Marcel Duchamp's readymades disturb the conventional notion of what art is. A metal wheel sitting on top of a stool isn't what we would traditionally think of as art, but because Duchamp said it is, it is. Art is stuffy, and Duchamp injected his works with a witty wink-nudge to that stuffiness. "[I]t's only because of humor that you can leave," he said, "that you can free yourself."

If he were alive today, Duchamp might have been a moderator on the subreddit /r/fifthworldproblems. While most of Reddit blends aggregation and forum functionality with users posting links, images, videos, or text that other users comment on, /r/fifthworldproblems is more an art project than a place to share Imgur photos. Here, users gather together to discuss the mundane challenges they face as powerful eldritch creatures of the Fifth World.

Related: The Man Behind @DadBoner

The "fifth world" is an extension of the Cold War-era "three worlds" ideology, where the first world is the capitalist West, the second is the Soviet Bloc, the third the developing world, and the fourth is uncontacted peoples. So what would the fifth world look like? It's a place stripped of normalcy and tinged with what the mods refer to as "dark surrealism."

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/r/fifthworldproblems was created three years ago by redditor Happybadger. He's described by moderator spacemanaut as "ur-god emeritus and mother brain of the subreddit," and the moderation team was hesitant to speak with me without his go-ahead. "We're not allowed to discuss specifics," spacemanaut tells me via reddit private message, "But membership initiation involves ritual sacrifice of a mid-sized aquatic mammal as well as agreement to, if necessary, take on a second shoulder-head (for tax purposes)."

In the Fifth World, Reddit itself is part of the artwork. Redditors remain in-character at all times, speaking as occupants of the Fifth World, and participants in Happybadger's three-years-running art project.

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"[P]eople like being dark gods, people like space, and people like cryptic symbols," Happybadger explains. "[S]o my approach has been accommodating them, while using my own contributions and the visibility of mod posting to steer the conversation toward ideas that I think have a lot of potential and funny behind them." He moderates with a light hand, ensuring posts are unique, in-character, and not leaning too heavily on pop culture for inspiration. "I want people to take a very basic idea—this is a world where the fabric of reality is turned on its head—and create their own interpretation of it. Pop culture references give a ready-made template for creative expression which simultaneously strips it of any creativity and turns the whole thing into a circlejerk." Other than that, Happybadger lets the community run wild with the theme, as long as they remain in character. He likes to use his status as a mod to "inject" ideas into the community—like the arrival of Zalthor as presidential candidate—but their success is dependent on if the community latches on or not.

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Zalthor is an amalgamation of "Bill Clinton's sexual escapades and Richard Nixon's defensiveness and Barack Obama's image and Teddy Roosevelt's over the top bravado" and his posts exist to push redditors to use the Fifth World to explore and critique people and events going on in the real world. Zalthor's candidacy led to the creation of /r/fifthworldpolitics, which encourages ongoing surrealist critique of the upcoming US election, through candidates running against Zalthor. All interested candidates must submit "name, home planet, ages in quantitative AND transdimensional times, and US birth certificate."

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Zalthor is Happybadger's auteur hand in the forum—it's not a rule, and it's only canon if the community accepts it, but it is the artist suggesting the content move in a way that he deems most compelling. Zalthor's posts include multimedia, not just for laughs, but to show users that Fifth World art can go beyond text posts. It hasn't fully taken off yet, but the existence of offshoot subreddits like /r/fifthworldpics shows there's interest.

/r/FifthWorldProblems differs from shocker subreddits like /r/spacedicks in that it's not there to revel in violence or offend for the sake of offending. It's pleasantly strange, and the delicate bizarreness of the posts – standard Reddit fare, tinged with a touch of the uncanny—is humorous in its unexpectedness.

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"Upvote for visibility" is typically a request that users upvote a post in order to push it to the top of the subreddit. In /r/fifthworldproblems it is a request to become visible in a corporeal sense. In one piece of advice, a user riffs on the response format of redditor Unidan, the "excited biologist" who is known for enthusiastically sharing ecological and biological knowledge. Fifth World redditors ask for their version of travel advice, bizarre relationship advice, and participate in very surreal "Ask Me Anything" posts.

Like Duchamp's readymades, /r/fifthworldproblems lives somewhere between art and not-art, daring the viewer (or participant) to choose a side. Reddit is a place where art can be shared, but usually, the content itself is not art. But in the Fifth World, the subreddit structure allows the community to create art as a collective. Happybadger recognizes that /r/fifthworldproblems is unique, and with the introduction of new "canon" characters like Zalthor, he encourages the community to tackle the concept of the "Fifth World" in more complex and challenging ways.

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This theater of the uncanny has expanded into an empire of the weird, organically, with no guidance from the moderation team. There's /r/28thworldproblems (like the Fifth World, but about ants), /r/fifthworldpoetry ("Did your auto-soul ring briefly in harmony with the celestial matrix?"), the 45th world, the 54th world, and the infinite world. Reddit's easy-to-use framework and popularity online allow users to create art in new internet-specific ways. /r/fifthworldproblems represents an online democratization of art—the subreddit structure allows one artist with an idea to create an ongoing performance where other users can float in and contribute to the performance canon in ways they deem fit, guiding and shaping the piece as they go. Duchamp's works let the viewer in on a secret—that art is a bit ridiculous. Happybadger and the Fifth World community let the viewer create the art itself, and it can be as wild and ridiculous and surreal as you desire—just don't drop any Welcome to Night Vale references. Zalthor 2016!

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Some Mormons who like Star Wars and who may or may not be married and/or gay. Photo via Flickr user Wm Jas

Groups who oppose gay marriage are increasingly fighting a losing battle, but no one is waging war on behalf of penis-vagina couplings more entertainingly than a bunch of gay Mormon men who just asked the Supreme Court to consider the idea that same-sex marriage would make their marriages to their wives "meaningless."

Right now 70 percent of Americans live in a place where gay marriage is legal, and SCOTUS will begin hearing arguments about whether it should be a federally recognized right on April 28. The Mormons who filed the brief think if that happens then it codifies the idea that "only same-sex marriage can bring gays and lesbians the personal and family fulfillment that is the desire of the human heart." They call that message "one-size-fits-all" and "false."

It should be noted that the Church of Latter Day Saints has had a rather bizarre relationship with its gay members since 2012. That's when church leaders softened their stance and launched the site MormonandGay.com in support of the idea that same-sex-attraction (SSA, as they call it) is OK, as long as the men who experience it marry ladies.

They also started another site that year—LDSVoicesofHope.org—as a platform for SSA men who've supposedly suppressed their desires to share their message of hope. The site is registered to Jeff Bennion, a personal injury attorney, and North Star, which describes itself as "a place of community for Latter-day Saints seeking support and resources addressing sexual orientation or gender identity."

The amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court is basically a collection of essays taken from LDSVoicesOfHope.org, and Bennion's is one of them. "While they do not have a choice about their attractions, they do have a choice about their relationships," the introduction reads. "And rather than choose the culturally acceptable and popularly celebrated 'traditional' same-sex relationship, these same-sex attracted men instead have chosen marriage to a woman."

Apparently, Bennion always wanted a wife and kids and was full of despair about his gay attractions. But then he met Tanya, and forced himself to work "backward" from emotional intimacy to physical attraction. Their eight-year marriage is based on a kind of love, he wrote, that "isn't often sung about."

Related: Watch our documentary, "The Mexican-Mormon War":

There's also Joshua Johanson, who struggled with being gay until he met Alyssa at a dance and discovered she loved him "not in spite of his attractions, but because of them." At first, he thought the whole being gay thing might pose some difficulties in the bedroom, but, "I was wrong," Johnason wrote. "Our sex life has been amazing from day one. There was no awkwardness of need for adjustment. It was just pure and beautiful"

Fewer and fewer people these days believe that you can simply choose to not be gay, or change your sexual orientation through prayer—and perhaps because of this, the gay-but-married Mormons write in the brief that they aren't denying anything.

"Rather, amici fully accept the reality of their same-sex attractions and fully affirm their individual selfworth, just as they are," the brief reads. "But they also attest that their attractions do not dictate their relationships."

Oh, OK.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Chicago police officers. Photo via Flickr user Scott L

For decades starting in the 1970s, more than a hundred people, nearly all African-American men, endured torturous interrogations and detention under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his crew of officers. It is one of the most notorious and awful instances of police misconduct in American history: The torturers performed mock executions and employed electrical shock, among other incredibly brutal tactics, leading to several known false confessions and wrongful convictions.

But now the victims are poised to receive some semblance of justice after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced earlier this week that city officials are ready to dish out a massive reparations package.

"It was a very bad time in the city's history, and something has to be done to acknowledge it," said exonerated Illinois prisoner James Kluppelberg, whom Burge's officers beat so badly in 1988 that he urinated blood, records show. The beating forced a false confession, setting in motion a prosecution that cost Kluppelberg almost 25 years of his life.

The unprecedented reparations deal—which is expected to be approved by the city council—would reportedly include a formal apology, a $5.5 million fund for torture survivors, and other assistance ranging from free city college tuition for survivors and their families to counseling services. The city would also create a memorial, build or designate a center on the South Side of Chicago, and require eighth- and tenth-graders enrolled in Chicago Public Schools to learn about the torture cases as part of their history classes.

The notorious Burge—who still earns a police pension—was released from prison in 2014 after less than four years behind bars on a perjury conviction. For his criminal acts of torture, the statute of limitations has expired.

The city is trying "to bring this dark chapter of Chicago's history to a close," as Mayor Emanuel put it, and a robust history of local investigative journalism and grassroots activism deserves much of the credit.

"It was the power of the movement that made this happen," said Joey Mogul of the People's Law Office, who, along with Amnesty International and advocates from a group called Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, negotiated the agreement with the city. "In the last five months, there has been a truly intergenerational, inspiring movement."

