[body_image width='1024' height='768' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='a-blackpool-man-was-charged-with-assault-after-flicking-baked-beans-at-a-police-officer-735-body-image-1423591298.jpg' id='26196']Technically, this is a weapon. Photo via Flickr user Matt Jones

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A Blackpool man has been charged and fined after flicking three baked beans at a detention officer. Why? Said detention officer failed to bring him a cup of water promptly enough.

You think you'd do quite well in prison, don't you? We all do. You've seen Prison Break and Orange Is the New Black and Oz. You've seen The Shawshank Redemption and The Great Escape and American History X. You're like: Fuck yeah, I'd do well in prison, I'd melt a toothbrush with a lighter into a shiv and stab someone in the neck with it! You're like: get me enough ketchup packets and fruit cups, and I'll brew up a batch of tangy piss-wine in the metallic toilet! You'd dig a tunnel out, wouldn't you? You'd hide blades in dug-out bibles and get really good at chess. You'd cross racial boundaries and somehow unite the white supremacist faction with the black gangs. You'd sort of be like Jesus, if Jesus went to prison for something stupid, like low-level fraud or possession.

But then a man in Blackpool gets charged and fined for flicking three baked beans out through his prison bars onto a corrections officer's shirt, and you think: Actually, I don't think prison is for me. I don't think I will steal that car after all. I really don't like the idea of my kidneys being punctured like two cheap water balloons in a petty and longstanding conflict over a Mars bar.

And so to Blackpool, where the aforementioned three-bean assault went down. As the Blackpool Gazette reports today, Anthony Raynor of South Shore was arrested at 4.30 AM on Sunday morning after shouting abuse and interfering as officers tried to deal with an unconscious woman who had passed out in the street.

He was put in a cell at Blackpool Police Station and—and this turned out to be a crucial mistake—given breakfast, and at 9AM he asked for a glass of water. Pam Smith, prosecuting, told Blackpool Magistrates Court today that Raynor soon became abusive to the point that he threw the scant remains of his breakfast out of the cell and onto a police officer, who was so stained with lukewarm bean juice that he had to change his shirt. Raynor claimed the water request took an hour and a half to fulfill, although CCTV footage shows it only took three minutes.

"He flicked three baked beans from his breakfast through the hatch and they landed on the officer's shirt," said Howard Green, defending. "This was not a serious act of violence, but one of stupidity."

Raynor's punishment for the shouting/flicking beans at the police combo: a fine of $115 and a $30 victim surcharge (the approximate cost of one bean-soaked shirt), which—seeing as he couldn't pay immediately—was transferred into a sentence to stay within the confines of the court until lunchtime, which he hopefully spent without throwing any food fragments at anyone. He managed it, and what we are left with is a cautionary tale: Do not get arrested, kids, you will not survive prison; do not throw beans at police officers, kids, they will use every inch of the law to hurt you.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

[body_image width='1000' height='667' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='uber-is-launching-a-panic-button-feature-in-india-915-body-image-1423603836.jpg' id='26283']

Road traffic in Gwalior, India. Photo via WikiCommons

Starting tomorrow, app-based car service Uber will launch "panic button" and "safety net" software features for riders in India. Part of the company's 2015 focus on increasing safety (especially women's) in their informal taxis, the app's panic button will notify police and local response teams of any incident in a cab, while the safety net will allow riders to share their route, destination, and ride information with up to five other individuals. Response to the move has been positive thus far, but it remains to be seen how effective this and other security measures will be at improving safety (and helping Uber avoid looming bans by local Indian governments).

Ostensibly major safety reforms have been in the works since at least November 2014. And you can probably read these features as an effort to bring Uber in-line with the background checks, emergency alerts, and passenger tracking features of other app-based rideshares like AsterRide and Shuddle.

Yet this Indian focus appears to be a reaction to the alleged December 2014 rape of a 26-year-old New Delhi girl by 32-year-old Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav, who police claim confessed to the crime, but who also continues to contest his case in court. His next hearing is tomorrow, the same day the panic button launches. The case and its coverage prompted significant backlash against Uber, calling for better regulation of its drivers and higher safety standards in its cars.

Days after the case broke, India's Home Ministry recommended that all states ban the app, which Hyderabad, New Delhi, and the entire state of Karnataka did. New Delhi officials indicated that in order to return Uber would need to register as and act like an official taxi, meaning they would need to use clean fuels and install tracking devices and emergency buttons. Then in January the (unnamed) victim in the rape case pushed for the installation of in-car cameras and creation of a 24-hour customer-support hotline to aid those having trouble with Uber drivers.

Although Uber proper is still officially banned in New Delhi, the company returned under the gibberish name of a subsidiary, Resource Experts India Private Limited, in late-January as a regularly licensed taxi service. Alongside their resumed service, they announced that they'd installed new security protocols and would run extensive background checks on their drivers (they used to require only a driver's license, proof of insurance, and taxi driving permit in India, which might have led them to miss Yadav's previous detention on suspicion of raping a taxi passenger several years earlier) before they could get back on the streets.

Yet despite these new procedures, the state of Maharashtra (home to two major Uber-using cities, Mumbai and Pune) was apparently still considering a ban at the start of the month. The local Transportation Department last week allowed Uber and other app-based rideshares 15 days to put together a comprehensive list of new safety measures they could offer to sway officials.

It's unclear whether Maharashtra or New Delhi will be satisfied with the in-app panic buttons and safety nets, especially given their previous demands for physical, in-car buttons and safety numbers. These assets would be useful for someone, say, whose phone ran out of credit, juice, or signal mid-ride. But according to Uber, these demands are impractical for a type of service such as theirs, which doesn't control the cars of their private contractor drivers.

"Imagine you enter the vehicle of a driver who works on four [rideshare] platforms," Uber Mumbai General Manager Shailesh Sawlani wrote in a recent blog post. "His/her car will need to have four physical panic buttons. In a situation of distress the rider would have to pick the correct operator's panic button to be able to get help on time."

"There is [also] no way to ensure that [the buttons] are kept in working condition across al the cars in the city," he added.

Yet they stress that not only is an in-app button a reasonable solution, but that their new, intensive Indian driver screenings should be a solid layer of defense against abuse.

"Our arrangement with First Advantage [a third-party background check firm] brings in additional layers of screening over and above the standard transport licensing process," Sawlani's blog post continued, "including: address verification, a local criminal court search, and a national criminal database search."

Amitabh Kumar, the head of communications for the Centre for Social Research, a major New Delhi-based grassroots gender-based activism and lobbying outfit, sees the panic button as a good step for women's safety, but agrees that strong background checks are more important.

"It's certainly a good measure to install such panic buttons," Kumar told VICE, "but a panic button is just one mechanism. It is more important that Uber... also does a better job of driver's background [checks]."

In addition to background checks, Kumar wants Uber to train drivers how to deal with women.

"Technologically, all the taxi companies just like Uber are doing a lot [for safety]," he said. "But when it comes to their manpower, they have to realize that they're working in a very patriarchal setup. So ensuring that their drivers are well trained, [that] they're not under the influence of alcohol—these are the forms [or protocol] that will make Uber a safer taxi service for women."

The efforts Uber's gone through to improve their security on the ground in India via background checks, even in India's notoriously difficult business climate, suggests that they are willing to invest in such trainings, or even the installation of physical buttons in consenting drivers' cars.

But Uber's willingness to engage with security concerns in India is probably a reflection not of their unbridled goodwill, but of the size and importance of the Indian market. Uber's a $40 billion company with operations in over 250 cities. Yet India, with 3,000 to 5,000 Uber drivers in New Delhi alone, has since 2013 become their second largest market, and they've been pouring money into advertising and running losses on some rides for years to cement their foothold in the promising nation.

More than that, India is an important test for Uber's international expansion. Many nations and municipalities have banned Uber, sued its owners, or just made it very clear that the company is on thin ice—but usually on the grounds that its disruptive model doesn't fit into their regulatory system, meaning they're often operating at least mildly extra-legally given existing taxis laws. The India case is one where Uber's acceptance by officials is fairly explicitly contingent on its demonstrated ability to respond to security concerns—something tied to customer experience and satisfaction and firmly in their control—rather than wiggle through policy loopholes.

Fortunately for Uber, in their efforts to win over India they have a lot of popular support. The decision to ban Uber in New Delhi sparked backlash from locals who pointed out on Twitter that regular cabs were unsafe as well, and that the alleged Uber rape was part of a larger women's safety crisis in the nation, making it illogical to lay all the blame at the app's feet. Kumar of the CSR as well says that Uber is a useful tool for increasing women's mobility, so it has a place in India's future. Local demand for Uber-esque services, coupled with the company's honest bids at reforming security, should go a long ways in helping the rideshare avoid any bans in India.

However it's unclear whether Uber plans to extend its new panic button, safety net, and above-standard security checks and response teams to nations beyond India. VICE contacted Uber at 9:50 AM seeking comment, but has not yet received a response from the company.

It's also worth noting that even in countries where Uber already had extensive background checks, there have been accusations of rape and assault by their drivers. Just last Friday, an Uber driver in the United Kingdom allegedly abandoned a young female passenger on the shoulder of a highway in the dead of night after becoming angry with her over a route change.

Background checks aren't a perfect indicator of good behavior. Even in the US it's easy for drivers to falsify them. Many fear that the Indian checks will be subject to spotty local records and the distorting effects of bribery, undercutting the legitimacy of one of Uber's main new safety assets. Likewise the new panic buttons or safety nets run the risk of failing—especially if a passenger is suffering from phone failure. And a physical button wouldn't be foolproof either.

There's probably just no way to make an Uber ride entirely safe, the same way there's no way of making any taxi ride totally safe. But the Indian reaction at least shows the app is making a real effort to play by the books, increase its security, and respond to criticism. Still, we'll have to see if it's enough of an effort to convince local governments, and if we can dig up any hard data to see how much safer these measures make the service in comparison to traditional taxis.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

[body_image width='1000' height='667' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='suburban-crime-lords-476-body-image-1423572149.jpg' id='26020']The suburbs. Photo by Nicholas Pomeroy

This post first appeared on VICE UK.

Last Tuesday evening, Redwan El-Ghaidouni was executed outside his home on a suburban West London street. The murder, carried out by a hooded man firing six bullets at the former car dealer, left neighbors and the media dumbfounded.

They wondered how this could happen in such a respectable neck of the woods. After all, El-Ghaidouni's spacious family home, complete with double driveway, was yards from a $33,000-a-year private school, on a street in Uxbridge known as "Millionaire's Row."

"Neighbors spoke of their shock today after an 'ordinary' father shot dead in his driveway in a suspected gangland 'hit' was revealed as a convicted drugs baron," the Evening Standard reported, quoting one resident: "We can't believe it. I thought they were just an ordinary family. His wife volunteered at the local football club and the two kids were always smiling. You'd see them all leaving the house together at the weekends. I just saw his stylish car and thought he must be a very successful businessman."

Of course, the residents of Uxbridge appear to have missed a news story from four months earlier that featured El-Ghaidouni's drug trafficking exploits—the one that explained how the Moroccan-born "Mr. Big" had the honor of becoming the first UK criminal to have their assets (in this case a swanky £400,000 [$610,000] apartment on the 49th floor of the Torch Tower in Dubai) confiscated by authorities in the UAE.

The surprise expressed by the good people of Uxbridge at finding an international weed importer with a lengthy jail term behind him living in their midst—among the privet hedges and mock Tudor frontages, acting like a normal middle-class person—is understandable. But in reality, drug barons and other crime lords love suburbia because it's the perfect place to blend in—a guarded cubby hole under the camouflage of mundanity.

In fact, the residents of Uxbridge seem to have a short memory when it comes to crime lords trying to vanish in their sea of magnolia.

Just the other side of the rifle range and golf course from El-Ghaidouni's place in Manor Waye (and yes, that is Manor Waye) lived a very respectable pensioner called Marc Skinner, with his wife and two kids. The only odd thing about him was that he insisted on maintaining a particularly high, thick hedge at the front of his house. Nevertheless, according to what 76-year-old neighbor Janet Hills later told the BBC, he was "one of the nicest people you could wish to meet."

Except he wasn't Marc Skinner. He was actually Domenico Rancadore, a.k.a. "U Profissuri" (the Professor), erstwhile area chief of Palermo's Cosa Nostra, who once sent a blood-soaked lamb's head to a priest as a threat. When the police came knocking at Manor Waye in 2013, 64-year-old Rancadore—who'd been on the run from the Italian police for 20 years and would later be dubbed "the Godfather of Uxbridge"—leapt over his back fence in a dressing gown and flip-flops, only to be grabbed by a waiting officer. He's still facing extradition back to Italy but remains in Britain on account of heart problems.

