Quantcast
Channel: VICE CA
Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live

DJ Sprinkles Talks Homophobia, Liberal Bullshit, and Why Music Is Aural Capitalism

0
0
DJ Sprinkles Talks Homophobia, Liberal Bullshit, and Why Music Is Aural Capitalism

The VICE Guide to Right Now: The ACLU Claims in a Lawsuit That Arizona Cops Are Illegally Selling Your Property

0
0

Photo via Flickr user Keith Cooper

Read: How to Protect Yourself from Violence in Prison

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona filed a suit in US District Court on Wednesday arguing that the state's civil asset forfeiture laws—which, when abused, allow law enforcement agencies to fill their coffers by seizing and selling the property of innocents—violate the constitutional rights of citizens.

As it stands, police in Arizona can confiscate anything from cars to cash to real estate if they suspect the property was in some way linked to a crime. They can then either keep or sell what they've picked up—even if it belonged to someone who hasn't done anything illegal. In Pinal County, Arizona, the sheriff and county attorney have put money collected from this type of seizure to a few different uses: salaries, overtime pay, retirement funds, and more—even upkeep of the county attorney's home security system, according to the ACLU.

Since the money from shit cops confiscate and sell can be used to pay them, the ACLU argues, police departments have a twisted incentive to pursue civil forfeitures as opposed to cracking down on other crimes. The lawsuit cites a 2014 report by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission that found the state and county attorney's offices and Arizona law enforcement agencies had almost $85 million in their bank accounts derived solely from forfeitures.

Although people who feel like their stuff shouldn't have been taken can fight the fuzz in court, it typically costs more money to legally regain what they've lost than their property was worth in the first place.

Take Rhonda Cox's case, for example, which Arizona's ACLU is using to try to overhaul the state's forfeiture laws. In August 2013, Cox's son borrowed her car, a truck she had bought a few months back for $6,000. The cops wound up arresting the kid for allegedly stealing a car hood and installing it on his mom's truck. When Cox showed up to the scene, she told the deputy the truck was her own and asked when she'd get it back. According to the ACLU's complaint, the deputy "curtly told Rhonda that she would never be getting the truck back"—and when she told him she had nothing to do with the alleged crime, "he simply said, 'Too bad.'"

Cox couldn't afford a lawyer, and spent months trying to get her truck back in court on her own. But she threw in the towel after the County Attorney's office told her that if she fought her case and lost, she'd be forced to pay the State's attorney's fees and the cost of the investigation—which could amount to a hell of a lot more money than her truck was worth. The vehicle was eventually sold by the county.

"On top of authorizing the seizure of her truck even though she did nothing wrong, the forfeiture laws then punish Rhonda for standing up for herself and her property in court," the ACLU wrote in the complaint, later adding, "The forfeiture laws have created a system in which few people like Rhonda can afford to take the risk of defending their property. And Defendants have profited, and continue to profit, wildly through this system."

I Went to a Massive Anime Cosplay Festival to Learn How to Fight the Conservatives’ C-51 Bill

0
0

Images via Daily VICE

As I make my way past rows upon rows of tables littered with the most kawaii pastel plushies, figurines, Pocky, and anime-themed Etsy products, I push through a crowd of hundreds populated by every sort of creature imaginable—including a disproportionate number of Sailor Scouts and Pokémon. I arrive at the group gathered within the main hall of the Ontario Science Centre for the "So You Think You Can K-Pop" competition and finally find a lineup of people waiting to enter a talk called "Intro to Political Activism," presumably in hopes of discovering an exciting method of discussing our government with the sounds of high-pitched, adorable-sounding music still emanating nearby.

After the packed Game of Thrones Tinfoil Conspiracy Theory workshop bursts out of the studio at 5 PM (Jon Snow lives!), I take my seat toward the back and watch as the room fills up with about 30 various creatures: a demon hunter from Diablo III; the pink-haired, headphone-wearing Super Sonico; a kigurumi Stitch; Mordecai, the chilled-out bluejay from Regular Show; and a slew of characters I don't recognize as anything specific, most donning some combination of brightly coloured hair, Tripp pants, and armfuls of kandi.

An orange dick-shaped balloon leftover from a previous workshop is swaying on the wall in the air conditioning as someone removes what looks like a giant Tesla coil from the room. Discussion leaders Christopher Lambe, from Youth Vote Canada, and Nahum Mann, of Currant, both wearing nondescript outfits punctuated by geeky accessories and Anti-Bill C-51 buttons, introduce themselves as former Occupy Movement members. They say that, during that form of protest, "Nobody listened to our voices; they wrote us off as hippies or methheads." And then, like clockwork, the discussion immediately turns to hacktivism.

The bizarre combination of anime characters and political discussion actually seems pretty normal, considering the setting: Atomic Lollipop, a Toronto festival in its fifth year that's held at the Ontario Science Centre and dubbed by its founders as the "Woodstock of Geek." A-pop is not your typical anime-geek convention; the vibe is somewhat reminiscent of Burning Man, which contributes to its attracting a massive number of ravers.

Among the typical debauchery of crafts, cosplay, and dancing to electronic music, however, I found something much deeper lurking beneath the surface: a serious mandate to get attendees involved in IRL society.

In a programming series aptly named "Get Off Your Ass," workshops were held on entrepreneurship and collaborative large-scale art a la Burning Man, and—perhaps the most intriguing—there was also a discussion on Canadian politics.