Built on decades of outcry among communities impacted by the torture, the reparations ordinance was introduced in city council last fall, but then it stalled. The city's inaction was met with a flurry of activism from a coalition of 45 groups, including one called We Charge Genocide.

Advocates marched, participated in a "sing-in" at the city council, and hosted teach-ins about Burge's torture ring. On a freezing February evening, activists joined the Chicago Light Brigade in front of Mayor Emanuel's resident to illuminate a sign: "REPARATIONS NOW."

"Without that real concerted push, we would not be here for sure. We would not be here at all," said Mariame Kaba, who serves on the advisory board of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials. "We made this an untenable situation for them to ignore."

Buoyed by the Black Lives Matter protests, the coalition persisted. On the eve of a public hearing this week, city elites apparently decided to reach an agreement with the people.

"All of this is overdue," said former investigative journalist John Conroy, now director of investigations at DePaul University's legal clinic in Chicago. "This is a miracle."

It was more than 25 years ago that Conroy first wrote about the torture cases in a Chicago Reader piece titled "House of Screams."

"I was braced for a storm," Conroy said. "We got four letters in response to that article. Two were in favor of the torture, and two were opposed to the torture. For many years then, everybody was aware of the torture, but nobody wanted to do anything about it."

Burge was fired in 1993, and a decade later, then Illinois Governor George Ryan pardoned four death row prisoners who had been tortured.

But Burge's legacy persists, Conroy added, "like a cancer."

"It's got nothing to do with a few bad apples," he said. "We're talking about a system that allows police officers to do this."

In recent months, Chicago made international headlines when a Guardian series revealed alleged police brutality at a "secret interrogation facility" at Homan Square, a police compound long known in its neighborhood for detaining and abusing individuals.

"They always say, 'Make it easy on yourself. Help yourself out,'" said Andre Wilson, a formerly incarcerated man from Chicago's West Side who says he has been detained at Homan and Fillmore, the intersection of Homan Square. "They put the handcuffs on me and slung me in the car. It's always Homan and Fillmore."

The Guardian series also reported that a longtime Chicago detective had exported his torture tactics to Guantanamo, and a recent Truthout investigation found that vast numbers of police misconduct allegations against young people have been purged and shooting deaths of citizens misclassified.

Related: Watch this episode of VICE Meets with journalist Radley Balko on the militarization of American police:

Around the same time news of the reparations announcement broke Tuesday, we learned that the city had agreed to pay $5 million to the family of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, whom police shot 16 times last October.

"The question that we've been raising for years is, have the underlying conditions that allowed Burge and the midnight crew to operate for so many years with impunity, have they changed?" said writer and human rights activist Jamie Kalven, who detailed McDonald's troubling autopsy results for Slate. "There's significant evidence that they haven't."

Dashboard camera video of the shooting, a "de facto execution," as Kalven put it, has not yet been made public—even in the face of federal and state investigations.

To move the reparations package forward, the city council finance committee must appropriate the money before a vote on the full resolution next month. The Chicago Police Department and its legal affairs department declined to comment for this story.

Follow Alison Flowers on Twitter.

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Students occupying UQAM despite a court injunction. Photo by Keith Race

The Université du Québec à Montréal's (UQAM) board of directors decided not to prolong the winter semester after a series of protests and extended injunctions against students blocking classes.

Tensions have been mounting at the university, where some students have been on strike since March against the Liberal government's austerity measures.

The board of directors at UQAM decided on Thursday night not to amend the semester in spite of a recommendation from the university's senate to extend the semester until June 19.

"The 2014-2015 university calendar is therefore unchanged. The winter semester will finish May 3 and the summer semester will begin May 4," said vice-rector Diane Demers in an email to students.

The board asked that the senate find a solution so that students who have been affected by the strike can still complete their studies by May 3—even if they have not been in school for over a month.

"A very large majority of students at UQAM are not affected by or are no longer affected by the strikes," wrote Demers.

The decision comes after two volatile weeks at UQAM, including a protest on Wednesday that quickly devolved. Protesters, dressed head-to-toe in black, forced the cancellation of a French class at the J.-A. DeSève pavilion. Students were there to complete their final exam of the semester when demonstrators disrupted the class.

Marc-Antoine St-Yves is a business student who was forced out of the class. He needs the exam to complete his undergraduate degree at UQAM.

"If I do a master's degree then I will never do it at UQAM," said St-Yves. "We respect them and we're penalized."

St-Yves' faculty is not on strike but the class is a cross-faculty course.

"We voted not to have a strike while others voted to have a strike so they can go outside on the streets," said St-Yves. "Leave the person who wants to study alone."

Earlier this week, a Quebec Superior Court judge granted an extension of the injunction against five student faculty associations to prevent protesters from blocking, disrupting or forcing the cancellation of classes on campus until June 21.

The extension followed a particularly tense few days at UQAM where police were involved in a pair of protests and arrested more than 20 people. Police intervention on campus has led to both calls for rector Robert Proulx's dismissal and support for the decision.

The head of UQAM's board of directors called for inclusive dialogue and support for Proulx in an open letter this week.

"While they may be unpleasant, the disciplinary procedures, the injunction that was asked for and obtained, do not only conform to the law but they are courageous," wrote Lise Bissonnette.

Bissonnette also criticized the attack on freedom of thought, writing that the expression of various opposing beliefs should never be hindered, especially at a university campus.

Follow Kalina Laframboise on Twitter.

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Chickens enjoy the spring sunshine at Milne's farm, Indian Summer Market Gardens, near Hay River, Northwest Territories. All photos by the author

Farms are probably the last thing you picture when you think of the Northwest Territories, where dense boreal forest and rocky shield dominate a large part of the territory's vast landscape.

But with food insecurity on the rise in communities across Canada's North, residents are increasingly shifting toward growing and raising their own food.

That's where Jackie Milne comes in. The jubilant founder and president of the Northern Farm Training Institute (NFTI) based in Hay River, NWT, is spearheading a food sovereignty revolution that is already seeing small farms and gardens popping up in unsuspecting places across the territory.

As the first agricultural school of its kind in the North, NFTI is designed to empower students with the basic knowledge to return to their communities armed with applied skills in food production and break their dependence on the often unaffordable, unhealthy options at their grocery stores.

"With aboriginal culture, traditionally they really believed that they were secure when everyone was secure. That's what gives us security. Whether it's at a family level, a community level, a state level, a country or a global level, when we really have security is when we have all of our needs met," said Milne, a Métis woman born and raised in the North. "That has really touched me, and I realized that I could influence more food being produced by helping other people learn than what I could physically grow myself. I realized that was probably the fastest way to do it."

Now in its third year offering courses to students from as far north as Fort Good Hope (66 latitude) all the way down to Fort Smith (60 latitude), NFTI offers training in seed selection, designing and planting a garden, creating forests of fruit and nut trees North of 60, garden maintenance and marketing, food harvesting, preparation and storage, and large and small animal husbandry.

Apart from helping individuals secure the knowledge they need to feed themselves and their families, Milne said the systems being implemented are designed to feed 200 people—the typical size of the most remote, vulnerable communities in the North.

Though people further south might find it hard to believe that farms can thrive in the middle of the northern forest, Milne said the thing that poses the greatest challenge to Northern food production is doubt.

"It's a very common belief, because of winter and the short season, that we can't grow very much food. But it turns out our temperate climate in the summer is one of the most conducive to producing food because it doesn't get too hot," she said.

Long days of sunlight help to make up for shorter summers, while Northern gardens tend to lack the plant-eating pests of the south, Milne added. Long winters also give gardeners time to pull back and plan, like a deep inhale before the exhale of spring and summer.

At the same time, affordable, local, and organic food is in high demand across the North.

"The beauty of it is food is very expensive here, and there's a lot of room for entrepreneurs, for people to start little businesses, little specialty things if they're not too confident. We don't have any competition. The grocery stores will buy, restaurants will buy, people will buy, so it's a wide open market; you just need to focus on producing the product," Milne said.

"There's probably more things in our favour to get started than are a disadvantage at this time."

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Jackie Milne points down to where NFTI's "living classroom" of market gardens will grow at the old hog barn site.

Creating a farm campus
Inside the dilapidated hog barn—a dark metal structure whose roof now sags dangerously close to the cramped quarters that once held hundreds of tightly packed pigs—a leftover fan hangs from a beam.

The faded logo reads "Profit-Maker."

Milne scoffs at the irony. The failed Northern Pork factory meat operation never actually made money, she explained, and wouldn't have stayed open for as many years as it did without hefty subsidies from government.

Now it just so happens that the abandoned site—a 260-acre lot outside of Hay River—serendipitously opened itself up for lease just as Milne's dream of a permanent school facility began to grow roots with a massive influx of funding last year.

The municipal government gave NFTI the go-ahead to use the area earlier this month, after the farm school was given $2 million by the federal government last summer during Prime Minister Stephen Harper's annual Northern tour. In its pilot years, the project also received support from the territorial government's own Growing Forward funding initiative, which supports community agriculture in the NWT.

In the spirit of regeneration, Milne now plans to replace the derelict symbol of unsustainable farming with NFTI's new farm campus, complete with greenhouses, livestock grazing areas, outdoor gardens, and hardy orchards, along with classrooms and housing for staff and students.

Right now, the site consists of a series of meadow clearings surrounded by mixed forest with a spectacular view of the Hay River valley below. Though the collapsing structures and rusted-out junk vehicles that litter the area need to be removed or salvaged for parts, Milne and her staff are already excitedly pointing out where the students' yurts are going to go, where berry bushes will be planted, where a cafe and garden market could thrive and where students from as far as Nunavut can, in the future, fully immerse themselves in experiential learning.

