The final days of America in 2014 will bear witness to nation​wide protests over the dual decisions to not indict white police officers in the separate deaths of unarmed black men. It's the tangible seal on a quasi-apo​calyptic year in which villains like the Islamic State, Ebola, and Bill Cosby dominated the news cycle—reading headlines about torture r​eports, Congressional gridlock, and the hazards of climate change, it can seem like whatever social progress has been made in the past five decades has all been for nothing. But 2014 is also a moment in our national consciousness where everyone seems to agree that something bad has happened. And in New York City yesterday, the movement that has arisen from that collective anger was out in full force.

In the early afternoon, approximately 25,000 protesters of all shapes, races, and sizes converged on Manhattan's Washington Square Park for the "Millions March," with a planned route through Midtown and back down to 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD. The crush of people was so dense it took nearly an hour and a half for the park to fully empty.

[body_image width='1800' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='anti-policeviolence-protests-took-over-new-york-city-yesterday-body-image-1418576203.jpg' id='11280']

Protesters fill Washington Square Park. Photos by Jason Bergman

"We want people to shut down their cities for justice," the march's organizers said in a press release. "We are continuing where the freedom fighters of the Civil Rights Movement left. We are a new generation of young multiracial activists willing to take up the torch and we're not going to stand for this anymore."

That same day, Reverend Al Sharpton and his National Action Network organized a somewhat small​er civil rights march in Washington, DC, but though both events drew inspiration and outrage from the same well, the crowd in New York was younger and less tied to the activist old guard that Sharpton can be said to represent.

"Why go to Washington? Congress is closed on Saturdays—they're not there," Calvin Hunt, a Harlem native, told me at the Millions March. "It's a waste of time and gas. It happened here in our backyard, so we march here."

​

There were many families on hand yesterday, and Hunt brought his two young sons with him, almost as if to prep them for what he sees as the realities of the system. "I want them to see what's really behind the curtains in New York City," he said.

Taking off down Fifth and Sixth avenues, the noisy mass repeatedly came into contact with the participants of SantaCon, which the Village Voice recentl​y described as New York's "most reviled bar crawl." An occasional "Blue Lives Matter!", the slogan of the pro-cop counter-protest, was heard emanating from a Santa every so often, but nobody seemed to care. The interactions between drunken revelers and determined protesters remained civil for the most part, though they did inspire a chant that went, "No Justice, No Christmas!"​

[body_image width='1000' height='801' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='anti-policeviolence-protests-took-over-new-york-city-yesterday-body-image-1418576625.jpg' id='11289']

K. Lamonte Jones

K. Lamonte Jones of Brooklyn College wore chains around his neck and hands to symbolize "embodied slavery." When asked if he sees the protest movement slowing down anytime soon, he referenced Bacon​'s Rebellion, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Protestant Reformation as examples of momentum. To him, the Black Lives Matter movement has the same moral force. "It's not a white or black problem," he said. "It's a human problem."

There were plenty of ideas about what could be done to solve this problem percolating on the ground. Nicholas, another protester I spoke with, proposed that the US should begin a ten-year national dialogue in 2016 that discusses the state of violence and civil liberties in our country. That conversation would culminate in a second Constitutional Convention in 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence. "The US is incredibly good at saying it'll do things but then not," he said. "And trying to stop movements in their tracks, but not this one."

[body_image width='1800' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='anti-policeviolence-protests-took-over-new-york-city-yesterday-body-image-1418576491.jpg' id='11285']

Throughout the march, the NYPD maintained a heavy presence, both in numbers and barricades, and the occasion was mostly peaceful. Tension arose on the Brook​lyn Bridge, however, after the organized protest ended and an offshoot took matters into its own hands. Beforehand, as the crowds entered 1 Police Plaza, a small group surrounded a some police officers, holding their hands up in protest as one cop tried to move them. "He thinks this is a game!" the crowd shouted. "This ain't a game!" (The NYPD said last night that two of its officers were assaulted during the​ protest, and one person was arrested.)

[body_image width='1800' height='1200' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='anti-policeviolence-protests-took-over-new-york-city-yesterday-body-image-1418576341.jpg' id='11284']

Ron Davis addresses the crowd

But the most telling part of the day came at its end, when the families of victims, including ​Ramarley Graham, ​Alberta Spruill, and others, stood at the center of thousands, using the mic check technique to amplify their voices. Ron Davis, the father of ​Jordan Davis, the 17-year-old shot dead by a white man at a gas station in 2012, addressed the crowd first.

"My name is Ron Davis and my son was killed for loud music," he said, tears visible in his eyes. "Yell my son's name. Jordan..." The crowd responded "DAVIS!" a number of times, as Ron's voice got louder and louder, until he burst out, "That's my baby!"

Follow John Surico on Twit​t​er.

[body_image width='1500' height='1001' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='what-are-americans-terrified-of-this-week-214-body-image-1418577942.jpg' id='11291']

Protesters in Minneapolis calling for police reform on December 13. Photo via Flickr user ​Fibonacci Blue

Welcome back to the Fear Digest, our weekly roundup of the top ten terrors lurking in the back of the American imagination.Read last week's column here

10. Charles C. Johnson
​This week the political media suddenly became fixate​d on Charles C. Johnson, a formerly obscure conservative blogger who runs a website called GotNews.com. The reason for this attention—which included profiles in the Washington Post and Politico Magazine—was that Johnson doxxed "Jackie," the subject of the infamously incorrect Rolling Stone story about rape on college campuses. He revealed what he said was her real name and spread around what he claimed were photos of her—except it wasn't her in the pictures. That combination of maliciousness and inaccuracy is sort of his trademark style—"he seems to make a lot of mistakes, even for the freewheeling, don't-wait-just-publish environment of digital media," wrote Jacob Silverman in Politico. Johnson would be an absolute joke if he weren't just a little bit scary. If you end up in the public eye for any reason, this crusading self-important blowhard might just dig up and release your personal information and accuse you of all sorts ​of BS. One-man witchhunts like him are why people don't trust journalists.
Last week's rank: Unranked

9. Cars That Spy on You
​Most of us don't have to be worried about malicious journalists roaming the social media landscape like packs of factually-challenged jackals. Pretty much everyone, however, has a car, which means that everyone has a vehicle that is quietly tracking their movement and press of the brake pedal. Yup, our cars' increasingly complex computer systems are storing our data. From the Washington Post:

Some fear that this automotive data could someday be seized by government spy agencies or used against helpless drivers by insurers or worse. How automakers use, store and protect even the most mundane data collected from our increasingly smart vehicles is going to become even more important as cars start talking to everything around them — from other cars to sensors embedded in the road to nearby businesses. Manufacturers are taking their first steps to safeguard this information. But even they acknowledge there's a lot they don't know how to do.

Last week's rank: Unranked

8. The NSA
​Not that the carless among us have any more privacy. NSA reformers lost yet more ground this week, with Congress both making it easier for the secretive intelligence agency to collect Americans' data and officially enshrined into law parts of a Reagan-era executive order that authorized many of the NSA's data collection practices in the first place.
​Last week's rank: 8

7. Terrorist Attacks Over the Torture Report
​Speaking of things that keep America safe, early this week there was a big stink over the "torture report," a summary of a classified 6,000-plus page investigation into the horrible things done in the name of national security after 9/11. Though anyone who watched Zero Dark Thirty already knew that the CIA was not exactly playing patty cake with its detainees, publicly releasing the details was controversial—so much so that officials warned of possible attacks on Americans and American facilities abroad, and US embassies around the world beefed up their defenses. (Possibly as a result of these countermeasures, there weren't any significant post–torture report attacks, though some US allies were all like, Um, did you do this stuff at black sites within our borders?)
​Last week's rank: Unranked 

6. The Torture Report Being Unpatriotic
​The debate over the torture report wasn't just about whether releasing information on " enhanced interrogation techniques" would result in specific negative consequences for US foreign policy—it was about whether ordinary Americans should know about this stuff at all. In one Fox News discussion that went viral thanks to its sheer inanity, a set of well-coiffed pundits decided that they didn't need or want to know the sort of transparency the torture report represents. Furthermore, the whole report was apparently a political play by Democrats to distract from the real issues and make people think America is "not awesome." 
​Last week's rank: Unranked

5. Being Shot by Random Strangers
​If you want proof of America's awesomeness, holy Jesus do not do a Google News search for "shooting," which during this relatively ordinary week in December would have netted you results for a gun battle in New Haven; a violence-plagued bar in Macon, Georgia; a fresh batch of shootings in Chicago; and a possibly gang-related incident at a Portland, Oregon, high school that put three kids in the hospital.
Last week's rank: Unranked

4. The Islamic State
​At least our homegrown violence was seemingly random this week, as opposed to the planned and organized awfulness of the Islamic State, which released what appears to be a horrific guide for how to treat their female slaves.
​Last week's rank: 6

3. Undercover Cops at Protests
​I'm not saying that embedding undercover officers inside protest movements, as the Oakland Police Department reportedly did this week, is a terrible idea that demonstrates a rather shocking contempt for citizens' First Amendment rights—but if you are doing that, it might be a good idea to avoid visuals like these: 

[tweet text="Cop draws gun on demonstrators in dramatic photos at overnight protest via @reuterspictures: http://t.co/EIjmB61afD pic.twitter.com/shDr1uzgIU" byline="— NBC News Pictures (@NBCNewsPictures)" user_id="NBCNewsPictures" tweet_id="543031210243813376" tweet_visual_time="December 11, 2014"]

Last week's rank: Unranked

2. Cops Planting Guns on Innocent People
​On Thursday, the New York Times reported on an even more alarming case of potential police misconduct—some people are saying that NYPD cops in Flatbush, Brooklyn, have been framing suspects by planting guns on them. Well, that's bad! Already one of these cases has been dismissed, and judges have apparently been extremely skeptical of police accounts in others.
​Last week's rank: Unranked

1. The Cops in General
​You might argue that cops who brandish guns at crowds of demonstrators or plant weapons on suspects are just a few bad apples—but increasingly, people around the country are calling attention to the underlying rottenness of the whole metaphorical apple orchard, the whole racist, classist, casually violent system of roots. It's not just that we've seen a streak of unfortunate encounters between (usually white) officers and (usually black) civilians lately, and it's not just that these cops are almost never held accountable for their misdeeds. It's that those within the system seem to greet this sort of state-sanctioned violence with a these-things-happen kind of shrug. In the past week everyone from doctors to law students to Congressional staffers to mothers of police shooting victims have been literally taking to the streets and demanding that the authorities figure out a way to enforce laws that doesn't leave so many bodies in its wake. The really scary thing? All of this might not be enough to change anything for the better. 
​Last week's rank: Unranked

Follow Harry Cheadle on ​Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

​Remember the CCTV camera that refused to film anything but sunsets after it was sprayed by MDMA vapor from an unknown passing drone? Or the multiple car pileup caused when a lorry full of bugle jackknifed on the Silk Road?

Hmm. Me neither. Propaganda, myths or completely making things up are all de rigueur when it comes to drug stories. This year we've been told that ​cannabis is as addictive as heroin, Stephen Fry is ​responsible for the misery in Mexico and that Breaking Bad ​created a crystal meth epidemic in Europe. In the drug zone, everyone is under some kind of influence, whether it's journalists with an agenda to chase or scaremongering politicians with votes to win. Or you. On drugs.

So, for some end-of-year clarity, here is your scratch 'n' sniff guide to what really went down in the world of drugs in 2014.

[body_image width='728' height='531' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='what-we-learned-about-drugs-in-2014-991-body-image-1418646474.jpg' id='11415']

Guests at the launch of The UK Psychedelic Society

THE 'CELEB DRUG DEALER' STING IS DEAD
​Fake Sheikh reporter Mazher Mahmood's humiliation at the trial of Tulisa Contostavlos in July and in a Panorama exposé in November was a long time coming. For years this complete asshole has been writing stories making out that various celebrities are drug dealers when they are not, just so he can look good and be mysterious on the back of ruined lives.

Tulisa was accused of cocaine supply after an elaborate Sun on Sunday sting last year, in which Mahmood pretended to be a jet-setting movie mogul. He offered Tulisa a chance of the big time, bombarded her with booze and promises—if only she could get him some cocaine. In the end, drunk and eager to impress, she capitulated and the story, "Tulisa's Cocaine Deal Shame," was on the front page.

But, in a ruling that will hopefully put an end to this stupid sport, the judge decided that Mahmood, the chief prosecution witness, had lied in court. Now Mahmood faces charges of perjury and entrapment and I sincerely hope he goes down.

