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An Oral History of the “Dubfire:Live HYBRID” Genesis

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An Oral History of the “Dubfire:Live HYBRID” Genesis

The VICE Guide to Right Now: This Police Department Really Doesn't Want You to Get Drunk and Hunt Bears with a Hatchet

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Photo via WikiCommons

A friend of mine used to squat illegally in Yosemite National Park. He'd steal food from tourists and rock climb all day, and at night, he'd camp in bear caves with a group of fellow squatters to hide from Park Rangers. I remember he told me the bears mostly left him alone, but if memory serves, he knew a guy who had been decimated by a Grizzly in the park. The man had to be airlifted to the hospital, and didn't come back the same.

Most humans are smart enough to understand that we are weak creatures with skin that is easily punctured, and should not actively seek out interactions with giant animals covered in fur and claws. But there are apparently plenty of folks who like to get drunk, grab a weapon, and try to kill a beast.

Drunk bear-hunting is enough of a problem in western Massachusetts that the North Adams Police Department posted a plea on Facebook Monday night urging citizens who see a bear to "LEAVE IT ALONE" and call in instead of chasing bears "through the woods with a dull hatchet, drunk." The NAPD took one wasted bear hunter into protective custody, and informed the public that "chasing bears through the woods drunk with a dull hatchet is strongly not advised." Thanks guys.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Bears?

1. Peter Hoffmeister Lived with Bears in Yosemite and Survived to Write a Book About It
2. The Woman Who Wrestled Bears
3. Science Has Figured Out Why Bears Go Down on One Another, and It's Depressing
4. Pollution Is Damaging Polar Bears' Dicks

Follow River on Twitter.

Jazz on Bones and X-Ray Audio: Chasing the Ghost of Soviet Russia's Most Dedicated Vinyl Bootlegger

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Jazz on Bones and X-Ray Audio: Chasing the Ghost of Soviet Russia's Most Dedicated Vinyl Bootlegger

Leeroy Jenkins and the Changing Face of the Internet

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[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/hooKVstzbz0' width='480' height='360']

One more time for the road: The Leeroy Jenkins video is ten years old.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

This week saw the tenth anniversary of one of the internet's most popular mainstays. A video whose fame was reliant on the kind of people the internet predominantly belonged to a decade ago: men in their early to mid-20s who were into MMORPGS. Yes, Leeroy Jenkins—the chicken-loving bro who (supposedly) ruined a raid on World of Warcraft by running, kamikaze-style, into the battle area early, much to the chagrin of a bag of nerdish, unimpressed paladins and warriors—somehow happened ten years ago.

In those ten years, the internet has moved on in ways we could never have predicted. For a start, the geeks have been pushed to the dim-lit back alleys of the web by football banter accounts, Facebook aunties, and everyone else in the Western world. The instantaneous sharing of information has become so succinct that traveling to hundreds of different websites for different videos and images is a thing of the past. We all only use about five websites now: Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, plus a news source that tallies with our own political sympathies. They all intertwine to pump the same things into your feed. Your friend shared it on Facebook? Someone's tweeted it as well. They might have also put it on Ello, but who the fuck is looking there?

Gone are the days when you'd have to go to eBaum's World, then to NewGrounds, then to LiquidGeneration, or YTMND, if you were so inclined. Back then, the content was dispersed through a hundred different channels, the internet was a Spaghetti Junction of pneumatic postal tubes delivering lolcats and "fail" videos to your creaky living room dial-up. Now we just sit back, covered in Mini Cheddar dust and globs of Frijj, waiting for something to trend.

Leeroy Jenkins never trended. It was never in the "Explore" section of Twitter, it wasn't in that sidebar on Facebook. It was never a "This Group Of WoW Players Go On A Raid, And You Won't Believe What Happens Next" article. Before that, a video going viral was dependent on whether we wanted it to or not. Millions of things will have been ignored, deemed not lulzy or important enough, but many break through. Flash cartoons, like Bananaphone, were once the prime example of a shareable meme video. When was the last time you got excited about a flash cartoon? When was the last time a crudely drawn character, whose voice is badly recorded on one of those old mics that look like a cross between the Pixar lamp and a creature from Prometheus, made it to the homepage of YouTube? This brand of shoddy yet heartfelt DIY creativity has long since died out, and is as likely to make a comeback as Britpop-themed chat rooms and paying for porn.

Why? There is simply too much money at stake now. As soon as an "internet creative" gets a sniff of success they're being sponsored, their clicks turn to pound coins and they end up in the editing suite of some TV studio before you can say "Shoop Da Whoop." The power of discernment has shifted away from us and towards the people who always had it anyway. Editors, businessmen, marketers—professionals whose job it is to make you watch stuff, as opposed to letting you watch it if you want to.

A bitter nostalgia for this lost and more democratic online era is felt in many corners of the net. Any aspect that hasn't become too showbiz feels the need to exile itself to the darker regions. 4Chan is still going, and reddit feels like its less evil bastard child: the Max Mosley to its Oswald. The lewdness, the danger, becomes rarer the more the culture is homogenised and simplified.

WATCH: We Got 20 British Strangers Who Aren't Models to Kiss Each Other:

There are still avenues for funny, weird things to grow organically. Six-second video creator Vine has given a generation of teenagers their opportunity to create things unfettered by big business influence, undisturbed by the question of whether it's WTF or LOL in Buzzfeed's Geiger counter of bullshit. Of course, the natural desire to be loved and shared is still there. There are still people singing, attention seeking, quirking. But there's a sense of freedom to it, and through its inherent spontaneity a lack of the kind of studied narcissism that pervades YouTube in the form of vloggers, and Instagram in the form of everything.

It used to be a surprise to have something go viral. Nowadays, it's an entitlement, an expectation. Leeroy Jenkins is a possibly made-up scenario that only a couple of people, by rights, should be amused by. It was dumped online. There was no social media team behind it, no #AtLeastIHaveChicken hashtag.

