These images are not from the wedding described in the piece, but you get the idea. All photos courtesy of The Gun Store

"Look!" pointed out the sister of the bride. "Your ear protection matches your dress."

It was a tender family moment punctuated by loud gunfire. Crimson red rose pedals fluttered on the floor of the chapel, converted from the room normally used for gun cleaning. The ordained minister addressed the young couple with a pistol secured in his hip holster: "Do you Jeff take Sandra* to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, to love and cherish this day forward til death do you part?"

The last few words were muffled by the spray of machine gun fire, popping from the shooting range located in the next room. Gunpowder stung my nostrils.

We were at the Gun Store in Las Vegas, the first establishment to offer literal "shotgun weddings." Couples are wed inside the gun range's weaponry outlet and then seal their vows by firing off AK-47s, Uzis, or MP5 submachine guns. The only thing that could make these nuptials more emblematically American would be the baby Jesus conducting the ceremony himself.

"It's loud. They duck sometimes," said Emily Couture, who came up with the idea back in 2011. Couture had been working as the media contact at the gun range before she approached her boss and suggested the idea of using the place as a wedding venue. "He looked at me like I was a crazy person," she remembered.

But Couture had a feeling, so she got ordained and became a marriage officiant herself. In 2012, the Gun Store held their first wedding.

"We let them get married down range where the guns were shot. And then they actually got to shoot downrange where they just got married 20 minutes earlier."

It's no mistake that this all takes place in an anything-goes town like Vegas (which also happens to be the wedding capital of the world). Couture has a laissez-faire approach to the whole thing: "If they want to get married at a gun range holding a big fat Uzi, far be it for me to keep them from it."

The Gun Store's $500 wedding package includes use of the venue, the ceremony, legal paperwork, a gift bag, and VIP shooting range access, with five blasts on a shotgun for both bride and groom. They also offer a $450 package for renewing vows.

On average, they conduct five weddings per month. Recently, Couture administered her very first same-sex marriage, now that it's legal in Nevada. The couple were Las Vegas locals who were thrilled to legally express their love with a weapon involved.

Many of the Gun Store's couples come from the UK and Canada rather than the United States—tourists looking to embrace America's freewheeling gun culture, and take part in the gun-range-turned-wedding-chapel that isn't available within their countries' borders.

Strangely—and perhaps disturbingly—wedding bookings tend to increase after shooting-related tragedies, according to Aaron Dickson, the the Gun Store's concierge coordinator. After the Sandy Hook massacre, not a single wedding was cancelled.

The weekend I visited the Gun Store, the weaponry outlet was decked out for the wedding of a couple from Canada. The pair had been together for 12 years—and they were finally ready to romantically lock and load.

"Out of the three weddings I've done, two of them have ended in tears," whispered a woman in the back of the room, who was in charge of cueing the ceremony music. Those tears weren't from a stray bullet shell flying into someone's eye, she said—they were from the flood of emotion that one can only feel when getting married at a gun range.

The wedding party of eight arrived in formal attire—sharp suits for the men and long black dresses for the ladies. Family members took position on grey foldout chairs. A flowered trellis, resting on a makeshift stage, was flanked by a mounted Uzi and Tommy gun.

Then, as classical music streamed through a CD player, the lovely bride, adorned in a long, flowing dress, entered. A hush fells over the room, while the barrage of gunfire erupted from the next room: POP-POP-POP!

Besides the artillery, it was more or less a traditional ceremony: Kisses, claps, tears, gunfire, and more gunfire. Then the mother of the bride cried tears of joy.

Want more on firearms? Check out VICE's documentary on the world of DIY gun-making.

"Will you hold my flowers?" asked the bride, exchanging her bouquet for an assault weapon. She and her new husband took photos under the wedding trellis while holding an Uzi and Tommy gun, respectively. Their parents took turns cradling an AK-47, making for the strangest family wedding photo I've ever seen.

With the ceremony complete, eye and ear protection were dispersed among the formally-clad wedding party. They moved down the hall, past a range of shooters, to the specialty VIP shooting range adorned with marble floors. Here, the couple would consummate their marriage with a bang.

The Gun Store staff laid out ground rules: The newlyweds aren't allowed to throw the bouquet in the air and riddle it with bullets (though this is often requested). "We'll definitely hang up your bouquet and you can shoot that downrange," Couture explained. "You can shoot whatever you want."

The range master, who lingered nearby like an attentive waiter, loaded the weapons and brought the husband and wife an array of firearms. Though the selection was broad, for an additional $370, the Gun Store also offers an upgraded service— the Mr. & Mrs. Smith & Wesson package—with "more guns, ammunition, and targets" for the truly gun-crazy couple.

The Gun Store is pretty much open to any type of weaponry-themed wedding. One couple who held a "redneck wedding." The only thing not allowed is a real shotgun wedding: Pregnant bride aren't allowed to shoot because of the sound reverberations from a MP-40 can negatively effect the unborn child.

"The weirdest phone call I've gotten is a request to do a nudist wedding, which we're down with," Couture said. "They could have a full nudist wedding and shoot nude." Though unlike ear and eye protection, the Gun Store doesn't supply genital protection for nude newlyweds, so "if brass that flies and melts them and burns them, that's on them."

And if the love happens to go flat, the Gun Store also hosts Divorce Parties. Couture recalled one group of women who showed up dressed in black on the day a divorce was finalized. "They came in and had pictures of her ex that they took out of the frame—it was a contest to see who could shoot pictures of the ex-husband. We don't encourage that."

Afterwards, when the divorcée saw the bullet-riddled photos of her former husband's face, she remarked: "Wow, that's cheaper than therapy." And, I might add, less time-consuming than prison.

Not everyone is in support of the gun-wielding ceremonies. "Responsible gun owners appreciate the risks of having a gun," says Jonathan Hutson spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "They don't treat a gun casually like a party favor."

To love guns enough to include them in your wedding vows is a problem with our culture, according to Ladd Everitt, the communications director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence in Washington, DC. "We live in a society where a certain subset of gun owners fetishize firearms, talking them as something akin to religious idols," he said. "There is a strong spiritual element here, where commonly embraced maxims of faith, 'Thou shalt not kill,' 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' are rejected outright. The gun culture takes great pride in ignoring the risks posed by firearms, and embraces the suffering they cause: 'That's the price of liberty.' Some might describe this philosophy as nihilism."

As we watched the bullets fly at the Gun Store, I turned to the sister of the bride. "What did you think when you heard your sister was getting married at a gun range?"

"I was a little bit surprised," she admitted. "I was like, Why not? It's definitely original."

The bride fired her Benelli; the wedding party cringed with each passing shot. My teeth hurt from the loud blasts.

"Don't worry," she said to the wedding party, "you guys will get your turn."

The range master suggested that she and the groom share a shooting lane "to start off the marriage appropriately—you guys get to start sharing right away." The happy newlyweds moved together to demolish Nazi zombies (the most popular target for newlyweds) with semi-automatic shotguns, then with the pistols and Uzis. The bride, looking angelic in her flowing wedding dress, firmly held her AK47.

"All right, it's legal now," said the groom after blasting away the final target.

Afterwards, the couple seemed pumped with adrenaline from firing. "Everyone we know says they wished they would have done it," the groom said. "Weddings were never a huge deal for us, that's why it probably took us 12 years. It just seemed like an original thing. It was pretty funny."

I asked them how this set the tone for their new life together.

"Hopefully, it's not as violent as it is today," said the bride, laughing. "It's a good way to start and loosen up. It was pretty unique."

Couture says that couples who come here are more trusting, since it takes confidence in another person to let them shoot a gun near you. As she puts it, "the couple that shoots together stays together."

It might be true—as long as these marriages never end the same way they begin.

* The bride and groom's last name was excluded for privacy reasons.

Follow Harmon Leon on Twitter.

Unrelated photo via Flickr user Charles Hutchins

At 11:32 AM Eastern time on Wednesday, trading stopped at the New York Stock exchange. By 3:15 PM, it had resumed. The stoppage coincided with two other strange glitches or possible hacks: one earlier in the morning at United Airlines, and another at the online home of the Wall Street Journal shortly thereafter.

We're still finding out what happened, but here's what we know so far:

In the wee hours of the morning, would-be passengers on United Airlines flights started noticing that IT problems were halting the carrier's ticketing system. At first, the usual airline gremlins were blamed, and customers issued rote announcements of boycotts:

At around 8:26 AM, United grounded all flights and blamed a "network connectivity issue." Flights resumed about an hour later. Almost exactly three hours after the United grounding, trading stopped on Wall Street, with officials citing an unnamed glitch. Less than an hour after that, the Wall Street Journal's website went down.