"The beauty of having the institute is it will give us the capacity, as the students increase in their skill set, to allow them to be able to come for longer periods of time," Milne said. "So if someone wants to move to specialization—say you just really love greenhouses—we could have interim positions of a month, three months, a whole year, whatever, to learn that whole process."

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Meet Greasy Bacon, the Berkshire sow who has almost singlehandedly transformed a boreal swamp into usable growing land for Jackie's farm.

Forest farm animals
Tromping through mud at the old hog barn lot, Milne openly imagines pigs roaming the area as the naturally forest-dwelling creatures they are, helping to restore and fertilize the soil, just as the institute's two existing sows have done back at her own farm, the current home base for NFTI. There, two bulky, black Berkshires—named Sophie and, perhaps more aptly, Greasy Bacon—have as a duo managed to transform an entire muskeg, or boreal swamp, into usable growing land by rooting up tree stumps and churning up the ground.

The pigs' work highlights a portion of the research being conducted at NFTI, which looks to find ways to incorporate animals into the overall agricultural system that flows with nature rather than works against it—a model known as permaculture, and one that recently earned NFTI the honour of becoming the first Savory Institute hub in Canada.

The animals aren't just there to till soil, however. Not only is meat culturally significant in the North, but it is also crucial for providing enough calories and protein in an area where nuts and legumes can't be produced in large enough quantities.

At the same time, climate change, industrial activity and increased human pressures on wild animals have meant certain species, especially caribou, are dwindling in the NWT, adding to the food security crisis. Milne believes domestic meat, done sustainably, can lend a helping hand to wild herds and the communities that depend on them.

"The more harsh the climate is, the diet tends to be more meat-based. So if we're to let nature recover—say, for example, the caribou seem to need a little bit of rest—we're still going to eat meat," she said. "So how can we have a domestic system that we can rely on so we can take the pressures off the different wild systems? We have to be able to do it in an authentic, sustainable way, so we have to look at what types of animals would be best suited here."

Along with pigs, NFTI already has its own chickens and a tiny herd of Dexter-Galloway cattle, thickly coated little creatures capable of producing milk and meat. These days, Milne is also looking into sheep, who apart from their obvious benefits to humans as a source of meat, dairy and wool, are "browsers," meaning they can be used to regenerate forests by grazing down certain plants after a wildfire in order to encourage reforestation.

After fires consumed 3.5 million hectares of forest in the NWT last year, Milne suspects that sheep, tended to by some large guardian dogs to ward off bears and wolves, could not only thrive in the territory, but actually work with nature to facilitate quicker regrowth of the ecosystems on which so many wild animals depend.

The same goes for reindeer, another species being considered by NFTI. Milne is researching what it would take to manage a domestic herd of the ungulate that would provide similar benefits to the forest along with spectacular food for a region defined by people's relationship to caribou and moose meat.

"Learning about the different animals is connected to what they eat. Some are very much grass eaters, others eat leaves and weeds, so ensuring there will be more natural food for the animal here is going to help," she said. "We're really looking at that. That'll be probably one of the funnest parts to implement, but with animals you've got to really make sure the system is in place."

Follow Meagan Wohlberg on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

London's property developers clearly don't give a shit about popularity contests. In the past few months they've really done all they can to make the city think of them as 2D caricatures of unscrupulous, short-sighted scumbags: they've had families evicted to make way for luxury flats nobody's going to live in, they've demolished a popular local pub without permission, and they've continued ridding Soho of everything that once made it a sanctuary of cultural significance within the bland assemblage of chain stores and office space that is the rest of W1.

Now, Chinatown is also under threat; rising rents in the West End could lead to the closure of many of the restaurants and shops in the area within the next few years. The Evening Standard reports that the owners of Loon Tan on Gerrard Street have seen their rent rise from £160,000 to £312,000 ($240,000 to $467,000) in the last five years, and that betting shops and fast food restaurants—businesses with high turnovers—are waiting in the wings like greasy-fingered vultures ready to pounce.

Meanwhile, according to the same report, landlords Shaftsbury PLC saw profits rise by nearly 50 percent in the six months to the end of March last year. I contacted their PR firm to ask for comment on the issue but had received no reply at the time of this writing.

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Chinatown nestles between Soho and the tacky tourist-trap bars of Leicester Square. A stroll down Gerrard Street and the alleys that surround it reveals a vibrant glut of inexpensive, sometimes garish, tasty restaurants that are open super-late. There are also busy supermarkets, Chinese medicine stores, "massage" parlors with flashing Mandarin in LED lights, mobile phone unlocking shacks, and dim red doorways with "model upstairs" signs tacked to the walls. All human life can be found here: as well as being the center for London's Chinese population there are also out-of-towners ogling street performers, guilty businessmen scarfing early-hours dim sum with their covert office girlfriends, and trans women picking up dried lily bulbs and sliced bamboo. It is a fabulously diverse, gloriously shabby district that many of us love.

Predictably, all of this is now under threat. With the horrific examples of "placemaking" we have seen in other parts of London, most recently the much-maligned changes proposed to Portobello Road, where developers plan to "enable a cultural, community and artisan retail destination," one can only imagine what will become of Chinatown if it falls prey to the same late-capitalist drive toward pristine but dull mediocrity.

Photographer and oral historian Mike Tsang—whose recent exhibition Between East and West at the LSE explored the heritage and identity of the British Chinese through portraits, archival imagery, and interviews—told me that "Chinatown in Soho has been the epicenter of Chinese culture in London since it moved there from Limehouse in the 20th century."

For more on housing and gentrification in London, watch our doc Regeneration Game:

Limehouse was the first settling place for the Chinese in London, many of whom were sailors employed by the East India Company. Some chose to stay, opening businesses, and the area quickly gained a seamy reputation for opium and gambling dens—a reputation fueled by lurid newspaper reports and novels like Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Many of these narratives were exaggerated for literary effect in a vaguely xenophobic way, as documented in Christopher Frayling's fascinating 2014 book The Yellow Peril: Dr. Fu Manchu and The Rise of Chinaphobia. But severe bombing in the Second World War, coupled with new regulations that made it tough for non-English seamen to get work, caused many of the settlers to make the move across town to Soho in the 1950s, where rents were still low.

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The area where Chinatown currently sits has its own colorful history. Gerrard Street was once a center for writers, artists, and intellectuals who would gather together in the Turk's Head pub to get smashed and talk politics, while neighboring Newport Market developed a reputation for seedy criminality. Waves of immigrants—Jewish, Italian, and Maltese—came through, and the area became known for its vibrant nightlife and tasty foreign cuisine. With a market fueled by soldiers returning from service in Asia with an appetite for Chinese food, many of the new arrivals opened restaurants to great success. Soon the area was thriving.

I asked Mike Tsang about the importance of the current Chinatown to the Chinese community in London.

"It's been a bellwether for successive waves of migration—the Cantonese first from the 1950s to 60s, then Malaysian and Singaporean mainly. Now most immigrants are from the Chinese mainland, mirroring the economic development of these countries.

"From the massively-attended Chinese New Year celebrations each year to the restaurants, it's many British people's first taste of Chinese culture. I think having a hub for our culture in Chinatown is especially important, as Chinese people tend not to have a predominant religion, so there's no communal meeting point such as temples for Hindus, mosques for Muslims, or synagogues for Jews. In a way you could say food is our religion—the thing that brings us together. Certainly many of my favorite memories growing up were round a dinner table."

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Jay Rayner, Observer food critic and novelist, recently decried gentrification "ripping the heart out of communities" like Chinatown, and called for a "responsibility to community." Many feel the same way, but Rayner (and I) are white English men. I asked Tsang what the impact on the Chinese community would be if Chinatown were to disappear.

"In Between East and West I interviewed an adoptee, Lucy Sheen, who was ethnically Chinese but raised by white parents. She recalls a memory of first visiting Chinatown on her own as a teenager and how important that visit was to her discovering her heritage," he replied. "Without Chinatown we would lose that cohesiveness. All other major cities have a Chinatown, and I think it's as much a part of London heritage as it is Chinese."

In 2003, the City of Westminster released an "action plan" they called "Working for the Future of Chinatown" in which they acknowledged its "distinct culture, cuisine, and character" and said that "the City Council is resolute in protecting Chinatown as a unique area." They even spoke of "redesignating Chinatown as its own Conservation Area." Let's hope that this attitude still prevails and something can be done to preserve the district and stem the tide of bland that currently seems to be engulfing the UK's capital.

Mike Tsang's "Between East and West" project can be viewed here.

Follow John and Jake on Twitter.

Band photo by Manny Mares

Turnover is signed to Run for Cover Records, who've championed bands like Tigers Jaw, Elvis Depressedly, and Crying. They also toured last month with New Found Glory, which provokes deep excitement for my inner 13-year-old. Turnover's got a new record out on May 4 called Peripheral Vision, a low-key emo album in the vein of Title Fight that thankfully never succumbs to the sort of clichés that often befall punk bands who have made it to 2015. It's thoughtful, atmospheric album—check out the track "Humming" above.

Preorder Peripheral Vision via Run for Cover.

I come not to bury the Golden Corral nor to praise it, but merely to reconcile myself to its existence. I worked there on weekends for the entirety of my undergraduate career at the University of North Carolina, stretching from late 1998 to early 2002. For three years, I overcooked sirloin steaks, burnt omelets to order, and kneaded yesterday's uneaten dinner rolls into tomorrow's bread pudding. And I watched, and I smelled, and I couldn't believe it then and I still can't believe it now.

After quitting to manage an Abercrombie & Fitch, I never set foot in the restaurant again.