It increasingly feels like we're being robbed of our choice to decide whether things go viral or not. Given the world's current climate of constant abject horror in every waking corner, this may seem unimportant. But it's not. The internet has grown in the last decade from a fringe space occupied by WoW-players to the most prominent gallery spot in our culture. Leeroy Jenkins is a relic. It's a reminder that once upon a time the internet gave us the power to choose and make "famous" whatever we wanted to, before auto-playing LAD Bible Facebook videos, before branded content made you feel as small and patroniszd as every billboard and TV ad. In online terms, Leeroy Jenkins is a world heritage site; it deserves a blue plaque on the big memorial wall of the internet's lost souls.

Follow Joe on Twitter.

'Bodies, Windows, then One of Them Shot the Driver': At the Scene of the Karachi Bus Attack

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'Bodies, Windows, then One of Them Shot the Driver': At the Scene of the Karachi Bus Attack

Is the Man Fasting for 55 Days over the Armenian Genocide Risking His Life?

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A memorial in California marking the 94th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 2009. Photo via Flickr user Arev G

On April 4, Agasi Vartanyan of Glendale, California, started what he intends to be a 55-day fast in hopes of pressuring the American and Turkish governments to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide as a genocide. Ever since, he's been living in a roughly 12-foot-by-12-foot enclosure with a glass viewing window for passersby out front of Burbank's St. Leon Armenian Cathedral. It's equipped with a cot, TV, clothes, and images of purple forget-me-not flowers, the symbol used by the Armenian diaspora to commemorate this year's centennial of the mass killing.

Most nations, including Turkey, acknowledge that from 1915 to 1923, during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, nationalistic Turks committed a series of brutal forced relocations of Christian citizens, including Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontic Greeks. Accused of collaborating with the Ottomans' foe, Russia, during World War I, these poor souls were labeled enemies of the state. However, only two dozen countries (and 43 US states) officially label this event a "genocide." Those who've hesitated to apply the term here usually point out that it's hard to pin down whether Ottoman Turks intended to eliminate their Armenian population. The Turkish government insists today that while what happened was a tragedy, it's been overhyped (it claims commonly cited death tolls of 1.5 million are inflated), as there was no intention of outright extermination.

To date Vartanyan's fast has drawn only limited media attention. But the occasional reports by Armenian and local Californian outlets show that this protest starvation is having a significant effect on his body. When Vartanyan entered his enclosure, the 55-year-old man (he chose a 55-day fast both to beat his personal record—a 50-day fast he says he conducted while living in Russia—and to represent his age) weighed 224 pounds. But after only 28 days of eating nothing (and drinking a gallon of water a day), he'd already lost nearly 40 pounds.

Vartanyan—who's being regularly monitored by a nurse and physician so long as he remains on his fast—has stayed upbeat with reporters.

"I can't comment on what Turkey or President Obama are doing," ArmRadio quoted him as saying one month into his protest, "but I can talk about my efforts, which I won't stop."

"You cannot harm your body in this way," he told the Los Angeles Daily News earlier in his strike, "if you're doing it for a cause."

But Vatanyan is taking a risk by protesting in this way. Quite a few people have died while on principled hunger strikes in the past. Yet just how long one can go on fasting before the human body starts to shut down is surprisingly tricky to establish. After all, it's no simple matter to assess the conditions in which people starve without simultaneous dehydration—which will kill you in under 20 days—or other environmental stressors or health conditions. And there's a lot of variability in how long a body can go without food based on general health, genetics, and weight. Apocryphal accounts of years-long fasts aside, we know of cases where hunger strikers made it up to 73 days before they died—but we also know of incidents where people died in just over 40 days.

To get a grip on just what such a lengthy hunger strike is doing to Vartanyan's body, I reached out to Dr. David L. Katz, the director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and a nutrition specialist. Upon hearing the details of Vartanyan's case, Katz told VICE that the activist is currently undergoing a process called catabolism, in which his body will break down its own fat and muscle tissue to provide itself with energy. At this stage of starvation, your metabolism slows down as your body shuts down less essential bodily functions. Vartanyan will especially be suffering from decreased immune system functionality, fertility, and gastro-intestinal activity.

Catabolism, once the non-vital tissues are eaten away, can begin to take its toll on progressively more important bodily materials, eventually leading to permanent or lethal damage. First, the body will start to lose bone density and there will be observable bruising. But eventually this internal auto-cannibalism will start to go after vital organs as well, doing major damage.

"[Serious damage] can result when the body leaches proteins from vital organs, such as the heart," says Katz. "That can produce fatal dysrhythmia."

Katz suspects that the absolute longest such a fast could go would be three months (much longer than Vartanyan has planned), but adds that this is highly dependent on how much non-vital body mass his body has to break down. However, Vartanyan is not yet displaying telltale signs of immediate distress. Nor does he appear to be anywhere near the 60- to 80-pound (or 12-to-12.5 body mass index) danger zone past which anorexia sufferers often start to suffer lethal organ failure and heart attacks. So Vartanyan will probably make it out of this hunger strike looking a good deal slimmer than he did at the start and perhaps with some bruising, but mostly sound of mind and likely capable of making a complete recovery.

Whether Vartanyan's fast ends in illness or silent completion, neither outcome is likely to have an impact on policymakers or diplomats in Turkey or the US. Many protests, some of them violent, have preceded his solitary vigil—and nothing has yet persuaded the two countries to change their minds.

"The hunger strike is a powerful weapon under the right circumstances," Ronald Grigor Suny, a historian at the University of Michigan and author of "They Can Live in The Desert But Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide , tells VICE. "But I cannot envision political leaders reacting in this case. There have been demonstrations, terrorist events, and still no reaction that has led to recognition."

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

The German-Lebanese Gay Teen Whose Own Family Threatened to Kill Him

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All photos courtesy of Nasser El-Ahmad

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps.

Berlin has a reputation for being one of the world's most gay-friendly cities, but that doesn't mean that all of its citizens feel free to express their sexuality without fear of reprisal—particularly not those brought up within ultraconservative Muslim families. This is fact that German-Lebanese 18-year-old Nasser El-Ahmad knows all too well.

After he was outed by some school friends, Nasser's family quickly turned on him, he told VICE in an interview, warning him that he'd "burn in hell like the rest of the gays." His father whipped him, saying he'd slit his throat, while his uncle drenched him in petrol and pretended to set him on fire.

