting a long time for change. Just like Eric said to the cops, 'This stops today.'"

Follow John Surico on ​Twitter.

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Sue Webster at her Nazi typewriter. All images courtesy of Sue Webster 

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Sue Webster's art has never been for the delicate of soul. The work of the prolific artist, famously created in tandem with her partner in crime—and, until recently, love—Tim Noble has plowed a surreal, highly personal furrow since she graduated from her role as Gilbert & George's assistant in the late 90s. They have been called art punks for years and the term—however hackneyed—still fits. 

Noble and Webster are, perhaps, most famous for their ​shadow work. If you haven't seen it, the pieces are huge piles of ephemera—rubbish, crisp packets, old beer cans, exploded splinters of wood, dead rats, and seagulls—that become, at the receiving end of a spotlight, shadows of the artists relaxing, champagne glasses in hand. Or, you know, ​pissing. Or maybe instead of rubbish, you're looking at ​a cluster of dildos and its corresponding shadow of Noble and Webster's decapitated heads, tongues dryly hanging out. They are masterful, magical feats of engineering that command the whole room and have to be seen—much like their ​light sculpture work—to be truly believed. 

Basically, they're two artists that have consistently kicked against the pricks. Their work has always been a punch in the face and immediately accessible. Shock is an accessible, universal thing because you can't escape from it—something that the ​modern art world tends to think of as gauche these days. Noble and Webster's isn't a message of erudition. Rather, it's: Here's what you can make with the tangible shit that society has left on the street. Here's what you can make if you pull your finger out your ass and look hard enough. 

Webster, a proud Leicester native with both the wiriness and soft footing of a flyweight boxer, once told me that she wanted to marry a chip as a kid because she loved them so much. Grayson Perry was once scoffed at for doing pottery because it was so anti-establishment, but now she's done something not many artists have done before and has written a cookbook. Only, don't expect any kind of neat, macro-lensed art-direction and Jamie Oliver-style gurning—she's written it all on Nazi typewriter, replacing every "S" with "SS."

There are recipes that include roadkill and a chicken's foot that a fox left tied to a post, but there's also much more mundane, everyday stuff like carrot cake and pea soup. Her and Noble spend most of their time—especially when they are working on a show—in London, in a huge, black, David Adjaye-designed ​building in Shoreditch dubbed "Dirty House," but ​The Folly Acres Cookbook is focused on their country lot of the same name—a sprawling 44 acres of verdant, Gloucester green where they let rip with two feral-but-loving cats, an ever fluctuating number of chickens and an outside toilet in a shed. 

VICE met with Webster in her London home for a chat over a cup of Northern tea, i.e. heavily stewed and with a palette-stripping lack of milk. 

VICE: Hi Sue. How much has doing this book changed your relationship with food? At the start you say you only ever saw food as fuel, but over the course of the book it becomes apparent that you really enjoy it.
​Sue Webster: I was brought up surviving off frozen food in Leicester. My dad worked in the Findus factory and would bring back carloads of frozen food with no labels. It used to sit in the freezer and we'd go, "What's this?" before thawing it out and eating it. I'm sure there was dog food in there. I didn't have Linda McCartney cooking for me. Mary McCartney's just done a cookbook, actually and it's full of pictures of her kids picking strawberries from a strawberry bush. I didn't have that kind of mother—I was brought up thinking that you just ate tinned and frozen food, that cooking a meal didn't last any longer than the time it cook to eat it.

When did that change?
​When I met Tim. His mother would slave over the oven. I'd never seen an aubergine or an avocado before then—I didn't know what to do with them! I guess I learnt a lot from her, she was a wonderful cook. And having Folly Acres, our farm, where you can just plant seeds and grow ridiculous, giant parsnips... I saw all that as free food. Although it probably cost more if you count labor.

There's always been a found element in your shadow sculptures, whether it's piled-up trash from the street or roadkill cast in silver. Do you think the free element of growing food has appealed to your resourceful nature?
​Are you making an analogy to my work? Scavenging for materials and scavenging for food?

