For months, the mezzanine of Milan's Central Station served as a makeshift waiting room for those refugees lucky enough to have avoided drowning while sailing rickety rafts from Libya to Italy—a treacherous stretch of water responsible for 75 percent of all migrant deaths worldwide. For many, the train station became a sort of limbo between their previous lives and the ones they hoped to forge by heading north.

Recently, after a huge surge of arrivals and the tightening of Italy's neighbors' borders, the mezzanine was cleared and new spaces were set up to accommodate the migrants. This piece was written just before that and tells the story of the migrants' journey from the floors of MCS to the streets of Paris.

The overnight Thello train from Venice to Paris (via Milan) was set up in January 2012 with the aim of "allowing passengers to rediscover the pleasures of night travel." For the base price of €35 ($38) a person can eat, drink, and share a sleeping cabin with five other people as they travel across the continent.

Since its inaugural journey, the train has shuttled nearly 900,000 people between Italy and France and, thanks to the fact that it provides a direct route between two countries with vast foreign national populations, it has garnered a reputation for itself; it's become a beacon of hope for refugees trying to find a new life in Europe. It's no wonder some call it "the train of second chances."

I decided to take the trip and experience the journey myself.

Muhammad

Upon arriving at Milan Central Station, I met a man named Muhammad. He was new to Italy and had only been in the country for four days. He'd spent the winter living by the coast in Libya, waiting for the Mediterranean's waves to die down. He then paid a trafficker €800 [$867] to get on a boat that could take him away from there. He explained that he was so terrified that he'd smoked five packets of cigarettes in the first ten hours of his trip.

His first two nights on the continent were spent in a Sicilian refugee camp and his third, on the floor of Milan Central Station. The mezzanine overlooking the station's exit had become a kind of gathering place for refugees as they awaited to begin the final leg of their journey by boarding a train heading north. Muhammad flitted in and out of the hall, wheeling his suitcase behind him. He was too nervous to sleep but too tired to distract himself. He kept coming back to ask about departure times, the price of tickets, and see if anyone new had arrived.

The weekend before I embarked on my journey, 7,000 migrants had been rescued from the Mediterranean as they were en route, via makeshift boats, to Italy from Libya. I wondered if some of them were there at the same time as me.

Generally, refugees stay at the station for somewhere between a few hours and a few days—it all depends on whether or not they have money or can get their hands on some. Every morning, a group of volunteers from SOS ERM—Milan Refugee Emergency—come to the station with tea, crisps, and biscuits. They also advise people on where to go and how to get there.

One of ERM's volunteers, Susy Iovieno, told me that Italy's welfare system "is almost nonexistent for refugees" and although there are camps around the country, the lack of jobs, opportunities or any real chance of meaningful integration means that Italy has become nothing more than a stopover for desperate people passing through. If they do stay, they often get sucked into the world of organized crime.

"I always tell them to go to Munich," Iovieno said. "A lot of them want to go to Switzerland, but they will just end up in some cold mountain village somewhere. Or they want to go to France or Sweden. You know, it's much cheaper to get to Munich. The journey is short and if you are sent back, the ticket is so cheap that you can almost always afford to try again."

On the train station's television, we heard the news that 700 people had drowned crossing the Mediterranean that morning. A man pulled out his phone and showed me a video filmed on the boat trip from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa. The wooden wreck of a ship was packed mostly with men, not all of whom were wearing life-vests. They had the look of people who had handed over control of their lives knowing well there was only a slim chance of ever getting it back. I saw that very same look on the faces of a lot of the people in the station and those nervously boarding the train.

As dusk settled in, the train got ready to depart. It was difficult to tell what kind of person was boarding the Thello train and even more difficult to tell why. As we were pulling out of the station, it struck me that this train was the perfect mode of travel for anyone trying to travel in anonymity—there are plenty of dark corners to tuck yourself away in that just don't exist on, say, a plane.

Half an hour into the journey, the stewards began making their way around the couchettes. They seemed to walk in pairs—one waiting in the corridor taking note of anyone leaving, while the other checked passports. An hour or so later, at Domodossola, border patrol and customs police boarded the train. They picked couchettes "at random" and questioned people about where they were from, where they were going, and which language they actually spoke. They began pulling open passengers' bags in the hallway.

I'd heard stories about how, last summer, a pregnant Syrian woman traveling with her husband and a group of other Syrian refugees had been removed from the train. They put her on a train back to Milan but she began to bleed in her seat en route. By the time they reached the station, she had miscarried the child.

I saw a man that I recognized from the station's mezzanine grab a hold of one of the stewards, trying to explain that the police had taken his wife and child and that he couldn't find them on the train. They told him to sit down and said he wasn't allowed to leave his seat to search for them. He just sat still with a look of worry painted across his face.

I noticed that people rarely talked to each other on the train. It seemed as if being in close proximity to strangers, makes you introverted. As if the less we reveal about ourselves, the less obvious our differences become.

I looked over at a Moroccan man who'd been sitting close by, staring down at his hands for an hour or so. We caught eyes and he began to tell me he needed money for a ticket: "I'm trying to get away," he said. "I don't want to sell cocaine anymore." I apologized to him and explained that I didn't have any money to give. It wasn't long before the security guards escorted him off the train at the Swiss border.

At about 2 AM, I began to feel sleepy. The train was somewhere just past the Swiss-Italian border, on its way to the flat French countryside near Dijon where it would later turn north toward Paris. I decided it was time to retire to my couchette to get some sleep. The "six-person mixed couchette" had three folding bunks stacked high on either side. Luggage is either stowed underneath or just below the roof. The central aisle was so slim that you were only ever a matter of centimeters away from the person next to you. I quietly, so as not to wake the others, tried to climb into bed, when I noticed someone was already in my bunk.

I stood staring down at the person laying there, trying to decide whether or not to ask them to leave when, all of a sudden, someone began shouting something aggressively from somewhere further down the train. The woman in my bed bolted up. She was clasping a ragged bag close to her stomach. She looked deep into my eyes, her pupils wide with fear—it was obvious that she was scared to death. I didn't even get the chance to tell her to lay back down; in one swift movement she stood up and shoved past me. She pushed so hard that I was thrown sideways ended up on the corridor floor. I watched her awkwardly fumble with the handle of the next couchette, slide the door open, stick her head in for a moment and then disappear further off down the train.

Confused, I took her place under the sheets. As I lay down in the warm bed, I couldn't help but feel like I was being watched so I decided to get back up and have a wander. Feeling restless, I took a stroll down to the bottom of the train. It was quiet down there, full of empty carriages. My phone buzzed: Muhammad was texting me. We'd exchanged numbers in Milan and I'd told him that if he ever needed anything, he could call. It turned out that he just wanted to send me a picture of the two of us standing together. I texted him back and I told him to let me know if and when he arrived in Munich. I sat and pondered what might have happened to that woman who'd commandeered my bed. I figured it was probably just a hilarious misunderstanding ("Typical her," her friends would say).

Related: Europe or Die

After heading back to my couchette, I managed to drift in and out of sleep for a few hours before finally nodding off for what felt like a few minutes. When I finally woke up, unsure if I had actually slept or not, it was morning and the train had slowly crawled back to life.

We pulled into Dijon train station. Those who were awake took the chance to get off and stand in the sun in an attempt to relieve the cumulative claustrophobia and stretch their aching legs. My clothes felt as if they were covered in a layer of mould, my breath stank, and all I could think about was hopping in a bath as soon as I got home. Everyone seemed bored and tense—as if the novelty of an 11-hour train ride had entirely worn off. People slowly began to surface for breakfast: A young couple took the only available seats in the restaurant carriage and sat down next to the man who I had seen tell the police he lost his wife and child. After a few moments of thoughtful reserve, they spread out a map and started to etch out their plans for Paris.

As soon as we pulled into Gare du Lyon, I noticed about 15 police officers stood on the platform, waiting for our arrival. The man I recognized from the mezzanine got off first, still without his wife and child. He was led to an office where he was destined to sit in silence while he waited for that evening's train to take him right back in the other direction.

It's difficult to say how many people are turned away at that station. No official figures exist, but there are plenty of accounts. In March last year, Le Parisien reported that a group of 85 Syrian refugees, including 41 children, were arrested upon arriving at the station and given one month to leave the country. They slept on the floor for a few days before trying to go to Germany, where they were blocked at the border and sent back into France.

A group of Ethiopian refugees—four women and two men—caught my eye. I recognized them from the train station in Milan. They stood hugging and laughing outside the train station. I felt like telling them how happy I was for them but shied away from it at the last minute. Just behind them, newspaper stands screamed about the fact that 700 migrants had drowned in the Mediterranean the day before.

My phone went off—it was Muhammad sending me a picture of himself giving a thumbs up. He had made it to Munich.

Eric Garner's mother Gwen with the moms of other black men killed in confrontations with law enforcement figures. Photo by the author

According to his daughter Emerald, Eric Garner "was very family-oriented" and "always loved a big gathering or a big family function." Sunday dinners were a regular tradition—in fact, Emerald had just finished talking about on such get-together with her mother, Esaw Garner, on the day of her father's death.

When the 23-year-old got another call from her mother immediately, she initially thought it was a pocket dial before she heard crying on the other end of the line.

"They said your father's not breathing," Esaw told her.

Related: Nine Months After He Filmed Eric Garner's Killing, the Cops Are Trying to Put Ramsey Orta Behind Bars

"A few hours later, we found out there was a video," Emerald said this weekend, as several events across New York City marked the one-year anniversary of her father's death on Staten Island.

"While everybody was distracted," Emerald slipped into another room and looked up the video online, but only made it halfway through before she "couldn't take it anymore." She never watched it again. "It's not something I want to replay because when I listen to video, it sounds like when I used to speak with him on the phone," Emerald told me.

The pain was too unbearable.

"People really take to it when they see strength in a tragedy." –Emerald Garner

The video that documented the chokehold that killed Garner and captured the last words he uttered 11 times before losing consciousness—"I can't breathe!"—quickly spread across the internet and sparked outrage nationwide.

Still deep in her despair, Emerald was suddenly thrust into the role of a spokesperson. Juggling grief and activism was not—and is not, a year later—an easy task. But the Black Lives Matter movement has helped to mitigate her grief, and allowed her to pay homage to a father she says "always provided for us."

Emerald said there were times she hit bottom, wondering, How am I gonna live? ... I'm a spectacle now in the media –like, I just want to end it at all. But fighting for justice after her father's death helped her cope.

