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Fifty-Five Dead Greyhounds Were Found in a Mass Grave in Queensland

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On Tuesday, the decomposing carcasses of 55 greyhounds were found dumped in remote bushland in Queensland, Australia. The surrounding area was littered with .22 caliber bullet cartridges. The Queensland Police and the RSPCA Greyhound Taskforce are currently investigating the grim discovery and looking for evidence of inhumane treatment.

Detective Superintendent Mark Ainsworth described the find as "nothing short of abhorrent," while Queensland's Police Minister Jo-Anne Miller called the perpetrators "oxygen thieves." However, animal rights groups claim the discovery isn't surprising at all—they've been lobbying against mass greyhound executions for years.

"There's still thousands out there," Lisa White, President of greyhound-adoption group Friends of the Hound, said. She claims that because of the cruel nature of the greyhound-racing industry, execution is a common outcome for unused dogs. "Over a ten-year period, there were 90,000 greyhounds bred for racing in [New South Wales] alone, but only around 6,000 that made it professionally," she said. "So where are those other dogs?"

For the thousands of greyhounds who don't become professional racers, some trainers choose to dispose of them. Ms. White added that fortunately some greyhounds were outsourced via adoption programs. Some Queensland vets have even taken to euthanize failed racing dogs for $20 each. But despite these efforts, dogs continue to be killed.

"It's no surprise to us that mass graves are found," she said. "The real issue is that most Australians would not agree [that] this kind of execution on a grand scale is ethical—but unfortunately in Queensland it's legal to just breed dogs to die."

Queensland's Animal Care and Protection Act 2001 does state it's only illegal to kill animals in an "inhumane" way. Inhumane is defined as a method that causes them "not to die quickly" or suffer "unreasonable pain." So despite the ethical implication, the mass execution of greyhounds by a bullet to the brain is technically lawful.

But outside of this case, the larger problem for animal justice groups is that they have little way of knowing if greyhounds are being killed inhumanely on a large scale. QLD Police said that applications for search warrants must first pass a "reasonable belief test," one that gives sufficient proof there is cause to inspect a property. This means for prosecuting agencies like the RSPCA must first prove that trainers are inhumanely disposing of greyhounds, before they can inspect their property.

"It's a vicious cycle," said Michael Beatty, a spokesperson for the RSPCA. "Because there is little other way we can get evidence for a warrant, without inspecting the property in the first place. The usual evidence we work off are people coming forward with information, ones prepared to speak on a sworn testimony about where and when these killings are happening."

But these people are difficult to find, because locals concerned over greyhound breeders are often afraid to speak out against them. Inez Hamilton-Smith, co-founder of greyhound-rights groups Gone Are the Dogs, said frequently people called her "in hysterics," crying over how their neighbors were killing their greyhounds.

"One lady told me that she'd dated someone from a nearby family, but that she was never allowed out the back of the property," she said. "That's where the father killed the greyhounds, it's where the pit was." Another person was afraid to speak out, Mrs White said, because she feared if their neighbor found out they'd harm her own animals.

QLD Police and the RSPCA are currently investigating the greyhound burial pit, looking for instances of animal cruelty. The two groups have been working in unison since 4Corners revealed in February that trainers were using live possums, piglets, and rabbits on mechanical lures to train greyhounds.

Follow Jack on Twitter.


Major Label Debut: Punk's 'Sell Out' Albums Revisited

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Major Label Debut: Punk's 'Sell Out' Albums Revisited

I Spent Seven Hours at Wrestlemania on a Tinder Date

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Photo by Flickr user Ed Webster

I love professional wrestling. I grew up watching it in its 1990s heyday, and I now think of it as the ideal form of entertainment. Wrestling has it all: inoffensive violence, cartoonish archetypes, tons of hair oil, and an oddly tenuous boundary between the performance and the real-life egos that drive the business. To me, it's strange that anyone would not enjoy a soap opera starring muscular dudes in slogan-bearing T-shirts and no pants—and yet, few others in my life share this passion.

So when it was announced that Wrestlemania came to the Bay Area for the first time this year, it proved difficult to convince any of my friends to spend the several hundred dollars and an entire Sunday watching grown men pretend to punch each other at Levi's Stadium.

Faced with this dilemma, I did what any reasonable person would do: I turned to Tinder. I curated my photos to make myself appear fun, edited my description indicating my intent, and swiped right on the next 100 people. Age and looks were irrelevant. There were only two requirements: Do you enjoy wrestling enough to make the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Levi's with a strange woman? Do you have a pulse? Great, then let's do this.

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Despite this utter lack of discretion, it took several weeks to lock someone down. I received a couple dozen replies, but was quickly able to weed out serious inquiries. Generic greetings—"Hey, how's your night going?"—suggest that they didn't read my description. Others expressed interest, but only because they were more interested in the other kind of wrestling. Hilariously, one asked me to confirm that I was over 18. I had to convince almost everyone it wasn't some elaborate catfish, and that I was serious about going—under the condition that it was strictly about the 'Mania.

Some dropped off the map when it came time to coordinate tickets. Many others—like users of Tinder in general—quickly moved on to the next shiny object. To put it in marketing terms, it was tough to "convert."

It was mere days before the event when I finally did. With wrestlers and fans flooding the Bay Area for a weekend of festivities, I landed on a 32-year-old man from San Francisco. We talked briefly on the phone, verifying that that the other was on the spectrum of normalcy, and met at Caltrain on March 29, the day of the event.

Normally when meeting a stranger, I'd construct an exit strategy—a prior engagement, a "work emergency"—in case he sucks. But on Sunday, there was no such option. There would be two long hours together on public transit to Wrestlemania. Match after match in the midday sun, stretching into the twilight hours. Almost four hours to get back home, amidst the sweltering masses of Brock Lesnar fans. The only way out was beer.

Fortunately, we ended up in a party car heading down to the event with a large group of revelers who passed around booze as disinterested Caltrain employees wandered the aisles. By hour two, I knew my Tinder date's entire work history, the sports he played throughout high school, his opinion of Jed York, his opinion of "Big Data," and his favorite type of cracker (he likes Triscuits). Like so many 32-year old males in this region, he works in software sales, and since this is San Francisco, we were swapping app ideas and pledging intellectual property rights in solemn, slurred tones by hour three.

By that point, mercifully, the wrestling began.

If you've never been to Wrestlemania, it's basically a marathon of matches interspersed with pyrotechnics, over-acted confrontations, and video sizzle reels. It's the Super Bowl of the wrestling world, so they trot out all the favorites: crossover figures like the Rock and 90s superstars who emerge with gray-flecked goatees along with the present-day cast. The event was MC'ed by Stephanie McMahon, the villainous executive, sometime-wrestler and daughter of WWE chairman Vince McMahon. The title match was Brock Lesnar—a Viking-like veteran who just re-signed with WWE after a stint in UFC—versus Roman Reigns, the swarthy upstart with perpetually wet hair and a flat affect. With the possible exception of some of the kids in the audience, everyone understands that wrestling is scripted. But the crowd's investment in the acrobatics, the visceral smack of flesh on the mat, and the storylines that unfold across several years, is delirious. The women's bathroom lines are also nonexistent. If you ask me, Wrestlemania is well worth the price of admission.

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By hour five, it's impossible not to find yourself doing things you never expected as you're subsumed into a 70,000-person mass of emotion. By this point, the Tinder date has ceased to exist: We've merged into a group of fans whose names I mostly don't remember, reacting with uniform euphoria to the drama, spectacle, and surprise unfolding on the tiny, distant ring below. You may find yourself cheering reflexively as a video of Ronald Reagan flashes across the Jumbrotron. "Tear down this wall!" demands Reagan, as the WWE's "Russian" wrestler, Rusev (who is actually from Bulgaria), enters the ring on a tank to deafening boos as the Russian national anthem thunders in the background. In this Bay Area crowd, the jeers turn to cheers, and back to halting jeers, as Republican soundbites fill the arena.

By hour six, beneath the punishing daylight, John Cena's constant entreaties about "Respect" rub off on the crowd. I accidentally splash Coors Light on the shirt of a child in the first row. Oops. His father stands up, puffs out his gut and orders my Tinder date:

"You need to apologize."

"It was me. I'm very sorry," I explained.

Ignoring me, the 400-pound, tribal-tattooed man insisted to my date, "It's about respect."

It seemed like the wrong forum to bring up the gender politics involved here. I leaned out.

My date apologized.

It's amazing how much, yet how little, you can learn about a person from spending four hours sitting on public transit after Wrestlemania. The Coors Light is consumed, the souvenir shirts are bought, and Seth Rollins has inexplicably won the WWE title despite being not scheduled to perform. And as the buzz began to wear off, along came the clarity that we would never associate with one another again. All that was left was a creeping dread of work in the morning, and a bizarre depth of conversation that can only take place on a Tinder date that's gone on eight hours too long.

On the Caltrain platform back to the city, we had the least insightful discussion about particle physics that's ever happened outside of a college dorm.

"It's the idea that there are other you's out there."

"Wow, dude."

"Hey, where's that weed smell coming from?"

As hour nine lurched into hour ten, I learned that he had been admitted to a prestigious science and technology program at 18 but declined for personal reasons; I learned the we lost a parent in the same year, in the same manner; we spoke of about early experiences that make up the sediment of one's memory.

At this point, I realized that I might know more about this person than I do most of my friends. But once we parted ways, his identity instantly retracted back into a Tinder bubble: photos, name, an age, a set of mutual friends and interests. Much like the outcomes of certain Wrestlemania matches, specifics on Tinder are lost in a swell of predetermined excitement. But nobody goes to Wrestlemania for the specifics.

Follow Annie Gaus on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: My ‘Dark Souls II’ Redemption Has Been Ruined by ‘Bloodborne’

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You wait ages for another crack at one of From Software's devilishly difficult video games to come along, and then two show up practically at once. Arriving mere days after Bloodborne turned the gaming press into a squidgy morass of (near-perfect) marks, Metacritic swamped with lines like "a remarkable achievement" (Polygon) and "the PS4's best exclusive game" (GamesRadar+), the "Scholar of the First Sin" edition of 2014's Dark Souls II has parked itself front and center in the attentions of gamers who live for nothing more than dying over and over and over again. For fun.

