VICE's Justin Ling spoke with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

The government of Ontario dropped new changes to the province's heavily-regulated liquor industry last week. But, despite being touted as "radical," you still won't be able to buy beer at your local corner store.

Critics, including the federal government's champion for modernizing Canada's liquor regime, say the announcement is largely a failure.

The changes mean some grocery stores will be licensed to sell beer over the coming years, growlers will finally be stocked on store shelves, The Beer Store will be forced to sell more craft brews, and more provincial liquor stores will carry 12-packs. But, on the negative side—taxes on beer are going up.

Though critics suggest they are just tinkering, Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government might begin to crack the door open for other provinces to reduce the regulatory puritanism for buying booze.

VICE sat down with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa to figure out if this is the big deal the Liberals claim it is.

The largest part of the plan is expanding beer sales to the province's grocery stores, which is an idea that has proved wildly popular. There are, however, three huge caveats: the stores can only sell six-packs and individual beers, the stores will only be able to sell $1 million in beer per year, and there will only be 450 beer-laden grocery stores allowed to operate across the province.

The changes come from recommendations in the Premier's Advisory Council on Government Assets.

The province currently has three types of liquor stores—the LCBO, which can sell spirits, wine, and beer (though only six-packs and singles of the latter); The Beer Store, which can sell two-fours and 12-packs; and a series of private wineries, which largely only sell Ontario wine.

The Progressive Conservatives had campaigned on opening up beer sales to grocery stores during the last election, while only the Green Party endorsed ending The Beer Store monopoly.

Of those 450 grocery stores that will soon be allowed to sell beer, only 150 stores will be stocking the shelves with beer by May 31, 2017. They will be located in "urban population centres."

The sales cap means each store will only be able to move about 85,000 cases of beer a year. Which isn't a lot. By way of comparison: each Beer Store in Ontario moved roughly 200,000 cases (including 12 and 24 packs) in 2012.

Sousa says the plan is a win-win.

"We've been able to protect the price while are the same time broadening distribution and convenience," he told Daily VICE over a pint of beer from Great Lakes Brewery at Bar Hop, in downtown Toronto.

Obviously, many were hoping that the focus would be more on convenience, and that the Wynne government would open up beer sales to convenience stores. VICE asked Sousa why Ontarians, unlike their Quebec neighbours, still face prohibition in their neighbourhood corner store.

"We also have another responsibility," Sousa said. "And that's one of social responsibility."

He said that groups were worried about booze ending up in the hands of children, and that was the biggest roadblock to completely reinventing the system. Sousa also said that limiting distribution keeps costs down.

Some prices, though, will be going up.

To compensate for making things better for people who want to drink beer, the premier has slapped a new temperance tax on the hoppy goodness. The price of a two-four will be hiked 25 cents every year for the next four years.

The biggest brewers, however, will be forced to maintain a price freeze for two years. That means that you'll see the price of smaller breweries and craft ales go up, but Labatt and Canadian will be the same price.

But don't worry, the government press release swears, "Ontario consumers will pay prices for their beer that are at or below the lowest prices in Canada."

Sousa underlined that: he says his government was cautious not to turn Ontario in British Columbia or Alberta—where private retailers mean Westerns can pick up liquor just about anywhere, and late at night—and where "it costs almost six bucks more a two-four."

Ontario Beer Facts, a lobby campaign paid for by the Beer Store, backs that up, noting that Ontario has some of the cheapest beer in Canada (except for Quebec, where "prices were almost equal," meaning that Quebec beers are a third cheaper).

Those numbers, however, are suspect. Most cases of beer in BC cost roughly the same as in Ontario. And there's no real evidence that the deregulation scheme in those provinces—as opposed to taxes or transport costs—are the reason why beer is pricier, if it is actually pricier.

Last week's announcement, however, is a victory for craft brewers. For years, they've been virtually shut-out of The Beer Store, which is Ontario's multi-national beer monopoly. Owned and operated mostly by Molson and Labatt, with Sleeman Breweries owning a small slice of the company, the store has become a symbol of hapless Soviet-style management.

The Toronto Star has reported how the Beer Store has leveraged political favour in order to keep their sweetheart deal, at the expense of consumers and small breweries that have sprung up across the province in recent years.

The Wynne government will now be requiring The Beer Store to give 20 percent shelf space to craft breweries. Currently, the requirement is just seven percent.

Some small restaurants will soon be allow to buy beer at cheaper prices thanks to last week's changes.

But Thursday's announcement has no impact on how wine and spirits or sold. It is, for example, still impossible for wineries from the rest of the country to sell their products in Ontario.

Up until enterprising Conservative MP Dan Albas wrote a private members bill last year that changed things, it was still technically illegal to bring wine across provinces for personal use.

But with the federal restrictions out of the way, it's still up to the provinces to knock down their trade barriers. And they won't, for some reason, meaning it's virtually impossible to get Nova Scotia wine in Ontario, or vice versa.

VICE asked Albas whether the Ontario Government's announcement did much to impress him.

It did not, he said.

"Basically, this is a giant cash grab," Albas told VICE over the phone from his BC riding. "It will benefit the big corporate brewers."

Albas says that between the tax hikes, and the lack of action to break up corporate ownership of the big three brewers, the changes do very little positive, and may actually cement the power of the LCBO and Beer Store.

He notes that by only allowing a small number of grocery stores sell only a very small amount of beer, it's likely that those chosen, "golden," beer-carrying grocery stores will simply carry big-name brands that can handle mass distribution, further alienating craft breweries.

"It creates another beer monopoly," Albas says.

Albas says he hopes the Wynne government actually does something to reduce those trade barriers.

Sousa says the advisory council is looking at that—"that's the next phase of our review," he says—but Toronto has previously rejected the idea that Ontario would make it legal to buy wines from other provinces.

Every province except Manitoba and British Columbia maintain the protectionist barriers to importing wine. When it comes to deregulating liquor sales, only Alberta has privatized the approach entirely—a handful of other provinces maintain hybrid systems. Other provinces have considered loosening government control of the system, but Ontario is the only one in recent years to make any progress, no matter how minor it may be.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

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This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Since 1997, Rupert Goold has been attempting to redefine theater in Europe. From Shakespearean classics to a musical rendition of American Psycho, the British-born stage director has a penchant for taking celebrated texts and reconfiguring them for modern times. With nearly 20 years of experience in theater, Goold has just made his first foray into feature film with True Story.

Adapted from the memoir of former New York Times journalist Michael Finkel, the film charts the degeneration of two men with a unique history. The first is Finkel, played by Jonah Hill, whose reputation as a noble journalist was sullied after evidence revealed he produced fictitious reports on the African slave trade (i.e. he was like Johann Hari or Jayson Blair before they came along). The second character is Christian Longo, played by James Franco, who was a fugitive on the run using the alias "Mike Finkel" before being captured and convicted for the murder of his wife and two children.

Now unexpectedly entangled in a story that could salvage his career, Finkel begins interviewing Longo over a series of months. On the outset it would appear that these two have little in common. But Goold attempts to excavate the truth, presenting us with the bond these two similarly flawed and insecure men forge. Suddenly, the movie becomes a duplicitous game of cat-and-mouse, where you're uncertain of who is playing who.

In conversation, Goold discussed his move into cinema, his appreciation for the enigma that is James Franco, and why it requires unfettered narcissism to be an artist.

VICE: With such an esteemed career in theater, what was your reason for turning to film?
Rupert Goold: Other than the natural fantasy of being a film director? At some point I wanted to be an actor, but as I was getting into drama, I just felt sort of uncertain about learning this new whole world and kind of drifted into stage. And then the thing that I always set out to do got further and further away, and I just got to a point when a friend of mine sent me a book called, My First Movie which is an anthology of lots of different movie directors writing essays about their first movie. And he had underlined this essay Ang Lee had written where Lee says, "You know, I have friends from film school in their 40s who still think they're gonna make their first movie." I was in my late 30s and thought, "If I don't give this a go right now, then it's never going to happen."

What was it about this particular story that compelled you to get involved?
In retrospect, I think I am really interested in the idea of shame, particularly shame in men and how that affects masculine identity, so I found that interesting. I was very interested about what happened to men when they lose everything near the apex of their career or life point. If [Michael] Finkel (Jonah Hill) had lost his job in his early twenties, it would have been a Rite of Passage, and we all kind of know what that's like. If you lose your way in your forties or fifties, it's a mid-life crisis, but then you find something else to do. But, if you lose everything around the age of 30, as both these men did, that's a very shocking and particular kind of trauma.

The other thing that I kind of like is this idea of a nemesis, which is in some of my other stage work, especially the Shakespeare films that I worked on. And again, I think it's quite a male thing—men, particularly youngish men, are often defined by a very, very intense rivalry or competitive bond. Often, it's with somebody who may be a colleague or a friend, but they never quite escape the attraction of that moment. You obviously see it in sports, you think of Federer–Nadal, Frazier and Ali. But equally in politics you get it, but they are sort of locked together in a perpetual conflict, and that element of the two men, I think, drew me.

I mean, those are only some of the things. I suppose I liked the idea that being generically a true crime thriller on some level, and there's not really jeopardy through extraneous serial killers, and guns and knives and stuff. It's unease generated through moral and psychological positions, rather than from sensationalism.

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And what drew you to the character of Michael Finkel?
He's the man who is compassionate, who has a political agenda, and who, actually, other than his big mistake, could be a really scrupulous journalist. He committed his professional life to extreme hazard in Haiti, Gaza, and Africa, and then lost everything. His sort of response was to try and find and look at extreme poverty in his own country that he hadn't looked at before. I think part of him looked at Longo and said, "He's like the Haitian boat people I've stayed with." He wanted to magnify and make Steinbeck-like something that wasn't really there or he was projecting into.

I really recognize that need to authenticate yourself through profound suffering or bearing witness to people who live very, very complicated and difficult lives. I think that speaks to a really Western anxiety about how we all go to shopping malls and have nice boats and drive cars, and it was a kind of emblem of that for me.

Have you found value?
I am not Marxist politically, but I'm Marxist in terms of what he says about if you make a chair and you see the chair in front of you, you know you've made it. It is a very, very satisfying thing. And I think if you put all the work into making a movie or a play or a book, that has incredible validation and a kind of richness. Making this film has been backbreaking and far more complicated and complex than I expected it to be. But I feel huge pride in the fact that we did it.