Drug barons, drug kingpins, or businessmen—call them what you will, but they're not all that different from everyone else. Some might be sadistic, some might have an Uzi tattoo under that Barbour sleeve, but most of them are just like the rest of us. They want a luxe life: money, vacations, five-bedroom houses, nice cars, and a bit of respect from their fellow man.

It's no surprise—whether they're still in the game or shifting down into optimistic (we've all seen the films) retirement—that your average big time player wants to live in a nice area. For those who grew up on a council estate, the driving factor—the reason they've taken so many risks—is to go up in the world, to provide something for their family.

While some go for the ostentatious, footballer-type splurges on pink Land Rovers and "fairytale" mansions, other more modern gangsters prefer to keep things a little more low key, while still providing their children access to a better education and life than they had.

"Some of them don't want to attract attention—they prefer to live a life away from the scene in which they are involved; away from vendettas, prison and police... and they don't want the country pile, either," a former drug detective with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (now the National Crime Agency) tells me. "Suburbia is the perfect cover, and it's these people, living below the radar, who end up having longer, more fulfilling lives."

This method, unfortunately, didn't pan out for El-Ghaidouni.

There is nothing new about the suburban gangster: The city fringes are an old stomping ground. One of the reasons suburbia is so frowned upon by the metro elite is that the middle-class realm of middle managers and bohemians, depicted in 1970s shows such as The Good Life, has been infiltrated by what they would call the "hoi polloi."

The gradual breaking up of traditional inner-city working-class communities since the 1960s—for example, from the East End of London into the fringes of the Home Counties, such as Essex and Kent—meant some cultural traditions were exported into suburbia. The use of organized crime as a pragmatic way of competing financially with the far more privileged middle and upper classes was one of these traditions.

It just so happened that suburbia, with its increased anonymity and increased access (at the nearest country club) to potentially useful white collar criminals, suited the new landscape of organized crime well as it moved from the community-based protection rackets of gangs like the Krays to the international drug trade. By the time the infamous North London crime boss Terry Adams was jailed for money laundering in 2007, he was living in the relative sanctity of leafy suburban street in Mill Hill, Barnet—not in Islington, the turf from which he elevated himself.

[body_image width='1024' height='768' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='suburban-crime-lords-476-body-image-1423573185.jpg' id='26023']A nice suburban hedge. Photo by WA via Flickr

"Forms of violent action traditionally associated with the inner city are now common in the swathe of suburban neighborhoods that constitute London's increasingly ambiguous periphery," wrote the criminologist Dick Hobbs in Lush Life, his book about the changing nature of organized crime in the UK. "This effectively shifts the notion of criminal territory away from an emphasis upon youth, poverty and ethnicity, and focuses instead upon the 'bourgeois utopias' of the suburbs, from where the family firm can join their neighbors and commute into the city, or exploit the new territory of the periphery."

As ethnic groups have also relocated from the inner cities to the suburbs, so too have links with crime. The money made by North East London-based Pakistani heroin importers can be found in the bricks and mortar of suburbia, in areas such as Woodford, rather than in Walthamstow or Leyton.

Can a leopard change its spots? Kenny Simpson of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) has had an insight into the lives of suburban drug barons via wire taps and other forms of surveillance.

"On the face of it, some will have a normal life, watching cartoons with their kids, putting them to bed, taking them to school. They do all the things that anyone else would do. Some are very loyal to the family unit," he said. "But in the end, they are still thugs. In the process of getting to where they are, they have dished out and caused a lot of physical grief. They aspire to respectability, but it never comes to them. They can't buy it. They'll have nice houses, nice furnishings and nice cars, but their bins are still full of McDonalds wrappers."

For the modern drug entrepreneur, class is neither here nor there. The measure of a successful criminal is time served outside prison and, ultimately, like the world's most lucrative crooks, complete legitimacy.

The real criminal players understand the importance of blending into the fabric and infrastructure of society. It's a necessity if you want to secure and develop a legitimate business, as they act as both a convenient cover and a means to turn bent cash into clean assets. For some, where they live is no different. And what's more effective than losing yourself in the guarded, seemingly sterile lap of a suburban world that's so adept at concealing its secrets?

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

Desert Dingo Racing has never won the Baja 1000. They've never even finished. The Baja 1000 is the longest continuous off-road race in the world and the Desert Dingoes are one of only a handful of teams that race it in Class 11—stock pre-1982 Volkswagen Beetles. The brainchild of Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham, the Dingoes are an eclectic bunch, from weed-smoking 63-year-old Dennis "Crusty" Lange to heating and cooling man and quad enthusiast Gil Medrano. What they set out to accomplish each November is a nearly impossible task. It's like trying to win the America's Cup in a blowup raft.

When Toby Fray, my friend and youngest member of the Dingoes, first told me about the team, I didn't know if I should believe him. Fray is the kind of wildcard who would off-road race on the side, but it was hard to believe that he went to the western peninsula of Mexico every November to drive 1,000 miles in a VW Bug.

"We're so incapable of traversing this terrain, just by being Class 11, that there's definitely some insanity involved," he told me. Then why does he do it? "A little masochism maybe. But you can't experience something like this anywhere else." It didn't take much convincing before I was on my way down to Baja to stay with Fray and the team and trail their Bug during the race.

Fray had explained that the Dingoes's chances were slim—they'd raced in the Baja three times already and never come close to finishing. But as I talked to the team during the week leading up to the race, I started to believe that they could really win this year. The older members of the team were incredibly confident, and even Fray started to become hopeful as the race approached. Things were looking up for the Desert Dingoes. The Bug was in great shape and the team had a bunch of new technology in the car—satellite phones, a portable hotspot, a better GPS—to make communication on the Baja's huge course less difficult. But by the time the team reached the 200-mile marker, everything had gone to shit.

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Racecar driver Toby Fray gets out to observe the wreckage after attempting to veer off course to avoid silt pits at mile marker 205 of the Baja 1000.

We were deep in the land east of Punta Colonet—gorgeous rolling desert like much of the northern half of Baja California, all small shrubs, agave cacti, sandy peaks, and burnt-brown ranches—when Fray radioed to tell us that he and his co-driver Cyrus Roohi were stranded. They were ankle-deep in silt, halfway up a hill to the right of an antenna tower. The tower was the only landmark in what felt like an endless desert sprawl. It'd been 20 hours since the Bug left Ensenada and the Desert Dingoes were less than a sixth of the way through the 1,275-mile Baja 1000 race. It looked like it was over.

Chuck Gianni studied the GPS in his 1990 Suburban as his brother-in-law Medrano talked to Fray on the radio. The truck raced along the bumpy dirt course, veering up onto shrubs to avoid patches of the ultra-fine, quicksand-like silt which plagues the Baja racers. Finally, we spotted the 1969 matte-black VW Bug marooned atop some cacti on the side of the hill near the antenna tower. The Bug's front left fender had been ripped off and Fray's face was half-covered with white dust. He popped the hood as we approached and hooked a black toe-line to the back of the Suburban. The silt was thick and the hill was steep, so the wheels of the truck sputtered for a moment before catching and hauling the Bug to the crest. But from the flat top of the hill we could see that there was a 70-degree decline and then an even steeper sandy incline to summit.

Fray's co-pilot Cyrus Roohi, who had flown in from Virginia to help out and take notes for his own Class-11 team, thought it was time for the Desert Dingoes to cut their losses. He thought it was most prudent to tow the Bug out to Highway 1, meet the rest of the team there, and head home. "We're going to grind for four more hours and still end up on a trailer," he told Fray.

But Fray, blond hair rustled up and blue eyes peaking through his dusted face, would have none of quitting. "We grinded nine months to get here!"

He stared hard at Roohi and took a deep breath of the hot, dusty desert air. "I'll fucking drive it myself!"

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The Desert Dingoes tune up the Bug before the race at a fellow class 11 racer's compound in Ensenada, Baja California.

In reality, it took way more than nine months for the Dingoes to get to that desert hill by Punta Colonet. In December of 2006, Graham, a wide-eyed and curly-haired 53-year-old, and his wife Roxanne came across the documentary Dust to Glory—a 2005 film that valorizes the Baja 1000 race. "Ten minutes in, I turned to her and said, 'I have to win this race,'" Graham told me. "And she's like, 'You don't know anything about cars.' I said, 'I don't care, I got to do it.'"

He called a few friends who, after seeing the documentary, were as ready as Graham to give it a shot. They bought a 1969 VW Bug rolling chassis for $300 and, 11 months later, the first incarnation of the Desert Dingo went off the start line at the 2007 Baja 1000. "It's like saying, Why don't I take up jogging? and the first thing you do is the Olympic Decathlon."

I met Graham before this year's race at his house in Felton, California, deep in the forest outside of Santa Cruz. He'd agreed to take us to Mexico in his 1985 VW Bus, and we started the crawl toward Baja early Sunday morning. We met the rest of the team at a San Diego Walmart that night and made it to the starting line in Ensenada late in the afternoon on Monday, three days before the race.

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Desert Dingoes, from left to right: Romy Frederick, Dennis "Crusty" Lange, Chuck Gianni, Toby Fray, Gil Medrano, Rosh Edwards, and Cyrus Roohi.

Downtown Ensenada was all done up—a Coca-Cola stage, a Monster Energy tent, and a bunch other sponsor booths set up around the Riviera del Pacifico Cultural Center—but the team's convoy of cars drove past the ritzy hotels filled with Trophy Truck drivers and up a dirt hill in the southeast side of town. We passed some rundown shacks and a few empty lots, before stopping in front of a maroon gate. The Dingoes had arrived at the compound of another Class 11 team owner.

We unloaded the cars, claimed bunk beds in the two-story boarding house, and then went to the empty lot across the road where Dingo crew member Crusty had parked his RV. He was perched at the edge a sharp cliff face looking down over roofless shacks, Highway 1, and finally a cobalt cove. We sat down in lawn chairs on the cliff side and Crusty lit a joint as we watched traffic fly by on Highway 1.

The Dingoes's eight members had spent every Saturday and Sunday for the last three months in Roseville, California, wrenching on their VW to earn the right to drive—"It's like a Marxist collective," Graham told me—and in a little less than 70 hours they'd see the fruits of their labor.

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Motorcyclists take off first in 30-second intervals, starting with last year's winner.

At 6 AM on the morning of the race, a crowd was gathered around the starting line downtown. Every 30 seconds for the next hour, a dirt bike exploded off the line, taking a sharp left turn and then another, before flying off a dirt hill into a dried-up canal. After the last motorcycle took off, the first of the quads began the race.

Back at the compound, the Desert Dingoes were making their final preparations. The Trophy Trucks—$750,000 vehicles with three-feet of suspension and helicopter escorts—would leave at noon, followed by the UTVs, the less powerful trucks, and the Baja Bugs—like Class 11s but with suped-up engines. The Desert Dingoes would be the last to leave the starting line, setting off at 2:30 PM.

The Dingoes met for a frenzied final pre-race meeting later that morning. Graham told the group that they were the Class 11 team to beat and everyone in the room seemed to believe him. But then one Dingo laid out a thrown-together driving order and another teammember gave an incredibly vague explanation of the chase car plan, and I started to worry. I asked Gil Medrano if this haphazard coordination was par for the course, and he broke out in a grin. "Welcome to Desert Dingo Racing. Organized chaos."

The Dingo's caravan drove down the hill to the start line. The first pair of Dingo drivers hopped into the Bug, while Romy and Jen Frederick—the Dingoes' PhD-holding high school sweethearts and long-haired Midwesterners—started the Suburban chase car, which they'd drive for the first leg. I hopped in back and we took off. Crusty's RV and Graham's VW Bus would meet back up with the Bug 200 miles down Highway 1.

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Local children cheer on Trophy Trucks at a rural crossroads on the Baja Peninsula.

As we left Ensenada, the one-story wood homes and storefronts began to disappear. After a few miles, it was all empty desert, save for the occasional ranch or wrecking yard. Everything we passed was for sale—it was all bone-dry and barren.

We stopped at the first place where the course crossed the highway, a little military outpost called Ojos Negros. Romy and I walked to the gas station to buy a 12-pack while my photographer and Jen went to watch the Trophy Trucks drive by. A crowd of locals gathered on a small incline above the track as ranchero music blasted from a parked SUVs stereo. It was an odd moment of tranquility before a text from the Bug on the Iridium GO—the portable satellite hotspot—evaporated any sense of calm. "Desert Dingo stuck in silt at Race Mile 60." We hurried back to the Suburban, pulled a U-Turn, and jetted north back up Highway 3. We had small-talked on the way to Ojos Negros, but the drive back was silent. This was supposed to be the year that the Dingoes won their class at the Baja 1000, but things were already going wrong.