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Unsurprisingly, all that led to Nasser running away from home and finding refuge in Berlin's gay community. Child protective services quickly got involved and revoked custody rights from his parents. The agency also administered a travel ban so that he couldn't be sent to Lebanon for "treatment," forced marriage, or—in the worst-case scenario—an honor killing, as his family had threatened to do.

The travel ban gave Nasser some degree of security but he was still only 15 years old and—like any other teen might—began to miss his mom. In a moment of weakness, he picked up the phone and called her.

His mother, who he told VICE he considered his "best friend," cried into the phone, saying how much she missed him and pleading with him to come home. Being young and naive, he ignored the authorities' advice and decided to do it.

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Upon arriving at his parents house, Nasser was greeted by several of his relatives. They asked him to sit down for a chat and offered him a soda.

The next thing Nasser knew, he was hidden under a blanket in the back of his father's car. The Coke they'd offered him had been laced with sleeping pills. His father and two of his uncles had abducted him and were on their way to Lebanon where they'd set up a marriage that they hoped would "cure him of his homosexuality." Halfway there, they changed their mind and decided to kill him instead.

Interpol had already declared him missing throughout Europe but somehow his kidnappers were able to smuggle him through several countries. It wasn't until the Romanian-Bulgarian border that customs found him and, ultimately, saved his life. Weirdly, his family were not arrested but just sent on their way.

Recommended: Young and Gay in Putin's Russia

Nasser returned to Berlin a few days later. It wasn't an easy decision, he told VICE, but he knew that he had to take his family to court. His lawyer advised him to press charges for unlawful imprisonment and child abduction—unfortunately there wasn't enough evidence for him to go further with abuse charges.

The defendants never showed up to the trial so the case was concluded in less than four minutes. The three men were sentenced to a completely absurd daily fine of roughly $15 for 90 days. That's $1,400 a head, roughly the same as the fine for petty theft. The judge offered Nasser a retrial but knowing it wouldn't get him nowhere, he declined.

The justice system may have failed the young man but it didn't break his spirit. These days he's a civil rights activist who spends his time organizing gay rights marches through Neukölln, the neighborhood he grew up in. Sure, he gets death threats, but at this stage he's used to them.

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Nasser at his demonstration against homophobia. Photo by Grey Hutton.

The demonstrations he takes part in pass right by the area's most conservative mosques, as well as his parents' house. On more than one occasion Nasser has found himself chanting, "We have human rights!" while staring directly into his father's eyes—the only contact he has had with his family since.

Nasser's story is currently being turned into both a book and a film.

Follow Franz on Twitter.

Algae Could Help Solve Our Environmental Problems, so Why Aren't We Using It?

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Algae on a lake in Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest. Photo by Flickr user Andy Arthur

Earlier this month, English design firm ecoLogics Studio drew the attention of attendees at Expo Milano 2015 (this year's Universal Exhibition, neé World's Fair) when they set up a working prototype of their newest invention, the Urban Algae Canopy. With 390 square feet of cushiony flaps lined with tubes filled with a slurry of green algae and attached to a series of pumps, the canopies are meant to be the newest revolution in urban greening, gardening, and even fuel generation.

Programmed to react automatically to weather patterns or to manual commands from passers-by using a digital interface, the canopy pumps varied levels of water, air, and nutrients to the algae within it, generating more photosynthesis and thus more shade and greenery in the sun, or less when desired. The flaps can be moved about as needed. Providing dynamic greenery for cities is already a fairly cool invention, but beyond its aesthetic values, one canopy alone can purportedly suck up as much carbon dioxide and produce as much oxygen per day as 400,000 square feet of woodlands and generate 330 pounds of algal biomass, 60 percent of which (depending on the type of algae used) can be converted into food or current engine-compatible biofuels.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/bC7yLdYbnkU' width='640' height='360']

The promises made by the Urban Algae Canopy are enticing and impressive, yet this is only one of many projects looking to solve food and fuel security by plugging pond scum into high tech machines—the earliest such conceptions date back to the 1950s. Private firms and the US Energy Department alike have long touted the potential of algae (of which there are 100,000 strains, some toxic but some energy-dense, converting nutrients into natural oils that can be squeezed out and processed into biofuels) to produce anywhere from 10 to 500 times the oil of traditional crops like corn or soy. And they can do so, according to these promoters, on bad or useless land rather than farmland, using passive open ponds or networks of contained-system tubes, all while fixing carbon dioxide into oxygen to neutralize the future impact of their fuels.

Within the past few weeks alone, researchers have explored new technologies to use algae to clean up pig shit and turn it into protein-rich livestock feeds, and even to make surfboards, without relying on environmentally degrading polyurethane production. And just a year ago, the notoriously futuristic and ostentatious design firm Arup launched its own algae-powered urban energy solution in the form of an experimental Hamburg, Germany apartment building called the Bio Intelligent Quotient—a cube tiled in algae reactor plates, responding to sunlight with shade and pumping biomass into an incinerator to power the building and generate fuel or food for others in the city with its potential excess. And beyond these projects, the US government has invested millions per year under President Barack Obama (and even developed its own algae testing grounds) on algal energy. Even ExxonMobil has gotten involved in the research game, eager not to be left behind if this technological innovation takes off and displaces oil.

Yet given all this boosterism and the publicity around things like the Urban Algae Canopy and the Bio Intelligent Quotient, one has to wonder why we only hear about the future transformative potential of algae and never see it turn into consumer-ready technologies.

The reason turns out to be fairly simple (and classic in the green tech world): While algae can do all the wonderful things proponents claim, it can only do them via costly, inefficient processes.

Related: VICE takes a cruise to the Northern Gyre in the Pacific Ocean, a spot where currents churn up tons of plastic into a giant pool of chemical soup, flecked with bits and whole chunks ofrefuse that cannot biodegrade.

Setting up the infrastructure to contain algae systems like the Canopy is incredibly expensive (given that these systems require constant temperature control) and take massive tracts of land. One estimate holds that to replace just 17 percent of the gas we use in transit alone, we'd need to set aside a swath of land the size of South Carolina. And the least expensive systems (open algae ponds) lead many to fear that imported or genetically modified algae cultures could easily escape from these systems and wreck havoc in the natural environment. Even if we were to get the infrastructure for algae farming in place, algal colonies suck down massive amounts of water (50 percent more than we need to produce fossil fuels at best, but some estimates say we'd need to appropriate water equal to a quarter of what we use in total for agricultural irrigation to hit that 17 percent goal). They also require tons of nitrates and phosphorous as nutrient bases, both of which are getting more and more expensive with every passing day—just feeding the damned algal blooms can constitute up to 80 or 90 percent of the cost of the resulting biofuels. Then there's the problem of even finding the right strains that can survive mass cultivation.