So yeah, this was a bizarre morning.

Sometime during the Wednesday morning cyber-clusterfuck, President Obama was briefed, according to the Guardian. Members of the press were also briefed by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. He told America not to panic, and said, "The officials at the stock exchange are working feverishly, as you would expect."

A tweet from the "signal booster" account for the operations of Anonymous, the loose hacker collective, began to attract retweets late on Wednesday morning as the situation grew weirder.

That tweet had gone up on Tuesday, suggesting that whoever runs the account might have known something fishy was about to happen. But the prospect of Anonymous mischief was promptly contradicted by the NYSE's own Twitter account.

All functions at the Wall Street Journal website were restored at around noon, according to the paper's own Twitter feed.

At 1PM, with trading still halted at the New York Stock Exchange, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson briefed the public on the situation. In his speech, he said, "The malfunctions at United and the NYSE were not the result of any nefarious actor."

Johnson added, "We know less about the Wall Street Journal at this point. But their system is back up again, as is United Airlines'."

The situation at New York Stock Exchange has been a major headache. 700,000 ongoing transactions had to be manually cancelled by employees before the system could be rebooted, according to the New York Times. Traders on the floor reportedly received no warning before the system was shut down.

Stock Exchange President Thomas Farley told CNBC that the system would be up and running again at around 2:45 or 3PM eastern because getting everything up and running again before the traditional closing bell at 4 was "critically important."

"It's not a good day," he said on the cable channel. "I don't feel good for our customers who are having to deal with the fallout."

During the chaos, the Nasdaq was still running, but stocks were trading down, with the index having dropped nearly 88 points at the time of publication. The S&P 500 showed a 33 point decline, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged over 250 points. The latest on the dire situation in Greece (a do-or-die ultimatum from Europe demanding that the Prime Minister settle a debt dispute by Sunday or else) can't be helping matters.

An unnamed trader told Reuters that the shutdown wasn't the only problem for traders Wednesday morning, and that, "It was a mess from the open." That person claims that crucial connectivity ports were reportedly failing to function, or were losing their connections, causing chaos well before the shutdown occurred.

Shortly after trading resumed, a different Anonymous Twitter account teased some afternoon plans:

Check back in to find out if anything interesting actually happens at 5PM. We'll keep you posted.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Photos courtesy of Ellen Waddell.

About ten minutes into my Skype conversation with Ellen Waddell last week, I embarrassed myself. Kind of impressive on my part, really, considering we were talking about Jean-Luc Picard and Me, Waddell's absurd new play about her lifelong obsession with Star Trek. (I'm a Trekkie too, but this play takes shit to a level of geekery to which I can only aspire.) But when I asked whether she'd had any past experience onstage, she politely told me she had—as a member of Los Campesinos, a band whose debut record I listened to and played on my college radio show incessantly when it was released in 2008.

In my defense, Jean-Luc Picard and Me is a long, long way from the indie-rock stages of Waddell's past. (Though admittedly, one look at Los Campesinos' lyric book will prove both projects at least involve lots of Nerd Feelings.) The show is about as uncool as you can get: it's an introspective, 50-minute reflection on a childhood spent using Picard—the captain and main protagonist of Star Trek: The Next Generation—and his crew to cope with a tumultuous home life. Thirty-year-old Waddell's only costars are a PowerPoint presentation and a comically bad DIY mannequin with a cutout of Patrick Stewart's face tied to its head. Its terrifyingly dead eyes don't give a shit about four lights.

By now, the show has wrapped successful stints in Bristol and London; next month, Waddell will be taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it'll get another 11-day run. So obviously we wanted to know what exactly is going on here. She explains it all, but first she wants to make one thing clear: you don't have to know a single thing about science fiction, let alone Star Trek, to enjoy it.

VICE: Your show opened in London last night.
Ellen Waddell: Yeah, I've only done it about three times. London was a bit scary, because I live in Bristol, and London is [prissy voice] "London! Streets are paved with hipsters!" I worried about what the audiences would be like in comparison to Bristol, where it's a smaller community, but it went really well. I got some really nice emails from people afterward, who sort of felt inspired by it. I didn't expect that at all.

What inspired this show?
I had this idea lurking in the background for quite a long time, about how, when I was younger, I really liked fantasy and sci-fi shows. I wanted to know why, when I can't deal with stuff, that's my go-to solution, to indulge in a fantasy world and tune everything out. What is it about that?

So, I started thinking about how it started as a bonding experience with my dad. We used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation together, and went to the cinema when Generations came out. Even before that, he showed me Aliens, and Terminator and Predator... stuff like that.

And then when my parents got divorced, I kept watching The Next Generation, carried on being obsessed with it. A whole part of my identity has to do with my dad, and having that bonding experience and then never feeling that close again. After my parents' divorce, my dad and my relationship wasn't great, he was quite upset with my mum about stuff, it was a very typical estranged parents, Kramer vs. Kramer-style thing. It was quite difficult, and then he straight away moved in with someone else. At that [age], you're still being shaped and everything affects you.

So the show is about how Jean-Luc Picard basically then became this replacement father figure for me, and how he and the show gave me advice. I saw a call for submissions from a theater in Bristol saying, "Submit your idea for a show and we'll put it on." So I did, thinking I'd finally have to write the show if they accepted it. They said yes and gave me dates, and I was like, "Oh no, now I have to write it!

There are far worse shows to learn from as a child than Star Trek . So it all started with your dad?
Yeah, he was a massive sci-fi fan. I think Aliens was his favorite film. We watched it together. Now I'm like, were we too young to watch that film? Definitely. At least my mum made sure I knew I was not named after Ellen Ripley.

Is there a recording we Americans can enjoy?
I'm not filming it, because I just can't watch myself on film. But I've got a really crap-looking papier-mâché head of Jean-Luc Picard with a little mask on it, and it starts with me talking to him and asking him for help. And that's the ending; the story is then how I ended up in that position, on my knees, begging to this model head Jean-Luc Picard. And then there's a PowerPoint presentation—

Wait... what?
I know. It's like, in the guise of a TED Talk, but it's not a TED Talk. It's more like, why I like Star Trek, and going through my childhood really, really rapid-fire, sort of explaining what happened with my parents, what was so great about Star Trek... and how I really fancied Jonathan Frakes. He was sort of the first man to ever make me feel, you know, weird.

It also delves into details of bad decisions I made later about men, my obsession with characters in sci-fi and finding them in real-life men. And then I go through my time in a band, but really really quickly in the PowerPoint, to sort of explain how much of a whirlwind it was, and then how, even in the band, I still felt like I hadn't made my dad proud. So, it's about that as well. I was pushing myself to do things, because like, I was his Number One, or used to be?

But a lot of it is me doing impressions of my family, from the perspective of a kid. At the time, my mum used to drink a lot, smoke a lot, a bit like Edie from Absolutely Fabulous. [Frou-frou voice] "Sweetie, dahling, sweetie, dahling, everything's fine, dahling." And she was a counselor as well.

Wow, what a great combination.
Yeah, so it's a little about having a harsh, strict dad and a mum who's like "It's not your fault, everything's OK." If I told her I hated her, she would thank me for feeling kind enough to express my emotions.

Oh my god.
Yeah, but she was like Deanna Troi! So it was fine. I mean Troi's powers were sort of spotty, like, "Oh, no, they put up a force field, I don't know what they're thinking!" [But if they weren't] I guess the whole episode would be over.

Apart from just watching the shows, did you grow up going to conventions or being a part of the Trek community at all?
I didn't go to my first Comic Con until I was 20 or 21. I went with my mum and my sister, weirdly. My mum was like, "I'm really interested in this thing you girls like." She found all the costumes amazing.

I sort of talk about this in the show, but my epiphany moment was going through the Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. [Los Campesinos] toured a lot around America, so every time we were in Seattle I would go there. They were some of the best days of my life. I remember once, they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibition on, and I [went through it] just on my own, crying—well, not crying. But nearly crying! It was amaaazing. They even had a Muppet exhibition once. I was eager to touch a wall of Muppet fur.