A couple weeks ago, though, when I was going to pick up some prescriptions at a pharmacy adjacent to a Golden Corral, I decided to walk over to the restaurant and peer into its windows. I missed the place, I guess. It had been such an important part of my youth, the site of many valuable first experiences, only most of which were regrettable. My visit didn't occur at 3:55, which is the perfect moment to buy dinner, right before the registers change over to the increased price, nor was it 11:00, when the doors open and the fresh items on the buffet look almost good enough to eat. Rather, it was around 2:30 PM, a dead zone in the restaurant's operating schedule. This is the point of the day smack between lunch and dinner, when the cheaper lunch foods are left exposed and unattended while the hot cooks and grill cooks begin preparing dinner.

Related: Shoenice22 Will Eat Anything for Fame

It's when the servers take their smoke breaks, availing themselves of pick-me-ups before what they hope will be a profitable dinner shift and leaving veritable Everests of un-bussed, half-eaten food plates to fester under the fluorescent lights. Since it was a Monday, usually one of the worst nights for the Golden Corral, those hopes were unlikely to be realized unless a few buses of hungry Little Leaguers materialized out of the aether.

The stacks of plates, laden with abandoned comestibles, transported me back to my turn-of-the-millennium prime. Here, as plain as day, was the tragedy of the Golden Corral, which is this: the Corral does exactly what it is supposed to do, and does it very well. And what it does is optimize gluttony in much the same way that Henry Ford had once optimized the production of automobiles: with precision, power, and unfailing efficiency.

Consumption was why I took the job at the Corral in the first place. I had only ever eaten there once or twice before applying for work, but I was a budding weightlifter who harbored dreams of professional wrestling glory. The Golden Corral would sustain me during this lean period, its bountiful meats and poultry enabling me to maintain an intake of 300 grams of protein per day.

I have no complaints about the particulars of the job. The store where I worked was managed by a man who remains the most competent supervisor I've ever had. My co-workers were a diverse and lively bunch of characters with whom I shared a great deal of extracurricular fun. But a well-run nuclear waste dump is still a nuclear waste dump.

The savvy buffet-icianado, however, knew to purchase ice water, fill up 30 plates of food, nibble at all of it, and then leave the mess for the server.

At the Corral, an eight dollar or ten dollar buffet purchase entitled the purchaser to all he could eat, after which nothing would stop him from depleting the buffet. The price, set by some bean counters at the corporate headquarters, presupposed that the average patron would devour two or three plates of food and would wash it down by buying an overpriced soda; thus satiated, he would stack his two plates in a neat pile on the table, and leave a three-dollar tip. The savvy buffet-icianado, however, knew to purchase ice water, fill up 30 plates of food, nibble at all of it, and then leave the mess for the server, who quite naturally hadn't been tipped so much as one red cent, to haul away. By acting this way, you beat the system—and really, what was the harm in that?

In spite of this, the Corral is profitable and generally always has been, in part because its bigwigs don't waste money on slick advertisements and in part because they exact steep discounts from their food distributors. The workers are paid reasonably well (I was making around 12 bucks an hour when I quit) and the managers earn high base salaries and competitive bonuses. Each year, the menu—which once upon a time existed to emphasize standalone offerings like sirloin tips, the salad bar serving merely as a pleasant add-on—grows smaller and smaller, with more made-to-order items moved to the buffet.

So eventually every patron who wound their way through the actual corral at the entrance and up to the register found himself or herself ordering the buffet, thereupon to feed for as long as possible at this ever-expanding golden trough. The Corral, in the thoroughgoing blandness of its furnishings and the forgettable hum of its Muzak, represented the banality of American wastefulness. People of all shapes and sizes, and from all walks of life—I'll engage in no classism or body-shaming here, since the Corral took all comers—entered the place and began to act like complete assholes who had never before encountered plates, forks, napkins, food, or even bathrooms (the less said of their restroom discoveries, the better).

In 2013, some candid photographs of a filthy Corral dish room set Reddit ablaze. When those photos grossed out the readers of Reddit, blame was automatically assigned to the Corral itself. Redditors made all the expected remarks: "What an advertisement for this dump," "can you imagine working here?", "e. coli central." That's not so bad, I thought. You should have seen our dish room after the Sunday church crowd left.

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Photo via Flickr user Nick Gray.

The reason the Corral dish room becomes so fetid and miasmal, with standing food-sogged water so moat-deep that I and an enormous El Salvadorian dentist would slip and slide while staging playful battles in it, is because its patrons lose all sense of proportion once they pass through the corral and thence to the trough. The reason I sprayed off dishes with a garden hose, dozens at a time, and then restacked them and hurried them back out, was because I had no choice. The Sunday post-church patrons needed their slop buckets, and if they didn't get them, everyone on staff would catch holy hell.

The result of all this wasn't pure Americana; it was, pardon the shouting, pure AMERICANA!!! As a US historian, I've always had a keen fascination with manifestations of the more unsavory aspects of our national character. The first thing I realized while working at the Corral, and this was especially notable in 1999-2000 at the heyday of 80-cents-a-gallon gas, was that Americans waste stuff because they can, for the same reason a dog or cat chases its tail, and for no better reason than that. The second was that Americans get what's coming to them. They get their money's worth, even if that means throwing away food that would be better served by being repurposed to nourish the least among us.

The Corral, which also managed to get its money's worth in spite of its rapacious customers, couldn't donate all the uneaten food or untouched leftovers to food banks or homeless shelters, because, you know, lawsuits. Rather, we just hauled teeming trashcan after teeming trashcan to the compactor, and I got a decent workout hoisting and dumping these overstuffed receptacles. The resulting stench beggared the imagination. Describing it is beyond my ken. To quote the great sportswriter Red Smith, "Now the story ends, and there is no way to tell it...reality has strangled invention."

Follow Oliver Lee Bateman on Twitter.

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Horrible day at work today jk jk jk! Photo via hot-dog-legs.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

This week a poison pen letter sent to a young mom named Jade Ruthven went viral because it essentially asked her to shut the fuck up about her fucking baby. The reaction to the story was typical: People were outraged that a collective of moms were willing to print out the result of their anonymous gossiping and send it to their friend when the "unfollow" buttons are, like, right there.

But—how to say this?—deep down, are we not all tired of moms on our Facebook feed? I know I am. I know there's a six-year-old child in Wales who I know intimately despite never having met. I know all sorts of things about him. I know he's shit at karate. I know his favorite meal is a hotdog, sliced lengthways to accommodate a Cheesestring, covered in more cheese, dotted with pepperoni, and baked in the oven. I know he went back to school this week. He had his first sleepover a few weeks ago and he didn't go to sleep until midnight.

Previously, a man with my specific and unnerving information about a six-year-old Welsh boy would be locked up, and probably killed, in prison. Boiling pan of sugar water over my head, that sort of thing. There's no getting up from that. But this is the modern age, and this is Facebook, where pricks abound. Shit: I'm a prick on Facebook, and I bet you're one too. All I do is post links to VICE articles I wrote with faux-humble captions like "wrote a thing." And you? You probably do way worse than that. The point is: Everyone is terrible, forever.

Here is the rich variety of pricks you're friends with on Facebook dot com.

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THE 'LIKE MY PAGE, GUYS!' SELF-PROMOTER DJ PRICK

DJ DARREN • 37 LIKES

DJ DARREN PLAYING ALL THE BANGERS THIS MONDAY AT DICKSHOT • THE NUMBER ONE CLUB IN WORKSOP PLAYS HOST TO DJ DARREN MAKING THE CLUB BANG BY PLAYING ALL THE BANGERS • DAVID GUETTA / CALVIN HARRIS / ARMAND VAN HELDEN / DJ FRESH / ANOTHER CALVIN HARRIS ONE / TIESTO / NERO / AVICII / CALVIN HARRIS / ALICE DEEJAY • YOUR MONDAY NIGHT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

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THE PERSON WHO STILL LIVES IN YOUR HOMETOWN AND IS MAD ABOUT THE TRAFFIC ON THE WAY FROM WORK

It's six cars. You have a five-minute commute, and most of that is spent on Facebook while you try to get onto a busy roundabout. You're behind six cars. I know this because you've taken a photo of the six cars in front of you and hashtagged it "#fuming." Hashtags do not even elegantly work on Facebook. Your expression of anger as a memeable concept is moot.

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THE GIRL WHOSE BOYFRIEND IS HER ONLY JOKE

"Sent him to the shops," she says, between cry-laugh emoji after cry-laugh emoji. "Told him to get heavy-flow pads and he got light-flow!" Cry-laugh emoji. Tags in boyfriend's name. "Can't believe it!" Twenty-comment thread between the girl and her boyfriend that ends in a row. Two weeks later they Facebook-announce their engagement. Tale as old as time.

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Read: The VICE Guide to House Parties

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THE BOY WHOSE GIRLFRIEND IS HIS ONLY MATE

Love my baby :) — feeling blessed with Lauren Girlfriend

Miss u tonite babe :( luckily soccer is on :) rogan josh! — with Lauren Girlfriend

Lauren comes into kitchen goes you know how computers have chips in them I says yes she says do you ever get computers with fish in them omg [FIVE HUNDRED CRY-LAUGHING EMOJIS IN A ROW] had to call my mom so funny I shat and pissed my pants — feeling happy with Lauren Girlfriend

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THE MAN WHO IS OBSESSED WITH CARS AND THE CONCEPT OF CARS AND IS ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT BUYING A NEW CAR

It's an eBay link to a used Mustang that sparks an 88-comment thread with a guy called Lee. It's an entire Sunday spent replacing his existing washer jets with a pair of chrome washer jets that he ordered especially from America and furiously paid a $35 importation charge on. You know about this $35 import charge because he posted a photo of his receipt with the question "ne 1 else ever had to pay this???????" He's on the Top Gear audience waiting list. He thinks the BBC have "killed Top Gear." He spends most of his Friday night driving around the big roundabout in town, and occasionally parking on the big roundabout in town, opening all the doors and the boot, and playing Ministry of Sound Annuals as loud as it will go. His diet is almost exclusively McDonald's Chicken Legends, the bags and detritus from which is tamped down into a solid block in the passenger footwell. He cannot yet competently change a spark plug. He wants to know if you want to join the "Corsa Appreciation Group" he moderates. You do not.