It's clear from the Panorama documentary that Mahmood, who comes across as a giggling, snidy sonofabitch, used similar tactics to sleaze baggies out of other victims, such as the actor ​John Alford, who got nine months for two grams of cocaine, and Page 3 model Emma Morgan.

What is amazing is that for decades Mahmood not only hoodwinked his targets but also the police, the CPS, judges and the public into thinking that these people were big-time drug dealers deserving of a lengthy prison sentence. You would hope that the era of the bullshit drug sting is dead and buried.

[body_image width='723' height='297' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='what-we-learned-about-drugs-in-2014-991-body-image-1418635795.png' id='11345']These suits are your new weed dealers

CAPITALISTS HAVE HIJACKED THE DRUG REVOLUTION
​When idealist drug legalizers campaigned in the 60s and 70s for the human right to freely take drugs in the quest to broaden the mind, many did not think they would be alive to see widespread legalization of weed in the US.

But as state by state decides to legalize marijuana and reap the taxes from the green dollar, some tokers have seen their hippie dreams turn to dust. In the brave new world of ganja capitalism, pot peddlers are more likely to be venture capitalists than hippie co-operatives, and I suppose this was inevitable. Marijuana has become a commodity like anything else.

The people behind ​the Bob Marley brand of weed are not a collective of expert Jamaican Rasta growers, but a team of white, Yale-educated private equity guys from Seattle.

And in November there was a massive trade convention in Las Vegas that attracted hundreds of investors and venture capitalists all after a slice of a business that is expected to be worth $20 billion by the end of the decade.

[body_image width='1024' height='682' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='what-we-learned-about-drugs-in-2014-991-body-image-1418635964.jpg' id='11346']Could be E, could be cat laxatives. It's very hard to tell with stock photos. Image ​via Flickr user Me

BRITAIN IS DRIFTING IN A SEA OF POTENT E
​In the late 2000s most ecstasy pills contained mere remnants of MDMA; they were nearly all BZP. Not happy with that, kids on council estates in places like Blackburn started popping 20 a day in stairwells and on street corners alongside cans of cider. Other, more nerdy types started fiddling around with research chemicals and people started buying an E substitute, mephedrone, over the internet—the rest is history.

But now it's a different story. Tests on pills confiscated at festivals and clubs since the summer have revealed that ecstasy purity in the UK is at its highest for a decade. The average pill now contains 100 mg of MDMA, about five times as much as they did in 2009. MDMA powder is also becoming more potent.

Health workers are worried that people used to popping three weaker pills a night could end up overdosing on the harder stuff. At one two-day festival this summer there were nine cardiac arrests from MDMA and deaths from the drug have been rising.

On online drug forums, ecstasy users discuss the easy availability, especially over the web, of pills containing more than 200 mg of MDMA, such as Chupa Chups, Nespressos, purple and orange Magnets, and red Bugattis.

[body_image width='1200' height='1034' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='what-we-learned-about-drugs-in-2014-991-body-image-1418636077.jpg' id='11348']Image via ​Imagens Evangelicas

THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T USE FALLING DRUG USE AS PROOF THAT ITS DRUG POLICY IS WORKING—BECAUSE IT'S STARTED RISING AGAIN
​The Home Office has for a few years now been smugly batting away accusations that its drug policies are imperfect by robotically quoting "falling drug use figures."

Whenever a report has landed on David Cameron's desk providing overwhelming evidence that his drug policies are ruining lives, killing people, and wasting taxpayers' money, the response has been the same: "Drug use is falling. Our policies are working." If it ain't broke, don't fix it is the kind of theme at play here.

But in July this stance started looking a bit wobbly as the government's own statistics revealed that—after several years of falling drug use—annoyingly, for them, it had started to rise again, particularly among the young. As have the number of drug-related hospital admissions and deaths. So what do they say now?

I've noticed since then that the Home Office's usual drug policy rebuttal statement, "falling drug use" etc., activated in the face of any well-researched evidence about drug policy from around the globe, has changed to " long term falling drug use shows our policy..." Very clever. It seems they're hoping this is a blip so they won't have to read those big reports containing complicated things like evidence.

But how long can this soft-shoe shuffle, the refusal to accept some stark truths about drugs, carry on if drug use keeps rising? Probably forever. When cocaine use was rising in the early 2000s, the only policy change for Blair was to get chummy with Britpop, Britart, and Cool Britannia: the cocaine trade's biggest customers.

[body_image width='720' height='540' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='what-we-learned-about-drugs-in-2014-991-body-image-1418646666.jpg' id='11417']

Nancy Lee, who died after prolonged ketamine abuse at the age of 23

KETAMINE'S DARK SIDE
​In March, ​a 23-year-old woman named Nancy Lee died at her mom's home in Brighton, England, after five years of intensive ketamine abuse. An investigation into the circumstances around her death revealed a hidden world of heavy end ketamine use that is far, far removed from its usual reputation as a wacky post-club hallucinogen for intellectuals.

In cities like Brighton and Bristol, teenagers are taking so much K that their internal organs are collapsing. A rising number have been forced into bladder-stretching operations and removals, while others have been driven to suicide. This year official figures showed that ketamine was rising in popularity faster than any other drug in the UK.

Although 2014 witnessed a big K drought (sparked by a new law clamping down on suppliers in India), offering people who'd been snorting ten grams a day the chance to sort themselves out bit, undoubtedly supply will return.

IN THE UK, DRUG TAKERS ARE STILL HATED
​When Stephen Fry went on the promo rounds for his new autobiography, the hook was that he had snorted lines in Buckingham Palace, the House of Commons, and in virtually every private members club in the country. Which is fine. But when he was questioned about it he said it was OK because his coke taking did not harm anyone apart from himself—which was a dumb thing for such a clever man to say.

He was fried alive in the media. Did he not know that the drug trade leaves a bloody trail from Dalston to Bogota? asked some commentators, although I think blaming him for the horrors of a prohibition-fueled global drug trade is a bit naïve.

But as Fry, those two spliff-smoking One Direction lads, and the X Factor ketamine face bloke found out, in the UK, if you are caught taking drugs or admit taking drugs, you will be reviled. The reason this doesn't really happen in America, where Miley Cyrus and Rihanna are always going on about drugs, is that over there no one pays that much attention to the Daily Mail when it starts moaning about it being a bad influence on young people while shoving the offending pot smoking images right in the faces of... young people.

THE DRUG-SEX CRIME HORRORS HAVE NOT LET UP
In America, one of TV's favorite father figures, Bill Cosby, ​stands accused of doping and raping young women who trusted him. Intoxicants have always been tools of persuasion, intimidation, and sex exploitation. This year, the Cosby allegations aside, we got a grim reminder of that on the streets of Britain.

In November, two gangs of Somali men were convicted of the systematic exploitation and rape of vulnerable teenage girls as young as 13 in Bristol. Some of the men groomed the girls by pretending they were their boyfriends and giving them free khat and skunk. They turned one of the girl's apartments into a crack house. Soon, the victims were required to perform sex acts in order to receive the money, drugs, alcohol, and gifts they had been bombarded with before.

The Bristol case arrived on the back of an investigation into a pedophile ring said to include politicians and celebrities, who'd meet at drug-fueled sex parties in Westminster during the 80s. Then, in August, a report was published into widespread child sexual exploitation of over 1,000 girls in Rotherham, south Yorkshire.

The investigation revealed a familiar modus operandi to many of the grooming cases that have come to light in the last few years: drugs are utilized to control isolated young girls, many of whom had been taken into care because of traumatic childhoods. This year it dawned on us that all the time we were worrying about the overblown scare story of drinks being spiked with Rohypnol or GHB in pubs and bars, easier targets were being picked off at will in the backstreets.

SHITTY SYNTHETIC WEED HAS LEFT OUR PRISON SYSTEM IN MELTDOWN
​This year saw a rise in violence, health emergencies, and even lockdowns in prisons because of inmates' new obsession with synthetic cannabinoids. Drugs like Black Mamba and Spice, as illegal on the inside as they are on the outside, have taken over the heroin substitute Subutex as the drug of choice for a rising percentage of Britain's 80,000 prisoners. This is because—unlike other illegal drugs—it does not come up in prison drug tests. It's also dirt cheap for family and friends to buy on the streets. But unlike the usual drugs, such as the heroin and cannabis that inmates have been managing to smuggle into prisons via French kissing, corrupt screws, or getting it thrown over the wall inside dead pigeons, chemabis is far from soporific. It's unpredictable, potent, and addictive.

The drug, as the Chief Inspector of Prisons has found during virtually every jail visited this year, has been responsible for heating up the notoriously combustible prison drug market and scores of inmates have been badly injured as gangs struggle to dominate the market. On top of this chaos, which has caused one prison in the Midlands to be on lockdown for some months now, some prisoners have been physically and mentally collapsing as a result of caning these nasty concoctions, created in China by spraying rancid research chemicals on bits of grubby foliage.

Follow Max Daly on ​Twitter.

More from VICE:

​What We Learned About London in 2014

​Narcomania: Max Daly's VICE Drugs Column

​The Worst Types of People I Met While Working in a Crap Pub

Photographer J​odi Bieber has spent the past 20 years shooting some of South Africa's darkest corners. Through her work she's examined domestic violence, body image, and the lives of disaffected youths growing up in city slums. But she's also taken care to seek out other aspects of the country, and balance images of its harsh realities with moments of levity from the daily lives of regular people.

VICE: Your work deals with a lot of different subjects. Do you see it as having an overarching narrative?
Jodi Bieber: I started my career prior to South Africa's 1994 elections, so my photos move between darkness and light. It's sort of a history of South Africa and a history of my state of mind.

Photography was something that really let me to explore my country. People are actually good, we all have good and bad. Some of the people I photographed were rapists or murderers or women who had been abused. I didn't walk into an area with suspicion, I was just interested and people got that.

South Africa is often presented as a very extreme place. Were you conscious about breaking down that stereotype?
​Definitely. If you look at my more recent work in ​Soweto​ it's taking away that stereotype. It's not just this dusty, crime-ridden, poverty-stricken place. This is a place where 3 million people live, and they're proud of their area. 

So how did you try to present it?
​The youth in Soweto, compared to their parents, have their own identity. There's fashion and music. If you look at my picture of a mother and daughter in Soweto you can see the old and the new generation. It's a place they feel proud of.

In pretty stark contrast to that, you've also shot a series on women who have killed their abusive husbands. How was that to shoot?
​I could only do that in a day. I did some intensive interviews and photographed the women in prison. In a way, I understood it and it doesn't surprise me. These women go through major abuse and they feel they don't have any other way out. One woman is there for life, she paid someone to kill her husband, but her husband made her sleep with his best friend in front of him. I guess some people just don't know how to get out of it.

You focused on women in a different way in ​Real Beauty​. There you explored how far we have to go from the media to define our notions of beauty.
​I suppose, being in my 40s, I felt more comfortable with who I am. I had listened to a BBC interview about how more black women in South Africa were becoming anorexic, because they were taking on Western body shape views. Then I met a model on a plane to Paris. She opened up a Vogue and told me everyone had this and that wrong with them. All of these experiences inspired me to put out posters asking women to speak out on real beauty and to photograph them in their underwear.

I liked that you followed that by photographing men in their underwear too.
​You can see how vulnerable men actually are, they're as bad as women. What is interesting is that you are so much more used to women being exposed, I think this exhibition was uncomfortable for many people. The project was about quietness and not showing men in a performative way—we always see them doing something or being something.

Follow Laura Rodriguez Castro on ​Twitter.

I finally figured out my type when it comes to men. After several years of having no clue what the hell I was doing, I got it. As it turns out, I like a guy who is eager to please me, let's me boss him around, compliments me frequently, and wants me to sit on his face for a long period of time while expecting nothing in return. 

Turns out I have a fetish. 

I never felt like I did, but when something that attracts you requires you to join a "community" of "like-minded individuals," that's a big giveaway that you're in kink territory. I can't have a meet-cute with a potential lover at the local coffee shop. I mean, maybe I can, but it's kind of hard to bring up female domination with a guy you've just met—especially if he won't shut up about the third draft of his groundbreaking screenplay.

Female domination, in its simplest definition, is a female-led relationship. I had no idea this is what I wanted until I met someone on Tinder who wanted to be my sex slave. Feel free to use this as a success story in your advertising, Tinder execs.

Before meeting Winston (not his real name), I assumed what most people assume about domination and submission. The female dom, or dominatrix, always wears leather and impossible-to-walk-in high-heels. She carries a whip, then beats and humiliates men into obeying her. This is definitely not wrong. In fact, last year I took a financial domination workshop that did more to reaffirm these beliefs than disprove them. It wasn't until Winston, however, that I eventually learned there is more to female domination than strictly spanking and ball gags. 