What about Picard in particular—and I guess, by extension, Patrick Stewart, since Picard was such his character—attracted you to him as a father figure?
He was very stern about things, and very commanding, but he was always very fair. He sort of lost his temper about things sometimes, but it was always in a very reasoned way, he always explained it. My dad sometimes got angry about stuff, but it was about his own issues and inability to be patient with kids. I talk in the show about how he saw kids as little adults. I absolutely adored my dad; I thought he was the bees' knees, but Jean-Luc Picard has got all that: he's commanding, he's very good at taking control, but he's also sort of mannered about it. That really appealed to me. I was like, "I would follow him!" Picard had that troubling relationship with Wesley.

Picard didn't really understand children, either.
Yes, he was very similar. There's actually a part in the TV show where he says to Riker, "Can you help me not make an ass of myself in front of kids?" But eventually he gets on with Wesley, they totally like each other, and he becomes a faux-father figure to him. You know that weird thing [with fictional characters] where you go, "Maybe one day this is the stage I could get to"? It was like he could be paternal if he let himself.

So it was a possibility thing for you then. It presented an alternative, different set of circumstances under which a person like that could be a father figure and learn from it.
Also I think when you're young, anyone who seems like they have their shit together, who can be like, "I'm gonna save everyone's lives, and I'm gonna do it in an awesome way and say something smart at the end." How do you do that? I want that. I also love a well-spoken person.

And he's the British guy on the show, which I'm sure helped... sorry, I mean "French."
In the show, I talk about how I found Star Trek quite believable in comparison to a lot of cinema that came out at the time, where the parents would always get back together in the end, like The Parent Trap and Liar, Liar. Star Trek was more realistic because the relationships were more real. I was like, "Well, my parents aren't gonna get back together. I can't make a magic wish." It's that weird thing where you go, "This is real, apparently; it's set in our world. But I find it more unrealistic than Star Trek."

Have you met Patrick Stewart? Does he know about this?
I haven't met him, but people have tweeted at him about the show. I haven't because I feel like that might be trying to get attention for the wrong reasons, and also you don't want him to be like [stern Patrick Stewart voice] "What is this. Who are you. Go away." [fake sobbing] "Oh god, why, Patrick?!"

He would never!
No, he wouldn't, he wouldn't. He'd be like, "Hmm. Interesting."

How were you able to expand the show from that one-off in Bristol to these London dates?
It's just me on my own, organizing everything, and London just seemed like the next place to try. The venue I'm doing it at [the Canvas] is part of this thing called a " happy café network," where they let people write on the walls about things that inspire them, and have workshops.

I think some people think that if they don't know much about Star Trek, they won't get the show, but I always explain things, and I don't ever use Star Trek as anything other than a metaphor. There are some geeky references in there, but it's really about the fallibility of your parents, and growing up, and realizing that no one ever really feels like a grown-up and that's totally fine. It's not really about Star Trek. It is, but it's about more than that.

Jean-Luc Picard and Me is playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival August 19-30. For more information, check out it's festival page here.

Follow Devon Maloney on Twitter.

Gambling! Photo via Flickr user Michael Dorausch

In its ongoing quest for a balanced budget, Quebec's government has taken on some pretty fierce adversaries. Students, feminists, physicians, and even police have protested the Liberal government's aggressive austerity measures, which are behind massive cuts to public spending.

And Quebec is now tackling another source of lost revenue—the internet.

More specifically, and more disturbingly, it will be targeting websites that compete with Loto-Québec—its state-owned gambling monopoly.

Quebec's online gambling market is worth $250 million according to Loto-Québec, yet their online gaming portal Espacejeux only has a 20 percent market share. The rest of the market is dominated by unlicensed websites, which are based out of the US and offshore countries like the Cayman Islands.

"Under our current business model... we do not believe that we will be able to increase this share in any major way," Loto-Québec declared, adding that "the government is losing significant amounts of money" because of unlicensed competition. Last year's online gambling report concluded on an ominous note: "Illegal online gaming is a growing problem. Loto-Québec believes that a solution must be implemented."

So instead of creating a more competitive gambling interface with its $3.5 billion in revenues, Loto-Québec is relying on its state power to nudge the market in a preferable direction. Buried deep within the province's 620-page 2015 budget are measures which would force internet service providers to block access to a list of "illegal" websites compiled by none other than Loto-Québec. In a system like Quebec's, any gambling activity that does not fall under the umbrella of Loto-Québec is necessarily illegal or unlicensed.

Quebec's Finance Minister Carlos Leitão, who tabled the budget, has said that unlicensed websites like Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker "circumvent our laws, generally offer no guarantees with respect to responsible gambling and deprive the Québec government of substantial revenue." The minister argues that these sites have an unfair advantage over Espacejeux because they operate illegally and are unregulated. In essence, the Quebec government wants to use its legislative arm to black out websites that compete with its slot machine arm.

By definition, a monopoly kills competition, yet Quebec is calling for even more regulation in order to control unlicensed alternatives—in the name of competition. This has led many critics to suspect that the proposed law has more to do with crushing competition than balancing it.

Michael Geist is professor of law and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He has written extensively on this issue and thinks it sets a dangerous precedent.

"I think the Quebec government was pretty transparent about the fact that it wants the blocking in order to commercially benefit its licensed alternative. I think this is a very dangerous approach that will be subject to legal challenges," he told VICE.

Allen Mendelsohn agrees. He is a lawyer from Montreal whose private practice deals with a wide array of internet-related legal issues.

"Quebec, through Loto-Québec, has a monopoly on gambling in this province and they want to protect that particular monopoly. I want the government to be financially healthy but at the same time there are larger issues here like setting bad precedents and website blocking, at the provincial level especially," Mendelsohn says.

"They say they want to block illegal gambling websites but are they doing it for that particular purpose or are they doing it just so they can protect their own monopoly through Loto-Québec's own gambling service?"

But as Geist pointed out and Mendelson reiterated during our conversation, the Quebec government is stepping on to a legal minefield.

For starters, there is the possibility that these legislative measures would violate the Charter, which protects freedom of expression. "Any time there is some sort of government blocking access to any form of media or art, a freedom of expression Charter issue is going to emerge," Mendelsohn says.

But even more salient for lawyers we spoke with is the fact that telecom (like internet) is a federal jurisdiction under our Constitution, as are criminal matters like gambling, so both of these spheres of activity may be outside the realm of Quebec's legislative authority. In other words, the province may be illegally overstepping its boundaries in order to protect a cash cow—a sick and tired cash cow.

Financially, the Crown corporation has been in rough shape for years despite literally being the only game in town. But this reality seems to have more to do with mismanagement than competition from illegal gambling websites.

Earlier this week, the Journal de Montréal reported reported massive losses by Loto-Québec in its clumsy attempt to revitalize the Charlevoix area by building a casino. That foray into regional development cost taxpayers $127 million over the course of 15 years and generated a paltry $9.7-million return.

The private sector, on the other hand, seems to be thriving in the digital age of gambling.

Eric Hollreiser is head of communications for Amaya Inc., a Quebec-based company which bought the parent company of online gambling juggernauts Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker last year for a cool $4.9 billion.

Hollreiser told VICE this issue is not regulation per se, but rather the proper role for the state in that area of business. "I think the crux of the issue is what we think is the appropriate role of government in our technology-based industry."

In recent years, Quebec bureaucracy has not hesitated from blocking Internet traffic in order to achieve a policy end. The Office de la langue francaise—commonly and misleadingly referred to as the "language police"—has blocked access to websites that do not adhere to its language laws. As the National Post reported in November, BCBG and Anthropologie were blocked until their French websites were up and running, while major retailers like Urban Outfitters and Club Monaco still have no Quebec websites.

Poker Stars say they are willing to work within legal framework and coexist with Loto-Québec. "We encourage and welcome regulation, which is why we hold more online poker licenses than any of our competitors. We've always been a leading proponent of regulation for online gaming that meets the key public policy issues." Regulation which Eric Hollreiser says creates "a viable, secure and competitive marketplace."

This is ironic considering that giving more licenses to private companies like Amaya was one of the suggestions made by experts hired by Quebec to evaluate its online gambling presence. In its report, the working group recommended that the provincial government "explore the possibility of also offering the games of private operators to Québec online gamblers exclusively through a government website," especially given the legal hurdles "linked to the amendment of the Criminal Code."

So while the experts hired by the province clearly anticipated the constitutional issues of amending the criminal code and recommended that Loto-Québec give private enterprise a slice of the pie instead, these recommendations apparently fell on deaf ears—recommendations which the finance minister claims he "read with great interest."