At Race Mile 50, Romy took a sharp left turn onto the course and floored it. The Suburban bounced violently over the harsh divots and skidded around blind turns. When Jen gripped her armrest, he shot her a glare—for a moment the 30-year-olds felt like an old married couple. "The Suburban's not a racecar," Jen said. "Don't break it, honey." He rolled his eyes.

Five miles onto the course, Gianni, the Bug's driver, texted us back on the satellite phone. They were at Mag 1—the first of the pits to refuel—and the Bug was dumping oil. Romy told him to check the valve cover gasket and after changing it, they got the car going. A few minutes later, Gianni radioed to tell us: "We're having trouble getting into second."

"Is it grinding?" Romy asked.

"A little," Gianni said.

Romy turned to me. "That's not good."

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The Desert Dingo Bug tears down the course, trying to make up time after setbacks and repairs.

At 8 PM, Romy finally got through to Graham on the satellite phone and they agreed to wait and change the transmission at Mag 3, where the rest of the chase vehicles were parked. We pulled to the side of the highway to wait for our Bug, watching racers pass. The Desert Dingoes were already close to last place.

Finally, we saw the Bug fly past and started after it. Gianni radioed to say that they still couldn't get the car into first gear, which meant they couldn't slow down. The Bug flew down the highway and then took a sharp left back onto the course. The road was a dirt path that cut between farms and shacks in the small town. There were no streetlights, only the wide starry sky and the Desert Dingoes red and blue flashing roof lights. It was beautiful to watch the Bug fly at 70 MPH over the bumpy course as we tried to keep up. For the first time, I really believed that the Dingoes had a chance—maybe not to win, but to at least finally finish the race.

The racecar rattled its way over a few more divots before hitting a larger bump and going airborne. We watched as the Bug's wheels lifted from the ground and then everything went dark—the harsh landing had completely stalled it out. Gianni radioed: "It's a booby trap!" Romy backed off the Suburban's gas and took it slow over the bootlegged ramp.

Booby traps are an interesting look into the Baja locals' relationship with the race. In small towns throughout the peninsula, Mexicans will build makeshift jumps on the course. The Trophy Trucks and the motorcycles hit them and fly in the air, which makes for great theater for the spectators, who camp out with beers and grills to watch the race. There are YouTube videos showing the best way to build a jump and some that show locals lying under the jump as trucks soar over them.

Unfortunately, VW Beetles aren't built to fly through the air, and a booby trap can mean the end of their race. But it's worth noting, there is no malice toward the Class 11s. Every local we met wanted pictures with the old Bugs and respected the Dingoes crazy decision to try to finish the race. The marooned VW Bugs just happen to be an unfortunate side effect of a truly awesome sight to see while drunk—an 800 horsepower truck flying through the air.

The Dingo could not start in the loose sand on the other side of the booby trap, so we hooked it to the Suburban and towed it 100 yards to solid ground. Gianni and I walked after the car. Hopelessness was setting back in, but the night was warm and the stars were out. We didn't say much as we walked.

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After getting destroyed by a booby trap, racecar driver Gil Medrano and co-driver Chuck Gianni lick their wounds while the team chase truck drags the Bug to the nearest pit stop for repairs.

We push started the Bug and it set off again, limping the last 20 miles into Mag 2. When we arrived, the pit crew fueled it up while Jen talked to Graham on the phone. We were 40 miles from Mag 3, where we'd planned to change the transmission and the Bug was in bad shape. Romy and I stood behind the car, trying to push-start it, but it was stuck in second gear and wouldn't budge. Jen tried in vain to convince the rest of the team to drive backwards on the course and fix the transmission right there. Romy turned to her and shouted, "Tell them to get back here or we're out!"

Right then, we started to rock the Bug and finally it rumbled back to life. If the Bug could make it to Mag 3, the Dingo's race wasn't over. We hopped in the Suburban to trail it down the road.

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Near midnight, Romy Frederick and the Desert Dingoes remove the Bug's engine and replace its transmission on the side of the course.

Twenty minutes later, Gianni radioed to tell us they'd lost all power. They glided almost a half-mile like a soapbox derby car, but eventually, a gradual incline halted their progress. We hopped out of the Suburban and strapped the Bug's towline to the back of the truck. We were 25 miles from Mag 3 with a curvy drive over an unlit mountain pass between the Dingo and the rest of the team and the Bug was completely dead. We'd have to tow it the rest of the way.

I was silent in the back of the Suburban, having visions of the Bug slipping off the edge of the cliff, pulling the truck down with it. But Romy was relaxed up front. He took each turn at 30 MPH, confidently keeping the wide truck on the road with the towline taut. I tried to picture the knot that connected the Dingo to the back of the Suburban and prayed he had tied it right.

The tow, more than anything all week, illuminated the odd blend that makes up the Desert Dingo Racing Team. Gianni and his co-pilot Medrano are from Northern California, but have drawls, conservative ideals, and a love affair with their trucks. Romy and Jen are the opposite—they're Burning Man regulars with PhDs from Berkeley. But on that desolate mountain road, strapped tightly into their powerless Bug, Gianni, and Medrano had absolute trust in Romy and Jen to drag them to safety.

The dream of conquering the Baja 1000 in a 1969 VW Bug had brought these completely incongruent characters onto that highway, with their lives in each other's hands. After 45 minutes, the Suburban pulled into the BF Goodrich pit by Mag 3 with the Desert Dingo in tow.

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Race car driver Toby Fray, delirious after driving through the night, takes a moment after the Bug's final breakdown at Race Mile 205.

The guys at the BF Goodrich tent—and really, every other driver and pit worker at the Baja 1000—were much more similar to Gianni and Medrano than Romy and Jen. Fray, a San Francisco native, had told me: "You go to these races and in the pits, there're fucking 'Impeach Gore' flags, and you're like, What does that even mean? " So when Romy and Fray—who met us at the pit—started the arduous task of switching out the engine, there were some wary eyes upon them.

Medrano and Gianni tried to help, but were too delirious to do productive mechanical work. They'd been in the car for ten hours, fighting hard for every one of the 156 miles they'd traveled. So instead, they told anyone and everyone their race stories. Off-road racing is a team sport, but is also a hugely personal endeavor. For much of the race, the driver and co-driver are confronting pulse-raising action apart from their team. Most of the race is experienced in hearsay, and Medrano and Gianni's account of their initial breakdown changed each time they told it. At first, they got stuck in the silt because of an unfortunate mistake trying to pass another Class 11. By the 20th telling, there was nothing they could have done to avoid it.

Finally, the engine was installed and Dingo partners Roohi and Fray climbed in. The message all week had been "Smooth is fast, deliver the car," but the Dingoes needed more than that to have any chance to finish before the time limit ran out. Fray stepped on the gas and the Bug flew out of the BF Goodrich pit.

Romy bummed a cigarette and we all cracked beers. After eight hours of ups and downs, the transmission was repaired and we could finally exhale. It was 1 AM.

The rest of the chase vehicles were gathered around a small dirt patch close to Mag 3. I got out a sleeping bag and laid down on the edge of the trailer, trying to get warm in the frigid desert night. After a couple hours of shivering, I passed out. I woke up at 6:15, chugged an energy drink, and watched the sunrise.

In my exhaustion the night before, I hadn't noticed where we parked, but in the morning light, it was clearly a bizarre stopping point. The barren lot was strewn with trash and burnt shrubs and there was a big crater about ten yards to our left. A teenager walked past with a plastic shopping bag full of clams, offering to sell us some. We were miles from the ocean.

That's when we got the call from Roohi, saying that they were stuck for good halfway up a sandy hill by Punta Colonet. The only landmark as far as the eye could see was an antenna tower. We climbed back into the Suburban and headed off to save the Bug again.

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Toby Fray gives local children a ride in the Bug after the Desert Dingoes bow out of the Baja 1000.

"I'll fucking drive it myself!" Fray shouted at Roohi, under the shadow of the radio antenna. He climbed into the Bug's driver's seat and sped recklessly for half a mile before finally admitting the futility of continuing. He met up with us in the Suburban by Highway 1. "Well, we already fucking lost," Fray said to me. "You want to go for a ride?"

I got into Roohi's racing suit and strapped into the co-driving seat as the Suburban trailed us to a gas station in Punta Colonet. Even on the paved highway, you can feel every single bump. And there is no windshield, so specks of dirt and concrete flew right into my race helmet's visor. During the ride, I started to understand why the Dingoes do what they do—the Baja 1000 in a Class 11 is truly an adventure. It exists on another plane—the boyhood world of fort building, color wars, and double dog dares. I was buzzing on adrenaline as we pulled in front of a little taco shop next to the gas station.

Roohi went to buy a 12-pack while we stood by the car. Little kids ran up from the town, asking for Hero Cards—small posters with the team's logo and picture on it—and autographs. Fray took the kids on drives around the lot while I tried to explain in broken Spanish that the Dingoes had stopped because their wheel flew right off the car. The Dingoes had lost the race, but to these kids, they were absolutely heroes. Their excitement was infectious.

Joseph Bien-Kahn is a freelance reporter, part-time café worker, and roving intern in San Francisco. He's had articles published in the Rumpus and the Believer, and writes a hip-hop column for BAMM.tv. He's also editor-in-chief of the literary mag OTHERWHERES. Follow him on Twitter.

Toby Silverman is fine-art photographer based in San Francisco. You can see more of his work here.

Last September, a website called Ello appeared, and very quickly, everyone got very excited. It was an ad-free social network that promised not to sell users' data and give them a clean, vaguely Scandinavian-looking layout. Anyone looking for a Facebook alternative had someplace other than Google+ on which to hang their hopes and dreams. "Ello: the anti-Facebook meant to be private and pretty, but not this popular," trumpeted the Guardian. The Dow Jones blog Marketwatch threw around a headline that said, "Facebook killer called Ello Gets the timing right." Just days after it entered the news cycle, people were literally asking, "Could Ello be the next Facebook?"

Hundreds of thousands of users signed up to the invite-only service. The new site, founded by an entrepreneur Paul Budnitz, came with a prominently placed manifesto that threw shade at other social networking sites:

Every post you share, every friend you make, and every link you follow is tracked, recorded, and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that's bought and sold.

Plus – and I suspect this was a big deal – on Ello you could look at adult content that Facebook wouldn't let you see.

It sounded great, but once the Ello bouncer let you through the velvet rope, the newest, hottest nightclub in town turned out to be a cool space with decent music, but no liquor license or bathrooms. People joined the site, but once they were there they seemed to mostly talk about how they had joined up or wonder out loud what they were supposed to post there. It was also oddly difficult to find your friends.

[tweet text="Dear #Ello, without search or any find friends feature, I can't follow anyone, so there's no reason to come back. Fix this first or die. -JC" byline="— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine)" user_id="JoshConstine" tweet_id="515259443655626752" tweet_visual_time="September 25, 2014"]

There were other flaws: Posting a URL didn't scrub a page for an image and description; it was annoyingly just a URL. Hitting "post" meant hitting a clickable button marked "→" instead of just pushing enter. And while it offered anonymity, you had no ability to message anyone privately.

I tried hard to get into Ello, even though my friends weren't posting on it, but never succeeded in joining a community. People I wanted to be friends with—bloggers, fellow writers, and someone named @nudes (link is NSFW)—didn't return my @ replies or friend me back. My posts declined in popularity. The sheer joy of being there didn't last long.

I wasn't alone. The internet's attention soon wandered away from Ello, in search of the next hot topic to create shareable content about.

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Last week, curious to see what was going on with the formerly hip social network, I wracked my brain to remember my password and logged back in. The first thing I noticed when I fired up my Ello was that none of my friends had used it since at least November, and consequently my "friends" newsfeed was like a time capsule. Even @nudes hadn't posted in months. So I also used the "discover" feature to find some Ello-ites who posted a lot and began interacting with their posts.

One of my new follows, Kervin Brisseaux, said that the site was still a bit buggy—adding new information to his profile, for instance, involved some trial and error. "Changing my description takes a couple tries," he said. "When I try to upload a new website to the website line, it tends to not work." Still, Brisseaux remains a fan, and says the bugs don't bother him because "it's still a new site."

But it's also a lonely site. I may be used to the madding crowd of Twitter and Facebook, but I found it nearly impossible to get those dopamine squirts of positive reinforcement that hit you when you get a lot of likes or favs. My questions were ignored. My jokes weren't popular. There's no such thing as a like or fav.