"I've had those thoughts, but then it's like, 'No, I don't want to die. I want to stay around a little longer so I can use my voice and turn my anger into action,'" she said.

She hopes she can encourage others—especially young people—who might be feeling hopeless, angry, or even suicidal to "not give up" but, like she did, "use their anger as action."

"People really take to it when they see strength in a tragedy," Emerald Garner said.

Being just one of six siblings, she said, has been helpful because the family can split up responsibilities and take breaks when they feel overwhelmed: "If I need to take my time and get my emotions together, I know there will be somebody out there on the front line, and I can say, 'Thank you for handling this. I needed time to get myself together.'"

Emerald has also enjoyed support from other victims of police violence—people she believes when "[they] say wholeheartedly, 'I know how you feel and one day you'll start to feel better.'"

That sense of community was on display Saturday as Eric Garner's mother Gwen Carr shared the stage at a rally in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza with the mothers of Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, and other black men who died at the hands of law enforcement types. "You see my warriors behind me," Carr said, "Together we will stand and we will win this fight. They may knock us down but they're not going to knock us out because we are going to endure until the end."

"Y'all keep me empowered to speak... I feel like a flat balloon until I see you. You inflate me, and you make me larger than I could ever be." –Esaw Garner

The support that's poured in from across the country and even the world has helped the Garner family heal, and encouraged them to keep fighting. "To actually talk about it and hear the people, hear their responses, all in a positive manner, everybody so supportive, makes it a whole lot easier," Emerald said.

Echoing that sentiment while thanking the audience for their support at Saturday's rally, Garner's widow Esaw said, "Y'all keep me empowered to speak... I feel like a flat balloon until I see you. You inflate me, and you make me larger than I could ever be."

Emerald told me the main focus of her activism is to push the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to indict and hold accountable the officers who caused her father's death, but she also plans to use her father's legacy to support other families in the same situation.

"My vision is to make sure nobody ever forgets Eric Garner and that they know what type of person he was. He was a very giving person, always liked to help people," Emerald said. She hopes to honor that part of him with her work, including with the Eric Garner Foundation, which she says will assist "the families and the victims and the struggles they go through, because living with life after a tragedy like this is very hard.

"Some people they grieve so much they miss work. They lose their job. How are they going to live—how are they going to support their families, their children?" Emerald asked.

A single mother, Emerald had been a manager at Payless shoes for two weeks before her father died. "I ended up having to leave because of the schedule and my up days and my down days didn't allow me to be at work as much as I needed to," she said. "If I can do a fundraiser for the victims and their bills will be paid off for a year, they won't have to worry about that. They'll know that their fight will only be for justice."

The Garner family's fight for justice notched a few victories over the past year. Last week, the family received a $5.9 million wrongful death settlement from the City (which Emerald stressed is not "justice" because it fails to provide accountability), and earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order appointing the state attorney general as special prosecutor for police killings of unarmed civilians.

Garner's death helped spark the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country, a movement that has been dubbed one of the more substantial and enduring since the 1960s.

That movement has laid bare the need for policing reform—an issue Emerald remains committed to—and attracted the attention of many local elected officials. Over the weekend, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Public Advocate Letitia James, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, City Councilperson Jumaane Williams, and others showed up to demonstrate their dedication to improving community relations with police. Jeffries said that this effort must focus on ending the NYPD's reliance on the broken windows theory of policing, which targets low-level, misdemeanors as a means of preventing more serious offenses. Many have linked the approach to the NYPD's overreaction to Garner's history of illegally selling loose cigarettes.

"It unnecessarily targets people in communities of color for things like riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, taking up two seats in a subway car, or having an open container on your front porch during a hot summer night," Jeffries explained.

Garner's killing was a tragedy, and no amount of policing reform will fill the void left in his family's hearts. But the movement that emerged after his death gives his relatives a sense of purpose, a support network, and a mechanism to keep his memory alive. It has also sparked a crucial conversation about race and justice in this country, and those positives were not lost on longtime activist Al Sharpton, who spoke at a vigil on Friday (as well as the rally on Saturday).

"Who would've thought, Emerald, that your father would be the impetus of a movement, that all over the world, people are standing up now?" Sharpton asked his audience. "Eric was wronged, but God has a way of taking wrongs to make the next right."

Follow Kristen Gwynne on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user Abigail G

I've waited to have sex because I was raised in a religious culture that said it was the right thing to do. When I found myself in my early 20s and in a serious long-term relationship I made the decision to continue waiting. I think that was part hangover from a religious upbringing, and part personal choice. After so long I thought, Why stop? Why give up on that? Every year after that my virginity felt more like something I couldn't throw away.

At times it does feel like a burden. I'm a very sensual person and want to engage with people in an intimate, sexual way. Without sex that can be complicated. But it forces you to really think about what you consider sex and intimacy. All of this, my virginity and what it means, attracts a fair bit of attention from friends who don't share my views. That can be tricky, but I talk honestly and find people on the whole are supportive and surprisingly encouraging.

It only really comes up when I'm in a relationship and hanging out with new people. When I'm single I don't really talk about it. I suppose as I get older I'm sometimes a little embarrassed. But also, it's fraught. It's like talking about climate change with really conservative people—I'd rather talk about other things.

Taking sex out of a relationship means I haven't had many. But it also means relationships look different. Things start the same way as with anyone, just a whole lot of flirting. But when the other side—particularly men, women not so much—work out that sex isn't on the table it's like they go through this period of hating you. But weirdly, they always come back, it's like they suddenly remember you're their friend and they get over it.

After that shift there is this new, really strong intimacy to the friendship I don't have in other relationships. Maybe that's what other people feel after sex with someone they care about. That's what I remember as the falling in love stage as a much, much younger person, before sex was even a thing. It feels like how you intensely love a friend as a child.

You still understand sex's place in a relationship when you're not having it. And it is still a presence. It raises the stakes really quickly, so when you're choosing not to have sex, you're still thinking about it all the time. Again as a sensual type of person there's heavy making out, and it's like: Where's the line? Where's the boundary? Sex is still the center of the dynamic in that respect.

Some people think all human interaction is based on our desire for sexual connection, I don't agree with that. I really believe in true platonic relationships. But taking out sex also changes what that looks like. I'm attracted to men and women and I have explored the differences in that. I've fallen in love with some female friends, but not others; in the same way I've fallen in love with gay male friends, and some of my straight male friends, but not with others.

Sexuality isn't necessarily about our bits, the word comes from a derivative of separation. It's about our desire for intimacy and connection is that desire to bring it back together. And I think you can experience that human to human, with yourself, with the earth, and if you believe in God or have another worldly connection, with that.

I think we confuse that sometimes. I think we experience intimacy because of sex, but it's about more than that. I think we put too much value in the pursuit of gratification through sex—but not necessarily into the act itself.

Even as a really inexperienced person I see how much of our identity is tied up with our relationship to sex. I don't think that's unique to someone like me. In talking to other people, observing them, and listening to their stories, I think sex is very closely tied to our sense of ourselves. Whether we deny that and have casual sex for fun—and that's cool—it's still an identity defining attitude. For me that thought is very present.

I've never thought about sex as being something that changes how you view the world. I see it as something that's neutral and it's whether you have positive or negative experiences that becomes the filter. But it still leaves a trace, whether it's good or bad. Maybe you leave a part of yourself.

As told to Wendy Syfret, follow her on Twitter.

Every week, it seems, Uber opens a new and previously unimaginable battlegrounds in its war for global ride-sharing dominance. Last month, the company was turning French cabbies into a new Parisian mob, hunting down anyone they suspected of being a cake-eating Uber driver. Just a few weeks later, it was launching a full-scale PR assault against the Mayor of New York, adding a "De Blasio" tab to show riders how long they would have to wait for a car if the city's taxi-loving despot gets his way.

Meanwhile, for most of us, Uber is the $50 billion-with-a-b ride-sharing juggernaut we hate on principle, but don't know how to get home from the bar without. Given this ubiquity as the world's most combative car-hailing company, it perhaps makes sense that Uber now finds itself in the middle of the country's biggest political battlefield, used as a rhetorical football in the 2016 presidential debate.

Presumptive Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton kicked off the 2016 Uber War in her agenda-setting economicpolicy speech last week, saying:

...many Americans are making extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car. This on-demand, or so-called gig economy is creating exciting economies and unleashing innovation. But it is also raising hard questions about work-place protections and what a good job will look like in the future.

She went on to pledge that she would "crack down on bosses who exploit employees" by classifying them as contractors, "or even stealing their wages."

To many, it seemed like a direct shot at Uber and the rest of the so-called "gig" or "sharing" economy—the Uber drivers, AirBnB hosts, Etsy sellers, and Postmates messengers who can be beckoned at the tap of a smartphone, but who also aren't on any employer's payroll.

The GOP saw its opening for an attack. As Clinton's remarks settled, the Republican National Committee went into action, blasting out a "Petition in Support of Innovative Companies Like Uber" with ominous warnings about the "taxi unions and government bureaucrats who would stifle innovation." Jeb Bush's campaign gleefully alerted reporters that the 2016 presidential candidate would be hailing an Uberon his visit to San Francisco Thursday.

Other GOP White House hopefuls have also heaped praise upon the sharing economy. Marco Rubio dedicated a whole chapter of his book to "Making America Safe for Uber." Ted Cruz has even gone so far as to claim that he is Uber—"the Uber of Washington."

So far, though, there hasn't been much effort on either side to come up with specific policies or solutions to adapt public policy around the realities of this new workplace—both to protect and foster innovation, and also to ensure fair wages and treatment for independent contractors working in this new landscape.

Independent contractors get paid on an ad hoc basis instead of an hourly wage. While the practice isn't new by any means, it has become controversial for app-based companies whose business model relies on the idea that they are third-party facilitator, connecting service and customer, but not the employer of those providing the services.

A recent decision by California's Labor CommissionCalifornia's Labor Commission foundthat a former Uber driver who had filed a complaint had actually been an Uber employee—something the company has been fighting against in several courts. While the decision applies only to one driver, its implications are big: If Uber drivers are employees, they are eligible for things like overtime, workers comp, and minimum wage. Similar class-action suits are moving down the pipeline in the state, and in other jurisdictions as well.

To make matters worse for Uber, a San Francisco judge recommended last Wednesday that the company be suspended from operations in California for refusing to hand over data on who their drivers pick up and where, to show that the company is providing equal access to its services.

