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Photo by John Keane

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Today, a Facebook ad or promoted Tweet is supposed to have popped up on every UK adult's feed, courtesy of the Electoral Commission. This has been timed to coincide with "National Voter Registration Day"—the culmination of a week-long campaign to get people to register or re-register to vote. Bite the Ballot, an organization trying to rock the youth vote, has called this a "national day of celebration," like a Royal Wedding or something.

But while the Electoral Commission tries to convince people to act upon their varying levels of disdain for David Cameron and Ed Miliband, a new form of registration may have caused almost a million people to drop quietly off the electoral register. That's more than the entire UKIP vote at the last election. When the new registration system comes fully into effect after May, it could cause another three or four million voters to drop off. That's the equivalent of half of the Labour vote at the last election. This is according to research by anti-extremism advocacy group Hope Not Hate (HNH).

Individual Electoral Registration (IER), which began to take effect for new registrants over the summer, requires everybody to register themselves. Previously, many people could be registered automatically by someone in their house, their university, or care home. They can't do that any more, and many won't realize. And as the system is re-jigged, those whose details don't match up to more recent tax or benefits records will be dropped off the register.

The idea was to prevent electoral fraud, but the knock on effect has been one million fewer people on the register compared to last year—the biggest drop off from the register in UK history.

Nick Lowles from HNH explained to me how with the next election being particularly tight, this could turn out to be quite a big deal. "Fifteen of the 50 key marginal seats have got far more people dropping off than the marginal difference between [the two leading parties]." For instance in Lancaster, where just 22 of 7,500 students are registered to vote, there are "143 votes difference between the Tories, who hold the seat, and Labor." Because of this, Nick explained, it's clear that, "the drop off in register is going to have a major impact in the outcome in this election."

"Things are particularly bad in London," Nick continued, giving the example of Brent, where 35 percent of people on the old electoral register have been removed. "[In Brent] the council has a few months to try and get those people on the register. But they only have six members of staff in their electoral services department, [so] the chances are that the vast majority of those people aren't going to re-register before May."

And while local authorities have been given more money for voter drives, this isn't ring-fenced, meaning there's nothing to stop them using this to plug shortfalls in other funding.

Much like every unintended consequence of virtually every policy, ever, the fall out from the change to IER is expected to affect people who are already marginalized by society the most. "It's going to disproportionately impact on the poor, the young, the very old and transient, new communities," Nick said.

"We're seeing, in many places in the country, an 80 percent drop off in young people joining the register," Nick explained, citing 17-year-olds joining—or not joining—the register for the first time and students as the reason for this. "Students move around a lot more, they're transient... that makes it difficult both for the electoral services to find them and to register them," he said, "they also aren't as clued up in terms of voter registration and knowing what you have to do."

The same applies to poorer people, who often also live in cheap, private-rented accommodation and have to move around a lot. This makes keeping track of them difficult. And, as Nick pointed out, for people struggling to keep up with rent, bills, and whatever else, "registering to vote is not their priority."

The research has also flagged up particular concerns about recent immigrant communities, where people may need to register to vote for the first time and not be aware that they have to do so themselves. And for ethnic minority communities, the research found that the Electoral Commission is much like a newscaster struggling to pronounce a foreign interviewee's name: discrepancies in the spelling or ordering of names could result in many people falling off the register.

In the short term, more registration drives might help. HNH are calling for the government to target further education colleges and allow universities and care homes to block register residents immediately, but later on they also want the government to incorporate voter registration into other forms of data collection, including passports, driving licenses, council tax collection, school enrollment, pensions, and benefits.

Being struck off the register could politically disenfranchise people, which could, in turn, stoke extremism. Nick believes that people dropping off the electoral register due to IER could exacerbate "a much wider issue about disengagement with party politics... We've been working in communities where the BNP have been strong or the English Defense League," Nick said. "[Our fear is that] in the long term this [people dropping off the electoral register] increases disengagement with the political process and increases the chances that extremists can exploit increasingly alienated communities."

I asked Nick if he was sure he had it the right way around—perhaps the people who haven't registered might be people who wouldn't vote anyway. Nick harked back to the example of Lancaster, where only 22 of 7,500 students are currently registered to vote. "There's a lower student turnout than the population in general," he conceded, "but you still get 30 percent of students voting. When you've only got 22 out of 7,500 people on the register, that clearly means there are people who in the previous election would have voted, who aren't going to be able to vote in this election."

Whether or not people want to vote is up to them. But, Nick said, "the fact that a million people won't even be on the register, [so] won't even be able to make the choice about whether they vote or not, is a sad day for our democracy." Maybe that National Voter Registration Day celebratory bunting is a bit premature.

Follow Charlotte England on Twitter.

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Via Flickr user ryan melaugh.

Sad dads across America love to opine that college is supposed to be the most fun part of one's life. Although they're mostly lamenting own boring post-collegiate life choices when they say that, it sounds like something that should be true. Isn't it all about hooking up and partying? Posters of Jon Belushi? Beer bongs and complicated weed-smoking devices and sleeping until noon? I mean, when the Boyhood kid got to college he was pretty much immediately doing shrooms in a beautiful landscape with some attractive buddies. You've got to be excited if you're on your way to that sort of thing, right?

But data tells a different story. Since the 1950s, suicide rates among college students have almost doubled; in 2012, that was actually the most common way for kids that age to die according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. Now a newly released study from the Higher Research Institute of UCLA claims that incoming freshmen are more depressed than they've been in 30 years.Only 3.1 percent of American adults are clinically depressed while 9.5 percent of freshman say they feel like they are. Why aren't the kids all right??

Dr. Gregory Eells, the chair of mental health and counseling services at Cornell University, thinks that economics and social media are to blame. First off, 18-year-olds spent their entire adolescences in the recession, which puts them under a lot of pressure to succeed while taking on increasingly more courses and debt. And there might be something to that: Elizabeth Hawksworth wrote for the Washington Post last September that the pressures of school once drove her to the brink of suicide.

Eells also says his clients feel increasingly uncertain about whether they are "pretenders" or "posers," which is exacerbated by Facebook. "Now there are always ways we can be evaluated socially," he told me. "We really live in a world where there's no privacy. All we have to do is make one mistake in front of a camera phone and we can be embarrassed in front of millions of people."

And increased reliance on social media for interaction has another effect that might lead to depression. Only 18 percent of UCLA's survey-takers said they spent more than 16 hours with their friends per week, whereas in 1987 that number was 37.9 percent. More specifically, kids aren't partying: In 1987, fewer than a quarter of students said they partied less than an hour per week. These days, more than 40 percent said they don't party at all.

So, are students depressed because they don't party, or do students not party because they're so overwhelmed with school, which then makes them depressed?

Either way, the phenomenon's already putting a strain on the mental health systems of some campuses. "It's hard to be efficient, and we're continuing to see more and more students every year," says Dr. Eells. "I think this study indicates to me that there's a greater need [for mental health services] than any university can manage."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

I came back to the apartment to find Laura sitting at the kitchen table, upset. She said she had just gotten off the phone with the district attorney's office in New Orleans, and they told her that since her ex-boyfriend did not stab or shoot her but beat her up without a weapon, he would get a maximum sentence of six months in jail.

"I was getting comfortable knowing that he was going to jail, and now it's like, 'Bam! He's free!' But the good thing is that if he beats somebody else up, it's his third offense and he's going away for life. So now I am just crossing my fingers that he beats another motherfucker up? That is stupid. That's just stupid," Laura said. "That just kills me."

Laura moved from New Orleans to Williston, North Dakota, in 2013 to be with her boyfriend and the father of her youngest son, who had moved to Williston months earlier to find work and to escape charges in Louisiana.

The recent oil boom has transformed practically every aspect of Williston and the surrounding area.

In particular, episodes of domestic violence have skyrocketed since the boom began. A local shelter reports that, prior to 2009, it was occupied for approximately 15 nights a year. Now the shelter is rarely unoccupied.

When it comes to domestic violence in the United States, Williston is notable for a unique set of circumstances that allow for a rise in sexual trauma: the transient nature of the workforce, the isolation that many women experience when they move away from their friends and families, and the remote environment. Yet Williston is not the only place where these issues play out. The struggles that these individuals and families face, when confronting and recovering from instances of domestic violence and sexual trauma, are common all over the country.

These are photos from my time spent in Williston. None of them depict perpetrators of domestic violence or sexual assault.

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Evolve should be a hit in the making—but it could just fall flat on its face.

It's a great concept, a brand new game from a company with form—Turtle Rock, creators of Left 4 Dead—and a fusion of two of the most popular genres around right now: shooters and MOBA. (Replace that with whatever term you prefer to use, in the certain knowledge that not one shit is given about what that is.)

On the face of it, it's not a game whose name should be said while shuffling awkwardly, or coming on a wave of pre-order bonuses and DLC that smacks less of a title with a long bright future stretching ahead of it than a fire sale being run out of a building that is actually, literally on fire. An Evolve-themed Match-3 game on mobile devices, anyone? With microtransactions?