This release represents the complete package for those who missed Dark Souls II first time around, featuring all downloadable content and making the leap from past-gen platforms to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4—so if you flogged your old console before DSII came out for it, now you get the definitive version, so far as its makers are concerned.

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This is "me" in the new 'Dark Souls II,' the ever-so-pretty Antoinette

To me, the games From Software has built its reputation on—the fantasy action-RPG Souls series, incorporating 2014's DSII and its 2011 predecessor, plus the foundational Demon's Souls of 2009, widely considered the bastard-hardest of the trio—are a little like records by Radiohead. If you're in the music press, you're supposed to "get" what Thom Yorke and company are doing, even if albums like Kid A and Amnesiac don't mean a thing to you, personally. It's not that they're especially difficult to get into, as such; but there are barriers for progression through each set of experiences, wilfully esoteric tangents of patience-testing singularity. (There are more niche parallels to draw than Radiohead, but let's keep this relatively populist.)

Naturally, listening to Radiohead is a less-stressful way to spend an evening than setting out to harvest souls from a base camp in Majula, but my point is that if you're part of the games press, which I guess I am these days, you're duty bound to acknowledge that From Soft's triad of tolerance-sapping, controller-snapping Souls games are the shit. But, for me, that's just not been true.

I played Dark Souls, for a bit, and hated it. I'm all for tough games, but this one's absence of an engaging early story made connecting with my (constantly getting killed) character impossible. I ultimately didn't care about them, nor the game around them, so after being flattened by the Asylum Demon a few times—Dark Souls' very first significant enemy—I just stopped. Sorry. I know, I could have tried harder, but as your "spare" time in which to enjoy video games becomes shorter, who needs entertainment this masochistic?

And my initial encounter with the sequel went no better: soaked to the bone after being caught in torrential rain en route to publisher Bandai Namco's London HQ, I shivered my way through a few hours of death after death. It was an utterly miserable afternoon, and I walked out while everyone else in attendance for the preview session was getting stuck into the game's first boss, the lanky Last Giant. It was less a walk of shame, more a head-down charge to the nearest boozer to drown my sorrows at being so bloody inept. And damp.

But, when I got a copy of DSII home, I did try again. Something this time around, unlike the first game, had connected. I fought my way through to the Last Giant. The large space the game gives you to battle the stringy, self-dismembering beast allows for plenty of distance between you and it, time enough to strategize and take a slow, methodical approach to bringing it down. Of course, I didn't. Dead. Dead. Dead. I get that I'm shit at these games, which affects my appreciation of them being the shit, but come on. If I'm doing the same bit of any game a dozen times and failing constantly, what's really at fault: my abilities, or the design of the game in question? (That's a rhetorical question, so please don't rush to the comments. Obviously it's me.)

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/xJ9uvz-COSk' width='560' height='315']

The announcement trailer for the "Scholar of the First Sin" edition

Really, then, the "Scholar of the First Sin" edition's release represents a third crack at Dark Souls II—but it's one I'm taking because, damn it, I am not getting left behind by a game that so many peers considered one of the very best of last year. But, already, I have concerns. It just might be that I'm never going to get along with From's so very celebrated series of action-RPGs. I'm not even at the Last Giant and already I'm having serious doubts about making any substantial headway. Things have changed, and more on that in just a moment.

What I am doing differently this time is referring to a guide, or two, to help me through each new area—and to point me in the direction of difficulty alleviating perks and collectibles. I quickly acquired the blacksmith's key from the old merchant at the Cardinal Tower—I figure having him available will be a blessing later when my gear needs fortifying, or I want a slightly sharper thing to swipe aimlessly at whatever is doing a terrific job of making me dead. I traded some of my souls for a Silver Eagle Kite Shield, as recommended by one walkthrough I've been looking at—and it's helping, definitely. Or at least, it was.

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Do I have to?

I'm also blundering into areas that I can't fight my way through—areas that aren't quite as advertised. "Visit the Cathedral of Blue," reads one slice of beginner's advice, because there's something amazing there: the Ring of Binding. This little trinket will keep my health at the manageable level of 75 percent on respawning, even after I've been cut down several times. Problem is that there are these massive knight things, loads of them, between Majula and said item's location in Heide's Tower of Flame, and guess what? Dead. Dead. Dead. Sure, I can dance my way around one or two of them, taken individually, and even do them in when it's one on one. But then you manage to piss off three at once, and while you can run for it, you'll soon enough be toast because oh look, there's now a dragon where there wasn't one before. A fire-breathing dragon, protecting the lever you need to activate to acquire the ring. The guides don't work. I repeat: The guides don't work.

Because, you see, this is the new and improved Dark Souls II. There are more ways to die than ever before, areas patrolled by updated groups of death-dealing terrors. There's a gigantic troll stomping in the shallows of the Forest of Fallen Giants' stream—he definitely wasn't there before. Likewise some turtle-shell-backed brute with a big, blunt weapon (sounds almost sexy) who crushes away half my health with a single blow when I'm on the battlements of the Cardinal Tower. He's why I've not reached the Last Giant yet. He's the scourge of my game right now. But believe me, I will beat him. I've only tried twice so, obviously, I'm not giving up.

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See this guy, with the big club? Fuck this guy, seriously.

Unless I do, because, despite my very best intentions, I've fallen victim to distraction already—albeit to another of From Software's acclaimed exercises in player punishment, Bloodborne. The gothic gore-fest is billed as being somewhat easier than the Souls games, and you know, it bloody well is. It's still heartbreakingly hard in places, and losing right when you think you've got its first Big Bad, the shrill-shrieking, bridge-pounding Cleric Beast, licked is just... Uh. The shoulders slump, the pad goes down, you go to make a cuppa and cry into it. Cockiness frequently leads to one's comeuppance, and while it's easy to get the game's cast of grotesque enemies on the back foot, they're quick to turn the tide with their own health-stripping blows if you're not swift with the side steps. It's not uncommon to die when you're right on the edge of delivering a deathblow yourself. It's not unusual to feel like the game is laughing in your stupid face.

It's got its claws in me, though, in a way that Dark Souls has never managed. Again it's feather light on immediate story, but Bloodborne's streamlined presentation of how to level up, what to do in order to keep your gear at its best, and sensibly ordered areas for harvesting currency, makes it a dramatically more approachable game. Even though it's killing me, persistently, I sort of love it. Fuck it, no "sort of" about it. While after a good handful of first-hour deaths I was hearing echoes of Trail of Dead's "A Perfect Teenhood" in my head—this, basically—that tune was slowly replaced by Chuck D barking about how he refuses to lose. Radiohead? Not nearly empowering enough.

Bloodborne was beating me, it is beating me, but I'm bouncing back, familiarising myself with its visceral attacks, gaining greater confidence with each lap around Yharnam. The werewolves that once struck fear in me can now be brushed aside like sick puppies; the brick-thrusting thugs that once cracked my skull into seven pieces aren't shit against a well-timed pistol shot and follow-up strike. Its combat is almost Bayonetta-like in style, with an action/reaction emphasis evident over a stressing to play it cool and a quicker-to-click parry system, which I can get along with more naturally. OK Computer's great and everything, but sometimes you just need The Bends.

In comparison, Dark Souls II has pressed my face down into the dirt, again, and right now I can't promise I'll peel myself from it. I'm sure that if I had endless hours to spend learning its particular, peculiar ropes, I'd eventually grab onto them and tough out its visceral thrills. But I don't, not against the current PlayStation-filling opposition and non-gaming demands on my time, so my second chance at what I understand to be a certifiable classic of its kind has quite probably been undermined by its own makers' outstanding new nightmare. Oh From, you bloody genius idiots, you.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

One Text Is Too Many and a Thousand Are Never Enough

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Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

I'm trying to quit getting high on people. It's really fucking hard. I'm a romantic and an addict. I crave eros, fantasy, and intrigue. I'm wired for longing. But I keep getting really sick. Longing-sick.

When you keep getting sick, you start to get tired of it. Eventually, you might be like: This isn't working. I'm done. I want to be OK. But it's taking me a lot of failed attempts to make any progress.

Also, getting clean off of people isn't the same as getting sober off of alcohol and drugs. As an alcoholic, there are very clear boundaries as to what I don't do. I can't text alcohol. Dealers don't send nudes. What's more, alcohol and drugs are pervasive in America, but people are even more pervasive. People are everywhere. Hot people. You can abstain from alcohol and drugs. You can't abstain from people.

I think everyone is entitled to love, even those of us seeking to quit getting high on people. But this column isn't about love. This is about using people as drugs. It took me a while, but I'm beginning to get the difference. Now, when I become romantically obsessed with a person without really knowing them (or ever having met them) that signals danger for me. It's a red alert. If I feel those first fantastical pangs, I disengage.

It's sad to disengage. It's not poetic or musical. It's not what art tells me is valuable (at least the art I like). I want love at first sight to be real. But I fall in love at first sight every day. Also, love at first sext. There will never be enough sexts to sate my longing. The higher I get, the worse the comedown is.

Recently I blocked the most intense drug-people in my phone. It's been hard to do this, especially with one particular drug-person who always treated me with kindness and respect.

With this drug-person, there was genuine love there. I would say we were both in love but also got fucked up on each other. So I suffered a lot, in spite of the love, because you can't make a drug-person not be a drug-person no matter how wonderful they are. What fed the drugginess was that distance, and other factors, assured we would never be able to really be together. Neither of us were really available. So we were in a constant state of longing—of almost touching—like Keats's Ode On a Grecian Urn but with iPhones.

The truth is, distance and unavailability—flecked with shortlived, gorgeous, IRL binges—were what made the drug-person so intoxicating. I wanted more of the drug-person than could ever be available. When I didn't get a text, I was, as junkies say, sick. When I received a text it made me well. But it only made me well until the next text I sent. Then I was waiting for him. I was sick again.

If I could be eternally and omnipotently texted, I might not have had to quit the drug-person. But no one can text you infinitely. So every day became a cycle of getting high and getting well. The only solution, as I saw it, was to quit the drug-person entirely.

I tried quitting the drug-person multiple times. But every time, I kept going back for one more taste. If I didn't go back for more, the drug-person would text me. And when the drug-person texted me I had to text back. I didn't want to "hurt him."

Was I really afraid of hurting him? I don't know. Maybe I was afraid of what he would think of me if I ignored him, that I was a "bitch" and not wonderful. Maybe I was just afraid of cutting off my supply.