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THE GUY YOU MET ONCE IN A NIGHTCLUB SMOKING AREA WHO REALLY LIKES SHARING VIDEOS OF SUNDAY LEAGUE FIGHTS

There's a curious sub-species of the British Lad, uncatalogued by leading lad biologists, who you will meet in the smoking area of a nightclub and he will immediately makes friends with you on Facebook. "What's your name on Facebook, man?" he'll say, forcefully shaking your hand. "Joel," you will say, if you're me. "Yeah, but what's your name on Facebook?" And you watch him tap your name up, and find you, and zoom in on your profile picture and hold it up to your face—"That you?" he's saying, almost fiercely, and you nod, you idiot, you nod—and then he will send you a friend request. And then he will watch you intently until you take your phone out of your pocket and press "Accept." "I'll just invite you to a club night I'm doing next Tuesday," he says. "My cousin's DJing." And so you find yourself, inexorably linked forever to the kind of man who goes to a nightclub on his own, watching his constant feed of amateur soccer videos ("LOOK AT THIS FREE KICK!") ("LOOK AT THESE GOALS FALL OVER IN THE WIND"), fending off the occasional poke (How does this man still know where the poke button is? Mark Zuckerberg doesn't know where the poke button is), afraid forever to return to the scene of your friendship crime in case he clocks you again and makes you buy him a beer. And you will never be rid of him. He will never die. When the missiles hit and the cockroaches inherit the earth, he will still be stood in the corner of the smoking section of WonderWorld, in a River Island bomber jacket and on a final warning from the bouncer, scrolling through Facebook on his phone, sending you event requests, and laughing.

WATCH: Talking Politics with Drunk Yuppies at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race:

THE FRIEND FROM SCHOOL WHO IS HAVING A NEW KITCHEN PUT IN

You remember Sarah—girl from primary school who was born with a broken leg so she got out of every PE lesson because she could only walk in a circle. Well guess fucking what: she's having a kitchen put in mate, and it's the best thing that's happened to her in her entire life. She's just instagrammed some taps from a big B&Q. She wants to know if any of you have experience with installing soft-close drawer slides (awful weekend!). A Timehop update a year to the day since they ripped the sink out of the wall. Does anyone know a good (cheap!) laborer who has experience with granite? She's found a bag of hinges that she doesn't remember the use for so she's posted a blurry photo of them with the caption "?" Guess what: Terry just proposed to her, so you're going to have to go through all this shit all over again when the fuckers plan their wedding.

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THE GUY WHO SEEMINGLY ONLY GOES ON THE INTERNET ONCE A WEEK, WHERE HE SPENDS 45 MINUTES CATCHING UP ON WEEK-OLD BRO BIBLE POSTS AND SHARING THEM BACK INTO YOUR FEED—JUST AS YOU'D ALLOWED YOURSELF TO FORGET ABOUT THAT KID WHO THREW HIS LAPTOP OUT THE WINDOW WHILE HE WAS WATCHING PORN ON IT—AND THEN HE JUST LOGS OFF AGAIN, TO DO WHATEVER ELSE IT IS THAT HE DOES

What are you doing for the rest of the week, Tom? Where do you go?

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ANYONE WHO INVITES YOU TO AN EVENT AND THEN ACTUALLY DISCUSSES THE MINUTIAE OF THE EVENT ON THE EVENT WALL AND EVERY TIME THEY FUCKING POST SOMETHING NEW ABOUT IT YOU GET A NOTIFICATION

Facebook has transformed party planning from a middling piece of admin into something excruciating and interminable, the highest note played on the worst violin. What happens when you get an event invite and say "Yes" now is that you co-opt the process of RSVP-ing—every single "Can't that weekend! We're in Berlin" and "sooooooooo sorry I can't make it! Florida!" message lights your phone up like the world's most annoying Christmas tree. And then, by the time the event rolls around, everyone has muted the group so hard they don't turn up anyway. There is no better schadenfreude than a "don't forget this is today, guys!" notification from someone who had the temerity to plan a birthday picnic three months in advance. "We're by the trees!" they are saying. "Baked plenty of little treat-sized muffins! Bring prosecco!" Choke on your loneliness, fucko.

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ANYONE WHO STARTS A GROUP CHAT

If you've ever started a group chat with me, just know that I have seriously thought about paying to have you murdered.

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THAT FUCKER WHO CAN'T KEEP THEIR PHONE IN WORKING ORDER FOR ANYTHING IN EXCESS OF SIX WEEKS

HOW DO YOU KEEP CHANGING YOUR NUMBER. IT IS SO EASY FOR PHONE SUPPLIERS TO TRANSFER A NUMBER OVER. I HAVE HAD THE SAME PHONE NUMBER FOR OVER A DECADE, AND I FUNCTION MEDICALLY AS AN IDIOT. HOW DO YOU KEEP FUCKING UP YOUR LIFE, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. HOW. HOW. HOW.

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THE PERSON WHO LEAVES FACEBOOK AND THEN COMES BACK AGAIN AND LEAVES FACEBOOK AGAIN AND THEN—

"Announcement: I'm leaving Facebook as of today (8 PM). This website is poison and I frankly don't give a shit about all ur lives and what your scores are on Farmville or whatever game it is this week! I'm off to go OUTSIDE and breath FRESH AIR and engage with the WORLD. If u know me u know how to get me, family and friends all have my number, to the rest of u randos who I met at parties or whatever... CYANARA!!!!! have a nice life on ur little website, but I've seen the other side" – some cunt

"Back for a while (work thing). Any adds I've missed?" – same cunt, eight days later

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THE PERSON WHO IS CONSTANTLY LOOKING FOR A ROOMMATE

Yeah, I know you have room available in a spacious and airy two-bed with decent transport links (both bus and rail). I know this because I sent three people your way when you last needed someone, which was about six weeks ago. What happened? Did you murder them? If so did you take those photos of your living room before or after you washed the blood out of the carpet? Because your house is a shithole and it is legitimately difficult to tell.

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THE PERSON WHO IS ALWAYS SELLING BABY RABBITS

There's something going on here that you're not telling me about, because not even professional breeders produce as much livestock as you seem to. Also: if you're charging $5 for a live animal, you may as well just not charge money at all.

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THE PERSON WHO 'CHECKS IN' WHEN THEY GET TO WORK

Your life is so empty I can hear my own sadness echoing around it and ricocheting back towards me like a squash ball. Please just start learning an instrument, or something. Get something to make your life worthwhile. Get a new kitchen put in. Anything. Please. Christ.

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THE PERSON WHO DEMONSTRATES HOW MUCH OF A FUCKING NIGHT OUT THEY ARE ON BY POSTING A VIDEO OF THEM AND THEIR MATES, THEIR BIG LUNKING ARMS OVER EACH OTHERS' SHOULDERS, SINGING ALONG INCOMPREHENSIBLY TO SOME FUCKING SONG OR OTHER, A VIDEO THAT CONSPIRES TO HAVE WORSE AUDIO QUALITY THAN VIDEO QUALITY, AS IF THAT IS EVEN POSSIBLE, AND IS SHOT IN THE WRONG ASPECT RATIO, AND CUTS OFF PRECISELY HALF A SECOND BEFORE ANYTHING NOTABLE HAPPENS

You know the ones.

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Namaste, babies! :) Photo via Tiare Scott.

THE PERSON WHO IS PERPETUALLY ON HOLIDAY

Actually, I quite like these ones. Like yes: when they post a picture of their hotdog legs with the captions "great view from the office," I think: well you're up there among history's greatest monsters, for this. But nobody has a psychological breakdown on a Monday morning at work like the person who takes six holidays a year. And that's the thing: unless they are smuggling bumfuls of cocaine around Europe and the Americas to pay for their out-of-control beach holiday habit, they have to work in the scant weeks they are not wearing swimwear and being a prick. They are pathos and they ethos. They splash playfully in the sea and they moan about taking a two-hour pub lunch because they "can't cope" with work today. They giveth and they taketh. They cannot cope with reality and they rub their escape in your faces. They are statistically way more likely to have one of them piss fishes swim up their urethras and eat their dicks from the inside out. Placate yourself with that.

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THE #SMUGLIFE PERSON WHO SINCERELY DESCRIBES THEMSELVES AS A 'FOODIE' IN THEIR TINDER BIO

There is a lot of pop psychology floating around that's all "ooh, people only put the best representations of themselves online so it's not a true snapshot" and "ooh, envying other people's lives will only make you more depressed about your own" and "ooh, everything is a lie" but holy shit how many quaint countryside gastropubs do you go to each week? And what am I meant to get out of a DSLR photograph of a really tiny pudding? What am I meant to do with that? You didn't make it. I can't congratulate you. It doesn't make me hungry because I can see the thin skin that formed on top of it while you were fucking about trying to get the settings right on your Nikon. I don't want to fuck it. What do you want me to do? How do I engage with this? You paid $20 for a salad. Well done. I don't know how you keep affording to buy lobster mains and fun new twists on a gin and tonic without bailiffs coming around and crushing your knees to dust, but you do. Logistically, your life doesn't make sense. That's what hurts the most: not that you think food is interesting, but that your finances must be a wreck.