Like this? Watch Permanently Temporary: The Truth About Temp Labor on VICE News

So what does all this mean for 2016? Clinton's speech was made in the context of concerns independent contractors are exposed to more risk than traditional employees. Some costs are also shifted from employers to contractors. Payroll tax accrual, insurance, health care and other basic benefits businesses are required to provide for employees can be avoided. This is arguably a huge benefit for profit margins of businesses in the sharing economy. Firms can generate higher profits because drivers are less costly to "employ".

Ironically, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, actually makes it easier for firms to employ contractors. The ACA's exchanges are designed to make it easier and cheaper for individuals to purchase health insurance, making independent contracting for sharing economy companies more attractive than prior to its passage when employer-provided health care was the only option for many Americans. Jeb Bush acknowledged that in a scrum with reporters after his campaign appearance in San Francisco last week.

Employees even provide the tools of their trade themselves, driving their own cars to pick up riders or deliver food, or renting own their own houses. Economically speaking, they're providing labor and capital, and being charged for it via the tech company's cut of their revenue. Clinton's logic is that this cost shifting is emblematic of a broader decline in labor's "bargaining power" or share of economic output. If workers are seeking flexibility, the sharing economy can be a liberating experience with no set hours or boss. But for members of society who turn to the sharing economy as a last resort, that liberation can feel more like desperation and a race to the bottom; these are the Americans that Clinton was trying to address.

Want more on the sharing economy? Check out The Problem With Sharing on Motherboard

From an economic perspective, there's some truth to the idea that workers aren't getting as much pay as they have in the past. It's certainly not the exclusive fault of the sharing economy though. Labor's share of economic output has fallenfrom a peak of about 59 percent in 1970 to about 53 percent today—a difference of about $1 trillion in wages, salaries and benefits for workers, or enough to boost the average family's pre-tax income from $64,432 to $72,656. In that context, the emergence of the gig economy is relatively recent—most app-based sharing companies, including Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Spinlister, among others, were founded after the 2008 crisis.

Whether these gig companies are actually hurting labor income—or are treating workers unfairly—is a much more open question. Clinton's remarks assume that they are: Her concerns about the costs of the sharing economy are targeted at the Taskrabbits among us who feel forced to work at the instruction of apps because of a lack of options or opportunity in the traditional workforce—not workers who actively opt-in to the sharing economy for its benefits.

On the other hand, Bush and other Republicans have good reason to believe that support for Uber will score political points. The company has, after all, grown from nothing to a valuation that's about the same as General Motorsin the span of six years—regardless of how you feel about Uber and its Objectivist founders, it's hard to deny theirs is a bonafide American entrepreneurial success story. Bush is also on the record saying that he believesAmericans need to work more hours, and the flexible hours offered by sharing economy companies are a reasonable way to get people working more, offering more choice, lower prices for consumers, and less regulatory burden than traditional businesses.

Republicans have fetishized Uber and other tech "disrupters," whose business models they see as shining examples of a free-market, anti-regulatory ideology, challenging government-sanctioned monopolies—on, say, taxis or hotels—that keep consumer prices higher they would otherwise be. That was the source of the riots in France: French taxi drivers, angry that Uber was taking their fares, protested, and things got out of control, giving Courtney Love an unfortunate scare; the French government responded by cracking down on Uber's UberPOP service, effectively protecting the country's licensed cab driver monopoly. AirBnB has faced similar issues in numerous jurisdictions, including New York City.

In short, the sharing economy has all the ingredients of a punchy campaign issue: It's a metaphor for a big shift that's been under way for over thirty years, neatly encapsulating a lot of complicated economics and policy into one symbol. And it's a jumping off point for an important election-year debate over what that "normal" American economy should look like after years of slow recovery from a massive recession. Plus, all the kids are doing it.

Follow George Pearkes on Twitter.

Read: The Very Serious Business of Figuring Out How Earth Will Handle First Contact with Aliens

Stephen Hawking has teamed up with Russian tech entrepreneur Yuri Milner to seek out sounds of extraterrestrial life in the cosmos, AP reports.

Milner made his name by investing in tech start-ups like Facebook, but also has a soft spot for the final frontier. He recently dropped a load of cash into a giant, new Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project called "Breakthrough Initiatives," which will hunt for signs of life in outer space. Milner is in league with scientists worldwide, and has said the project will use open data and software, meaning total transparency. With a budget of $100 million, it's by far the biggest SETI project in history.

Professor Hawking has come on board for a portion of the undertaking called Breakthrough Listen, which will allow a bunch of scientists to press their ears up against the Milky Way and listen for any alien rumblings. Breakthrough Listen plans to pick up anything broadcast from the 1,000 closest stars.

Humanity won't be sending out any radio signals of our own, at least not this time around, for fear of pissing off some aliens with a bunch of spam from Earth.

During today's live-streamed launch, Hawking said, "We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth, so in an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life. Somewhere in the cosmos perhaps intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean."

"There is no bigger question," Hawking continued. "It is time to commit to finding the answer to search for life beyond Earth."

Image via the PlayStation Blog

Every time I turn on my PS4, for whatever reason, big or small, I'm sucked in. It might be that I forgot to eject a disc the night before (can't be having that), or that I need to dip back into The Witcher 3 to double-check that the Ice Elemental that destroyed me in my previous session hasn't learned any new tricks since last we battled. And there it is, gleaming on the dashboard, beckoning me: Rocket League has been impossible to say no to ever since it found itself a home on my hard drive. I only meant to play a single refresher match before writing this—I stayed online for half a dozen more.

San Diego-based developer Psyonix's follow-up to their Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars PS3 exclusive of 2008 has a rather more elegant title than its predecessor, but the base gameplay remains the same: teams of (you guessed it) rocket-powered battle cars face off on an enclosed football (soccer) field, a goal at each end, an oversized ball in the middle. The objective is just as simple as football proper: score more than the other team. Rules so simple that any Premier League center forward could understand them.

Rocket League, released earlier this month (July 2015), allows match set-ups ranging from one against one to four versus four, online and offline, with split-screen local co-op and cross-play across PlayStation 4 and PC platforms. There's a single-player season option for truly antisocial sorts. Cars are customizable, but underneath an array of accoutrements and custom paint details it's always a case of blue versus orange, matches lasting for five minutes and draws settled by the golden goal rule. It's an incredibly simple game to get to grips with controls wise, too: On a DualShock 4 the triggers operate the brake and accelerator, as they do in most driving games, circle gives your car a boost (you can destroy opponents if you strike them at top speed) and the X button makes your vehicle hop into the air, where bicycle "kicks" and other tricks can be attempted.

When I was playing recently, I noticed that some 175,000 people worldwide were also at it, concurrently—an impressive stat indeed, and one helped massively by the game's availability as part of July's PlayStation Plus bundle (beside some other shit I've not played yet... something about a stealthy goblin... nah, I don't care). Rocket League's been downloaded more than two million times in total, so factor in the PC and PS4 cross-play and you're rarely waiting more than a minute before you're into the action. There are several pitch types which all play the same way, but the visual variety helps to preserve freshness across lengthy sessions—like those three hours I spent in front of it a couple of nights ago, when I only intended to stay up for a handful of matches. Whoops.

'Rocket League' "OMG it has everything" trailer

As with most online multiplayers to strike a popular nerve, Rocket League's hit some server snags, but Psyonix is active on the game's official Twitter account and quick to update players on any downtime—and to show them what's available as compensation for sticking with them through teething problems. The sales pitch, in the words of PlayStation's own blog, is an "insane football/racer mash-up," but having spent several hours in the company of Rocket League, I think it taps a deeper memory than any title of those types present in this console generation. It's tickling those same places that the Bitmap Brothers' Speedball 2 got to, back in the early 1990s.

The Amiga's (well, that's what I played it on) premier future-sports sim featured armored athletes punching and kicking the shit out of each other, the need to outscore the other team sometimes a distant second place in any match's game plan to the pure pleasure of seeing their most talented player carried off on a stretcher. Power-ups and score multipliers were scattered around the arena, from which the ball—small, metal, lethal in the right hands—could not escape. Just imagine the injuries spectators would walk out with, otherwise. Assuming they could walk.

Related: Watch VICE's five-part documentary on the world of eSports

When I'm playing Rocket League, I'm bang back there with Brutal Deluxe—smashing up my rivals, chasing after a solid-steel sphere (albeit one that behaves more like a shiny beach ball than anything you'd use in a professional sport), drinking in the amazing atmosphere generated by some sterling sound design. The in-match soundtrack to Rocket League is tremendous—there are no cries alluding to ice cream's availability, but the "ooh"s and "aah"s that complement a chance missed or a great save are wickedly enveloping. The crowd counts down to the buzzer, too, adding palpable drama to the sometimes frantic few seconds of a match, where your team's just one behind and then you miss an absolute sitter and you crumple in your seat, utterly deflated, as the timer reaches zero. This really happened to me, just earlier today, with my trio of oranges 3-4 down. It's still painful a couple of hours later.

Unlike so many competitive online games, I feel every collision of Rocket League, I celebrate every goal scored as if it's one netted by the football team I so foolishly persevere with supporting season after season. When the ball's in the air and I launch my car at it, I sit bolt upright and stretch my own neck. I feel stupid for doing so, immediately, but without fail, it happens every time—I'm the player-manager, on the side-lines and the centre circle, kicking every ball beside my faithful charges (who I also am, if any of this makes sense). I don't remember ever feeling this way before about a game that can legitimately claim membership of the eSports club—and, unlike tournaments of Counter-Strike and League of Legends, a Rocket League live event is something I would definitely buy a ticket for. Short matches, simple rules and fantastic action: what's not to like? Add some beers to the mix and I'm there, tonight.

"But eSports aren't real sports."—Oh go and look at these sports already

The game's already found a place in the eSports League (ESL), "the world's leading platform for eSports" (says their own website), and with Psyonix promising support for years to come, Rocket League is a title that could play a significant part in shifting eSports to a more mainstream audience, finding popularity amongst the crowd that doesn't tune into Twitch and couldn't care who or what "Faker" is. It's much easier to pick up and understand than Dota 2, and can be enjoyed by two to four mates around the same TV just as it can an as an online multiplayer experience. In a local co-op capacity, it has my mind tumbling back through the years to playing EA Hockey on the Mega Drive with my best pal—another game where the scoring of goals inside an enclosed area was punctuated by outbreaks of gloves-off violence, and where realism didn't quite come through the creative process unscathed (thankfully). The "racer" tag doesn't wholly stick to Rocket League, either—this is a lot more like the first PlayStation's Destruction Derby series than anything so straightforward as a laps-running racing game proper.