Winston (starting to regret calling him this) and I dated for a few weeks before any dom/sub talk happened. I definitely knew something was up, though. I would occasionally ask him to drive me somewhere, and he would do it without complaining. He'd cook meals for me, and massage my feet without my asking. These are things I should have realized were out of the ordinary.

Before Winston, dating was hard work. I struggled to get any sort of genuine affection from my supposed boyfriends, who often disregarded me and never made our relationship a priority. Men never sought after me the way I sought after them, and it made me feel like your standard pile of grade-A shit. When the occasional guy did show normal signs of affection, I took it as him being creepy. Wait, you want to hold my hand? In public? What is wrong with you? Are you a serial killer? 

It got to a point where I felt that dating might not be for me. I was done seeking men out, and was devoted to working on myself. Outside of relationships, I was a different person—a lot more confident, and more sure of her self-worth. For a long time I convinced myself that if I got into a relationship, I would lose this person.

In fact, Winston happened on accident. I thought it'd be a good idea for me to stay in the practice of going on dates, which was the main reason I even kept my Tinder account. It was surprising to me that we started dating, and more surprising that I was not taking his adoration as a sign of freakishness. 

One night, after drinking an entire bottle of wine together, our conversation somehow tilted toward BDSM. Winston jumped on the opportunity to tell me that he wanted to be dominated. Being drunk gave me the self-confidence required to give this a whirl. We went directly to my bed, and I began berating him. I don't remember most of what I said, but the gist of it was: "You have a small penis and you're a garbage person." Because I have such a wondrous way with words, Winston immediately got a fat boner. I wasn't sure what else to do, so I figured i'd spank him for "being bad." It felt uncomfortable for me to say this, because we both knew full well he had done nothing to deserve punishment. If he asked me why he was being punished, I don't know what I would have said. Uh, for telling me you think Frasier is boring? 

I searched around my room for some sort of tool for spanking. My extensive search eventually led me to a sandal. The " ​a-ha" moment I had that instant made me feel like some sort of cavewoman discovering that a simple rock makes it easier to crack open a hard-shelled nut. In a certain way, I too was "cracking open a nut." Nope. Nevermind. I take that back.

The spanking began, and Winston was overjoyed. His fantasy was finally being fulfilled. I, on the other hand, was feeling just OK about it. I didn't particularly like the forced and extremely corny "you've been a bad boy" sort of language. I didn't even enjoy the physical violence, which really took me by surprise. Truthfully, what did turn me on was that he was turned on. I've come to realize that I really enjoy being the person some men have asked to explore their fetishes with. It makes me feel like some sort of fetish whisperer.

Winston and I kept our relationship up for a few months. He bought toys for me to use on him, such as a ball gag, handcuffs, and cock rings. As much as I disdained for this part of our dom/sub dynamic, I told myself it was necessary. I was getting off on making demands, being served, and owning his cock (also known as "cock ownership"). When we were apart, we established that he would have to text me and ask me for permission if he wanted to masturbate. The only time this didn't turn me on was when he texted me at seven in the morning. Honestly, dude? Could you at least eat some sort of breakfast first?

One night, I got out of bed to use the bathroom, slipped on the ball gag resting on my floor, and fell right on my ass. I'll admit, this was a hilarious pratfall. It looked like something out of a Three Stooges porn, which I hope to God doesn't actually exist. However, it was also my breaking point. I spent the next day thinking hard about what I was doing. Am I really being the dom if I'm bending to his will? I wasn't sure if I was genuinely enjoying this, or if I was yet again putting my significant other's feelings over my own. I broke up with Winston a few days later.

At this point, I was at a complete loss. If I'm not a dominatrix, what am I? Not knowing whether or not I was into BDSM gave me a legitimate existential crisis. I remember going home one weekend to visit my mom. I watched her yelling at my step-dad for not barbecuing the burgers just right. I thought of my grandmother and how she was with my grandfather. That's when I thought, Maybe I'm not a dominatrix. Maybe I'm just a Jewish woman finally realizing her destiny.

I left it at that for several months. Until a few weeks ago, when I read a message from someone who wanted me to financially dominate him. I had no idea who this person was, but I told him the truth: I wasn't sure if domination was for me. I explained that I don't enjoy humiliating subs, and his response was shockingly enthusiastic. He said that he prefers not to be humiliated, and just wants me to have his money and receive gifts from him. Well, in that case...

I briefly gave it a go with financial domination and got a quality juicer, as well as some cute pairs of shoes via Amazon gift cards. I still didn't know exactly who this guy was. I did know that he didn't have a lot of money, so I decided to call it quits. As much as he was turned on by giving me stuff, I didn't want to be responsible for his bankruptcy. This did inspire me to set up a ​Fetlife account, however. I wrote explicitly in my bio that I wanted to dominate, but not humiliate or engage in physical torture. From there, a slew of messages appeared in my inbox. Several submissive men had responded that they either preferred not to be humiliated, or were fine with doing things on my terms. My terms. Fucking duh.

Now I've immersed myself in this world once more, this time with more of an idea of what I'm actually doing, and what I actually want. If it wasn't for Winston, I would never have delved into domination and submission in the first place. Things didn't work out between us, but now I know that female domination has nothing to do with following a specific set of rules, and somewhere out there is the perfect sub for me. Both in human form, and in sandwich form. 

Follow Alison Stevenson on ​Twitter.

Mossack Fonseca headquarters in Panama. Photo by the author

One of the simplest ways to crack down on ​organized crime and money laundering, most cops or FBI agents will tell you, is to make it harder for crooks to ​create so-called "shell"companies. These firms—typically set up in an offshore haven by the crook's attorney or bagman—are designed to hide the identity of their real owners and allow people to move money around the world without it being traced back to them.

So when guns, drugs, or human beings are trafficked, or a politician takes a bribe, or a company pulls off a tax scam or Ponzi scheme or ​pump-and-dump stock swindle, you can be virtually certain that a shell firm was used to move the dirty money and cover the trail. According to Dennis Lormel, the first chief of the FBI's Terrorist Financing Operations Section and a retired 28-year Bureau veteran, "Terrorists, organized crime groups and pariah states need access to the international banking system. Shell firms are how they get it."

My sto​ry in the December issue of VICE reports on the activities of one particularly prolific shell-company creator, Mossack Fonseca, a law firm with operations in dozens of countries around the globe that has set up companies used by an astonishing assortment of money launderers, business oligarchs, and cronies of some of the world's worst dictators.

When you hear the term "offshore haven," you tend to think about places like Panama, where Mossack Fonseca is headquartered, or the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, or Switzerland. But as I reported in the story, the United States is the second easiest country, after Kenya, in which to establish an anonymous shell firm, according to a a DC group called Global Financial Integrity. That's probably why Mossack Fonseca sets up so many shell firms in the US, specifically in Florida, Wyoming, and Nevada, where it works with closely affiliated local offices.

A recent re​​p​or​t by the group Global Witness documented dozens of scams and crimes pulled off with American shell companies, ranging from massive Medicare fraud by an Armenian-American crime syndicate to money laundering by Mexico's Los Zetas drug cartel (which used some of the laundered funds to ​buy race horses, including one named "Number One Cartel," that won millions of dollars at the track).

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who is retiring next year, has long tried to pass legislation that would make it harder to incorporate anonymous companies in the US. He had ​support from groups like the Fraternal Order of Police, the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and various financial watchdogs, but his efforts haven't led anywhere. This was in large part due to opposition from lawmakers in those states that rake in especially big revenues through incorporating companies, especially Delaware and Nevada.

If I were a real crook or bagman, experts I spoke with advised, I'd "layer" my money laundering network by setting up a firm in one haven and subsidiaries of it elsewhere.

But just how easy is it to establish a bogus, anonymously owned shell entity in the United States that could be used to funnel money offshore to evade taxes or finance terrorism or crime? I decided to see for myself.

If I were a real crook or bagman, experts I spoke with advised, I'd "layer" my money laundering network by setting up a firm in one haven and subsidiaries of it elsewhere. I started out in Delaware, where ​sec​​recy rules are as tight as anywhere in the world. My initial choice as registered agent—the company that files the requisite paperwork, collects fees to be paid to the state, and sometimes appoints "nominee" directors—was CT at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington. That's the listed address for more than 200,000 companies, from corporate giants like Google, Coca-Cola, and General Motors to countless anonymous shell vehicles like the one I planned to create.

CT was a bit pricey, so I went with Agents and Corporations, Inc., which is also headquartered on Orange Street. Company president John Williams talks about why Delaware is such a great place for companies to incorporate in a video on the firm's webs​ite. "When you're an officer or a director, many other states impose liability on you for making bad decisions, whereas in Delaware you're protected by the Delaware Business Judgment Rule," he says. "What that does is provide a shield for you... so you can take risks without the threat of lawsuits from stockholders from those business risks being a bad decision."

Of course, there was no need to actually go to Delaware to form my company. The whole process can be done in 15 minutes online or—as I did, on October 28—over the phone. It cost $292. I had to provide the name of a contact person—in a real-life scenario this would have been a lawyer, and hence I would have been protected by attorney-client privilege, or a trusted bagman—but for the purposes of this story I just wanted to keep my name hidden, so I had a friend in Washington serve as my front. (Her name doesn't appear anywhere in public records either, but is kept internally by Agents and Corporations, Inc.) The following day she received incorporation papers for my firm—MCSE, an acronym for Medellin Cartel Successor Entity—which was already up a​nd running.

I planned to set up a subsidiary of MCSE in Nevada, which also has incr​edibly lax rules on business incorporations and which has billed itself as the "Del​aware of the West." Under state law, you need to identify your local registered agent and a company "manager" when you establish a shell, but they don't have to disclose anything about ownership unless compelled to by a court or law enforcement, and even then it can take a long time. Furthermore, the "manager" does not have to be a human being but can be another anonymous company located in a different secrecy haven.

I could have created the subsidiary over the phone, but I was flying to Las Vegas anyway (Mossack Fonseca creates shell firms through an affiliated company there), so I decided to do it in person. On the morning of November 3, I headed out from New York-New York Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip to meet Fe McGuffey of the Corporate Services Group (CSG), which I'd randomly selected from a li​st of registered agents on the Nevada Secretary of State's website. She'd assured me via email that even though I would control the firm, my name wouldn't appear in any publicly searchable records.

CSG is located at 723 S. Casino Center Blvd, in an area otherwise occupied by bail bonds offices and liquor stores. But the name on the front of its modest two-story stucco building, which has a yard with a few small palm trees that is circled by a chain-link fence, was Hilbrecht ​& Associates.

After she'd escorted me into her small office, McGuffey, a short, sturdy, middle-aged Asian woman who previously worked for the Navy in biological warfare programs, explained to me that CSG is one of five corporate incorporators operating from the address. They are all owned by her boss—who, I subsequently discovered, is a former state senator, Norman Ty Hilbrecht. Each of five incorporators had different purposes, McGuffey told me. For example, one sets up LLCs in neighboring Wyoming, while another registers firms for foreign clients. McGuffey never told me what Nevada Incorporating Company—which she picked to register my firm—specialized in, but she said it was her personal favorite of the five.

With Seabasstian Consulting and MCSE I was positioned to go into business as a drug trafficker or arms trader or dictator's bagman.

It took us about an hour to fill out the paperwork. Then we emailed two pages to my friend in Washington for her to sign and return. "You're not hiding from the law, are you?"McGuffey said with a chuckle after I'd asked, for roughly the tenth time, for confirmation that my name wouldn't appear anywhere in the shell firm's records.

"No, it's just a matter of privacy,"I replied. "It's a long story." She didn't ask for details and I was soon out the door.

Two days later, I checked the Nevada Secretary of State's website and was pleased to see that Seabasstian Consu​l​ting, LLC, named in honor of my daughter's pet Siamese fighting fish, was now a ​legitimate shell firm, operating from CSG's address and managed by MCSE, the Delaware shell. All this had been accomplished in less than a week and for under $1,000.

With Seabasstian Consulting and MCSE I was positioned to go into business as a drug trafficker or arms trader or dictator's bagman. But Heather Lowe, head of Global Financial Integrity, told me that I'd probably want to create several more subsidiaries offshore to put a few extra layers between me and my American shell companies. After that, I could open a foreign bank account that would be very hard for the IRS or international law enforcement to trace. "You might have to look around a little but you would be able to find a foreign banker who'd open an account for you," she said.