Finally, desperate for attention, I posted a .GIF of a young woman flashing her boobs, and to my dismay, even that didn't get much traction—but then, Todd Berger, Ello's head of graphic design, commented on it with a friendly note and a link to some recent updates about the site. He's not the only Ello guy who does this: Site developer Justin Gitlin roams around dropping relevant emojis on posts, and @Budnitz, the account of Ello CEO and co-founder Paul Budnitz, is one of the most active and popular feeds on the site.

How popular is Ello with people who don't work there? When I reached out to him, Budnitz wouldn't share much in the way of stats. "We don't publish official data about the number of people on Ello. We decided early on not to get into that arms race," Budnitz said when I asked him how growth was going. He did say the site had acquired 250,000 new users in the past week, but that doesn't mean all of those people will become active participants on the site, and it doesn't mean that a lot of the profiles on the site haven't been more or less abandoned.

Budnitz is sanguine about how things have shaken out after last year's spike. "Yeah, it was nuts then," he told me from his Vermont office. "We released Ello with 90 people in September, and kinda cruised along. Then suddenly we got this enormous amount of media attention... When Ello first came out there was no way our service could handle that traffic. It was just nuts."

Shortly after that swell of users, Ello became a public benefit corporation, which means it's legally obligated to serve a stated mission as opposed to the bottom line. (Other examples of public benefit corporations include municipal transit authorities and the Boy Scouts.) That, the Ello team says, means the site will never sell user data or display paid ads, even if it gets sold to someone else.

For Budnitz, however, Ello was never meant to be the "Facebook killer" that the media made it out to be. In March, when the site was still a twinkle in his eye, Budnitz told Motherboard, "We built it specifically with creative people in mind, people who value content, with a good bit of discussion and dialog happening around that content."

Kervin Brisseaux, the user I spoke with, is one of those creative people. He's been using Ello as a platform to distribute his art. The site's layout allows you to post massive images, and you don't have to worry about your work offending your aunt or getting taken down for being too sexy the way you might on Facebook. Brisseaux has thousands of followers, and receives plenty of encouraging comments. Ello has given quite a boost to his career. "Within the past few weeks a potential job has come from [my work on Ello]," he said, "and I've been collaborating with fellow artists as well, that I wouldn't have met otherwise."

Another user, who goes by "ngarrang," also posts his work on Ello, but his poetry and photography hasn't quite gotten the attention Brisseaux's had. I asked him why he was still plugging away on a somewhat obscure social media site, and he had a fascinating answer: "I am trying to create a new me. One that is an artist (music, poetry, photography), and [Google+], Ello, and Tsu allow me a clean slate compared to the years of Facebook use, and the long-time friends I have there."

If you follow enough artists on Ello you'll have curated a feed of photos, .GIFs, and videos reminiscent of a sort of backwoods version of Tumblr or Pinterest. Memes and selfies certainly aren't nonexistent here, but they tend to be artsier. And there does seem to be a sense that Ello users are in this thing together—lurk enough on Ello, and you'll find yourself seeing a lot of lovefests between artists.

"The most remarkable thing is how positive it is," Budnitz told me.

For instance, here's an exchange that occurred on a posting about a fashion show:

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As it stands, Ello is the nice small town of the internet: It's friendly and welcoming when you know everyone, but a bewildering place to walk into as an outsider. The trick going forward will be for Budnitz and company to scale up and get rid of the bugs and hiccups while maintaining everything the current user base likes about the site.

That core of fans is what matters right now, and they're a huge part of the site's direction. "We release features to small groups first to make sure they don't fuck up how Ello works, then to everyone once we know they're right," said Budnitz. This spring, according to Budnitz, will see the launch of Ello's app, and the site will cease being invite-only "whenever we're sure it's time."

In the meantime, Ello continues to grow, slowly and away from the public spotlight, and odd little sanctuary for anyone who gets really fed up with larger sites. For now, the site seems like it wants to be an extension of Budnitz's Ello bio: "I create beautiful things that change the world."

That's just a really, really difficult promise to keep.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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All images courtesy of Sean Dunne

Florida Man is the world's worst superhero. At least that's the running joke on the internet, where Twitter accounts exist just to collate all the bizarre news coming out of my beloved home state. But if you ask people on the street there—you know, actual Florida men—they'd have no idea they were something of a cultural phenomenon. That's what Sean Dunne did while making his new documentary Florida Man, and he found that they were some of the most open, friendliest people you'll find anywhere.

Last year, the guerrilla filmmaker traversed Interstate 4 and stopped in places like Cocoa Beach, Clearwater, Inverness, and Ocala with a four-person crew. With no agenda in mind, he simply asked people on the street if they had any words of wisdom. Rather than be put off, he found, Florida men just rolled with the idea of having a camera crew in their faces for a few minutes. It didn't even phase them.

"It gave me a sense that they do a lot of wild shit and see a lot of wild shit, and it was nothing in comparison to what their normal days are like," Dunne told me.

The resulting doc, which you can watch for free on Vimeo, is 50 minutes of cinema verite chock full of jorts and malt liquor. Its characters live in trailer parks, hang outside of Waffle Houses and ride their bikes to liquor stores because they have DUIs. And it's not what Dunne calls "cookie-cutter, PBS-style bullshit"—there's no narrative arc here, no lessons learned or epiphanies reached. It's just people saying whatever they want, in the process challenging the viewers' assumption about marginalized peoples.

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Dunne himself was—briefly—a Florida man. At 15, his family was struggling financially and his father was battling personal demons. Dunne and his three siblings were approaching college age and had no way to finance an education, so they left their native New York and sought to reinvent themselves in a state that grants full scholarships to students with decent GPAs.

It was in the suburbs of St. Petersburg that Dunne first started fiddling around with a camera. "I would go out and bullshit with people, and they really inspired me," he says. "There's beauty in the mundane down there."

Since then, he's been fascinated with subjects that most people treat with classist indifference—like Juggalos. He found the best way to combat judgment and prejudice is to just let people talk without prompting them. And while his goal is to promote acceptance, it also helps him as a filmmaker that these people who are scorned by society at large are also eager to be heard. "There were characters everywhere, and they were very natural storytellers," he says. "I think their desire to talk to me came from, 'Nobody ever asks me what I'm up to.'"

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These characters include a guy with a blown-out bellybutton and a pit bull who once got stabbed by a couple who thought he had painkillers, as well as a Bible-toting man with a yellow pallor to his skin and a ton of True Detective–esque wisdom. "Time is a circle," he offers. "We all came from stardust." Others do curls with tallboys and still more sip them inside bus stations or outside laundromats. In fact, most of the characters are some point on their way to drunk, an unavoidable but unproblematic fact for Dunne, who finds booze-soaked ramblings inexplicably romantic.

"I'm not looking down on these people, and I actually envy their looseness and commitment to living a certain type of lifestyle," he says. "That's so foreign to people in New York, who think you're a piece of shit if you're not getting up every day and grinding it out and trying your hardest." He was particularly impressed with how one guy described taking several naps a day and by a man who went by Mr. Sexy Cocoa Beach and recounted a threesome he once had on some dock rafters.

"I look at this and I see myself, and I hope the viewer does too," Dunne says. "When I talk to these people I know I was a few decisions aways from being that person—and that's not necessarily a sad thing. These guys have a different idea of what life's all about, and maybe we should listen to them."

Follow Sean Dunne on Twitter.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Comedy Central has confirmed that at the end of this year Jon Stewart will no longer be the host of The Daily Show. Stewart broke the news earlier this evening during a taping of the show (which quickly made the rounds on social media).

"For the better part of the last two decades, we have had the incredible honor and privilege of working with Jon Stewart," the statement from the cable network reads. "His comedic brilliance has been second to none. Jon has been at the heart of Comedy Central, championing and nurturing the best talent in the industry, in front of and behind the camera. Through his unique voice and vision, The Daily Show has become a cultural touchstone for millions of fans and an unparalleled platform for political comedy that will endure for years to come. Jon will remain at the helm of The Daily Show until later this year."

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Last November, Stewart sat down for an interview with Christiane Amanpour at CNN (a network he'd made a career out of skewering), where he said that he had moved out of his home state of New York to a location which he "can't disclose. I got a whole thing going on." Later Amanpour noted that Stewart's contract with Comedy Central was about to expire, and perhaps he was looking for other artistic avenues, citing his directorial debut last year with Rosewater, a film about the interrogation and torture of a journalist in Iran. "Will we see you as host of The Daily Show for the next presidential election?" Amanpour asked.

"That I can't tell you," was his response.

Rumors abounded in 2014 that Stewart was offered the role of hosting America's longest-running television program, Meet the Press, when NBC was looking for a replacement for David Gregory. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Stewart confirmed that he was offered the job, but brushed it off: "My guess is they were casting as wide and as weird a net as they could. I'm sure part of them was thinking, 'Why don't we just make it a variety show?'"

Stewart has often downplayed his role in political journalism, often emphasizing that he is just a comedian. So it is unlikely that he'll pursue a formal, sober gig with any large network. Though after a 14-year run on The Daily Show, where he launched the careers of Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Larry Wilmore, fought for the rights of 9/11 first responders, virtually shoved CNN's Crossfire off the air, won countless awards, and forever altered the role of humor in modern political discourse, it's fair to say that Jon Stewart has earned himself a much deserved break from the spotlight.

Follow Josiah on Twitter.

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The author while working at the Playboy Club London

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I've been fascinated by the Playboy Club for a long time. Working in Mayfair casinos as a croupier, I met a few former Bunnies from Hugh Hefner's original 1960s Park Lane pleasure dome, and it was their stories that sparked my interest: From then on, I told myself that if Playboy ever reopened in London, I'd apply.

In 2011, it did, complete with a Cottontail Lounge for the "louche and mysterious". After attending an all-singing, all-dancing casting, I was offered a job as a Bunny. I took a salary cut of £16,000 ($25,000) to accept the role, on the promise that I'd make it back in tips—and, in fairness, I did.

As a feminist, I imagined I was following in the footsteps of journalist Gloria Steinem, who'd gone undercover at New York's Playboy Club in 1963 and written about it for Show Magazine. But unlike Steinhem and the women's rights campaigners who picketed the London launch, I never wanted to bring the club down—quite frankly, I've experienced more objectification and dealt with more harassment-lawsuits-in-waiting in office jobs than I ever did in my bunny ears and pom-pom tail.

Here's some of the stuff I learned during my time as a Playboy Bunny.

FREE THE NIPPLE CAMPAIGNERS CAN RELAX—I'VE GOT THIS ONE
My nipples weren't so much freed as reluctantly outed. Wearing a costume unqualified to contain them, it was less a case of wardrobe malfunctions, more just a severely malfunctioning wardrobe. In addition to the standard casino games, I provided customers with a side bet of Bullet Bingo: Which of my nipples would pop out next? You decide!

Despite a fitting in the corner of the canteen, sectioned off by a bit of bamboo, my costume practically cut across my nipples at the best of times. The seamstress told me to take off my bra and raise my arms to see if my nipples hovered above the hemline.

They did. Perpetually.

I wasn't the only Bunny subject to excitable boobs. One of the girls camouflaged her nipples with concealer after dabbing it on her dark circles. I hid mine behind hair extensions, which also helped to stave off the cold (anyone who says you lose the most heat from your head clearly hasn't spent an entire winter with their tits out).

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The author during her first week on the job, before she realized the benefits of hair extensions

BIG UNDERWEAR IS A GIFT FROM THE GODS
When you've got a painful urine infection, the last thing you want is to stab about with a tampon. In the desirability stakes, that falls somewhere between a Rustlers burger and death by boiling. No—what you really want is to put on your biggest underpants and a mattress-sized sanitary pad, erect a "No Entry" sign, and leave it well alone.

Unfortunately, when the crotch of your costume is as narrow as a nail file, you don't really have that luxury. Because I'd complained about nipple exposure, the seamstress lengthened my costume at the crotch, leaving it so slim I had to bunch up my G-strings to stop them spilling over the sides like a BP tanker on a protected beach.

With even less fabric covering my wobbly bum, I succumbed to wearing the regulation support tights under my black ones to hold me in. The effect was stifling, like being encased in an extra tight tubigrip bandage from the waist down.

STUFFING TOILET PAPER DOWN YOUR TOP ISN'T JUST FOR TEENAGERS
In an effort to emulate Playboy-brand boobs, we stuffed anything we could find down our costumes. The cups were cavernous, swallowing up the entire contents of my sock drawer and what felt like half of the John Lewis bedding department.

My left breast nestled with a Hungarian goose down duvet, my right breast single-handedly boosted Andrex's share price as I shoved in wads of toilet paper to supplement the loft insulation I'd pilfered from my parents. No soft furnishings were safe.