Instead of heeding the advice of experts, Leitao plowed ahead and told reporters at a press conference that "public health" implications of gambling were sufficient to make it fall within his government's jurisdiction and that he would be lobbying other provinces to approach online gambling the same way—by forcing ISPs to block websites.

But this approach essentially amounts to censorship for Geist.

"I think it's dangerous because once blocking Internet content is established, it is easy to envision governments moving down a slippery slope," Geist says. "If that happened, the open internet in Canada would be placed at risk of unprecedented government intervention into how ISPs manage their networks and what sites Canadians are able to access."

Follow Nick Rose on Twitter.

Thumbnail image via Flickr user Alex F

Members of the real-world vampire community are not just Edward Cullens or Count Draculas. They are, according to D.J. Williams, director of Social Work at Idaho State University, "successful, ordinary people." Williams has been studying self-identifying vampires for almost a decade, and says that real vampires are a diverse, conscientious, and ethically-driven community with a presumed global population of thousands.

A paper by Williams and Emily E. Prior published in the latest issue of Critical Social Work describes how vampires, though they generally live ordinary lives, are extremely tired. In order to revive their energy, they need to find consenting adults who are willing to let them drink a small amount of their blood. Makes sense, right?

The paper goes on to explain how these "authentic" vampires (not to be confused with "lifestyle" vampires, who are more of the gothy, Halloween variety) have a hard time "coming out of the coffin" to clinicians and therapists. They are in constant fear that their blood-drinking will put them at risk of being labeled "sinful" or "mentally ill."

The study emphasizes how self-identifying vampires are more common than one would expect and that it is important for psychologists and counselors to create an environment free from discrimination. Williams thinks that if clinicians are more educated about self-identifying vampires, they will be better suited to helping them with their psychological needs. Even self-identifying vampires struggle with common relationship and career issues and deserve an open environment to discuss their problems.

"This is a study with a specific alternative identity but it also relates to a larger issue that we are moving into as we are seeing more alternative identities and practices," Williams told the Idaho State Journal. That being said, he acknowledges that many physicians are still not aware, or do not accept these kinds of studies as valid, so these real-life vamps aren't going to feel comfortable coming into the light any time soon.

A promotional image for 'Super Mario Maker,' via Nintendo.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

In September 1985, video gaming changed forever when Nintendo launched Super Mario Bros., immediately laying down a template for platform titles that's barely changed since (apart from when Nintendo themselves elected to shake things up, taking Mario 3D in 1996). Thirty years later, Mario's about to take on another dimension entirely, as Super Mario Maker (released on September 11) gives its players the power to create their own levels, using familiar blocks, perks, and enemies, and share them with the world via their Wii U.

Super Mario Maker's cross-generational focus means its aesthetics can be tweaked to fit whatever your favorite Nintendo era may be. If it's super old-school pixels you're after, you can skin your creations to resemble 1985's original game, but there are three more options to choose from: Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), Super Mario World (1990), and New Super Mario Bros. U (2012). As something of a sucker for 16bit sprites, I elect to build my own level using World assets when trying the game out at a recent London preview, and soon enough I've an array of coins-spilling blocks, plumber-propelling springs, and enemies to splat. I don't create a complete stage, but I get the idea—and the idea seems like a lot of fun. Also, blah blah, something about amiibos, blah. They're compatible, basically, and using, say, a Link amiibo will let you play these levels as Link. (I still don't really understand the appeal of amiibos, sorry.)

Player-created stages will live in an online hub that breaks them down into categories of difficulty, based on completion ratios—how many others tried the level, and how many of those got to the flagpole at its end. Makes sense, though it does mean that any one stage will need to have been attempted a fair few times for the user base to get a realistic reading of its challenge.

But then, challenge is something that's always been at the forefront of the classic Mario experience. Sure, he's a dumpy man in a silly hat chasing around the Mushroom Kingdom, butt-bouncing off turtle shells and fang-toothed fungi. It all seems cutesy, silly, simple—but series creator Shigeru Miyamoto always wanted to turn pad-clenching knuckles white, and the first evidence of this teeth-grinding difficulty came with 1986's Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. It was so tough that Nintendo of North America declined to release it in their territory at the time, only issuing the game as part of 1993's Super Mario All-Stars collection for the SNES. (And what a wonderful console that was.)

In the 3D era, too, Mario's been known to send controllers flying across living rooms, as anyone who aimed for absolute, beat-all-the-bonus-stages, collect-everything completion of the GameCube's Super Mario Sunshine can confirm. Several years later, New Super Mario Bros. U aped its 2D predecessors in punishing difficulty terms. Basically, Mario's meant to be fun, of course, but these games in their purest forms are supposed to test players, to push them to their limits. And Super Mario Maker is about to let that attitude loose on an audience of amateurs with no experience of creating games for a living.

'Super Mario Maker' E3 2015 trailer.

On purchase, Super Mario Maker will have 100 premade courses available for offline play. You can expect these to show off the potential of the game's editing toolset, but the great draw of the title is its infinite possibilities. Assuming there's an eager community of level-creators consistently generating new content, this is a game that could never end—at least, not until its servers are left for dead when Nintendo does eventually abandon the Wii U. But does anyone really think that the most active "makers" are looking out for fellow gamers' fun? Don't be naïve. Be they Miyamoto acolytes of old or newcomers to the Mario series looking to mess with mainstream expectations, these regular uploaders are only out for one thing: the glory of realizing the most crushingly difficult Mario levels ever seen.

I play one course crafted in-house by Nintendo's Treehouse team. It looks pretty easy, to begin with. Nail a few moving platforms, scale some vines, murder a goomba. But very quickly the mistakes creep in and I'm falling, off screen, into a pit of infinity, into death and a swift restart. Do it over: past the platforms, past the vines, onto some springs, and... shit, down I go again. Every time I die, which is several times, a series of crosses litters the bottom of the screen. Bless, I think. The game is kissing away my maladies. There there, never mind, try again. "Those indicate where other players have died, too," the chap assisting my session informs me. Bloody hell. This level's got a body count bigger than a hundred playthroughs of any Grand Theft Auto entry.

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He can see I'm struggling. What began as a few failures, easily laughed off as a result of platforming-like-this rustiness, has become a veritable buffet of broken childhood memories. "Here, this is one you'll definitely be able to do." He selects the most nightmarish array of obstacles I may have ever observed on a side-scrolling screen. I'm about to tentatively edge Mario into it when I notice a text balloon, right at the start of the level. "Don't move!" it instructs. I don't. A spring fires behind Mario, sending him spinning into chaos—but every landing point is a new launch pad onward, and every lethal horror is magically bypassed by the arrival of some fresh momentum. Mario reaches the flagpole, a jingle plays, and I smile. That is some fantastic design right there, a play-itself level that will outright annihilate you if you so much as touch the left stick—which you're naturally predisposed to do. But very few of those designing levels for themselves are going to get close to its meticulous engineering and overall wow factor.

The messages appear on other levels, warning of fatal falls and sneaky traps. They provide advice, comfort. Or, at least, that's what they're supposed to do. "This is like Nintendo's very own Dark Souls," I say to my guide. He offers a nervous laugh, like he's just been found out. "Um, I've never played it." No worries, mate, I'm utterly shit at the Souls games, but I've played enough to understand their core mechanics, and I can see parallels here.

On Noisey: Video Game Music: Demystified

Super Mario Maker is going to be the most fiendishly challenging Mario game of all time, well beyond "nails-from-diamonds hard," exclusively because it's guaranteed to have certifiably impossible levels. How can it not, when so many of us who love playing the Mario games haven't the first real clue of how to put together a satisfying course? We know, but we don't understand. (Edit: users will be able to report stages for inappropriate content, or if they simply do not work, and if a level's creator cannot complete their own stage, it will not be viable for sharing online.) This game is going to kill you, and kill you, and kill you, just like From Software's fantastically acclaimed series. You might not get a "You Died" screen every time Mario's toasted by a fireball after navigating 99 percent of any given stage's nasties, but the pain's the same: so much effort, for nothing. And the little messages are akin to those found in any Souls session—and you just know that sadistic sorts are going to fill them with misleading information. Try jumping? OK, sure... fuuuu... Dead. These bastards are going to measure their levels' success in rage quits.