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Still from 'True Story'

Were James Franco and Jonah Hill attached to the project from the beginning?
Neither of them. James knew about it. He had seen a couple of my shows I'd done on stage, I think. He is a really, really great actor. I didn't quite appreciate getting to work with him. But what I also really like is that he has such a remote mystery as a persona. I mean nobody really knows what he does, where he lives, his sexuality, everything. He's like an enigma wrapped in a mystery as a riddle. And people want to mock that at times, and find it suspicious. They go, "Oh that's pretentious!" "What does he stand for?"

In a weird way, that was very useful for this role because that remoteness and that strange integrity mixed with irony, it's pure Longo. I find that really fascinating. The other part was much harder to cast because, I say this with all respect to your profession, people sort of want to read journalists as craven and manipulative, and Finkel—although I like Jonah Hill—has a genuine political agenda in many ways. He is a very flawed or potentially even narcissistic seeming character. I felt the film needed somebody who was going to be really soulfully and empathetic and Jonah felt like a real person.

Related: VICE meets the man behind 'The Interview'

I think narcissism runs through both characters.
Oh my god, yeah. It's the big theme of it. They both crave readers. They are very hungry for the perfect reader and they find it in each other. Longo's spent his life revering Finkel as a writer, and Finkel finds Longo incredibly fascinating. If he is an artist, I really recognize something like that. Especially because I know what it's like to put a show on and be disappointed with everybody's responses, because you want them to see it the way that you see it. So if you did find someone who perceived your work the way you see it, there's a kind of terrible narcissism and vanity in that you kind of, you can fall in love with them in a way, and then go, "Wow! Yes, you're like me!" Which is I think what happened with these two.

Isn't it a prerequisite as a filmmaker, or any artist vying for people's attention, to be narcissistic?
Absolutely. I always really wrestled with this idea, "Is it art?" Being a director, am I an artist or a craftsman? I always wanted to have that analytical, "Yeah I'll learn my trade, I'll learn about lenses, I'll learn about staging, I'll learn about directing actors." I hit 30 and realized it doesn't actually matter if you know all the technique in the world if you don't have something to say, and to think you have to stare at yourself and go, "I'm important, I'm fascinating!" And of course that is incredibly narcissistic. All artists are total narcissists.

I'm going to read a quote of yours, which I'm sure you love. "I came home today to an empty house after the Olivier Awards, carrying my trophy for Best Director, and I realized that I have peaked. It's now going to be downhill on the way." So, how are you feeling these days?
I think that's about closure. If you work in dramatic fiction, the mark of a storyteller is whether you can begin and end it properly. And I thought, "Oh, that's a great closure point! Great! I could be hit by a bus now and feel like, 'Good closure!'" I feel ridiculous because I am such a novice in this form now, but I also think that you've got to keep pushing yourself into new areas.

I remember being terrified on the first day of shooting. In New York with a New York crew, nobody knew who I was. I didn't know a single actor on set. No designer, nobody that I'd ever worked with before. I'd just turned 40 and I went, "Why am I doing this?" I'm away from my family for eight months and you do it to kind of push yourself—to not get complacent, to stay alive.

Follow Sam Fragoso on Twitter.

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Meditation at dawn in the stone circle at Tamera eco-village, Portugal

When I set out to spend a year touring the world's communes I expected anarchic, possessionless wanderings. I wanted to burn my Air Maxes, quit Facebook, and forsake hygiene. I imagined dancing around a Druid pyre while downing cups of elk blood. What I found was a bureaucratic internet maze of credit card payments, application forms, and groups of middle-aged people making sure they washed at 30 degrees.

Communes have grown up. Gone is the time when you'd drive off in your parents' car, sell it, and give the money to some all-supreme leader before being treated to a welcoming orgy in a goat shed. Now communes patiently ask visitors to only come on designated "Welcome Weekends" and not make any noise after 10 PM.

In reality, true communes are almost extinct. A commune is only a commune when the members share all their possessions. In order to understand how today's communes function we have to call them by their proper name: intentional communities.

Intentional communities are places where people come together to live out a specific cause. This cause could be a commitment to shedding their fingernails in order to achieve their idea of peak physicality, but more often than not it's something far less irrational and cult-y, like a desire to live with more ecological awareness, environmental sustainability, or to only eat vegan.

Unlike communes, intentional communities are willing to use the tools of the privatized world to achieve their aims for sustainable living. But sometimes the power of these economic tools gets too much to handle and the community ends up destroying its own values in the process.

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Sunset over the swimming pool at Esalen Institute, California

Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California is the archetypal story of how youthful socialism decayed into middle-aged conservatism. It began, in 1962, as a radical alternative living retreat where thinkers from Aldous Huxley to Fritz Perls experimented with theories of behavioral psychology and human communication. Now it acts as a five-star holiday spa charging $100 a night to stay in a shared dorm, where the only way you can visit is if you sign up for an expensive mediation/healing/mindfulness workshop.

Esalen discovered that what they had created was marketable, and that they would have a much easier time "living different" if they only allowed the rich to take part in their game.

Grow Heathrow, a protest squat in a derelict greenhouse complex near Heathrow airport, is a community that's pushing the other organizational extreme. Environmentalists seized the land in 2010 to oppose the building of a third runway, and since then the community has been truly anarchical: There are no fixed jobs, no cooking schedules, and no formal application policies.

Sounds great, until you see how the lack of government lets the strong exploit the weak, and the lack of a positive raison d'être—as opposed to its negative stance against the airport—has caused micro-politics to flare. The most charismatic members of the community use the space as a playground for pet projects; they design geodesic eco-domes or DJ-booth bicycles, while those with less self-confidence and entrepreneurial vision make sure everyone has enough firewood and aren't bothered by rats. The in-crowd feels little loyalty to the squat because they know it's only a matter of time before they're kicked off the land. The wood choppers and rat killers are the residents who want Grow Heathrow to be their home and their family, and so are prepared to do the dirty work. No one means to exploit anyone, but without a collective future aim the community is unable to manage the workload fairly, and this leaves the "working class" alienated and bitter.

Other communities are doing a better job of balancing egalitarianism with environmentalist progress, but have lost some of the flair, mystique, and openness that draws in a younger crowd.

Sieben Linden is an eco-village in central Germany that's home to 100 adults, 40 children, and almost no 20-somethings. They live in pleasant houses and each use only 33 percent of the electricity of an average German citizen; they're changing the world, but it doesn't smell like teen spirit.

When they first arrived at the site everyone imagined their ideal future house: turrets, slides, balconies, domes; creativity was abound. But when the eco-kids found out that the most sustainable way to build a straw-bale house was to make it rectangular, two-storey and covered with solar panels they succumbed to their higher vision and threw out their romantic designs. Now they're left with the uniform aesthetic of Soviet Russia and a content asceticism that frowns on art for art's sake.

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A secluded "love-space" at Tamera eco-village, Portugal

Tamera is the hotter, brasher sister of Sieben Linden. Started by a bunch of Germans in the hills of southern Portugal the mid-1990s, Tamera calls itself a "Research Centre for Realistic Utopia." Much like other progressive living experiments, they believe that one route to this utopia is to encourage the open and honest communication of personal fears and desires. They've also got some kookier policies, such as talking to animals to stop them from eating crops, using a stone circle to communicate with siblings in Palestine, and an avowed belief that polygamy is the surest way to avoid jealousy.

But its not these eccentricities that cripple Tamera's utopic dream, it's their ironic lack of willingness to question their own system. I visited with 200 other curious newcomers on a 12-day "get-to-know-us" immersion course. On the last night us greenhorns were allowed to creatively express how the community had made us feel. One group of plucky amateur actors made a satirical theater piece that poked fun at the German strictness of the "camp," the awkward complexity of how to invite a potential partner to a "love space," and the overall self-importance of the eco-village. The jovial mockery hit a nerve. Instead of reflecting on this honest but critical feedback, the Tamerians rejected the satire as offensive and disrespectful. This community—one that preached the importance of deep and intelligent communication—was letting pride and self-righteousness block it from reading the lesson in the art. There is no summer immersion course planned for 2015.

Tamera's self-protectiveness may block them from attracting inquisitive allies, but shedding your radical beliefs altogether seems a surer path to entropy. Sunburst Sanctuary in southern California is (only just) living proof.

Related: VICE travels to Slab City, an ex-military base-cum-squatter haven in Southern California, inhabited by drug addicts, eccentrics, army vets, hippies, and just plain old weirdos.

Los Angeles, 1968. Three-hundred free spirits follow Kriya meditation guru Norman Paulsen into the Santa Barbara foothills. They herd sheep, weave baskets, and live celibate. Ten years later they've had kids, bought houses and started businesses. Now they're a 20-strong community of lovely 60-somethings whose grown-up children—long bored of meditation—have joined the modern world. With no heirs and no new followers, the community has no one to maintain the meditation center or look after the collective farm. By diluting their zealous poverty with the comforts of modern life they offer no inspiring ideology to tempt in the young questioners of the world.

But if young hearts are what's needed to keep a community alive, where better to start one than a city? Lois Arkin founded the Los Angeles Eco-Village in 1993, and has been leading the urban house-sharing project ever since. The intentions are the same as many eco-villages: use bikes, re-use grey water, have solar panels, eat together at least once a week. The difference is that people can do normal jobs—lawyers, electricians, journalists—because they're not stuck out in the wilderness. The Los Angeles Eco-Village is a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with the cost and loneliness of living in an urban jungle, and a great example of how to live more sustainably in the modern world. It's just a little too close to normal life for the radical romantic in me.

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Sunrise at Burning Man Festival, Nevada

Ironically, the most wildly expressive place I visited on my tour of communes wasn't actually a commune. Burning Man is an arts and music festival you'll have already heard of. If you haven't, the basic vibe is that thousands of people gather at a location in the Nevada desert where money is banned and everyone is encouraged to share. The people are extraordinarily friendly, extraordinarily drunk and have spent so much money preparing for the party that sharing isn't much of an ask.

When 60,000 people enter a desert, rich and jobless for one week only, craziness is easy to come by. Thing is, when you're trying to build a sustainable plan for new ways to manage humanity and tend the Earth, you need patience, discipline, and sobriety.

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A hand-built cob house at Emerald Earth community, California

Emerald Earth, a tiny Redwood-shrouded community in northern California, has a new members policy to match the Illuminati. One of the four permanent members (two more are on a year-long probation period) gave me a checklist of what they look for in new recruits: lived in nature before, have a business project that uses the community land to earn an income, be familiar with physical labor, experience of living in another intentional community, have good email decorum, and admin skills. This might seem paranoid, elitist and businesslike, but it is simply a way to ensure the community stays strong enough to sustain itself.

This is what I've learned from my journeys to communities: they are not hippy playgrounds for kids who hate their parents. They are serious endeavours by committed activists who want to experiment with sustainable ways for humans to live together and look after the planet. And in order to achieve this aim within our global capitalist society they've had to open bank accounts.