Sounds alright, doesn't it? Twisted Metal by way of Speedball 2, wholly addictive in nature, presented in super-shiny graphics that, while not really pushing the PS4's capabilities in that area, suit the exaggerated physics and emergent carnage of every match perfectly. And to two million players, this all represents old news. But with half of all PS4 owners being PS+ subscribers (according to figures of May 2014), and over 22 million PS4s in the wild, many more gamers have some catching up to do. And to those people, I say: whatever you're doing with your console right now, you're doing it wrong. You should really be playing Rocket League. Now do excuse me, I've got to, um, check on my recent PSN friend requests, or something.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

World Famous Moonlight Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof eats a sugar-free Popsicle. All photos by Amy Lombard

Broadly is a women's interest channel coming soon from VICE. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

World Famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch proprietor Dennis Hof gained his notoriety by claiming to own the majority of Nevada's legal brothels and starring on the cult classic HBO show Cathouse—but this year, the author of The Art of the Pimp has announced a more ambitious goal: He has started an exploratory committee to pursue a run for US Senate in Nevada, and created a plan to end sex trafficking. If he can gather the money to fund a campaign, he plans to run on the libertarian ticket and try to take the seat of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is retiring in 2016.

"Where do you get the $5 to $10 billion it's gonna take to run this campaign without selling yourself out?" he asks. "There's more whores in Washington and in politics than the Bunny Ranch has ever had in its 50 years of existence."

Sex trafficking is an American epidemic far more dangerous than Ebola or the missing planes that have absorbed American media for the last year. Between 14,500 and 16,500 people are trafficked in the United States each year, and human trafficking remains the third biggest black market industry after drugs and arms trafficking, according to the non-profit DoSomething.

Hof may seem like an odd person to defend sex trafficking victims, but he believes his experience with legal prostitution proves that decriminalizing the oldest profession would end one of the world's biggest human rights issues. Hof has spoken at Oxford and the Sorbonne about his plans to end sex trafficking (name another pimp who has spoken at Oxford), and on his press tour for his new memoir, The Art of the Pimp, he has called ending sex trafficking his last goal in life.

As a businessman, he obviously has an ulterior motive in advocating for legalization: If legal brothels can operate in other states, then Hof would be able to expand his empire. Having a charitable cause associated with legalizing prostitution also makes the Bunny Ranch and Hof's other brothels seem like humanitarian efforts. But some of the data—and some feminists—support his ideas. While the National Human Trafficking Resource Center has cited 364 sex trafficking cases since 2007 in Nevada, most these calls from from Las Vegas and Reno—cities where prostitution remains illegal. (In Nevada, brothels can only operate in towns with small populations.)

While living at the Bunny Ranch for a series of stories for Broadly, I sat down with Hof to discuss his possible run for office and his strategy for ending sex trafficking.

Broadly: Why are you considering a run for Senate?
Dennis Hof: The Nevada governor wanted to put in a bill that taxes all the business people. It's a $1.1 billion bill. It's bad for business. It's the biggest tax hike in the history of Nevada, a 150-year history. So at that point, I said if the Republicans who are pro-business and low taxes are going to do something like this to us, it's time that we start having businessmen in politics.

Why have you chosen sex trafficking as a major platform?
[Sex trafficking] is disgusting, it's out of hand, and it's in epidemic proportions. [Las Vegas] can't fight it, and they don't have the resources to fight it.

Throughout your 25-plus career in the sex business, how have you seen sex trafficking explode?
Sex trafficking is in epidemic proportions. If it was anything else that had that much crime involved in it, you'd see the federal government involved in it in a big way to close it down. The old way was the pimp would pick up a little hot girl in the Midwest; bring her to Vegas, San Francisco, Hollywood, or Dallas; and throw her on the track—that's how he'd make his money. The new way is they pick the same girl up, take her to these cities, put them up in a Quality Inn or something by the week, take a few pictures, throw 'em up on Backpage—which is doing most of the sex trafficking in America now; they're enabling it—and then he takes off. That way the cops aren't there to arrest him when he picks her up on the street and all that. The internet has such good things and bad things—one of the bad things is it's really put sex trafficking at its all time highest.

How could legalization end, or at least decrease, sex trafficking?
Look at prohibition! The Al Capones made money, the politicians that looked the other way made money, and the criminal organizations grew and grew and grew. When you legalize it, now you've got health tests, distribution, and age restrictions. You're seeing the same thing with marijuana: Look what's happened to the drug cartel. You don't even hear about the drug cartel that much anymore.

You can't control the supply side with legalization. We don't have illegal prostitutes in this county [of Nevada]. When you legalize it, you take away the need for [sex trafficking] and the vice squad, or cut it way, way down. In Vegas now, they've had a thousand girls that have been arrested and forced to take an STD test and working with HIV. Working with it! So that stuff about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, that's all nonsense.

Some people may argue that legal prostitution isn't perfect. There's still pimps. After all, you're a pimp. What do you say to that?
Everybody has a pimp. Air Force Amy [the most successful prostitute at the Bunny Ranch]will say, "My pimp is Bank of America credit cards, Wells Fargo home loan, and Mercedes Benz auto credit. That's my pimp—that's why I work." Other girls will say, "I've got two kids and a deadbeat guy who doesn't pay any bills. I want a job where I can make the most money I can in the shortest period of time so I can be with my kids—and I don't have to have substandard babysitting and work three jobs. I come to the Bunny Ranch so I can do that." [Politicians] paint it with the same brush.

How do you implement legalization? Do you go state by state like with weed?
Unless you get the politics behind you, the politicians behind you, it's never gonna happen. Never gonna change state law even though it's out of hand. It's so out of hand; you get people like Eliot Spitzer, who's running the state, and one of his big issues was prostitution and being hard on it and the pimps. Then they catch him using a prostitute—that's the world's greatest hypocrite. If you're a politician and you're going to pick a cause, pick something you're not into.

The Bunny Ranch's self-described "working girls" support Hof's plan to end sex trafficking.

Why won't politicians legalize prostitution?
If they're going to say, "Yes, I'm pro prostitution," [and you're from] the right wing, [during the] next election, [Democrats are] going to tear you apart. No morals, blah, blah, blah. And if you're on the left, you say you're for it, or you say you're not for it, then it's the same way [but coming from Republicans]. They just can't win.

Do you think some people don't understand the difference between legal prostitution, illegal prostitution, and sex trafficking?
Absolutely. Here's what happens: The right wing, especially, they want to paint all prostitution with the same brush, whether it's legal or illegal. They want to take a drug cartel guy selling heroin and compare him with Pfizer, but that's never going to happen. In the sex trade for some reason, it does happen. So it's always the issue with me and this exploitation.

How do you change political opinions. With lobbyists?
The right way to do it is to use the Bunny Ranch model to open up all over America and turn it into a profit center [through taxes]. Money would be the only thing that might entice them to [legalize it].

Don't you have an ulterior motive to advocate for legalization and sex trafficking in politics?
I'm speaking for numerous reasons: One of them is advertising, and, to be perfectly honest, another one is my ego. Now the serious side of it is, besides my ego and money, sex trafficking is a worldwide problem. The United States is growing faster—they've had a lot of it in Europe for a long time—and I know how to fix it. You're never going to get rid of [sex trafficking]. Let's slow it down to a trickle. And that I can do.

What makes you, and other people in Nevada, different? Why are you accepting of prostitution?
It's our culture. First came the miners, that guy that walked through here in 1850 or something, put his pick down and shovel, started digging a little bit, and all of a sudden found gold and silver. The mining companies suggested to girls to come out here where this gold rush was—where money was—to open up shop. You've got the miners and the prostitutes, and the end result was the children of Nevada. We grew up with that. So we don't have any problems with anybody.

I remember once Geraldo [Rivera] out of the blue hit me with, "Dennis Hof, World Famous Bunny Ranch, how do you get along with the church?" And I just kind of hesitated, and I thought for just a second, and I said, "We get along real good. The limo makes its rounds and drops the girls off at the different churches." I said, "Geraldo, what people don't understand is this: Nevada, as crazy as we sound, drink 24 hours a day, gamble twenty-four hours a day till you lose your house, you can buy sex in most counties in Nevada—we're very conservative."

"Oh, that's not true" [Geraldo said.] It is true. We're a very, very conservative state—extremely conservative—but they're also smart and they come from that culture of being raised around it, generation after generation, that's just the old cathouse. [The brothels] buy turkeys for the people that are hungry at Thanksgiving. They donate money to the food bank. That brothel, they're the ones that came up with all that money to get life jackets so we didn't have any drownings last year in the lake. It's been around so long.

Mitchell Sunderland is the managing editor of Broadly. Follow Mitchell and photographer Amy Lombard on Twitter.

Look at this guy. What a dick. Via Flickr user Kevin Dooley.

One of the biggest priorities in storytelling is motivation. The audience likes to know why characters do what they do. This is all well and good when we're learning the backstory of a character we're not supposed to idolize, like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, but it becomes more problematic when you realize a character universally considered to be a hero is only doing heroic stuff for personal reasons. In other words, when you give a hero a reason to fight crime other than "the public good," it becomes clear they're acting out of self-interest, just like the villains they're toiling against.

Once selfish motivations have been established, the hero becomes an antihero. He doles out justice with a generous dollop of violence on the side, qualifying his actions with a drizzle of some heinous tragedy that happened to him many years before. "Since I experienced [insert trauma here], I will not REST until evildoers feel my wrath," the antihero says. Antiheroes are constantly attempting to fill a void inside themselves by wearing body armor, teleporting, or shrinking to the size of an ant, and then fighting crime.

The antihero doesn't truly care about saving someone else's life; it's a function of the job, but not a mandatory vocation. Like screenwriter Max Landis said about Man of Steel and the first Avengers film, over 100,000 innocent people die in these cities during the final battles, and yet no one is devastated by these casualties because the greater threat is vanquished and the overall city is "safe" again. The antihero thrives in his vague sense of morality, which often runs counter to law enforcement and the ideals of normal people in the universe he inhabits.

Because an antihero doesn't care about others, he's liable to accept collateral damage in the service of killing his enemies. That doesn't provide much comfort for Joe Sixpack who's watching on the sidelines while his house gets blown up so some guy in spandex feels better about his childhood.

Read about Phoenix Jones in Portrait of a Superhero on FIGHTLAND.