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Jesus Rabbit, from The Folly Acres Cookbook

Yeah, I guess.
​Ha! It comes from naturally wanting to make things, I think. Making recipes is like making art, and it's more rewarding to eat something you've cooked and grown yourself. When we bought Folly Acres we inherited a vegetable garden and an apple orchard and, because it's quite remote there, it made us live off the land and learn about seasons. I started off making things to eat and photographing them on my phone, but after a while it got really boring; like, "Ooh, another bowl of soup with the sun behind it and the spoon at an angle."

I remember looking at the garbage and making little faces with the peelings and eggshells and thinking that I could sculpt with the garbage in a way I couldn't with the food. 

Did you ever set out to make a cookbook?
​No. I'm fascinated by people who have written cookbooks who aren't cooks, though. I found one on the shelf of Tim's mother's house by the crime writer Len Deighton. I mean, my mother didn't have a shelf of cookbooks—she had a shelf of Jackie Collins! I love the idea of people going off on a tangent. 

So we had a farm, I was learning how to cook, we were growing vegetables, I was making things out of what ever was available. Like, apples and parsnips are in season at the same time, so I'd put them in a dish together. You just become aware of things. So I'd make my apple and parsnip soup and jot it down so that, when I came back next week, month or year, I'd have accumulated a pile of paper scraps. Then, I acquired the typewriter and I decided I'd like to make a little book, so I don't have to keep searching through all these scraps of paper. I just started typing them up. Everything was grown, cooked and written down there, even the little tips like, "Cook this for as long as Neil Young's On The Beach takes to play."

Some of the pictures in the book I'm familiar with as your work—like the blindfold drawings like the one of Frida Kahlo you did for the cover of the ad-hoc food quarterly, ​Wolf—but some feel like new territory for you. 
​I did initially start doing normal photos of food and sending them to friends, but it didn't last long. One Christmas we were down there and had a big pile of garbage, all the peelings and stuff, and I was just so fascinated by it. It reminded me of the way I work in the studio, making stuff out of what people throw away. There's not many pictures of actual food. There's Party Squirrel and Jesus Rabbit and the Carrot family and a drawing made of beetroot juice. 

Right.
​Oh, and I suppose eggs on crumpets is more traditional, but it's supposed to look like a pair of tits.

OK. Why did you use an SS typewriter?
​I felt like the typewriter would be a big issue. I'd tell people about [writing a cookbook] and they'd say that it was a great idea, following in the footsteps of ​Andy Warhol's cookbook, and stuff. And then I'd say, "Oh, by the way, I typed the whole thing on a 1940s Nazi typewriter and I don't know why but I've decided to omit the S and use the SS." People got quite worried about that. But when you see the typed manuscript you realize that, in the overuse of that symbol, you dilute its importance.

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Rissotica

Well, you've taken it out of context, too. You don't expect to see the SS symbol on a page talking about spinach soup.
​Once you've seen it, you realize how ridiculous it looks. It's two lightening flashes. You have to wake yourself up a bit as to what it means.

Do you still think it's important for art to shock?
​As an artist  I don't think you can help yourself but be drawn to things that are wrong in the world, to things that people don't know happen. I think it's more dangerous to pretend that something didn't happen than to remember something bad that did happen. You almost have a responsibility to preserve signs of evil to remind people that they did exist. Did you know that the biggest collectors of holocaust memorabilia are Germans?

Shit, really? Why do you think that is?
​Fascination. Those are the people who want to preserve signs of evil to prove it existed. I have a German friend who was really excited that I was using this typewriter. She gave me a cookbook, ​In Memory's Kitchen, which was written by women in Terezin concentration camp. The original exists on parchment paper or something similar, which the women in the camp wrote recipes of what they ate on when they were free from memory.

On a practical note, did working with a 75-year-old typewriter old ever get a bit annoying?
​It did break down a couple of times and the book got put on hold. I couldn't find another one that hadn't had the SS key filed down. I had typed the recipes but not the stories, but thought: 'I'm a sculptor. I can make things. I can fix things.' So I became at one with it. I spoke to it and, rocking it, it came back to life for me. If you love a machine, it will love you back. Does that work for digital technology? 

Not really. 
​Typing on an old 1940s typewriter, it's thud-thud-thud. The screws come loose and keys get stuck. I had to maintain, grease and tighten it. It's part of the family now. Fred West actually used to refer to his tools as humans. 

And humans as objects?
​Yes.