Eventually, the pain of waiting for texts from the drug-person outweighed the highs. I said my final goodbye. I blocked him on my phone.

I then went through a period of grieving much deeper than I ever went through in quitting the drug-person before. I cried about deaths that happened 15 years ago. I cried about having to grow up. (FYI: It's probably never really about the person you think you're obsessed with. It's about old pain.)

A few weeks ago, I found myself doing really well, better than all of the times I've quit him before. When I dreamt of him, the dreams were no longer full of lust and ache. Even in my dreams I knew that we weren't right for each other. I dreamt that I flew over his apartment building in a helicopter. The building looked beautiful and he called to me to come in through the roof. But I didn't go. It's as if even my subconscious version of him was ruined. I felt glad it was ruined. I felt strong and free.

Then, the drug-person got in touch again, twice. Perhaps he sensed that I had healed and he didn't want to be forgotten. Perhaps he didn't want me to feel like I'd been forgotten. No one wants to be forgotten.

First he commented on one of my FB posts. In the past, whenever he used to do this it would get me high. But this time, when I saw the comment I was like fuck. I felt doom. Should I "like" it? If I didn't "like" it I would appear coldhearted. But if I liked it, I'd be breaking my rule of no contact and also potentially encouraging him to contact me again. I didn't "like" it. I felt good.

A few days later, he sent me a series of messages on FB. I didn't know what to do, so I decided that I would just ignore the messages and let them sit there forever.

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This was supposed to be a column about not checking the messages. But I am a human being, so obviously that didn't work out.

I didn't check the messages for two days. Then, I went down the rabbit hole of my compulsion into a gorgeous, grammatically-hellacious cascade of his drunken messages.

He said: its incribly hard not to harass you i love you still obsivously

He said: i still visit your shit to sniff and i love the semlaall...in the romandic way of the beauy adnd the best...

He said: god i already regret this communication...howefver i must say that i huhhhh...the longer the type the lobgner i realize my mistake...i love u so much...i love ur life...i am crying...you are th e best human....im sorry im in marrakech....i am very drunk in morroccoan country...

It was then I realized that he too is probably an addict of some sort. Anyone who can meet my level of intensity can't be totally normal.

He said: ugh,,, i have failed u my queen. oh i only mean to communicate that u are the best one and anything else i wish i would be vaporized for...no need to respond please...u are the only 1

Then he said: Please ignore me, I just want to leave you alone. Really sorry :/

This was supposed to be a column about how I ignored him. But I am a human being, so obviously that didn't work out.

I said: please do not throw words like this at me drunk, because i am a very sensitive human being with real feelings and am not an object (which is hypocritical because i guess i treated you like an object in some ways)

I said: it is very easy to tell me you love me when it is over and you are thousands of miles away in a foreign country

I said: could you love me at your front door?

I said: i don't think you could.

I didn't think he could. And even if he said he could it wouldn't mean he could. It wouldn't mean I could. But of course I wanted him to say he could, whether or not either of us could.

He said: i don't know what i could do which is probably a bad sign but i do miss you.

I told him never to contact me again in any form.

Then there was a moment's pause as I thought about what I had done. Never again in any form. I wasn't just flushing one baggie of the drug, I was extinguishing it from my existence.

I said: lol sorry it had to end like this

I said: say goodbye to me please lol

I don't know why I kept saying lol. I was crying.

He said: I'm dead now forever you can block me

He said: I thought I was better than drink idiocy but turns out I'm a piece of shit. oh fuck it shut up myself. bye

It was the least satisfying ending ever. Now I want to contact him and be like just one more thing! I want to give it the perfect ending. But there will never be a perfect ending. The perfect ending is a romantic ending and thus is not an ending. The perfect ending will only feed the compulsion. So I am keeping the imperfect ending and pretending it is perfect.

But now I am sick again. I have holes in my brain where I want to hide from life. The holes are filled with voices that tell me we were nirvana, over and over. The voices seem like truth to me, because I am an addict and I want being high to be the truth. I don't know if I will ever fill the holes. But I am trying really hard not to enter them again.

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

An Exhibition of Art Made by Prisoners Comes to New York

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An Exhibition of Art Made by Prisoners Comes to New York

VICE Premiere: VICE Exclusive: Can We All Please Calm Down and Just Listen to Some New Age Jazz for Once?

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One good thing about 2015 is that nothing means anything anymore. Music is completely amorphous—hip teens from Omaha slow down elevator music and invent vaporwave. Fat little white kids appropriate the hip-hop vernacular and end up on World Star. Even the indie rock wimps make black metal now. You can pretty much do whatever you want. When Mac Demarco rips off Barry Manilow and bros mosh to it in sold-out venues, you know that the concept of "Cool Music" is gone.

Jeff Oster's music is not "Cool," at least not in the sense we're talking about. The critically-acclaimed smooth jazz trumpet player may be beloved in some circles, but those circles don't have a lot of overlap with VICE's audience. But this is 2015, so fuck it. Jeff Oster's music is fantastic, and the title track for his new album is a tight, minimalist, New Age haze of a tune where trumpets drone over a slow and funky beat. The song features guitarist Nile Rodgers, who's worked with Daft Punk and David Bowie, among others, in case that name drop will make you a little more comfortable listening to this.

Put on the song, align your chakras, rub your nipples with spirit crystals, and just fucking relax for once. Jeff Oster looks like your friend's dad who wore a fedora and hit the grav bong too hard—but who knew that guy could also blow a mean-ass horn?

What We Know About the Left-Wing Militant Group That Took a Prosecutor Hostage in Turkey

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On Tuesday, a hostage crisis in central Istanbul ended in a burst of gunfire and explosions as security forces stormed the courthouse, where two members of a militant leftist party held state prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz at gunpoint for six hours.

When the operation was over, officers found Kiraz, who had shot three times in the head and twice in the body. He died at the hospital soon after. The two radical leftist assailants—members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C)—were killed during the raid.

But perhaps the most significant part of this attack was not where it happened or who fired first, but the group behind it—an organization unknown to many that seems to be reasserting its presence in Turkey this year and may become a premier security threat in the near future.

Turkey has historically been home to dozens of militant organizations, with some of the most prominent being Islamists, representatives of hostile states, and factions of the marginalized and secessionist Kurdish population. Al Qaeda affiliates, Iranian or Syrian groups, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) are usually the go-to culprits in incidents like this, but Turkey also has a history of leftist insurgencies dating from the Cold War.

The DHKP-C—classified as a terrorist group by the EU, US, and Turkey —is the country's most prominent militant left-wing group, although its efforts have been sporadic in recent years. It originated in 1978 as part of Dev-Sol (the Revolutionary Left), initially an intellectual, political, and militant movement recruiting out of high schools and universities. During the 1980s, many members of the organization were thrown into jail, then proceeded to take over the prison system and use it as a base of operations for an increasingly violent movement that has killed dozens of security personnel and over 80 civilians to date.

DHKP-C "was always an active antigovernment group," Coskun Unal, a Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium analyst and retired Turkish Lieutenant Colonel, told VICE, explaining the overriding goals of the DHKP-C and its progenitors' unrelenting—if somewhat low-level—attacks from this era onwards.

"They aimed to harass every government in power... and were capable of planning and executing sensational attacks in Turkey," he added.

In 1994, after a series of complex fissions within the leftist world, one faction of Devrimici Sol emerged as the DHKP-C, which had moved beyond the prison system and installed itself in low-income neighborhoods, providing law and order and welfare to minorities like the Alevi Shi'a and Kurds, who often see the government as a threat.

"The DHKP-C is a part of us," Yucel Yildirm, a resident in Istanbul's Okmeydanı neighborhood, told Al Jazeera last year. "They are our brothers, sisters and children. The Turkish state is against the Alevi population here. They want our land. And the DHKP-C fights for our rights."

It was from this base that, starting in the 1990s, the DHKP-C and its progenitors began to adopt increasingly violent and flashy tactics targeting foreign assets and government officials.

In 2000, according to Varyan Khan of the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC), they launched the "Revolutionary Wave Program" to increase their visibility in the country, including a massive and deadly prison hunger strike and attempts to assassinate a number of prominent Turkish individuals. Some say they were drawing on al Qaeda tactics, including suicide bombings, which they tested on a police station in 2001 before ramping up small-scale attacks on Turkish governmental facilities in 2003. But after a series of crackdowns and with the illness of their leader, Dursun Kartas, aka Dayi, the group began to quiet down, fading into near-obscurity by decade's end.

"[They have] been through a long reorganization and regrouping process," according to Unal. "Between 2007 and 2012, when Kartas was still alive but struggling with cancer, they decided to revise the group and their objectives. They gave recruitment and octrine trainings utmost importance and tried to expand their influence among Turkey's [Alevi] groups, as well as among universities."

Unal believes that during that time they also developed a strong following among a number of lawyers, who took issue with the judicial system under now-President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP). This growing support sector may help to explain why the DHKP-C would target a courthouse and a state prosecutor working on behalf of Elvan. They apparently believed that this prosecutor was, as a state actor, was complicit in AKP hegemony.

After his death in exile in 2008, according to Khan, Kartas was replaced by three leaders: Musa Asoglu, Zerrin Sari, and Huseyin Feyzi Tekin, who had very different ideas about the DHKP-C. "The new leadership preferred avoidance of direct confrontations with the Turkish government," Khan said, "resulting in a low-key presence." For a time.

Unal suspects that Turkey's involvement in Syria—which under Assad may have funded the DHKP-C to destabilize a regional rival—also briefly disrupted the organization.

In late 2012 though, the DHKP-C roared back to life with a suicide bombing at a police station, followed in early 2013 by a suicide bombing at the US Embassy in Ankara, killing a guard and leading the US to issue a $3-million-per-head bounty for information leading to the arrest of key leaders. The group subsequently renewed their longstanding low-level attacks on state facilities too. (That summer, the state used the DHKP-C's presence in the Gezi Protest Movement as a justification for crackdowns on peaceful protests as well.)

This January, the DHKP-C launched two more prominent attacks (a failed bombing at the prime minister's office and a successful suicide bombing in the central, tourist neighborhood of Sultanahmet. These attacks tipped off officials to the possibility of another large-scale event, like Tuesday's hostage crisis, but even in a state of vigilance, security forces were blindsided.