Even when we manage to set up a functional algae farm or system, the energy-intensive process of harvesting it and wringing the oils or nutrients out of it can at times wind up generating more carbon dioxide than the colonies suck out of the air. And the high yields estimated based on lab results don't always translate into real-world systems. Plus, some worry that the resulting fuels wind up being weaker than standard fossil fuels. We don't yet know how all of these problems affect the Urban Algae Canopy, but we know in the case of the Bio Intelligent Quotient the end result was a cost of $2,500 per square foot to install a system that has at present only managed to achieve 50 percent (versus the promised full) energy self-sufficiency. We also know that the inefficiencies of algae technologies were the reason that a long-lasting Energy Department program, researching algal power since 1978, was shuttered in 1996.

Thankfully, this inefficiency is not an unchangeable reality of algae technology. Over the past couple of months, scientists have made great bounds in reducing the costs of harvesting and resource extraction by developing strains of algae that naturally clump together. And just this month, one research firm managed to bump the productivity of its systems up by 22 percent, making them more cost-effective and productive. In March, researchers at Rice University also published a paper showing that one can actually kill two birds with one stone by growing algae colonies in wastewater treatment plants, so that the colonies suck natural nitrates and phosphorous out of our sewage (the most costly stage of wastewater treatment at the moment), lowering both the cost of their care and of sanitation, and generating steady flows of food and fuel in the process. A similar system was actually installed in Alabama in 2013 and has met great success so far.

Even with all of these advances, no one thinks algae will rise to prominence immediately. The most optimistic boosters' estimates say that (modest) industrial production of algae can begin in 2018. But algae power is on its way in the long run. Unfortunately for design nerds, it just won't look like the futuristic (and experimental and likely prohibitively expensive) Urban Algae Canopy. It'll probably look more like pond scum on the top layer of a slurry of shit and piss, churning away somewhere in a sewage treatment plant. Still, even if the Urban Algae Canopy isn't coming to a city near you anytime soon, it's a fun way to explore advances in the technologies algae can someday fuel, and to get people talking about a faulty yet promising tech.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.


The Swiss Custom of Voting While Shitfaced and Heavily Armed

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All photos by Evan Ruetsch.

This article originally appeared onVICE Alps.

The Landsgemeinde, or "cantonal assembly," is Switzerland's oldest form of direct democracy—a rural voting ritual with roots in the 16th century. Basically, everyone who's eligible to vote gathers in his or her local city square and communally hashes out whatever issue is up for discussion on a given day. Everybody in attendance has an equal right to voice an opinion or protest a notion, and all final decisions are made via a show of hands.

The only people in the square who aren't actually allowed to vote are the service folk, who are far too busy filling voters full of beer and sausages. Decisions are best made when shitfaced, after all.

To get a better idea of the whole ritual, a few weeks ago we headed over to a town called Appenzell-Innerrhoden, which is actually one of the two Swiss cantons where the Landsgemeinde is still being practiced. It's one of the country's oldest assemblies, where women have only had the right to vote for the past 25 years.

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Historically, men have had to prove their voting eligibility by carrying a bayonet or side arm. The idea presumably being that if you carry a weapon in public, you are obviously a rational human-being who ought to have their opinion taken seriously.

Local musicians Harmony Appenzell kicked off the electoral proceedings by somehow managing to make the Swiss national anthem sound like "The Imperial March." It was an apt soundtrack to the march of local dignitaries and their guest of honor, the Minister of Commerce, which traditionally takes place before the assembly.

On that particular day, the people of Appenzell-Innerrhoden gathered to elect their new "city captain"—which is Swiss for "village mayor." The choice was between some right-wing guy, locally famous for owning a golf course, and a farmer with no real political agenda.

Related: The Heroin-Loving Piss-Takers Running Against Nigel Farage in Kent:

The election process was full of pints, heckling, and rogue last-minute candidate propositions. It was, for all intents and purposes, a complete shit show. After the final show of hands, the farmer was crowned victorious. Sure, the whole affair may be a little more dramatic than the elections we're used to, but at the end of the day, everyone seemed to enjoy voting a lot more than the UK did last week.

The NYPD Just Shot a Man Who Was Allegedly Attacking People with a Hammer

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On Wednesday morning, New York City police shot a man who was allegedly attacking people with a hammer and his fist at random.

According to the New York Post, which had one of the earliest stories about the incident, a 30-year-old named David Baril was stopped on the street by the cops because he resembled photos of a hammer-wielding man who had been assaulting strangers on the streets of Manhattan for the past two days. Baril apparently lunged at one of the officers, Lauren O'Rouke, swinging repeatedly with his hammer and injuring her head, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Remarkably, despite being shot in the head, the suspect is in critical but stable condition, an NYPD spokesperson told VICE.

Baril's ostensible reign of terror started on Monday at about 1:45 PM, when he reportedly hit a 20-year-old man in the back of the head. Later, at about 7:40 PM, he is said to have attacked a woman sitting on a bench in Union Square Park. Ten minutes later, he assaulted a 33-year-old woman, according to the Post. (It's unclear whether or not he also punched a woman on East 26th Street and Madison Avenue earlier that evening.) The Post is reporting that Baril has a violent past, having been arrested for both assaulting a cop and jumping over the counter at a KFC to punch someone who worked there.

Baril was shot around 10 AM on Eighth Avenue near 37th Street. One local reporter tweeted a picture showing a hammer lying on the pavement. The area is closed off, and there's a heavy police presence.

The NYPD spokesperson told VICE there will be a news conference about Baril at 3:30 PM. We'll update this post with more information as soon as we have it.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

How Elon Musk Willed SpaceX Into Making the Cheapest Rockets Ever Created

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How Elon Musk Willed SpaceX Into Making the Cheapest Rockets Ever Created

Is the NFL's Big Bet on Making Football Safer Working?