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Evolve – Wraith interactive trailer

But not all Evolve's problems are down to anything it's doing wrong. It's likely, for instance, that everyone would be much more excited for it had EA's Titanfall not burned out so quickly—and that was an easily picked-up game with mechs and jetpacks and big explosions. The history of online games has rarely been particularly kind to those that tried to offer something radically different, and even less that demands as much from its players as Evolve does.

Any multiplayer game lives and dies based on its community, and communities are fickle. Not for nothing have most recent successes been in the free-to-play world, rather than full $50+ games with no real solo content to fall back on if the online side doesn't take off.

The basic premise of Evolve is a four-against-one battle between hunters and a monster, all player controlled. The monster begins weak and has to avoid the Hunters early on while it levels up and unlocks its ability, while the hunters have to track it, catch it in a force-field dome, and combine their skills and weapons to take it out. There's more to it than that, including dangerous flora and fauna that forces the hunters to stick together (much like Left 4 Dead used Smokers and other super zombies to punish lone wolves) and the monster getting a choice of skills to power up, but that's the gist—a fast-paced game of hunter becoming hunted.

When everything clicks, it's great fun. The hunters each have special skills to deploy, and the choice of who to take into the field radically shifts the battle. Pick the human character Val as your medic and you get a powerful healing ray for keeping allies alive at the expense of being very visible, while Lazarus prefers to hide in an invisibility cloak and pop-up to revive the dead when they fall. Robot support Bucket can fly his head around the map to track the monster, while Hank can slap shields on the party and call in orbital strikes. Skills are built around character synergies and only come into their own when properly combined—much like a MOBA (see earlier comment about the genre's name), even being a heavy hitter only gets you so far.

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The hunters come face to face with one of Evolve's monsters, the Kraken

The catch is that, before you get a handle on the game's singular selling points, Evolve is a thoroughly miserable experience. It's not just that it feels like a weak shooter—it's that it feels like a bland trudge through a map before a straight-up scrum against a monster that, being piloted by another new player, is likely just thrashing around. To appreciate what the game actually is requires either proper tuition or much slogging through, and more importantly, four other players willing to do the same.

This is very unlikely to ever be a PuG-friendly game you can just jump in and play for an hour. Its reliance on everyone pulling together—hunters and monster alike—to make things fun as well is a recipe for hostility, with the specific character classes and load-outs both helping and exacerbating that. Your job isn't to come up with clever ideas and schemes and feints and tactics, but to play your character as designed and draw variety primarily from the team composition and developer-designed synergies and tactics. It's all very mechanical, making the overall game more interesting, but not without cost.

With friends it's inevitably a far, far better game. At that point though, the risk becomes one of simply getting tired. Evolve's monster-hunting concept doesn't have the raw kick of Left 4 Dead's zombie apocalypse, or the expertise curve of something like Dota 2. It's one thing to be hooked on it, but you really need a full team of friends on voice comms and a competent monster player to go up against before it becomes interesting.

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Evolve – Evacuation Story trailer

Having played a few rounds though, it's hard to see Evolve holding its interest. Changing the characters will certainly switch things up, but as yet and from beta reports, you're still functionally doing the same things—a limited strategy hunt, and a boss fight. The monster type Goliath especially suffers here, despite being the game's mascot. It's a bullet-sponge bore that quickly stops being scary to fight.

The result of all this is a game that it's hard to get too optimistic about. It's easy to imagine getting hooked on it for a couple of weeks, playing the maps and modes, trying out the new characters, learning the rhythms and teaming up with friends. It just doesn't feel like something most people will be playing a couple of months from now, when the community has hardened up and learned how to dominate their games, and new players just farting about are no longer welcome.

What made Left 4 Dead such a great co-op game was that it was easy to pick up and, for the most part, intuitive. There were painful lessons to learn, like not bothering the Witch, but they were one-time things and to at least some extent having a complete arse on the four-player team felt appropriate to the zombie apocalypse setting.

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The Wraith was the third monster to be revealed by Turtle Rock

Evolve, meanwhile, is a game that looks simple on the surface, whose complexity could—with enough additions, like new maps, monsters and mutations—be what keeps it interesting, but not without being a real barrier to entry. Its rules will either be what makes it more than simply a scrum, or completely suffocates the fun in its crib. It's also unfortunate that despite the DLC and special editions being sold, there isn't a cheap four-player pack that would make it possible for friends to play for less than $200.

However it turns out, right now Evolve is one of the year's biggest, yet most intriguing gambles. The frustration of it is that, in most ways, it's exactly the kind of game that we should want to succeed—something brand new, something that dares to go its own way, something with a cool core concept that deserves to succeed. It's maddening to doubt its chances while less-ambitious games like the latest Call of Duty dance happily into the sales charts, and that's made worse by the fact that Evolve is genuinely a good game when everything clicks.

While such a big question mark hangs over its longevity and players' willingness to play by its rules and take such a huge chunk of the responsibility for making the hunt worth going on, though, it's hard not feel The Fear for its chances. It's just unfortunate that even if Evolve has what it takes to succeed, this could end up a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Evolve is released for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on February 10.

Follow Richard Cobbett on Twitter.

The first time a young bull scuttled past her, Wena Poon told me, "the sand sprayed like little gold pieces, flicking against my leather boots. And, it's like pssshhhh, magic, and you see her glossy body just glide past you. I got so lost in the beauty of the sound that they had to shout to snap me back, before she charged again."

"They have surprisingly soft, delicate feet," Coleman Cooney added. "Feeling an animal go past you like that—it's a remarkable sensation. And, when you come home, it's like you've been to the moon because there's no point in telling anybody. They don't understand."

The three of us were practicing torero de salón in the baseball diamond of a Middle School in Alpine, California. Cooney, founder of the California Academy of Tauromaquia, was "running the horns" with his student, Poon, a Singaporean novelist. She lured him, rippling her capote as she taunted, "Ha!" Cooney held the ayuda [sword] like horns above his head. He charged in slow motion into the magenta cape that Poon swept away in a graceful veronica arc, always just out of reach.

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All photos by the author

"The basic technique of torero," Cooney explained, using the Spanish term for bullfighting, "is that you want to have one part of the cloth closer to the animal than your body. To the animal, I'm a shape, and this capote is part of me. They are going to charge whatever is closest."

A matador may have fought in a thousand matches, but whenever a bull rushes into the arena, it is always for the first time. The lidia, or bullfighting sequence, only works if the bull is naïve. The matador must learn to exploit the animal's instincts.

"The bull rapidly learns the distinction between tools in your hands and the intelligence behind it," Cooney noted. By the end of the approximately 15-minute-long lidia, the bull has been pierced in the shoulders by lances and colorful barbed sticks called banderillas. At that point, Cooney continued, "99 percent of bulls understand full well that you, the human with the two legs, is the engine of this disaster. That's when they become incredibly dangerous. And yet, their reactions are so quick, that even when they've made that realization, they can still be tricked into charging the fabric. You can even see the regret in their expression sometimes: Ah, I did it again. I fell for it again."

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Throughout the lesson, the instructor shifted effortlessly between the mind of the matador and the mind of the bull. "If there was truly something cruel about bullfighting, it would be the separation of the animal from the herd and releasing it into an enclosed area," he said. "That really freaks them out. So even animals that are not brave will charge because they are afraid. But a portion of these animals are truly courageous. You feel it in the way they charge. The bull is charging from a position of strength. He's saying, 'You're disgusting. I hate you. I'm going to clear you from the face of the earth.'"

Modern bulls are bred to be brave. "They charge from birth," Cooney maintained. "I've been charged by an animal still covered in placenta. They can walk almost immediately, and their first reaction to danger is to attack."

Fighting bulls are also bred to be fixated on movement. So much so, Cooney insisted, that "you can actually torear with your bare hand. It's very hard, because it's a very small target, but you can do it."

We practiced all afternoon swinging the capote, making concentric circles in the dirt with hypnotic repetition.

"My greatest challenge with adult students," Cooney observed in a soft critique, "is that they tend to do all kinds of extra motions. Most of the training work for me is just to eliminate extraneous motions. Children don't have that problem. Still, with enough time and money, I can make just about anybody into a bullfighter."

Most of Cooney's students have been wealthy amateurs. There was the man who wanted to kill a bull on his honeymoon in France. There was the CEO who had his secretary trained as well, so that he would always have someone to run the horns for him. There was an Irish adrenaline junky who, after years of training, progressed to fighting professionally in Spanish arenas.

Wena Poon was an anomaly. The novelist had been commissioned to write a fiction piece about a female bullfighter and needed to train in order to understand her protagonist better. "I had all these typical urban hipster preconceived notions about bullfighting," she confessed, "but until you put yourself in the arena, it's so easy to misunderstand. If you watch a bullfight on TV, you wonder why the matadors are always spitting. You think they're just trying to be macho, but when I was actually in the ring, I realized that they have to spit. Your mouth fills with sand every time the bull makes a pass."