Super Mario Maker will have its breezy, family-friendly stages too, of course, the kind a dad (hi!) can enjoy with his kids on a rainy weekend. Nintendo gets "play," and it knows that what it's putting out are toys, more so than any other games developer. The company's 30th anniversary Mario title is one unlike anything that's come before it. It's a terrific gift, an invitation to innovate using iconic designs that have resisted the test of time superbly.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Today marks the closure of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany. In the past ten days the committee has made hard choices for heritage areas all over the planet, including the decision to not list the Great Barrier Reef as "in-danger."

This call came last Wednesday, on the proviso that Australia cut agricultural pollution by 80 percent, restrict industrial development, and to stop dumping dredge waste in the marine park. And while UNESCO acknowledged that the Australian Government had made some conservation progress, the committee warned the outlook for the Reef remained "poor."

Of all the things killing the Reef, UNESCO flagged the Australian government's proclivity for mining as the principle threat. The problem, as the committee observed, is that expansion of Queensland's mining industry requires larger ports to export minerals, and those ports sit along the reef. Then there's all that Australian coal burning in power stations across Asia, and ravaging the reef via climate change. Media attention may have died down around mining since Queensland's pro-coal government lost office, but the issue certainly hasn't gone away.

For a further look at these issues, check out our video, 'The Grim Barrier Reef'

In terms of value, coal is Queensland's biggest export asset. Across the state, 56 coal mines have produced billions of dollars in coal exports from within the Bowen and Surat Basins, which cluster in the central-southern areas of the state and contain some of the biggest coal reserves nationwide.

This is why since 2012 Queensland has been working to open up the Galilee basin, which sits just west of the existing Bowen and Surat basins. One will be the recently-approved Carmichael coal mine, expected to produce 60 million tons of coal a year, making it the country's biggest coal mine. A dedicated rail line will then transport it all to Abbot Point, a port along Queensland's coast that sits not too far off the Great Barrier Reef.

In order to handle such a huge volume, the port must be expanded to add another 35 million tons to its current 50 million ton capacity. Any excess would cater to one of any number of other coal mines in the region.

The company behind the project is $9.389 billion dollar Indian mining giant and port operator Adani. In the fashion of megalomaniacal business magnates the world over, the company is named for its founder, Gautam Adani, whose folksy origin story has him moving to Mumbai as an 18-year-old and making his first million as a diamond broker by the time he was 20. Adani, the company, made it big in 1995 managing the largest private port in India along the Mundra coast in the country's northwest. Later, it was contracted by the Indian government to build an "ultra mega" 4,150MW coal-fired power plant in the area. Local fisherman say it filled the sky with ash and killed the fish they had depended upon for centuries.

Operating a large commercial port catering to one of the world's largest coal mines is never going to be the most sustainable business operation, but Abbot Point takes it to the next level. To open up the port for the super tankers needed to ship coal in volume to India, Adani has to dredge the seabed, including seagrass and animals. Initial plans would have seen five million tons of silt dumped into the sea in the area around the Reef. After an outcry, this was scaled back to three million tons to be dumped on the sensitive Caley Wetland. Then the former Liberal government were slaughtered at the election, which is the point at which this story took a back seat from the headlines. But Labor still wants to dredge, they're just talking about dumping the waste inland.

Operating a large commercial port catering to one of the world's largest coal mines is never going to be the most sustainable business operation, but Abbot Point takes it to the next level.

That is, if the finances hold up. Documents leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald suggest Adani's finances are increasingly wobbly. At present, 11 international banks have refused to invest in the Galilee basin project and for the thing to work, the price of Australian thermal coal, that is the coal used to generate power, needs to sell for $110 a ton. Right now, it's selling for $64.99.

Which is a problem for the state and federal politicians, left and right, who have spent the last few years getting feverish over the idea that coal will make it rain. Under the Liberals, Queensland's former deputy premier Jeff Sweeney promised thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in royalties. Since Labor took office, state treasurer Curtis Pitt has described the opening of the Galilee as "critical" to Queensland's future.

Federally, Prime Minister Tony Abbott made headlines last October when he declared "coal is good for humanity" at the opening of a new coal mine in Queensland. Coal, he said would remain the "world's main energy source for decades to come."

Abbott's rationale is that slinging coal to India and China is a safe bet, a way of thinking born in last decades' mining boom buzz where China was inhaling raw materials at a rate faster than anyone could produce. Everyone thought it would last forever, until it didn't.

The exact same scenario is also happening to coal as the price of thermal coal has dropped 40 percent since 2010. This has translated into some 30,000 people out of work last year alone.

This downward trend is being driven, in part, by the rapid development of the renewable energy sector. Last year global investment in renewable energy grew 16 percent, with solar making up half that amount.

At the bleeding edge of this is China. In recent years it has been pushing for a non-fossil fuel powered economy. Since 2013, it has not built a single coal-fueled power source and has no plans to until at least 2020. Instead China, also a major manufacturer of solar panels to the world, is drawing increasingly on nuclear, gas, and renewables. Last year, it even banned some the dirtiest coal from being imported, threatening the value of about 49 million of the 170 million tons that run through the port at Newcastle in New South Wales in a given year.

India, home of Adani and potentially Queensland's biggest customer, could have been the exception. But this changed late last year when the Indian energy minister signaled he was looking at a China-style ban on coal imports as the country rolled out solar. In the meantime, he said, they would support themselves with their own domestic coal industry. At the moment there are no immediate plans to bring in a ban, but should one fall, it would bring down the axe, taking the Abbot Point expansion and a good chunk of the Queensland coal mining industry with it.

Though, honestly, there's a fairly good chance that may happen anyway. Last June, Adani was threatening to walk away from its multi-billion dollar project if Queensland's government didn't get on with dredging the Abbot Point seabed. If the Port isn't dredged by 2017, Adani will lose $1 billion every year it is not exporting from its $16 billion Carmichael mine.

Which is good news for the Reef, but still means Australia is basically pumping money into an industry destined to be made redundant and makes about as much business sense as buying into what's left of the worlds' VHS tape manufacturing industry, while insisting to everyone that tape is timeless.

If the Queensland and Australian Federal Government are serious about saving the Reef, Abbot Point should be scrapped as the ridiculous development it is.

Follow Royce on Twitter.

Still from 'Enough Said,' via Every Single Word Tumblr

Read: The Petition to Make Emoji Less Racist

Have you ever thought about how long a movie would be if it only featured the lines spoken by people of color? Here's a hint: You could finish an entire movie in less than the time it takes to watch a few loops of your favorite Vine.

Every Single Word, created by actor Dylan Marron, is a Tumblr that collects video montages of popular films, focusing only on the lines from people of color. Unsurprisingly, none of the featured videos even reach one minute. Considering the fact that many of these movies surpass the two-hour mark, this is pretty depressing.

Scrolling through the Tumblr, which made its first post on July 1, it's hardly surprising that this year's 87th Annual Academy Awards was widely recognized to be one of the whitest ever. After all, how can a person of color be nominated for an award if they don't even have a speaking role to begin with?

Some of the movies that have been given the Every Single Word treatment so far are American Hustle (about 40 seconds), (500) Days of Summer (about 18 seconds), The Fault in Our Stars (about 30 seconds), and Frances Ha (about 18 seconds). Others, like Into the Woods and Moonrise Kingdom, last less than ten seconds.

Every Single Word has only edited a handful of videos so far, but the project has already made one thing painfully clear: Hollywood loves white people.

Pine Mountain, Kentucky.

This article appears in The Photo Issue 2015

While making these images, I found myself at odds with the process of creating a series of photographs that claim to represent the nuances of faith-based spaces and communities in Appalachia. I struggled with the complexity of translating the value and power of religion to urban populations, which have long participated in the characterization of rural people as simplistic and naive.

In central Appalachia, churches can serve as spaces of kindness that are capable of rallying care, love, and support to those in need. Often these spaces exist beyond the fantasy and spectacle of redemption, as meeting grounds for community members to share resources and aid. The rural church, as a personal site of belief and actualization, can mobilize quickly and meaningfully in times of crisis. This is of particular value in Appalachia, where local and federal governments have stolen and misappropriated disaster funds for nearly a century.

It's here, in these small churches surrounded by the Appalachian mountains, that I'm forced to question and acknowledge how rural communities struggle with the decline of the powerful mono-economy that was coal. It's here that I can sit—as an outsider at odds with religion—next to faithful locals who are reckoning with the same questions of abundance and decline. And it's here that we collectively create a space to offer solace from a drug epidemic that is rapidly diminishing a large portion of the population.