"I can say that both Turkish Intelligence and police neglected [the DHKP-C] threat due to other concerns," said Unal, referring the conflict in Syria, peace talks with the PKK, this year's upcoming parliamentary elections, and concerns about other militant groups. "But they were following the group closely. They had a list of 13 potential [DHKP-C] suicide attackers with names and both [of the courthouse] attackers' names were on that list.

"Irony is, despite having accurate intel, Turkish security forces were not able to catch them before or stop them [during the incident]."

Unal sees Tuesday's hostage crisis as a simple reaffirmation of the group's goals—targeting government facilities and officials with suicide bombings. (He believes the explosives carried by the assailants were proof that they never intended to surrender, even if their demands were met.)

But Khan sees their hostage-taking, a novel move for the group, as a sign of a shift in tactics. She points out that since the hostage attack, there have been two failed assaults on government posts in Istanbul, both of which are unattributed but widely credited to the organization, possibly signaling the start of a new campaign of coordinated and widespread leftist violence.

"Keep in mind that Turkey's election is scheduled for 2015, coupled with rising socio-economic concerns and plummeting oil prices as well as the Islamic State or Turkey's doorstep," Khan says, "not to mention the outside pressure from the West over foreign fighters' migration through Turkey [towards Syria and Iraq].

"The stage is set for Turkey to be distracted long enough for DHKP-C to make significant [inroads]. As with all groups that are competing with [the Islamic State] for media attention, DHKP-C is likely going to escalate attacks even further to remain relevant enough to espouse their cause."

The real fear about the DHKP-C is not just that they will use unrest in Turkey to launch a new wave of low-level attacks across the country, though. The major concern is that they will attract other fighters, from fellow leftists like the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party to violent Kurdish separatists like the Kongra-Gel (Kurdistan People's Congress). That's especially worrisome as major negotiations with the PKK progress, threatening to create splinter groups with serious grievances against the Turkish state, eager to strike while the nation is preoccupied. As we've seen in the past few days, when they gear up for a major campaign, even rising from relative obscurity, the DHKP-C can fairly destabilizing and effective all on their own. But if their newest wave of violence metastasizes, then Turkey could be in for a very rough year.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.


How Will the UK's Far-Right Groups React to Enoch Powell's Pedophilia Allegations?

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Enoch Powell. Photo by Allen Warren.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When it first came out that glam rock superstar Gary Glitter had child porn on his laptop, his part in the Spice Girls movie was cut. When Rolf Harris was linked to the allegations of child sexual abuse, we had to adjust ourselves to a world where the man who had sung: "I'm Jake the peg, diddle-iddle-iddle-um / With my extra leg, diddle-iddle-iddle-um" was a sex offender. And now another British public figure is being dragged through the mud as he is investigated for child abuse. Though the allegations are not proved, surely nobody will be able to enjoy the works of former Conservative Party MP for Wolverhampton, Minister of Health and xenophobic poster boy Enoch Powell without wondering if he was a pedophile. One of Britain's most iconic racists—slandered.

Enoch Powell's name has been passed to police in relation to the investigations into historical child sexual abuse. Powell is best known in the UK for delivering one of the most racist speeches ever given by a British politician. Known as the "rivers of blood" speech, it warned about the dire consequences of immigration, and contained the lines, "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." The idea he was trying to get across was that increased immigration would inevitably lead to communal violence. The 1968 speech caused a furore. Powell was sacked as Shadow Defense Secretary by Conservative leader Edward Heath. The Times newspaper described the speech as "evil" and linked it to a string of racist attacks that occurred in its aftermath. Ten days after the speech was given, a mob of white youths attacked a black christening party in Wolverhampton, chanting "Powell."

Nevertheless, while he was reviled, Powell also managed to be hugely popular with many. The speech made him a national figure, both loved and hated. When he was sacked, thousands of London dockers walked out on strike, backing Powell, joined by the meat porters from Smithfield market. Powell claimed to have received tens of thousands of supportive letters with only hundreds telling him he was wrong.

Ever since then, the phrase "Enoch was right" has been used by people as a shorthand to say that immigrants should be sent back to where they came from. Nigel Farage seems to think he was right and the Telegraph has run comment pieces asking when the Tories will admit that he was.

But this adoration isn't confined to mainstream immigrant-bashers. Powell is still a hero of the far-right. An Enoch Powell Facebook page run by the extreme right-wing Traditional Britain group has several thousands likes. Another one that posts a constant stream of the kind of updates common on any far-right page—racist memes and Daily Mail stories—also has thousands of likes. You can buy badges, T-shirts, and fridge magnets emblazoned with the slogan "Enoch was right" and these are regularly seen at far-right demonstrations. Neo-Nazi hardcore band, Of Wolves and Angels, sample recordings of Powell speeches heavily on their only LP. That feeling of idolizing a star, to later have your hero accused of being a monster—that's how Britain's racist far-right must be feeling at the moment.

This is all the more awkward given that the far-right love to pose as child sexual abuse vigilantes. Of course, there is no stretch of the political spectrum that doesn't think child abuse is vile, but the far-right articulate this revulsion in a particularly fervent and grim way. Rather than simply wanting to save children, their desire to "save" the white race from some dark menace that is always bubbling just below the surface. "Hang pedo scum" has long been a slogan popular on the far-right—you can get it on pin badges. What better way to popularize the argument for the death penalty than by reminding people of pedophilia? Hands up who would defend the life of a pedophile in a political debate?

For the far-right, the grim use of abused children for political ends reaches its nadir when it comes to "Asian grooming gangs"—sex trafficking of underage white girls mainly by Asian men—that have been uncovered in places like Rotherham. Scandals like this combine several themes prevalent in far-right politics: non-white people (specifically Muslims) committing crimes against white people, a corrupt or feckless establishment failing to keep order, and child sexual abuse. If a grooming gang is discovered in your town, you can practically guarantee minibuses and coaches of St. George's cross wielding racists will be soon to follow. Newcastle, Rochdale, Stevenage, and Oldham are among the English towns and cities to see protests by far-right groups against grooming gangs. Bristol and Llandudno nearly saw protests over the issue. Almost every group on the right has got in on the action: the English Defense League, British National Party, National Front, National Action, and various EDL splinter groups, like the Infidels and South East Alliance.

When the scale of the child sexual abuse in Rotherham was revealed—1,400 mainly white children sexually abused by groups of Asian men—it was a bonanza for the far-right. As if having local authorities turn a blind eye to wide-scale sexual abuse of hundreds of vulnerable children wasn't bad enough, Rotherham had to deal with drunken racists fighting each other on its streets. Not that the presence of nearly every far-right group in the country was completely unwelcome—scenes in the Channel 4 documentary Angry White and Proud show the South East Alliance being applauded through the streets by local residents.

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/04/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/02/' filename='enoch-powell-child-sex-abuse-allegations-the-far-right-833-body-image-1427969241.jpg' id='42399']

BNP members roping Islam into things while protesting against pedophile scandals at the BBC in 2012. Photo by Simon Childs.

Given the far-right's supposed dedication to combating pedophilia, many have reacted to the allegations surrounding Powell with disbelief. The general consensus among the British far-right appears to be that they are untrue. They are being talked about as a smear on a great man who spoke the truth about immigration. Simon Heffer's article for the Daily Mail, which described the allegations as a "monstrous lie" has been shared appreciatively by hundreds of racists on social media, including by fascist social media titans Britain First.

I reached out to various British far-right organizations for comment on the allegations against their hero. Some didn't respond. Some said they would get back to me and haven't. The National Front said Enoch "sold out" after his big speech so they weren't too fussed about him anyway. Another organization said, "How does fuck off sound?"

In the last few years, the UK has been shocked as much-loved personalities have turned out to be child abusers. The far-right have been thumping Enoch's tub for years, while tarring entire religions and ethnicities with pedophilia in the wake of abuse scandals. Should the allegations against Enoch turn out to be true, it will be interesting to see how the far-right react to the fall of their hero.

Follow James on Twitter.

Breastaurants Are the Worstaurants

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Just another day at the office. Photo via Facebook

We've all heard of Hooters: the servers' uniform consisting of tight orange shorts and cleavage-bearing owl-emblazoned tank top has been a cultural icon since the pub-food chain started in 1983. But the delightfully tacky eatery spawned a full-on trend in the food industry—referred to colloquially as breastaurants, many newer chains have latched onto the concept of hyper-sexualizing their waitresses by enacting increasingly skimpy uniform policies.

In Canada, other than Hooters, some major breastaurant chains include The Tilted Kilt (originally from the US) and the predatorily named Shark Club. Chains like these are experiencing great success in the US, where these businesses are doing better than average sit-down joints. Twin Peaks, an American breastaurant chain that features both a David Lynch reference and waitresses in miniscule, campy gear, was the fastest-growing chain in the US in 2013, according to Bloomberg Business. But it's doubtful whether more American chain breastaurants will be venturing this side of the border: Hooters shuttered both of its Calgary locations at the end of March, after The Tilted Kilt closed its doors in the same city earlier this year.

Though this shows a difference between American and Canadian markets, there is also the issue that the uniform policies of breastaurants make them a target for sexual discrimination complaints. In 2004, a woman who worked at a nightclub that required her to wear a bikini top at a special event was given $6,000 to settle a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal.

Other than the sexual discrimination issues—there aren't any popular restaurant chains that require men to wear scantily clad outfits—breastaurants create an unbalanced power situation in which harassment can easily occur. These eateries, which are common locations for bachelor parties and nights out with the guys, construct environments with a sense of sexual entitlement for customers, and sometimes even male staff members. I spoke to one source who used to work in management at a breastaurant chain in Canada and wished to remain anonymous—we'll call her Mary. She said that she had been harassed by a male superior.

"He opens the back of my dress and just kind of does an, 'Ooooh!' I'm just standing there like, What the fuck just happened?" Mary says. Though she says she considered going to the labour board over various issues with this superior, she eventually just ended up quitting to work at a regular restaurant.

It isn't just staff who engage in this kind of behaviour. My sources, who previously worked at various breastaurants in Canada, explained what goes on with customer interactions.

"You'd always get the couple of girls who loved the attention. I remember we hired this new hostess... She'd let [customers] smack her ass," Mary explained. "That's great that you're fine with this, but he's going to have a couple more drinks, and someone else is going to walk by, he's going to do it, and he's going to get a beer in his face."