There is a simple impasse between the practicalities of intentional living and the image of rebellion one might expect from a commune. If you're more interested in feeling like you're breaking the rules than working for real change, head to Secret Garden Party, take acid, get naked, and climb a nine-meter statue of a fox. Like this guy.

All the communes I've visited were started and maintained by thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive people who have a commitment to a cause. This doesn't mean they are particularly welcoming, self-effacing, irreverent, or happy: they are not showmen, they are not entertainers, and they're not all that wild. They are normal people living a slightly different life to the rest of us, struggling to live more consciously and simply in this increasingly mechanized world.

To read more about Rich's adventures in intentional communities, visit his blog.

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Popper kit. Don't use it; it's bad. All photos by the author

The fact that there's an entire holiday associated with smoking weed should tell you everything you need to know about how great it is. They don't just hand out holidays for everything—flag day excluded. But when you're young, you don't know about different strains of weed or their effects, you just know that getting high is awesome and that you'd like to do it as much as your schedule permits.

As a teenager growing up in Northern Ontario, I came of age around a group of people who also liked to get high—probably because there wasn't much to do where we lived except go to the movies or hang out in the parking lot in front of convenience stores. When you're a teenager with limited access to funds and only a handful of shady friends who could get you (not good) weed, you need to get creative with your search to get a buzz. It was this combination of desperation for getting high and limited resources with which to buy weed that led me to trying poppers.

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Popper bong

A popper is essentially a bong hit with a cigarette, but it's different from dumping some batch on top of a leafy bowl. First, you need a metal bowl with a long stem. Then, you unscrew the bowl, so only the stem remains, which is referred to as the "popper bit." You rip off a small piece of a cigarette and insert it flat into the bit, into which it fits perfectly. You then take the bit with the cigarette in it and tap the whole thing on top of some ground up weed until you can't see any more of the tobacco. The popper bit, now stuffed with a double layer of cigarette and weed, goes into the bong and is smoked. This last part takes the most practice, since for the operation to successfully work you need to make sure you can clear the bit in a single toke attempt. You know you're successful when you hear the "pop" of the cigarette being pulled into the bong water—hence the name "poppers." The first few times you try to do this, you will undoubtedly cough up a lung. But with enough practice, you figure out the breath control and inhalation speed necessary to be successful.

Poppers are a very functional way to get high: I would do one right after waking up, one before leaving for school, and then binge on them at night until I fell asleep. One cigarette is good for about five to seven poppers, and I'd go through a pack of cigarettes a week while doing this.

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Popper with cigarette

A lot of you may read the above and say that this sound disgusting. You are not wrong. The benefits of smoking poppers is that it uses considerably less weed, and you get the headrush of smoking your first cigarette every time you do a hit. However, the downsides are pretty harsh: the smoke you're exhaling smells like the inside of roadkill anus, the bong is permanently tinged with the residue of this weird tobacco grime—meaning you can never use it to smoke normal weed out of without always getting a weird aftertaste—and it fucking destroys your lungs.

When you smoke a cigarette, you inhale that smoke through a filter. But when you're smoking a popper, you're taking that cigarette bareback: the only thing between you and the the tobacco is the bong water. You're also mainlining it into your lungs in the process, which is part of what gets you high, but is also what will eventually shred your lungs.

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Popper with weed

I did dozens of poppers every day for almost five years straight, and quitting was one of the hardest things I had to do. I would probably still be doing it had I not started noticing that I would start to get stabbing pains in my chest every time I took a larger-than-normal breath.

It's one of those things that you know is so destructive for you in the long term, but you can't stop because the momentary rush it gives you outweighs any potential downsides that can come down the line. I guess that's true of any drug, but indulging in poppers feels more innocent than shooting heroin or doing lines of ketamine. It's just a cigarette and some weed, what's the big deal?

Today's video - Standing up to Arctic oil exploration in Baffin Bay, questioning Ontario's historic new rules for beer sales, your first look at the new series Canadian Cannabis, and for 420, THC-infused ice cream.

Exclusive: Canadian Cannabis: Cash Crop

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The man trying to change the way you have sex with strangers. Photos courtesy Robert Gorkin

Two years ago, in March 2013, Bill Gates announced a new project through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund research into next generation condoms. Although cheap, simple to make, and widely available worldwide, Gates noted that there's still one massive barrier to seeing this disease- and pregnancy-preventing miracle of modern contraception used regularly and reliably: Most people think they feel like shit, robbing us of the sensation that makes fucking fun. So, Gates figured, perhaps if the Foundation offered $100,000 grants for research into new materials and designs (and up to $1 million for the development of successful concepts) they could incentivize a breakthrough in condom technology that'd finally make them feel good, increasing contraceptive usage worldwide and bettering global health and family planning in the process.

The world has responded to Gates's call with gusto. As of today, 52 research projects have received grants from the Foundation. Many of these projects focus on how we put on condoms, reducing psychological barriers to usage, innovative new materials, or lubricants and gels to make them more pleasurable.

But of all the fascinating new condoms in the works, one of the most interesting is the (as-of-yet theoretical) hydrogel condom. An initiative from a group of material scientists at Australia's University of Wollongong, who had little (research) experience with condoms until they got their Gates grant last June, "Project Geldom" hopes to use this ultra-strong and skin-like material, famous for recreating bodily tissues in prosthetics, to get closer than ever before to recreating the feel of unprotected sex while still offering protection—in the process displacing latex. But beyond just feeling natural, the Wollongong researchers believe that their hydrogels could actually improve on the feel of natural sex, building in automatically released internal lube and Viagra for instance, to make people not just accept condoms, but want to use them.

At the moment, the Wollongong team is still proving that their material can match the contraceptive power of latex and preparing for biometric tests to see exactly what effects on sensation their hydrogels can have. But while we wait for their new magic condoms to come onto the market, VICE caught up with project leader, Dr. Robert Gorkin, to talk about the origins of the idea, hydrogels, and improving on natural sex.

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VICE: Where did this idea come from? I know you were working with hydrogels before this project started, but how did that turn into... condoms? Robert Gorkin: Yeah [ laughs]. We were at an institute that was looking at materials for next generation 3-D printed implants and bionics, prosthetics, and whatnot. We were working in materials that were touted to be more tissue-like.

The idea really came when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put out this call for a next generation condom that would have a more skin-like sensation or preserve sensation. I took that concept back to the team and at first they laughed at me. But then we started to say, our materials, although we haven't' been trying to look at those conditions, are actually quite like latex .

It was a lightning bolt of inspiration?
You see Bill Gates wanting safer sex in these click-bait articles, you know, so obviously I'm going to look at it. And if I hadn't seen that link... yeah, it was just, hey, let's try it .

When did you go from let's explore this to, yeah, we've got a condom on our hands?
I should clarify: we don't have condoms yet. We're still in the materials evaluation stage.

We've seen materials in our arsenal that sort of have the properties of latex. We came up with a plan for how to test them. This is what we proposed to the Foundation, and what we got our grant money for: Basically, there are hundreds of these variations to play around with. We need some that adhere to some specific mechanical and biological properties. It's got to be stretchy and tough and obviously not break, and we have to be able to prevent against the transfer of bacteria, viruses, and sperm.

There are standards to test condoms around the world, and we just used those same standards to try our new materials. By narrowing down the field, we found a few formulations that really, really work.

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Let's talk about these hydrogels you settled on. What can they do?
I say hydrogels and people gloss over. You may be wearing a type of hydrogel right now—you're wearing a contact lens? Well that's very similar to some of the materials we're looking at.

Typically hydrogels are very brittle. These tough hydrogels are much tougher. You can stretch them, pull them, there are some videos online where you can drive trucks over some of these materials. They have the properties a bit like wet plastic, but they feel and act more like real skin.

The advantage of them is that hydrogels have been used for decades to do things like deliver drugs or help to regrow cells. What we're thinking we can do is invent lubrication inside the condom instead of putting a lubricant on the outside, which is necessary in latex. What if we can put it inside the condom and have it release when you need it? In the same way, you might be able to put drugs in them. Viagra is a good example. There are already condoms that are coated in Viagra, but to help with delivery. And not only those agents but things to fight against STIs—instead of putting a coating on, you could put them inside the condom itself. And with latex, if you put a glove on, you're always going to feel a glove, no matter what. But when you put these on, they're hardly perceptible. It's kind of amazing. And you wouldn't have latex allergies. They're perfectly clear so it might be a visual benefit. All of these things.

Related: Like sex? Watch this.

Are there any downsides? Or is this a miracle material?
I wouldn't call it a miracle material. It's definitely very new.

I think the biggest downside is that this class of hydrogels has only been around for the last ten years or so. When you're talking about attempting to disrupt a whole industry based on latex, the limitation is that they're not known, there's not the supply chain there to make them as cost effective as they could be down the line. And right now we're not exactly sure—we're growing more confident every day that the research is showing that they could be applicable materials—but we can't be sure right now.

I think if you make something that feels like it's not there and delivers Viagra and lube mix-sex, you just might stand a chance of finding a market share, though.
Absolutely. We're also exploring, what is feel. There's a lot about the perception that condoms limit sensation that's not actually about the material itself, but about having to put it on, or visual cues, or things like that. So some of these things about condoms not feeling good may not be able to be overcome with just a material change. But if we can make them feel better, we certainly have an idea we can revolutionize with.

If you're working with a new material, couldn't you change the form of condoms? Like the liquid Band-Aid of condoms or something like that?
There was a spray-on condom at one point. But there were a whole bunch of issues with those. I think with the spray-on condom the issue was that nobody wanted to put their member in the box, where you couldn't see what was going on.

Given the existence of glory holes, I'm surprised that would hold people back.
Well, I mean they say, we're going to spray your member with some kind of crazy thing ...

I don't know if we're going to change [the form] that much. But the material can be used in so many different ways. We could print these materials. It's very flexible in its ability to be formed and molded and make these different structures. And potentially there's someone out there with this crazy idea, wow, I'm going to reinvent the condom in a whole new way . This material could still be used for that.

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What are your thoughts on the other new condoms that the Gates Foundation is funding?
There's been a bit of press about graphene condoms. I'm a founder of a grapheme start-up company. I know about grapheme, so there's an interesting concept there.

A lot of the work I've seen is based more on different additives for enhancing sensation or Viagra substitutes and whatnot. Things that would encourage people to use them more. And even some designs that would make the application of them easier. There's an Origami Condom where it goes on in a second and it's got these ridges on it.