The possibilities were virtually endless, and I could do it all without straying far from home. I could, for example, set up a Seabasstian Consulting subsidiary on Nevis, the Caribbean island that provides "compl​ete secrecy" for company owners, according to a US-based firm called Offsho​re Corporation (which helps clients set up shells online or at its offices in Santa Clarita, California or Coral Springs, Florida). The Nevis shell could then be used to set up yet another dummy company in, say, Liberia, which may be a failed state currently being ravaged​ by Ebola but has a highly efficient, loosely regulated corpo​rate registry that operates out of Vienna, Virginia, in the DC suburbs.

But if I really wanted to secretly funnel my money offshore, I'd make an appointment with Mossack Fonseca and fly down to Panama City. It would cost a little bit more, but why deal with second-rate competitors when I could go straight to the top of the international shell company incorporation racket? 

Ken Silverstein is an investigative reporter for The Intercept.

[body_image width='1200' height='1206' path='images/content-images/2014/11/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/10/' filename='how-to-never-be-enough-000-body-image-1415658605.jpg' id='2745']

Illustration by Rob Corradetti

So Sad Today is a never-ending existential crisis played out in 140 characters or less. Its anonymous author has struggled with consciousness since long before the creation of the Twitter feed in 2012, and has finally decided the time has come to project her anxieties on a larger screen, in the form of a biweekly column on this website. The first installment offers some insight on how to never be enough.

Bringing a child into the world without its consent seems unethical. Leaving the womb just seems insane. The womb is nirvana. It's tripping in an eternal orb outside the time-space continuum. It's a warm, wet rave at the center of the earth, but you're the only raver. There's no weird New Age guide. There's no shitty techno. There's only you and the infinite.

I was born two weeks late, because I didn't want to leave the womb. When they finally kicked me out I was like oh hell no. I've been trying to get back there ever since.

In the womb I felt like enough. Was I really? Feelings aren't facts, except they kind of are. If you feel shitty in a forest you're shitty. So, in a sense, feeling like enough is the same as being enough.

Day one on Earth I discovered how to not be enough. The doctor who delivered me said I was pretty. I wanted to believe him, because I love validation. Validation is my main bitch. But I was not the type of infant to absorb a compliment. Had I been verbal I would have extended a compliment in return so as to assuage the implicit guilt of my own existence rubbing up against praise. Instead, I created an external attribution.

An external attribution exists to make you feel shitty. It's a handy tool, wherein you perceive anything positive that happens to you as a mistake, subjective and/or never a result of your own goodness. Negative things, alternately, are the objective truth. And they're always your own fault.

The doctor's perspective was only an error of opinion. He obviously had shitty taste in babies. If he'd called me ugly I would have spent the remainder of my time in the hospital trying to convince him I was hot. But he liked me. There was definitely something wrong with him.

If you're never going to be enough, it's important to find a way to turn a compliment against yourself—to reconstruct it into a prison—which is precisely what I did. I decided I would have to stay pretty for the rest of my life. If I got ugly it would be my own fault. Don't drop the ball. Don't fuck it up. I was definitely going to fuck it up.

Next they put me in a room with, like, 20 other babies. Immediately I compared myself to all of them and lost. The other babies seemed pretty chill about being on Earth. They shit their diapers like no big deal. They just sort of effortlessly knew how to do existence. I, on the other hand, was a wreck about being alive. Why was I here? What did it all mean? Things weren't looking good.

My first day on Earth and I was already thinking about death. A lot. I was thinking about death enough to negate every future accomplishment, relationship, and thing that I might come to love with thoughts like what's the point? and why bother? At the same time, I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I was actually, definitely going to die one day, as this might lead to the realization that I might as well enjoy my one brief life, and who wants that.

The situation only got worse when my mother announced that she couldn't breastfeed. More precisely, she said I was "killing her." Killing your mother as an infant is proof of one's too-muchness. In the context of food and consumption, too-muchness is the same thing as not-enoughness.

One titty is too many and 1000 are never enough. What I really sought was a cosmic titty. I sought a titty so omniscient it could sate all my holes.

I was "killing" my mother, because I was sucking too hard. Less than 24 hours on the planet and I was already trying to fill my many insatiable internal holes with external stuff. I was trying to sate the existential fear of what the fuck is going on here with milk. I was sucking and sucking, but there wasn't enough milk. There would never be enough milk. One titty is too many and 1000 are never enough. What I really sought was a cosmic titty. I sought a titty so omniscient it could sate all my holes. The world was already not enough, and I, of course, was not enough either. They gave me a bottle.

As a result of all my sucking, I ended up in a higher weight percentile than my height percentile. This was problematic, because my mother had obese parents. She needed an object upon which to project her own anxieties. I was perfect for that! The religion of the household quickly became food: me not being allowed to have it and me sneaking it.

One of my favorite foods to sneak was me. In an attempt to be enough, I began to consume my own body parts. I ate my fingernails and toenails. I ate every single one. I liked to bite them off and play with them in my mouth, slide the delicious, calcium-rich half moons between my teeth until my gums bled. I tried to enjoy my own earwax, but earwax is an acquired taste. Later in life I became a connoisseur of my own vaginal secretions. The depth of range was astonishing. The vagina is always marinating something.

What I loved most, though, was to pick my nose and eat it. During story hour at school I created a "shield" with my left hand to cover my nose, so I could enjoy some private refreshment. Then I'd really get in there with the right hand. Some of my happiest childhood days were spent behind that handshield. I felt self-contained, satisfied, full on myself. The other kids knew what was up and they made fun of me, but I didn't care. The bliss was too profound.

Unfortunately, the bliss was not going to last forever. Let's be honest, the bliss was going to last 4 minutes or until my nose ran out of snot. But teachers, parents, if your kid is eating herself, you have to let her. Let your child devour herself whole. Even if she disappears completely, encourage her to vanish. Let your child eat the shit out of herself and then shit herself out. Let her eat that.

Not being enough is an art and it's important to start young. It's best to gain an early awareness of oneself as not enough in the world and practice practice practice. Some, like myself, are blessed from the get-go with the natural gift of emptiness. You might call us doom geniuses. But there are others who aren't so lucky.

For those of you who feel intrigued by the not-enough lifestyle but don't know where to begin, simply apply the principles exhibited by early, intuitive not-enoughers. Remember to always compare the way you feel inside to the way that others appear. Make repeated attempts to fill your spiritual holes with material bullshit. Ruminate on death daily, but not enough to change your life. If anything good happens, follow it immediately with a terrified thought. If anything bad happens, blame yourself. Eat your own body. Relive the tragedy of birth. Do this for your entire life.

Follow So Sad Today on ​Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='797' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='mexican-mods-tijuana-123-body-image-1418650297.jpg' id='11425']

Adam Hernandez at the Tijuana a Go-Go party. Photos by Vito Di Stefano

It's Saturday night at Moustache, a small bar in downtown Tijuana. Every month, mods from the local Baja crew throw the Tijuana a Go-Go party here, spinning James Brown, ? and the Mysterians, and the 13th Floor Elevators to a crowd of skinheads, suedeheads, rude boys, and Mexican mods. If it wasn't for the green-haired girls standing outside, drinking 40s out of brown paper bags, we could easily be in some London basement club 50 years ago.

But this is a relatively recent sight. Not so long ago, Tijuana was the front line in a vicious inter-cartel turf war; close to 500 people  ​were murdered here in the last three months of 2008 alone. And even if you weren't directly involved, you'd inevitably end up affected in some way: Kidnappings and public gun battles were a regular occurrence, and drug gangs would often hang their victims from bridges—or simply pile up their bodies in the streets—as a threat to their adversaries. Tijuana, a border city that's long relied on the US tourist trade, quickly became somewhere that no tourist would ever want to visit.

However, while American college kids stopped coming down to Tijuana to get shitfaced on cheap tequila, locals and longtime nightlife regulars kept partying, opening bars and restaurants for themselves and their friends. Six years later, with the annual body count cut in half, it's these individuals who have helped to reshape Tijuana into the  ​cultural landmark it is today. Among them were the city's mods, who carried on hosting club nights despite all the violence around them.

"The mod scene in TJ is small, but being a Mexican mod isn't all that different from being a regular Mexican," says Tijuana a Go-Go DJ Astronauta Jackson. "We all like to get fine and dandy, shake our hips to the oldies but goodies and get wasted by the end of the night. It's all about the music mainly. If you want to pop on a Fred Perry and some shiny shoes, cool. It's all the same people getting together and listening to the music."

[body_image width='1200' height='797' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='mexican-mods-tijuana-123-body-image-1418650344.jpg' id='11426']

Mods emerged in Cold War Britain as a response to the class struggles and expectations leveled at the UK youth of the time. They dressed in expensive Italian suits, dragged their Lambrettas around, discussed art and philosophy, took a bunch of speed at all-night underground parties, and beat the shit out of people for wearing leather jackets. Everything was good for those with a scooter and a Caesar cut. But as certain figures from the counterculture scene drove it into the mainstream, things began to fizzle, with young men and women of the 1970s tending to choose hairspray and swastika patches over braces and Chelsea boots.

However, after the success of 1979's Quadrophenia, the subculture began to enjoy a renaissance. It was around this time that a small contingent of Mexican dandies adopted the culture for themselves, with Tijuana's new mods collecting records, throwing parties and riding their refurbished scooters through the city's potholed streets. More than 30 years later, that same lot are still around, only older and grayer (time has a tendency of doing that to you), and accompanied by their kids, who are into the mod scene, though may not completely identify with it.

[body_image width='1200' height='797' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='mexican-mods-tijuana-123-body-image-1418650369.jpg' id='11427']

"Some people join a subculture, then, after a month, will switch to another, then another," says Ricardo Jimenez, a 27-year-old suedehead and historian hanging out at Tijuana a Go-Go. "With the mods, that doesn't happen, because there are so few of them. It's not exclusive, though; if you're into the music, they always welcome you. It's all about coexisting and communing."

Tijuana a Go-Go rages until near daybreak. The music plays on as a fight breaks out and a drunken kid is carried to the pavement by the bartenders. The mods keep dancing until it's time to go home. They'll be back a month later, and a month after that.

[body_image width='1200' height='1659' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='mexican-mods-tijuana-123-body-image-1418650082.jpg' id='11424']

The Hernandez family outside La Ciruela Electrica in Tijuana

Guy and Miriam Hernandez—who are 51 and 46, respectively—were part of the original Tijuana mod scene in the early-80s. Unlike most of their friends from the era, who got married, had kids and eventually stopped subscribing to the subculture's ethos, Guy and Miriam continued. They now live in a small house decked out in midcentury finds and even raised their kids mod, dressing them in vintage 60s clothes from the day they were born.

While flipping through records at La Ciruela Electrica, a tiny Tijuana record shop named after 60s psych band the Electric Prunes, Guy, Miriam, and their sons Adam, 21, and Gael, 13, tell me that, for them, being mod isn't a fad; it's their entire way of life. 

"A lot of people get married and they change. I don't know why, but, you know, that's their thing," says Guy, who, along with Miriam, has been throwing 60s dance parties in Tijuana every month for the last six years. "We didn't change, because being mod is what we really like. When you do something you like, you do it for the rest of your life."

[body_image width='1200' height='797' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='mexican-mods-tijuana-123-body-image-1418650453.jpg' id='11428']

"That's when it becomes a lifestyle. You start looking for the clothes and the records and it just becomes who you are," adds Miriam. "I don't know what's ever going to stop us from being mod or partying. Death? Other than that, I don't see us stopping. Now there's this younger generation who can say this was always their lifestyle. They can say, 'I was born mod.' If they want to change later, that's their choice."

Adam and Gael don't seem to be in a rush to give up their mod heritage, though. Even though he's teased at school, Gael doesn't have an urge to dress like his schoolmates. "They dress kind of ugly," he says, refusing to take off his vintage shades because, as he says, they make him look " perrón," or "badass."

While the Tijuana mod scene might be tiny, social media has allowed its members to connect with those with shared interests in other parts of Mexico and the US. The scenes in Mexico City, Monterrey, Puebla and Nuevo Leon are all going strong, and mods from Los Angeles have ridden down Tijuana to DJ at some of the 60s parties in town. They've created a network of torchbearers for the British subculture, spanning a range of nationalities, ages and sexes. 

"That's one of the advantages of the mod movement," laughs Guy. "Whether you're 20 or 40, you look good when you're a mod."

Clockwise from top: New York gangster Lucky Luciano, Chicago bootlegger Al Capone, and Camorra drug lord Paolo Di Lauro, who made a killing off of economic crises. Illustration by Jacob Everett

The Mafia has always profited from economic crisis. Recessions fill up the mob's coffers and boost its social standing.