Another source, who we'll call Leah, said at one breastaurant where she worked, some waitresses would not wear underwear beneath their skirts and would bend over in front of customers in an effort to get more tips.

Though actual sexual contact with customers is against policy at chain breastaurants, the women I spoke to said they were encouraged to flirt with and lightly touch the shoulders of customers, and stay after their shifts to drink with them. This created a sort of power dynamic between the waitresses and customers, where many men came to treat their waitresses as modern-day serving wenches. "They just kind of come there to bully you, and you're sitting there in underwear, essentially, trying to make conversation with them," Mary said.

Additionally, maintaining the perfect physical appearance in a skimpy uniform is key for working in a breastaurant. Mary, who worked in management, said one waitress was fired for gaining 15 pounds. She had 30 days to correct the weight gain (that's half a pound a day), and when she failed, she was let go.

Besides the pressure of maintaining a certain physical appearance, some of the waitresses at the breastaurants my sources worked at would get drunk, and some would do drugs—on the job—sometimes in an effort to deal with the environment.

"It's just like a cesspool: you get stuck just drinking and partying because that's the type of environment you're in," Leah said. "So it does obviously fuck you up as a person a little bit."

But she also said that while she was working at breastaurants (she worked at two different ones), she could make anywhere between $400 and $700 per night—essentially the only reason she was there.

After a blowup with management over wanting to put a sweater on because she was cold (it's Canada, for fuck's sake), Leah quit on the spot. She now says she has to bust her ass waitressing at a regular sit-down to make half of what she did in tips at a near-titty bar.

Though the breastaurant trend may be fading in Canada, uniforms at sit-down restaurants across the country are still teetering on the edge of sexual discrimination. At restaurants such as Earls Kitchen and Bar and Moxie's, there are uniform requirements that differ for female and male employees: the trend is leaning toward waitresses wearing tighter, more revealing clothing.

But the setting of breastaurants is a unique one in which the sexist power dynamic between male customers and female waitstaff is magnified tenfold. Mary, who now works at a regular restaurant where she wears a tight v-neck shirt and a skirt, says that the environment is a lot better at her new job.

"The customers that come in [at my current job] are generally the financial-type crowd, and the level of respect is high," Mary says. "Regulars come in because they enjoy our personalities for the most part, as opposed to checking out our half-naked bodies."

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

The Dizzying, Acrobatic Sport of Yoga on a Pole

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The Dizzying, Acrobatic Sport of Yoga on a Pole

The Inventor of Palcohol Wants You to Know the Media Got It All Wrong

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The Inventor of Palcohol Wants You to Know the Media Got It All Wrong

Apologies to the World’s Greatest Mayor but Naheed Nenshi is Hardly Perfect

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Naheed Nenshi in a DeLorean with a skateboard hover-board. Photo via Flickr user Naheed Nenshi

In the four and a half years that Naheed Nenshi has been mayor of Calgary, it's been more than well established that he's the coolest municipal official in the country. (Sorry, Jim Watson of Ottawa.) It's an odd suggestion, to be sure—bylaws, amendments, and budgets tend to be deeply dull for those who don't spend their afternoons watching Question Period on CPAC or critiquing the accuracy of Parks & Recreation's depiction of civic politics.

Somehow, Nenshi's figured it out. A glowing profile in Marketing magazine. An interview with Richard Florida for The Atlantic's CityLab. A segment on the Rick Mercer Report. Oh, and the esoteric World Mayor Prize. All those honours were bestowed upon the 43-year-old in the past year alone, cementing his Obama-like status as an astute legislator with a sleek public image. (It's worth noting that Nenshi has a better following than Obama on Twitter based on the number of citizens he governs: 20 percent vs. 17.8 percent.) Not bad for a former business professor with a less-than-stellar average ranking of 2.8 on RateMyProfessors.

But that doesn't mean the Purple Revolution's proceeding without interruption. Over the past few months, a handful of tax-averse councillors have started publicly warring with Nenshi. A first-term councillor actually suggested in a council meeting that a plaque be given to Shane Homes, the company whose CEO is currently suing the mayor for defamation. Another junior councillor (and global warming-denier) painted him as being divisive. There are plenty of other examples. But in short: shit's getting personal.

Paul Fairie, who's currently teaching a class on local government at the University of Calgary, says of the situation: "Building a coalition is important, but ultimately it is politics and it is OK to have divisions on council. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's dysfunctional if people are opposed to one another."

Fairie's incidental use of the word "dysfunctional" is of particular significance. Back in 2012, the mayor hired a clinical psychologist to help what he dubbed a "dysfunctional" council to get along. It's a theme of sorts. Nenshi has many great ideas (in the eyes of an urban progressive voter, that is). If council doesn't vote for them, the mayor implies that the system's broken—or "partisan," like he recently told an audience in Halifax, an insinuation that caused a backlash in council.

"The mayor's not the boss of council: he's the first among equals," says Jeromy Farkas, a research fellow at the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education. "What he did in Halifax was really unprecedented. He really raised the stakes. Never before has one of our mayors gone to another city and broadcast on national news that our council is dysfunctional."

Farkas, who also runs the foundation's highly informative Council Tracker, notes that Nenshi's insinuation that council is "partisan" just isn't accurate. Instead, he suggests that councillors work together depending on the issue. In the case of individual secondary suite applications (i.e. allowing homeowners to add a basement apartment or whatnot), only one councillor has voted negative every time. It's a mistake, Farkas says, to conflate disagreement with obstruction.

The lack of rigid voting habits is something Fairie has noticed via his work on CityBlocs, a project that converts voting patterns into easy-to-read graphics. Compared with other cities, he says, Calgary's doing quite alright. Especially compared to the divisive and often counterproductive Toronto city council during the "Mayor Rob Ford crisis." But Coun. Ray Jones, who's represented Ward 5 since 1993, hints at the possibility of that changing due to recent events.

"I never saw former mayors [Al] Duerr or [Dave] Bronconnier call out their council colleagues before," he says. "That's something that's new. I don't necessarily think it's a good idea because at some point in time we all have to get along. I'm hoping people are voting not because of a spat, but because it's either a good or a bad project."

Calgary voters are very much into reminiscing about the good ol' days. Bronconnier, the city's mayor from 2001 to 2010, was legendary, in policy wonk circles at least, for his phrase, "as long as you have eight votes you can control whatever happens." He'd always get those eight; Jones mentions that if "Bronco" (the painfully Calgarian nickname he rolled with) would only forward a motion if those votes were guaranteed.

It's a strategy that obviously only works if you've got a party-like blocs behind you. Such "fiefdoms," as Ward 8 representative Coun. Evan Woolley jokingly refers to them, take time and discipline to curate. But Jones says, "I don't think Nenshi's ever been to my office." Similarly, Coun. Diana Colley-Urquhart, delegate for Ward 13, suggests that "Naheed doesn't lobby for votes," electing instead to let the superior perspectives rise to the top in the chambers.

On the other hand, Nenshi promotes open debate. Very open debate, in fact—a recent report suggests that overtime costs about $10,000 per session, something new to this council. "I think the other difference I experience with him is that he's always open to what your opinions are," says Colley-Urquhart, who notes that Bronconnier's council was far more partisan than the current. "He's a policy geek. He really loves to hear what your ideas are."

Efficiency was essentially guaranteed under Bronconnier's watch, with debate unnecessary due to the aforementioned blocs. Now, items that should take 30 seconds to pass often take over an hour, according to Jones, who adds that "decorum went out the window."

Marc Henry, Bronconnier's former chief of staff and president of ThinkHQ Public Affairs, says of the extensive debate: "Discussions in council today tend to be a little bit more freewheeling and longer. People arguing multiple times and maybe not being quite as strict with the procedure bylaw as they used to. It's a different mayor, different of leadership."

Even with the extra verbosity, Nenshi's managed to push through many of his goals set during his inaugural campaign, including implementing a poverty-reduction strategy, constructing the airport tunnel, and getting the New Central Library underway, just to name a few. Passing the most recent budget was a massive success. But there have been misses. Take the issue of secondary suites, the first on the list of Nenshi's 12 "Better Ideas" and a critically important stopgap for the crippling housing crisis.

Despite widespread support from business and residents, the motion to legalize suites in existing neighbourhoods was shot down in an eight-to-seven vote. Prior to the session, Nenshi had petitioned business leaders to hound some of the councillors critical of the motion in order to change their minds. The tactic didn't work. It may have even backfired. Partway through the proceedings, Nenshi stated that he would boycott further discussions on the subject if the motion didn't go through.

Ivan Zendel, the clinical psychologist Nenshi brought into council back in 2012, warns against such a response to disagreement: "When you leave the room and talk to the public, it becomes critical that those many voices coalesce into a single voice and work together to make those things happen, whatever is decided," he says.

But there appears to be growing concerns that the "single voice" often seems to be Nenshi's, not council's. Fairie explains that Canada features a "weak mayor" system, with the mayor's responsibilities restricted to serving as a normal councillor, chairing meetings and performing ceremonial functions. That means Nenshi's powers to push through ideas like secondary suites or eliminating hidden subsidies for suburban developers, can become tricky. Since he doesn't have veto power like "strong" mayors do, that leaves a couple of options: there's the Rob Ford approach, bullishly trying to stop the "gravy train" with strong-arm tactics; or a more diplomatic approach founded in strong persuasive techniques. At times, it can be tough to tell where Nenshi falls on that spectrum. He's got unparalleled wit and charisma. But implying fellow council members get drunk on the job doesn't help his mission.

Nenshi is indeed an excellent ambassador, but the voices on the opposite side of the spectrum don't always seem to get the same adoration.

Chris Harper, a business consultant who missed out on becoming Ward 1 councillor by 87 votes in 2013 (and who also got in a bizarre Twitter spat with Nenshi during the election over whether Harper was an operative for the Manning Centre), notes: "The celebrity status is a good thing for the city. But what I'm not a big fan of is how he sometimes uses it to punish or potentially scare councillors into going in particular direction. That's where I start to have a concern with it."

Nenshi's camp turned down an interview request for this article.

Follow James Wilt on Twitter.

In the Future, Your Phone Will Be Built by Thousands of Robot Ants

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Late last month, the German industrial automation firm Festo unveiled a product that it hopes will help to revolutionize manufacturing: hand-sized, autonomous, collaborative ant robots, or BionicANTs (for "Autonomous Networking Technologies").