My experiences within these churches have enabled me to open myself to the value of shared belief, community, and faith. And although I have not become a believer, neither saved nor born again, I have been enriched by strangers who have hugged me, shaken my hand, told me I was loved, and invited me into their homes to share a meal. These gestures of kindness and acceptance—of community—have done so much to stave off my persistent loneliness and my own cloak of darkness that I carry with me. They made me feel accepted and cared about in a genuine way, despite my demons, struggles, and personal failures. I believe that you, too, would be treated this way no matter your past or present circumstances. So while I do not see a solution in Christ as savior, I have been impacted by the transformative power of faith and by the essential goodness of fellowship.

Baltimore cops outside the Camden Yards baseball stadium. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced Wednesday that she's replaced Anthony W. Batts as the troubled city's police commissioner less than three months after Freddie Gray suffered lethal injuries in local cops' custody.

Perhaps more relevant to his firing, Batts ran the show during the riots that followed Gray's death, as well as the wild spate of gun violence since.

In an afternoon press conference outside Baltimore's City Hall, Rawlings-Blake specifically cited the surge in violence as the impetus for giving Charm City's top cop the boot. Just last night, around 10:30 PM, three people died in an incident that may have involved three or four shooters and took place right outside of the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the Baltimore Sun reported.

"We cannot grow Baltimore without making our city a safer place to live," Rawlings-Blake said at the press conference. "We need a change. This was not an easy decision, but it is one that is in the best interest of the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better."

The firing came just a few hours after the local police union released a scathing critique of city and BPD leadership in the aftermath of Gray's death.

Gray, a 25-year-old with a history of lead paint poisoning, was loaded into the back of a Baltimore police van after making eye contact with an officer and running away. (Cops initially claimed he was in possession of an illegal knife, which was later disputed by city prosecutors.) By the time Gray was brought to the station, he was unconscious and suffering from a mostly-severed spinal cord. On April 19, he died, and allegations that Gray had been subjected to a so-called "rough-ride"—where cops deliberately drove in such a way as to inflict harm on their suspect—sparked riots in the city, as well as protests across the country.

Although leaked police documents obtained by the Washington Post were initially presented as evidence that Gray might have somehow injured himself in the van that day, that story quickly fell apart, and Mosby announced on May 1 that there was probable cause to charge six cops for his death. A grand jury agreed a few weeks later.

It's still not clear exactly why violence has spiked in Charm City, but there's no denying that this is more than a statistical blip. By late May, homicides in 2015 were up almost 40 percent compared to the same point a year earlier. One theory is that cops have been agitated by Mosby's enthusiasm for coming down hard on the officers allegedly responsible for Gray's death. On the other hand, it could be that all of the riots and protests have simply left beat cops feeling burned out.

Regardless, Batts—who made over $200,000 a year, according to the Sun—is out. For now, he's been replaced by Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Davis.

"Over the past three years, Commissioner Batts has served our city with distinction," Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday as she announced the man's termination.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Bill Cosby's bus in 2013. Photo via Flickr user Madeline Wright

On Tuesday night, Disney confirmed that a bronze bust of Bill Cosby at their Hollywood Studios theme park in Florida was in the process of being removed. On Wednesday, a Television Academy spokesperson confirmed to VICE that an identical bust, formerly visible on the grounds of the Television Academy headquarters in Los Angeles, will be removed as well.

This comes just after the announcement that Bill Cosby himself is under investigation by the LAPD for one alleged sexual assault. According to a tally by Entertainment Tonight, 39 women have informally accused the 77-year-old comedian of sexually assaulting them or attempting to do so.

The doomed Cosby bust in Los Angeles is part of the Hall of Fame at the Academy Plaza, an outdoor art display in front of the complex owned by the organization responsible for the Emmy Awards. The old display formerly included likenesses of many of the TV stars of yesteryear. Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Walt Disney, and Mary Tyler Moore were all there alongside Cosby.

The plaza, located in North Hollywood's Arts District, is part of the tourist-friendly section of the Academy's base of operations. Visitors would often pass the Cosby statue on their way to a movie theater on site, where Academy screenings are held.

The current state of the plaza. Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

At the moment, though, the plaza is a construction site, so no one can access Coz's mug in order to be bothered by it. But there is a plan to put some of the other old-timey stars back in their former places of honor when the new facility is unveiled. "We are still finalizing plans for which busts are going to be put back," an Academy spokesperson told us.

Cosby's removal is certain, however. "We have no plans to display Mr. Cosby's bust within the Hall of Fame Garden, or elsewhere, at the new Television Academy Media Center," the representative said.

Ron Howard and Dick Wolf's plinths alongside one that has had its name plate removed. Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

The plinths that used to hold up the busts are being stored near the entrance to the Academy building. One of them had its name placard removed, although the Academy did not confirm that the blank was Cosby's former plinth.

It's not just statues; two dimensional renderings of Cosby appear to be in danger as well. Ben's Chili Bowl, a chain of eateries that ordinarily feature a mural of Cosby on one of the outdoor walls at every location, opened a new flagship restaurant in Washington DC on Wednesday, and it had no images of Cosby at all, according to The Washington Post.

VICE also reached out to SPARC, the organization that manages "Black Seeds," a Los Angeles mural that features an image of Cosby alongside dozens of figures from African-American history. They would not comment on whether or not Cosby's image would remain in place.

Jamie Lee Curtis Taete contributed reporting to this piece.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

All photos by Matt Takaichi

For years now, the image of the tech startup world has revolved around young, upstarting programmers with new, shiny innovations. While many native San Franciscans demonize this image (not least for hiking up all the rent prices in the Bay Area), the companies themselves seem to embrace it, parading their young, sexy coders and graphic designers around as a sort of mascot for their business.

That's not the image of the tech world that photographer Matt Takaichi wants to portray. Matt grew up in San Jose, and has been living in Oakland for five years. Last year, the Bay Area native started a photo project titled Developers based on sneaking into tech conferences. What his photos show are the antithesis of what the Bay Area tech industry strives to be: It's not sexy, young, or hip as much as it is mundane, tiresome, and really, just like any other day-job.

VICE: First off, I want to ask what inspired Developers. Was there a specific incident or event?
Matt Takaichi: My mom actually organized tech sales conferences in the South Bay. About five years ago, I helped her take event photos for a tech conference. I just remember oscillating between being bored and put off by the network-y vibe the entire time. I mostly decided I never wanted to try commercial event photography again. I thought about that day and it hit me that I had a chance to take some totally weird photos if I wasn't being so whiny.

Interesting. So this world isn't new to you.
No, and Martin Parr's approach in documenting tourism gave me some ideas about how I could revisit tech conferences with an interesting angle.

How so?
Parr was able to blend in with large tourists groups to photograph the tourists photographing overrun monuments and themselves in front of them. I imagined it wouldn't be too difficult to easily look part of the crowd, either as another programmer or an event photographer. I normally do a type of street photography where my presence feels more conspicuous. Being perceived as a fellow attendee was a way to gain proximity to the crowd and would arouse hardly any suspicions. I also thought the exaggerated gestures and facial expressions at corporate events would be fun subject matter.

Sneaking into tech events seems tricky, though. Where were they mostly?
The conferences were in either downtown San Francisco or Santa Clara. There's seriously at least two or three of them going on every day in SF, so if I didn't get into one there would be another one nearby I could take a crack at. I tried a few in San Jose, but their security was much better for some reason. It was kind of a bummer to drive to San Jose from Oakland only to get turned away at the door. I tried to keep in mind it was part of the process.

How would you try to get in?
I'd say I successfully snuck into 60ish percent of the ones I attempted. I tried to either find a back door or just walk straight into the front. I'd often find a group of other attendees and I'd just try to walk in the middle of their circle. I could also use nametags and lanyards from other events that looked similar to try to blend in. Sometimes I was able to find discarded badges in the trash. I mostly just got turned away at the front door while trying to walk in with a badge. Once I was inside, I rarely got asked any questions.

What was the demographic of people at these events?
It might be the most telling example of the demographic that, as a half-Japanese and half-white male, people assumed I belonged there—whether I had a badge or not.

Because you're half-Asian, half-white, and a dude?
Right. It should come as no surprise to know men vastly outnumber women at these. The gap should immediately stand out in the images I have. The more surprising aspect was how many older people I saw, from middle age to baby boomer and beyond, were at these.