In fact crime is one of the few sectors of the economy that thrive in moments of financial decline. Just look at the past decade, when the United States suffered a collapse in its housing market, Italy risked default, and Greece, Spain, and Portugal came to the brink of bankruptcy. During all that time, drug trafficking reached unprecedented heights of prosperity.

It's always been this way. In the Great Depression, the Italian-American mob, which was already reaping the benefits of Prohibition, saw its business grow even more. The consumption of alcohol and drugs increased as uncertainty about the future caused people to seek refuge in them, the penniless and destitute turned more often to loan sharks, and general hopelessness about the future spurred the rise of Mafia-organized gambling, sports betting, and illegal lotteries.

And it doesn't end there. The Mafia exploits these moments of uncertainty to validate its organizations and to build consensus in society. After the stock market crashed in 1929, Al Capone decided to mobilize his restaurant and garment businesses to feed and clothe Chicago's poor. (In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar would reprise this demagoguery when he offered to pay Colombia's public debt out of his own pocket.)

While politicians and the press worried about how to end the Depression, the Italian-American bosses gloated in the situation, using it as an opportunity to reorganize and relaunch their illicit enterprises. It was during that period, for example, that the Chicago Outfit was consolidated. It was at the end of the 20s that Lucky Luciano came to understand the importance of the heroin trade. And it was in 1931 that gambling was legalized in Nevada and the bosses conquered Las Vegas.

Only in the early 1930s, when America had caught a glimpse of the way out of the crisis, did US institutions begin to truly concentrate on the fight against the Mafia. At that point the first arrests were made: Luciano and Al Capone ended up in jail, but they had established themselves so well during the recession that they successfully managed all of their ventures from prison. And the bosses of the Italian-American Mafia had such power that American intelligence asked their help with security during World War II in exchange for lessened sentences and impunity.

Though history teaches us that in times of crisis it's necessary to raise our guard against gangsters and racketeers, institutions tend to lower their defenses, handing a carte blanche to organized crime. So it continues today. ​

In December 2009 Antonio Maria Costa, then the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs, made a shocking declaration: He revealed that the earnings of criminal organizations made up the sole liquid assets at the disposal of some banks seeking to avoid collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.

But how did we get to this point? According to the International Monetary Fund, between 2007 and 2009, banks in the United States and Europe lost more than $1 trillion in toxic assets and bad loans. Many big credit institutions failed or were put under temporary receiverships, and by the second half of 2008, cash flow had become a major problem for the banking system. Due to the banks' reluctance to grant loans, the system was practically paralyzed, and criminal organizations seemed to have huge quantities of cash to invest—that is, to launder.

A recent investigation by two Colombian economists at the University of Bogotá, Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Mejía, revealed that 97.4 percent of Colombia's drug-trafficking revenue is regularly laundered in American and European banking circuits through various financial operations. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. The laundering takes place by way of a system of blocks of shares that work like Chinese boxes or Russian dolls: The cash is transformed into electronic titles, passed from one country to another, and when it arrives on another continent it is nearly untraceable. That's how interbank loans came to be systematically financed with money from drug trafficking and other illicit activities. Some banks relied on this money to save themselves. Consequently, a large part of the $352 billion originating from drug trafficking was absorbed into the legal economic system, perfectly cleaned.

On October 26, 2001, in the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act with the goal of preventing, identifying, and prosecuting international money laundering and financing of terrorism. This law established that the US Department of the Treasury can ask national financial institutions to undertake a series of special measures with regard to jurisdictions, institutes, or foreign bank accounts suspected of being involved in money laundering.

But despite the tough measures taken by the American government, the financial crisis that started in 2008 even caused American banks to turn a blind eye to illicit activity and to find a way around the law. In February 2012, before a congressional hearing on organized crime, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section of the Department of Justice at the time, declared: "Disguised in the trillions of dollars that is transferred between banks each day, banks in the US are used to funnel massive amounts of illicit funds," confirming, in a sense, that the Patriot Act was not enough to distance the flow of dirty money from the American economy and finances.

The tie between drug trafficking and banks is not new. As Costa declared to the Observer, "The connection between organized crime and financial institutions started in the late 1970s, early 1980s, when the Mafia became globalized." Until that connection was made, criminal organizations' money had circulated primarily in cash. With the globalization of the Mafia, it became easier and more convenient to transfer money electronically from one part of the world to the other through the use of electronic titles and virtual cash. But according to the Observer, at the end of the 80s the authorities increased their oversight of laundered money in banks, and criminal organizations began to operate in cash once again.

Yet the anti-money-laundering authorities hadn't accounted for the financial crises that spread across the globe in the early 2000s, causing a shortage of liquid assets from Russia to the United States. This shortage not only would bring the banks to their knees but also would open them up to the enormous assets of criminal organizations. And the cases in the news involving some of the biggest global banks in recent years demonstrate this fact.

According to some experts, the banking powerhouses of London and New York have become the two biggest laundries of dirty money in the world. This title no longer belongs to tax havens like the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man but to Lombard Street and Wall Street.

Translated from the Italian by Kim Ziegler

[body_image width='640' height='425' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='irish-immigration-double-standards-109-body-image-1418647006.jpg' id='11419']​

A protester demonstrates against Direct Provision in Dublin. Photo courtesy of the ​Irish Refugee Council

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

A couple of weeks ago, President Obama bypassed Congress and announced a long-awaited ​executive order on immigration reform. This essentially grants amnesty estimated to affect some 5 million undocumented workers in the US, provided they fit certain criteria: You have to have lived in the US for at least five years, have US-born children, and no prior criminal convictions. Of the estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants in the US, at least 20,000 are thought to qualify.

In Ireland, there has been jubilation at the announcement, particularly on the part of Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny who  ​wrote a letter to Obama thanking him for the "humanity and leadership" he has shown while pleading that "arrangements be as open and as flexible as possible." Although it leaves out big sections of the undocumented community, this immigration reform will change a lot of people's lives—ending the constant threat of deportation and letting them see their families again.

Marie is an Irish migrant who has been undocumented in the US for 14 years. "I have missed weddings, funerals, births and many other important family and friend occasions," she told me. "I want to be able to return to the place of my birth without consequence. I want my children to see where they descend from. They have missed out on so many things because of our status."

Having missed out on previous amnesties offered, Marie is "cautiously excited at the thought of this really happening" and says that "this executive order seems to be our only glimmer of hope." Clearly being undocumented takes a huge emotional toll, so this immigration reform is a positive development.

Unfortunately, Obama's "humanity" strikes a contrast to Kenny's attitude to migrants in his own country—both undocumented economic migrants and asylum seekers.

While waiting for their appeal to be processed, asylum seekers in Ireland are essentially interned in overcrowded centers often for years on end—centers characterized by  ​illegal "house rules," no privacy, and, on occasion, not enough ​food. This system, called Direct Provision, houses over 4,300 asylum seekers throughout the country, which makes it 10 percent larger than Ireland's prison population. One major difference between Direct Provision and prison, though? Prisoners know when they're getting out. Direct Provision was initially planned as a temporary solution but people are languishing for more than ten years, and the majority at least spend three years in centers. A third of those in Direct Provision are children.

Reuben Hambakachere, an advocate for migrant rights, told me about the emotional impact of living in these centers. He fled persecution in Zimbabwe and languished in Direct Provision for four years before having his refugee status accepted. His wife, who arrived four years earlier, spent eight years in the centers.

"Yes a roof was provided over my head, but if man had to survive and function well with this only basic necessity then our society would be the happiest ever," he said. "There is little hope for a man or woman who has been denied the right to work and provide for their family. Left with no choice but to depend on the state, living in Direct Provision left me wallowing in poverty with the shame of failing to be a role model to my children."

[body_image width='640' height='427' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='irish-immigration-double-standards-109-body-image-1418647649.jpg' id='11421']

A protester demonstrates against Direct Provision in Dublin. Photo courtesy of the  ​Irish Refugee Council

A month before the US immigration reform was announced, the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald confirmed that there will be no blanket amnesty for those living in Direct Provision in Ireland saying, "It must also be emphasized that broad regularization programs are problematic, in particular as they could give rise to unpredictable and potentially very costly impacts across the full range of public and social services."

Asylum seekers in Ireland aren't allowed to work, forcing them to rely on the state. The privately run immigration centers are  ​given over €12,500 ($15,500) per person annually. Individual asylum seekers, in contrast, receive only a meagre allowance of €19.10 ($23.75) per week for an adult and €9.60 ($12) for a child.

During the discussion surrounding the US immigration reform the old "the Irish built America" trope has come up many times. Current asylum seekers in Ireland are denied the right to do the same. The Irish government is praising the regularization of Irish migrants in the US while refusing migrants in Ireland the same rights.

Hambakachere told me he was his disappointed in the government's reaction to immigration reform in the US. "[They] could have chosen to take the initiative and address issues closer to home. By acknowledging Obama's immigration reform as 'humanity,' surely at this stage it would be a moral thing to emulate," he said. However, the Irish public doesn't seem to agree. Despite the glaring injustices of Direct Provision and  ​warnings that this will be our generations' ​Magdalene Laundries, 54 percent of the country believes that asylum seekers should stay in Direct Provision.

Famously, Ireland is a nation of migrants—emigration stands at about 80,000 a year. But while there's a lot of concern about those who have left for the US, there's little for those who have arrived in Ireland in need.

Follow Lia McGarrigle on ​Twitter

[body_image width='1500' height='835' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='christmas-market-vienna-photos-body-image-1418647175.jpg' id='11420']

Photos by Stefanie Katzinger

​This post originally appeared on ​VICE Alps

​Like it or not, Christmas markets are a part of the international holiday landscape. And, much like Starbucks, they are equally bizarre wherever you go. Growing up in Austria, I've always thought our Christkindlmärktes resembled a chamber of horrors packed with things I detest: crappy toys, drunken OAPs, bratwurst with sauerkraut, a constant need to urinate, folk music, and rum punch on the soles of my shoes.

However, now that I've gotten older and less cynical, I realize they are also as much an irrevocable part of the Austrian soul as Schnitzel and big-bosomed ladies, and as good an excuse for drinking spirits after dark as they come. 

Here are some photos from this year's market in Vienna. 

See more of Stefanie's work ​here.

[body_image width='640' height='433' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='police-spoof-posters-charlotte-england-acab-1312-body-image-1418655513.jpg' id='11449']

Photo courtesy of ​STRIKE!​ Magazine

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Over the weekend, posters that looked a lot like a Metropolitan Police ad campaign appeared around London. However, instead of trying to convince you to spend your spare time being a community support officer, they pointed out that the force is institutionally racist and unaccountable. As it turned out, some anti-cop activists had replaced the usual adverts in bus shelters outside New Scotland Yard, in Islington, Manor House and Lambeth, and about a dozen other places, with spoof adverts. Nobody knows who put the posters up. Considering the police have cordoned off several bus shelters around London and appear to be treating them as crime scenes, it probably makes sense for them to lie low for a bit.

But we do know their design can originally be found in a copy of STRIKE!, an anarchist magazine. I asked someone from the magazine to tell me more about why they designed the posters. We chatted about what he thinks of someone plastering London with them, and how he is now slightly freaking out that some angry cops might break down his door and step on his throat and/or balls.

VICE: What was the involvement of STRIKE! in all this?
STRIKE!: We created the original design. It was like two months ago that we did that. They were in response to the Metropolitan Police's Local Policing Campaign [a Met PR campaign].

Do you have any idea who put them up and how?
​I have no idea who did it. I don't know where you'd get them printed actually—it's got to be someone with access to a really, really big printer. We have previously done a guide to interacting with bus stop advertising spaces on our website and in our newspaper and that comes from [anti-advertising campaign] Brandalism.

Are you pleased with how many have gone up and the publicity it's getting?
​Enormously pleased, yes. Obviously that was sort of the point, part of the reason that we did is that the Met spent £12.6 million ($19.7 million) in 2012, £9.3 million ($14.5 million) in 2013 and that's on propaganda—you know, all PR is just nice lying. We haven't spent any money on this campaign at all and it seems to have had quite a big impact, which is really nice. We're sort of run on anarchist principles here at STRIKE! so we encourage horizontal, autonomous action and it's nice to see that has sparked someone somewhere to go off and do it.