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THE GREAT THINKING FEDORA BRO

This is the guy who took an IQ test on a Geocities page once and still puts the result on the first page of his CV. He's the one who thinks it's interesting to drink red wine and thinks engaging with popular culture is kitsch. He's the one who pretends he doesn't know who Taylor Swift is. "Taylor Who?" he says at parties. "Never heard of her." Here's a noise he makes when you mention Taylor Swift, ever: tchoh. He has more than one fedora. His profile picture is him wearing a fedora and drinking red wine and wagging his finger at a Taylor Swift CD. He posts statuses like: "Been thinking about the world and how it's broken..." and goes on some long self-fellating bit about how, if everyone just read a little more Anais Nin and spent a day in a homeless person's shoes, maybe this world wouldn't be so bad. "Sigh..." he says, booting up Second Life so he can have his ninth wank of the day over some furry in a crop top who lives in a precise 1:1 model of the Sydney Opera House. "That'll be the day."

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THE OVERSHARER

Just had chippy tea think they undercooked the chips or something guts playing right up — feeling sick

Up all night with my #shits hoping Tracey From Work or Sian From Work will cover my shift today — feeling hopeful

Can't believe it Tracey From Work is my angel!!!!!! No 8 hour shift for me today just going to stay at home and #delicatelydoapoo — feeling blessed

Snuggled up on sofa with Cat Who Inexplicably Has Its Own Fucking Facebook Profile and watching Grey's Anatomy. Derek Shepherd is a #dish — feeling wonderful

OMG so bored!!!!! lol someone come and save me from this hell!!!!!!!! LOL — feeling annoyed

OMG Tracey From Work has turned up exhausted from her eight-hour shift, her hair slicked to her head with the sweat of labor, her limbs and her heart more tired than her soul, and has bought me a load of fucking Lemsip and an oven cook pizza. MY ANGELLLL!!!!!! — feeling blessed, again

LOL Tracey From Work I'm bored again LOL come take me bowling LOL keep joking with her we should go bowling — feeling the crushing weight of the universe fully come down upon my chest

Just got ID'd in Morrisons for labmrini I'm like LOL I'm 34 I haven't been id' d since I was 17 kid behind checkout counter goes 'sorry just store policy it's really not worth telling Facebook about it's just a very standard procedure at the shops' LOLLLLLL — feeling like the existential angst of being the most pointless human alive somehow seems to be screaming even louder than usual today

All in the same eight-hour timeframe.

[body_image width='1024' height='680' path='images/content-images/2015/04/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/17/' filename='heres-every-prick-youre-friends-with-on-facebook-303-body-image-1429273863.jpg' id='47117']'Guys serious looooool it was funny how none of you turned up at the advertised 4pm start time but seriously I baked like ten moussakas this is rly rude.' Photo via Michell Zappa,

PROFILE PHOTO SWAPPERS

In case you didn't know what the person who cycles through four identical profile pictures on a near-weekly basis is doing: they are trolling you for likes. They only change their profile picture because they know you get a pop-up in your feed, and they really want to get a photo with a hundred likes. The kids call this "being thirsty." These people are thirsty. They are thirsty people. Have a glass of water, profile swappers. Because you thirsty.

§

THE SCHOOL ACQUAINTANCE WHO IS REALLY SPIRITUAL NOW

Hey, thanks for the 54-minute video of a dude in a tunic sitting cross-legged in a pagoda saying "everything is connected Namaste" it really made me rethink my terrible life. Hey, remember that time you got pushed into the boys' toilets and just started crying uncontrollably? Not saying that's the moment you disconnected from the rightful path of the lord and started on your journey to becoming a person who is really into joss sticks and thinks tapping a tiny pair of cymbals together can cleanse a room of bad energy, but it is. That's the moment. I watched it. You cried so much the nurse thought you'd had anaphlyaxis.

§

PEOPLE WHO POST LINKS TO the Take That TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT AND THEN TAGS LIKE 50 OF THEIR FUCKING FRIENDS WITH THE CAPTION "SHALL WE?"

This is the laziest thing in the whole world. This is the laziest thing in the whole world. You see the information, don't you, through your little pig eyes, and you copy and paste the URL, and you just mash at the keyboard with your fat little fists, don't you? "FRIENDS," you're saying, essentially rendered breathless by your panic to get this done, just mashing away still. "TYPE ALL THE FRIENDS." And then, with a flourish, in a rare moment of psychic calm, you daub out: "Shall we?" I don't need to see the shits you poop out. Here's the most damning thing that can ever be said about a human being, but it can be said about these people: they don't deserve Take That.

§

THE PERSON WHO CHANGES THE DATE OF THEIR BIRTHDAY TO MAKE SOME WIDER POINT ABOUT HOW WE'RE ALL ~DISCONNECTED FROM EACH OTHER~ IN THIS, THE DIGITAL WORLD

"Thanks for the messages guys but today is NOT my birthday!!!!!" they are saying. "I changed it a few months back because I didn't want people celebrating." A lie. "My REAL birthday is next month and I'd love you all to join me at [SHITTY PUB WHERE YOU CAN'T GET A DECENT BEER BUT THE COCKTAILS COST $15 AND IT IS BY A FUCKING CANAL]!!! Oh my god can't believe this happened to me!!!!!!!"

§

THE I'M NOT RACIST BUT...

You know. That racist person you know. The one who is always sharing racist things and gets really mad about the concept of mosques. The one who suddenly gets interested for the first ever time in animal rights because of halal. The one who isn't racist, but with a "but" hanging after it so heavy it could sink a ship. A "but" so heavy it could bring the moon toppling out of the sky. I'm not racist... but—and the tides turn, and kept animals start screaming in their cages, and the sun is eclipsed, and the mountains turn to dust—"I'm not racist, but: samosas. Do we really need them?"

Follow Joel on Twitter.

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Screenshot of a tweet from Abu Usamah

The same Islamic State militant with Calgary roots who burned his passport in a propaganda video, threatened the White House in an exclusive Skype interview with Shane Smith, and claimed Canada wasn't immune to the same types of attacks appears to be alive and tweeting, spreading fresh messages promoting jihad in Syria and Iraq.

The same online account linked with Farah Mohammed Shirdon—a 22-year-old Calgary native who joined the Islamic State sometime in the last two years and is arguably Canada's most notorious ISIS fighter in Syria and Iraq—reappeared on Twitter only for the social media company to suspend the account yesterday.

The ISIS jihadist who identifies as Abu Usamah online to VICE Canada, said via KIK messaging app that Twitter continues to kick him off of the popular social media platform. The same account I've communicated with is linked to other defunct social media accounts posting images of what appears to be Shirdon in Syria or Iraq, and connected to other known ISIS profiles online.

According to him, Twitter admins booted him "five times" and didn't notify Usamah on why he was suspended. His response: "I'm not too big on Twitter anymore. Don't got the time." At the same time we exchanged messages, Usamah said he monitored my reporting from Russia in early March.

When asked if he was in the so-called Islamic State—in the past he claimed to be in Mosul and Raqqa, respectively—Usamah was evasive claiming he could be in "Libya."

Whether or not that's true is unlikely. While the Islamic State organization is proving to be a growing player in the once-Gaddafi-ruled dictatorship, Usamah has often been a playful character online, once telling me in a message that "I'm an actor homie."

On a Twitter profile linked to his online persona as the "Muhajir Sumalee" (indeed, the same suspended profile promoted his KIK and Surespot messaging profiles), Usamah mentions being in Raqqa—the veritable capital of ISIS in territorial Syria.

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While VICE Canada was unable to independently verify Usamah's identity, Canada's respective federal law enforcement and intelligence agency both said they wouldn't talk about him.

And a new photo surfacing from his latest Twitter account appears to show Usamah to the left of a fighter and close friend who recently died in combat with the Islamic State.

It also appears Usamah is keenly aware of online surveillance of infamous Islamic State Twitter habits. In a post, he advises online ISIS-linked Twitter accounts against overshares.

"Don't compromise the life of your brothers in exchange for a few retweets," he wrote in a post attaching the below image. That kind of advice starkly contrasts Islamic State militants who tweeted the live execution of thousands of Shia men in June.

As he has in the past, Usamah is attempting to entice fresh recruits from the West to make Hijra (meaning a "migration" to Syria or Iraq) and fight for the Islamic State, asking potentials in one post "[h]ow many have been speaking about their desire for Hijrah for months but are still sitting idle in Dar al Kufr? Act, dont speak!"

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For Islamic State sympathizers at home, Usamah compels them to attack citizens. "How can rat poison be your ticket to Jannah (paradise)?" he says in one Twitter post. "All it takes is to invite your (kafir) neighbors over for BBQ and poison them."

The RCMP declined to comment on the status of Abu Usamah stating in an email that "only in the event that an investigation results in the laying of criminal charges, would the RCMP confirm its investigation, the nature of any charges laid and the identity of the individual(s) involved."

The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS)—the national spy service pegging the number of Canadians fighting in Syria at around 30—similarly declined to comment on Abu Usamah to VICE Canada.

Though the RCMP deferred specifically on whether Shirdon is under investigation, it recently laid terror-related charges against three individuals with Ottawa connections, including John "Yahya" McGuire—who similarly appeared in ISIS video propaganda in the summer—charging him with "facilitating an activity for a terrorist group" along with two other crimes.

Follow Ben Makuch on Twitter.

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Kristen Stewart in 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (2014), directed by Olivier Assayas

In the spring of 1986, at the age of 31, Olivier Assayas left his job as a reviewer at Cahiers du Cinéma for greener pastures, laying down his pen to pick up a camera. The transition from critic to creator appeared inevitable for the youthful Parisian. By switching vocations (or métiers, if you wanted French continuity), Assayas would join the fine company of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer—all of whom were once contributors to the prestigious magazine before taking their talents to the silver screen.