When the foundation put out the grant, there were about 1,700 applicants. Everyone's interested in new condom solutions because there's obviously a need. And if there are others that work on new compounds that give new sensations or new designs we may be able to take advantage of what they're doing but use a new material and maybe advance some of their work if our materials are more skin-like and more pleasurable.

What's your timeline? When do you hope to see these things on the shelves?
We've spoken with several major manufacturers. This would be around three to five years. That's a very early estimate.

The main considerations are obviously regulation and making sure that you're going through the right trials or whatever's necessary in the countries that you're going into to prove that you're effective, so just like latex condoms you have some credibility and assurance that they're going to work. Those are the real hold-ups for any new technology.

While we wait for this project to come to fruition, you're now a condom expert. What's your favorite? What should we be using until your condoms hit the shelves?
Have you ever heard of polyisoprene? These are the new [thin] condoms. Skyn is one of the brands. I can say I've tried them and, yeah, they're pretty good. I don't think I'd say that I have a favorite, but that's definitely one of the ones that I've tried and the polyisoprene seems to feel a bit better.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

[body_image width='1500' height='844' path='images/content-images/2015/04/20/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/20/' filename='the-future-of-auto-racing-in-cuba-body-image-1429560676.jpg' id='47911']A still from 'Havana Motor Club,' (2015)

Over next two weeks, we'll be covering the Tribeca Film Festival 2015. Check back as we serve up essays and interviews on the festival's films, stars, and directors, and give you access to everything, from the red carpet to the after-parties.

Although Havana Motor Club might be about Cuba's hard-to-fathom subculture of drag racers and their quest to hold the country's first official car race since the days following the 1959 Revolution, it encapsulates so much more. By touching on Cuba's recent reforms—allowing individuals to own property and small businesses, for example—the film also sheds light on how the ongoing liberalization impacts the everyday lives and passions of Cuban people.

"The hardest thing about living here is that there's no life for an honest man," one of the film's subjects suggests towards the middle of the film. He isn't lying. Another racer profiled in the film drives a 90s-era Porsche he built out of parts that were smuggled into Havana in a piecemeal fashion by a Cuban-American he knows in Miami. For Cubans who have long raced in the shadow of Fidel Castro's edict that the sport was "elitist," tarring its reputation and ensuring zero government support or infrastructure, the qualities of ingenuity and subterfuge have always been necessary to keep it going.

The film's world premier was last night at the Tribeca Film Festival, where I corralled director Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt (who's also known for making the documentary, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) and one of the drag racers from the film. They made an interesting duo. Perlmutt is quick-witted and diminutive, while Piti is a tall, wide-bodied Cuban. Fittingly, Piti wore a brand new pair of black and neon Nikes that must not have been an easy to find in Cuba, at least until recently.

Trailer to 'Havana Motor Club' (2015)

Piti admitted right off the bat that he'd been "racing for most of his life, 22 of his 40 years." The two met while Perlmutt was working on a different documentary project in Cuba. They were introduced to one another by one of the key figures in the Cuban underground drag racing community. Unfortunately, the film Perlmutt had originally set out to make in Cuba didn't come together. "We could either go home and give our investors their money back, or find another project," the director recalled while having a sandwich in the Tribeca press lounge. Havana Motor Club became that new project.

Perlmutt, who is from racing-obsessed North Carolina, admits to not knowing much about the racing world until he met the subjects of his film. The movie follows five key members of the drag racing community in the six-week lead-up to what promises to be the biggest race in two generations.

Although racing of this sort is technically not illegal in Cuba—a series of television programs about Cuban underground racing are broadcast all over the country, it's not necessarily legal either. This leaves racers like Piti who participated in this documentary in a delicate situation, considering the island still known for violent repression. "I was happy to share my passion with him, to have him show who we are," Piti suggested, shrugging off the suggestion that it might have been a risk to appear in the film. "We were very upfront from the beginning about what we wanted to do."

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The film also shows how difficult it is to stay in the racing game in Cuba. One racer ponders whether he will participate in the race or sell the motor from his vehicle—one that had been recovered on the ocean floor from a ship that was once used to shuttle Cubans away from the island—so that he can flee Cuba on a Florida-bound raft. Soon, the race itself is threatened. The government doesn't want it to happen because the Pope is coming to Cuba. Just as the race is supposed to go on, the racers no longer have the barricades they use to cordon off the street and the event seems to crumble. All hope seems to be lost, until a curious series of events, ones we might not believe had Perlmutt made them up, allow the race to go on several months later.

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Still from 'Havana Motor Club' (2015)

Milton, a top Cuban underground-racing journalist (such things exist), was also in town for the Tribeca premiere and came to join us. He had a Cuban-flag pined to the lapel of the blazer he insisted on wearing over fleece, even though it was a warm spring day. In the film, he comes off as the sports biggest proponent. "They must keep fighting. They are warriors of time," he says in the film when discussing the men's struggle to legalize the sport.

Milton is the driving force behind A la Motor, a popular show about Cuban autosports. In our conversation, he suggested that things are changing for the underground sport. For a long time, auto racing was not even shown on TV. But now, thanks in part to his efforts, racing has a place in Cuban pop culture. Schools to train children in go-cart racing have also recently opened in Cuba. But government support remains muted. And legally procured parts, due to the easing of trade restrictions, are pricey compared to illegally smuggled parts.

Getting permission to shoot the documentary from the authorities in Cuba was far more complicated than Perlmutt initially imagined. He worked with a Cuban producer, Marcel Piedra, in order to travel around Havana. Cuban authorities are weary of foreigners walking around with cameras, believing they can be used to monitor their police. Work and location permits, as well as approval of the whole project, had to come down from the state film board. Perlmutt and his crew's gear was often confiscated at the airport and the process to get permits for cameras and sound-mixing gear took many months.

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Still from 'Havana Motor Club' (2015)

"Something we were always told to do was dissemble everything as much as possible so that they don't know what it is," Perlmutt recalled during our conversation. "We did that with a lot of our gear, too. They do the same thing with their engines. It's really tricky." At some points, the filmmakers had to store their equipment in a young boy's room in Cancun while waiting for a permit. They shot much of the initial racing footage they got on the Canon 5D, a small DSLR still camera that allowed them to look like tourists. They received permission to make the film only a few days before the race was initially scheduled.

After Raúl Castro's reforms allowed for an officially government-sanctioned race months after the initial one was planned and foiled due to the Pope, Perlmutt's film piles on the anticipation and thrills in a way Days of Thunder never did. However, the drivers remain circumspect.

"Here nothing is for sure," one driver suggests in the most forlorn of fashions. They don't see why auto racing is in conflict with the ideals of the revolution. "Why can't the wealth created by auto racing be spread amongst all the people," another driver muses in the film, while acknowledging that, these days, "Capitalism calls all the shots in the world."

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Still from 'Havana Motor Club' (2015)

Capitalism is certainly at the heart of how films travel throughout the world. This movie was financed in part by Impact Partners, a production company that makes "films that engage pressing social issues that have never reached larger audiences or had greater social impact than they do today." Although Perlmutt is seeking traditional American distribution, the film may ultimatly be available in Cuba in a much more significant way. In a place where movie tickets are the equivalent of ten American cents and the average citizen sees 26 movies in the theater a year, as opposed to six in the States, the filmmaker expects huge audiences once the doc reaches its native shores.

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Still from 'Havana Motor Club' (2015)

"We've shown the film to the racers and their families in Cuba many times. Everyone loves it. There is nothing really sensitive about it," Perlmutt claimed. He suggested that the film may end up playing the Havana Film Festival before being broadcast nationally on Cuban television and playing in theaters throughout the country. For Piti, a cancer survivor currently in remission, he hopes the exposure can bring legitimacy to his life's pursuit, one that he sees as much less dangerous than boxing, another Cuban obsession.

"If they just give us all the abandoned airstrips to hold races on, it would be a beautiful thing," Piti mused. "It would be something to be proud of."

Brandon Harris is a contributing editor at Filmmaker Magazine. His directorial debut Redlegs has played over a dozen festivals worldwide and was a New York Times critic's pick upon its commercial release in May of 2012. Follow him on Twitter.

Ana Maria Uriayu turns her head away and refuses to speak. Her neighbor talks for her, reciting a tale of loss shared with countless mothers in Colombia's northernmost department of La Guajira: Between the two women, four sons have died in under a year. They blame the dirty water shared by the small community.

Just two and a half miles from the capital of La Guajira, home to Colombia's largest indigenous population, the daily struggle against thirst is written across the bodies of the Wayuu people, an ethnic group of over 400,000 who live in communities scattered throughout the desert peninsula. Several times a day, women wind through cactus forests between their ranches and the muddy catchments where they collect contaminated water, and their children follow on emaciated legs. The trip can take five hours, sometimes more, and must be repeated endlessly. Even the smallest child is enlisted to carry a bucket.

According to National Institute of Health director Fernando de la Hoz, "More people die of drought and dirty water in Colombia than from the armed conflict. And the risk of dying from illnesses related to water is four or five times higher in La Guajira than anywhere else in the country." La Guajira's child mortality rate has reached levels comparable to Rwanda, and not far behind Ethiopia: 50 children die for every 1,000 live births, according to a report by the United Nations. De la Hoz believes the actual death toll to be much higher than official numbers indicate, owing to scarce medical services and a Wayuu tradition of burying one's children on one's own land.

And while the well-publicized crisis has drawn a steady flow of aid and investment to the region over the past decade—including a $90 million World Bank project and a $270 million dam—there is still no water fit for human consumption in La Guajira.

But why have efforts to help residents failed?

A close look at La Guajira's water projects suggests that a lack of public oversight has played a large role in the crisis, along with government policies favoring business interests over human rights.

Related: Watch our documentary on an uprising against corruption in rural Mexico

Record drought hit the region last year, triggering a viral outbreak as people began hoarding water in open containers that are breeding grounds for malaria, dengue, and chikungunya. But local aid workers say El Niño isn't to blame for the current health crisis.

"We can't say that the problem in La Guajira is due to drought—that is false," said Robert Mendez of La Guajira's Office of Disaster and Risk Management. The problem of water in La Guajira goes back many years, and it is due to the bad governance of this department."

La Guajira is infamous for its corruption and mafia politics; the last five governors have been investigated for misappropriating funds meant for public works such as water, sanitation, and health services. The most recent of these, Juan Francisco "Kiko" Gomez, was arrested in 2013 on charges of murder and arms trafficking, only to be replaced by a friend and political ally. But while residents are critical of local politicians, they are even more bitter toward the national government they say has forgotten them.

In 2007, the World Bank approved a $90 million loan for the stated purpose of providing water and sanitation service to people in La Guajira. It was given two extensions, with a new completion date of October this year.