That's a different tangent altogether, Sue. What have people's reactions been like to the book so far?
​People are shocked. Forget about the SS symbol, though—it's the thought of me writing a cookbook! I went to my dry cleaner the other day and he asked what I'd been up to. I said I'd just been to New York as I had an opening there, but that I'm also putting out a cookbook. And he looked at me, like, What the fuck? He looked at his wife, then back at me again, and said, "What kind of recipes?" I said, "Things like roadkill. You know, you pick something off the road that you've killed and take it home and cook it." He kind of looked repulsed, but at the same time that he thought it was a good idea. Like, why don't more people do that?

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'HMS Punk'

How different is what you eat at Folly to what you eat in London?
​I can't be bothered in London. I'm too busy. I just revert to my past and eat fish fingers. In Folly I have time on my hands and look forward to creating food. I'll have people round—something I don't do in London. Although I did once have people round when we just moved in. It was my birthday so I got excited and invited a load of people round. I was going to cook something with rice and put a whole packet in the pan and it quadrupled in size and then I didn't rinse it through with hot water so it was just this... splodge. I remember Isabella Blow turning to Tim and whispering, "I don't think Sue cooks very often, does she?" And then Mark Hix came round and cooked this mushroom he found on the golf course, just with oil and salt and pepper. It was delicious. The whole flat was filled with this stink because one of the rings on the cooker had never been used, though—it still had its plastic sheath on. 

So no, I don't really cook much in London. To be honest, it took me ten years to work out what all parts of the oven did. 

Follow Hanna Hanra on ​Twit​ter.​

​For all the ​rape allegations swirling around Bill Cosby lately, there hadn't been a new lawsuit against him—until now. As the LA T​imes ​reported late Tuesday, a 55-year-old woman is claiming in court that the comedian molested her when she was a teenager 40 years ago.

According to the complaint, Judy Huth was 15 when she accidentally stumbled on a movie set with a 16-year-old friend in 1974. Cosby allegedly invited the girls back to his tennis club to play pool that Saturday and Huth was apparently instructed to drink a beer every time she lost a game to the much older man.

Later, the three went to the Playboy Mansion, where Cosby told the girls to say they were 19 if asked. Huth says at one point that she emerged from the bathroom to find Cosby sitting on a bed. She claims he asked her to sit down and then attempted "to put his hand down her pants." After that, he took Huth's hand and performed "a sexual act" on himself.

Nearly a dozen women have come forward in recent weeks to say Cosby assaulted them, but the actor himself hasn't responded, except for a  ​shaking of his head in a now-infamous NPR interview. This lawsuit makes keeping silent (or hiding behind statements from lawyers and spokespeople) a lot more difficult. Then again, Cosby might end up settling out of court, which means the public will never find out the details.

That's exactly what happened the last time Cosby was sued, after all. In 2004, a Temple University staffer named Andrea Constand claimed Cosby drugg​ed and fondled her. District Attorney Bruce Castor said there was "insufficient credible and admissible evidence" for a criminal charge, which led to Constand's putting together a civil suit. After she and her lawyers found 13 other women willing to testify about Cosby's patterns of abuse, the actor chose to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Legally, Cosby is backed up by Marty Singer, whom the New York Times dubbed "the guard dog to the stars" in a 2011 profile. So far, Singer has only said the women's claims are "unsubstantiated, fantastical stories," and that "lawsuits are filed against people in the public eye every day." The lawyer's normal line is that stars are frequently subject to scrutiny and schemes by people looking to get rich. "I really believe Charlie Sheen is a victim," he told the Times.

Even if this lawsuit gets tossed—or is settled as a civil matter—it will likely be difficult for Cosby's career to recover. Although his mostly elderly audience in Melbourne, Florida,  ​gave him a ​standing ovation at his recent performance there, the public as a whole hasn't been as forgiving. Even the comics Cosby has inspired, who are ​naturally prone to defending him, appear to be admitting that the man's legend is crumbling. In a ​recent interview with New York magazine, Chris Rock noted: "It's a weird year for comedy. We lost Robin, we lost Joan, and we kind of lost Cosby."

Follow Allie Conti on ​​Twitter.