The most obvious and ubiquitous filmic antihero started in 2005, when capital-f Filmmaker Christopher Nolan took a stab at rebooting the Mattel commercials that were the Batman movies of the late 90s. The result was Batman Begins, a great film even a decade after its release. It's a study on symbolism and the building of powerful myths. It asks how, exactly, does a billionaire playboy turn himself into a modern-day knight? Simple: have Morgan Freeman use his fortunes to tinker on ass-kicking accessories while Bruce learns to inject his fear and dread into low-level mob goons. Through isolation, media manipulation, and seven years spent mastering all kinds of cool fighting techniques, the Bruce Wayne of Batman Begins chisels himself into the most dedicated instrument of punishment.

Still, Batman isn't a superhero. Strip away the cinematic mastery of Nolan, and you're left with a story about a goddamn sociopath with a trust fund. If you need proof of this, check out the new Batman vs. Superman trailer. New Batman (Ben Affleck) sees Relatively New Superman (Henry Cavill) and thinks to himself, I MUST STOP THIS GUY! Apparently, Superman violates Bruce Wayne's personal code of morality—by being a guy with powers greater than his own, apparently—even though as Batman, Bruce Wayne violates the very public Gotham City code of laws on a nightly basis. He destroys property, hinders police investigations, and attracts the kind of criminals who will blow shit up just to get his attention. He's a huge pain in the ass to the police, even to his lone ally Commissioner James Gordon, because he refuses to partner with police officially. He'd rather meet secretly to extract information and "get the job done" by illegal means. His rationale is that most Gotham police are corrupt, but maybe they wouldn't be so corrupt if there wasn't a guy running around in a bulletproof cape who was basically a magnet for evildoers who might turn otherwise straight-laced cops crooked?

Captain America. Much better. Via Flickr user Andy Roth.

Pain is the only real thing in Batman's entire life. In case you've forgotten, the new Batman vs. Superman trailer gives you a quick glimpse: Bruce Wayne's innocence was snapped the night his parents were murdered for no reason. Batman is the agent of Bruce Wayne's turmoil, the dread and loneliness and guilt he refuses to let go.

Modern superheroes are intoxicating characters to read about; to dress up like; to spend $15 and watch them lay waste to maniacal villains on summer afternoons. But you wouldn't want your child to become one. That would involve you, that child's parent, dying in some sudden and violent way at the hands of an irredeemable criminal. The ten-year scourge of antiheroes has made me aware of what we're so sorely missing: an ACTUAL hero.

Watch: The Real Superheroes of Montreal

While watching the latest Avengers movie, it occurred to me that Captain America—specifically Steve Rogers, the first guy to assume Captain America's identity—has become my favorite superhero. What can I say, the guy's incorruptible. Cap carries with him the idealism of the Greatest Generation, as explained incredibly in this TED Talk with Simon Sinek, or summed up by me here: Steve Rogers's life is built around a sense of purpose not centered on himself. As a young man, he donated his puny body to science for an experimental super-serum to beat the Nazis. This was a true, noble cause because his intention was never to become a superhero—his body limited his military eligibility, so rather than go home and put on a mask to stop purse snatchers, he literally handed over his life to his country for an experiment that had never been done before.

When the war was over, the world became a more complicated place. There was no universal enemy to defeat, and because of this, there was no more use for Captain America in the halls of Marvel Comics. His character was taken off the shelves in 1954. When he was brought back into the comic book world, having been thawed out from a block of ice by the first Avengers in 1964, he wasn't bitter about having missed Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, and he didn't turn heel to get revenge for waking up just in time for Rock 'N' Roll to happen. Instead, he yet again found a purpose greater than himself: he led the Avengers, a collection of powerful, dysfunctional people who had no business working together.

Noisey thinks that Ice-T is the antihero feminism needs.

Steve Rogers realized Captain America isn't just a PR tool of the president or the war department, but a representation of the idealism of America, something greater than himself. During the Nixon years, he became Nomad—"A Man Without a Country," complete with a motorcycle and long hair—because he didn't agree with the draconian politics of the times. In the late 80s, Steve Rogers became "The Captain" after he resigned as Captain America due to governmental corruption he encountered. He fought Tony Stark in the Civil War series, an arc about superheroes self-registering with the government, over the serious threats posed against loved ones and innocent people connected to each hero due to invasions of privacy. You know when Batman first let someone else wear the cowl? When his back was snapped in half by Bane.

This is the marking of an actual hero—a person whose only priority is service to others. Chris Evans's portrayal of Cap in the Marvel Cinema Universe is thoughtful, grounded, and likable. He also has a backbone and a shield from the 1940s as his only weapon. And he's the leader of a team with a Norse god, an unstoppable green monster, and a billionaire scientific egotist. (Management skills: also extremely heroic.) Cap carries regrets and grief, namely about his partner Bucky Barnes getting captured, brainwashed, and turned into a Russian killing machine known as The Winter Soldier. In the last Captain America movie, he tries to save Bucky's life while BUCKY IS TRYING TO KILL HIM.

As a soon-to-be Millenial Father, I can't relate to Batman. I don't have time for antiheroes and their issues. I have bigger things to take care of as a grown adult. I want to strive for strength and compassion, integrity and toughness, character and action. I want to be Captain America because he deals his pain privately and doesn't take it out on the world. The Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the citizens of the United States don't have time to deal with Steve Rogers' personal shit, and he knows that better than anyone. My wife and my son will need me to be there for them, always, as my best self, even when it's hard and I'm down and out. But a real hero doesn't act on his worst impulses. And that's why I need more heroes to look up to.

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Put that Ed Balls tweet into deepdreamr, because, weirdly, there aren't really any good images of politicians tweeting.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The adult humans in charge of our country have been issued with a 5,500-word etiquette guide to tweeting, according to a Sun on Sunday report. Let that sink in for a minute: The people who govern everything we do—every person we let into the country, our status as one unit on the greater whole of a continent, how much tax we pay, what the living wage is—these people need a 5,500-word primer before they can send a tweet, in case they fuck it up so spectacularly they have to quit their job over a photo of a patriotic van. These people have the keys to our nukes and their fingers on the button. They cannot be trusted not to fav pornographic tweets sent from anonymous accounts.

Commons Speaker John Bercow issued the report to MPs new and old this week, with advice including: "It's sensible never to tweet when drunk!" and: "Only tweet when you have something interesting or worthwhile to say." The report pulled the MPs close and whispered, "Tweet about things normal people are interested in, like music, sport, films, and TV." The report coddled them in a blanket and said: "But make it genuine, don't fake an interest in your local football team or Coronation Street if that's not your thing."

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Some points of interest:

i. Sorry, fucking first up, can we examine the phrase "normal people" buried quietly within the above? You know normal people, don't you, with their football and their Coronation Street. They like their soaps, the normal people, don't they? Like their football. They like anything on a TV screen, really, the scrotes; the commoners; the vermin. Have you ever seen a film? Try talking to a normal person about it, they love all that shit. Some example conversation starters: "Eyup, what about Ant-Man?"; "Les Battersby"; "Did you see that goal by Old Wazza? Old Wayne Rooney?"; "Eeeeeeeee: films and TV."

ii. To reiterate, this report lasted 5,500 words. As a man who once wrote 3,000 words about "how not to be a dick on the Tube"—a man to whom word counts are a simple hurdle on the 400m track ahead of a marathon; a man to whom word counts aren't even advice, just an echoing sound that get in the way of me fully indulging in the nine-month ego trip that has been my employment as a staff writer; a man who just wrote a 109-word sentence about word counts, word counts rendered a meta-concept now, a word-count-within-a-word-count—please know: even I think that's too fucking long.

Watch VICE's video about political students, House Party Politics:

iii. Watching MPs commit seppuku on their own tweets is like watching your headmaster do a fun dance at the end-of-year talent contest: horrible, unwatchable, a human car-crash buckling in upon itself; but also a brief glimpse at the monster within, a rhythmless reminder that we all live, we all die, we all have flaws and are human.

iv. Our MPs are inept lizard people who cannot send a fucking tweet without guidance. I mean, fucking hell—truly we are doomed.

In fairness to the new set of guidelines, it's not like MPs don't have form for extremely fucking up on social media: Ed Balls, for instance, did that Ed Balls thing, which I would be inclined to say was deliberate if he hadn't done it four years ago, before social media self-awareness truly took off, before #brands started engaging in rap battles with one another, before the first nails in the body of humanity were hammered through the palms and into the firm wood of the cross.

Remember also: Emily Thornberry having to resign after taking a photo of a van; or Simon Danczuk's "Fav if #tacky RT if #classy", a now seminal tweet, a roller coaster of a tweet, every human emotion—jealousy, fear, rage, a sudden vacuum of joy, general anger about a low-level gym group offering affordable subscriptions on the front of Karen Danczuk's trunk—distilled into one perfect whole, the instruction "Fav if #tacky RT if #classy" both classy and tacky, the concept of irony engulfing itself in 114 short characters like an ouroboros, this tweet his Galloway-and-the-cream moment.

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Do we want this, or do we not want this? Because I know I enjoyed watching Simon Danczuk body himself into oblivion; Danczuk going full Danczuk on himself; Danczuk the monk on his knees and this tweet his gasoline; Danczuk just kneeling there, a single lit match in his hand, kneeling there and shouting: "I'LL DO IT, KAREN, I'LL FUCKING DO IT."

But I also very much did not enjoy it and would rather this stop.

I suppose the balance here is: do we want our MPs to be fragile and flawed and human, or do we want our MPs to be automatons, the fleshy filling in a suit-and-expense-account sandwich, robo-wankers issuing missives from on high? Because when you zoom out and think about it, there is no good answer: on one side of the spectrum you have Simon Danczuk eyelessly chatting on a sofa about his divorce, and on the other hand you have David Cameron going studs up on foxes and seagulls. Truly, there is no winner. The only loser is us.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Photo of a different Chinese police officer via Flickr user Michael Mooney.

Read: I Lied to My Wife, Flew to Lagos, and Got the Shit Beaten Out of Me Because of a Nigerian Email Scam

A guy from Wuhan, China, has to turn in his fake gun and badge after getting busted for allegedly posing as a cop. The fake officer was selling fake warrants and forged official documents out of his house, which was dolled up to look like a police station, complete with interrogation rooms, the Guardian reports.

The Wuhan man, who called himself "Inspector Lei," had a wardrobe "filled with the black blazers of a crime-busting bobby and his office contained an armory of stun guns for subduing the outlaws he claimed to hunt."

Inspector Lei was able to pull off his charade for at least two years, working out of his apartment-cum-precinct. He even had a rooftop siren for his car. Unfortunately, everything came crashing down once he pissed off his girlfriend, Tingting. Conning the public into thinking he was an officer of the law? No big deal. Conning Tingting into thinking he was a trustworthy boyfriend while hitting on her friends? Big mistake.