"The [World Bank] project was never executed, there was never any money given to the communities, not even in the urban areas," said Matilde Arpushana, an indigenous leader and human rights worker representing over 200 communities near the state capital. "The water problem persists and it is very bad. Women have to walk five hours, sometimes more in order to get water. There is no water for human consumption in all of La Guajira."

According to Carlos Uribe, the project's water and sanitation specialist, the operation was frustrated from the beginning due lack of cooperation from the local government, employee performance issues, and confusion over a new water policy.

But to Nathanial Meyer, senior water organizer for Corporate Accountability International, the project's continued failure even to provide basic services to the main hospital is just further evidence that the World Bank's private investment model doesn't work. The World Bank, which holds equity shares in private water companies itself, evaluates the La Guajira project's success by the number of contracts that have been signed, rather than actual access to water. Citing failed projects in the Philippines and India, Meyer pointed out that signing a private contract does not guarantee that infrastructure will be extended.

"There is no water for human consumption in all of La Guajira." –Matilde Arpushana

In January, the government signed a decree pushing the expansion of public-private partnerships throughout the country as a solution in poorer areas, even as private companies fail to provide service up and down the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. When asked how private water contracts can ensure service to impoverished regions such as La Guajira, the World Bank refers to existing Colombian laws that guarantee subsidies for public services; significantly, these subsidies only reach up to 70 percent of the tariff for potable water.

"In addition indigenous reservations can apply for subsidies from a different source within their national transfers, which could eventually be used to pay for water supply," said a spokesperson for the World Bank, referring to the General Royalties System.

Both of these entitlements remain largely theoretical in a region with such weak government institutions. When water policy management was delegated to local municipalities during the administration of the World Bank loan, requiring each local government to submit a plan in order to be included, only three out of 15 participated, Uribe said.

"The problem is the in order to do the work, we need to have the project designs, and they needed to be sub-ministered by the municipalities," he told me. "And unfortunately, the institutional capacity of La Guajira is very small, and there were no projects. And in the last four years, there has been very little movement due to governance problems."

In other words, the solution lies in the theoretical application of policies that have so far failed to benefit the population.

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Ana Maria Urariyu and Teresa Apushaina on their ranch in Monte Verde, La Guajira

La Guajira's other major infrastructure project, a $270 million dam, was built in 2010 with the objective of providing water service to roughly 400,000 people. It holds 93 million cubic meters of water with a discharge rate of 7,760 liters per second. But aqueducts remain dry as the government waits on a study to "confirm which option for the execution of the project (public or private) will generate more money for the government of Colombia."

The dam is a public asset that communities cannot access, according to Wayuu authorities that have issued a legal request for help from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), an autonomous body of the Organization of American States. Indigenous authorities claim the dam has drained the river which residents have depended on for hundreds of years while pumping water to large estates in the south ofthe department and to El Cerrejon, a coal mine stretching the length of the peninsula.

Since the dam's completion, 4,151 child deaths have been reported in La Guajira, according to Colombia's family welfare agency, Instituto Colombiano de Beinestar Familiar.

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Children in La Guajira

The government says it does not have the money to connect the $270 million dam to aqueducts, according to the finance agency researching the viability of public-private partnerships.

But a look at the resources flowing into the region shows over $250 million in annual royalties from El Cerrejon, Latin America's biggest open-pit coal mine. According to the government's new national "royalty map," close to $300 million has been invested in La Guajira since 2012.

Unless there is enough political will, no amount of resources will help communities in Colombia's second-poorest department, and the leniency given to corporate giants in the region suggests that the welfare of Wayuu people is rather low on the list of national priorities.

According to the five Wayuu authorities appealing to the CIDH, Colombian law dictates that humans must, without exception, be the first recipients of water, and only after their needs are met can the surplus can be used for agricultural, industrial, and other purposes. Even in the midst of drought and widespread disease caused by water scarcity, the El Cerrejon uses 7.1 million gallons of water a day in its 24-hour operations, according to Carlos Franco, the mine's director of International Relations. In fact, El Cerrejon has a license from the national government to use much more. "We are only using about 17 percent of our water capture permit," Franco told me. "We're allowed to use much more water."

In response to questions about the lack of water for La Guajira's population, Franco told me, "For us, its an embarrassment. It is very painful that there is no potable water in La Guajira, and there is no excuse." However, he said that El Cerrejon has recently invited the government to work with them toward a solution to La Guajira's water crisis.

Related: VICE takes a look at the water crises in America.

Over the past 40 years, the multinational giant has not only depleted and polluted water resources, but has also violently displaced indigenous and afro-Colombian communities. According to the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyer's Collective, a group representing the legal interests of Wayuu communities affected by mining, the multinationals that own El Cerrejon (Angloamerican, Glencore, and BHP Billiton) have never been penalized for human rights abuses against the communities.

"It is very complicated to litigate against the company, because all of the legislation favors business interests," explained Petra Langheinrich, spokesperson for the Collective. "And here's the serious problem: You have to imagine that in Colombia, and in La Guajria particularly, the state and environmental regulatory institutions are almost nonexistent."

Last year, the Wayuu community in lower Guajira held a tribunal to judge El Cerrejon's environmental and human rights abuses, citing the absence of a judicial system in the area.

If the state is so weak against multinationals like the Cerrejon, how can it ensure that private water companies will extend service to those who can't pay?

"You have to imagine that in Colombia, and in La Guajria particularly, the state and environmental regulatory institutions are almost nonexistent." –Petra Langheinrich

In January, La Guajira's Secretary of Health called for coordination with "forces that guarantee the availability of water for human consumption" due to the intensifying viral epidemic. The department has been on official red alert and declared a "public calamity" several times in the last year for drought, malnutrition, and viral epidemics. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also singled the department out as being in need of "immediate intervention" in 2014.

When Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won reelection last year on a platform of peace and social equality, the rest of the world grew hopeful for an end to the 50-year armed conflict between the Colombian government and Marxist guerillas. But who will hold the national government accountable for equitable services in a post-conflict nation, in the face as such failures as La Guajira? Does an international focus on the conflict prevent a true evaluation of aid, the majority of which now pours into peacekeeping operations and narcotics control?

Most important, how will things change for the 900,000 residents of La Guajira who cannot afford another lost decade?

Victoria Mckenzie is a human rights and global health reporter based in Medellin and NYC.

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National Guardsmen walk through the affected area a day after the Boston Marathon Bombing. Photo via Flickr user The National Guard

All of Boston stopped to watch the Boston Marathon bomber trial verdicts roll in. Maybe "all" is an exaggeration, but that's how it felt. For half an hour, so many were riveted to Twitter or television, watching as reporters passed back word on each verdict in 30 charges.

Like hammer blows they came down:

Guilty. Guilty.

Guilty.

Of course, the decisions on the first dozen charges were hardly surprising: During the trial, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyer had almost immediately acknowledged that he did it; surveillance videos caught him placing his backpack bomb just before it exploded.

But the roll call of "guilty" continued jolting through all the parts of Count 16 and beyond—possessing and using a Ruger semi-automatic handgun to kill MIT campus cop Sean Collier, a murder that could have been committed by his older brother, Tamerlan. The jury was holding Dhzokhar equally responsible for that, too? And it continued through every single count: Guilty of it all.

The 12 people responsible for levying justice in our name appeared ready to send this young man to death row. But is execution really justice, as opposed to vengeance?

Some clearly think so. "Just watching the coverage makes me sick and want to cry," texted one friend, a prosecutor—who added, as the guilty verdicts continued, "I hope he has a long and grueling death."

But not all of us do. Another friend's sons went to high school with Dzhokar, and one partied with him. She texted, "So painful how his life went so wrong, leading him to take innocent lives. Every part of me wishes we could turn back time."

Let's be clear: If any crime merits the death penalty, it's this one. Dzhokhar Tzarnaev will not be exonerated, not by DNA or anything else.

As the verdicts were announced, outside it hailed as if in biblical counterpoint, stark and fitting punctuation to the end of Boston's marathon endurance of the brutal crime, the brutal trial, and the brutal winter of 2015.

Did I write "end"? This was a pause, not an end, a pause during which we take time to remind ourselves we are alive, during which we celebrated a second post-bombing Marathon. Now begins the play's more dramatic second act, the sentencing phase that could last for weeks, in which prosecutors will argue that Dzhokhar w­­as a hardened terrorist committed to slaughter and destruction who deserves to die at the government's hands, while the defense will plead that he was a disturbed slacker from a disastrous family manipulated by his older brother and who deserves life in prison for his inexcusable crime.

The jury, our Greek chorus, will have the final say.

Let's be clear: If any crime merits the death penalty, it's this one. Dzhokhar Tzarnaev will not be exonerated, not by DNA or anything else. No manipulative prosecutors withheld evidence; no jailhouse liars testified against him in exchange for a lighter sentence. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted a dirty homemade bomb in the beating heart of Boston on our day of communal celebration. He knowingly placed it next to happy children and families and amateur runners, shredding flesh and shattering bones and setting bodies on fire. He killed three people that day, caused another 16 to lose limbs, wounded at least 260, and blasted hundreds of others into a war zone surrounded by bloodied noncombatants. But beyond that immediate circle, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev exploded our city's peace. This wasn't just a murder, or two, or three, or four. This attack—as he intended—lacerated us all.

And still, the majority of this city believes he should not be killed in our names. In a WBUR poll conducted during the trial, just as the victims' suffering was being reported and broadcast daily, 62 percent said he should get life in prison, not death. Even while we were listening to detailed evidence of evil, the city's opposition to executing Tsarnaev had remained steady since a Boston Globe poll taken in September, long before the trial. The pro–death penalty Boston Herald opiners and my friend the prosecutor are the minority.

Most of us want him banished from society, not dead. That includes Bill and Denise Richards, who watched as their eight-year-old son was brutally blasted to death and their seven-year-old daughter lost her leg, and whose extraordinary front-page statement in the Boston Globe asked the US Attorney's office to spare Tsarnaev the death penalty if he agrees to waive all rights to appeal. (Of course, other bombing survivors respectfully disagree, and are hoping for his execution.)

In a democracy, justice is not for the victims; they can never be restored, their lives put back as they once were.