GOING TO THE TOILET ISN'T EASY DRESSED AS A BUNNY
When we unzipped our costumes, the contents of our cups spilled out immediately, our deconstructed jugs littering the loo floor. After finally squeezing out of our boa constrictor tights and having a piss, we then had to rebuild our breasts, crafting them out of bathroom floor detritus, before facing the contortion challenge of zipping our costumes back up.

Not everyone fancied running this gauntlet just to pee. One Bunny held on all shift: "My stomach just gets bigger and bigger all day, then after I finish I sit on the toilet for ages," I remember her telling me. Spending 40 hours a week with our vaginas encrusted in a blockade of synthetic fabric, it was no wonder so many of us harbored festering yeast and urine infections.

BRONZER CAN'T DISGUISE THE WARNING SIGNS OF SCURVY
Working nights, I ate a huge amount of chicken pie and biscuits. Neither of those things are good for you in large amounts over a sustained period of time, especially considering the quality of the "chicken" I was eating: There was probably more meat in the fillets down my costume.

Of course, regularly shoveling the food equivalent of liquid sewage into your throat doesn't tend to do great things for your skin. Coming home one day, I passed a neighbor who told me I had the skin tone of SpongeBob SquarePants. To remedy that, I used a lot more bronzer. As in, I David Dickinson-ed the fuck out of my face. Only, without the LA sunshine, I ended up looking less like a Crystal or Kendra, and more like a Sunny D victim who'd locked themselves inside a home tanning booth.

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WHEN YOU'VE BEEN UP FOR 36 HOURS YOU STINK OF DEAD DOG
If you haven't been to bed for three days, it really makes no difference how much Paco Rabanne you chuck at your neck. You can apply it with a firehose: You'll still stink of shit. You could do the Ice Bucket Challenge with the contents of the Harrods fragrance hall, but if it's coming up for a week since you last had a shower, you're not going to fool anyone.

At Playboy, we had a regular whose grime was indiscernible from a distance, crawling beneath Boden knitwear and an easy-care haircut. However, when you got within five feet, you were hit with a wave of what I'd imagine decomposing colon to smell like. Twisting my head each time I inhaled, I managed to fast-track through evolution, developing one of those extendable Inspector Gadget necks. A compulsive gambler, it took fallen pipes, fire drills, and skilled negotiators to get her out of the building.

I don't think it's any coincidence that every time the fire alarm went off she'd been gambling for up to 40 hours straight. We'd traipse to the church round the corner and hang about smoking, in heels and polka dot dressing gowns, like modern-day Mary Magdalenes. We'd then go through the motions of signing a fire register while the cleaners blitzed the gaming floor with Febreze.

WHAT SHAKESPEARE WOULD LOOK LIKE IN JIM DAVIDSON'S HANDS
Imagine if Jim Davidson directed a Carry On–style version of Midsummer Night's Dream. That's about the closest representation I can convey of the Bunnies' locker room at Playboy.

The self-appointed Chief Bunny walked around naked, bar flesh-colored support tights. Her torpedo tits flanked a black thicket of pubes that fought through her reinforced gusset. For me, the overall effect was quite unnerving and a little unpleasant, but I suppose one person's eyeball aneurysm is another's sex dream.

Follow Samantha Rea on Twitter.

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Image via Evil Warnings Tumblr

Earlier this week, Hollywood Reporter got an exclusive bit of news about the future of the Halloween franchise. Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the writers behind Saw IV, V, VI, and VII will be creating a new version of the story.

In what's described by sources as a "recalibration" (whatever the hell that means), the duo are working on a new story about the hulking figure in the white mask. No further details about plot, possible cast, or a director have been leaked, but I can say with authority that this is going to blow.

Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill and directed by Carpenter—who hasn't made a movie in more than five years but is instead making music—the original, 1978 Halloween reshaped and re-routed the trajectory of horror on film. If you haven't seen it before—you've seen it, right?—it follows the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) as she's stalked and attacked by Michael Myers, a mask-wearing, near-invincible killer.

Since then, the history of the Halloween franchise has been beset by terrible sequels and two clunky remakes. If we use the past as a barometer for the future, there's no way Michael Myers is going to stalk the screen with the gusto he had while under Carpenter's direction.

The original Halloween had a production budget of $325,000 (a shoestring, even in 1978), and if it had just scraped by, or made a small profit, that would have been that. No more Michael Myers. But Halloween was the first major horror blockbuster, with a domestic gross of around $47 million. And because of that sweeping success, we were quickly treated to Halloween II. This is as close as we ever got to a watchable sequel, with Carpenter and Hill writing the script. It's... fine. It takes place seconds after the events of the first film, and is just a continuation of the story. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't suck either.

After Halloween II things got hairy. The third installment in the franchise, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, was an attempt to break away from Myers as their main slasher. Focusing on an Irish mask maker who steals a hunk of Stonehenge and uses magic to melt the heads of children, the movie made $11 million less than II. Personally, I think this is one of the most imaginative entries in the series, and even though Witch doesn't feature Michael Myers, it's the last film in the series that was remotely watchable.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers were both what we call in the movie biz "garbage"—4 has an aggregated Rotten Tomatoes score of 29 percent and 5 has an appallingly low 14 percent. Their plots—which center around a young girl who ends up being Michael Myers's niece—are full of holes, gaps in logic, and cheap scares. The fifth movie is about the little girl being so traumatized that she can't speak, but (believe it or not), she finally overcomes her fear and speaks (meanwhile Michael stabs, stabs, stabs). By the time Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers came around (with an astonishingly awful 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) it's safe to say that no one really even noticed how bad it was.

They dragged Jamie Lee Curtis back for Halloween: H20, which brought in tons of money in the box office, but the film just feels like a modernization of a classically 1970s story. And if you did, for some reason, care about the sequel storyline up to that point, you'd probably be annoyed that H20 ignored the plots set up by a bunch of its predecessors. The final "official" sequel, Halloween: Resurrection, is so boring it doesn't even deserve any mention here.

Then it was horror-metal-dude Rob Zombie's turn to try his hand at the franchise. Mr. Zombie tried—he really, really tried. He took the original concept, made it more fucked up, and created scenarios that should have been terrifying. But Halloween (2007) is a boring rehash of the original masterpiece. It didn't bring anything new to the table. It exists as a glossy remake that wants to be grimy, but misses the point (It's like Orgy's cover of New Order's "Blue Monday," or, more appropriate, the 2011 remake of Carpenter's 80s classic The Thing).

And the sequel's no better, continuing the mythology Rob Zombie wanted to rewrite without keeping the immediacy of Halloween II. This is a filmmaker who clearly loves what he's doing... he's just not doing such a great job.

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A behind-the-scenes photo on the set of the original 'Halloween' via

It's been a rough road, for sure. But the entire franchise, which cost around $83 million to produce, has raked in, worldwide, around $363 million.

And that's one of the major problems with the Halloween franchise: Even though the sequels and remakes pale in comparison to the original, they still make assloads of money. We viewers continue to shuffle into the theater every few years to watch the big dude in the white mask stab women. So all my hooting and hollering doesn't matter, right? The flick still rakes in money for the studio, and its investors are paid big time on their initial investments.

So, no matter how lukewarm the response to Zombie's two remakes, the legacy of Michael Myers will continue. Like the hulking Shade himself, the franchise can never really die, right? And with two Saw writers behind the wheel, I've got low, low expectations. But even though I'm not expecting much, you'll see me in the theater about a week after it comes out, because I love horror, and I love popcorn, and the original Halloween is so good that I'll go see shitty remakes just to remind myself of how good Carpenter's original was.

Follow Giaco on Twitter.

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Photo via Flickr user Roman Königshofer

Last fall, one of the underlying themes of some conversations at pro-cop rallies, police union gatherings, and online cop forums was the idea that the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were the unfortunate but justified consequences of resisting arrest. The lesser-known murder of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn last November, however, was different. Nobody denied that Gurley's death was not a horrible mistake, not even the cops.

In the words of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton the day after Gurley's death, this was a "total innocent"—a 28-year-old, unarmed black man leaving his girlfriend's apartment at a housing project in East New York when he was accidentally shot and killed in a dark stairwell by rookie officer Peter Liang. The Daily News reported not long afterward that Liang left Gurley bleeding to death while he texted his union rep.

But now something super rare is happening: The cop who killed the young father is actually going to trial. On Tuesday, law enforcement officials announced that a grand jury has decided to indict Liang for second-degree manslaughter. A source told the Daily News that Liang could face up to 15 years because of the recklessness suggested by the manslaughter charge. He's set to surrender to authorities on Wednesday before being arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

A spokesperson for Brooklyn DA Kenneth Thompson, whose office convened the grand jury, declined to comment to VICE on the decision. The New York Police Department also has been repeatedly reached for comment, and we have yet to hear back. But even the most ardent pro-cop voices don't seem to be too angry about this course of events. Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association who has heavily criticized the police reform protesters and Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in a statement, "This officer deserves the same due process afforded to anyone involved in the accidental death of another."

Ed Mullins, the head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, added, "I'm sad that he was indicted. I don't know exactly what transpired in that hallway, but I believe it's a truly accidental incident."

Liang, who had been on the police force for 18 months at the time of the shooting, reportedly used the same hand he was holding a gun with to open a door to the apartment building's eighth-floor stairwell. The gun accidentally discharged, hitting Gurley, who was on the landing one floor down, in the chest. He died soon after.

Liang and his partner were assigned to patrol the building's lobby, not the staircase. In light of the mistake, the rookie cop has since been assigned to modified desk duty and forced to surrender his badge and gun to higher-ups as investigations proceed. The NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is conducting its own probe into the incident, but given their track record of leniency, that won't likely amount to much.

Take the 2004 shooting of Timothy Stansbury. Stansbury, an unarmed 19-year-old black man, was shot and killed by Officer Richard Neri as he was heading to the roof at a party in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Just like in Gurley's case, the mayor and police commissioner admitted it was a terrible mistake. Bloomberg even visited the home of Stansbury's family.

But Neri was never indicted. Instead, an internal probe resulted in a 30-day suspension. His gun was taken from him permanently, but as of 2011, Neri was still making nearly $80,000 annually as an NYPD officer.

That Gurley's killer was indicted is a welcome breath of fresh air after a months-long stretch of hopelessness summed up by headlines like, "Why It's Impossible to Indict a Cop." 2014 saw Officer Darren Wilson get off scot-free after the death of Michael Brown, as Daniel Pantaleo, the plainclothes officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold. Officer Christopher Manney enjoyed similar leniency when he was exonerated in the death of Dontre Hamilton in Milwaukee, as did the unnamed police officers who killed John Crawford in an Ohio Walmart.

But in all of those situations, the police had a reason—they claimed—to use fatal retaliation. Michael Brown, in Wilson's eyes, was a threat to the cop's life. Eric Garner refused to be handcuffed by Pantaleo. Dontre Hamilton had allegedly grabbed Manney's baton and hit him on the side of the neck with it. And Crawford was waving his somewhat real-looking BB gun in the air at the department store.

Gurley's death was more clear-cut. It also probably helped that Thompson was elected last year on a platform of police reform, whereas Garner's grand jury came from notoriously pro-cop Staten Island, where District Attorney Dan Donovan—who's now running for Congress—is widely suspected of letting politics creep in.

Now we'll see what Liang—who is just the fourth New York City cop indicted for killing someone since 1999—fares in a courtroom.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

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From The Mountains of Majeed, by Edmund Clark. All imagery courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Photographer Edmund Clark's latest project, The Mountains of Majeed, examines the visual life experienced by the 40,000 military personnel and contractors living at Bagram Airfield, America's largest base in Afghanistan.

The visual environment both outside and inside the base is dominated by the peaks of the Hindu Kush—a mountain range occupied by the Afghan resistance. 40,000 personnel call Bagram home, but over the nine days Clark spent on the base, he realized that few workers—besides the small portion of security-cleared locals—had ever ventured beyond the base perimeters.

The workers' sense of Afghanistan's physical landscape was restricted to the tips of the mountains of the Hindu Kush visible beyond the wires and through the local paintings that hang on the walls of the mess halls. The mountains exist as a foreboding reminder, though, that foreign occupation isn't, and never was, welcome in Afghanistan.

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Paghman, Kabul, by Majeed, from The Mountains of Majeed

In the beginning of the photo book, a Taliban poem called Afghanistan Is the Home of Afghans encourages the reader to remember the strength of local fighters.