[body_image width='480' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='police-spoof-posters-charlotte-england-acab-1312-body-image-1418656715.jpg' id='11458']

Photo courtesy of STRI​KE!Magazine

Do you hope this happens more?
​I can't incite [crimes] in the present but I think about when change has happened previously. Women have the vote now because women in the past went out and threw rocks through windows at Buckingham Palace, through the windows of Downing Street, so I hope that future generations will be grateful for this present action.

Police abuse of power is in the news at the moment because of what's happening in the US. Do you think that's got something to do with the timing?
​People have made quite a bit about the timing, but we've been talking about police brutality, police racism, and police corruption since our first issue two years ago. Since the inception of the police force, people have been campaigning against large men with sticks beating up minorities—whether that's economic or racial minorities, so perhaps it's more the case that more and more people around the world are waking up to the fact that they don't want large men with sticks policing their communities. There's another interesting thing about the timing, that they [the posters] went up on the 13th of the 12th—the 13th of December. 1312 is code for ​ACAB [All Cops Are Bastards]—it's a bit like​ 420, it's like international ACAB day. That could be why they chose that particular day.

So they went up on Saturday night?
​Saturday night.

And how many posters went?
​I've seen like maybe kind of 15 or 20, something like that, there are quite a few and they are quite spread out around London.

They've actually sealed it off with crime scene tape, must be a high priority pic.twitter.com/KJdQ1TT65U

— YetAnotherJon (@YetAnotherJon) December 14, 2014

Are any still there?
​I seriously doubt it, I went out yesterday to see—I heard there was one at New Scotland yard and I went out to see if there was one still there and to get a picture of it if there was and they had a patrol car stationed outside it with its lights flashing. I've seen pictures of patrol cars screeched up outside the one in Manor Avenue and a police officer talking into his radio like he was calling in a SWAT team or something. They turned the one in Lewisham into a crime scene—like, they cordoned it off with crime scene tape and all that. So yeah, I don't know if there will still be any up there. It's making us quite nervous that they're turning it into a crime scene, because it sort of feels a little bit like every cop in London wants to stamp on our throat. But it also feels ironic—if the Met put this much effort into investigating their own crimes and corruption, the posters wouldn't have gone up in the first place.

[body_image width='480' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='police-spoof-posters-charlotte-england-acab-1312-body-image-1418656809.jpg' id='11461']

Photo courtesy of STRI​KE!Magazine

What do you think about the reaction of the public?
​I've been surprised actually that it's been overwhelmingly positive.

The thing that is interesting is that people‚—I would assume fairly decent people that would not consider themselves racist—[have made] comments that kind of go along the lines of, "I'm not racist but black people do commit more crimes." Even if twice as many people were being stopped and searched as white people it would be a heinous crime, right?

For us, it's obviously not the [case] that black people are inherently more criminal. There are structural reasons, and some of that is because police both pursue and prosecute black and ethnic minority groups much more than they do white people. There is some ignorance around it, but it's hardly surprising that there's ignorance around it when the Met spend so much money trying to convince people they're not racist. If you ask a member of the Metropolitan police force, "is the police force institutionally racist?" they immediately go, "I'm not racist, how dare you call me racist!"—they just don't quite get that we're talking about the institution and the structures that are in place in society.

How do you hope the police respond to the posters? Do you think they'll take the criticism on board?
​Right now I'm hoping that they don't just come round to my house and stamp on my testicles. That would be my immediate hope for the future.

I sort of feel like the police are neither here nor there, they're actually a symptom of an unequal society. It's not necessarily about what we want the police to be. We want the police to stop being racist, to stop stopping and searching people in a racist manner, but really we want society to be more equal and less racist—the police are just a reflection of our society.

The police are a bit like alcoholics, they're never going to deal with their racism problem until they say, "We do have a racism problem." At the moment if you ask them they say, "Oh no, no, we're not institutionally racist." Weirdly in 2012, the black and Asian police officers association said, "Yes the Metropolitan Police is still institutionally racist" but then the Met weirdly, racistly, ignored that—you know, it's sort of ironically racist to ignore your black and Asian officers when they say that you are still institutionally racist.

Follow Charlotte England on ​Twitter

Archbishop Dominique Philippe blessing a family of parrots. According to him, animals have a soul and his job includes looking after it. Photos by Melchior Ferradou-Tersen

This post originally appeared on ​VICE France

​Monseigneur Dominique Philippe has been officiating at the church of Sainte Rita in Paris' 15th arrondissement for almost 25 years. Every year, on the first Sunday of November, the archbishop organizes a Mass exclusively for animals. During this Mass, residents are asked to bring their pets to church so that their sins may be absolved.

Unfortunately, Sainte Rita is doomed to be demolished if its faithful visitors can't manage to come up with four million Euros soon. The arrondissement wants to erect 18 apartment buildings in its place, but Monseigneur Dominique Philippe is willing to do everything he can to keep this from happening. 

Last November I attended Mass at Sainte Rita, where in addition to classic pets (like cats and dogs and parrots), I was also able to stroke camels, goats, and llamas in pursuit of the divine blessing. Then I had a chat with Monseigneur Dominique Philippe.

VICE: How long have you been an archbishop?
​Dominique Philippe: Since 1988, if I remember well. I was a monk in an abbey in Normandy, then deacon, bishop, and finally archbishop. I've been in Paris since 1973 and in this church for 24 years.

How come you decided to devote one Mass per month to animals?
​I love animals. I had a poodle at the time, who wandered all day inside the church. A lot of people came to attend Mass and tied their dogs to the railings. One day, I told them that they could come in with their animals. Pretty quickly, Sainte Rita became known around Paris for allowing dogs in during Mass.

I assume it annoyed some of your superiors. 
​We are nine priests in Sainte Rita's and only two of us wanted to do it. They worried that the animals would get the church dirty and that the other priests would make fun of us.

If you only follow what we call the Roman Catholic Church, you never do anything. They think that sin is everywhere. Two months later, I stood up and announced: "We will be celebrating a Mass dedicated to animals and I take full responsibility."

You believe that animals have a soul, right?
​Yeah, I believe in that. That being said, I'm not annoyed with the people who don't believe that. I found some publications of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet dating back to the 17th century in which he already spoke of the soul of animals; so I'm not the only one to believe in that.

And there is a Garden of Eden just for animals?
​Of course, yes. A special Heaven.

Do you think they can be possessed by evil too?
​I haven't really thought about it, to be honest. But indeed, there are animals that are as bad as humans. You know, several years ago, a TV channel asked me to go to a pet cemetery in Asnières, near Paris. I was wandering around when a young guy arrived with his pitbulls. One of the dogs came closer to me, barking, his owner was freaking out but the animal sat down by my side and didn't move.

Even in the neighborhood, during the summer, when the doors of the church are open, a lot of dogs come in, go for a walk inside and leave. There is something happening between me and them.

Do you think that some animals are "better" than others?
​No, not at all. I have a lot of birds and they know when I'm going to feed them. When I'm not there, they are sad. They are very intelligent animals.
​

​The archbishop at home, with his birds. 

Do you live with a lot of animals?
​A bunch. I have several ponies, two llamas, some goats, hens, geese, ducks, budgerigars, canaries, doves, turtledoves... I'm lucky to live in the countryside.

How is this practice perceived by the other churches?
​At the beginning, it was perceived very badly. When things are not their idea, it's necessarily bad. The supervisor of the episcopate accused me of looking for profit, while I don't earn anything. I remember a cleric in Strasbourg who wanted to do it, but he realized that he was allergic to fur. Some other churches have tried it, but it never lasts.

Do you think this practice will stay isolated?
​Yeah. I was the first one to do it in France. I know someone who does the same thing in Spain, with Anthony the Great and his pig, but in France, you are considered a weirdo the moment you stray off the path.

It's true, your approach is very modern.
​​Yeah, I think this is the only way of making people come back to Church. The Church has changed, but in the wrong way. They get it all wrong. The fact that clerics can wear a suit now doesn't mean they are more modern. Three days ago, I went to a funeral, in an important Parish, and the cleric was very dirty. I told him he should polish his shoes and wash his shirt before officiating.

Thank you, Monseigneur.

[body_image width='2000' height='1464' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='the-ancient-history-of-grills-wc-body-image-1418656061.jpeg' id='11453']
​Illustrations by Nick Gazin

"We about to start an epidemic with this one," Jermaine Dupri announces at the beginning of Nelly's 2005 music video for "Grillz," the St. Louis rapper's anthem in honor of gold- and diamond-studded teeth. Nelly's impact and relevance might have faded over the past decade, but this Billboard Hot 100–topping hit was prophetic. The video, which featured more than 70 close-up grill shots, introduced mainstream America to lavish dental ornamentation. It captured the moment when bejeweled dental prostheses entered the American zeitgeist. It was an era when Johnny Dang, the Vietnamese-born, Houston-based jeweler to the stars who made a cameo in "Grillz," was selling more than 400 decorative teeth coverings a day for at least $500 a pop.

Nine years and a Great Recession have passed since "Grillz" first hit the airwaves, but Americans of all socioeconomic situations are still flashing expensive mouth jewelry. Of course, MCs like A$AP Rocky and the Flatbush Zombies have carried on the tradition of wearing and rapping about gold teeth. But grills have also maneuvered their way over to the pop charts. In the past few years we've seen them adorn the teeth of Katy Perry, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, and Beyoncé. The accessory has even appeared on the runways of New York and Paris Fashion Week and in the pages of Vogue.

Yet, as ever-present as grills may seem today, mouth bling isn't new. And it wasn't new when Nelly started "an epidemic," either. Actually, grills have been appearing, disappearing, and reappearing throughout human history in fits and spurts as civilizations have risen and fallen around the world. Tracing their story reveals threads of ancient misogyny, class warfare, and lost scientific studies and artifacts.

Anyone who's had a passing interest in the history of the grill has probably come across the dozens of shady Google search results that claim that the earliest gold dentures were made by ancient Egyptians, who used them as a form of dental care. Although this concept is pretty pervasive, it's just not true based on what we know.

"The only acceptable evidence is that revealed in the skulls themselves," writes  Dr. F. Filce Leek in his 1967 study "The Practice of Dentistry in Ancient Egypt." Leek was part of the Manchester Mummy Project, which CT-scanned more than a dozen excavated mummies for a peek inside the wrapping. He found teeth so concave with cavities that he concluded many people likely died from tooth disease. Archaeologists have discovered Ancient Egyptian writings on dental procedures, but "no tooth with gold or metal," Dr. Leek writes, quoting fellow archaeologist Sir Marc Armand Ruffer. Not in pharaohs or their slaves.

People mistakenly think grills originate in ancient Egypt because archaeologists in the early 20th century found two teeth woven together by a gold wire that dated back to about 2,500 BC in Giza. Archaeologists first claimed the teeth were wired while the person was still alive, but upon further speculation, Leek found it more likely that that the teeth fell out of the Egyptian's head and he started wearing them on a gold wire around his neck. Leek suggests this man was buried with these teeth because of the Egyptian custom to be put to rest alongside items needed for the afterlife. So what is commonly thought to be the first grill was probably just a gold chain.

[body_image width='2000' height='1349' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='the-ancient-history-of-grills-wc-body-image-1418656187.jpeg' id='11454']

"People like to think Egypt started everything," says Jean MacIntosh Turfa, co-author of the upcoming book The Golden Smile: The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry. "But in [ancient times], it was purely an Etruscan phenomenon."

The Etruscans lived in Italy—eventually giving their name to the region of Tuscany—from around 800 BC to 200 BC, when they were conquered by the Roman Empire. Barely any Etruscan papyrus writing has survived, so just about all of our knowledge from the era comes from excavated graves and tombs. American archaeologists started digging in Rome in the 1800s, but almost all of the recovered gold teeth from Etruscan times were passed from researcher to researcher, brought to America, and eventually lost in the transferring process. To all but ensure their disappearance, the teeth were only written about in obscure journals. But in his 1999 study "Etruscan Gold Dental Appliances: Three Newly 'Discovered' Examples," Marshall Joseph Becker, Turfa's co-author, pieced together the available information. Archaeologists found documentation of around 20 sets of teeth woven with delicate golden wire that was about the size of a thick rubber band. The earliest of these artifacts date back to the seventh century BC.

Rich Etruscan women were the first group of people to wear what we would now call grills. "Certain high-status Etruscan women deliberately had [front teeth] removed in order to be fitted with a gold band appliance holding a replacement, or reused, tooth," Becker writes. He found three variations on the gold bonding technique used to weld rings of gold to Etruscan teeth. "It was never a dentist" who applied the gold, according to Turfa. "It was always a goldsmith. It was done for adornment.  You couldn't bite an apple with these," Turfa reasons, as the gold usually held replacement teeth in place, "but it looked pretty good."