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Is the NFL's Big Bet on Making Football Safer Working?

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Colombia Might Start Using Coke-Head Butterflies to Kill Coca Plants

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Monarch butterflies. Not the coke fiend kind, eloria noyesi. Photo via Clinton and Charles Robinson

The Independent reported today that the Colombian government has decided to stop dousing its illegal coca plants with a cancer-causing weed killer. Last year, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer released findings that "sufficiently demonstrated" that the main ingredient in lots of herbicides, glyphosate, caused cancer in animals who came in contact with it. The president of Colombia's Quindio Botanical Garden, Alberto Gomez, has come up with a better solution—releasing a plague of eloria noyesi butterflies, whose larvae feed on coca plants.

Gomez has yet to address the concern that releasing a swarm of butterflies may result in a country-wide epidemic of deadly butterfly attacks.

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An Interview with the Artist Behind the Covers for Goosebumps

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As you might recall, Goosebumps was a phenomenally successful 1990s book series about preteens finding soft-core terror in the suburbs. The characters had names like Lucy/Lizzy/Billy/Andy and the author, R. L. Stine, had an unusual commitment to describing outfits. To be honest, it was hard to know what made Goosebumps so popular, except that they had mind-blowing covers.

Tim Jacobus was the New Jersey native behind those covers. In 1991 the children's book publisher Scholastic asked him to tender for a new series of horror books. He got the job, and over the next decade Jacobus illustrated the full series of nearly 100 books.

Also over that decade, a nine year-old version of myself tried to copy his style. There was something so cool about those candy-colored, fish-eyed depictions of American horror. And ever since, I've wanted to talk to the guy. How did he and R. L. Stine get the formula so right? I called him up to ask him exactly that.

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'Say Cheese and Die,' 1992

VICE: Let's start with your background. How did you get into illustration?
Tim Jacobus: In high school all the best art was on album covers, and especially if it was by a guy named Roger Dean. He did these surreal covers for Yes, and I wanted to paint like him. I was very lucky that one my tutors had been in the Marines, he was a tough guy, and my dad related to him. So this guy said, Hey, your son has some talent. I think if he tries, he really has a shot. That convinced him, and I set my sights on illustrating books.

Why books?
Because you only get better with the sheer numbers, and in the 1980s and early 1990s, paperbacks were doing numbers. My first two books were called Fugitive in Transit and Brains Incorporated for a science fiction company called Daw. There were a few years where I had no money, but slowly I could buy socks and underwear. Then somehow work became consistent, and I stopped thinking every job would be the last.

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'Let's Get Invisible,' 1992

How did you first hear about Goosebumps?
The first I heard was that Scholastic were trying out four copies of children's horror by a guy named R. L. Stine, but no one really thought they would work. I did the cover for Welcome to Dead House and got the job because I used lots of color. They thought colors would appeal to young readers. Then I did a few more, and one day I got a visit from some friends. Their kids were in middle school, and we got talking about what we'd been up to. I said, "Oh, I'm working on a series called Goosebumps." And they were like, "No, seriously? We buy tons of them. This is a really big deal!" Not long after that I started seeing them everywhere.

What did you think of the book themselves?
Well, they're not Thoreau, but they're good. And they got a lot of kids reading who would have otherwise never picked up a book.

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'Egg Monsters from Mars,' 1995

Tell me about the style. They illustrations were all really slick; everything was glistening and warped.
For Goosebumps I used a mixture of paint and airbrushing, which provided that sleek, finished look. Then the distorted perspective thing really started with the Goosebumps book Egg Monsters from Mars. It was a kitchen scene, which was going to be hard to make interesting, so I warped the cabinets and the tiles. Then that sort of became the look.

What was your method for these paintings?
I always got up at 5 AM, and they used to take 30, maybe 40 hours to do. I still work early, and music is always on. I still listen to Yes, and I love progressive rock. I'm seeing Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree in June.

Nice! Did you get rich illustrating Goosebumps?
I didn't. They paid me fine, but my payment wasn't attached to sales. It didn't make any difference whether they sold a million copies or ten. I don't live in a mansion.

Does R. L. Stine?
Yeah, I've been to his house, and it's a real nice place. He lives in Manhattan in a very nice place.

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'The Werewolf of Fever Swamp,' 1993

Did you become famous?
No one would recognize me walking down the street, but it's weird that I can talk to you, or someone from the other side of the world, and I say Egg Monsters from Mars and they know what I'm talking about. That blows my mind.

So what's the secret to a fad?
It's all timing. I'm not diminishing what R. L. Stine did, but it was just hitting the right thing at the right time. They put us together, and something happened; it was electric. But I don't know the formula. I don't even believe that if we got together again it would be close to successful. You need the skill and the dedication to get lucky, but in the end there's an element of magic.

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Some examples of his non-Goosebumps work. This is a piece called 'Whale'

How did you feel when it ended?
I was sad. I don't want to call it depression, but yes, I was very sad. I sensed it was coming, and there was talk of Hey, this won't go forever, but I didn't expect it to end as abruptly as it did. We were doing the Goosebumps 2000 series, and I was 95 percent of the way through a cover. Then they called me up and said Yeah, don't turn it in. It was the early 2000s, and Goosebumps was over.

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'The Lost Seven Cities of Gold'

When you look back at the experience, what's something that you might warn others against?
Maybe just the idea of a creative job. You have to be a certain type of individual because it's not easy, it's just not. There's tons and tons of rejection in a creative career, and you have to learn how to deal with that early and constructively. To be perfectly honest, if my own son wants to be an illustrator, I'd tell him no. It's a hard, fickle life. Having said that, though, I wouldn't go back to the Goosebumps years. I've done that, and I'm 56 now. I'm thrilled to see what happens next.

Interview by Julian Morgans. Follow him on Twitter.

See more of Tim's work at timjacobus.com.

Everything Is Awesome (When You Do MDMA the Right Way)

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[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/05/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/13/' filename='everything-is-awesome-when-you-do-mdma-the-right-way-body-image-1431544936.jpg' id='55901']Are there more more drugs out yonder? Photo courtesy the author

When I clambered down the airplane steps onto the tarmac of Victoria, BC's tiny airport several weeks ago, average human thoughts were swimming around in my brain, mainly: We made it out alive. The air is clean as hell. Who has weed? The West Coast is, in fact, the best coast. And so on.