"I didn't notice you spit," Cooney remarked.

"I spit very discreetly," Poon demured, "because I'm a girl."

The novelist's admiration for toreo came unexpectedly. "The first time I went to a bullfight, I cried," she admitted. "I wrote to my editor, 'This is so depressing. There is nothing beautiful about seeing a splendid animal reduced to a punctured carcass.' But my editor insisted that I go again, and I did, and I was hooked."

"What changed?" I asked.

"When you see a man injured right before your eyes, and he's pale with blood loss, and he continues to finish the fight... I was sitting right there in the front row seats. I could see every emotion go through his face. I grew up in Asia, and I'm female, and Buddhist, and a member of PETA, but as a human being I could just feel everything."

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Cooney looked like he'd just been slapped in the face. "You're a member of PETA?"

"I just contribute money," Poon replied.

"So do you advocate for the extermination of all domestic pets in the United States?" Cooney retorted. "Because that's their official position."

"PETA is the only organization that actually does anything to help animals," Poon maintained.

"I have a cousin who fumigated [PETA president] Ingrid Newkirk's house for termites," Cooney japed. "She's a rank speciest."

"You need to change the enemy from within," Poon told him. "You need to show them that you're rational."

"What's the best, most rational case that bullfighters can make?" I asked.

"Well, first they need to admit that it hurts," Poon replied.

"No," Cooney interjected. "Science tells us that prey animals have high endorphin content in the bodies. When you're watching TV, and you see a lion eating a zebra, that zebra is in shock. Its body is filled with shock hormones."

"We can't say for sure," Poon acknowledged. "But when you deny that it's cruel, they see you as barbaric."

"Cuisine is cruelty," Cooney said. "Unless you're an absolute vegan, you're participating in cuisine. And I'm glad you do, because it makes human life more rich."

"When I was writing the novel," Poon said, "I was searching for the source of the discomfort [surrounding bullfighting] on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, I think we're all fundamentally uncomfortable about our power over animals. We don't know how to deal with this power. So we choose to negotiate a relationship with animals: how they're raised, how they die, how they get eaten. You go into a grocery store and there's a constant dialogue about our stewardship over animals. Look at all the different kinds of eggs you can buy—eggs with a guaranteed square footage of 150 square feet per animal..."

"But it's not sincere." Cooney asserted. "It's a sham. It's a question of making yourself feel good. The people in your organization sincerely believe that they have an extra capacity for caring, and that people like me are somehow handicapped. I think that, on the most basic level, they just don't want us to have fun."

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"I have a horse and I care for the horse like it's my daughter," Poon offered. " And, I would love to be in a fox hunt. I think it would be a really fun community event. But I also hope the fox gets away. I think we have to be comfortable with moral ambiguity, and most people aren't."

"You may not like the bullfight," Cooney concluded. "You may find it abhorrent or deeply disturbing, but the one thing you can't do is dismiss it. You can't dismiss its unearthly beauty. You can't dismiss its power."

The discussion meandered as the sun slipped lower and our shadows lengthened. The capote and muleta sat neglected, leaning up against the chain link fence. The practice had ended too soon. We walked back together to the parking lot and parted ways. I shook Poon's hand and then Cooney's, realizing that I still had never seen the bullfighter's eyes. The instructor prefers to keep a low profile behind a permanent pair of shades and a ski hat. Perhaps he suspects there are animal rights activists who would love the opportunity to do to him what he does to bulls.

Follow Roc's latest project collecting dreams from around the globe at World Dream Atlas.

The first rule of military strategy, as any historian or Risk enthusiast will tell you, is never get involved in a land war in Asia. It is "one of the classic blunders" Vizzini warns Westley about in the Princess Bride, along with "never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line," before plopping over dead, poisoned by his own cup, in a scene that is actually a pretty apt characterization of the current relationship between the US and China: two adversaries sitting at the same table, each concerned that the other has poisoned the drink.

Mutual suspicions between the two countries abound, particularly as China flexes its military muscles toward its Asian neighbors. To counter these shenanigans, in recent years the US has been making a lot of noise about its so-called " pivot" toward Asia: a military, political, and economic shift that includes deploying 2,500 Marines to bases in Australia and pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that would include a massive range of countries—from Japan to Chile to the US—while conspicuously excluding China.

The possibility that tensions between the US and China will erupt into anything resembling war remains remote. For one thing, the US spends three times more on its defense budget than China, its nearest rival in military spending. But China has been making moves, building up its air and naval capabilities, and the possibility that the build up could lead to armed conflict between the two countries is not totally inconceivable. With that in mind, we asked Abraham Denmark, senior vice president for political and security affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research, what would happen if shit really hit the fan.

VICE: What would happen if the US and China went to war?
Abraham Denmark: A conflict between China and the US of any significance would be disastrous for both sides—politically economically and militarily. It's something both sides have a profound interest in avoiding.

The Chinese would have to take very seriously the implications of entering into a conflict with the US military. The US military is by far the most capable military that has ever been seen in human civilization. A war is not something to be taken on lightly. From an American point of view, our objectives are always to reduce tension, avoid conflict, and reduce the potential for miscalculation.

But suppose the US invaded China?
Nobody on the US side is envisioning a ground invasion of China. It wouldn't really serve a strategic objective. There is much more potential for conflict in the air and at sea and in cyber domains. That kind of conflict is very different from what we saw in Korea and Vietnam, and what we experienced more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is investing in air and sea capabilities. That is not just because of China, but it is one of our considerations driving us to maintain our pretty significant advantages in the air and sea.

What are some of the contingencies the US is bulking up and preparing for?
The focus of the two militaries is really different. The US military has global responsibilities. Our forces need to cope with potential adversaries across all domains of conflict—from the high end to the low end, on land and sea, in space, dealing with loose-knit forces like the Taliban to the highest-level militaries and every force in between. That means the US military has to be fairly flexible.

The Chinese military is able to focus on a few, fairly narrow sets of objectives. They don't have any allies to defend. They don't have global responsibilities. They've been able to tailor their military modernization to a limited set of scenarios, many of them involving the US. They are able to focus a lot of their military modernization on capabilities designed to undercut, undermine, and counter specific US military advantages. They have the benefit of staying in their home court.

In terms of specific, hypothetical scenarios, Taiwan is a perennial concern, but [there is also the potential for conflict] in the East and South China Sea. China could also enter into conflict with a US ally like Japan or the Philippines, and the US would be obligated to defend [those countries.] Other things to think about are what we can't plan for. In 2001, a Chinese fighter jet rammed an American propeller plane in international waters and forced it to land on Hainan Island. That caused a pretty significant crisis between the US and China. If that sort of thing were to happen again, or between ships in international waters, that would be a crisis. I'm not saying it would lead to conflict, but it would be a challenge to manage.

Since America has a broader international presence and China has focused its military capabilities locally, would you say we'd be evenly matched if we went to battle by sea or air?
The US has tremendous advantages, but those advantages are diminishing over time because China is becoming more technologically advanced. It is closing the gap a bit. I'd also say the quantity has an advantage that is all its own. China is just able to build more ships, to build a lot of planes. That has a military effect.

[The US is] not standing still either. We're making the investments we need to defend our allies and our interests, but it requires eternal vigilance and constant evaluation.

The US and China compete both economically and militarily, but they're also working together in some respects. Is this a keep-your-enemies-close approach on the part of both countries?
I think it is more that both sides have deeply ingrained uncertainties about the intentions of the other. They're looking for ways to ensure the relationship moves in a positive direction. From the American point of view, there is deep concern that China will supplant the US as the dominant power in Asia. The Chinese are concerned that America is fundamentally opposed to China's rise and that America will act to contain and restrain it.

What do you make of the rising anti-Americanism in the official Chinese press?
It's definitely something to be concerned about. Chinese anti-Americanism has never really gone away. Mao referred to us as an imperialist power, but engaged with us to counter the Soviets, so our relationship has always been complicated. But both sides are trying to work together without sacrificing what they see as nonnegotiable interests. I would cast [China's] anti-Americanism as an intensifying nationalism. A lot of the anti-American rhetoric we are hearing is coming through the filter of nationalism.

What we are seeing in the media from both sides is reflective of where the relationship is. There's suspicion and mistrust on both sides, but both sides are trying to figure out a way to work together. Looking at China, this view of the United States as trying to contain China and this resurgent nationalism, it all grows out of how the Communist Party talks about Chinese history, talks about the Century of Humiliation [1839-1949], and its need to buttress itself in the face of abandoning communism in all but name and deal with intensifying tension within China. It is using nationalism to enhance the legitimacy of the party.

What's the relationship between Chinese economic ambition and the flexing of its military might?
They are using all aspects of national power to try to establish China—they would say reestablish China—as the central power in Asia. The name for China in Chinese means central kingdom. They are trying to establish China as this central kingdom.