These mechanical bugs, to be demoed at the Hannover Messe (basically ComiCon for industrial automation nerds) later this month, are each about 5.3 inches wide and equipped with stereo cameras and floor sensors to view their surroundings, pincers for gripping, six legs for scuttling, and chargers in their antennae that attach to rails to juice up their two onboard lithium batteries for 40 minutes of autonomous action at a go. Importantly, they can use radios in their abdomens to communicate with each other, allowing them to coordinate their movements like an actual ant colony and, based on pre-programmed rules, solve problems, and collectively complete complex, diverse, and large-scale tasks efficiently.

This isn't Festo's first foray into animalistic industrial robots. The company's Bionic Learning Network laboratory, the team behind the BionicANTS, is dedicated to studying natural phenomena and translating the efficiency of organic evolution and motion into engineering techniques. Since 2006, when they pioneered fish-shaped drones, they've developed a robotic menagerie that includes jellyfish, penguins, seabirds, dragonflies, and even a bionic kangaroo that was a test to see if Festo engineers could replicate the marsupial's extremely efficient, elastic hopping motion. And this year, at the same time as they unveiled the BionicANT, Festo also unveiled its eMotion butterflies , capable of autonomously fluttering in coordinated swarms.

Yet for all the fanfare around the company's inventions, Festo never markets its animal robots directly to factories. It views these creations as proofs of concept for more abstract technologies. And that's really a shame, because it'd be amazing to see a factory of swarming robo-ants at work.

I recently spoke with Elias Knubben, head of Festo's Bionic Learning Network and the lead on the BionicANT project, about scientific wow factors, the future of bespoke and flexible automated factory work, and the imminence of the internet of things in all of our lives.

VICE: Your project was mainly about studying coordinated, autonomous systems modeled on ant behavior. So why did you think it was important to you to replicate the whole body of the ant and not just its mind?
Elias Knubben: It's important to understand that the way we work is that we do future concepts, quite similar to concept cars. We try to bring as much innovation as possible [into our projects] and find the kind of realization of that [innovation] that can be easily understood by our customers but also young people, for example, who we want to fascinate with technology.

We do not just use [coordination] algorithms. We also look towards the design. [It makes it] easier for everybody to understand what we're talking about.

Doing these sort of future concepts, we're able to go a little further than we would usually go in our product development and use this platform for testing new actuators, technology, printing circuits, and so on.

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A lot of your lab's work in the past focused on replicating the physical motion of animals. Yet in this project you focused on the hive mind of ants. Why look into this instead of just focusing on the their form and motion?
We are always searching for topics that are relevant to the field of industrial innovation. We believe that in the future we will have autonomous systems working together in a collective way—like you said, "hive mind" creatures.

How similar is your algorithmic hive mind to an ant's actual hive mind?
This model's communication is wireless, not chemical like it is with real ants. The similar thing is the way they are able to collaborate doing a complex task with very little intelligence.

Each [real] ant itself doesn't have a lot of calculating power, so they have to share their calculating power to solve the task together. This is also what we do with our control algorithms. So in the end we collaborate with rules that are quite similar to the rules real ants have.

What sort of machines would you put these technologies in? What will they be able to do?
Nowadays, in many [machines] we have one centralized control board or control device and from that we control all kinds of transporting, handling, gripping, off-switching elements. But in the future, we think that many products will have their own decentralized intelligence.

We will have more functions in single components that will need more intelligence as well. So it will help if all those components are connected to each other and will communicate and figure out their own strategies to work in an efficient way together.

This is actually what ants do, so we think that their way of working together could be an option for many applications.

What does this allow us to do in machining and factory work that we couldn't already do with powerful computers coordinating many automatic machines?
The machines we are using now are mainly developed to do one single thing very fast, very often, and very precisely. But they are not made for changing [tasks] and being very flexible.

Having many agents with a low level of possibilities that, if they work together, are able to solve bigger tasks are in the end much more flexible. So it's possible to configure those kinds of swarms so that they can do one thing now, and tomorrow or five minutes later, if they want to, they can configure themselves to another system and do something else.

So basically one day a manufacturer could make cars and the next day he could make plane wings or something like that using robots with this flexible technology?
Maybe not such big changes as from car to airplane. But to produce consumer goods like furniture or phones, you have to produce thousands of them to make them cheap. We think that later on products will be more individually designed for [individual] customers. So the machinery has to be able to switch very fast to produce one smart phone today and the next minute another one that is a bit different in function or design or whatever.

When will we see your ant coordination technologies used in factories?
Parts of it are being used already. I think the development will be very fast.

In Germany, we have this [concept of] industry 4.0, the industrial revolution where everything will be connected—what's called the internet of things, or cyber-physical systems.

Meet the Nieratkos: J Strickland Is the Most Polarizing Man in Skateboarding You've Never Heard Of

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All photos by J Strickland

For the past decade and a half the artist/filmer/photographer J Strickland has lurked in the skate industry shadows as the consummate dark-man. He created the iconic logos of Baker Bootleg and Life Extension (LE) skateboards, filmed some of the classic Baker Bootleg tapes, and even had a stint playing Tony Hawk's team manager in the 90s, but most people aside from industry insiders have never heard of him. Part of that might be due to his unique knack for pissing people off along the way with his brutal honesty, shit-talking sense of humor, and refusal to be bent over by a business built on dicking over creative people.

I've been friends with J for 21 years and he hasn't changed a bit. He's the same irreverent, crazy, and loyal guy who, on the first day I met him, I watched steal a beach cop's ATV as a distraction for his handcuffed friend to make a clean getaway. (J was ultimately taken to jail for the weekend after being tackled off the stolen ATV by a cop who jumped off another moving ATV like in an old Western.)

Since then he's gone on to film and photograph some of the biggest names in skateboarding, including the legendary Piss Drunx crew that Rolling Stone callously called "The most dysfunctional degenerates to ever bust an ollie." Tomorrow J will release his long awaited self-published photo book, Shoot to Kill, which documents his past 15 years in skateboarding with a photo show at Paradise Plus in Brooklyn. I caught up with J as he hung the show in New York.

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VICE: Your Baker Bootleg videos are some of the most fun and beloved videos of all time. What do you think your place is in skate video history?
J Strickland:
Doing those videos fun was kind of out of necessity. I always wanted to be involved in making videos and then I got the opportunity to work on Birdhouse's The End because I was the Birdhouse team manager. I don't want to say that video was over-produced, but it was a big production and after that I wanted to do my own thing. I also wasn't going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had been sitting on that footage for the first Baker Bootleg tape and nobody, like Tony Hawk or anybody, cared about it.

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You were around for some of the Warner antics, like [Jim] Greco eating Ali Boulala's puke and that kind of stuff, which wouldn't get into most other videos so we were like, "Let's put that in our video with the skating," because that's what kids wanted. I wouldn't say I was the first person to do that; I was just lucky enough do to it with such high caliber skaters who weren't too serious. I don't know where I'd put my place in history because it was really just me taking a risk when everyone said I couldn't make a video because I couldn't film. Like, how many people would talk shit back in the day that Heath [Kirchart] would only film with me?


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Why was it that Heath would only film with you? And what's the story of you strong-arming Transworld over his Sight Unseen footage?
At the time I don't think Heath liked that over-production thing. He just wanted one person to film him and one person to shoot photos. With that crazy level of skating he had his own process he went through and I was down to go film him by myself and a photographer at 2 AM. I never once gave him some pussy excuse like, "Oh, no, I can't film at 6 AM." I don't think Heath cared about the quality of the footage. As long as I got the trick it was cool. I think if I had been running around with dollies and weird shit Heath would have had a breakdown and tried to fight me.

All respect to Heath, and it's nothing personal, but at the time of the Transworld thing I had stopped being the team manager of Birdhouse and was on my own, freelance. That experience is why I wouldn't want to be a filmer now, because your footage gets raped and the skate industry doesn't give filmer and photographer the respect they deserve. At the time I was on the strug and didn't know what I was going to do, so when it was time to turn in the footage I didn't want to take $600. I had filmed him for two and a half years on my own dime, driving all over the place, paying for everything myself. So when it came time to get paid for that work I even think $10,000 is bullshit for two years' work. Ten grand is below the poverty line; you can't live in the projects on ten grand. Considering how much people jock Heath and that part nowadays I could've asked for 50 grand and it still would have been worth it. When it came down to them paying they were like, "We're just little Transworld," and I was like, "Dude! You guys are owned by Primedia!" I got this stigma now of holding the footage hostage but at the end of the day I was just trying to respect myself.


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It seems like you've been the scapegoat and gotten the shitty end of the stick in a lot of situations.
At the end of the day I don't think I got the short end of the stick. Shit has happened because other people try to leach off creative people. Skateboarding is a really artist-based thing, but the industry just rapes artists, designers, filmers, and photographers, and they let it happen. People might think I'm salty but everything I've said is true. The only thing I regret is not being a corporate asshole and going after people with lawsuits. I took the high road and that's why it's easy for me to be the scapegoat. But I don't base my success on money. I never have. I do what I do because I love it; fuck having a job. I don't cry about getting jerked or not making money. I'm perfectly happy being in the proverbial skateboard gutter because I stand by what I've done, whether you're down with me or not.

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Why did Jamie Thomas and Chad Fernandez make you take footage out of your videos?
It was audio of Knox Godoy, a 12-year-old, prank calling Chad and Jamie Thomas. I have no bad blood with those guys and I wish they could have taken a joke. Skating got real fucked up back in the day. People were serious then and things were just overblown. I just wanted to make the next Rubbish Heap. Straight up. That's what I set out to do. I'm not going to compare it, it's not the same, but you can see the influence. Like that clip of Billy Waldman saying, "I hate reggae music," was the birth of the stuff that Baker and all this shit comes from. That line is engrained in everyone's head from the 90s era, and so we talked shit and fucked with people but it was nothing personal. Chad Fernandez looked like a kook and he got called out. Jamie Thomas was one of us in the gutter and got uptight because someone did something he didn't have control over. People just get uptight when they don't have control. I mean, you can say I'm a fat fuck who can't skate but I'm not going to cry and try and sue you about it. Kids troll me out on Instagram still; I don't cry about it.