Yeah, your photos were the first to really make me think about that.
Maybe it's the young corporate image these companies project, or the youthful actors from shows like Silicon Valley, suggesting this is a 20-something game now. Old dudes ride on, in case there was any worry.

Silicon Valley still has a racism problem, albeit a quiet one.

What kind of conferences did you attend?
I cast a broad net over any sales conference or networking event with a connection to the tech industry, from startups to large corporations. The goal of the project was to make portraits of the people who attend these events, so I didn't place too much of an emphasis on finding a consistent type of event. Some of the events, like the ones put on by Twilio and Microsoft, aimed to court software developers to use their platforms. Some were gatherings of niches like home automation or virtual reality. Others were startups that were vying to secure venture capital, or mixers for companies to hire programmers—these were often free to attend.

I'm curious about how you personally view the tech industry. I knew you grew up in the Bay Area, but I didn't know your mom tangentially worked in the industry. Do you sympathize at all with these people?
Working on this project probably shaped my sentiments of people in the industry. It cut both ways, like the spread in almost any social situation. Some people were sweet and others were assholes. I've been surrounded by the tech industry my entire life.

Watch: How I Survived Without Food for 30 Days

So you grew up with the tech industry always being there. Does this mean you haven't noticed much of a change then? At least, not the way others have?
The dialogue surrounding tech-driven gentrification can often suggest places like San Francisco were suddenly overtaken in the last five to ten years. It's true the stakes are higher, but it's also important to recognize the gears driving this economy have been in motion for a long time.

Right. Rome wasn't built in a day...
That said, the housing crisis and related Ellis Act evictions brought by the new tech boom is at a boiling point. What's changed is how consistently the dialog comes up—it's nearly impossible to avoid. It has huge implications on anyone trying to hold down their fort in the Bay Area. The emphasis on tech, rather than housing developers, as the underlying cause driving displacement seems to have gained traction. Or, at least, images of Google bus protests might stick with us more. It says something about how tech culture, or the image we have of a tech worker, has gone mainstream.

So what's the overall intent with these photos?
My initial intent was to make photos visualizing the opportunist aspect of tech, the attitude that drove the immense influx of wealth and the eventual displacement of an existing population. These can best be seen in the images with aggressive networking attempts, brand promotion, and handshakes. I personally encountered the attitude, too. When asked what I do, I just told everyone I was an event photographer—which wasn't a lie. It was funny to see how, often, I could just see the calculation running in someone's head of how I was immediately devalued since I wasn't a programmer they could poach. They would leave the conversation shortly after. Though, some were more interested to speak to me because I was a break from whatever industry related conversation they were having all day.

Is that what are you trying to portray from this world?
Not exactly. You see, then I started noticing people at all of these often seemed really bored. It makes sense. Many of the people flew across the country to San Francisco on red-eye flights and they're not doing anything there besides attending the conference. I walked by stressed parents on phone calls to their families at home. It was common to see people passed out throughout the halls. At the same time, there's people at company booths doing poor imitations of a hype man to mildly amused attendees. Everything trying to counter the fatigue came off as trying too hard. I wanted to expand my initial intent with images showing how the tech industry can be shitty and alienating for lots of people. It's not hard to have empathy with someone bored at their job.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

^{Photos by Jason Altaan for VICE}

When I first heard about Courtney Stodden, I was convinced she was not real. I thought she was more of a performance artist than a budding reality star. In an era where likes serve as empty calories for our self-esteem, and we can repurpose any life moment for commodification, it's difficult for us to determine what is real and what is an act. Upon receiving the opportunity to interview and observe Stodden, I decided to answer the plaguing existential quandary: What is the actual reality of a reality star?

Playing a characterized version of yourself is nothing new. We've been immersed in the famous-for-being-famous echo chamber for decades, from the Warhol Stars to Angelyne to The Real World cast to Anna Nicole Smith to Paris Hilton to the never-ending Kardashian sprawl. But Courtney Stodden's construction has seemed unreal to the point of hyperbole. Her initial tabloid headlines felt garish by design ("16-year-old girl marries 51-year-old has-been actor"), and her meticulously calculated photo-ops (bikinis in public, 8-inch stripper heels at-all-times, ubiquitous Frappuccinos) functioned as much as entertainment as they did a studied critique on the spectacle of femininity. Viewers could perceive her devotion to a hyper-feminine aesthetic, and all of it's discomfort, as a radically feminist act. A Barbie girl in the Barbie world, objectifying the nature of objectification one paparazzi snap at a time.

If my artistically inclined hypotheses had indeed steered me properly, if she was some post-Paris Hilton performance artist who had designed her life to serve as a satirical gazing ball for us to reflect on ourselves, she was brilliant. Her curated persona is undoubtedly a performative act—she lives her life like this every single day. Still, the question of intention looms: If the artist at work is unaware of the art that's being suggested, is it still art?

I emailed Stodden in an attempt to discern what she brings to the table when performing the act that is her life.

[It should be noted that all of my questions were pre-screened and monitored (and likely answered) by her omnipresent stage mother, Krista. Keep that in mind when gauging the "actual reality" of our exchange.]

VICE: What's your average day like?
Courtney Hutchison: I get up in the morning around 10 AM, brush my teeth, wash my face, cuddle both of my little fur-babies (Cupcake and Dourtney), check social media, and make a breakfast smoothie (all fruit except bananas because I'm allergic). I kiss my hubby good morning and then give the pups their breakfast. Around 11 AM, my yoga instructor comes over for a private session. Afterwards, I shower, put on my make-up, get ready for the day, take a few selfies, and my wonderful hubby delivers my Starbuck's caramel Frappuccino. (Guilty pleasure!) Then I meet with my team to discuss projects over lunch at my house. A typical lunch for me is tofu with a side of veggies. Yummy! Depending on the day, I may have a photo shoot and/or meetings in the afternoon. Somewhere in there, I squeeze in time to satisfy my shopaholic tendencies. [In the] early evening, I get to enjoy dinner (i.e. my famous veggie lasagna) with my hubby and our pooches. After dinner, I sometimes get a massage from my masseuse—and, for me, the perfect ending to the perfect day is to pop some corn, make cotton candy, curl up on the couch, and watch one of my fav flicks like, Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

You spend a lot of your time selling your life to the public. As a reality star, if you walk down the street and nobody photographs you, did you really walk down the street at all?
Yes, but I was incognito.

Considering your personal life is the public's business, what would you say is the difference between the person you are in private and the person you are in the public?
The public me always has her make-up in place and is always "on." The private me sometimes doesn't wear any make-up at all and [lays] around in pajamas. The public me plays up "the blonde bombshell" image. The private me is actually pretty unpretentious. The public me is vulnerable, yet guarded. The private me is vulnerable and unguarded.

There's certainly an element of humor involved with the blonde bombshell character. You've been quoted as saying, "I don't read or write." What are the benefits of playing up the dumb blonde character?
There definitely [are benefits], but actually, when I said "I don't read or write," I was being facetious in order to point [to] the fact that all blondes aren't dumb. The quote was taken out of context and people assumed I was being serious. Of course I read and write—otherwise, I wouldn't be able to read your questions and write my answers. LOL!

The dumb blonde is one of the oldest Hollywood clichés. You present yourself as hyper-aware of the stereotype. Are people's perceptions of you as stupid the most common misconception about you?
Marilyn Monroe did build a career on [playing dumb]. I'm exactly that—a dumb blonde. I know I look the part, but some would say I'm definitely dumb like a fox.

Watch: Space Barbie

That's a cute twist. You're clearly a dreamer. What was the last dream you had?
Actually, I had a super fun and colorful dream last night. I was at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. I was riding on the Ferris wheel eating cotton candy, and all of a sudden, Michael came running out of the house, grabbing his crotch, singing, "You know I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it." And then I flew from the Ferris wheel down to Michael. He gave me his glittery glove to put on, and we started climbing all of his trees together—and then I woke up feeling kind of sad knowing that it was just a dream and Michael's no longer here.

That is indeed a bittersweet dream. I was thinking about his ranch the other day and how it's legacy is laced with both fantasy and tragedy. Since your image represents fantasy, and you yourself are a reality star—not to mention that you have a song called "Reality"— what does the word reality mean to you?
To me, reality means whatever you want it to be. I believe we create our own realities based on dreams, imaginations, and beliefs. I know I sound like a total Disney princess right now, but it's true. What I mean is that we all have the power to define our lives any way we choose. That's reality to me.