In the last year we've seen the Chinese President Xi Jinping announcing programs like the New Maritime Silk Road that are designed to insert China into Asia's economic and financial mechanisms and to draw the region in more closely with China. The military is being used in the East China Sea and the South China Sea as a way to flex China's muscles and assert its claims over disputer waters and islands, but also as a diplomatic tool to put pressure on the region and demonstrate that China is rising and that the region needs to grant it a greater degree of power.

These disputes go back centuries. China has a dispute with Vietnam over the Spratly Islands. It has been going back and forth with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. These feuds are nothing new. What is new is China has a greater ability to assert its claims, and increased economic power. America views these ongoing disputes as bellwethers over whether [China] will follow a revisionist path or plug in with the existing international system and contribute to its health and success.

Do you see China becoming more aggressive in the next few years?
Absolutely. China has been conducting a multi-decade effort of military modernization that has been geared towards asserting its power along its periphery. It has primarily been focused on contingencies related to Taiwan but increasingly it is incorporating scenarios related to the Senkaku Islands and in the South China Sea. They've been developing aircraft carriers, which will have limited capabilities in a conflict with Taiwan, but have significant implications for the South China Sea, especially as a tool for coercion and military intelligence.

Whether or not China acts more assertively has to do with Beijing's calculations as to how their military capabilities relate to those of the US and the willingness of other countries in the region—Japan, Vietnam—to push back.

Follow Peter on Twitter.

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Words by Rik Beune.

The tradition of paño (from the Spanish 'pañuelo' which means 'handkerchief') began in the correctional facilities of Western American States sometime in the 1940s. At the time, decorating handkerchiefs was the only way for illiterate Mexican prisoners to communicate with the outside world. To this day, paños are still often sent to friends and family instead of letters, while, in certain prisons, the handkerchiefs are a popular form of currency.

Most of the artworks are tattoo-like images of skulls, clowns, lowriders, and pin-up girls drawn on muslin cloth with a ballpoint pen. Themes range from religious to pornographic, with decorative elements like boobs, teddy bears, skulls, and unicorns alternating repeatedly as if they were conceived in pairs. Paños basically show that even the most hardened criminals make their mother a hand-drawn card on Mother's day.

Up until recently, paños rarely made it past the walls of prison cells or of the prisoners' relatives' homes. Five years ago, while researching prison artifacts artist and collector Reno Leplat-Torti discovered the art of paños and set out to collect as many of them as possible. At the moment, his collection counts more than 200, which he has been exhibiting in galleries all around Europe.

Find out more about Leplat-Torti's collection here.

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A still from Jace Connors' YouTube post, embedded below

GAMERGATE iS STILL A THING

The mainstream media's gradual withdrawal from the GamerGate controversy may have indicated that its heat had died down, that the hate had calmed. This week illustrated, vividly, how that's not the case.

At the weekend, Boston-based Giant Spacekat developer Brianna Wu—a target for abhorrent abuse as GamerGate was at fever pitch, and whose socials have since been constantly attacked—discovered that a Massachusetts man was, apparently, planning "Operation Wu-Pocalypse." Jezebel reported on Monday, February 2, that his name is Jace Connors and that Wu only became aware of his explicit intention to confront her, after 43 prior threats over social media, when this video appeared on YouTube:

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/jYPC-YMdJFI' width='560' height='315']

The above video contains racist language which may offend

Connors, who posts on YouTube as "ParkourDude91" and has previously claimed to be a former US Marine and admitted to a history of schizophrenia and PTSD (on his own website), was driving to Boston "in order to challenge [Wu] to a street race... for #GamerGate," when he crashed the Toyota Prius he'd borrowed from his mother. The video he immediately filmed finds him raving about not being drunk, and how the windshield is made of "bullshit plastic," before displaying text outlining Operation Wu-Pocalypse, and accusing Wu of attempted murder for rigging the car to crash. He interpreted this Tweet from Wu, from October 2014, as a "thinly veiled death threat" against him. Clearly it's nothing of the sort.

Wu has since been granted a restraining order preventing Connors from coming anywhere near her. Quite how we're in this position, where people who make video games are threatened with death by (some) people who (sometimes) play video games, is a mystery we'll probably never solve. These actions have precisely nothing to do with ethics, or any kind of journalistic corruption. And sadly, this wasn't the only reason that Wu was in the news this week.

Giant Spacekat's first game, Revolution 60, debuted on Steam Greenlight earlier this week, immediately attracting several downvotes and negative comments from posters with existing opinions on Wu's outspoken position on GamerGate. The studio saw it coming, but it was still depressing to see unfold. Reported MCV's Ben Parfitt on Wednesday, February 4: "As you might expect, the discussions page on Greenlight is horrific, with locked topics including 'are you trying to emotionally blackmail us,' 'is Brianna Wu a white supremacist?', 'Spacekatgal, it's time you stopped demonizing people,' and various other assorted nonsense."

At the time of writing this, recent comments on the game's Greenlight listing include "Eh, I think I'll stick with Hatred," and "Don't buy this, guys. It's for 'new gamers,' as in fat semi-retarded housewives who can barely manage to get their hands around a phone, let alone 'master a controller with 15 buttons.'"

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Joshua Peters was understandably in tears after being "swatted" (still from the video below)

SERIOUSLY, THIS SHIT IS STILL SCARY

I didn't know a thing about dox(x)ing or swatting prior to GamerGate. Now, disappointingly, I know about these things all too well. The latest example of the latter—where emergency services, from small forces to entire SWAT teams, are erroneously dispatched to an address on the false reporting of a critical incident—occurred this week, when Twitch streamer and US Air Force veteran Joshua Peters had his house in Minnesota stormed as he played Clash of Clans for an audience of close to 60,000 people.

Reported Alex Hern of the Guardian on February 5: "Viewers of the stream realized what was happening at the same time as Peters, when his mother's voice was picked up by the microphone as she called to him about the arrival of the officers. They watched as confusion flickered across his face, before turning to concern, exiting stage right." Peters was using noise-cancelling headphones, so didn't hear the officers coming in.

When Peters, aka Twitch user "Koopatroopa787," returned to his broadcast several minutes later, he was visibly shaken and confirmed that he'd been the latest victim of swatting. The police had received a report that there'd been gunshots at his property, and possibly a casualty.

Earlier this year, on January 3, one-time GamerGate supporter and Feminist Frequency donator Grace Lynn was swatted following months of harassment from "Gators" she'd once aligned herself with. Twenty officers showed up at her property, although the perpetrator(s) behind the call could not be directly linked to anyone actively "for" GamerGate. But several reports have tied GamerGate activity to instances of swatting, as documented in this Guardian article.

Peters' reaction video to his swatting is sobering indeed. There's no place for this in gaming.

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IN LESS DEPRESSING NEWS, 'RESIDENT EVIL' IS ALSO STILL A THING

The leaderboards for the new Resident Evil HD remaster are already "broken," with one bright spark cheating his way to completion after just a single second.

Kotaku's Patrick Klepek reported on Wednesday, February 4: "Within days of release, players had started digging into the game's code, looking for ways to finish it faster and faster by aggressively cheating. It's probably not possible to beat it faster than a second, but I'm sure people will try."

The "record" of just a single second comes from someone with a fine history of speed-running Resident Evil properly, which at least indicates that he's having a laugh with his code-cracking tomfoolery. "Carcinogen" has clocked the full game in under an hour and a half—impressive indeed given How Long to Beat's "average" play time of closer to ten hours.

Here's a commentary video of "Carcinogen" in action, if you've half an afternoon to waste (or spend constructively, learning the man's many tricks):

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/L0q1HeYSsPc' width='560' height='315']

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SOME NEW GAMES CAME OUT

Episode two of Telltale's Game of Thrones, "The Lost Lords," followed in the jugular vein of its predecessor by layering on the intrigue for coming installments without actually settling any of the loose narrative strings left flapping in the wake of episode one's bloody climax.

You'll find no spoilers here, but Telltale's six-part project is successfully mirroring the atmosphere of its televisual influence: It's dark, with distrust lurking behind the eyes of even one's closest confidants. The game runs concurrently with the HBO show, offering a sideways perspective on happenings from the end of season three to the beginning of season five, while focusing on new characters who don't feature in either the TV adaptation or the original books.

Catching up with Jon Snow—voiced by his TV actor Kit Harington—at the Wall is a nice aside to the political power struggles in King's Landing, but episode two's missing the previous entry's star turn, namely Queen Regent Cersei Lannister, played by Lena Heady. Her exchange with new-to-this-game character Mira Forrester, in the Red Keep's Great Hall, was the very best part of episode one. Her absence in episode two is keenly felt—the rest of the cast curse and clash like fans of the franchise would expect, but without tongues so wicked as that of the Queen herself.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zGt0DCBKV_o' width='560' height='315']

"The Lost Lords" trailer

The Acquire-developed Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed comes rather less recommended, its official European port for PS4 arriving this week after a series of dismissive reviews around its original release. The third-person brawler sees you strip vampire-ish enemies down to their undergarments, but it's a lot less fun that it sounds. Gamespot wrote that "the monotonous combat only grows more tiresome as you progress", awarding the game 4/10 last summer, while the current issue (#276) of Edge magazine concludes with the same score, adding: "you'll ponder whether so much exposed skin has ever resulted in anything so thuddingly dull." Here's a trailer, anyway:

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zIVTfzZH_tE' width='560' height='315']

Perhaps the best game of the week is Sunless Sea, which is graduating from Steam Early Access tonight (February 6). Hands up, I know little about the game, beyond that it's a top-down maritime survival title from London indie studio Failbetter. But when the games writer Simon Parkin—of New Yorker fame and more—awards something 10/10, you pay attention. You can read his Eurogamer review here, and you really should.