Here's something I was not thinking: I have arrived, folks; I am ready for my spiritual awakening that will occur when I ingest two doses of MDMA with a gaggle of strangers.

But alas, there I was on vacation in Victoria, thoroughly unprepared for my aforementioned enlightenment.

It was on the last day of the eight-day trip spent with an old friend, Rosebud*, and a new friend, Tiger Blossom*, that we were invited to a gathering of sorts. It was called, Tiger Blossom told us, a Safety Meeting—a ritual wherein she and her friends do drugs in a comfortable environment. Rosebud and I said "YEAH!" and we all jumped in the air for a freeze frame.

When we entered the designated Safety Meeting Apartment that evening, there were people sitting around in a circle drinking hemp beer and pulling tarot cards and listening to ambient music.

We all introduced ourselves summer camp-style with an adjective that starts with our first initial, passed around burning sage and chilled out.

On the menu that night was MDMA. Pure. Local. Organic (nah). Cups of water and evenly portioned TP M-bombs were distributed. I gulped mine down.

A singalong ensued and things started to feel real cool. It was an acoustic rendition of a bad Lana Del Rey song that we all somehow knew the words to and it felt like soft butter melting all over my insides. I couldn't stop smiling.

Bodies soon migrated to the bed in the corner of the living space and formed a gigantic soft pretzel of intertwined limbs, everyone touching each other absentmindedly. I felt a tinge of overwhelming discomfort for a moment and realized I wasn't in immediate contact with anyone. I grabbed Rosebud's shoulder and squeezed it. Relief. I received a killer hand massage from a stranger who wasn't strange anymore. I hugged her afterwards. So many feels.

It became apparent that this trip was at the opposite end of the spectrum from "Getting Fucked Up and Vomiting Your Midnight Munchies and then Slipping into Unconsciousness." (Sorry, VICE) It lacked sloppiness—we were calm and articulate and genuinely cared about each other's well-being. Someone lent me two sweaters and a coat so I wouldn't feel M-shivers when we took a walk to a different apartment. We lay in grass looking up at the stars, we said Oms together in an edible fruit garden and sang songs, we stayed hydrated and looked out for each other. Everyone was respectful and reflective. There's no better title for the experience than Safety Meeting.

Stuff happened in my brain that night, deeper than the chemical fuckery of the drugs. My attempts to put them into words may lack absolute clarity due to the limits of the English language, but here it goes.

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Safety Meeting Revelation 1: Connecting with other humans is fucking important.

Throughout the handholding, the massages, the hugs, and the look of wonder on my new friends' faces when I spoke, I was in awe. I've never experienced anything like it. Boundaries broke down that night—people weren't uncomfortable about touching or being touched. It was essentially a platonic orgy. We were intently focused on helping each other relax through massages and therapeutic scents and healing crystals and talking honestly about life. Everyone interacted excitedly with (very) wide eyes, hanging on tight to the words spilling out of mouths. I told Rosebud, whom I travelled to BC with, that I love her and I'm so happy we did this trip, and it was one of the most genuine things I've ever felt. She reciprocated as we walked through a darkened daisy field holding hands. (What?! This shit only happens in movies.) My new friend Tiger Blossom started calling me Daisy when she saw me picking a few. "You're a daisy." I beamed.

I realized this is what had been missing in my life. I had been gliding through my days with blinders affixed to my skull, only really connecting with a handful of people. And here I am, on earth, surrounded by these fleshy opportunities to feel human presence, to deeply give a fuck about what a stranger wants to do with their life. That night I connected more deeply with people I just met than I ever have with some of my actual friends. And that woke me the fuck up. I need to start doing things differently.

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Safety Meeting Revelation 2: People are doing drugs wrong.

I can't think of any other environment or method of tripping that makes more sense. I recall walking through the quietly progressive Victoria neighbourhood of Fernwood mid-trip, lifting my fists like antennas to heaven and shouting, "Why isn't everyone doing drugs like this?" Echo, echo, echo.

To be clear, I don't want to police anyone; people have the right to do whatever the hell they want with drugs and I respect that. But a small part of me thinks that the folks who take shots till they pass out every Saturday night or bump coke off a grimy PortaPotty toilet at Coachella have not tried anything remotely close to a Safety Meeting.

When people do drugs, especially uppers or hallucinogens, they're obsessed with what they're doing—the activity. They need to be at a bar or a show or a club or a festival. They need to be preoccupied or they get bored. These people forget about who they're doing it with. There are entire universes inside each of the people you trip with and exploring those universes is the most valuable use of "time."

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/05/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/13/' filename='everything-is-awesome-when-you-do-mdma-the-right-way-body-image-1431545100.jpg' id='55904']The West Coast is the best coast. Photo courtesy the author.

Safety Meeting Revelation 3: I am an individual.

Because of the aforementioned revelations—that human connection is possible and that I finally did drugs in a way that benefits me—I felt an enormous sense of contentment inside myself.

The entire night I didn't look at my phone once and for 10 hours I had absolutely no concept of time. It was probably the longest I've gone without checking social media while awake. I felt in control of myself and unfazed by the iron grip of technology. It wasn't until someone announced sleepily that it was 4 AM, informed by the glowing rectangle of alien light in their hand, that I remembered time was a thing.

I was comfortable being with myself, not tied to things or ideas such as time, existing as a solitary entity with personal free will. Things made sense; they aligned in my head. I came to terms with my location in the enormous jumbled spider web of space and people that exists on this planet.

I texted my significant other in the early morning as I was coming down off the high to tell him what happened to me. I had been thinking about him repeatedly throughout the night, but with intense happiness that he exists rather than glumly wishing he was with me.

That was the big bang of the night—I didn't want anything at all because I am everything, I am comfortable inside myself. Things happened, they lined up, and I just fucking went with it. If I can exist in a bizarre situation (doing drugs spiritually in BC with mostly strangers) as a single entity without any worries or desires, I am legitimately content with myself.

***

The feeling didn't drain from me when I came down. Yeah, at a certain point in the night it got weird to touch each other so much and the next morning we all urgently needed coffee-infused blood transfusions, but my perspective was new.