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I heard you have a lot of taped audio recordings.
There are tons of tapes, dawg. But I'm not trying to get a federal indictment on some OG Edward Snowden-shit. Back before the internet the skate photographers were the ones who spread all the rumors because they'd go from crew to crew like, "So and so did this," or, "I heard this." People know about Shiloh [Greathouse] calling my house drunk, death threatening, and I just recorded it because it was funny shit. To this day it's funny. Knox and Terry [Kennedy] used to take my phone and prank call people, so I gave them a recorder, like, "If you're going to prank people, at least record it." I would say Knox's dad and Rick Kosick have the funniest shit.

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You witnessed so many crazy things in that time period. What are the highlights for you?
All the fucked up shit and the party shit ain't nothing new. That was my life before skating and that was my life during that time, but I wouldn't say any of that partying and eating puke shit are my fondest memories. My thing is all about the skating that came from that. The best memories for any skater are the camaraderie. Like, you go on a trip to some different place and people look at you like weirdos, but we're doing shit, we're creating shit in some foreign place where nobody understands us. My favorite memories are of dealing with the Heaths and the Andrews when they didn't even have any idea what they were doing or how good they were. After Heath kickflip backlipped Brick Town, or Reynolds kickflipped the 5 in Paris... I couldn't grasp what I had just seen. There were times with Heath and Reynolds where it got scary, where I knew they could die doing that shit. I was not just a filmer, I had to be prepared to be an EMT; it was at that level. It wasn't Transworld in 1992 with Willy Santos skating a curb cut on the cover. No, those kids were taking shit to the next level and I just got to be there. But that was then, and for the past ten years I've been doing a lot more shit than I ever thought I would do and I'm more happy with my perception of skating now than I've ever been.

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Which leads us to today. At some point you picked up a camera, and now you have this photo book, Shoot To Kill, with shots from the past 15 years.
I think every skater has the knack of an eye for photos, and I was one of the Yashica T4 bros back when I was filming. Mike Ballard was the first person to give me a real camera and a bag of film and told me to go shoot Evan [Hernandez], Knox, and Terry; the Baker amateurs who no one wanted to take seriously. That's when I got thirsty for shooting photos. Photography has always been more exciting because of the end result. Footage comes and goes but, coming from graffiti, the visual is always the most important thing. A photo is eternal and this book is like a band putting out a vinyl record to show that you can do it yourself; you don't have to work for someone to get your photos out. If you like taking photos, go make a book. If you like filming, make a video, burn DVDs. I love skating. I'm over 40 and first and foremost still a skater. I'm also a sensitive artist deep down, just trying to be a peacock and fly.

Follow J on Insta @MrStrix and buy Shoot to Kill here.

And if you're in New York head out to J's book release and photo show tomorrow, April 3, at Paradise Plus, 257 Varet Street, Brooklyn.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko


Snapchat Reveals How Many of Your Snaps It’s Sharing with the Government

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Snapchat Reveals How Many of Your Snaps It’s Sharing with the Government

Nacho Picasso Is the Sith Lord of Seattle Rap

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Photos by the author

Seattle rapper Nacho Picasso is a self-proclaimed scumbag. The antithesis of the city's other hip-hop superstars, he's grimier than Macklemore and raps lines that would make Blue Scholars blush. Nacho's music springs from the dark, depressive side of Seattle that once birthed the grunge movement—but his twisted lyricism is balanced by humor in the same way Nirvana's music once was. He recognizes how shitty things are, and simultaneously realizes that there's nothing you can do but shrug and laugh.

Nacho's humor and witty turns of phrases come fast and frequent, but they're always a little hard-edged with cynicism. Sonically, his music follows in the footsteps of Def Jux alumni El-P, Cage, or Cannibal Ox, along with fellow Northwest collectives like Oldominion and Grayskul. The majority of his work has been with the production duo Blue Sky Black Death—VICE premiered their most recent collaboration, Stoned & Dethroned, a few months back. BSBD's trappy, layered beats fit seamlessly with Nacho's dark flow.

I recently met up with Nacho at a weed dispensary in downtown Seattle. The tattooed rapper looked like he had just stepped off stage, decked out in goth-gangsta attire. We walked around Seattle a bit before Nacho stopped, lit a blunt, and told me about his new record and how he uses humor as a way to ease his pain.

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VICE: Hey Nacho. Let's start at the beginning. Why'd you start rapping?
Nacho Picasso: The whole reason I started rapping was because I wanted to hear myself in my El Camino. I wanted to hear people rapping about what I was goin' through, and nobody was touching on that in Seattle. So in 2010, I just made some shit with my cousin Raised by Wolves and my boy Eric G who's now part of 9th Wonder's council. That was Blunt Raps, the first shit I recorded. Locally, it blew up and got a little cult following of shitheads and scumbags.

Right after Blunt Raps, I dropped For the Glory with Blue Sky Black Death. A lot of people think For the Glory was my first album, but that was just the first one that I started getting noticed for outside of Seattle. Locally, Blunt Raps was a cult classic. That was the first shit that got me noticed around here.

What were you doing to support yourself back then?
I've only had one job my whole life, and I haven't worked since 2006. I tried it, and I just wanted to beat everybody up. It just wasn't my thing. Before that, I was just doing whatever I had to do to get some money.

What were you listening to growing up?
I remember being in elementary school when Doggystyle came out. My mom put it in my Christmas stocking. I grew up on reggae cause she was a dread, but as soon as I was old enough to pick my music, I chose rap. I had a cool mom, to a degree. She was more like a peer than anything else. There weren't many rules, but she also didn't do everything she was supposed to do as a mother. There were positives and negatives, but I always had options—except for rock music. She used to get pissed when I'd go in my room and turn on Nirvana or Godsmack.

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You grew up during the height of the Seattle grunge era. Musically, that's still the scene everyone associates with the city. How deep were you into grunge at the time?
I wasn't as much into it as I was influenced by it. Seattle's not so segregated, so you could be from the hood and go to school with all races. So I had friends that we're rockers and punks and skaters. Everywhere you went, you heard grunge. Even the hoods wore flannels. But you have to understand—grunge didn't make Seattle, Seattle made grunge. It's in the air. Kurt Cobain felt those feelings cause he was out here. It's all created by the atmosphere out here.

What do you listen to now?
Weird-ass indie rock. There was a point in my life where I didn't listen to anything other than Dipset and Mac Dre. That's what I identified with. For the most part now I listen to everything but rap, because I rap so much. When I do, it'll either inspire me or that shit'll be so lame that it'll make me wish I never picked up a pen and pad. It's not a spectator sport for me. It's like being a boxer and watching a boxing match when you're not on the bill: You just want to punch the shit out of somebody and end the fuckin' fight.

Seattle's been put into the hip-hop spotlight lately by acts like Macklemore and socially-conscious groups like Blue Scholars. You represent a much different side of the city. How do you look at that polarity? Is it a rivalry or more of a necessary balance?
I'm just as much a reflection of Seattle as Macklemore. Everything has two sides. I definitely am Seattle's dark captain, and Macklemore is the man on the other side. It's all love, though. After the game, teams shake hands. I respect everything they've done for the music scene in Seattle because without them, there wouldn't be a scene for me to rock.

You're definitely darker. You're like Seattle's Sith Lord.
That's just how I rap, man. It's hard for me to hear music telling you to tie your shoes and take your vitamins. I do what comes naturally to me. I feel like Stoned & Dethroned is my darkest album yet. Partly because I felt like I was lightening up a bit. I wanted to give the core fans something.

Your stuff is a little sinister, but you always keep a sense of humor about it.
I had a really fucked up childhood. I was always in and out of CPS and shit. They took me from my mom when I was 11. Shit was so fucked up with my family, but we always laughed. If I don't laugh, then I'm going to cry. The humor in my music is just how I talk. It may sound like I am trying to hide it with all of that stuff, but really that's me letting it out as best I can.

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To what extent does your music influence your life and vice versa?
My life has definitely influenced my music cause that's real shit. I don't go into a studio feeling like I need to make a song because that's what's popular and I need to get a certain crowd. I just go in and say what I've been doing all week!

Cocaine is referenced quite a bit on Stoned & Dethroned. Are you doing a lot of drugs?
I've been on some binging lately. I just do what I want to do. I'm not saying that's right, and I'm not telling anyone else to do it, but like Mac Dre said—"I ain't hurt nobody but my body." I like to experiment. I've been trying to go to other realms with DMT and shit. I really want to talk to the motherfucking lizards but they won't let me in. Everybody else gets to them, but they're not letting Nacho in.

What are your plans for the rest of 2015?
I just dropped Stoned & Dethroned. I just wrapped up my first EP on Harry Fraud's Surf School label, and we're looking to put that out before the summer. I got a shitload of songs I don't even remember making—I got like three mixtapes I'm sitting on for the in between time... Then probably start working on my full-length Nacho Picasso/Harry Fraud album.

Looking forward to hearing them. Thanks man.

Follow Sam on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: Six Ways in Which 'Pillars of Eternity' Is Incredible

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It was 1998 and it was a heady time. Geri Halliwell had packed her Union Jack dress and had two feet out the door of the Spice Girls. John Glenn blasted off into space for the second time. Viagra had just been approved by the FDA, inspiring penises across America. And gamers everywhere were getting their first taste of a fantasy role-playing game that would come to define the genre. Amid the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Pokémon Red, and Banjo-Kazooie, Baldur's Gate was king.

It would take 17 years before its heir, Pillars of Eternity, would make its way into a new generation of gamer's bedrooms. But now that it's here young gamers around the world are twirling wands, sharpening axes, and marauding through the fan-funded, zombie-cat-rich land of Eora, where the game is set.

Pillars of Eternity is a fantasy role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Which is interesting in itself, because not long ago the studio looked like it was going under. Until, that is, they began a Kickstarter. It ended up being the 10th most successful campaign on the crowd-sourcing site, ever. Just what made so many people chip into the cause, keeping Obsidian active and (relatively) blindly paying for a game, then called Project Eternity, that didn't yet exist?

The short answer: because Baldur's Gate was a landmark in gaming, and the people at Obsidian were largely responsible for it, the company having been born from the ashes of Baldur developers Black Isle Studios. So yes, each dollar contributed was a gamble—but a gamble that's paid off, because Pillars of Eternity is seriously good,

Here are six reasons why.