Last week, Tingting had finally had enough and told Lei she wanted to split. Lei wasn't having any of it. He demanded she pay him $13,000 to buy her way out of the relationship, but Tingting refused. Undeterred, the fake cop threatened to leak their sex tape online. That's when Tingting went to the real police, and Inspector Lei's cover was blown.

When the actual cops raided Lei's apartment, they found a surveillance camera, forged documents, and a GPS tracker, which may have been used to stalk Tingting.

Read more comics by Lauren Monger at her Tumblr and also her Twitter.

Image of Jen Shahade via Pokerstars

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

In The Biggest Game in Town, his tribute to the 1981 World Series of Poker, the poet and critic Al Alvarez described the men around the table as "gray-faced and unshaven." He wrote: "They shifted about uncomfortably in their seats, yawned, scratched vaguely at their grubby shirts, lit one cigarette from the stub of another. They looked, most of them, like the uneasy sleepers on the benches in railway stations."

Many of the players sitting around the baize at this year's World Series bear little resemblance to Alvarez's haggard old gamblers. Names like Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson and Stu "The Kid" Ungar have been replaced by online celebrities such as jungleman12 and nanonoko. Crucially, however, you're now more likely to find a woman staking $10,000 for a share of the $60 million prize pool.

The inaugural 1970 World Series was held at Benny Binion's Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas, where a guy name Johnny Moss beat a small group of nicotine-stained men in Stetson hats. Moss, the Grand Old Man of Poker, famously once claimed to have played heads up for five months against Nick "The Greek" Dandolos, eventually cleaning him out. He was the first person inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

Since 1970, the tournament has grown bigger each decade, moving out of Binion's Horseshoe and into the gargantuan Rio casino off the Vegas strip. Last year, over 80,000 people entered 65 different events. However, women made up only 5 percent of the players, and a woman has never won the main event.

Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim, Jack Binion and pals outside Binion's Horseshoe Casino, Las Vegas. Image courtesy of David Schwartz / Gaming Studies via)

In 1977, the World Series introduced a ladies event, although the buy-in was a patronizing $100, versus the $10,000 buy-in for the main Texas hold 'em event. This limited the prize on offer, and meant the ladies' tournament was seen as a distraction for the wives and girlfriends of the high rollers rather than a serious challenge. The fact that it was held on Mother's Day until 2004 didn't help the tournament's gimmicky status, either. Men aren't even excluded from entering, with poker player and broadcaster Victoria Coren-Mitchell recalling a woman getting knocked out of the event by a man in a dress. She got up from the table in tears of humiliation.

Away from Vegas, though, women are rising to the very top of the game. Coren-Mitchell, better known as the host of highbrow BBC Four shows, has lifetime tournament winnings of over $2.5 million. She was also the first two-time European Poker Tour champion, something no man has ever achieved. In fact, some of the most famous faces in poker today are women. I asked Jen Shahade, a writer and chess champion turned poker pro, if there's still a place for women's tournaments.

"I think women's tournaments are great opportunities for women to interact, and a welcome change of pace," she said. "It's not like women and men play separately on a regular basis. I always play women's events if I can for two simple reasons: I like women who play poker—it brings out tough, smart women who I feel excited to talk to, regardless of skill level. Also, as a poker player, part of my job is to play events where I have a positive expectation, and these tournaments fit the bill. To have fun while working is the reason I started playing games like chess and poker in the first place."

Jen Shahade at the table. Image via Pokerstars

No-limit Texas hold 'em has come to dominate the professional game, but Shahade is known for playing more obscure types of poker: "I think women can perform just as well and aggressively as men in no-limit hold 'em. In fact, that people think we don't have that aggression can be a motivator to exhibit it," she told me. "But for some cultural and social reasons it may come less naturally to women. For instance, when I started out, I noticed it was much easier for me to be aggressive online on PokerStars than in live games."

READ in Gaming: VICE Vs. Video Games

Liv Boeree, who won the San Remo leg of the 2010 European Poker Tour for just over £1 million [$1.5 million], discovered the game when she applied for a Channel 5 reality show after graduation. I asked her if ladies' events might discourage women from playing larger tournaments, but she doesn't think so: "If she did well in the [lower buy-in] competition, it may give her the confidence and the bankroll boost necessary to decide to play the main event, too."

Considering women account for so few live tournament players, female players do make up an impressive number of high-profile wins. Might women just be better at poker full stop? Boeree says it's possible. "Becoming an excellent poker player mostly depends on your willingness to study and analyze your play, over and over," she told me. "There are definitely some live poker skills that are harder to teach, such as emotional intelligence, which is often stronger in women and thus can give them a big advantage on their road to becoming a great player."

Liv Boeree wins the San Remo leg of the 2010 European Poker Tour. Photo by Neil Stoddart, via PokerStars

These days, some of the most exciting action can be found online. Sites like 888poker and PokerStars let millions of users play 24/7 in virtual games, and Shahade is adamant that this will help to address the male/female balance: "Women often get a lot of attention at the table. This can be a lot of fun, or annoying, depending on your disposition," she said. "But for women just starting out, I think more often than not it can be disconcerting to be scrutinized, because you'll obviously be making more mistakes than average at the start. Learning the fundamentals online before playing live can ease that process."

She points out that many women aren't in a position to—or don't feel comfortable—spending night after night in casinos or carrying around cash. After a series of lawsuits, online poker has been knocked back in the US, but Shahade still sees it as the future of the game. "This is the number one reason I'd like to see online poker regulated in the US—I want to see people able to build their bankrolls safely and responsibly, and not feel like they have to take huge financial risks to improve and enjoy a game they love," she told me.

WATCH: VICE meets North Korean defector Kim Hye-Sook:

In Europe, it's much easier for sites to get a license, and recently one rookie has caught the attention of thousands of other players online. WildHungarian is a 26-year-old from Budapest who decided last December to give up her job and attempt to make it big playing poker.

She now claims to study the game for two hours every day, on top of playing at least 40 games online. Some 120,000 people have viewed her streams on Twitch, a live-streaming video platform for gamers. When I asked what drove her to take such a huge leap of faith she told me that nobody can expect to be successful in professional poker while still working a 40-hour-a-week job, especially not starting from zero. "If I do something, I do it with 100 percent," she said.

WildHungarian's online stream

Does she get flak on poker sites for being a woman? "On online forums there are haters for everybody, no matter if it's a girl or a boy," she said. "People do like to doubt me because I'm a girl, though." According to WildHungarian, the anonymity of online games could encourage more women to start playing, but it's also important that female players are a visible force in the poker world, encouraging others.

Perhaps this explains why her Twitch stream is so popular. "[On Twitch] they can see something different than anybody else who streams poker: The journey of a person who started from nothing, until hopefully being a pro, someone's progress. Being a part of it makes it easier for people to connect," she told me.

Over the past few years, the turnout for the World Series Ladies' Event has steadily declined, and this year was no different. Jennifer Tilly, the actress and World Series bracelet winner, has suggested this is a positive thing. She claims that women are actually moving away from the event because mixed tournaments no longer seem so out of reach.

The rise of online poker is revitalizing the game, and the macho braggadocio romanticized by writers like Alvarez has given way to a new generation of calculated and focused players. Despite the fact that you're still more likely to find a woman watching a man from behind the rail than sitting at the table taking his chips, players like Jen Shahade and Liv Boeree have shown that, fortunately, that's not going to be the case forever. The question now is when will a woman take poker's biggest prize?

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El Chapo after his most recent arrest in 2014. Photo via Flickr user Day Donaldson

On Friday, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gómez González announced that seven prison workers had been arrested in connection with the escape of El Chapo—the world's most notorious living drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

The July 11 jailbreak is an unbelievable coda to an already nuts tale. El Chapo (born Joaquin Guzman Loera) grew up poor and illiterate but managed to become one of the shrewdest and most feared men in the world by building a smuggling empire based around a series of tunnels underneath the US/Mexico border. He's broken out of jail once before, in 2001, but his second escape act involved a Breaking Bad–esque engineering feat: a mile-long escape route burrowed underground and complete with ventilation and electricity.

What might be even crazier than El Chapo's life story, though, is that Mexico may not extradite him to America—as the US requested weeks before his escape—if he's brought back into custody a third time. "National sovereignty and national pride are so important... that I doubt the government will do it," Senator Juan Carlos Romero Hicks said of the situation. (According to BuzzFeed News, "Mexico's National Security Commission president said Guzman would be, 'transferred immediately to the United States when he is re-apprehended.'")

With pride and politics coloring the latest manhunt for El Chapo, it's at least worth wondering what he might might be getting up to now that he's a free man—and what all this means for the Sinaloa Cartel. I asked Malcolm Beith, author of a biography called The Last Narco, about how Mexico's biggest organized crime ring works, and the odds of its ruthless kingpin quietly retiring. (Hint: They're pretty remote.)

VICE: To begin with, just how big is Mexico's biggest cartel?
Malcom Beith: The way I worked it out in my book, The Last Narco, was I used Mexican military intelligence estimates to find out the number of people working in the drug trade. For that, they have 500,000. At the time—that was 2008-2009—there were about, roughly, four or five cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was easily the most powerful, the one with the biggest presence.

So I went with the assumption that basically, maybe 150,000 people worked for the Sinaloa Cartel. The problem is when you look at real arrests—and you can do this, you can look at the National Drug Intelligence Center in the US, which compiles all the information on arrests and detentions and stuff—you find that a lot of people arrested are like, "Sinaloa what?" They don't even know the cartel they're working for. They'll be working for intermediary bosses, right? It's a fluid industry that works mainly on profit. There are academics who hate the word "cartel" because cartels are really organized, and [they] control prices. But they're fluid organizations, so let's say maybe 150,000 people. Did Chapo, when he was in control, did he know them, did he phone them all? No. They ran independently in what the authorities now call "cells."

They've adopted that word because they like it, because it sounds like terrorists. It's more like gangs.

How is Chapo's inner circle organized, then?
The top tier, traditionally, in the Sinaloa Cartel, has been him and a couple of other guys. Ismael Zambada and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno—he's dead now (Note: Moreno's death is still disputed)—the previous guy is thought to maybe have betrayed Chapo because his son was arrested in 2009 and extradited to the United States where he cut a plea bargain, and it was after that information that Chapo was caught. So there are a lot of people who believe that.