Afghanistan is the home of Afghans
Foreigners won't be able to weaken it by force;
These mountains are ours and we belong to these mounts;
This is the home of Allah's great lions.
The invading forces will eventually leave;
This is the home of strong heroes.
This is the home of the eagles.
Jackals can't hold out here

In his book, Clark explores the military disconnection with the landscape by juxtaposing the rudimental paintings of the mountains by an unknown Afghan artist called Majeed with his high-tech photography. It pits a romantic, mythical view of the local landscape pre-9/11 Afghanistan with the limited snapshot of the country the foreign personnel are living in.

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At Bagram airbase

"We don't see the war from the other side," says Clark. "The Mountains of Majeed focuses on two sets of mountains—those captured by myself using a high-tech camera, and the low-tech paintings of Majeed, which were exhibited around the base."

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Salang, by Majeed

One set of pictures captures the view from inside—"the experience living on the base and never leaving, captured, essentially, by an occupier"—and the other is simple wood, canvas, and board, a local Afghan showing how he interprets his native landscape." In doing so, Clark highlights the gulf between the occupiers and the inhabitants—in both perspective and technology.

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A meeting room at Bagram with a mural by an unknown artist

"I knew nothing about Majeed," says Clark—something he felt was important. "I asked if anyone knew how these paintings had gotten there and no one did. But through my ignorance of him, he becomes universalized. He becomes all Afghans." Because while Operation Enduring Freedom is a war on terror, for much of Afghanistan, it's also a war on resistance.

The Mountains of Majeed will be on display at Flowers Gallery, London E2 from February 27 through April 4.

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Screengrab from Xenon gas therapy by heroindetoxeurope.com

We all have moments in our lives that we'd rather forget. Drunken conversations with coworkers, mom walking in on you while jerking off, that summer spent reading On the Road...

Well, all that pales in comparison to suffering from PTSD. People who have suffered a trauma that they cannot process or cope with generally feel powerless and vulnerable, and often suffer from emotional and physical complaints like stress, aggression, and insomnia.

Only half of all PTSD sufferers are rehabilitated after extensive therapy. The other half are stuck with a syndrome that can make their lives unbearable. For those guys, the only solution seems to be to erase that traumatic memory completely.

That sounds more dramatic than it actually is. Edward Meloni, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard, has come up with a new method that uses xenon gas—a noble gas that is famous on YouTube for making your voice deeper—to help people forget their traumas.

Meloni tested his method on rats that were taught a certain fear by being shown specific images while getting short electric shocks. The next day the rats were shown the same images, which caused them to sweat and got their heart rate up. "But when we administered xenon gas, a gas that antagonizes the NMDA receptors (where fear comes from), the rats seemed to forget their fear," says Meloni. "We hope that the FDA approves this soon, so we can start human trials within a year."

The idea that you can erase a memory is as thrilling as it is terrifying. What if something goes wrong? Meloni argues that it's not as dramatic as some films and sci-fi novels would have you believe. "Research shows that xenon gas can remove the emotional charge of a traumatic memory, but not the memory itself. The chance that memories disappear completely is pretty slim."

But just because it's a slim chance, doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. Memories are what make us who we are, so if they disappear, you can come out of treatment a completely different person. Meloni seems less panicked about this than I am. "Even if the memory does disappear completely, I'd still want to use the method in some cases."

According to the professor, xenon gas is harmless—it's already being used for all kinds of purposes, including anesthesia. Furthermore, the drug would only be used on the most extreme cases, on people who can't be helped with conventional treatment. "Since my study has been in the media, I've been getting hundreds of e-mails and phone calls every day from people who want to get rid of their trauma at any cost," Meloni says. According to Meloni, opponents of the treatment don't know what people who are traumatized go through. "You have to realize that your whole life is ruined after a trauma like that. Consequently, you often make the wrong choices, which can lead to even more problems."

Supposing traumas can be completely forgotten, what kind of effects would that have on our society? I asked Professor Douwe Draaisma, who specializes in the nature and workings of the human memory.

"In ethical literature you often get the example of the 'forgetting pill'—a pill that erases your last memory. Suppose a rape victim takes one of those pills, then the consequences for the perpetrator could be less severe," says Draaisma. "Or even worse: the rapist could force the victim to take the pill. That is one of the dilemmas that treatments like these bring up."

That all seemed a bit far-fetched to me, but Draaisma told me that something similar has already happened. "An autistic girl was caught shoplifting, and slashed someone with a pair of scissors. In this case the perpetrator ended up traumatized and suffered from numerous PTSD symptoms. She had to be committed, and the doctors gave her an EMDR treatment to help her deal with the trauma." The perpetrator no longer felt the emotional burden of what she had done, but you can wonder what that means for the punishment that he or she should receive.

That scientists and ethicists are still debating the matter as if they're dealing purely in hypotheticals is strange. I came across the website heriondetoxeurope.com, and apparently there is a doctor in Belgrade, Dr. Vorobiev, who's been doing xenon gas treatments for a while now. His clinic mainly focuses on British people looking to get rid of their drug addiction on the cheap. Dr. Vorobiev did not respond to my attempts to get in touch, but Meloni was overjoyed when I told him about Vorobiev's practice. "Maybe we can work with the Serbians to test if it really works!" he said.

Meloni's enthusiasm may have something to do with the fact that in the United States, at least 22 war veterans commit suicide every day. Some vets suffering from PTSD use MDMA as treatment, while others find solace in an insane party mansion filled with strippers and Juggalos. Maybe drastic times call for drastic measures—even if that means going full Eternal Sunshine and attempting to erase someone's memory completely.

It might look as though the fashion industry is on the brink of breaking down the barriers that once shut minorities out. In the past few years, we've seen a new generation of multi-ethnic designers, artists, and creatives who have clawed their way to the highest echelons of style. From the multi-racial design duo Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborn of Public School nabbing the CFDA Fashion Fund Award, to Shanye Oliver of Hood By Air showing at the prestigious Pitti Uomo in France—it can make you think that we're in an exciting moment, when sheer talent and creativity finally overpowers prejudice.

Unfortunately, despite recent gains, there are still a great many roadblocks—some more subliminal than others—for people of colour who work in fashion. It's a duality that reflects what it's like to be a minority in America today, where you can have a black president and still find institutional disregard for black lives, or you can be excited about Eddie Huang's Fresh off the Boat series but pissed it took 20 years to get a new sitcom about an Asian family on network TV.

Nowhere is the struggle more visible in fashion than on the runways of New York Fashion Week, where around 80 percent of models on the catwalks are white. This underrepresentation triggered models like Bethann Hardison and Naomi Campbell and designers like Diane Von Furstenberg to petition the industry to hire more minorities. But despite the A-list support, real progress has been negligible at best.

While there hasn't been too much effort put towards improving diversity, fashion's eagerness to exploit the style of minorities through the appropriation of baby hairs, headdresses, and "migrant worker chic" is very much in vogue. Season after season, we see how clueless the industry can be—from A.P.C.'s Jean Touitou naming one his runway looks "Last Niggas in Paris" to Maison Martin Margiela resurrecting the career of designer John Galliano, who's known for making racist and anti-Semitic comments.

To find out what it's like for minorities working in the fashion industry, we reached out some prominent people of colour who are involved in modeling, styling, editing, designing, and photography. Their presence in the industry is inspiration to all those who dream of designing a collection, walking down a catwalk, or getting their name on a masthead, but don't readily see people who look like them in those positions. Their stories paint an insightful picture of the fashion world, where there is both opportunity and institutional obstacles for minorities.

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Preston Chaunsumlit
Occupation: Casting Director
Age: 35
Hometown: Mabelvale, Arkansas
Ethnicity: Asian

"I don't think that the fashion industry is particularly racist. I think it is exemplary of how race works in our culture. It being a visual industry, it is just more obvious in some ways. I would say every day I work in fashion, I have to deal with the race thing, but I have to deal with the race thing every day when I go to the store. There have been times that I have shown up to my own castings at a client's office and the receptionist or the intern has told me to go to the freight elevator for deliveries, or asked 'Is that my teriyaki chicken?' I have gotten that a lot.

"In New York and in fashion, people pride themselves on being more sophisticated in culture, but that doesn't give you a free pass to not be offensive. It is strange that in our culture—and especially in fashion casting—when you have a blank slate it is usually someone white. But if you have colour, it is something that is added onto that blank slate, so it just changes everything. There has been a lot of talk about diversity in casting, but I don't think that fashion is out to do the right thing. I don't think it's the industry's responsibility to do the right thing, either."

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Yara Flinn
Age: 32
Occupation: Designer of Nomia
Hometown: New York, New York
Ethnicity: Multiracial

"When I was a teenager I used to get scouted by modeling agencies because I was 5'10 when I was 14. One time I remember going in to an agency for a go-see and the agent telling me I was 'too ethnic.' It was the late 1990s, a time when more androgynous, overwhelmingly white models were the trend. At the time, I was pretty confused and disappointed, but now I can appreciate that type of honesty because I think open dialogue is the only way to bring about more meaningful discussions of race and inclusion in fashion.

"I think access into the industry is very tough for everyone, but I think economic factors can be even more of a barrier than ethnicity and in some cases gender. For models, I imagine breaking in to the industry to be quite difficult, which is a far cry from the 1980s when models of colour were more prevalent. Ultimately it comes down to trends, but usually those trends are symptomatic of a broader cultural and political climate. I feel extremely lucky to have had the experience of growing up in a huge city with a really diverse group of friends and it's hard to explain exactly how that manifests in my work, but it's fundamental to my identity."

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Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs
Occupation: Founders of Street Etiquette
Ages: 25 and 25
Hometown: New York, New York
Ethnicity: African and West Indian

"We created Street Etiquette because there wasn't a voice for black culture in fashion as far as young men go, but at the same time we just needed to express ourselves. We didn't come out saying this is the new black cultural perspective, but people labeled it that because it was something new and refreshing. Even in the way we research style, we look at West Indian, Caribbean, and African style and mesh that with what that would look like today in a modern way. I think combining different worlds and different aesthetics brought about a new culture.

"You'll see now in different details in the fashion industry that people are borrowing things from minorities, specifically black culture like baby hairs, finger waves, du-rags, Air Force Ones, and Timberlands. These are all facets of different cultures, and black culture is being embraced by the fashion industry. It is much more concrete now, but before it was like they wouldn't associate themselves with it. Everyone is inspired by something, but you also have to know where to draw the line." – Josh

"I feel like a lot of the times when we have these conversations, they are more negative than positive. We already get discriminated against so much that if you are trying to enter into a field and you are a minority, you are already looked at in a certain type of way, so we created our own space. I don't think the fashion world really embraced us with open arms. It was more of this new way that people looked at the internet and things to be inspired by, not so much what's happening in fashion.

"My girl was telling me about this London brand's T-shirt that has a Jamaican man hanging from a tree and at the bottom it says 'Batty Boy,' which means gay in Jamaican. It is something political and the undertones are good because the [people wearing the shirts] are gay men, but they are also white. You can't really do that. I think people in fashion have been notorious for that. Even if they think they understand it, they are too far removed from it." – Travis

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Miyako Bellizzi
Age: 26
Occupation: Stylist
Hometown: Oakland, California
Ethnicity: Asian-American

"I decided to do this shoot because I feel its an important topic that should be open for discussion. Being mixed, a lot of people wouldn't even know I was Japanese if it wasn't for my name. I consider myself more Asian than white because that is how I was raised. I have noticed that with modeling, when they are looking for a mixed-Asian girl, I am always the one they hit up. When I am on set it feels like they have to have me there because they need to meet a quota for campaigns of one black person and one Asian.

"When I am on set, a lot of people who work with me behind the scenes are the minorities, but the people in front of the cameras are always white. If it's not the hair or makeup girl that is a minority, than no one else is. When I shoot my own editorials or when I have the chance to choose, I like to choose people of different races."

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Brian Procell
Occupation: Owner of Procell
Age: 31
Hometown: Elizabeth, New Jersey
Ethnicity: Ecuadorian/Colombian

"Being Latino and being fluent in Spanish has definitely helped me when it comes to sourcing for my store. Because I do a lot of 80s and 90s urbanwear, I go into a lot of Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. I think being able to speak Spanish has opened up a lot of doors and allowed me to get into storage units, or attics, or basements that otherwise wouldn't have been accessible without being able to communicate. Also, because of my appearance, being brown and having a beard, sometimes people mistake me for being Middle Eastern or Muslim. So, when I go to neighborhoods that are predominately Muslim and go digging out there, no one fucks with me.

"I feel like a couple years ago, Americana was a big deal. I was providing heritage American clothing, and sometimes it would be very awkward. Customers might not have said it out right, but it was a feeling of them thinking that I didn't understand what it stood for or what it was about because of my appearance. The cool thing about my shop is that it is super diverse. The same way that many people are close-minded about race, a lot of people aren't open-minded with experimenting with clothes or being accepting of other brands or styles. That is crazy to me."