[body_image width='2000' height='1591' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='the-ancient-history-of-grills-456-body-image-1418658422.jpeg' id='11464']

Etruscan women had more civil rights than the later Greek and Roman women—they could own property and would go to public banquets with their husbands—and their gold teeth further displayed this relative equality. "These women were showing that they had people cooking prepared foods and soft white bread for them," says Turfa. They were rich and free to do with that money what they pleased.

But that freedom, along with Etruscan language, culture, and grills, disappeared when Caesar, Cicero, and the Romans took over Italy. By 100 AD, the teeth had fallen out of fashion. Revered Roman poet Martial wrote mockingly of what he thought was women's vain tooth replacement:

"Nor do you lay aside your teeth at night any differently than you do your silk dresses, [which are] packed away in a hundred boxes... You use your teeth and hair that are bought and you are not embarrassed. What will you do about your eye, though, Laelia? They don't sell them."

[body_image width='2000' height='1355' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='the-ancient-history-of-grills-wc-body-image-1418656206.jpeg' id='11455']

For the ancient Mayan, jade was a precious stone. They carved it into art, made it into masks, and turned it into a type of grill. Throughout the classic period—from 300 AD to 900 AD—Maya kings and queens would drill holes about three millimeters in diameter into their upper teeth and fill them with round pieces of jade. The lighter, more translucent shade of green, the better. "There are two factors here: One is to enhance their physical attractiveness, and two is to differentiate their social status," says Payson Sheets, an anthropology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who focuses on ancient societies in Mexico and Central America.

The use of jade specifically, though, was a sociopolitical statement. Green was a symbol for plant growth, agriculture, and sustenance, so by wearing it at all times, Maya royalty took on an obligation. "It's a powerful statement that the royals are responsible for bringing the rains, having the crops mature, and feeding the people," Sheets explains. Grills weren't for conspicuous consumption, but for the betterment of the society—a visual and permanent promise that everyone would be taken care of.

One class level down, Mayan professionals like architects and sculptors couldn't afford jade, but would modify their teeth by filing them because, aesthetically, Sheets says, "it was definitely a lot better than unmodified teeth. A lot better."

But similar to the way Etruscan grills ended, the Maya stopped inserting jade into their teeth after the Spanish Conquest in the 1500s. As a new leader and culture took over, grills once again disappeared.

"Humans have something in common," says Caroline Arcini, an anthropologist at the National Heritage Board in Sweden, "the desire to change their appearance—teeth included." She first realized this when archaeologists discovered that the Vikings started filing their teeth around 900 AD. "We have these tooth modifications in North and South America, Africa, and Asia, and it was really important that this kind of group identity could also be demonstrated in Europe."

In Sweden, the Vikings' teeth filings have only been found in men, and rather than elegantly decorating their teeth with gold, the Vikings filed ridges into them. It wasn't to prove social standing but to create a group identity, according to Arcini. The Vikings filed a flat area on the tooth and then made ridges starting from the top of the tooth. They might have also colored the ridges with some sort of charcoal mix to create white teeth with dark black lines.

Most ridged Viking teeth come from the island of Gotland, just southeast of Stockholm. It was a rich transit island that was an outpost for Vikings on their way east. Archaeologists have also found foreign coins and jewelry on the island. It's possible that Vikings picked up their habit from their many travels, though Arinci says, "I've been researching for 20 years and [it's been] very hard to find out if they had picked it up from somewhere else." But what she is sure about is that tooth filings have also been found in England and Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Norway, and mainland Sweden.

Humans have something in common: the desire to change their appearance—teeth included.

In Southeast Asia, gold was thought to link the individual to cosmological forces. According to ancient Filipino mythology, Melu, the creator of the world, had pure gold teeth. So Filipino mortals followed suit. The earliest evidence available shows they started decorating their teeth with the metal around 1300 AD, and also filed and even deliberately blackened their teeth.

Some areas of the Philippines had more than 100 words to describe gold, according to Father Pedro de San Buenaventura, a missionary sent to a parish in Pila, Laguna, during the Spanish colonial period. In 1613 he wrote Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala, which became the definitive outsider examination of Tagalog culture. Buenaventura translated more than 122 entries for gold. There was ginto, meaning gold, the metal. And pusal, which is the Tagalog word for gold pegs in teeth. Other Bikol-speaking regions used the word pasac to refer to the gold driven into or wrapped around the teeth.

In Bolinao, in the Pangasinan province, teeth with gold pegs were very popular. People drilled up to nine small holes to insert the gold pegs, which formed "a delicate point, disk, or fish scale," according to a Cordillera Review study. The process was meticulous. Gold teeth were rare and found in graves with prestige burial goods, so archaeologists believe they were worn by a higher social class. When chiefdoms moved to the coastland during the beginning of the second millennium AD, they became more involved in long-distance trade with socially hierarchical societies and found a greater need to display wealth and status. There's evidence that chiefs' compounds had metal workshops, making gold teeth a permanent mark of social distinction and allowing for constant on-the-spot modifications. But by the beginning of the 1600s, public displays of wealth came to an end as the elite Filipinos were forced to relinquish their gold to the Spanish conquistadors, who, as they did among the Maya, saw tooth modification as a "barbarous practice." "Whoever files his teeth I will surely punish," Father Buenaventura wrote in Vocabulario.

Further north in the Philippines, around Kabayan, people wore fitted gold bands called chakang, which covered an entire front row of teeth. Although they made it impossible to speak, these artifacts from the past are the closest-looking gold plates to today's grills. In Kabayan, the "leading women would place a plate of gold over their teeth and remove it to eat," wrote the visiting missionary Francisco Antolin in his 1970 study Notices on the Pagan Igorots in 1789, revealing a similarity with the ancient Etruscans. Chakang were passed down as family heirlooms and survived all the way into the mid 20th century, when they were still worn during rituals.

In Dushanbe, [gold teeth] glint at you from almost every mouth. In some instances every tooth has been replaced. 

Ancestors of the Mayan who now live in southeastern Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador still wear mouth ornamentation. On a trip to Guatemala that Dr. E. J. Neiburger wrote about in his 2012 piece in the Journal of the Massachusetts Dental Society, he estimated that about 65 percent of Guatemalans wore some sort of gold dental decoration. In Central America, local dentists advertise their names next to pictures not of pearly whites but of flashy gold teeth, which have replaced jade as the decoration of choice. "Having a gold tooth is a sign that you've got enough resources to afford it—and it's shiny," adds Payton Sheets. Gold teeth are commonly worn by native Latin Americans throughout the region. Costa Ricans, who aren't Maya, have a saying that roughly translates to, "That's as terrible as a Guanacaste resident without a gold tooth."

But emigrating north changed this outlook. Neiburger, an American dentist, tells of his experience with Central American patients who make appointments to replace gold teeth with what they call "American crowns," or white teeth. "Many of these immigrants will give up their gold in their attempt to acculturate to the American lifestyle," following suit with the long trend of one culture conquering another.

Maya descendants aren't the only ones influenced by the mainstream West to remove the gold. Tajikistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, was once part of the former Soviet Union, where dental care was free. Gold was the cheapest way to fill and fix a cavity, so it became common, and then fashionable. "In Dushanbe, the capital of this desperately impoverished nation, they still glint at you from almost every mouth. In some instances every tooth has been replaced," J. J. Fergusson wrote in a 1997 Independent article.

But after the Soviet Union fell and Tajiks were allowed to leave the country, "their value as a status symbol has declined, especially among the young," Professor Omar Tairairov, the country's chief dentist, told the Independent. He blamed Western videos, but it proved more psychological than that. Matluba Mamadjanova went to an American language teachers' conference in Athens and came back changed. "There were hundreds of people there and I was the only one with gold teeth," she told Ferguson. "They kept looking at me."

What's funny is that right as the Central Americans and Tajiks Westernized their mouths, mainstream Americans were picking up on the more opulent alternative. A reverse cultural appropriation was taking place. Just one year before the Independent published that article about changing views on gold teeth, Johnny Dang opened up shop in Houston. It was the United States of America's turn to shine.

[body_image width='2000' height='1284' path='images/content-images/2014/12/15/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/15/' filename='the-ancient-history-of-grills-wc-body-image-1418656588.jpeg' id='11457']

By the late 1970s gold teeth had started popping up in mostly black neighborhoods of New York City. "I was a kid growing up between Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant when I first noticed grills on some of the West Indian people in Bed-Stuy," says Akintola Hanif, editor-in-chief of Hycide, a photography magazine dedicated to subculture, art, and conflict. "They would have one or two gold teeth."

Those were never stylized, though. In the 1970s parts of the West Indies, and Jamaica in particular, went through a slow economic period, and there wasn't much money for dental care, so gold teeth it was. Shabba Ranks had "one gold tooth" not because of fashion but because he probably didn't floss regularly. In the late 70s and the 80s, people from the West Indies started moving to New York, bringing along their gold teeth and sending money back home for proper dental care.

The same was true in Vietnam. When Johnny Dang was growing up there, the only people he witnessed sporting gold teeth were his grandparents. "The solid gold was to cover teeth, but not for fashion. It was to protect teeth," he says in his heavily accented English. "They put a gold crown so it would last forever." Dang, on the other hand, has only made a handful of permanent grills over his 18-year career.

But for West Indian immigrants and native New Yorkers alike, gold teeth became a fashion statement. "I started seeing everyday guys and girls, drug dealers, and hood stars wearing them," Hanif says. New Yorkers called them gold fronts back then, and many fashion-forward kids had a pair as a way to show their wealth, like the ancient Maya and Etruscans before them. By the mid 80s, Slick Rick was wearing grills in videos like "La Di Da Di." Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap followed soon after. With rap, grills grew into a look for the rich and famous. By the 90s, Flava Flav would make them ubiquitous. Grills became the visual aid to literally depict the exaggeration of hip-hop. It was the noun to flossing's verb.

So grills made their way from the north down to Atlanta and Houston, where Paul Wall and Johnny Dang's grills businesses are based, respectively.

Dang started making grills when he opened his jewelry shop in 1996 because there was a demand. "They just said, 'I want gold teeth.' So I make it for them," he says. Dang rakes in about $8 million a year wholesaling grills to two dozen jewelers as far as Japan and Italy, and hand-delivering them around America to rappers from Chief Keef to Lil Jon and Riff Raff.

Dang's grills only take about two days to construct. It starts with a mouth mold that buyers can make themselves. For online orders, Dang ships the mold out to customers with instructions. Once he gets it back, the mold is filled with gold and diamonds within two days. Some less high-tech jewelers will even fill the mold while you wait.

Dang offers a wide variety of grill designs, and he's constantly innovating the process. His latest invention is the very high-tech engraved grill, which is so popular he's ramping production up to 40 a day at $70 per tooth. He also sells the Princess—what Kanye wears—and the Baguette, which are named based on the cut. Jewels in the Baguette look long and flat, while the Princess has diamonds protruding in little 3D triangles. For an even higher-end piece, there's also an invisible binding option, where it looks like the diamonds are bound to each other and not the gold behind them. Most of Dang's fanciest grills sell between $5,000 and $20,000. The rest of the grill-wearing world, who can't get their hands on high-end pieces like Dang's, pay somewhere between $90 to $150 per gold tooth.

They were doubtless gentlemen of the highest class of their day, otherwise they would not have gold fillings.

As Nelly announced his "platinum and white rose, traditional gold / I'm changing grills every day like Jay changes clothes," grills slipped into American consciousness. Now, famous actors wear them on the red carpet, Olympians wear them during award ceremonies, and rich high school girls wear them to prom.

Today, grills project the definition of American wealth and social status—of what it means to live the American dream. While modern celebrities and the wealthy can afford to invest and hide their money away to protect it, they also feel the need to carry their money on their teeth to remind themselves and everyone else just how successful they are.

Back in 1913, archaeologists praised the Ecuadoran grill-wearing 1 percenters for this very outlook. "They were doubtless gentlemen of the highest class of their day, otherwise they would not have gold fillings," wrote Marshall Howard Saville of his findings.

A hundred years later, Kanye West put it a little differently but essentially the same: "[There's] just certain stuff that rock stars are supposed to do."

Follow Lauren on ​Twitter​

Last Tuesday, a 49-year-old man with a history of mental illness was fatally shot by a New York City cop. That sounds bad, especially in an environment where ​people en masse are finally asking for some accountability from police officers. On the other hand, while it's early yet, this looks like a justified shooting—or at least an understandable one. 