There were top few guys, and then lots of what they call lieutenants: high-ranking operatives who then delegate to what are called placa chiefs. The placa is the trafficking card—so for instance, each major city will have a placa, the placa is the route that the drugs take through that city. Each border town is gonna have a placa chief. So they have those at those levels, and then below that they have the foot soldier.

And then on another level you have the hit men, the sicarios, who are the killers. The one aspect that is often disregarded—people don't think about a lot—is the lawyers. The lawyers play a huge role. Just like the Mafia in the old days, the lawyers play a huge role in helping launder money, helping buy properties, helping negotiate deals—there are definitely examples, cases of Chapo's lawyers bribing officials. They do it through the lawyers so that someone like Chapo, if he's seen with an official—never gonna happen, right? But if he sends a lawyer to do it, a lawyer can plead whatever privilege that lawyers can plead. It's changing a little—a few years ago they were starting to go after the lawyers a little bit.

What would El Chapo's involvement have been in making day-to-day decisions? Are those now delegated to other people?
I think what he probably did mostly was organize big shipments, big deals, and negotiate with other cartels. There's always that sort of inter-mafia arrangement going on between the various organizations, whether it be for peace or for war, and those are the sort of decisions he would make.

How did the cartel reorganize the first time he was captured?
When Chapo went to jail, I think there was a bit of calm at that point—from '93 to '98, I think—it was a bit quieter. At the same time, that was around the time that Pablo Escobar was falling in Colombia. So maybe that has something to do with it. The tension basically went down to Colombia. Because a lot of this, remember, when they fight against each other—when business is good—they don't fight very much. It's kind of like normal.

So if law enforcement pressure was shifting towards Escobar, the Cali Cartel in Colombia, Mexico will just plod along as usual. Plus I think the economy was doing pretty well at that time. Oh, and there was NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement} too, which, helped. Unfortunately, NAFTA did actually help the drug trade in some ways because it just allowed so many more trucks to come through unchecked. So you can factor that in.

And then after El Chapo got out the first time, what happened? Did things explode into violence?
In about 2003, he launched a war against both the Tijuana Cartel and the Juarez Cartel. Maybe there was a bit of revenge going on there? It was the Tijuana Cartel that basically got away with the shootout that [El Chapo] got arrested for, if that makes sense. So it could've been a bit of revenge—they'd always had a lot of problems.

He went after the Juarez Cartel as well, which had been weakened since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997. [El Chapo] also went after the Gulf Cartel in the East, and I think that's where he sort of overstretched himself. He thought they were weak, but the East is very tough to break into.

When he was in jail the first time, I believe one of his brothers was put in charge and Ismael Zambada and the old guard continued to keep it going, and he just stepped back to his old role. I'm sure there were some tussles for power, like in any organization, I guess, but yeah, I think he just sort of quietly went back into the same pattern.

El Chapo obviously doesn't need money at this point in his life, but is stepping down something you think he would be able to do psychologically?
It's impossible to speculate, but yeah, he's never shown a particular desire to just settle down and retire. With him, I don't even know if he knows of other options anymore. He is a killer, so there's a bit of a difference, but I think with people like that, it's expected of him [to stay in the game].

Can you explain narcocorridos, the Mexican folk ballads that glorify traffickers who are, often times, terrible people?
If you go to Sinaloa, you'll very quickly realize why the government is not necessarily the respected force, OK? Shortly before I was there in 2008, a group of kids had been gunned down by soldiers, by accident. So after that, you can see why people are gonna be like, Well, to hell with the government. Chapo's our guy, you know, he's the one who looks out for us.

It sort of makes sense, but also what you are seeing—I definitely got a sense that in the last several years, there's been less of a glamorization, that sort of Robin Hood myth has been kind of deconstructed. They see him for what he is, not for what he tries to pretend he is. I think the media has done a good job in that; Mexican journalists have done a good job. And the authorities. [But] the police are not always perfect in Mexico. Neither is the military.

What kinds of themes do the narcocorridos about Chapo focus on?
They're a big part of it, and a lot of people like them. They're often funny, they're often satirical in many ways. You know, laughing at the general: I met one of the generals who chased Chapo for many years, and he played me a song that the people had written about him, "The Little General with the Long Rifle," and he found it funny. Part of it is a cat-and-mouse game—the drug war is a never-ending thing and the military knows that they're kind of outnumbered, or not outnumbered but outwitted, half the time. And they're OK with that, in some ways. But then there's some ballads that are more gory: Chapo will take over, will kill everyone in the government, things like that. They're less common. Usually, they're sort of [like], Chapo, our man from the mountains, he loves us, he represents us, he's one of us, man of the people, enemy of the state, you know, that kind of thing.

Why are people's conceptions of the man changing?
I think part of it is there's more awareness now. Instead of just rumors and all that, there's good reporting going on, good Mexican journalists doing good work to prove the killings and things like that, which I think is very important in those sorts of parts of the world. Otherwise, the myths will just continue. You know, Mexico is a place that had a lot of government-run media for many years, and that's just no good. That doesn't help people. It provides misinformation, it clouds their judgment if it's all propaganda. There's been good law enforcement too, I think, that has proved what's going on much better.

So basically people have realized he's not exactly Robin Hood—he's a psychopath, or at least a brutal career criminal.
I think it's impossible to look at him in any other way now. When he was arrested last time, I think he admitted that he had killed two or three thousand people. And you're like, "Come on, man. You're not a hero."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via Geograph

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last week, the UK government had an opportunity to make some positive changes to the lives of young people across the country, but they decided not to. A Parliamentary committee said they should make decent sex education compulsory in all schools. The government said, "nah."

Here's a brief recap: Last year VICE helped kick-off the #SameSexSRE campaign to bring age-appropriate sex and relationship education (SRE) to every school in the country. State schools currently have to deliver basic sex education, which is mostly about biology and making babies—it doesn't go into relationships, body image, or anything else. Faith schools and academies don't even need to do this. That's not good enough unless you think people can sort of fumble their way through life, believing old wive's tales like you don't get pregnant if you drink a pint of cola both before and after sex, 1950s style.

Crucially, the campaign focused on teaching about LGBT relationships, so that any young gay kids growing up ashamed of who they are, or in families where being gay is not OK, receive vital acknowledgment from the education system that it's perfectly fine to have the feelings they might have.

I devised the campaign and it was supported by the National AIDS Trust (NAT). Our open letter to key party leaders was signed by over 30 LGBT organizations, and added a united LGBT voice to the campaigning work of organizations like Brook, which has been calling for young people's educational rights in this area for over 50 years.

In February this year, the House of Commons Education Committee published a report, saying statutory, age-appropriate SRE is absolutely needed as part of PSHE (personal, social health and education) lessons.

The majority of parents, the media, and teachers agreed. A lot of politicians agreed, with the obvious exception being the diehard Tory old guard and UKIP, who still believe that young people never think about their sexual identities until the age of 16, at which point they start sizing up a partner to marry and procreate with. And if you're LGBT, well, then obviously that's not to be discussed in schools because you will lead a miserable lonely life and, after you've popped your shameful queer clogs, eventually burn in hell for the rest of eternity.

David Cameron clearly didn't want to rock the boat before an election by saying that the proposals of the Committee made perfect sense in modern day Britain. Young people have a different perception of their physical selves than the image that exists in some MPs' imaginations. There's a fascination with body image, and with it, pressures to conform. In a constantly connected, digitized society, people are using hook-up apps to meet casual sexual partners, and personal sex videos are sent without a second thought. Revenge porn is, unfortunately, a thing.

While there's an overload of sexual information, crucial knowledge is still lacking. Sexually transmitted infections are on the rise. One in five people in the UK don't know you can get HIV from sex without a condom. Three quarters of gay and bisexual young men don't receive any information about same-sex relationships at school, and at the same time new HIV diagnoses amongst this group has doubled over the past ten years. And the Government's plan to deal with all this is to bury its head in the ground. Again.

Related: Stopping HIV with the Truvada Revolution—Part 1

Last week, five months after the Select Committee published its findings, Education and Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan finally responded on behalf of the Government. She failed to address the main concern that the Select Committee raised—that good PSHE and SRE is still not a compulsory part of young people's education.

In her response Morgan acknowledges that the education system should prepare "all pupils for life in modern Britain" and how "schools have a critical role to play in helping to shape rounded, resilient young people that can face the challenges of the modern world with confidence."

Morgan even agrees that high quality PSHE and age-appropriate SRE teaching is "essential to keeping pupils safe and healthy, inside and outside the school gates. Young people today face unprecedented pressures posed by modern technology."

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Photo via Policy Exchange

But despite accepting that these are fundamental points, the government is adamant that individual schools should decide how or—in the case of faith schools and academies—if they want to teach SRE, rather than making it a statutory requirement. So a conservative Catholic school can continue to gloss over LGBT issues, or even opt out of this "essential" lesson.

Morgan even agrees that there is "more that [the government] can do to emphasize its importance and improve the quality and provision of PSHE education which is not yet good enough in too many schools." Still, they've decided not to make these vital life lessons compulsory, in order to keep a small group of conservative traditionalists happy.

Funnily enough, it's a Conservative—Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud—who has the most damning words for Morgan over this. As Chair of the House of Commons Education Committee, he said, "The response made by the Government is disappointing. Ministers entirely sidestep the call made by MPs in the closing months of the last Parliament to give statutory status to PSHE. They also reject or brush over nearly every other recommendation made by the previous Education Committee in their key report published five months ago," he says.

On Noisey: Hip-Hop in the Holy Land – Episode 2

He continues, "It is unclear why it should have taken the government so long to publish such a feeble response. The inquiry found the government's strategy for improving PSHE and SRE in schools to be weak. Yet there is nothing in this response to reassure Parliament—or young people—that the situation will now improve."

It's a deeply depressing situation. With the government still settling in, it could be at least five years now—likely longer—before young people's basic right to be taught about life in the modern world is recognized.

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive at NAT, was equally unhappy with Morgan's limp response. "The Government's refusal to give all young people in this country an equal access to information is creating a two-tier education system. Depending which school you happen to go to, you may or may not have access to good sex and relationships education and you may or may not learn how to protect yourself from getting HIV in real-life situations—this is a violation of the human rights of many young people," she says.

Neil Carmichael struck a critical yet hopeful note, suggesting that the battle could still be won. "Ministers know that PSHE requires improvement in 40 percent of schools, yet they appear to see no urgency in tackling this," he said. "I am confident that the new Committee will want to pursue this matter with ministers, making use of any new evidence and questioning the Secretary of State further in due course." With a big enough public outcry, as well as support from community groups and charities like NAT, perhaps the government will be forced to reconsider.