Why does Boston oppose a death sentence for this ungrateful war refugee who spat in the face of his high school's motto, "opportunity, diversity, and respect"? I have heard a list of reasons. The Martins ask to be spared from the years of appeals, saying, "As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours." Others make a developmental neurology argument: Dzhokhar was only 19 and easily manipulated by his older brother; the frontal cortex, which governs impulse control, isn't fully formed until the mid-20s. There's the don't-give-him-the-satisfaction/anti-terrorism argument: Execution would make him a martyr, just as he wanted, it would transform him into a terrorism recruitment poster instead of a deterrent. There's the vengeance argument: He'll suffer far more in a solitary federal supermax cell, "virtually living in a bathroom" of just a few square feet, " rotting in prison for the rest of his life," than he would through a quick escape through death. And there's the spiritual argument: We as a society are better served by mercy than by cruelty and vengeance—as the slain MIT officer Sean Collier's sister wrote, she "can't imagine that killing in response to killing would ever bring me peace or justice... enough is enough."

Beneath or beyond all those ways of reasoning lies still another: an argument about the purpose and meaning of justice. In a democracy, justice is not for the victims; they can never be restored, their lives put back as they once were. The state intentionally takes the process out of their hands to ensure that justice is cool-headed and deliberate instead of red-hot and vengeful. Tsarnaev endorsed killing in revenge for killing on the sides of the backyard boat where he lay, bleeding and in hiding after a firefight with police, waiting to die or be found. But vengeance continues the cycle of violence; it's the way of tribes, clans, and gangs, not of civilization. Justice can restore only one thing: our democratic society and the rule of law. The jury acts as our citizen proxies, our randomly selected democratic representatives, to judge whether the accused has violated our laws. Justice means sending him to the penalty we have collectively assigned to the crime. Seventeen of the charges on which Tsarnaev was found guilty carry only two possible sentences: life in prison or death.

When death is one of the possible penalties, the jury decides if it's warranted. That means we don't decide—they do.

Related: More terrorism on American soil.

But does this jury represent us? We know that it does not. These 12 were selected precisely for an inclination that most in Boston do not possess: They would be willing to sentence Tsarnaev to death. Death-qualifying a jury—picking jurors who would be willing to sentence a defendant to death—means selecting people with uncommon temperaments: They are quicker to convict, less contemplative, more skeptical about mitigating circumstances, more likely to trust authority, and more likely to believe that justice means vengeance. Necessarily, these 12 people have for weeks been immersed in gruesome details about the bombing while the vast majority of us have looked away. (According to polling, a smaller percentage than usual for a big trial say they are following this one "closely.") Some of these jurors cried; all must have been profoundly wrenched. Meanwhile, they have watched Tsarnaev reveal not a flicker of feeling. His disengagement—which observers have variously speculated might be due to brain damage in the firefight, resignation at never being part of society again, or monstrous lack of empathy and emotion—cannot have made it easier for his attorneys to save his life.

That is, if indeed he wants it saved.

On the other hand, the death penalty must be arrived at unanimously. If the defense can persuade even one juror to hold out, Tsarnaev will go to supermax instead of death row. And so those of us opposed to the death penalty, even for terrorists, must now hope for such a holdout, a stubborn objector. Our proxies have already agreed to exile Tsarnaev forever from human society, never to be free again. Authorizing his murder could do nothing more. Bloodying our collective hands in vengeance would, rather, weaken our civilization into something less.

E.J. Graff is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. Follow her on Twitter.

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The band's logo. There aren't any photos of them, because if they were identified, they could be arrested and even executed. All images via Al-Namrood's Facebook page

Black metal bands have never been keen on religion. However, in parts of the world where religion can actually be oppressive, bands inspired by Bathory and Mayhem and Burzum are few and far between.

That's presumably because it's a lot easier to be in an anti-Christian metal band in the US, than in an anti-Islamic metal band in Saudi Arabia. In America, your obstacles extend to overhearing your mom tell a friend you're just "going through a phase." In Saudi Arabia, you face social ostracism and the possibility of imprisonment or death.

With that in mind, you've got to give it to Saudi Arabia's only black metal band, Al-Namrood, whose lyrics include all sorts of things that could get them executed. I got in touch with guitarist and bassist Mephisto for a chat.

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The artwork for "Ana Al Tughian"

VICE: How did Al-Namrood first come into being and what's the meaning behind your name?
Mephisto: Three men decided to put their aggression into music, specifically black metal. Needless to say, the concepts that are involved in black metal describe what we are experiencing. The band started with the creative idea of combining the Arabic scale with black metal and Arabic lyrics. The main goal was to create something catchy and harsh that fulfils the needs of extreme metal.

Al-Namrood is the Arabic name of the Babylonian king Nimrod, who was a mighty tyrannical king who ruled Babylon with blood and defied the ruler of the universe, according to the tenets of monotheistic religions. We find the title of Al-Namrood to perfectly fit the message of the band. [Literally, Al-Namrood translates to "non-believer."]

What's the motivation for adopting such a vehemently anti-religious stance in such a staunchly Islamic country?
We're fed up with religion. The fact is that everything that is connected to it makes us nauseous. I personally spoke to a shrink. He advised me that whenever I get inflamed I have to express [what I'm feeling]. So here we are, expressing. What can be more motivating than living in a place where everything is controlled by religion? Basically, individuals here have no rights to do anything. We're owned by the Islamic sharia. Everything we do must be justified by Islam and acknowledged by society. There are two outrageous powers: religion and our society. They both interact and fulfil each other.

Related: True Norwegian Black Metal

In what way?
While there's a lot of hypocrisy, it has been demonstrated that the local people are very much in agreement with the Islamic system. For example, in Islam, music is generally forbidden, but Muslim people listen to it on the basis that "God forgives." But when it comes to freedom of choice, "God never forgives." Everything is chosen for an individual from birth until death. A child is born and raised to become Muslim and never given a choice to look at other religions. Education is highly biased and focused upon the Islamic world. There is no chance of considering multiple points of views. The only view that can be adopted is the view of the acknowledged tradition and approved religious practice. Freedom of expression is a crime, justified by the fact that "it can disturb the peace." Even in marriage you cannot choose your partner. Rather, the elders choose for you. This social approach mixed with religious control is normally practiced in our country with no objection.

The music video for "Bat Al Tha ar Nar Muheja"

How did you first become interested in metal? I can't imagine black metal CDs are particularly easy to get hold of in Saudi Arabia.
It happened gradually, of course. When we were exposed to metal, we started basic, then we elevated to the extreme. We liked the concept of black metal, as it describes the irrationality of religion. Of course, this context exists in other genres, like death metal, but we lent more towards black metal because it has many elements of punk metal, which has awesome music and concepts. We purchased CDs from neighboring countries and smuggled them in discreetly. We educated ourselves about the outside world by also purchasing smuggled books, thanks to some amazing crazy friends, and then the internet came to extend our knowledge massively.

I've read that you never use your real names and never have your photos published, and that even your families don't know that you make metal. Going to such lengths to remain anonymous must be quite a strain.
Not at all. We've been doing this from childhood. I mean, we've had a different perspective than the rest of our society from an early age, and we've learned that sharing these views is not feasible for us. Some of us tried hard to fit in and share our thoughts, but ended up serving time in jail, so the lifestyle of being mentally isolated from the surrounding environment started from an early age. When it came to our musical approach, we just applied the same methodology of coping.

Related: Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Why do you think that, in spite of the fact that metal bands frequently incorporate an anti-religious sentiment into their lyrics, there have been so few bands that have said anything negative about Islam?
Simply because they haven't experienced it. Christianity nowadays is passive. The church doesn't control the country. I think whatever rage that people have got against the church cannot be compared with Islamic regimes. You can criticize the church under freedom of speech in European countries, but you can't do that in Middle Eastern countries. The system doesn't allow it. Islam has inflicted more authority on the Middle East than any other place in the world. Every policy has to be aligned with sharia law, and this is happening right now in 2015. We know that, 400 years ago, brutality occurred in the name of the church, but the same is happening right now in this age with Islam.

What kind of obstacles do you encounter when it comes to recording your music?
The obstacles are greater than colossal—it's like living in a cave and demanding electricity. In radical Islamic countries, this music is considered to be a crime by Islamic law. We are living our lives in isolation. Basically, our identity is hidden and our musical interests are kept top secret. It's risky, and the risk gets bigger if we want to publicize our band. However, the obstacles do not stop at social aspects. Also, the lack of availability of decent musical equipment is an issue, and getting the musical equipment into the country can be a problem.

Have you ever played a live show, or is that straight up impossible?
It's impossible, because it's illegal. We can be sentenced to death if we do them.

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Your lyrics focus heavily upon the demons and jinn of pre-Islamic Arabia. What's the inspiration for this?
We were taught in school that Arabs were living in utter darkness before Islam came to illuminate the people, but we find history more interesting than the post-Islamic world. We also like some Arabian tales from the Middle Ages, like One Thousand and One Nights.

You mentioned that you made a conscious decision to incorporate regional instruments into your songs. Can you tell me about that?
Yes. When we compose a song we can sense that a particular part can use Arabic instruments, such as an oud or a qanoon. The tricky part is figuring out how to combine the quarter tone with guitar tuning. Once this part is done, the rest just comes along. We are not experts in music production. We just make music that is pleasing to our ears. Some parts just come naturally, and some parts require revising and editing.

Do you ever see a day when Saudi Arabia will have a fully-fledged black metal scene?
Judging by the direction that the country is heading in, I would say not in a thousand years.

Thanks, Mephisto.

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Glossop, second from right, holding what appears to be an M-16 standing with comrades in Kurdistan on a hill with a smoking building below.

While Canadian Islamic State members continue to promote their war in Iraq and Syria, one former Canadian soldier with combat experience is reportedly alive and fighting one of the most feared terrorist organization in the world.

Brandon Glossop, a veteran of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Alberta, hopped on a plane in February to join the People's Protection Units (YPG) in its fight against ISIS.

Since then, there's been little trace of the professionally trained soldier other than sporadic social media postings and one photo of Glossop popping up on a Sun article from the United Kingdom about a British teen joining the Kurdish rebel group.

A shot from Brandon's Facebook page.

Sources close to Glossop and his Facebook page, confirm to VICE Canada that Brandon is still alive and on the frontlines against IS, even taking the Kurdish fighting name "Zinar."

"Our warrior appreciates all the messages he has received from back home and all over the world, and although he cannot reply, it helps him stay strong," says a Facebook message on Glossop's public page after weeks of silence on his status.

A source close to Glossop said he's stationed on a remote YPG controlled Forward Operating Base (FOB) positioned against ISIS and that Glossop, "couldn't say where he was, but that [the YPG] are successfully pushing back ISIS in every town they go to."

Glossop is fighting with the Lions of Rojava: a squad of foreign fighters drafted into the YPG counting British, Canadian, and Americans among its ranks and goes by the saying "SEND TERRORISTS TO HELL and SAVE HUMANITY."