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Illustrations by Dan Evans

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The feel of Stan against me. His yielding skin. Our flesh connected. Back then I couldn't get him out of my head. It sounds like ​teenage obsession, but at 15 I knew it was deeper than that. We weren't lovers; in fact, we violently hated each other for no other reason than juvenile macho ​bullshit.

Our relationship, which at times has verged upon the murderous—I'll get to that later—was not a particularly unusual one. According to a ​2013 study carried out by the UN, more than half of the world's murder victims are under 30. 79 percent are male, as are 95 percent of perpetrators. Essentially, when one young man has a problem with another young man, the stats show he's much more likely to resort to violence than any other type of person in a similar situation.

Death and serious injury aren't the only fruits of male-on-male conflict. The psychological effects of interpersonal violence, whether in the home or in the street, take a heavy toll; violence has the potential to really fuck with your head. I kept dreaming of the things I'd say when I met Stan again, before passion inevitably forced our hands. He would creep into my mind at innocuous moments and unsteady me.

I've done my best to move on from the vendettas and feuds I was subject to as a teenager. The easiest part of that process was getting the hell out of where I grew up. More difficult was acknowledging that fighting during my youth had been traumatic. It would be mentioned only in the context of boastful boozy late-night tales. The idea of talking about hurt, regret, shame, and worry was inconceivable.

The charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) ​released a study this November stating that there was a "crisis in modern masculinity," exactly because of such bottled up attitudes. At the extreme end, this has led to a 15-year-high in male suicides. CALM chief executive Jane Powell said, "Outmoded, incorrect, and misplaced male self-beliefs are proving lethal, and the traditional strong, silent response to adversity is increasingly failing to protect men from themselves."

Since returning home six months ago to take a bigger role in raising my five-year-old daughter, concerns I thought I'd buried bother me again. The hate I experienced as a teenager runs deep, and I worry the very same childhood issues that affected me have the potential to reach her.

Stan was my first real proper enemy. We'd been school friends until an incident at a fair, one of the biggest of its kind in Europe, whose ragtag bunch of gypsy merchants and entertainers have been visiting the area where I grew up every year for seven centuries. I was with my mates and Stan was with his. We bumped into each other outside some waltzer ride and Stan challenged me to a boxing match. There was a ring inside a tent and anyone who fought got paid a fiver. It was two quid to watch. Even by local standards, the place was an anachronism.

I agreed to a friendly bout. There were probably 50 people in the audience but it felt like more. Most of my friends, betting that he was harder than me, stood on Stan's side of the ring. We were the first of three fights, one of which included a match against a professional wrestler. As I climbed into the ring, a gypsy kid a few years older than me said, "You're not playing in there. Make sure you go in and fight."

I went in and pummeled Stan. It was a big surprise to everyone. Stan took it bad—despite it being a sporting event—and stopped going to school. His mates started saying he was after me. I pretended I didn't care, but I was shitting myself. Stan had a dark-side: in woodwork class once he'd shown me a ring he'd made for punching people. There were ragged bits of sharp metal sticking out of it. One day I was told he would be waiting for me outside school. There was nothing I could do. Everybody knew about it and there was no way I was chickening out.

He was outside a Next store near the school. A big group surrounded us. I dodged his first punch and uppercutted him. My knuckle hit his bottom lip, his lip went into his teeth and my knuckle followed. I pulled my fist free from his face and drove him as hard as I could into the Next window, which bounced inwards and then shook back into place. The security guard came out and split it up.

I CONSIDERED DRIVING MY PINT GLASS INTO HIS FACE AND STAMPING ON HIS HEAD – IT WAS EITHER THAT OR GET HURT

We made our separate ways to hospital—me to get my hand stitched up and him to get his face fixed. Stan caught me by surprise as I was sitting in the children's A&E and knocked a tooth out with his knee. I could hear his dad encouraging him. I wasn't going to fight in a hospital so I got up and left. We didn't see each other for a long time after that, but he played on my mind for the next few years. It felt like love, but it wasn't.

Stan got out of jail when I was 20. He was in there for arson after setting his own house on fire. I'd just got back from India and saw him in a nightclub. The school friend I was with would soon go to jail himself for breaking a guy's ankle and wrist in a drunken fight. I don't know if he knew we were going to run into Stan, but I suspect he might have.