Get more reality by Signe Pierce here, and see Jason Altaan's previous contributions to VICE here.

Photo courtesy of the author

People like to ask if I feel any different now—if the years of jabbing a needle into my thigh every two weeks have changed more than my body. I tell them, Of course they have. But transitioning isn't a clean break. My ghosts linger: I can still hear my old nickname on friends' lips before my new name tumbles out. I can still recognize myself in childhood photos, and in my fifth grade journal entries. And although the name on my ID might be consistent with the one I use day-to-day, my birth certificate remains unchanged.

While being trans has permanently marked my body through scars and synthetics, the public record insists on erasure. It was difficult enough to figure out when to update my name on Facebook, when to tell my friends and professors to call me something new—but that was just the beginning. Legally transitioning has been borderline incomprehensible.

On Motherboard: How to Change Your Gender

After starting hormone therapy, my newly lowered voice and teenage-boy scruff made using my original driver's license complicated and uncomfortable. So I decided to legally change my name. The process took about two months and cost $300: I had to make an appointment with a name change counselor, fill out the appropriate paperwork, pay to file the paperwork, submit a brief to run in a newspaper (this is often required before a court hearing, to determine the legitimacy of the request), and, finally, show up in court and hope the judge would approve my petition.

Each state (and sometimes, each county within the state) has its own variation on this process, sometimes making it very difficult to file a name change. In Michigan, anyone over the age of 22 must submit their fingerprints for background checks, adding another few weeks of wait time and $100 or so to an already expensive tab. Colorado essentially bans convicted felons from changing their names at all, and other states have limitations for those on the registry for sex offenders.

Once I had my official court order stamped for a name change, I quickly realized how impossible a name is to escape: My debit card, university records, Social Security card, driver's license, insurance card—even my Qdoba membership card—all needed to be updated. Fortunately, because I did all of this at the age of 19, I had few bills or properties in my name. But even two years in, I still have some accounts under the name on my birth certificate.

This process, while frustrating, confusing, and costly, is standard for a legal procedure. It's not much different if you change your last name after marriage. What's not standard is the process for changing the gender marker on a state ID or birth certificate, which, in most states, requires a signed affidavit confirming sex-reassignment surgery (SRS).

Most types of SRS are prohibitively expensive (ranging from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands, rarely covered by insurance) and almost all require some sort of approval by a psychologist. It's both costly and, frankly, insulting—taking my B-cup down to nothing necessitates psychological evaluation, yet getting implants to bring me up to a double D would carry no such restriction. Plus, making SRS a prerequisite for gender marker changes not only ties bodies to genders (by this logic, women with mastectomies due to breast cancer are no longer women) but also legally excludes trans people who either cannot or choose not to physically transition.

The author's driver's license, student ID, and birth certificate—all of which show different combinations of his name and gender marker.

The gender marker on my ID has not been changed. To do so, I would have to undergo some form of SRS and then send the signed affidavit to an office in Michigan, alongside my name-change court order and a petition to "correct" my birth certificate. I'd then take the new birth certificate to the Secretary of State (the Michigan version of a DMV) and pay to have my driver's license replaced. It's a complicated, lengthy, bureaucratic process.

While several states do not explicitly require SRS, or like Hawaii and Connecticut, have removed SRS as a requirement, the law is often vague and difficult to interpret. Other times, it's outright offensive: Louisiana's law states that, "The court shall require [that] the petitioner was properly diagnosed as a transsexual or pseudo-hermaphrodite, that sex reassignment or corrective surgery has been performed..."

I am troubled by the idea of surgery. It's a procedure I want, if only to stop binding my chest with tight spandex every day (I haven't had the lung capacity to take a deep breath since 2012). But I don't like the idea that I have to cut into my body to live in it.

Complying with the legal system takes considerable time and energy to even figure out, and to make things more complex, federal gender maker laws (for passports) only require a letter from a doctor. That means it's possible to carry three forms of entirely legal and entirely different identification. When I update my passport, it will list my name and gender marker as Alexander, M, while my driver's license says Alexander, F, and my birth certificate still reads Alexandra, F. When I changed the name on my student ID, the office wanted to charge me to replace the photo—so while it says Alexander, M, the Justin Bieber haircut and baby face in the photo draws double takes.

Consistency in documentation is important. When I notified my university's financial aid office about my name change, I realized that they had neglected to change the name on my FAFSA, but had altered the gender marker. Because all males over 18 in the United States must be registered for the draft (or have a legitimate exemption on file) to receive federal funding, I began to receive very angry letters from the Selective Service addressed to a Mr. Alexandra Pines, threatening jail time or a hefty fine. After a few months, I sent them a note with photocopies of my name change court order, state ID, and birth certificate, explaining the mix up. The letters, eventually, stopped.

Even now, the TSA pulls me aside for additional pat downs during airport security because of "incongruities" on my ID.

Before I was able to change the name and picture on my driver's license, my trans status became public every time I used my debit card or walked into a building at my university. Buying Hot Pockets at the grocery store became an exercise in choosing the least transphobic-looking cashier and I'd get questions about my genitals while paying for clothes at the mall. Even now, the TSA pulls me aside for additional pat downs during airport security because of "incongruities" on my ID.

The transphobia I have experienced has never turned violent, in part because I'm a white guy with access to trans-friendly medical care, including hormones. Many trans people cannot say the same—this year alone has seen the murders of at least nine trans women, many of them of color. Being forcibly outed as trans by the name on a credit card or gender marker on a driver's license thus becomes, in some cases, life-threatening.

On Fightland: The Life of a Transgender Kickboxer in Rural Thailand

But as much as going through the legal transition is, in many ways, necessary, each step takes an emotional toll. The legal system asks us, again and again, to prove that we are not just "making our genders up." At every step of the way, from access to hormones to name change hearings, we are required to justify our existence.

The "classic" transgender narrative becomes a useful shortcut to navigate the process, especially the psychological evaluations that are mandatory for most stages of physical transition (which, in turn, often happen before legal action). I have insisted numbly, over and over, that I grew up "trapped in the wrong body" to puzzled bouncers or doctors who see my ID or medical history. I hate this narrative—someone else's story mapped into my skin. It demands a breaking point, a split from a former self, as if the person I was for the first 19 years of my life never existed, or was somehow lying by using a different name and pronouns. I hate the vocabulary of this narrative, how it necessitates words like "change" (as in, "now that you've had your change," as if my body, needles or no, will ever stop changing) or "transition," which is, admittedly, a step up from "transformation." Trans people aren't Decepticons.

The trans body is a public one. Few other identities that I can think of require as much paperwork, as many mandatory therapy sessions, or legislation to comfortably use a toilet in public.

The typical transgender narrative allows for no uncertainty, sticking to a rigid binary of boy versus girl that many trans folks themselves fight against. In order to get on hormones, I found myself compelled to list trite clichés about preferring Batman to Barbie as a kid and always wanting to wear "boy" pants instead of the "girl" ones that emphasized my hips. By placing psychologists in the role of gatekeepers, the system transforms therapy from a space of figuring things out into an audition for the part of Real Trans Person.

The trans body is a public one. Few other identities that I can think of require as much paperwork, as many mandatory therapy sessions, or legislation to comfortably use a toilet in public. I've found that my own gender identity has been supported in part because I don't look trans—on the day of my name change hearing, the judge merely looked at my suit and my five-months-on-testosterone face, then back down at my paperwork before saying "good luck, son," and signing off. Had I shown up in a skirt and heels, I can't help but wonder if the petition would have been denied; according to the current system, trans boys in dresses might not be "trans enough" to change their names or gender markers.

When the legal system inherently only values trans people who adhere to certain standards of cisness, any rejection of those standards, by choice or otherwise, often leads to violence. In my case, that violence is limited to the violence of erasure. To get an "M" on my driver's license, I will have to formally amend my birth certificate to read Alexander Cameron Pines, male—removing any record that Alexandra Catherine, female, ever existed.

There are days when it is tempting to pretend that I was born a flat-chested boy. But I'm tired of pretending. I want to believe that Alexandra was just as genuine and real as Alexander is today, that I can recite my old softball cheers and show friends pictures of baby me in a strawberry-patterned dress holding a wooden sword at age three without it invalidating my current identity.

My ghosts, painful as they might sometimes be, are just as much a part of me as the hair on my face and vibration in my chest when I speak. So for now, the name on my birth certificate is going to stay.

Follow Alexander Pines on Twitter.