Glossop is only the second former Canadian soldier to join Kurdish forces battling against the Islamic State.

Fellow Afghan war vet Dillon Hillier joined the Peshmerga—the same Iraqi Kurds being trained by Canadian special forces operators—in December, before shortly returning in January.

Not long before that, Gil Rosenberg, a Canadian and former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) member, is said to have joined the YPG in its brutal siege of Kobane versus the Islamic State and continues to fight in its ranks.

VICE Canada reached out to YPG sources to confirm both Rosenberg and Glossop were alive and fighting with the armed Kurdish force, but have yet to receive a reply.

At the same time as Canadian citizens voluntarily join the war against ISIS, Canada's overall bombing mission on "Daesh" continues with the Harper government extending the official mission in Syria and Iraq a further six months.

In the past, one Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson warned against volunteer soldiers joining Kurdish armies recommending instead, to "join the Canadian Armed Forces."

Follow Ben Makuch on Twitter.

Illustration by Heather Benjamin

We gave the writer Edith Zimmerman a monthly column because we love her. But like everyone, she could be better, so we asked her to write about doing things that improve herself. Follow her over the next year as she gets better and better until she reaches perfection in March 2016.

Have you ever seen a picture of yourself and thought, That can't possibly be me—who is that person? But it is you, and you're forced to acknowledge, maybe for the first time in a while, the way you actually look? I had a moment like that a few months ago. My pub trivia team had won the thing we'd been trying to win for years, and so we took a group photograph, and it was great, although after I saw the picture I faked some of the happiness, because I felt a little undone by realizing—somehow, suddenly, in that instant, I guess I was finally able to see—how far I'd let my actual appearance get from the way I thought of myself. I knew I had gained weight, but I naively kind of thought that maybe I just carried it well. I mean I knew that TECHNICALLY I'd gained like 30 or 40 pounds—I still don't want to get on a scale—but somehow I thought maybe it worked for me, or was the invisible kind of fat. Haha.

So I decided to try CrossFit, because it seemed frightening and intense, which is the opposite of my life. There are apparently about 11,000 CrossFit affiliate gyms around the world, up from 13 in 2005, nine years after it was "invented." A lot of people call it a cult and make fun of it. But the people photographed in the endless CrossFit trend pieces usually look pretty amazing, and I was definitely open to becoming addicted to and annoying about it, to becoming part of their cult, if for some miraculous reason it stuck and I could maybe end up like one of the women in cool sports bras and Spandex shorts whose bodies are so fit they're frightening.

But then I actually went to a CrossFit class.

The gym—or "box"—felt like an industrial-style, gladiator-type training cavern that had been tucked behind an unassuming, normal-size door on a Brooklyn side street. It was filled with black metal jungle gyms, bars and gymnastic rings, and stacks of weights—also rows of kettlebells and medicine balls, racks of jump ropes, a bay of rowing machines, and a corner piled with wooden crates—but mostly big expanses of open space padded with black mats and Astroturf.

At the beginning of the class, we went around saying our names and fitness histories and hopes. Some said that they ran or swam or played basketball. I said I didn't exercise at all, hoping it might give me an excuse for whatever came later, but then a cute couple who arrived late also said they didn't exercise. And then they were so fast and strong at seemingly everything and never out of breath. Especially when we were learning burpees, a horrible exercise in which you drop fully to the ground, then jump up—if you can—back to standing, and then clap your hands over your head as you hop up in the air. And then do it all again. Over and over and over.

After around ten of these, I realized that I had at some point begun making audible groaning noises, kind of like in tennis(!), which was exciting because I don't think I've ever groaned from exertion before. Then we finished with four minutes of plain air squats—20 seconds of going up and down like you're peeing, followed by ten seconds of rest, eight times over—which maybe doesn't sound too crazy but was almost certainly the hardest I've ever worked out in my life. I fell down immediately afterward, on the first steps I tried to descend, walking off the mat to the locker area.

But I was so tired I didn't care whether I looked stupid, and at that point all I wanted was to go home and lie down. And never come back.

Concern over people doing CrossFit too intensely, or with improper form, has led to at least one lawsuit, in 2008, in which the plaintiff, a Navy technician, sued his gym (not CrossFit itself), claiming that his trainers' instructions gave him rhabdomyolysis, "a condition in which damaged skeletal muscle tissue breaks down rapidly" and that is often caused by "extreme physical exercise." (Quotes from Wikipedia.) He had been peeing blood and was hospitalized for a month, and he eventually won $300,000. To raise awareness about improper technique, CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman has run several articles on rhabdomyolysis in CrossFit's (non-peer-reviewed) online publication, CrossFit Journal. In one 2005 post (three years before the lawsuit), Glassman wrote:

To date we have seen five cases of exertional rhabdo associated with CrossFit workouts. Each case resulted in the hospitalization of the afflicted... The hardest hit was extremely sick, the least afflicted had no complaints other than soreness... Soreness doesn't adequately explain the discomfort of rhabdo, however. The worst hit, a SWAT guy, recounts that six days of intravenous morphine drip barely touched the pain.

The illustration accompanying the post, under the word "RHABDO," was a drawing of a jacked but bleeding and miserable-looking Krusty-esque clown, hooked up to a dialysis machine, his kidneys on the floor. The clown cartoon eventually came to be known as "Uncle Rhabdo," and one writer later called him, in a popular 2013 Medium post, "CrossFit's unofficial and disturbing mascot."

At home, the pain made me unexpectedly giddy and euphoric. Even though I wasn't experiencing rhabdo, LOL, I kind of loved the ache and burn—I could barely sit down normally, and if moving quickly or going up and down the stairs had been part of my job description, I might have had to take the week off. It was like there was a whole other body inside my regular one, waking up. And she was angry and mean, not because I was bothering her but because it had taken me so long to remember she was there. And I loved hobbling around and screaming when I sat down, "IN CASE ANYONE HAD FORGOTTEN THAT I WAS DOING CROSSFIT DID I MENTION CROSSFIT."

So I signed up for what's called the "On Ramp" session, a two-week, six-class beginner course in which you learn how to do all the actual CrossFit exercises appropriately, and which is required for anyone who wants to continue doing it.

The session I chose began the morning after the first class. It turned out that the gym was a lot quieter at 6 AM and only four of us had signed up. And our coach was really nice and seemed gentle and sympathetic to how intimidating it was to be there. He also seemed great about understanding everyone's personal limit and at helping without making anyone feel stupid or disgusting. He was also very fit, in a weight-lifting way, and he had a big beard.

So we all chatted a bit and then started learning some CrossFit, and for the next hour, I panted and sweated and felt weird, doing push-ups and sit-ups and pseudo-pull-ups (with a big rubber band), and I kind of had fun, or not fun, but something like satisfaction, and when I went home I couldn't shut up about how I was "doing CrossFit."

But over the course of the next two weeks, something shifted. What started as a desire to become FIT AND STRONG (i.e., skinny and hot) sort of changed into being about making my coach and the people in my class like me, and about looking forward to being around them, in just a goofy, simple way. Because it was clear from the get-go that I couldn't keep up, exercise-level-wise, and that almost everything had to be amended to fit my physical limitations. But that was kind of freeing, because the workouts were still exhausting; it just wasn't so terrifying or comparison-based. And it was nice to just be in a room with some new people, doing a new thing, looking like an idiot.

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Toronto new top cop, Michael Saunders. Photo via Toronto Police.

It took a few words from his ten-year-old son for the magnitude of the moment to dawn on Mark Saunders, Toronto's next police chief.

"Dad, that's history," the boy said to the veteran cop, the first black man to assume the helm of the largest municipal police force in the country. "That's something they can never take away from you."

The appointment of the so-called "cop's cop," who rose the ranks by leading tough investigative units in the homicide squad and guns and gangs unit, comes at a point of strained relations with members of the city's black community, who feel targeted by a practice known as "carding."

Asked explicitly if he will eliminate carding, Deputy Chief Saunders said he is open to whatever is best for the city, adding that while community safety is paramount, he wants minimize the "collateral damage."

Throughout Monday's press conference, the chief designate actively sought to quell expectations in one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

"Being black is fantastic [but] it doesn't give me super powers," Saunders, 52, said. "If you're expecting that all of a sudden the earths will open up and miracles will happen, that's not going to happen. What will happen is that there will be lots of open dialogue, there will be a lot of open talking, more so than ever before."

Saunders succeeds Chief Bill Blair, a polarizing force whose last day is on Friday. He beat out Deputy Chief Peter Sloly, who is also Jamaican Canadian, and had been touted as far back as 2009 as a chief-in-waiting. Sloly had the backing of prominent members of the black community and was seen as the most reform-minded candidate.

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The smile says 'Thanks for the honour/raise, Toronto!' Photo via Toronto Police

Saunders is said to have the respect of the rank and file, and was, unofficially, the union favourite. "I've got a lot of respect for Mark as a police officer and as a leader and think it was a good choice," Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, told VICE. "The right choice."

The appointment by the police services board follows an exhaustive international search that culminated with a unanimous decision, said Toronto Mayor John Tory.

Still, the issue of carding will be a fraught political minefield for the new chief, who said he is committed to "bias free" policing. Civil liberties activists and black organizations have ridiculed "carding"—a practice in which officers collect and document interactions with people who are neither under arrest nor suspected of any crime—with one group going so far as to call it "state sanctioned terrorism against the black community."

Data obtained by theToronto Star found black men are carded disproportionately. A new policy limits carding to instances where there is a public safety purpose, although critics say the definition is too broad.

None of the leading local police chief contenders came out publicly against carding, which senior officers see a crucial investigative tool. McCormack welcomed "another lens" that Saunders will bring to the matter, noting he "understands the investigative need for intelligence gathering and understands the community concerns."

Anthony Morgan, a policy and research lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic, told VICE his organization is pleased that the police board determined that "merit can have a black face" although Saunders "wasn't the most progressive choice, in our estimation."

But Cutty Duncan, a community activist who has pushed hard to ban carding, is optimistic the new chief is open to dialogue.

He, too, applauded the selection of a black chief. "Does it change what type of policing we're going to get? It's still going to be a fight to achieve what we want," he said.

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Image via Flickr user Craig Siczak

Quokkas (widely regarded as the cutest animal in the world) are an endangered species native to Australia. People who hurt them (widely regarded as A-holes) could face fines of up to $300,000 under new laws being drafted in Western Australia. The reforms come after two French tourists set fire to a quokka on Rottnest Island earlier this month.