"Lose your mind. Eat your crew." The game's website promises "discovery, loneliness, and frequent death." I'm in. Check out the launch trailer:

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/QhIk2PqPU3o' width='560' height='315']

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THERE'S NO 'METAL GEAR RISING 2,' UNLESS THERE IS

Platinum Games's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance of 2013 was one of the most deliriously fun action games of the PS3/360 generation, after the same studio's own Bayonetta and Vanquish. It took the serious-faced solemnity of Hideo Kojima's long-running Metal Gear Solid series and fired up the afterburners, giving the player complete 360-degree control of a sword that could slice through almost anything, from trees to tanks to unfortunate enemies whose limbs had never been so dismembered.

Kojima said in 2012 that if the game proved popular, he'd consider a franchise around it—in other words, it'd get at least a sequel. The next year, the celebrated developer reconfirmed that interest, and that he'd like Platinum to again oversee the second Rising game. So when a teal-colored, metallic-looking "2" flashed up at the 2015 Taipei Game Show, rendered in a style that was a fair ringer for the Rising logo, the internet duly concluded: sequel.

Unfortunately, Kojima Productions has since confirmed—as reported on Techno Buffalo on February 2—that there is no sequel being worked on. However, Kojima and company have been known for their teasing ways in the past—many Metal Gear fans are still recovering from the Christmas Day Chicken Hat marathon—so who really knows? It could yet be that a second Metal Gear Rising release is premiered at this summer's E3, or at the following Tokyo Game Show.

Platinum has the Xbox One-exclusive Scalebound in development right now, but surely that's not the only thing they're working on. I would desperately love the studio to deliver another Rising, especially after their amazing work on the Bayonetta sequel last year.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

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Image by Noah Van Sciver

From the ages of 17 to 19, I believed that God had cursed me with a swollen left testicle that was the size and shape of a large pear. I was suffering from a condition known as hydrocele, which basically meant there was an exceptionally large collection of fluid around my testicle that made it look like I'd put a 100-watt lightbulb down my pants. It was the result of blunt-force trauma—my loving sister thought it was hilarious to kick me in the crotch whenever I was napping. As traumatic as it might seem to be cursed with a grapefruit-sized sperm-machine, hydrocele isn't life-threatening and can be corrected with a pretty simple surgical procedure. Unfortunately, I told no one about my condition and lived with it for about two years.

You may have a hard time believing that a young man would—or could—hide this condition from his parents and friends. While I'll admit it wasn't easy, at the time it seemed absolutely necessary. Throughout my pubescent years, my life was immersed in the Evangelical world of Clear Lake, Iowa, where church camp and rapture novels made up the entirety of my cultural experience. The tiny Christian school I attended (there were six students in my graduating class) offered little in the way of sex education; mostly, we were told to fear our own bodies and condemn anyone who aroused our dark impulses. For a time I treated my crotch like it was the dreaded head of Medusa—one glance and it would turn me into stone.

The swelling continued until my scrotum puffed out like one of Dizzy Gillespie's cheeks.

But condemnation and promise of Hellfire still wasn't enough of a deterrent for me. Dealing with my hungry teenage penis was like picking up a hot kettle with nowhere to set it down. With great shame, I masturbated constantly and stuck my dick in every vaguely vaginal orifice I could find—couch cushions, vacuum hoses... Like most children growing up in an aggressively moralistic culture, I thought I was the only one who dealt with these impulses. So there was no one I could talk to it about—confessing to masturbation would be enough to get me kicked out of school. Coming in the palm of your hand or inside of an unwed uterus was utterly disgraceful. Worse yet was if you were ever caught with another boy—another boy, equally tortured by his own body, desperate for somewhere to put that hot kettle.

Such was the case for me when I was 17. When my left testicle began to ache and turn an angry shade of purple, I believed it was God's punishment for an afternoon I'd spent with a fellow (Christian) male. We spilled our seed together in the shower and watched it mix atop the wet porcelain and clog up the drain. With the orgasm came the sobering acknowledgment of God's eyes beaming down on us.

The swelling continued until my scrotum puffed out like one of Dizzy Gillespie's cheeks. It was an unwelcome appendage that became difficult to navigate. Whenever I made the mistake of crossing my legs, performing a cartwheel, or sitting down too quickly, I'd wince in pain. Then it became numb and hard. It calcified and hung low in the summer humidity, like a potato shoved into wet pantyhose.

When Judd Nelson asked Molly Ringwald if she wanted to see the picture of a guy with elephantiasis of the nuts in The Breakfast Club, she refused in disgust. "How do you think he rides a bike?" Nelson continued. How indeed.

As long as I didn't shower with the other boys in gym class (I hid in the stall until they were finished), it was easy to keep the little alien fetus between my legs a secret. I was successful for about a year until I dropped out of school and began working at a Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa. As weird as that gig sounds, it wasn't an uncommon route for kids who went to my school. You worked at the factory, picked up a marijuana addiction, and began dating one of the girls who stitched the seat belts.

"When I lowered my trousers, the doctor gasped, stared, and then left the room."

I was having plenty of sex, but keeping my little secret hidden from the woman I was bumping pelvises with was exhausting. Years later I heard artist Brigid Berlin explain that she never wanted men to see how fat she was during sex, so she'd always be naked and under the covers before they came into the bedroom. I could relate. When my girlfriend and I would strip down to our awkward, juvenile skin, I'd always make the sure the room was dark, the blankets were plentiful, and the sex positions were minimal.

By this time, I'd moved out on my own and the world was becoming a very complex place. My biblical literalism was being challenged by critical thinking. Morality and desire were in a constant battle. Years later I would become a thick-skinned atheist, but at 18, I still hated myself for the sex and drugs that had become a part of my everyday life. Though by that time I was starting to accept that the world was more complex than the mythology I'd been raised in.

I wasn't ready to accept the idea that the universe was an explosive mix of complex beauty and untethered chaos—but I was ready to see a doctor. I'd had very little contact with hospitals as a child, and had little idea how to navigate that world as an adult. I'd explained all the details of my fist-sized testicle to a woman over the phone, but she was just the receptionist. After repeating my story to a half dozen other people, I was eventually penciled in for an appointment with a urologist.

My assumption was that doctors—particularly urologists—had seen everything. Women with penises growing out of their thighs, men with a single blinking eye inside their asshole. Everything. So if I was going to reveal my soft-ball sized secret to anyone, a doctor seemed like the best bet. But when I walked into his office, lowered my trousers and hopped upon his papered table, the doctor gasped. He literally gasped. Then stared. Then closed the door.

Once he'd composed himself, the doctor diagnosed me with a hydrocele, explaining that "there's actually nothing technically wrong with the testicle. It still functions, and it's not cancerous. We can do surgery to drain the fluid, but it would be considered a cosmetic surgery."

At first I didn't think I'd heard him right. After all, this little anvil in my underoos was pulling so hard on my cremaster muscle I could feel it in my gut. (Though I would not have described it that way at the time, having little knowledge of anatomy or the films of Matthew Barney.)

I thought, Cosmetic surgery? As in vanity? As in nonessential? Priced right alongside a nose job and calf implants?

I was a Midwesterner, a farm boy raised in poverty on government assistance. The idea of going into a doctor to get cosmetic surgery on my balls seemed as weird and frivolous as a pet monkey in an iron lung. My insurance from the Winnebago factory wouldn't cover the cost of the operation. But it was explained that I wouldn't have to pay for it up front, so I scheduled the surgery with the promise to work off the debt in installments—a promise that, 13 years later, I have yet to make a single payment on.

I was informed that on the day of the surgery they would not let me leave without a guardian driver, so I was forced to bring my grandmother into the dark circle of truth about my asymmetrical scrotum. Grandma always represented a maternal security that was eternally welcome. She was a good sport, staying with me in the surgery prep room while a morphine drip fucked me up, the nurses shaved my sack, and I Love the 80s played on the TV.

After the surgery, while I was still pleasantly high—before the mind-shattering pain set in—she gingerly pushed my wheelchair to the parking lot, then drove me to her house, where I remained in bed for a week, watching 90210 reruns and choking down her Norwegian cooking while I moaned in pain.

"Try having that treasure chest between your thighs sliced like a Thanksgiving turkey."