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Christelle de Castro
Age: 30
Occupation: Photographer
Hometown: Pittsburg, California
Ethnicity: Pinay

"Often times I get thrown into an 'urban' category, where the musicians or fashion I shoot is more street or hip-hop. This affects my work because it's difficult to flip it from urban to high fashion. Fashion has the potential to be rather surface and sometimes very insensitive. As a woman of colour, as a feminist, as a photographer, I try to counteract that by always keeping my politics in mind. I want my women to feel comfortable and empowered on sets, I'm not going to do a stupid girl-on-girl editorial because it trivializes queer women. I will run to a march and photograph the faces of protestors because it's one small way I can be an activist through my work.

"It's very problematic that people of colour in the modelling industry are seen as 'flavours'—or all too often treated or cast as tokens. It's like hearing, 'Dominicans are trending lately.' These are statements and ideas that really deduce these models as bodies of colour, and point out that blacks, Latinos, and Asians are deeply under represented, and dare I say misrepresented in the modeling industry and mainstream American media."

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Noma Han
Occupation: Model
Age: 24
Hometown: Incheon, Korea
Ethnicity: Korean

"When I first started modeling, I thought that race was going to be an issue for me. In Asian culture we love tall [people with] blonde hair and blue eyes. So, when I was in Korea, I had those feelings too. I thought it would be hard because I am Asian and people don't want to use us. Since I started modeling in New York, it was easy, but when I went to Europe it was harder for me, not just because I was Asian, but because I am an Asian person with tattoos and gauges, which looked extreme to them. At first, they were afraid to take me as their model because they thought I wouldn't work.

"But, I do think it is much easier for models today to go to bigger cities because people don't really care anymore. Some people hate [my tattoos], some people love them, but it is just what I have to deal with because I like them. Personally, I don't think there are racial problems because there have been so many Asian people in this industry. They see me as me, not as Asian."

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Deidre Dyer
Age: 30
Occupation: Editor at The Fader
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Ethnicity: Afro-Caribbean American

"I have been lucky to work with people who are very like-minded, chill, and open to whatever. I have never worked with anyone who made me feel a certain type of way or that I should be ashamed of my colour. However, I will say that it is kind of funny and sad that brown girls in the industry get mistaken identities all of the time. About a year ago, I went to a fashion presentation right before fashion week and I had braids. I was introduced to someone through a mutual friend and they were like, 'Aren't you that girl who works at this other blog?' And I said no that isn't me. It is a lot of, 'Nope, I am the other black girl.'

"I have had some positive experiences in regards to race in the fashion industry. A year and a half ago Bethann Hardison wrote a letter to the International Fashion Council that was a really important watershed moment that was needed to make people feel uncomfortable. I was really inspired when Bethann did that. You don't have to feel obligated in the industry to do anything. But the people who do something and call bullshit when they see it should be applauded."

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Matthew Henson
Age: 31
Occupation: Fashion Editor at Complex
Hometown: Long Branch, New Jersey
Ethnicity: Black

"I think when it comes to race in the fashion industry, it is important for people to know not every setback or exclusion you face is because of your race. Fashion is a very insular industry that has become more mainstream, but there are still some old and antiquated ways that will always be there. There is a lack of empathy in the fashion world and we have to speak out when people are doing something wrong.

"My personal experiences when it came to racism were more on the social spectrum. Attending events, or not being invited to events with my contemporaries in my early years, was daunting. Not having many people that looked or sounded like me was a bit intimidating. There are times I have gotten looks and stares when I'm at events like store openings on Madison Avenue. Everyone is wondering if I am a rapper or a hip-hop artist, but I am just an educated black man. I deserve to be there. Institutionally, the fashion industry is colour-struck, but there are people out there who don't see colour. You have to stay true to yourself and in the end it's all about work."

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Brandee Brown
Ethnicity: 24
Occupation: Model
Hometown: New York, New York
Ethnicity: African-American

"America has been brought up on racism and we can still see it behind closed doors with things like modeling, where they cast the girl with the big curly hair or the light-skinned girls with the light eyes as the black girl to represent the whole race. But there isn't one role that speaks for every African American. You put things in front of people and they start to believe that's how it should be. You can just see that race is not really promoted.

"When Rick Owens put the women stomping down the runway, I could see how he wanted to make a statement. But why can't having all black models on the runway just be normal? I think that is where society is at when it comes to our ideas of beauty and what we think is beautiful. It's something we think is so artistic and different because it's not normal to see more than three black women on the runway. I am friends with a stylist, Lisa Cooper, who is African-American, and she tells me to keep my head on straight all of the time. She tells me how race does play into it, but to just be strong and keep going anyway."

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Darlene and Lizzie Okpo
Ages: 28 and 24
Occupation: Designers
Hometown: New York, New York
Ethnicity: Nigerian-American

"Our experience in the fashion industry has always been a hot and cold situation. They pre-judge what and who we are. We are often seen as the designer sisters who do streetwear. We look at that and say, Our aesthetics can sometimes be no different than Carven or Alexander Wang, why are we streetwear and they are considered ready-to-wear? Even if they see the collection, they still consider it urbanwear even when it is full of suit jackets and flowy dresses.

"We grew up watching Martin and the character Shanana was a typical person we would see in our neighborhood. I find it so funny that now Vogue, who has been scared of that woman who shook her head and rolled her eyes, puts her in their editorials with baby hairs, Timberlands, and bamboo earrings. I felt like that was something that we were told, 'You better not do that' because then we would be a stereotype. Then you see white men walking down the runway with du-rags. They think they are showing appreciation, but I see it as mockery because I couldn't do it. If I do it, it is considered urbanwear. If they do it, it is considered art." - Lizzie

"In the beginning, we were two young Nigerian-American girls, and often we didn't see people who looked like us. When we first started, we went to a factory and they thought we were the interns—and that still happens. I think the hardest part was going into a meeting or factory and really standing your ground and not fitting that stereotype that they do put on you, that we are urban. The biggest thing has been proving ourselves and it's heartbreaking.

"We are trying to be that positive energy for young girls. There aren't a lot of programs that are fashion based, where you could just tell a girl who grew up in Bed-Stuy that she could be a fashion designer. [Blacks] have a lot of buying power, and we spend a lot of money, but we aren't represented on the business side. It's hard when you are the only one. I have so many girlfriends who can say the same thing: 'I am the only black girl in this big company.' You don't want to talk about it, but sometimes you have to." - Darlene

Photos by Christelle de Castro
Styling by Miyako Bellizi
Makeup by Allie Smith
Words and interviews by Erica Euse

Follow Erica, Miyako, and Christelle on Twitter.

All responses were edited and condensed to fit the format of this article.

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Image via Flickr user Kelly

It is 11 PM on a Tuesday night and I'm on my bedroom floor fondling all my sweaters. "Thank you for... um, keeping me so warm," I tell them, individually, tossing some in a pile to give away and folding the rest, neatly, to be placed back in my drawers. I will eventually move on to my socks, tights, and underwear, caressing each pair to see if it "sparks joy" and discarding those that don't with heartfelt gratitude for the role they have thus far played in my life.

I am tidying up.

I've spent a lot of time tidying over the past few weeks, not so much guided as whipped into a feverish frenzy by Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I got it in a local bookstore after sheepishly asking for "the Japanese cleaning book."

The clerk knew exactly what I meant, of course: This book (Kondo's fourth title but first English translation) is making the rounds right now. It has sold over 2 million copies, and seems to really be hitting home with my demographic (i.e. the 20-something, urban-dwelling women who owns at least one dusty crystal and is vaguely aware when Mercury is or is not in retrograde) in particular. At least, that's how I found out about it—through the gentle, word-of-mouth hysteria of what felt like all of my friends at once.

Discovering a book this way felt odd in our time of memes and instagramming ~impactful lines~ from ~important books~ that are ~happening~ right now. It's rare for a zeitgeist to find you IRL before you encounter it online. But it seemed impossible to avoid Marie Kondo's KonMari method. People were losing their shit over it.

For my part, I am as dubious about anything purporting to be life-changing as I am rabbit-in-a-hat magic done by a sweaty, drunk magician at a toddler's birthday party. And yet, the idea of a cleaner home and a more minimal "space" was appealing. Friends boasted about improvement in mood and better sleep the farther they got along in the process.

I even overheard a stranger on the subway talking about "the tidying book" say the following phrase, out loud, for everyone to hear: "I basically just realized that none of my hats were actually bringing me joy."

For the uninitiated, Kondo is a cartoon-adorable "cleaning consultant" and bestselling author from Japan who travels the world teaching her—patented—tidying method. Her classes have a three-month waiting list and are based around the idea that effective tidying "involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things."

She claims every student who has completed her course has gone on to tidy their home permanently, changing their lives forever with no relapses into messiness. She also believes, very deeply and in a very real way, that all of her possessions are on some level sentient—that she can communicate with them, and they with her.

Kondo is not an objectum sexual, as far as I can tell, and nor does she appear to be encouraging you to forge an intimate, sticky relationship with your shirt sleeve. But she is a very intense person. She says things like, "To go through life without knowing how to fold is a huge loss," and, on some level, I know this to be true. "There is a significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying," she says. "Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type."

I didn't even balk at the bit where Kondo texts her old cell phone, "Thank you for everything <3"

She's not fucking around, either. The book is peppered with stories from Kondo's tidiness-obsessed past and present, dominated by the conflict between an earnest desire to help others change their lives through tidying and the author's somber insistence that she would not wish the difficult life of a cleaning consultant on anyone. Her theories range in utility from "the best time to start is in the morning" to "your socks are tired from being on your feet all day and you need to let them nap comfortably in your shelves."

In her preliminary one-on-one client sessions, Kondo typically facilitates the removal of between 20 and 30 trash bags of household items per person. This is because the KonMari method involves chucking out between two thirds and three quarters of your possessions based on whether or not they are useful and/or bring you the aforementioned spark of joy. There is no other criteria. You can, apparently, "just tell" if a thing makes you feel good.

"All of the objects in your home want to be of use to you," she says, adding that items that have outlived their usefulness are probably sad in your home and "just want to leave." It is a tall order to assemble everything you own in the middle of your living room and sort through it piece by piece, but Kondo claims this is the only way. "The key," she says, "is to make the change so sudden that you experience a complete change of heart."

Surrounded by my possessions, I realized my new guiding light was at least right about one thing—I had way too much stuff. I felt like a hoarder who only had a pile of slushy newspapers as a path to the toilet.

I set to work following the order of sorting outlined in the book: clothes, books, komono (a Japanese word for everyday miscellany like coins, loose buttons... the kind of everyday ephemera found in every idiot's junk drawer). While most of Kondo's tidying tips are basic common sense—everything should have a place, store similar things together, there's no point in keeping a present if you don't like it—there were also some more specific nuggets that helped me on my path to decluttering.

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Marie Kondo. Screengrab via

The phrase "downgrading to loungewear is taboo," for example, really hit me hard. One chapter cautioned against keeping old lecture materials; another warned about hanging on to tech manuals as though you'll ever use them over Googling the phrase "iPhone water damage rice not working" over and over. There was an entire section on "unidentified cords" that prompted a long, tangled shame spiral.

Many hours into my cleaning experience, though, I had a breakthrough: I hated almost everything I owned! It was going to be so easy to get rid of all my useless shit! I didn't need any of it! I could sleep on the floor fully clothed with all the lights on, like Kondo said she had during the writing of the book! The inside of my closet would be a little private paradise, as suggested, and the rest of my home would be bare. In a KondoMari-induced delirium I tossed old shoes, notebooks, and beauty products into bags to be donated. I found a crocheted (?) vest with the tags still on it and said, looking it right in the hem, "You know what? You did not bring me any joy."

I thanked the ugly-as-sin vest for teaching me what kinds of tops I thought were ugly, then threw it in a garbage bag. I felt good. Maybe too good.

Why? Because I realized I had just read the phrase, "Have you ever had the experience where you thought what you were doing was a good thing but later learned it had hurt someone? This is somewhat similar to the way many of us treat our socks," and thought, "Oh shit! Poor socks!" I had started hanging my clothes so that they slanted from left to right in my closet, but had not stopped to question whether sunlight really was a good disinfectant.

More worryingly, I didn't even balk at the bit where Kondo texts her old cell phone, "Thank you for everything <3," and then the phone SHUTS ITSELF DOWN PERMANENTLY, because it knows damn well that it's done a good job and that that job is now complete. It can transcend its mortal coil, peacefully and happily.