The first thing Stan said to me was: "Every time I look in the mirror I see this scar and I'm reminded of you." He was pointing to the one beneath his lip. The same jagged line runs across my knuckles. I considered driving my pint glass into his face and stamping on his head—it was that or get hurt. Either way, it was going to get worse. So I tried something else.

"Mate, you can hit me if you like, but I've already got a death sentence. I've got a life-threatening disease and not a lot of time left on the clock."

It worked. He gave me a hug and bought me a drink. He told me he knew what it was like to be an outcast. I spent a quarter of an hour laying a heavy trip on him about how he could turn his life around, but that it was too late for me, and then I left. Stan was a laughing stock when he started telling people I was dying. By the time I saw him again years later he was a broken man and no longer a threat.

I scarred someone else during my youth, who also vowed vengeance against me. Resolving the situation without employing the sort of violence that lands you in custody is not an option. I don't even know the guy's name, but after more than a decade we would recognize each other in an instant.

He appeared near where I lived when I was 16 and would threaten me because I was wearing the wrong school uniform. He's a couple of years older than me, heavy set with eyes that are too close together. The sort of person who moves in his own little world of shit and whose only contact with wider society is as an alarming and unpleasant envoy from a place people would rather not visit.

One day, the guy was standing with his friends around a car at the end of a long row of terraced houses. As I walked past he called me names again. I told him where to go and kept walking. He pulled the thick end of a pool cue out of the trunk of the car and followed me. I kept walking until he was a few feet behind me. Then I turned and head-butted him. He fell down and I grabbed the cue out of his hand. I smashed his face in with it. I didn't know how much damage I'd done but there was a lot of blood. I dropped the cue and ran.

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A few weeks later, I was talking to girl on a corner nearby when he jumped out of a car with a hammer. Before I ran, I noticed a large ugly line of stitches running down the middle of his forehead. Another time a car stopped in the middle of a main road. I thought it had broken down and was crossing to see if I could lend a hand. He jumped out of the car with the hammer again. We played cat and mouse like this for months until one time I noticed a long, thick piece of metal left fortuitously in a front garden. I picked it up and turned to face him. He stopped and looked at my new weapon. Then, absurdly, I started chasing him, until the Tom and Jerry nature of the situation hit me and I desisted.

During the remaining time I lived in that area I made sure I was armed, aware, and incognito. I adopted a sort of nu-metal uniform; baggy jeans held together at the bottom with safety pins, a duffel coat, and a beanie. I smoked king-size spliffs in the street and carried a football sock filled with half a brick in my pocket. I never made enquiries into who he was and only my close friends knew of the situation. I used alleys and cycle paths to navigate the area. Still sometimes he would spot me, pulling his car up onto the pavement and jumping out with some implement or other. Once he tried to run me over.

The last time I saw him was four years ago in Tesco when I was home for a short visit. Up until that point, I thought I didn't have to worry any more—it had been ten years since that first incident. He confronted me down the meat aisle and I tried to deny knowledge of him at first, but he knew it was me. We could smell it on each other. It was too public for anything drastic to happen there and then, but we each had a good look at our respective enemy. He even took a picture of me on his mobile. I couldn't help but take it personally when he told me I'd "filled out."

His malevolent piggy eyes were still located directly above each nostril and the scar was as prominent as ever. He reminded me of some twisted Batman, lusting after his own personal Joker. That upset me, because I don't consider myself to be evil incarnate. Still, he looks like he has a disfigured vagina grafted onto his face. A badge I gave him forever. Every time he meets someone new, every time he walks down the street. So what does that make me?

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I didn't want to follow him out of the supermarket to a showdown where one of us (and I was determined it wouldn't be me) ended up with life-changing injuries and the other in jail. However, he wouldn't leave unless I did. Finally, the security guard called the police and he walked out.

My daughter was a year old then, and it worried me that she would be with me the day my very own Frankenstein's monster turned up. Before she was born it didn't concern me in the same way. Now that I'm back permanently, my anxiety has increased. In moments of worry I check the smoke alarm works, just in case. I weigh up the capabilities of his limited intelligence and attempt to fathom the depths of his hatred. I run though the possibilities of him coming into contact with us.

Gradually, I calm myself because, as long I avoid certain districts, the chances are slim; there's no need to uproot my family.