I didn't feel emotionally devoid like the high school drug abuse pamphlets said I would. I wasn't depressed or anxious. I was the opposite. I figured out so many things during that trip that the next day the sky was a shade of blue I had never seen before and the grass felt softer under my legs and I looked at my friends differently.

Never in my two decades of life did I expect that popping a goddamn molly would lead to a spiritual awakening, but here I am. Wide awake.

(*Nicknames of individuals established in lieu of trip)

Follow Emma Cosgrove on Twitter.


How to Cook Bugs: Scorpions Edition

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How to Cook Bugs: Scorpions Edition

VICE Vs Video Games: ‘Call of Duty 4’ Still Provides Thrills Modern Shooters Can’t Match

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III was announced last month and, as always, reaction to the news was mixed. These spring reveals of big-budget titles for later that year (see also: Assassin's Creed: Syndicate and Star Wars: Battlefront) are as inevitable as the next round of Katie Hopkins hate speech: We know it's coming, many of us already know we won't like it, but we still act surprised when it arrives.

I'm a big Call of Duty fan and it still feels like shitting on the series and its fans is the default setting for many gamers and critics out there. It's still "cool" to roll eyes and slam Activision for announcing another entry to the franchise. But unlike Hopkins, Activision's money-spinner isn't actually hurting anyone, and remains loved by millions.

Does this mean that the series' fans are dullards who overlook indie darlings like Monument Valley and Gone Home in favor of rote corridor experiences? No, of course not. We're just playing what we enjoy. The short of it is: Lots of people genuinely like Call of Duty.

And yet, there's another consistent reaction to each new CoD reveal that has always intrigued me. Chances are you've seen this one yourself, but I often spot people online saying things like, "Call of Duty multiplayer hasn't been good since the first Modern Warfare," or, "CoD 4 is still the best game in the series."

Is it though? Really?

I decided to fire up the Xbox 360 and hop back into Modern Warfare's multiplayer to answer that question. Returning to the game with fresh eyes today reminded me of just how innovative it was for its time, and how it cemented the status quo of what an online FPS should be. Think back to 2007, when every shooter studio wanted to produce a Call of Duty–killer. Other military shooters leapt on it like seagulls swarming a discarded tray of chips, but none could come close to Infinity Ward's brilliance.

But is it ever pared back in contrast to 2014's Advanced Warfare. I scrapped all my old "Create a Class" setups to cherry-pick new builds from the small offering of firearms on offer, such as the sturdy M4 Carbine, vicious MP5 submachine gun, and the brutal Barrett .50-cal sniper rifle. It's clear that with fewer guns on offer, the game's balance can nudge closer to true equilibrium.

Related: Watch our documentary on the growing world of eSports:

Even the perks are scaled back, and although the likes of Juggernaut—which gives players more health—felt cheap back in the day, they certainly didn't feel like unfair advantages during my recent sessions. I don't know if it's Infinity Ward or Activision subsidiary Raven that have been maintaining Call of Duty 4 online, but it still runs like a dream. The last time I played this game was in 2012, and it was rife with hacks that resulted in players running under the map, spam pop-up boxes and other dodgy shenanigans—but there's none of that now.

What's left is a pure experience that easily brings a smile to my face, even so long after the first time it did. I remember thinking, back in 2007, that the game felt like paintball, thanks to the constant ebb and flow of battle across each superbly designed arena, and that feeling still holds up today. My first comeback match was on freighter stage Wet Work, which really captures the thrill of gaining ground and driving the other team back to their side of the map.

It was here, in the dark of the map's rain-drenched night, that I remembered each character build has access to night-vision goggles, and that "PITOOOO" sound they made as I flipped them on was a nostalgic kidney punch. Hugging the surface of freight containers and edging around the map's borders, I was able to start picking off enemies with ease. I was shit at the game when it originally came out, but years of playing subsequent entries really do give you a skill set that's transferable across the entire franchise. Come the end, I'd not done too badly at all.

Next, I went for the Black Hawk Down–inspired map Crash—one that I have great memories of. It's a dream in objective modes like Sabotage or Capture the Flag, and without the distraction of aircraft killstreaks gridlocking the sky—Modern Warfare 2's AC-130 streak reward can do one—the conditions for victory rely almost purely on player skill.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/LhuIjNSg7Gg' width='560' height='315']

'Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare' trailer, from forever ago.

Sure there's a chopper killstreak in CoD 4, but you need seven subsequent kills to earn it. Without tons of gadgets and other streak rewards to chain up kills, this is harder than it sounds. You really need to earn those rewards on your own. Although there are only about 3,500 CoD 4 players online worldwide right now, they're real diehards for sticking with an eight-year-old game and, as such, they're a skilled bunch. The level of play was brilliant.

It was great to see our team hunkering down in the map's elevated shop fronts and back alleys and working together without coordinating in voice chat—as if the map's choke points and defensive zones had become second nature. We just sort of knew where to be and which lines to hold in order to drive our opponents back. I don't know if that speaks volumes about the game's still-brilliant map design, but I had an absolute blast.

The matches then moved to other maps like missile site Countdown, with its lethal expanses and sniper-rich killzones, the multitiered factories of Pipeline, and claustrophobic interiors of Vacant. Call it rose-tinted specs, but the whole experience was full of fond memories and "Oh yeaaaaah" exclamations whenever a familiar environment jogged my memory. The spread of locales might be a bit thin, with most maps being set in either the Russian countryside or Middle Eastern urban districts, but their superb design makes the palette swapping forgivable.

So, is Modern Warfare still the best multiplayer that the Call of Duty series has to offer? Have the many years of subsequent installments and countless millions of investment failed to produce something superior? Well, not exactly, because obviously the answer to that comes down to your own taste, more than anything else. If you place raw skill above using fancy exo-suit tricks or future tech to score kills, then yes: this is the best entry. But whatever your poison of the present day, I urge you to dust off your copy and give it a bash, as it's not aged half as badly as so many other games of its era.

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Call of Duty's toy chest of online tools, perks, and death machines has expanded greatly over the last eight years, and has resulted in a broad range of CoD "flavors" that appeal to each fan in different ways. Comparing Black Ops II and Advanced Warfare and the first Modern Warfare reveals three very different experiences with varying victory conditions, control nuances, and tactical considerations.