Today I'm all about pills. Can't get enough of them. I'd swallow an iPod shuffle if convinced I'd get the same effect as Oxycontin. But back then, I had a deadly fear of medication. While I was recuperating at my Grandmother's house, my dad's voice was still a locked groove spinning constantly in my head: "The word pharmacy is derived from the Greek 'pharmakeia,' which translates to witchcraft, or sorcery." Therefore eating pills was tantamount to engaging in a Satanic orgy.

So I refused all the prescribed opiates and just dealt with the pain. Or at least endured it, because as bad as you may think the healing process of a broken bone or third-degree burns are, try having that treasure chest between your thighs sliced like a Thanksgiving turkey, sewn back together, and then throb like a screaming infant for weeks. With no drugs.

After a while, I moved back to my apartment and was cared for by my girlfriend, who made a big show about me not telling her about my condition or the surgery. She was hysterical, but I was sure it was an act. After all, how could she not have noticed my giant organ slapping her in the ass like a fleshy blackjack every time we had sex?

She'd most likely been in some mind-twisting state of denial, hoping the issue would just go away if she just didn't acknowledge it. I was 19 by then, and was getting too old for such childishness. After a few weeks of constantly sitting on bags of ice while I smoked weed and discovered the novels of Tom Robbins, the swelling went down and I once again had a balanced bag of balls. Staring at my now-restored coin purse in the mirror, I realized there was nothing shameful or evil about my body, and was looking forward to the years ahead of shame-free sex.

Until I discovered crabs.

Follow Josiah on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

All photos by Chris Bethell

Hundreds of students and anti-fascists disrupted a speech by Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right National Front at the Oxford Union last night. Le Pen and her party would have been proud of the invitation to talk at such an important institution. But through the thin walls of the old crumbling building, she and the audience would have heard the disgusted cries of people who think she should never have been there in the first place. Her speech was held back for an hour, hundreds were blocked from getting in, and the night ended with her sitting in a police van being followed down the street by irate anti-fascists.

It was an evening the Oxford Union would have been used to. They have a habit of inviting racist creeps to debates to show how brilliantly open minded they are and to cause a bit of a stir. In 2007 protesters broke through into the debating chamber to oppose the invitation of Nick Griffin, then leader of the far-right British National Party. It seemed like the Union had learnt a lesson when they dropped another invitation for Griffin in 2013. But last year, former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson was asked to speak in the wake of Rotherham's child abuse scandal. It was also opposed.

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When I arrived in Oxford about an hour before Le Pen was due to speak, hundreds of students were queuing up on St Michael's Street outside the Union building waiting to hear her. Nobody I interviewed seemed to agree with Le Pen's xenophobic, anti-immigrant politics but many were interested in how she might justify and explain them.

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Will

"I'm not here because I support her," Will, a 21-year-old history student told me. "But I think we need to listen to her because she is being listened to by others. We should engage with her on a rational level and ask her some intelligent questions."

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Most people in the queue agreed. For a while, the only people protesting were Unite Against Fascism. They'd set up a stand and a PA system at one end of the street and lectured the largely unimpressed students about their views on what free speech actually means.

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A few minutes later the atmosphere changed. As the long line of students began to make their way in through the Union gate, a bunch of new protestors arrived from a variety of anti-racist and anti-fascist groups including RS21, NUS Black Students Campaign, Stand Up to UKIP, London Black Revs, and Berkshire Antifascists.

The demonstration swelled to between 200 and 300. Though Le Pen had already managed to slip in through a side entrance on Cornmarket Street, they weren't about to let things run smoothly. One activist I spoke to said he had already tried to stop the event. He and several others woke up at five in the morning to put bike locks on each of the Union's entrances. University security guards just sawed through them.

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The Oxford Union, which is not affiliated with the University, defended Le Pen's invitation on its website. The Union says that it, "believes first and foremost in freedom of speech."

The anti-fascists trying to shut down the event argued that allowing people to say what they want doesn't necessarily involve actively inviting people to your gilded plinth to say it, particularly someone whose party is home to an ugly mix of rank and file racists and nationalists.

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Jonathan Katz

"Marine Le Pen has done nothing to erase her father's anti-Semitic legacy," Jonathan Katz, a 23-year-old Jewish graduate student told me. "Even if it says it's courting us Jews it's quite obvious if you're going to balls sponsored by neo-Nazis in Austria that you're not really a friend of the Jews. I'm very shocked that the Oxford Union has invited her to speak particularly given that Jewish and Muslim students already feel so threatened in the current environment. Freedom of speech should not be idolized over the freedom of people to live a safe life."

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Annie Teriba (center)

Annie Teriba, a 20-year-old history and politics student with RS21 echoed those thoughts. "I'm standing here watching a line of largely white people go in to debate my identity because that seems fucking interesting to them," she said. "My identity is not up for debate. My safety is not up for debate and if you think it is, you don't deserve a place on our campus either. We're not opposed to debating these ideas—we do that all the time. But that doesn't require having someone like Marine Le Pen on our campus."

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After half an hour of chanting, five or six anti-fascists holding anarchist flags suddenly moved to the front gate and blocked the 200-odd students still cueing outside from getting in.

The two security guards on the door, holding nothing but clipboards, decided to shut the gate to try and contain things.

There was a bit of a stand off before one activist moved forward, shouting out the code of the locked door—which he somehow knew—to those at the front. The door was forced open, but despite some pushing and shoving, the same two security guards somehow managed to keep the entire crowd out with nothing but their feet. Only the activist that had shouted out the code managed to get in, and charged into the courtyard as an army of one.

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"I was the only person," he told me after. "I ran straight up into the union chamber inside the courtyard. The moment they saw that the gate had been breached there were two people stood by the double doors where Le Pen was speaking. They pulled the doors shut and started running after me. I was shouting 'Nazi scum here we come' at them. They dragged me out into the back entrance before I was able to run off."

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At this stage the police—who had been absent up to this point—started to arrive in the courtyard. After an hour delay to the debate the Union had finally made a decision to close the gate, seal the other entrances and stop all further access.

The night then turned into a noise demo. For the next hour or so people gathered around trying to disrupt the event just 60 feet away by making as big a racket as possible.

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Rupert Cunningham

Some of the students that had tried to get in stayed, confused and irritated in the freezing cold. Standing away from the main demo, I spoke to Rupert Cunningham, a 22-year-old classics student. He was former President of the Oxford Conservative Association, and dressed in the way he will when he holds high office in about 30 years time. He arrived towards the end of the protest but told me that he had no interest in being a part of it.

"I think they are presenting quite an intimidating front to people who are generally interested in what she has to say. They have the right to protest, but trying to shut down debate is not good at all," he said.

"If Marine Le Pen can come anywhere to have her views questioned and intellectually challenged the Oxford Union is the place to do it," he told me.

This made me wonder if antifascists should actually be encouraging the Oxford Union to debate the far-right. Maybe if every fascist top dog in the whole world was subjected to the withering critique of a particularly precocious first year PPE student, they would give the whole thing a re-think and stop being so nasty? Maybe not.

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Sam Slater (right)

Speaking for first year PPE students, Sam Slater was also quite annoyed.

"I don't think these people understand that fascism doesn't start with a speech," he said. "It starts with a basic erosion of freedoms like the freedom of speech and assembly—which these people are denying me. I think these guys are the real fascists."

After a while the chanting started to die down with no more than 30 to 40 demonstrators remaining. I decided to leave but shortly afterwards an activist called me to say Marine Le Pen had been spotted coming out of a side entrance by a group of protesters.

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"They saw her walking out through the side with her head covered like she was a celebrity coming out of court," I was told. "She got into a police van and ten people started following after it but the van got away. People were annoyed at the police for having protected her."

In France, where people's opinions of Le Pen are more important, her attempts to rebrand the National Front appear to be working. An opinion poll published last week suggests she would finish top of the first round of the next presidential election—just her like her father did in 2002. However, her party is stained by a legacy of fascism. As last night showed, while her popularity grows, plenty of people will still try and make her life difficult wherever she goes. Meanwhile, all the fuss of the night probably did little to dissuade the Oxford Union from inviting "controversial" speakers to debate with them in future.

Follow Phillip and Chris on Twitter.

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Screenshots via Horse-news.net

The glorious nation of China has brought the world incredible inventions—paper, gunpowder, India Ink—and recently planned to introduce yet another marvel: a mass-produced, scantily clad My Little Pony (MLP)-inspired doll. The posting for the product has since been taken down, but it raised so many questions that we needed to dig deeper regardless.

The doll resembles the character Rainbow Dash, and is a beautiful five feet, nine inches of curvaceous equine PVC. If your immediate reaction is outright disgust you aren't alone, but consider that much seed has been spilt over plastified parts (I'm talking fake breasts here), and perhaps this may not seem so strange. In fact, you could argue that there's no shame in feeling sexually aroused by synthetic plastics. Maybe it's a normal part of growing up in the Willennium.