After my paranoia passes I'm aware that my concern represents something larger. The most vicious fights I've been in have been about status. That type of violence is the primitive root of patriarchy. There was an atavism at work where I was raised; a place that suffered at the decline of our industrial base and traditional roles. But it was fucked up even before those things disintegrated. The values I came into contact with were old and well established, despite being degraded and fragmented.

Watered down versions of those values led my girlfriend's parents to pay private school fees for her brother but dump her in the local comprehensive. They led my mother to view men as economic stepping stones because the domestic was the only choice she ever really had. They are present in the million miserable ways "traditional" masculine logic can and does enforce its hierarchies.

I worry that my little girl will grow up in a world built of that mess, and a thousand other messes like it. But then I look at her and I realize that she is free and that I'm here to make sure she stays that way. To help provide her with the knowledge and the tools to avoid the bad stuff and be strong.

Part of that responsibility is to understand what strength is not. I grew up thinking that strength was being able to fight my corner, drink people under the table, and take risks. I'd do things like climb out onto the very end of a crane when I was pissed for a laugh. If you were a bully and you started on me, I'd do my best to knock you out, rather than just avoid the situation completely like a normal person. The same beliefs prevented me—and probably many others like me—from acknowledging to myself that I had been hurt. The Campaign Against Living Miserably says these sorts of behaviors correlate directly with depression, which I can believe.

People like my Batman nemesis exist, and despite coming to terms with my feelings and altering my coping mechanisms there will always be a part of me that watches out. If I could go back in time and steer clear of him that day, I would. Instead of a time machine, I have a survival instinct. Despite hating the fact I've had to develop it, I'm grateful I possess it. I've also been lucky to have spent years having fantastic adventures across the world and meeting a brilliant brigade of unusual people. I'm torn between whether I did that because of the things I've experienced or in spite of them.

What never helped me was not talking to people when I was feeling bad. Sitting in morose silence while my girlfriend worried herself sick didn't help anyone. Deciding to slam tequila and be belligerent at a work party instead of admit that I was lonely and confused and frustrated didn't produce a damn thing. Instead of a friendly ear (and there were a few around), I was peeled off the pavement by the police and woke up in a drunk tank.

If this sort of behavior sounds familiar, it's because there is an epidemic of misguided British men pressure cooking themselves. It's time they started to communicate. Maybe if that happened fewer people would end up with hideous scars all over their faces.

Follow Dan on ​Twitter.

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Someone has ​stolen a hundred brains from the University of Texas, and I for one admire that sort of thing. Because if you steal a hundred brains, you're committing a crime you definitely haven't thought through. You're doing it for the thrill of the chase and the love of the game, because obviously, you really haven't considered the practicalities of storing 100 human brains. Somewhere out there, right now, is a dude or lady wondering how to keep a room full of brain jars hidden from their loved ones and the police.

Some details about all the brains that got stolen: First of all, they might not actually have been stolen. All officials at the university are saying is that 100 brains have gone "missing," as though the brains have just been temporarily mislaid or might, at some point, choose to come back.

What I'm especially in love with, in the case of the missing brains, is the quiet resignation evident in psychology professor Tim Schallert's assessment of it all. "We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don't know at all for sure," he told the Austin American-Statesman. Isn't that brilliant? Each word just drips with defeat and resignation. A room that had a hundred brains in it now lies empty. Who had the key last, guys? We had a load of brains in here. Where the fuck are all the brains?

The leading theory seems to be that students, collectively, have been pinching a brain here and there, as gruesome Halloween decorations or fodder for student pranks. But the authorities are taking it seriously, perhaps because one of the missing brains belonged to former UoT student and crazed sniper Charles Whitman. "We can't find that brain," said Schallert, who could have lapsed into PR-speak and said something like, "We are currently investigating the whereabouts of the brains and expect they will be returned shortly," but no—he is an honest and plainspoken man who calls a missing brain a missing brain.

The remaining 100 brains are being moved to a more secure building nearby, and presumably a haughty email has been sent around saying something like, "Whoever took the brains please bring them back, no questions asked," so this will all be over soon. But as long as I have a brain in my skull, I will never forget the fact that one time, 100 pickled brains mysteriously went missing so hard that it baffled a bunch of brain scientists.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twit​ter.