A ​mentally disturbed man named Calvin Peters had a knife in his hand and had already allegedly stabbed a 22-year-old rabbinical student when he was killed by NYPD Officer Timothy Donahue. Video from part of the confrontation—which took place in a Brooklyn synagogue—showsat least ​one rabbi or student urging Donahue not to shoot Peters and telling Peters to put down the knife. Peters—who was reportedly bipolar but had not been taking his medicine—finally put down the knife, only to snatch it up again and rush toward Donahue. 

The video does not make it clear when, exactly, Donahue shoots, because the cameraman takes cover, but one thing is for certain: The officer could have done a lot worse here. For one thing he only fired one shot, rather than the usual multiple shots to bring down a suspect—and Peters was unquestionably armed and posing a threat to others.

From the fatal shooting of Kaji​eme Powell in St. Louis this summer to the death of woodcarver in Seattle in 2​010, American cops have a bad habit of firing at individuals armed with knives without confirming that they represent a threat. Donahue gave Peters a lot more of a chance than many suspects get from police. (Then again, one does have to wonder whether Donahue could have used a Taser or some other less-than-lethal method before firing the fatal shot.)

Maybe it was the religious setting, maybe it was being on video, or maybe it was the tremendous backlash against police lately—hell, maybe Donahue is just a little better at this than some cops—but he did his job pretty well. He tried to safely take a seemingly unhinged, definitely violent person into custody by talking him down, risking his own safety to do so. He didn't succeed, but he at least made an attempt before resorting to lethal force. That might seem like a tiny victory, but it should be encouraged and applauded—or at least recognized as the lowest acceptable standard for police behavior. 

This praise is not to sug​gest that policing and American law and order aren't in major need of reform, but just that Donahue appears to have done a decent job in a difficult circumstance. When cops or their supporters ask what an officer should do in a situation where someone is  armed, they should look at the confrontation between Donahue and Peters. If cops want points for bravery, they need to wait before they shoot—even in the face of a demonstrably violent suspect.

Now for this week's bad cops:

-On Saturday, Congress approved the semi-terrible spending bill (stupid government), but at least it also included​ a ban on funding for messing with medical marijuana in states where it is legal. About damn time, but thanks to decades of idiocy in the war on drugs, we've got some bargain-basement standards for progress.

-Georgia resident David Hooks was killed during a n​arcotics raid on his home on September 24. Now his wife's attorney is saying that Hooks was shot in t​he back and the head by Laurens County deputies during the raid, making his death even more troubling. Hooks had a gun during the confrontation because he and the family had been burglarized recently, and the raid on the house was reportedly provoked by a tip from a man who stole Hooks's car. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is still looking into the shooting, which has not provoked as much attention as the high-profile deaths of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. Hooks has his supporters, however, who rallied at t​he county courthouse on Saturday.

-The plainclothes Oakland police officer who made himself a ​viral star when he pointed his gun at protesters on Wednesday acted appropriately, since he believed he was in mortal peril from the mob of protesters who noticed he was an undercover cop. Or at least that's ​what his supervisor, California Highway Patrol Golden Gate division Chief Avery Browne, said about the incident. The officer remains on duty.

-Apparently it's not just the St. Louis Poli​ce Officers Association that knows how to make waves by threatening football players' right to protest. On Sunday, Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, put out an indignant statement about Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wearing a shirt that said "Justice for Tamir Rice - John Crawford" during warmups before his team's game against their in-state rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals. 

Follmer wrote that the Browns owed the Cleveland Police Department an apology, since the cops help protect the stadium. He also wrote, "It's pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field." Maybe so. But maybe cops should stick to law enforcement and stop opining on the conduct of professional athletes.

-The same goals for the skills of editorial car​toonists: The Bucks County Courier Times published this​ carto​on last week, which provoked another angry response, this one from the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). The cops think the cartoon was a "slur" and was "highly offensive," and the media are "parasites" who must apologize. 

There's something impressively bold about that letter. It's terrible PR—or it should be—yet the FOP still sent it, knowing it would be publicized in this climate of protest against police. The Philadelphia Police Department fireb​ombed a house in 1985, and these days has a $6-million-a-year civil asset forfei​ture racket going, but God forbid someone make a cartoon about them.

-Video of Beavercreek, Ohio, ​police detective Rodney Curd interviewing the girlfriend of John Crawford III was released on Sunday in response to a public records request, and hoo boy is it ugly. Crawford was fatally shot in a Walmart on August 5 after he picked up an Airsoft gun and fiddled with it for several minutes. A grand jury later declined to indict Officer Sean Williams for Crawford's death. During Curd's interrogation of Crawford's girlfriend Tasha Thomas, Curd threatened her with jail and other consequences if she was lying. After 90 minutes, during which Curd said such things as, "Have you been drinking? Drugs? Your eyes are kind of messed-up looking," to Thomas, the already-crying woman was finally told her boyfriend was dead.

-A Georgia woman has won a $100​,000 settlement over being jailed in 2012. Amy Barnes was riding her bike past some Cobb County, Georgia, police officers as they arrested someone. Barnes flipped off the cops and yelled "Fuck the police!" at them. She was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct, and jailed for 24 hours. A judge dismissed the charges, and Barnes sued. Take it away, N​WA.

-Oh hell, let's give our official Good Cop of the Week award t​o Utah Trooper Jeff Jones, who began a four-trooper relay to drive an 87-year-old woman 350 miles to the hospital just in time to see her dying son on Friday. Helen Smith was speeding when she passed Jones, and he pulled her over with a warning. When she was driving off, she crashed into Jones's cruiser. So he decided she could use an escort, which included troopers Jared Jensen, Chris Bishop, and Andrew Pollard over the course of the trip. Smith's son died Sunday, and one could easily imagine this story going a different way if the officers detained her instead of helping her say her goodbye. 

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on ​Twitter.

[body_image width='1500' height='844' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='the-sporting-stars-of-the-future-are-halo-players-not-footballers-232-body-image-1418579125.jpg' id='11292']

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Imagine if, instead of smeary re-runs of Wayne Rooney's jowls rippling against a Brazilian midfielder's shoulder, the average London sports bar screened live coverage of StarCraft II matches in South Korea, or a League of Legends tournament final in Texas.

Imagine if those of us who missed out on a download code for this December's ​ Halo 5: Guardians ​play-test were able to watch luckier souls in action over a jar of Mr Wetherspoon's finest—the guttural shriek of the game's energy sword nicely counterpointing the wail of passing ambulances, the staccato of its battle rifle indistinguishable from the rattle of coins in the register.

Those bars would receive much more of my custom, that's for sure. Don't get me wrong, I'm not dead to the appeal of clawing at fellow rational adults for possession of gas-filled leather sacks. I can just about work out why Ronaldo's legs are insured for more than I'll earn in my lifetime. But the sports I've enjoyed have always been determined—shaped—by the video games I adore.

That's why, when the creaky roulette wheel of miscellaneous studies spat out a crash-course in fencing, 12-year-old me was first in line for a place. After all, I reasoned, I'd been obsessing over Namco's pendulously adolescent-friendly Soul Blade for years, so I must be good at swords and stuff by now. That's why I can't watch Wimbledon without humming the theme to Mario Tennis.

Halo 5: Guardians , E3 beta trailer

And that's why I fell in love at an early age with hockey, the only sport whose players could survive a pub brawl with the cast of Warcraft III. True, playing hockey meant that all the bigger, sexually insecure kids would call you a girl, but what it loses in strutting virility hockey wins back by arming everybody on the pitch with a vicious wooden maul.

And have you seen our goalkeepers? They're worse than Klingons. In my experience, at least, the job of a hockey goalie is to turn into Blanka from Street Fighter at the earliest opportunity, usually while screaming at defenders to stop fucking about and smash some ankles. So, Blanka doing an impression of General Patton, then.

I don't play the sport any more, but I don't miss it much. Perhaps that's because video games have stolen so much mindshare from "real" sport that pub chinwags about how to squish a Call of Duty sniper now seem almost as natural as chats about Bale's latest tap-dance in the opposing D.

[body_image width='1536' height='864' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='the-sporting-stars-of-the-future-are-halo-players-not-footballers-232-body-image-1418579713.jpg' id='11294']

Indeed, I think my introductory Wetherspoons scenario is teetering on the rim of outright plausibility. So does uncle Microsoft. November's Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched alongside the Halo Channel—a bespoke Xbox Live hub for both Microsoft's reliably dismal Halo TV spin-offs (the latest stab at this features Mike Colter from Million Dollar Baby) and an array of live broadcast and video curation options.

Worried that your synapses no longer cut it? Don't despair. You can spend your whole time as a Master Chief Collector just watching other people compete, be it a clash between pros sponsored by rival headset manufacturers, or somebody's sleepy Thursday afternoon grenade kickabout. And a few years from now, I suspect, more people will "consume" their games this way than actually play them.

Video games and sport have been close allies since games wallowed into the mainstream, of course. Annual FIFA, racing and NFL games are among the firmest of the industry's fixtures, quietly hoovering up millions of sales every winter.

The eSports sector isn't breaking news, either, though its growth from year to year continues to be vaguely terrifying. Nowadays, there are  ​million-dollar prizes, seedy sponsorship deals and ​actual university scholarships on the table for the owners of thumbs agile enough to wrestle a ten-kill streak from the capering chaos of Halo multiplayer. When a pastime is prosperous enough to have ​a match-fixing problem, you know it's Serious Business.

The trailer for Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Recognizing that eSports is on the up and up, developers like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare studio Sledgehammer now consult with pro-gamers when adding to well-travelled multiplayer modes. Symptoms of this range from more robust support for player clans, to new abilities aimed at tactical loopholes in previous games that were seized upon by the sporting elect.

This has led to some interesting tensions within multiplayer communities. Most of us cannon fodderites are, I think, glad that the eSports scene exists—it's nice to know that somebody can shoot a guy out of a cockpit in free-fall conditions—but the last thing we want is to be lumped in with those supernaturally slick bastards during a throwaway round of Battlefield 4. As a recent Guardian piece ​notes, it's a particular problem for emerging titles that can't muster the numbers or mode separation to keep people like Fatal1ty (​overall earnings: £289,453.27, or around $450,000) away from the average Joes and Josephines.

Still, if we can't beat them and we don't want to join them, we can at least marvel at their antics. Pro gaming is well on its way to becoming a mainstream spectator's sport, a festival of skill that players of all levels can savor and drink themselves stupid moaning about of a Saturday lunchtime. The biggest contributing factor is probably the warp-speed increase in online video consumption, via Twitch and YouTube. New video game consoles like PS4 and Xbox One are built from the ground up to accommodate this lust for gameplay on-tap, at least when they work as advertised.

But it's also a question of the body language of the latest games, which are increasingly outfitted and animated with an audience in mind, as developers warm to the idea that every aspect of every game should have a Spectate mode. Turning in a great performance no longer means just winning the match, but putting on a blistering show. These priorities are writ large in the use of parkour in a game like Titanfall—a school of traversal that seeks to cut down on travel time by dint of looking incredibly swish.

[body_image width='1600' height='900' path='images/content-images/2014/12/14/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/14/' filename='the-sporting-stars-of-the-future-are-halo-players-not-footballers-232-body-image-1418579543.jpg' id='11293']

The Master Chief Collection's release also underlines this. The oldest of the four games it offers dates back to 2001 and, angelic HD makeover notwithstanding, feels it. Movement through the world is stately, as players trundle out to the spawning points for heavy weapons, like arthritic Golden Retrievers zeroing in on a dropped sandwich.

Halo 5 leans on many of the same structural principles, such as recharging shields for all participants, but it handles like ninja pinball on an exploding ice rink. In a series of dramatic departures from tradition, all players can sprint endlessly, double-jump, slide on their knees like antique rockstars, latch onto ledges, and smash fist-first from air to ground.

Many of these tricks have been derived from other shooters, such as Crytek's ornately suited and booted Crysis shooters, but they also call to mind an ESPN highlights reel. When you see a quartet of space marines in moulded red alloy fling themselves onto the map in Breakout mode, it's hard not to think of American football teams leaving the sideline. When you double-jump to the lip of a platform in order to bowl a grenade through a sniper's feet, the nod is as much to slam-dunks in basketball as to FPS etiquette.

And when I use my suit thrusters to skip around another player's charge, slashing him with rifle fire from thigh to ear, it's hard not to think of my finest moment as a hockey player—that time I stole the ball away from a striker so artfully that he ran straight past me, then took an elbow-snapping swing at empty air. I doubt I'll ever fire up a real-world crowd like that ever again, so it's nice that video games are beginning to fill the breach.

Follow Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on ​Twitter