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Screenshot of Ali Baba product page

According to the website, the doll can apparently be used for "advertisement, parties, clubs, parks, and outdoor entertainment." So it's kind of a cross between a wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing tube guy and a bouncy castle that you can fuck.

The page for the erstwhile product was incredibly sketchy and confusing, and raised a lot of questions. For example:

Why did their product specifications contain the descriptor, "Ice cream cone: ice cream cone"? What were we supposed to do with the "ropes, glue, sandbags, pegs" that would have come with the repair kit? And why is there a company employee posing with the doll like he's awkwardly getting his photo taken with a celebrity on some B-list red carpet event?

But perhaps the biggest question of all is: Why Rainbow Dash?

The answer to that may lie in the fact that Rainbow Dash was the first in her class to get the revered "Cutie Mark" which, according to the MLP wiki, is a "unique picture-like symbol located on the ponies and zebras' flanks or haunches... often related to the personality, proclivity, or talent of the character." Rainbow Dash is the MLP character that represents and embodies the quality of loyalty.

Is this some sort of nod to the disturbingly similar practice of Polish pimps branding prostitutes in reward for "loyalty and good service?" Or perhaps it's because Rainbow Dash is one of the only characters in the series who engages in interspecies sexuality when she's kissed by a turtle?

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the issue, VICE talked to a brony named Evan Nip, an acquaintance whose MLP fandom has never surfaced in our interactions. Nip is a student in Ottawa and is also active on the Ottawa Bronies web forum. He owns a My Little Pony t-shirt and a plushie and is also part of a podcast called Alpaca Party.

VICE: So, as a brony, what do you think of this doll?
Evan Nip: The doll represents everything I hate about the fandom, to be honest. I've always had a big problem with the sexual fetishization of My Little Pony, and it's something that seems to only occur in the adult fandom. The show itself I believe does a good job of maintaining a non-sexualized image for the ponies, something that seems to be increasingly rare in television and toys marketed toward young girls. However, [some of] the fandom takes it and twists it all up. Let me be clear: I know some furries, and that is not what I have a problem with.

People have different fetishes, and while I'm not a furry, I don't really care that there are people out there who are. My main problem is when you associate that sexual energy to something that is supposed to be a kids' show. And it is definitely occurring. Search "clop" (MLP-themed porn) on the internet, read fanfics, or even go to conventions and you will see evidence of this everywhere. I went to Ottawa Comic-con this year, and the amount of "slutty"-styled MLP cosplays seriously disturbed me. I don't care about the provocativeness of the costume, I care about the association with a kids' show.

Maybe I can clarify with an example. I feel that probably the biggest misstep the MLP franchise has had is the Equestria Girls spinoffs. In them, the Mane 6 characters are represented as basically normal human teenagers. I felt that this essentially made it OK to sexualize these characters, and as a result, I felt the core message of the show has taken a different turn. I like MLP mostly because of the writing and the characters, but also because it presents a positive and empowering message for little girls, something which is still severely lacking in modern media. Attaching sexual fantasy to a show like this simply ends up reversing this message.

Can you tell me a bit about how you became a "brony"?
To be honest, I was actually listening to this podcast called the InternetBox, where they had a segment on Ponies every episode. The podcast was really good, but for about ten minutes each episode they would just go on about the latest episode, and it sounded funny, but I couldn't really fully comprehend what was being said. So basically I started watching it simply to try and get a full understanding of what was being said on some dumb podcast.

How does MLP meld with your identity?
People treat my fandom of MLP much differently than [other types of fandom]. Being a brony has become a defining feature of my interests to other people. If a friend of mine decides to make a jab at me, it's usually related to MLP, so whether I think it is or not, it cannot be helped that it is a major factor in how others perceive me, and therefore becomes part of my identity. Like it or not, identity is largely shaped by what others think of you, because if it was simply what you think of yourself, then we wouldn't have such problems with discrimination.

What are some of the misconceptions that people have about bronies?
I mean, the obvious one is that we are all perverted furry pedophiles. Every time someone finds out I'm a brony, the third or fourth question is some covert way of asking if I jack off to pony porn, and the only reason they wait that long to ask is out of politeness. However, I think there is a larger misconception that often goes unnoticed, and that is that we are all adult men. I know a lot of women bronies (some who hate the term "pegasister," some who don't), and for whatever reason, they consistently are marginalized in media coverage. Part of the reason, I think, that bronies have such an association with sexual fetishization is because the belief is that we are all dirty men living in our basements, when the truth is we are much more diverse than that. There are people who take the enjoyment too far in every fandom, but ours tends to cause more alarm because it's a little girls' show.

Does your current relationship have any My Little Pony aspect to it?
(Laughs)... No, not really. My girlfriend thinks that me being a brony is kind of weird, but she doesn't really give a shit. I think she's weird for watching America's Next Top Model religiously, but I don't make a big deal about it, either. Honestly, we are both mature adults, and we respect each other's choices, and that's all there is to it. If someone can't accept that, then that's their problem.

Back to the doll: would you be interested in purchasing something like this for, y'know, non-sexual purposes? Or do you know someone who would?
I definitely would not be interested in purchasing the doll, except for maybe prank purposes...I do know some people who would buy it, but to be honest, the majority of the people I know don't take sexual pleasure in MLP. If anything, they would buy the doll just to dress it up and keep it with their collection of plushies and other memorabilia.

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Two members of "the ISIS of London" train in a park

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The head of London's largest taxi drivers' association has compared the cyclists of London to Islamist terror cell, ISIS. And not, like... he didn't just turn round in his cab and say this to a bewildered tourist who was being taken to Trafalgar Square via Surbiton. He said this on the radio. While people were listening.

Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association (LTDA) general secretary Steve McNamara yesterday told LBC Radio: "These people, the zealots of the cycling world, are unbelievable. We have had cyber attacks on our websites. They are all over us like a cheap suit on Twitter and social media. We have had physical threats of violence. You name it, we have had it. It's absolutely unreal.

"The loonies out there in the cycling world, they're almost the sort of ISIS of London. Their views and their politics—if you are not with them, and we are with the majority of it, then nothing is too bad for you. These people are unreal."

"Almost a sort of ISIS of London". Let's unpack that statement, shall we? Because ISIS are a terror cell renowned for beheading journalists, crucifying children, burning captured pilots alive, and, as reported earlier this week, throwing a blindfolded gay man off a roof and stoning him to death when he miraculously survived. Whereas London cyclists are just a load of accountants called Graham who wear too-tight Lycra and think a lot about getting calf tattoos. I'm trying, Steve McNamara, I'm really trying mate, but I'm not seeing a natural connection here. On one hand, you've got ISIS, a radical Islamist group wreaking havoc across swathes of Syria and Iraq. On the other hand, you've got a group of people who just don't wanna get run over on their way to work each morning.

The current cabbie vs. cyclists beef—or the current flare-up of it, anyway, because cabbies and cyclists have been locked in a shout-through-rolled-down-windows war since time immemorial, since humans were nothing but amoebas floating in the sea, when the mountains were wrought and dinosaurs stalked the earth—follows the approval of two plans to build a sort of cyclist superhighway running through the centre of London, one from Barking to Acton, and one from King's Cross to Elephant & Castle. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? More cyclists on the road. Fewer cars. Healthier nation. Loads of people shouting at each other about left turns and saying, "I've got a fucking headcam, mate, this is going on YouTube!"

Not if you're a cabbie, it doesn't. It took about, ooh, one-and-a-half minutes between Transport for London (TfL) approving the proposed segregated-lane plans this week and the LTDA—as well as London First, London Travelwatch, City of London, and the Canary Wharf Group—to voice their concerns and threaten legal action. Only a couple of hours on from that, and the concept of cycling had morphed into a sort of rogue terror cell, where Lycra-clad cyclists patrol the streets, aggressively consuming sachets of energy gel, holding their HUMP backpacks aloft in the air, the falling-water sound of a million spokey-dokeys riding in unison acting as a sort of war cry to send people fleeing up the nearest flight of stairs to escape the wrath of the bikes.

Standard reporter Ross Lydall managed to catch up with McNamara after his radio interview, and he cited death threats made to him and members of his organization by cyclists as the reason for his comments. But, like: he didn't exactly retract them.

"Perhaps I would accept that was a bit strong," he said. "It was a live interview. I have had death threats. They say, 'I hope people you know die screaming of cancer.' I'm convinced that if 99 per cent of cyclists knew some of the stuff we had received after expressing legitimate concerns, they would be horrified.

"I'm not going to be intimidated. I don't take them seriously. We have not reported anything to the police because I don't think there is anything in them. I think it's just a few loonies, but they really have got a sort of religious zeal.

"Perhaps that was a bit strong [to compare them to ISIS] but I can't think of a single other movement in the world at the moment that behaves in such a vitriolic and aggressive manner." Well, neither can I, Steve, to be honest. I think the current axis of evil goes: IS, cyclists in London, Khorasan, Al Qaeda.