This is contrary to claims that the franchise never changes, and you can bet lots of people will regard Black Ops III to be their all–time favorite entry when it launches in November. It will certainly speak to people in ways that the risible mess that was 2013's Ghosts could not. It's probably safe to say that Treyarch's latest won't boast the stripped–back, uncluttered core of its predecessor, but in the name of injecting new life into the series, that's fine.

Modern Warfare is the barebones Call of Duty experience. There's a fluidity and urgency about the game that leaps off the screen during every tense skirmish or final push towards victory. This is a feeling many new releases can't match, and although the first-person shooter genre has moved on a great deal since 2007, it owes this game a huge debt. CoD 4's DNA is all over the competition, and that's surely evidence of its status as an enduring pioneer. Give it another look, seriously.

Follow Dave on Twitter.

The Life of Nosaj Thing: 'It's Like a One-Hour High, Then 23 Hours of Discomfort'

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The Life of Nosaj Thing: 'It's Like a One-Hour High, Then 23 Hours of Discomfort'

Islamic State’s Second-in-Command Reportedly Killed by Airstrike in Iraq

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Islamic State’s Second-in-Command Reportedly Killed by Airstrike in Iraq

Will Growing Support for Medicinal Weed Help End New Zealand’s War on Grass?

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With a ten percent rise in support for medical marijuana over the last decade, New Zealand may eventually be home to government-owned crops like this one in the US. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

While the dream of taking a legal toke is getting closer to reality for advocates of medical marijuana in New Zealand, stoners hoping that recreational use will follow have a long wait on their hands.

Results of a new poll released late last week by market analysts Colmar Brunton show a healthy 47 percent of New Zealanders believe cannabis should be legalized for medical use—a 10 percent bump from the same survey conducted more than a decade ago. Paired with the constant flow of anecdotal evidence and increasing scientific support, the polls are well-timed to potentially impact the current review of National Drug Policy being spearheaded by Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne.

Medical marijuana has been known to help relieve a wide range of ailments from chronic pain and neurological disorders to nausea and cancer-related atrophy, seeing it gather backers from unlikely corners over the recent years. But while Dunne is open to more medicinal products being available if they undergo a comprehensive testing regime, he has put his foot down on recreational cannabis bluntly stating he has no intention of legalizing it.

Related: Watch our video about an eight-year-old leukemia patient who uses medical marijuana to treat her illness:

According to the New Zealand-made documentary 'Druglawed,' directed by Arik Reiss and released last month, marijuana has a long history of therapeutic use in New Zealand. The film claims that cannabis was first cultivated in New Zealand around the late 19th century by a catholic sister named Suzanne Aubert who used it in brews to treat menstrual cramps and alleviate asthma. Her work treating the sick in general has put the late Mother Aubert in line for a sainthood, currently being considered by authorities in Rome. However, the the Catholic Church has disputed the claims she used pot in her pharmaceutical toolkit.

Also outlined in the film is the government's central argument against lifting marijuana prohibition, which stems from three drug-related treaties set in place by the United Nations in the 70s and 80s. The third treaty was finalized in 1988 and represents an escalation of the war on drugs, which was launched by Ronald Reagan in 1972. Ironically, the United States is now being accused of violating the treaties and ultimately breaking its own resolve by having legal cannabis markets in four states. And several others are poised to legalize pot by 2016.

For pro-cannabis activists in New Zealand, the government's inflexibility is somewhat of a sore point. Organizations like the local arm of NORML are strongly advocating for cannabis regulation with one of the core drivers being the high rate of cannabis convictions issued under the current regime. To help potheads, a.k.a. a sizable chunk of the New Zealand population, avoid conviction the organization has published an informative blog on how to contest a cannabis charge. In 1999, New Zealand topped the list of arrests, beating out countries like the United States with an incredible average of one arrest every 30 minutes.

If convicted for possession the fine is relatively modest with the maximum penalty being three months imprisonment and/or a $500 fine, but the real damage is in the recorded conviction that can severely limit job and travel prospects. Interestingly, of the people surveyed by Colmar Brunton, 21 percent indicated that possession of a small amount should only incur a fine and no criminal conviction.

The poster child for New Zealand's pro-cannabis cause is arguably Dakta Green. The 65-year-old, who was formerly known as Ken Morgan until he changed his name, was sentenced in April to 28 months in jail for charges relating to the country's first ever cannabis social club. Green opened the west Auckland clubhouse, dubbed The Daktory, in 2008 for people interested in cannabis reform to gather, and of course smoke weed. It even boasted a vending machine that dispensed one-gram baggies. As his colleague, NORML president Chris Fowlie writes: "the Daktory was his way of demonstrating that cannabis would be better regulated than prohibited."

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The Daktory's weed vending machine. Image via derbuchstabensalat blog.

The Daktory was well known to police and the general public alike, but it had a relatively untroubled existence until 2012. In June of that year, police decided to raid the clubhouse and found a quantity of cannabis on site and pinned it to Green, his girlfriend Gizella van Trigt and friend Stefan Bower, now collectively known as The Daktory Three. Despite what Fowlie calls "weak and circumstantial" evidence all three were convicted and sentenced, the former two received prison time and Bower got home detention. Fowlie is convinced that Green will not be knocked off course. "He has been to jail before on cannabis charges. That didn't stop him from opening The Daktory. Sending him to jail again won't make him stop fighting for cannabis law reform."

Fowlie goes on to argue that there is nothing to be gained by jailing any of The Daktory Three. "They are not criminals, they are community minded activists who were just trying to make New Zealand a better place," he writes. It's a statement that no doubt resonates with the country's smokers. Whether they get high for recreational or medical reasons, smokers are currently pushed into engaging in black market activity and risk damaging convictions to obtain weed.

As one user, who suffers chronic pain, explains: "breaking the law is awful. To be made to feel like a criminal for something a doctor recommended to me and has helped me is awful." As yet, it is unclear when the National Drug Review will be completed, but there certainly is anticipation for reform that will see less people clogging up the country's justice system and locked up for petty drug crime.

Follow Dannielle on Twitter.

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