For now, the fight for the right of young people to learn about sexuality continues, and the government has spurned a perfectly good opportunity to improve the situation.

Cliff Joannou is the Deputy Editor of Attitude magazine.

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Water Velocity. Photo courtesy BGL

When I arrive to meet Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère, and Nicolas Laverdière (aka BGL) at their Pan Am Games installation in Scarborough on a Friday in early June, I find two of the three artists high above the site in a crane, while on the ground, Giguère tries to sort out a dilemma over the phone to Montreal. BGL are missing "little stick" attachments needed to reinforce the structure of Water Velocity, a giant, looping aluminium interpretation of a swimming-pool lane, one that glitters like water at night and rustles colourfully by day, decorating what will eventually be the bustling outdoor lobby for the Pan Am Sports Centre's two Olympic-sized pools. The little sticks were addressed to Montreal by mistake, meaning the artists may have to stay in Toronto a little longer.

The Quebecois trio, who have worked as an art collective for 18 years and are fresh from the 2015 Venice Biennale, are wearing hardhats and safety gear but don't fit in with the rest of the crew preparing the Pan Am site. It's clear that having artists around is an oddity here, as various hardhat-wearing staff flit in and out during our interview to check on them (eventually one will notice me and kick me out). The construction workers and administrators contrast with BGL's easygoing natures—Bilodeau re-explains their predicament to one as he sign forms she's carried to them on a clipboard: "We'll have to stay this weekend, except if we find Superman and he can fly from Montreal to here."

"Okay," she answers.

Last fall, BGL were dubbed Canada's "avant-garde pranksters" by the Globe and Mail, which pretty accurately places them in line as contemporary dadaists. BGL's popular Canadassimo installation currently at the the Venice Biennale, curated by Marie Fraser, transports a replica of a full Montreal depanneur to Italy, where shelves full of pop, chips, candy, cereal, and household items prompted Marina Abramovic to express disappointment when she learned she couldn't purchase any items.

BGL have told me they can meet for lunch at the site, and their spirits are high and their moods welcoming and jovial even though they're clearly stressed over the drama surrounding the missing little sticks. While hundreds of colorful handmade squares move in the wind outside, Bilodeau, Giguère, and Laverdière eagerly share their homemade feast and do their best to fill me in on what it's like to create things like a carousel with shopping carts for seats, or install a false water surface made out of paper squares above the Louise Basin in Quebec, or turning an actual car into a giant hookah—essentially, to be the Bart Simpsons of the art world.

Together for nearly two decades, beginning in art school at Laval, BGL flow organically as a unit: they finish each other's sentences, assisting each other with English while dropping charming phrases like "site web" (instead of website, obvi.)

Surprisingly, the trio tell me they've followed a traditional route in the Canadian art world, having started small and worked their way up to their current position as full-time artists, beginning with small artist-run centres in Quebec.

BGL. Photo courtesy BGL

It was Toronto that really broke BGL, where at first they recall, "there was a little rumour about our work." The artists made a lot of relationships quickly including Mercer Union, who introduced them to Diaz Contemporary, the gallery who now represents them along with Montreal's Parisian Laundry. "The art community in Toronto is strong—they talked to other people, and maybe that's why we were invited to other cities."

But BGL are unclear as to how they arrived at their success (art has been their modest full time job for 15 years, which pretty much qualifies as success in Canada).

"Even us, we ask ourselves: how did we get here? It's not a strategy," Laverdière says. "We don't have a huge goal: the offers are appearing, and we're like, 'Wow, that's a good offer, let's try!' And we try. It's not a highway; it's like a country road—'Whoah, there's a little path, let's go there!'"

While BGL won their Pan Am installation by jury, Canada's National Gallery never asked them to submit to the Venice Biennale. BGL recall: "We just answered the phone... [it was] a surprise."

"We never really thought we would do this for so long. It's always been like, 'Okay let's try, okay let's try'— just dreaming of surviving doing that job, never convinced it would succeed. Maybe for the past 10 years we've known [it was sustainable]."

When I ask if a big public art piece like the Pan Am installation pays a lot, they grin. "It pays a lot? No. There's a big budget, but we put so much into the construction, and there's all these extra costs. We don't know how much BGL will have at the end. We give a little cash to ourselves while we work, to feed our stomachs and be sure that we can pay rent."

Stability arrived in 2000, when they began to enter the world of creating public art. Sales to museums are a huge boost as well (when Josée Drouin-Brisebois of the National Gallery first came calling in 2007 to purchase Le discours des éléments, BGL had to ask her if she was joking).

BGL's Venice Biennale installation, Canadassimo. Photo courtesy BGL

Whether they're building rideable carousels out of metal police barriers or attaching a walker to a motorcycle, audience reactions are what have driven BGL to stay together for so long. "We really like it when people enjoy art," they confide. "Maybe this is another thing about humour. We like art to be joyful—to provoke pleasure."

"We did a piece called Chicha-Muffler where people can smoke hookah out of the car. We transformed the use of the car into a huge pipe—just the muffler, but it's crazy to see that effort: there's an absurdity to turning the car all the way on its side just to smoke the muffler. Lots of people are laughing because the car is on its side, and you see people smoking from the muffler. People don't understand how it works, though it's pretty simple: some people are laughing, and some are having fun living the image of smoking a car."

This mix of absurdity, questioning, and comedy is BGL's hallmark. The idea is to defamiliarize viewers, to open them up to thinking about the work with a fresh set of eyes.

"When something is a bit funny, it's more interesting. If someone is making jokes, you're more willing to listen in for a longer time, like, 'Okay are they joking, or is that serious?'—behind the joke there can be many layers: you can get the serious behind that. If I made a joke about something that you do wrong, it's funny, but you also know that [what you did] is not correct, so you will change more."

Readily agreeing that communication through humour is a trait, or at least a stream, of Canadian art, BGL name Graeme Patterson, Dean Baldwin (currently exhibiting at MOCCA's final show in Toronto, where he's erected a very silly summer long "Queen West Yacht Club"), Liz Magor, and Kim Adams as fellow CanCon jokers of some variety—"we could name fifty artists that we find... I don't know if it's funny, but there is humour in their work. It's generous, and they're strange. They use material nobody has used before, play with stuff no one has ever played with before, and invent new ways of expression. Our generation became bored in museums—we found that boring. Maybe it's a reaction." I'm reminded of Montreal artists Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau's (a.k.a. Seripop) vibrantly saturated garbage art, meant to provoke both amusement and radicalism in the most welcoming and open-ended way.

"Our country has no war, and life is really simple. Our art represents our country. We don't have famine... our art production is a little bit light and plentiful." They mumble together about native genocide. "We should talk about white trash."

When I ask what they mean by "white trash," they say, "White Europeans came and killed the people that were living here. Not just killed, but tried to transform them." BGL finally open up about the more political, though always open ended aspects of their art. "The fence—the Carrousel, it's a soft..." Giguère trails off.

"Soft politics?" I ask.

"Yeah. Art not just to critique: it's more large, mysterious, poetic, and fascinating. That's a big challenge—to do something that fascinates people."

I ask about the soft politics of the Chicha-Muffler and they tell me that while it comments on the oil market and pollution, the up-ended, up/down-cycled (depending how much you love shisha, or hate traffic) car is also meant to provoke radical thinking: "It talks about all the gas: it's everywhere. It's in our hair, day by day, the pollution, the petrol market. There are the humans and the cars, it's like two societies, and we construct the cities for the car. There are people who talk to us about that when they experience the piece, but [Chicha-Muffler] is more about liberty: you see the car on its side on the ground and think, Wow, we can do that? We're free. Maybe old people don't care, they just laugh, but teenagers see that and think we can modify our society. We can play with cars."

At work on Water Velocity. Photo by Kristel Jax

The Biennale was one more stop on BGL's strange journey. "We're gonna remember that forever. It's crazy." I ask what they'll remember most and they giggle and tell me they discovered ping-pong before waxing on the beauty of the country.

It was humour that helped Canadassimo make a splash at the Okwui Enwezor-directed Biennale, which was often dark and politically charged, with Vik Muniz's Lampedusa, a floating installation about migrant deaths, and Christoph Büchel's temporary mosque, which Italian police shut down in May. Attendees found solace in BGL's cheekier, brighter pavilion, which also included a Euro-drop coin game. "Many people said 'thank you for your work, it's really fresh and funny," BGL recall, "everything here is so dark.'"

"The depanneur—it's not a joke, but it's pretty strange, and you laugh... You have doubts, you're lost—you probably imagine that you could have some Coca-Cola or water, so it's quite funny. You have to play with the line between art and no art: the limit."

BGL took the joke further by purposefully blurring one section of the makeshift shop. "When you arrive in the back, you realize that many objects are blurry, and it's tough to focus. It's an experience. You have to feel it to understand... it's weird because you doubt about your sight: you don't laugh. You run."

I laugh as Giguère mimes fear.

Just as little kids learn how to approach the world through play, BGL hope to teach everyone through offering them a chance to play forever, providing strange and unexpected situations such as a blurry depanneur a continent away from Quebec, or, as they're currently assembling in Montreal, a giant ferris wheel constructed out of city buses. It's play, too, that's kept BGL together for so long.

"Working together for 18 years: that's pretty unique," BGL admit. "Usually artist collectives are for a quick moment, and then they split because they have their own projects."

I ask how they've continued as a unit for so long.

"Money." They joke, and giggle together.

"You don't make money. [We make] a little bit higher than the minimal salary, because we share it in three parts. It's more sharing: friendship—the three of us are more stimulated to go to the studio to meet and work with our friends than alone. We do it now because we have three projects at the same time so we need to separate to work, but it started like that at school because we had more fun together, and we had a chance to keep it like that."

When I ask them about Canadian themes in their art in reference to titles such as Canadassimo, BGL seemed confused—asking, "Like, landscapes?" Nationalism for BGL is often incidental, and secondary at most, but their reaction is telling: the face of what we think of when we think of Canadian art is lagging behind Canadian art itself—artists such as BGL are building a name for Canada as a playful yet astute international class clown, bringing a sense of humour and wonder to large scale events like the Biennale or the Pan Am Games.

The Pan Am Games are running in Toronto until July 26, but Water Velocity is a permanent installation in Scarborough—or "it's supposed to be," BGL joke. In late summer or early fall, their massive project La vélocité des lieux, a 65-foot-high ferris wheel made of five buses, will open in Montreal.

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