Since making the jump, Assayas has written and directed over a dozen feature films. Simultaneously a celebration of and lamentation for the digital age, his latest work revolves around an illustrious actress (played movingly by Juliette Binoche) who begrudgingly agrees to take part in a revival of the play that jumpstarted her career 20 years prior. Much of this spellbinding affair contains Binoche's pained and perplexed character rehearsing lines with her shrewd personal assistant, who is played by Kristen Stewart with a confluence of confidence, sexiness, and passion. As Clouds of Sils Maria unfurls, Assayas powerfully unpacks the insecurities and emotions of both of these characters with wit and wisdom. It's at once a melancholic evocation on the impermanence of youth and a searing commentary on the inanities of Hollywood. (It also contains a hilarious conversation about the virtues and vices of a sci-fi blockbuster that may literally induce a spit-take.)

In conversation, Assayas candidly discussed his fears, the evolution of his storied career, and why he was mesmerized by the unexpected talents of Kristen Stewart.

Trailer for 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (2014)

VICE: How has your work as a critic affected your films?
Olivier Assayas: Eh, you know, I've forgotten! [Laughs] The last piece I published in a film magazine as a film writer was in 1985. So we're talking a pretty long time. For me, film criticism was like film school. I learned whatever I needed to start making my films. I suppose that I was extremely lucky because I was very young. I could travel and go to film festivals and watch stuff I never would have watched if I had stayed in Paris. I could meet filmmakers I admired. And I also wrote in a magazine, which was fine in terms of publishing very long pieces. So I had a lot of space to ask myself the questions I kind of needed to answer to feel confident to make my own features. But, you know, I've made quite a few films since, and I don't believe in the same things, and I suppose I've changed a lot during the process.

There's a line in the film where Kristen Stewart's character says, "The text is like an object that's going to change perspective depending on where you're standing. " Do you feel your perspective has shifted in terms of looking at your body of work?
Well, hopefully. I've learned to be less theoretical. Hopefully I have learned to trust more of my instincts, to leave space for the actors to not exactly improvise, but certainly reinvent the scene. You learn that the process of filmmaking is about capturing real life and capturing real-life emotions. Ultimately, you don't have to be too stiff, you don't have to be too controlling, you have to let things happen.

But, in terms of how you can tell a story in a million different ways, that's something I subscribe to. When Kristen's character says that, it's practically the definition of the movie you're watching in the sense that, if you imagine the same film with two different actresses, it's a completely different story. At some early stage of the film, I was about to cast Mia Wasikowska instead of Kristen Stewart. I admire her and I would have been really happy to work with her, but it would have been a completely different film. We would have had completely different dynamics.

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Juliette Binoche in 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (2014), directed by Olivier Assayas

It feels as if these roles were written exclusively for Stewart and Binoche.

And what direction was that?

Especially Stewart, whom most people have undervalued throughout her career. What did you see that compelled you to cast her?

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Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (2014)

How much of these characters are projections of yourself, the people around you, and your experience in the film industry?

And you don't fear aging?

Have you ever suffered from artistic stagnation? A frustration with the work you're doing or compromising more than you want to be?

But once in a while, when I'm writing, I can be angry with my characters or with myself. You have to live those situations and the situations have their own logic. You invent characters, you put them in motion, but you're not sure where they're going to take you. And once in a while they take you to weird places and make you feel like you're stuck. As if you've reached a dead end, and you get angry because all that stuff will go straight to the wastebasket. And then you kind of overcome it and maybe you understand another angle and can get things right. But I'm often very angry with myself and my characters when I'm writing, in the same way you can be angry at any character.

You have no desire to make a superhero movie?

More editing than directing?
So boring. You know, I like the idea of action film, things happening in front of an actual camera. I don't have the patience. If I was more patient, if I was more competent technically, maybe I would have more fun doing fantasy movies. As it is, I'm happy to watch them.

Your characters in Clouds of Sils Maria often blend their professional life and personal life until you can't tell the difference between the two. Is that something you yourself work on?

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Juliette Binoche in 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (2014)

And has your work as a writer/director affected your world, and even the world of your wife Mia Hansen Love, who also makes great films? You both are constantly dabbling in these fictional worlds you create.

Does that scare you?

Isn't that problematic? The films must end eventually.

And what do you need protection from?

Clouds of Sils Maria is in selected theaters now, including IFC Center, BAM, and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York.

Sam Fragoso is a writer based in San Francisco. He is the founder of Movie Mezzanine, and his work has appeared in the Atlantic, Playboy, Forbes, and elsewhere. Follow Sam on Twitter.

Last May, the New York Times reported on the gruesome conditions workers faced while building a campus for New York University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The men, many of them from South Asia, had to pay recruitment fees to get the jobs, which were never paid back; they worked over 60 hours a week; their passports were kept and held by the contractors who hired them; when some organized a strike they were beaten by the police and deported. The article attracted so much attention that it led to an immediate public apology from NYU to the mistreated workers, and in June, the school and a UAE government department assigned investigation firm Nardello & Co. to see what truth there was behind the allegations published in the Times and other media outlets.

The report came out on Thursday, and while it frequently nods to NYU's good intentions and praises the labor guidelines the university and the UAE government adopted in 2009 and 2010, it noted that around a third of the 30,000 workers were exempt from those rules. Nardello also confirmed that employers had held workers' passports in violation of the guidelines and that the vast majority of workers had paid fees of $1,000 to $3,000 to recruiters in their home countries—which is a lot of money considering that many of them earn just over $200 a month.

These sorts of exploitative labor practices, which are widespread on construction projects in the Gulf, have rightly been the target of a lot of criticism. In March 2014, NYU professor Andrew Ross wrote a New York Times op-ed that decried these abuses. "If liberal cultural and educational institutions are to operate with any integrity in that environment," he wrote, "they must insist on a change of the rules: abolish the recruitment debt system, pay a living wage, allow workers to change employers at will and legalize the right to collective bargaining." (Last month, the sociologist was denied entry to the UAE just before embarking on a planned research trip.)

Related: Watch our report on labor practices elsewhere in the UAE:

The problems that developed on the NYU project go far beyond one American university not ensuring that its stated labor guidelines were followed. As the Nardello report points out, the workers on such projects have few opportunities to improve their situation—striking is illegal in the UAE, meaning it's up to institutions like NYU to ensure that laborers aren't abused.

One broader point that Nardello and the harsher critics of construction projects in the Gulf seem to agree upon is that it should be possible to treat the migrant workers who erect lavish buildings with more dignity.

"The UAE is hardly alone in its dependence on tragically underpaid and ill-treated migrant workers. Every developed, and fast-developing, country has its own record of shame," Ross wrote last year in the Times. "But in the Persian Gulf States, the lavish lifestyle of a minority composed of citizens and corporate expats is maintained by a vast majority that functions as a servant class."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Today's video - Students preemptively arrested over an alleged terror plot in Montreal, the indigenous Tembe tribe battles illegal logging in the Amazon, and high-tech military robots take on improvised explosive devices.

Exclusive: Homegrown Radical, Part 3

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[body_image width='1920' height='1080' path='images/content-images/2015/04/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/17/' filename='on-its-tenth-anniversary-psychonauts-reminds-us-that-identity-is-what-you-make-it-453-body-image-1429279693.jpg' id='47149']

I went to a private, all-male high school. In my freshman year, I was a 14-year-old skateboarder, obsessed with punk rock and video games. I had the severe misfortune of being the polar opposite of my classmates, the majority of whom were either from exceptionally wealthy families, extremely talented athletes, or a mind-boggling combination of both.

Psychonauts came out on April 19, 2005, a month before my freshman year ended, at a point where I felt like a complete outcast at school. The game, the first from Tim Schafer's (who we interviewed, not so long ago) independent Double Fine Productions, swept me up instantly. For the first time in my life, I felt a personal connection to a video game. Razputin, Psychonauts' goggles-sporting protagonist, was an outcast too. He was a ten-year-old-psychic carnie, but I could totally relate to him.

A decade later and I still relate to Raz, but I don't see him as an outsider anymore. Sure, he gets picked on after arriving at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, but within a few days, he is universally loved, becomes a hero and gets the girl. Compared to my high school experience, Raz had it made. Looking back, I think Raz seemed like a cool outsider because that's exactly what I needed from a video game at that time. Now I appreciate Psychonauts for completely different reasons.

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It's really not

For all of its humorous dialogue and offbeat charm, Psychonauts tells a complex tale. Raz's journey throughout the game isn't one of an outsider ultimately gaining the acceptance of others, but rather a coming of age story built around the ideas of perception, understanding, and personal identity.

The first time I played Psychonauts, I never noticed just how flawed the game's characters were. No one is perfect, with virtually every important character suffering from some kind of notable fault. But this is among the game's greatest strengths, adding a level of depth to the cast that ultimately allows Raz—and the player by extension—room to see each character grow.

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Sure is, Raz

Psychonauts' early hours revolve around Raz learning more about his psychic powers. Players know little about him outside of the fact the he is determined to become a Psychonaut—highly trained psychic spies—despite his father's distaste for the mentally gifted. Whispering Rock's whimsy serves as a goofy, albeit idyllic, setting for Raz to learn all the skills required to become a full-fledged Psychonaut. He must do so in a hurry, however, because like all exciting endeavors, the eventual arrival of Raz's father threatens to dash his dreams.

Raz is able to grow as a character by learning more psychic abilities. As he comes into his own, Raz makes friends, gets asked to make out with his crush, and uncovers a plot by Coach Oleander—Whispering Rock's military minded counsellor—to harvest the brains of every camper in order to take over the world. The combination of pertinent youthful moments and dire situations are undeniably important, as these events serve as a turning point for Raz, shaping him into a proper protagonist. After he is presented with an opportunity to save others, Raz becomes a new character entirely. He is no longer the strange runaway who snuck into camp, but a capable hero.

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This change, despite being subtle, represents a shift in both Raz's personal identity and how he is perceived by others. From this point on, Raz, aware and accepting of his newfound identity as a Psychonaut (though not being deemed one until the end of the game), takes his talents to the minds of others.