The duo, who were working as cleaners on the island, filmed themselves using an aerosol can with a lighter to singe the animal's fur, before posting the video online. Fortunately the little battler made a full recovery. As WA Today reports, the pair have opted for the classic Monopoly move of staying in jail instead of paying their fines of $4,000 each. They'll remain in Hakea Prison, commonly known as "Hotel Hakea" by inmates, for a week.

Quokkas live almost exclusively on Rottnest Island, 20 kilometers off the coast of Western Australia. The animal is listed as "rare or likely to become extinct" in the Wildlife Conservation Act, and as "vulnerable" in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. It is an offense for a member of the public to handle the animal in any way on Rottnest Island.

Peter Murphy from Quokka Rescue, a group aiming to raise awareness of the animal's plight, told VICE the punishment isn't enough and shows that the Wildlife Conservation Act is outdated. "We felt that the punishment didn't fit the crime, we thought they got off lightly," he said. "We were really surprised that visitors from a country that's supposed to be cultured like France are doing such a disgusting act."

Murphy also said he would like to see the pair publicly shamed back in their home country. "We would like to see these two guys involved in this moronic incident exposed back in France, so they're aware that the people of Western Australia are very, very protective of this native, iconic animal, and we are most upset."

The Western Australian government is looking to reform the act to include a whopping fine of up to $300,000 for those that seek to harm the adorable creatures. The changes seem to have been in the works for several years, but little progress had been made. Perhaps two jerks using a homemade flamethrower to set a quokka on fire will provide the motivation the government needs. "The existing penalties under the Wildlife Conservation Act are wholly inadequate," Greens MP Lynn Maclaren said on a second reading of the reforms. The $4,000 penalty imposed is currently the heaviest available for those that harm endangered animals in the state.

Back in 2012, WA premier Colin Barnett agreed penalties weren't severe enough, and said they needed to be brought into line with the rest of the country. "The current Wildlife Conservation Act has penalties of $4,000 and $1,000 for taking or smuggling threatened species out of Western Australia, in comparison to NSW which has a maximum penalty of $220,000," he said.

Despite the planned changes, many feel the government still isn't doing enough to ensure the preservation of the quokka. "It doesn't really go far enough because the problem is the small colonies that still exist on the mainland, not the quokkas on Rottnest Island," Murphy told VICE. "If the government was serious about protecting the quokkas or increasing the fine for cruelty against quokkas, what they should be doing is protecting their habitats, not logging it."

Quokkas have enjoyed some recent viral internet fame, with many dubbing them the "happiest animal alive". They're known for a carefree attitude and a complete lack of fear of humans. A quick browse of #QuokkaSelfies will no doubt in improve your current mood.

But for baffling reasons, the animal has been the victims of attacks several times before. In February this year five quokkas were found dead on Rottnest Island, their heads stuffed into plant protectors. In 2007 two rugby players were fined $11,000 and $5,000 by their club after mishandling the creatures. "Quokka Soccer" was also behind the deaths of some of the endangered animals back in 2003.

Follow Denham on Twitter.

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Illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham

2015 was set to be a fantastic year for fans of Nintendo's most venerated series—a terrific 3D remaster of the wonderfully weird Majora's Mask would be followed by a brand new open-world Zelda game on the Wii U. At least, that was the case until Nintendo spoiled everything by postponing the latter until 2016—though that should make for a heck of a 30th anniversary celebration.

The reaction to the delay says much for the regard in which the series is still held. While some would claim the more recent entries have fallen some way short of their predecessors, each one has left a new generation of players enraptured. The backlash is, of course, part of the traditional Zelda cycle, whereby the latest game—after a raft of positive reviews—is roundly criticized, while its predecessor is reappraised as a classic. So fear not, Skyward Sword, you'll be considered a masterpiece next year. Maybe.

One of the reasons it has endured is the same reason some veteran players have drifted away from the series: tradition. Zelda is, as the title suggests, a fable, a tale passed down through generations that gains and loses elements in the retelling, like an extended game of Chinese whispers. It's what imbues its routines and rituals with deeper meaning—when Link pulls the Master Sword out of its resting place, it's an action that carries added emotional weight precisely because it's become part of the myth over three decades' worth of games; equally, for those who've done it several times before, it's a process that may be dulled by familiarity.

That's entirely understandable, but for many Zelda players, it's a moment that returns us to more innocent times—and besides, there's usually a fresh twist to make this particular ceremony, along with donning Link's iconic garb and uniting the Triforce, more than just hollow nostalgia.

Your favorite Zelda is your first, as the cliché goes. As such, pinning down significant moments in the series is a bit of a fool's errand, as everyone will have their own personal highlights. Here, then, is a list of eight special Zelda moments that you're bound to disagree with. By all means, berate me once you've read through what's below—but maybe this could be a place to discuss the Zelda moments that mean the most to you, and together we can celebrate a series that has brought joy to so many.

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Fi's farewell—Skyward Sword

Many Zelda games are described as the "most divisive in the series," but I think Skyward Sword is a shoo-in for top spot. It's polarizing for a number of reasons: Some believe the motion controls to be a stroke of genius, while others outright hate them. Design connoisseurs adore the structure, while others resent being sent to the same environments, even if they've usually changed quite a bit on return visits. Most fans and naysayers, however, would probably agree that robotic ally Fi holds Link's hand far too long and too often, not just interrupting exploration by calculating probabilities of success, but flat-out revealing the solutions to puzzles. Learn to ignore the flashing icon when she has knowledge to impart, however, and she's a much more palatable companion. And by the end, when it's finally time to say goodbye, you might just feel yourself welling up. Admittedly, the music has much to do with that, a sparse, tear-jerking piano refrain of her theme striking up just as you're ready to bid her adieu.

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The Milk Bar—A Link Between Worlds

Music has been a significant part of Zelda's appeal since the beginning: can you imagine it without the eight-note "secret" jingle, or the "da-da-da-DAAAAH!" fanfare that sounds upon opening a treasure chest? The iconic main theme has been reprised and remixed dozens of times but still has the power to make the hairs on the back of your neck bristle, while you'd probably recognize "Zelda's Lullaby" and "Great Fairy's Fountain" even if you'd never played a Zelda game. Those melodies are part of what makes the musical duo in A Link Between Worlds' Milk Bar so special, though it's also a snapshot of the kind of simple, appealing village life each game captures so beautifully. There's a sweetly rustic feel to these rudimentary renditions of Zelda favorites, performed on acoustic guitar and recorder, which makes each tune sound utterly charming. It's hard to resist staying put for one more encore.

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The Wind Fish is revived—Link's Awakening

On paper, the denouement to this 1993 Game Boy entry is nothing more than a variant on the hackneyed eye-rolling twist of the "it-was-all-just-a-dream" ending. In practice, it brings an unexpectedly daring adventure to a genuinely moving, bittersweet close. What begins as a slightly goofy, more light-hearted brand of Zelda game steps into darker territory as you realize that waking the Wind Fish, the creature that guards the island of Koholint, will destroy the place and everyone within it, leaving it as a mere memory in Link's mind. After Link defeats the final boss and plays the "Ballad of the Wind Fish," he wakes up on a piece of driftwood, bobbing gently along the ocean, looking up to see the silhouette of the creature pass overhead. This ambiguous coda ends on an even more touching note if you complete the game without dying: Link's friend on Koholint, Marin, is reincarnated as a seagull, as she had always wished.

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Midna's desperate hour—Twilight Princess

Sparky, snarky companion Midna is surely the series' greatest AI partner, neither as bossy as Navi nor as nannying as Fi. She represents a bold choice on Nintendo's part, as she's initially hard to like, but she steadily worms her way into your affections as the game progresses. All of which makes the moment where she and Link are ambushed by shrieking villain Zant—an unsettling character at the best of times—all the more shocking. Link is transformed (seemingly permanently) into his wolf form, while Midna ends up close to death—seeing this vivacious, impish creature slumped lifelessly over his back is truly upsetting. The game's hostile world is all the more unforgiving when you're racing against time to save your friend, and the tension is heightened by the bleak and insistent piano riff that plays all the while. It's a dark, raw and emotional sequence, and the relief you'll feel as you find help is tangible.

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The castle beneath the sea—The Wind Waker

From the stirring strains of the "Great Sea" theme through to Ganondorf's skull-puncturingly violent end via the characterful mini-game host Salvatore ("Splooooosh!") Link's stylistically audacious GameCube debut is one great bit after another. None is more potent, however, than the sequence where you finally descend beneath the waves into a monochromatic fortress in which lies a familiar sword for Link to retrieve. It works on two levels: veterans will have that moment of realisation when it dawns they're in a drowned Hyrule Castle, while newcomers get to immediately test the awesome powers of the legendary blade. The statuesque enemies spring to colorful life and you nimbly roll around and between their legs, slicing the cords holding a Darknut's armor together before poking a Moblin up the ass and sending him whimpering off in pain. The expressive joy of the Disney-grade animation is the icing on the cake of easily one of the finest Zelda setpieces committed to disc.

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The ending—A Link to the Past

Here's something you don't really see in modern games: a pre-credits sequence that shows you all the locations you visited on your journey. In Link's seminal SNES adventure—for many, still his finest outing—the final fly-past over Hyrule strikes the perfect tone: amusing, yet wistful. Once Link finally gets his hands on the Triforce, we're taken on a whistle-stop tour of all the places we passed through: beginning with Hyrule Castle and the Sanctuary before moving onto Kakariko Village with townsfolk waving at the camera, and vultures circling the Desert Palace. We see the Bully chasing after his friend atop the Mountain Tower and the Flute Boy playing at the Haunted Grove before the Dwarven Swordsmiths pause while hammering to take a bow. Simple stuff, but watching it again takes you back to a time when finishing a game felt like a real achievement, before you symbolically brought Link's quest to a close, lifting that cartridge from your SNES like the Hero of Time raising the Master Sword.

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Hyrule Field—Ocarina of Time

A predictable pick, maybe, but obvious choices tend to be obvious because they're basically too good to leave out. It's worth noting that the impact is only so pronounced, so eye-wideningly magical, because of what comes before. It's a risky, slow-build opening that involves a surfeit of exposition and basic go-here-do-that mini-quests that eventually become (whisper it) rather tedious. Then there's a visit to the Deku Tree, a fairly inauspicious quest that makes you wonder if this is really the epic you signed up for, the game everyone seems to be raving about. And then you step out into Hyrule Field and your doubts are firmly slapped down. It's not quite as spectacular as it once was, of course—it's basically a giant, flat-textured expanse of green—but even now it has the power to leave you dumbstruck. It's less about what it looks like, and more what it represents. It's freedom; it's possibility; it's the world stretching out in front of you, begging you to explore every square yard. It's adventure.

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