But cabbies have had a bad time of it lately, according to cabbies. Last June, a heated conflict with Uber came to a head when hundreds of drivers locked up traffic in central London in protest. The number of cyclists have grown over the last ten years, from 2.3 percent of Londoners getting in the fucking way all the time to 3.9. Plus people are way less likely to listen to them ramble on about immigration any more now they've all got iPhones to look at. Please, spare a thought for your cabbie next time you stiff them on a tip. They are warriors fighting a holy war.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

An unnamed 12-year-old singer in Japan has just come out of a coma caused by inhaling helium on January 28. The incident occurred during a stunt on 3B Junior Stardust Shoji, a TB show about 3B Junior, one of those Japanese singing groups with dozens of members. This is what they look like, if you're curious:

According to the Japanese media, the 12-year-old in question is awake, but can barely move or speak after pulling what's ordinarily considered a pretty harmless trick that makes people talk funny. The incident wasn't made public until a week after the fact, which has outraged some commentators (link in Japanese).

Officials from the TV Asahi network have publicly apologized for potentially ruining a girl's life over a high-voice gag—and by the way, how much higher did they want a 12-year-old girl's voice to go?

It's assumed that the girl fell victim to an air embolism, which most commonly happens when someone is inhaling helium from a pressurized tank. According to Howard Wolfe, director of the New England Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition, inhaling helium from tanks like that can kill adults as well as children."High-pressure gas goes into your lungs, and it can go through the lining of your lungs and into the bloodstream," is how he describes it. The victim's heart can't pump with that helium in the bloodstream, and it seizes up. Lung ruptures and embolisms kill a handful of people per year—not enough to be an international health crisis, but far too many for something so completely preventable. A similar thing happened to a 14-year-old girl in Oregon in 2012, though in her case the consequences were fatal.

Embolisms, Wolfe says, "most often happen when kids—or adults—put their mouths over high-pressure tanks like the ones you use to fill balloons."

The footage of the Japanese TV show didn't air, so it's not clear whether the girl was breathing directly from a tank or from a balloon. Balloons are much safer than tanks because the gas inside is at a much lower pressure. "I've never heard of [someone getting an embolism from a balloon] unless someone already had a lung condition," Wolfe says. "Usually what happens is you get confused and pass out, and then you let go of whatever's feeding you the helium.

"But there are still some problems with it," he hastens to add. First of all, helium from party supply companies is adulterated. "Those tanks are not filled with pure, medical-grade helium," Wolfe says. "It's helium with other gasses in it, along with oil from compressors."

That's not to say we should all run screaming from helium, we just shouldn't be stupid about it. What happened to this girl in Japan was terrible, and all the more tragic for being so easily avoidable.

So if someone's passing around the "voice change tank" and you're excited because you've never heard your voice on helium before (spoiler: It's higher), see if anyone's got a balloon instead.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Illustrations by Sam Taylor

Last week, you might have read about the man who asked his ex-girlfriends to rate him as a boyfriend so he could post the reviews to Tinder. The idea was that potential matches would see the ratings, realize this guy was a bit of a laugh, swipe right, and maybe have sex with him at some point in the near future. Instead, it seems that the guy's now on the road to getting back together with one of the exes he forgot to contact for his Tinder ploy. So I suppose it kind of worked in a very convoluted, roundabout way.

The most interesting part of it, though, were the reviews themselves. The reasons the numerous relationships failed, laid bare, on a dating app, for anyone with that dating app to see. Inspired by this man's quest for matches, we asked some of our writers to get in touch with their exes and have them review how good, bad, or unstable they were as a boyfriend or girlfriend.

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A REVIEW OF PARIS LEES BY HER EX-BOYFRIEND
You're the hottest girl I've ever dated, but you're also demanding, attention-seeking, and manipulative. You are very temperamental, highly-strung, selfish. It used to annoy me when you'd rub your attractiveness in my face during arguments. You're very bright. And a decent cook. Clean. I can't say sensitive or compassionate, but you are sweet in some ways, and humorous and lively when you choose to be. You can be spontaneous. I suppose a pro could be, if you're a really weak man who likes being bossed about, then Paris will be perfect for you.

Would I date a transgender girl again? I'm not sure I could handle the craziness. It was an interesting test for me in the sense of me being very pro-equality and not caring about people's backgrounds. I respected you and how you demanded to be treated with respect and not hidden in the shadows. It was never an issue. And if anyone had had a problem with it, it would have been a good way to weed out bad friends anyway.

I've learned a hell of a lot. I don't regret it. You don't have a lot of the boring bullshit that a lot of girls have—the, "Oh, let's go and visit my aunty Karen this weekend," and all that crap. I don't think you'd ever make a "good" girlfriend, but what you would make is a very interesting and fun partner to be with. As a lover and a human being, yeah, you're brilliant.

A REVIEW OF JACK URWIN BY HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND
You didn't listen well to the things I said and you were very out-of-touch with your own self, which grew into a plethora of issues. One of the things that saved us for so long was that your inability to communicate verbally somehow didn't translate completely to written form. We fought a whole bunch toward the end. I can't remember what I was mad about most of the times, but I remember feeling like I had to hold your hand a lot.

You lack self-control sometimes and make a lot of excuses, mostly to yourself. I think your biggest issue is you don't see yourself for who you are, and you start a vicious, cyclical pattern of feeling like you're not worth much. Before you know it, you've carved yourself a nice hole in the dirt in which to wallow. And god damn if you don't go to sleep early.

But you have one of the biggest hearts I've ever seen. For a straight, white, middle-class man you're very aware of people around you who don't fall into the same categories, and you try to be as sensitive, accepting, and humble as possible. You're genuinely smart, and with intelligence comes humor. You know how to make fun of yourself (probably better than anyone else can). You're also very loyal to those around you. Honestly, most of your personality is a pro. I just think you and I weren't well-suited for one another.

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A REVIEW OF HANNAH EWENS BY HER EX-BOYFRIEND
You found the ugliest, weirdest people attractive for the weirdest reasons. That maybe says something good about you. When we started dating you were exciting, very clever, and interesting. You made me feel interesting, too. I hadn't met anyone like you. But looking back, when you began to like me or when we became steady, you became arrogant. Completely complacent. Acted like you didn't give a shit, took me for granted. I became your servant and I got sucked in.

You're a bit mental, but in a good way. You're a weird person trapped in a pretty girl's body. You don't make sense on paper. You like Lord of the Rings and you also like heavy metal and partying and reading. You're different, I guess. You love people, which made me feel like shit when you went around talking to everyone. When you're happy, you're the most fun to be with. When you're not, you're distant.

You were a right fucking bitch at the end. You really went out of your way to make things overdramatic and go out with a bang. Everything has to be cinematic. I did cheat on you multiple times, so I suppose I deserved it.

All this said, you're a very kind person deep down. I'd see you do anything for a mate or your family. Too bad you wouldn't do the same for a boyfriend. You were a laugh—an unusual girlfriend—and I haven't been able to fill your place. Definitely not going to forget you, for good or bad. Wouldn't go there again, though.

A REVIEW OF ALEX HORNE BY HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND
It's sort of impossible to describe what you were like because you were never consistently anything other than a mess. You manage to be arrogant and cripplingly shy at the same time. You're ostensibly intelligent, but you also do the dumbest things imaginable and don't even realize it. When we were together, you switched between being cloyingly needy and barely even there so fast it made my head spin.

I don't actually think you're all there. The fact you asked me to write this confirms my impression that you don't fully grasp the idea of other people. It's not that you're selfish, it's more just that you don't understand that people are different from you. You need to learn that just because something wouldn't bother you, doesn't mean it couldn't bother someone else.

I know that you spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about shit and overanalyzing everything, but all this worrying never leads to anything. The closest you've come to changing your behavior is saying you were going to change your behavior.

I don't want this to seem too negative—we had a lot of fun, and I think, deep down, you're a good person, whatever that means. But you are also careless and exhausting and a bit unstable.

You did get me into the Knife, though, which has to count for something.

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A REVIEW OF JO FUERTES-KNIGHT BY HER EX-BOYFRIEND
As a human you're fun, but in terms of getting into a relationship, you were sometimes mean and paranoid. Remember when you sent me a BBM telling me to "die lol" because I'd been standing next to a girl from work for too long when we went out? And you mouthed threats at my ex when you were drunk. Also, remember when you were two hours late to meet me, but when I was half an hour late to pick you up, you got the hump, fucked off by yourself, and put your phone on silent? The time you went home and left my front door open in the middle of the night because you "didn't like using my bathroom." And when you broke my window frame leaning out to shout at someone. Also, the phone smashing incident.

I think my best memories are when we first met and just smoked and napped a lot. And your bum: I'm a fan. I'd say you are fine in contained spaces, just not in public because of all the shouting. You tend to get this "glazed-over-Jo" look and argue with taxi drivers. Good: bum. Bad: angry a lot.

@ParisLees / @JackMerlin / @hannahrosewens / @AllHorne / @fuertesknight / @SptSam