While the time Raz spends at Whispering Rock is a strong representation of Psychonauts' coming of age elements, perception and identity play an integral role during his journey to Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed. The decrepit asylum is not only the location of Oleander and Doctor Loboto's headquarters, but also the home of Psychonauts' most outwardly flawed characters.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/md_8uDtbffQ' width='560' height='315']

'Psychonauts,' trailer

Edgar, Boyd, Gloria, and Fred, long-term patients at the asylum, are introduced as insane. They are a haggard, troubled bunch, racked by delusions, split personalities and tormented by their respective pasts. Despite the reveal of each character implying that they may be beyond help, Psychonauts allows the player to understand the cause of their troubles through the use of the Psycho-Portal.

A literal doorway into another person's mind, the Psycho-Portal allows Raz access into each patient's psyche. In doing so, his perception of them is changed. Inside each mind, Raz sees the characters as they see themselves.

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While every one of the four committed characters are undeniably troubled, the time that Raz spends scouring their brain worlds proves that they are rarely as disturbed as they appear in reality. Much like Raz's growth from a simple psychic boy to an adept hero, Psychonauts delicately allows the player to understand and ultimately correct the cause of these patients' issues.

By uncovering the mental vaults stowed away in the minds of the patients, Raz is given greater insight into the causes of their slip into instability. This added perspective helps with the characterization of each patient. Surviving all four minds often requires Raz to quite literally destroy the cause of their troubles, allowing the patients to overcome past problems and accept their identity and restored sanity.

Few games deal with identity in the way that Psychonauts does. Video games, as a relatively new medium, often struggle with presenting a compelling narrative at all. Psychonauts, by giving its main character a chance to grow and genuinely understand and accept the identity of others, excels at crafting a story with conviction. Even ten years after its release, it still serves as a humorous yet powerful reminder that identity is what you make it. Sometimes, all it takes is a yellow-skinned boy poking around your head to keep that in mind.

Follow Raymond on Twitter.

I've never liked mushrooms. I've tried, over the years, to come around to them—not least of all because my wife's a fully-fledged veggie, and apparently they're like "their meat," or something. Nope, not buying that, for even the most meager mouthful. They're foul, any salient fleshiness factor overpowered by a taste falling firmly into the category of repulsive. Sometimes my wife cuts them up small and stirs them into our dinner. Sometimes I eat them to be polite. Mostly, I pick them out and leave them on the side of my plate. I am 35, going on six years old. But fuck them, because they're rancid, stinking fungal bastards.

And now one of them wants to kill me.

I've only been playing Acid Nerve's Titan Souls for 40 minutes, but I've died more than 40 times (I was on 37 the last time I paid attention to the save screen's stats)—and most of those deaths have come in the company of a lethal-spores-spunking, ground-pounding mushroom thing that just won't let me stick my one good arrow into its stupid... Actually, I'm not sure where to stick it, and that's part of the problem at the moment. I'm guessing I'm supposed to shoot it at the circular purple opening on its stalk—but such is its movement, leaping and spinning, constantly coughing forth one-touch-and-you're-toast clouds of death, that lining up a kill shot has, thus far, proved impossible.

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This boss can only be beaten by an arrow in the eye, the problem being that same eye's habit of shooting deadly lasers

The repugnant fungus— Obello, apparently—is one of the I'm-not-actually-sure-how-many-exactly (but more than some and south of infinite) bosses in Titan Souls, and bosses is all that the freshly released game, made by the three-man team at Manchester studio Acid Nerve, deals in. A demake-cum-tribute to Fumito Ueda's eternal Shadow of the Colossus, mixing in the lose-and-lose-and-lose-and-win gameplay of From Software's Souls series, it's a tough, 16-bit-styled, top-down RPG of sorts that pits the player character—one hit point, one retrievable projectile—against a series of titular titans. They've one hit point, too, assuming you can survive long enough to uncover it. The mushroom and me, we're yet to reach that stage in our relationship. But before it came four first-wave bosses, each of which met with a permanent end by my simple bow and arrow.

One was a blob that became more blobs when I landed a clean strike, eventually uncovering a heart that was easily enough speared into stillness and death. Next, a brain in a block of ice that required some well-timed bow work to fire a flaming bolt at its cuboid frame, melting away the protective layers. Then, another cube-shaped adversary, this time with a single, laser-blasting eye that I fall victim to a few times before sticking it good while drawing back my arrow from a distance—you can sort of "suck" it back into the clutches of your little hero. Fourth was a stone creature that pounded the earth with gigantic fists. He got maybe three or four ground-shaking blows in before I put pay to his boisterousness.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/7rf9khR4vLc' width='560' height='315']

'Titan Souls' launch trailer

But then came the mushroom. Thankfully, once the first four enemies in Titan Souls are seen off, you can choose your own order for attacking the next array. So when I turn the game back on, later, I'll be able to go after something else instead. There's a butt cheek-baring yeti, I'm told, and a snake that patrols a frozen lake. There's a beastly flower with flailing tendrils of deadly thorns. One of Acid Nerve's creations has a crystal core surrounded by lava. There's great imagination on show—but make a single misstep and the encounters are over.

Which can be, effectively, instantaneously if you're not so hot with the dodge button, leading to a (mercifully short) trudge back to the relevant battle arena for a rematch. It's a good thing that the music is so delightful in these between-boss "hubs," as you'll be hearing a lot of it. I'm yet to feel that urge to propel my PS4 pad into the floor with such force that it sends its tiny sticks flying up to the ceiling, rendering the controller utterly wrecked; but much like the recently released Bloodborne, Titan Souls is a game that's going to infuriate players regularly short on patience.

It eggs you onwards with its opening quartet of easily beatable bosses before smashing your hopes to smithereens the first time you come up against one of the following beasts. It's visually cute as a button, and (to echo a just-previous point) sounds beautiful, but when it bares its teeth it's like gazing into the monstrous maw of a T-Rex from about eight inches away.

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The trick with this one is to dodge his fists and stick your arrow into that purple patch he's trying so hard to shield... good luck!

Reviews for Titan Souls haven't been universally kind—I've spied a few 5/10 marks. And I can see, already, that the game's replay value is likely to be low once that final titan's fallen. But then, the same could have been said of Shadow of the Colossus, and I returned to that. People are constantly starting new game pluses on Dark Souls and its sequel, and it could be that Acid Nerve has more terrors to unveil as DLC, to prolong the game's lifetime in the way Monument Valley did with its Forgotten Shores expansion. Titan Souls' simple premise and exacting gameplay is sure to encourage competitive speedrunning—the game's demo certainly saw a rash of personal bests uploaded to YouTube. So it's far from a title to pick up only to put down, for good, an hour or two later.

Especially not if you, like me, keep getting flattened by a fucking mushroom. "We never set out to make grown men cry," programmer Mark Foster told me last month at Rezzed, where I first played Titan Souls. But cup your hand to the PlayStation Network, right now, and no doubt you'll hear the soft sobs of a handful of players lamenting the fate of their late DualShock 4, split asunder before a rock-hard risotto ingredient turned terrifically rampant.

Titan Souls is out now for PlayStation 4, Vita, and PC. It is being played by the author on PS4 using a code supplied by the game's publicist. Don't expect him to get much better at it any time soon because, if the above didn't make this clear, it's really bloody hard.

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Some unidentified teens in Pennsylvania

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Screencaps via Google Maps and 6ABC.

The incident: A woman shushed some teens during Furious 7.

The appropriate response: Not talking anymore.

The actual response: They attacked the woman, breaking her eye socket.

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania woman Cindy Santamaria-Williams was at a screening of Furious 7 at a theater in the Poconos.

During the movie, she says, there were three teenage girls that were making too much noise. "They were very loud, rowdy. They were cursing a lot," she told WNEP.

Cindy says that she asked the teens to be quiet, and also told a manager about them.

After the movie, Cindy went out to the parking lot, where the three teens, and five of their friends, were reportedly waiting for her.

That's when, according to Cindy, one of the girls said to the group, "When one swings, we all swing." After which she swung. And they all swung.

Cindy was reportedly knocked to the ground before being punched and kicked by her attackers. She received a black eye, a broken eye socket, and bruising in the attack.

Police are searching for the teens, two of whom are pictured above.

Cry-Baby #2: An unnamed teen in Ohio

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Screencap via Google Maps.

The incident: A woman confiscated her son's iPhone after he refused to clean his room.

The appropriate response: Tidying your room, but being really passive-aggressive about it. Or pretending you didn't care about the iPhone anyway, to annoy her.

The actual response: The son trashed his mom's car.

Last week, 40-year-old Kimberley Harrison asked her 13-year-old son to clean his bedroom.

In a statement to police, Kimberley said that the teen refused, so she confiscated his iPhone.

The boy was, reportedly, really, really not into this.

According to the police report, the boy confronted his mother and spat on her. Her husband, 46-year-old Jerome McDowell, allegedly attempted to intervene by explaining to the boy "how good he had it," which the boy responded to by hitting Jerome with a Gatorade bottle.

The boy, the police report goes on, then went outside, climbed on to the hood of his mom's 2001 Honda Accord, and jumped up and down on the roof and windshield, breaking the glass and denting the roof.

The boy then reportedly ran away, telling his mother that he was "not coming home." Like most incidents of teenagers running away, his departure was short-lived, and he returned to the house not long afterward. Upon seeing him, his mother called the police, who arrested the boy and took him to a juvenile justice center on vandalism and assault charges. Presumably sans-iPhone.

Which of these unnamed teenage terrors is the biggest cry-baby? Let us know in this poll:

Previously: A man allegedly desecrated a grave to piss off his ex-wife's attorney and a family was threatened with a fine for building a box fort outside their house.

Winner: The guy who allegedly desecrated a grave :(

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.