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This is Kelly, my Fire Godlike wizard with a taste for red

THE CHARACTER-CREATION SCREEN

It took me an hour to get through the first character creation screen. Not content to rely on typical fantasy tropes such as dwarves and elves, the world's filled with other races from as far away as the Winding White—basically Eora's version of Antarctica. You can play as the expected races, including humans, but you can also play as the Aumaua—imagine if you spliced a Na'vi from Avatar with a Viking warrior—and the Orlan, small and furry fighters who aren't to be underestimated.

Each race has yet more sub-races, such as the coastal and island Aumaua, who differ in the bonuses you get from them. My Kelly's a Fire Godlike. Her skin resembles metal and burnt glass. Flames erupt from her head. She can't wear helmets or hats because they'll burn off. She's seen as a sign—a blessing of Magran, goddess of war and fire.

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THE WORLD BUILDING DOESN'T FEEL FORCED

The game doesn't shy away from its world-building, but equally it never feels like it's too much. In the opening ten hours you visit "the capital of a country that had not long ago incinerated a god." You find out about who that god was— St. Waidwen, a reincarnation of the god Eothas, the god of renewal and light, who was destroyed by a group of men and women known as the Dozen, who detonated a bomb called the "Godhammer" on the Evon Dewr Bridge.

Still with me? OK.

You quickly learn that people are reincarnated after death and have multiple lives, and some carry the knowledge of their previous lives with them. As the game goes on things spin further and further—you investigate the roots of something called Waidwen's Legacy, which is causing babies to be born without souls, resulting in beings known as the Hollowborn. If you liked the endless tomes that littered the bookshelves of Skyrim or Dragon Age, you'll be delighted here.

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THE WRITING IS SOME OF THE BEST I'VE EVER SEEN IN A GAME

Though this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's played other games by Obsidian, such as the hilarious South Park: The Stick of Truth or the gritty Fallout: New Vegas, it's still refreshing for the genre. Fed up with Dragon Age's endless essays? Pillars of Eternity makes you care rather than feeling like you're running through the lines for a bit-part role in a soap opera. You'll be reading a lot, but it's never a bore. The developers have made a concerted effort to describe little things like the asides during dialogue, such as the characters spitting on the floor.

There was a moment early in the game where Kelly, dressed in just a wisp of a robe, stumbled across a massacre. The bodies were "splayed and bug-eyed," and enemies were "jerking their axes from bodies as if from half-split logs." It's harrowing, and the type of writing that usually appears in dark fantasy novels instead of games.

Amusingly peppered throughout the game are choose-your-own adventure scenes. After the wildly successful 80 Days, which was nominated for Best British Game at the BAFTAs, it's great that games are embracing this visual novel approach. At one point I was swimming through a submerged tunnel and sent my Barbarian, Bruce, down to investigate between the ribs of a sunken skeleton. Bruce drowned.

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BACKSTABBING BASTARDS

I wrote this in my notebook yesterday: "I'm halfway through the game and I've just found out that my mate has stabbed me in the back. I am GENUINELY HURT. I want to lift him up and chuck him at a tree but my 'might' attribute isn't high enough. What do I do?"

By this point Kelly had a half-dead pet cat wandering around with her as well as a bunch of witty NPCs who I'm not going to name here in case of spoilers. The thing is, after the climax of the mid-game event, I genuinely did feel hurt. Why? Because the developers had actually made me care for these petite bundles of pixels. And beware, for anyone who can't play Fire Emblem in case you get too invested in your characters: your pack of thieves and ne'er-do-wellers can permanently die. I reloaded one save file four times because my pal Durance kicked the bucket. It adds another layer of strategy to the decision-making.

Something that's relevant here is the game's approach to stats. That "might" attribute mentioned above? Instead of the old RPGs where gamers would notch up points in things like "strength," "charisma," and so on, here "might" means, basically, "strength of attack." This opens up a bonkers amount of options. Wizards can kick ass and Barbarians can finally be clever.

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YOU CAN PLAY THE GAME AS A GROUP OF BEARS

Over at PC Gamer, Christopher Livingstone discovered you can play the game as a pack of bears because of the fantastic mercenary features. Basically, you can hire adventurers that you then tailor, just like in the character creation screen. Fed up of dying? Hire a Barbarian to pummel your enemies to mush.

A particularly fun way of doing things is to have six wizards at once. The key thing here is that the game doesn't hang itself by its predecessor's rope—Obsidian haven't been shy about revitalizing the dryer parts of the genre. Better yet, when you finally decide your pack of bears probably won't work in the long run, you can store them in your stronghold—essentially a big castle—for later use. There's also a bunch of new classes available, from the Chanter—a bard who can sing songs that empower the rest of the group—to the Cipher, who can attack the souls of people.

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IT'S SURPRISINGLY TOPICAL

We're not talking references to the awful cutting situation surrounding Zayn's flight, but the main plot involves discovering what's at the root of these Hollowborn. It circles around issues of ethics and morality as the player finds out that Animancers have been manipulating souls. Kelly has to decide what to do about it. I can't help but think that if she shuts down what they're doing, her cat companion might, well, die. I'm sure this is all in my head—I'm sure that if I do actually shut it down the cat won't strip off its remaining fur and convulse on the path, retching up its bones like some sort of necrotic fur ball. But the brilliance of RPGs like this is that they at least make you think it might happen.

It's become an ongoing joke that Obsidian doesn't check games for bugs. South Park: The Stick of Truth was allegedly plagued by them, but I never experienced any. If you're worried about that, don't be. Paradox, the game's publishers, have allegedly helped with that process and so far it's got less problems than Skyrim, though there is one game-breaking bug. Ultimately, the thing that makes a good RPG is when there's no gimmick to them. No single feature battles for your attention. They're sandboxes of storytelling. And Pillars of Eternity is a shining example of one.

All screens except "Kelly" via Obsidian.

Follow Max on Twitter.

Two New York City Women Just Got Arrested for an Alleged Bomb Plot

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Two years ago, Asia Siddiqui, 31, told an undercover FBI officer that her roommate, Noelle Velentzas, 28, was obsessed with the Boston Marathon bombers. Their use of a pressure cooker as an improvised explosive device was genius bomb-making, Velentzas said, and she wanted to follow in their footsteps with a pressure cooker she'd received as a present.

"You can fit a lot of things in, even if it's not food," Velentzas later said to the officer herself.

Since then, Velentzas and Siddiqui—who lived together in New York City—were frequently in contact with Al Qaeda operatives, the feds alleged in a criminal complaint Thursday. In a poem Siddiqui allegedly penned for a Saudi Arabian magazine called Jihad Reflections—the predecessor to the now well-known al Qaeda publication Inspire—she reflects on dropping bombs while riding a hammock, and hitting "cloud nine with the smell of turpentine, nations wiped clean of filthy shrines."

Velentzas even had Osama bin Laden, whom she considered an inspiration, as her phone's background photo. She once pulled a knife from her bra, showing Siddiqui how to stab someone, in case things went astray.

"Why can't we be some real bad bitches?" she asked.

On Tuesday, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui—who went by "Najma Samaa" and "Murdiyyah"—at their apartment in Jamaica, Queens, on charges of conspiracy to construct and detonate a weapon of mass destruction. The news came just weeks after three men allegedly affiliated with the Islamic State were arrested in Brooklyn after making threats to assassinate President Obama and blow up Coney Island. (Velentzas and Siddiqui apparently did not have a specific target in mind, and expressed a preference to go after government entities rather than random civilians.)

Velentzas and Siddiqui's long history unknowingly of communicating with an FBI agent is documented in the 29-page brief unsealed in court on Monday by US Eastern District Attorney (and US Attorney General nominee) Loretta Lynch.

According to the feds, the two routinely boasted to the undercover officer about their love for the Anarchist Cookbook, the notorious manual for homemade bomb-making. Later, the pair took chemistry and physics books out from the local library, and studied past incidents online, like the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The women had begun to collect materials from Home Depot and local pharmacies that were necessary for the explosive; while carrying Miracle Gro fertilizer, Velentzas winked at the undercover officer when she said it was for her plant. Miracle Gro, as explained in the brief, contains incendiary ingredients.

"As alleged, the defendants in this case carefully studied how to construct an explosive device to launch an attack on the homeland," Lynch said in a statement. "We remain firm in our resolve to hold accountable anyone who would seek to terrorize the American people, whether by traveling abroad to commit attacks overseas or by plotting here at home."

The brief offers an incomplete picture, however. Right from the beginning, the duo is discussing the bomb, so it's hard to pinpoint when the FBI agent first started tracking them, or to exactly what the agent's role was throughout all of this. As Ramzi Kassam wrote for VICE after the February arrests in Brooklyn, these are vital pieces of information to keep in mind when hearing about a foiled terrorist plot.

In the Brooklyn case, the FBI agent was much more of an instigator, offering to process travel documents for a trip to Syria and even helping one man fill out paperwork. But in this latest Queens case, the undercover officer appears to simply stand by and observe what the two women are concocting. Occasionally, the agent brings over the latest copy of Inspire and asks them about current events involving other accused terrorists. In one case, the agent sees the propane tanks Velentzas bought in her basement, and says, "Yo, she got everything. This is like the Home Depot." Earlier, Velentzas and the undercover had debated what was better, nitroglycerin or potassium chloride.

Eventually, after being stopped by federal agents at LaGuardia Airport in July, the two grew suspicious of the undercover agent, and begin digging up articles on how to detect an undercover officer. At one point, Velentzas stripped the SIM card out of the undercover's phone, suggesting she was concerned about surveillance. The last recorded interaction between the three parties was on March 22, when Velentzas told the officer she was confused as to why some people decided to join jihad overseas when there were ways of "pleasing Allah" right here in the US.

Just nine days later, she and Siddiqui were in handcuffs.

The two are set to appear in court on Thursday afternoon. In the next few days, more information is sure to surface about these two women. But for now, the only real, direct motive we have is from Velentzas, who ruminated on her future at one point to the individual who would later help arrest her.

"I might get old here and be able to put a lot of people onto wisdom and reason, or I'm going to be in solitary confinement, and get raped or tortured, or I'm going to be killed in the street," she allegedly said. "That is your future in America."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Death Toll Rises to 147 as Al Shabaab Gunmen Attack Kenyan University

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Death Toll Rises to 147 as Al Shabaab Gunmen Attack Kenyan University
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