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Kesha in 2011, the year she denied in a deposition that Dr. Luke had ever roofied her. Photo via ​Wikimedia Commons

​ If you hang out with enough people in the entertainment industry, you'll hear countless stories about child sex rings and ​sexual assault. Generally, people in the industry have refused to speak out publicly about these phenomenon from fear of retaliation—until now. This year, we've seen several high-profile accusations of unsavory behavior in the entertainment world: There's ​a new documentary about X-Men franchise director Bryan Singer's connection to a Hollywood pedophile ring; several women have stepped forward to describe the times Bill Cosby allegedly drugged and raped them; and yesterday morning on the ​Howard Stern Show, Lady Gaga claimed that she was raped when she was 19 by an unnamed record producer.

Pop star Kesha has been lobbing ​her own allegations of sexual assault and battery via lawsuit against the legendary producer Dr. Luke, who helped her create some of her biggest hits. After Gaga's alleged sexual assault became public knowledge, Kesha's attorney Mark Geragos—who also represented Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson—went on ​a tweet spree in which he claimed that Gaga's unnamed pop producer rapist was Dr. Luke.

Guess who the rapists was? http://t.co/MTg0vSE3rr

— Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) December 2, 2014

"@xmichyx: @markgeragos are you insinuating someone that kesha fans would know of?" #namethepervert

— Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) December 2, 2014

" @xmichyx: @markgeragos lukasz" #bingo

— Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) December 2, 2014

The new accusation from Geragos falls in line with the very public war Kesha and her lawyer have been waging against Dr. Luke for the past three months. In October, Kesha filed a lawsuit and asked to be removed from her contract with the producer. In ​the lawsuit, the singer alleges that since she was 18, Luke has sexually abused her and forced her to take drugs. At one point, she says she woke up naked in Luke's bed after he gave her what he called "sober pills." She also claims she developed an eating disorder because Luke would call her things like a "a fat fucking refrigerator."

Both Gaga and Luke's representatives ​denied Geragos most recent accusations to TMZ. "It's absolutely not true," Gaga's rep said. Luke's rep echoed this statement: "Mark Geragos's statement is completely false and defamatory. Luke met Lady Gaga twice for less than half an hour total in those two meetings combined," they said. "He has never been alone with her and never touched her. Neither meeting was in that time frame reported."

Geragos then called bullshit on Gaga and Luke to ​TMZ, promising he would depose Gaga and three "not as famous" women in Kesha's lawsuit against the pop doctor. 

However, many questions have also been raised around Geragos and Kesha's lawsuit. In October, the ​Los Angeles Times ​described how Luke has countersued Kesha and including quotes from the producer's camp that claimed the singer, her manager, and her mother—the songwriter Pebe Sebert, who has penned hits for Dolly Parton and Pitbull—have tried to extort Luke to get Kesha out of her recording and publishing contract with him.

"Kesha's lawsuit is a spectacular and outrageous fiction that will go down in flames," Luke's lawyer Christine Lepara told the Times. "As the truth emerges, this sad and misguided smear campaign will only hurt Kesha. This is hardly the first time that Kesha and her mother have threatened Luke with an extortionist scheme to ruin his reputation publicly unless he let her out of her contract."

Statements made by Kesha in a 2011 deposition from a previous lawsuit between her and her former managers at Das Communications raise even more questions around her accusations against Luke. In the deposition, Kesha is quoted as denying Luke ever drugged or assaulted her—a lawyer asks her if Luke ever gave her a roofie and she says, "No."

Then the attorney asks Kesha, "Did you ever tell your mother that you woke up in a hotel room in [Luke's] bed and don't recall what happened that night?"

"I don't remember," Kesha says.

Later in the same deposition, the attorney asks Kesha if Luke does drugs: "I don't know if he does drugs," she says.

The stories of Gaga and the countless other who've come forward demonstrate (if anyone doubted the fact) that there are a lot of perverts in the entertainment industry. Right now, however, it's certainly not clear that Luke is one of them. 

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on ​Twi​tter.