While the idea that "your feelings are the standard for decision-making" was quite appealing, and the act of clearing out old shit really did feel like a confrontation of my lived past and coming future, I fell short of being able to imagine dropping to my knees to "greet" my home when I got back from work. I probably wouldn't "visit" my knitwear during the summer months, to make sure they knew I was thinking about them. I did not think I would be happier with neat sushi rolls of tights instead of the tangle of chunky noodles I was working with currently. Frankly, I've got other shit to do.

Towards the end of the book, Kondo goes deep about the roots of her cleaning obsession. "My passion for tidying was motivated by a desire for recognition from my parents and a complex concerning my mother," she says. Then, in a passage that finally does have echoes of Married to the Eiffel Tower, she writes: "Because I was poor at developing bonds of trust with people, I had an unusually strong attachment to things. It was material things and my house that taught em to appreciate unconditional love first, not my parents or friends."

This passage—and the one that suggested effective tidying would also lead to overall weight loss—did, eventually, make me sad. I put down some of my garbage bags and went to call a friend who was not a scarf.

Follow Monica on Twitter.

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Still from 'Taxi' (2015) by Jafar Panahi

Last weekend, Iranian director Jafar Panahi's new film, Taxi, premiered to a sold-out audience at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival. The Berlinale is one of the most celebrated fêtes in the industry and always a Berlinisch affair—casual, drunken, fun—especially compared to the buttoned-up doings at Cannes. Its conspicuously nonplussed audiences fly in from all over Europe and rarely show extremes of enthusiasm or disdain: Cool disinterest is the norm. (I deciphered a U-Bahn map for one heavy-lidded couple who claimed they weren't even planning on seeing any movies; they'd hopped on an Easyjet just for the after parties.)

Taxi is different. Its director, who until recently lived under house arrest, works in a state of legal purgatory whereby he is forbidden from making films yet remains unpunished for doing so, possibly due to the international attention each new samizdat claims. Panahi's latest experimental feature, filmed in secret and smuggled out of his home country, is one of the Berlinale's most highly anticipated premieres. So as I walked out of a packed screening last Saturday morning—after the well-caffeinated audience finished its long and thunderous applause—I was surprised to find myself thinking not of the usual festival buzz, but of Nâzım Hikmet, who died in 1963.

Hikmet was Turkey's first modern poet and, in the 1940s, its most famous political prisoner; his incarceration prompted calls for release from Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso, among others. Hikmet began writing Human Landscapes from My Country, considered by many to be his nation's 20th-century literary masterpiece, while serving a 13-year prison sentence for writing poetry that officials feared might incite soldiers to revolt. (From "Some Advice for Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison": "To think of roses and gardens inside is bad, / to think of seas and mountains is good. / Read and write without rest, / and I also advise weaving / and making mirrors.") Once published, his "epic novel in verse" was banned in Turkey for thirty years. Among its more famous scenes is a one-hundred-page sequence set on a wartime train journey, where a political prisoner—the authorial stand-in—watches the chatting and squabbling that takes place among an ensemble cast of traveling soldiers, widows, policemen, poets, and thieves.

The parallels to Jafar Panahi's life, and especially to his new film, are instructive. As Hikmet was Turkey's most well-known poet, Panahi is Iran's most famous filmmaker, having won major awards for his humanistic and increasingly political films like The White Balloon, The Mirror, The Circle, and Offside. Like Hikmet, he has spent time in prison for his work, virtually all of which remains banned in the country of his birth. And while contemporary Iran is hardly 1940s Turkey, both countries have struggled with a legacy of imperialist meddling and competing drives toward the liberal, secular, and cosmopolitan on the one hand, and the authoritarian and traditionalist on the other.

Panahi has been arrested twice, the second time for 86 days, and his release by the Iranian government—following a hunger strike and international pressure from an alliance of artists and filmmakers—was predicated on a 20-year ban on filmmaking, interviews, and international travel. Even while under house arrest, he immediately set himself to making more movies: 2011's playful This Is Not a Film , which stars the director and is set in his apartment in Tehran; 2013's Closed Curtain, which was shot at the director's villa on the Caspian Sea; and now Taxi, which finds Panahi venturing back onto the streets. These credit-less works must be smuggled out of Iran (in the case of This Is Not a Film, literally inside a cake) in order to premiere at festivals around the world. "I'm a filmmaker," Panahi says in his Berlinale director's statement about the prohibition he has defied three times. "I can't do anything else but make films."

As Panahi's life loosely follows Hikmet's, so Taxi loosely follows the panoramic project of Human Landscapes, although Hikmet's plurality of railway interaction is replaced in Taxi by the confessional meetings of passenger and a single, familiar driver: Panahi playing himself. The director's first fare is a professional mugger who argues in favor of the death penalty for stealing. Soon after, he picks up a pirated-DVD distributor and cinephile who recognizes the director and teasingly accuses him of making a film. ("Those were actors, right?" he says of two passengers who have just departed.) With each winking aside made by a new occupant, the audience in Friedrichstadt Palast's cavernous theater broke into surprised laughter, although their clear favorite was the director's so-called niece: a garrulous, enterprising nine-year-old filmmaker who utters many of the film's most thematically apposite lines, at one point complaining, "I don't understand what's real or what isn't!"

Despite the familiar dangers of meta-fiction, Taxi is charming, funny, and acrobatically stage-managed throughout. As Panahi drives across sun-dazzled Tehran, actors leap out from among the city's everyday citizens, enter the cab, and, in most cases, recognize Panahi as no ordinary driver. "I know what you're up to," another passenger grins, shaking her finger at the dashboard camera and eliciting more audience guffaws.

Constraint seems to be a blessing for Panahi: the fact that the film takes place in "real-time" and entirely inside a car provides a practical, no-frills architecture on which to build characters both nuanced and whimsical, such as the man who, on the way to a hospital after a traffic accident, delivers his last will and testament into Panahi's cell phone so that his wife will inherit the man's house—contrary to Iranian custom. (After the husband's recovery, the wife calls the director to make sure the will is secure, "because you never know.") Facts from Panahi's life play an important role, too: at one point, while driving past a crowd, the director believes he hears the voice of a man from the blindfolded interrogation sessions he underwent after his arrest.

Some early reviews have remarked on the ambiguity of these interactions. Are they staged or real? But I never doubted everything was scripted. If the film has any serious flaws, it's that the constraints turn into limitations precisely because Panahi struggles to pull off the illusion. As with a film shot in a single take or a novel written without the letter e, the fact of Taxi's completion threatens to overwhelm its narrative content, and even its political concerns, which include government censorship, women's rights, poverty, and capital punishment. These leitmotifs are typically announced with the sort of sententious expression (thieves "look just like you or me," says one character) or contrived anecdote that would be cause for eye-rolling in a more traditional film. Yet we're distracted by the filmmaking process itself: the shot framed inexpertly for the sake of authenticity, or the attempt to blend actors in with "real" Tehranis.

The impulse to foreground a film's reality with formal devices—found footage, news report, documentary narration—speaks to a certain perceived jadedness among modern audiences, and such trickery has become SOP in at least one film genre: horror. The thrills of horror are now thought to depend not upon suspension of disbelief but upon actual felt belief, even if that belief is precipitated, as is often the case with modern examples like [Rec] or The Blair Witch Project, by nothing more than shaky camera work and a fabricated news logo in the corner of the screen.

Political realities, too—like horror movies, but also like advertising campaigns and celebrity personalities—are carefully orchestrated, overdubbed, censored, forged, faked, and then embedded into YouTube videos, selfies, and other "naturalized" media that ostensibly show us a reality unfiltered by institutional agenda. ("These aren't paid actors," the commercial blurts.) What once signaled to viewers the presence of artifice—a screen—now purports to prove its absence.

[body_image width='700' height='399' path='images/content-images/2015/02/11/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/11/' filename='jafar-panahis-gonzo-selfie-taxi-arrives-at-the-berlinale432-body-image-1423673460.jpg' id='26652'] Still from 'Taxi' (2015) by Jafar Panahi

Just as Nâzım Hikmet chose a plain, documentary style rather than the formality of traditional Turkish poetry in order to achieve a heightened sense of realism, Panahi's Taxi, with its artfully staged "reality," is a coy response to the new technological naïveté. Toward the end of the film, the director concludes of the Iranian government that "there are realities they don't want shown"—with special emphasis on the plural.

It's not surprising that the "sordid reality" of poverty and thievery, and the question of its punishment, appear in several of the film's sequences, including its opening and closing moments. The artist who is transformed into a criminal by his country can't help but interest himself in the category of the criminal. Several thieves count among Hikmet's fellow travelers in Human Landscapes of My Country, as well—thieves being not categorically different from poets in the imprisoned author's eyes.

For Panahi, though, the act of stealing stands in opposition to the act of filmmaking: To steal something is to affirm its reality, whereas to film a thing is to interrogate the same. Despite the court ruling that could land Panahi back in prison at any time, he seems intent on pursuing the interrogation for as long as he can. And no doubt the world's film festivals, and especially Berlin, where three of Panahi's films have premiered, will continue to screen the contraband work of one of Iran's most important oppositional voices—even if, for the time being, he won't be able to attend the after party.

Ben Mauk is a Fulbright scholar living in Berlin and a regular online contributor to the New Yorker.

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All pictures courtesy of Fossil Free UCL

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When you see the above picture, do you think "socially-conscious young people trying to save the planet," or "drunken lost causes in the throes of the kind of bro-down cum group sex-then-suicide ritual that would feature in a late night Inbetweeners spin-off"?

The picture is in fact of some student activists from Fossil Free UCL, a campaign at University College London demanding that the university stops investing in the fossil fuel industry. Yesterday, they staged a sort of love-in at a UCL Council meeting dressed as Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and the UCL Provost, Michael Arthur, to highlight the "incestuous" relationship between the university and the fossil fuel industry. Council members, including the Provost himself, had to shove their way through an elaborate visual pun to get to their meeting. Students covered in "oil" and wearing placards demanding that UCL "Break up with fossil fuels" were in the way.

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Guin Carter, a second year politics and economics student who helped organize the action, pointed out the hypocrisy of UCL's investment in the fossil fuel industry when the University's own research "explicitly states that we must keep carbon based fuels in the ground to avoid climate chaos."

I asked Beth Parkin, another of the students involved, to tell me more about what happened.

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VICE: What is going on in these pictures?
Beth: UCL has £21 million [$32 million] invested in the fossil fuel industry and we wanted to highlight this kind of incestuous relationship between UCL and the fossil fuel industry. So basically we covered ourselves in molasses, which looks like oil, wearing masks of the Shell logo and our provost Michael Arthur, and we staged a scene whereby Shell and UCL were kind of getting it on in this context of an oil orgy.

It looks like some kind of revolting rowing team initiation.
[Laughs] Yeah, that's true. It wasn't. Everyone did it of their own accord.

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Who's the guy in the suit with the blue tie? He looks very annoyed.
So what was great about this action was that we held it outside the Council meeting. UCL Council meets once a term to kind of discuss all the business things that happen at UCL. The campaign has waited a year for an ethical review of the investments at UCL—which is completely ridiculous—and these were the Council members going into the council room, going in to the meeting.

Why did you turn to this kind of protest?
Students—actually everyone campaigning for change—have been completely ignored by management, and we're just getting really frustrated. For example, DeAnne Julius is the president of council, she's the former Chief Economist for Shell and worked for BP during the cover up of the deep horizon oil spill, and these are the chief decision makers at UCL. It's kind of like—how do students stand a chance of safeguarding their future against climate change if these are the people in charge of our big decisions and investments? So we're basically having to do this to open up new channels of communication with management because they're not engaging in such an important issue.

They said they would hold and ethical investment review committee but it hasn't happened for the best part of a year and we're kind of getting ignored and snubbed by management. So this was kind of to say, "You might be ignoring us and not being efficient on this, but we're not going away."

And like you said, the point here is climate change, right?
Yeah. The fossil fuel industry currently holds vast carbon reserves. In order to have a chance of staying below 2 degrees of warming, up to 80 percent of their reserves must not be burnt. All the evidence suggests that they intend to burn the reserves within their control. Companies such as Shell are also actively trying to discover new reserves, often in environmentally sensitive regions. So, their business plan and a liveable planet are incompatible.

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Do you think you're making progress towards forcing UCL to divest?
Well, they don't really have a leg to stand on in the case of divestment, because investments in the fossil fuel industry completely contradict what is written in their ethical investment review guidelines, and also it goes against all the research UCL are doing in sustainability and climate change.

Any future actions planned?
Yes, we're now escalating our campaign until management takes action.

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