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Photo of a presumably sober cat via Flickr user ​Elvissa

Today acid is just one of many drugs humans take because they are having a bad time being sober. People drop it at the ​Kentucky Derby to make a weird experience weirder, they use it to ​quit smoking, they store a bunch of it in their houses and ​treat it as art. But back in the 60s and 70s Lysergic acid diethylamide was considered a chemical compound worthy of serious study by scientists and philosophers alike, which is why Dr. Barry Jacobs gave it to cats. 

Jacobs is a professor at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, and in 1976 he and a team from the university's psychology department set out to study how LSD affected felines. That might seem like a bizarre research topic, but hey, it was 1976, they had this acid, they had these cats—what else were they going to do?

In a ​series of ​articles published in pharmacological journals, Jacobs detailed the experiments, which involved administering between ten and 50 micrograms/kg of LSD in a number of felines over the course of several months and observing their behavioral responses. Dosing animals with psychedelics wasn't really a novel concept (monkeys, dolphins, and an ill-fated elephant named Tusko were also been subjected to ​LSD-related research), but the cat studies at least lent support to existing theories about drug tolerance and, more importantly for Jacobs, the function of a specific serotonin receptor that's thought to be the "critical site of action in producing hallucinogenesis" for drugs like acid.

As far as ethics are concerned, there's no denying that spiking Lucy's water bowl with mind-altering diamonds seems like a project for a particularly perverse slacker in a Judd Apatow movie, but Jacobs maintains that the animal subjects were treated humanely and cared for by a scrupulous group of experts in a controlled environment. To get some insight into the findings, I called Jacobs at his Princeton office to ask what he learned from watching cats trip all those years ago.

VICE: So what do cats look like when they're on acid? Did they seem to have good trips?
​Dr. Barry Jacobs: With a dog, I could've told you, right? Because he'd be wagging his tail and have a big smile on his face. The one thing I can tell you definitively is that none of them seemed fearful, meaning we studied cats for years in my laboratory and what a typical fearful cat would do is crawl into the back of the cage. These are all done in cat cages, you know, big, large—where they could move around, but nice and clean. They were well-fed, watered, etc. None of them crawled to the back of the chamber and stood there, looking out at you in a fearful manner. That didn't happen. Some of them ran around like crazy people, bounding around. Can I say they were happy? No, I can't tell about happiness. But they certainly seemed—can I say they enjoyed it? They were really bounding around as opposed to having behaviors that looked fearful—they just didn't do that. And a lot of them stared for long periods of time.

Was there any particular reason you used cats for these experiments?
​To study the response and expression of behavior in a mouse seems almost unbelievable to me—even in a rat. But with cats, these are highly expressive animals, both behaviorally and in terms of emotion, and so that was the reason. We had literally thousands of rats in our experimental building in those days, so rats would not have been a problem, but I just thought: Evaluating the behavior of a rat? I don't think so.

In the paper, you talk about how the cats reacted to the drug with "limb flicks" and "abortive grooming." Why were those behavioral traits significant?
​Well, first of all: Who knows? I mean, seriously. So let me give you an interpretation that is probably correct—but again, who knows? First of all, these are naturally occurring behaviors in cats; in other words, these are not unique behaviors that no one has ever seen. But what the drug did was it brought them out in waves. If you watched a kitty cat for 12 hours a day, it might never do [these things], or it might do it once or twice, but here some of them were doing it like 100 times an hour, so it really was a drug-produced phenomena.

So why were they licking their paws so much?
Maybe—and this is a guess—maybe [it had something to do with] increased sensitivity to their paws. That is, they felt something crawling on their paws, which would be very consistent with a hallucinatory-like interpretation.

After the study was published, did you get any backlash from, say, animal rights groups?
​No. This was so long ago... But once we believed that we had figured out the primary site of action of these drugs, that's when I lost interest in it, and so we just quit on our own. And it was just too expensive. See, we were using these cats from a drug company, and to buy them ourselves would have been very expensive. I mean, when we bought and used cats in my laboratory, we used them for many, many months if not years.

Would you call yourself a cat person?
​Not particularly. I'm not an animal person, even. I don't want to hassle because of any animal. I don't want to have to walk a dog, especially in the winter; I don't want a cat messing up my house. They're OK. If I go to someone else's house and they have a dog, I love playing around with them and petting them. Maybe when I get old and decrepit, I'd like to have a dog to keep me company.

Follow Kyle Jaeger on ​Twitter.