"We want people to leave the event feeling like they gained something that they can sort of take with them and use throughout their life," Elliot Coombe, director of operations and cofounder of A-pop, tells me in an interview following the convention. "There's a lot of talk about young people generally being disillusioned, but I think that the outreach that's being done by political parties and existing organizations out there just doesn't really position the messaging in a way that it is accessible in an exciting way."

During "Intro to Political Activism," a guy in the front row eagerly asks as the first question: "What do you think of hacktivism?!" What ensues is a chat between the leaders of the workshop and a couple others with the resounding decision that, with most of the audience nodding, that, yes, it can be "really freaking useful."

It comes as no surprise that attendees at a con centred around internet culture are eager to discuss this. After all, Anonymous, the hacktivist group that recently claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on Government of Canada websites in protest of Bill C-51, derives from 4chan, a forum historically associated with anime.

Later during the panel, the facilitators will ask us what activism means to us. A guy in either plain clothes or obscure cosplay that is beyond my comprehension simply will answer "Anonymous."

One of the reasons Lambe and Mann were asked by Coombe to do the discussion was because he is also involved in political activism. He's part of the Toronto Coalition to Stop Bill C-51 and, notably, the coordinator of an event in Ottawa a few months ago where the group handed hundreds of carnations to MPs and staffers at Parliament Hill to "spread a message of love and compassion" following tension around Bill C-51 and the October 22 attack.

Bill C-51 is a major point of discussion here; after all, people who spend a lot of time on the internet are understandably concerned about surveillance.

Lambe and Mann explain that they think the real reason the government created the piece of legislation was "out of fear." They urge the crowd not to be opposed to members of the government as people, but to oppose the ideas presented in the bill. Another guy who popped in late stands against a wall dropping a few lines of his opinion, an anti-Bill C-51 button visibly present on his shirt; later, I recognize him onstage as one of the DJs, still donning his button in front of a crowd of hundreds.

"We're the ones on the internet, we're the ones surfing for stuff, we're the ones searching for knowledge," Lambe tells me at their misfit booth in the main hall during a talent show where he's handing out pamphlets. "We have this yearning for knowledge that sometimes takes us down a path that the government might not agree with."

About a quarter into the hour-long workshop, six of the most hardcore cosplayers file out in a parade of purple, pink, and blue wigs—a grim metaphor for the youth apathy that plagues Canadian politics. In the last election, voter turnout for Canadians 18-24 years old was only 39 percent—the lowest of all age groups eligible to vote.

Luckily, a shirtless, sweaty guy comes in lieu just after, likely fresh off of the dance floor. At this point, several tangential debates arise, many deriving from a Goth Lolita Catgirl and the decidedly not-so-chill Mordecai cosplayer. We talk about income inequality, student debt, the recent change in voter ID laws, First Nations issues, the role of greedy corporations. At one point, someone asks if anyone in the crowd owns their own home—not a single person raises their hand.

While discussing the differences between Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP, a heated debate arises between Lambe and Goth Lolita Catgirl about Canadian political party theory when he claims the current system is indicative of the "Dynasties and Interludes" theory.

Goth Lolita Catgirl vehemently raises her hand. She's sitting right next to me, and I glance over at her in horror, no doubt half expecting to hear some strange tumblr wormhole conspiracy theory. Instead, I hear an articulate argument.

"I have to say I really disagree with you," Catgirl says sternly, claiming she's observed in recent years that the nature of predominant political parties in Canada has morphed.

We nearly run over the allotted hour timeframe—there's a crowd of cosplayers huddled outside the studio impatiently waiting to enter for the Mad Science Fair workshop on microcontrollers.

Later, when I ask Lambe about his impression of the talk—the first he's done that wasn't in a traditional environment like a university campus—he tells me, "I had a whole plan in place, and I didn't need it because people kind of knew what they were coming into and what they were talking about, so we could actually make it more of a conversation instead of a lecture." He assures me that him and Catgirl had a deep convo following the workshop and made up.

Diana Peragine, cofounder and programming director for A-pop, says that next year they'll be moving the political activism workshop to a larger space to accommodate interest and will be expanding the Get Off Your Ass series to include panels on topics such as post-secondary education. According to Peragine, the political workshop and booth at this year's Atomic Lollipop inspired 56 people to register to vote at the event.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

‘Oriented’ Gives Us an Intimate Look at What It’s Like to Be a Gay Palestinian in Israel

0
0

All stills from 'Oriented.' Courtesy of Oriented Film

There are lots of controversial subjects out there, but it's difficult to imagine a film more likely to ruffle feathers than Jake Witzenfeld'sOriented. The documentary follows three gay Palestinian men in their 20s living in Tel Aviv, portraying their struggles and victories as they try to navigate the difficulties of being... well, gay and Palestinian. Khader is the scion of a Muslim mafia family who lives with his Jewish boyfriend; Naim is struggling to come out to his conservative, village-dwelling family; and Fadi tries to balance his Palestinian nationalism with an attraction to Jewish men. The three best friends decide to form a group called "Qambuta," hoping to bring about change through exposure to their unique sexual and national identities. It's a funny, moving exploration of a sensitive but important issue, and examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a unique lens. I sat down with Witzenfeld over a coffee in New York City and asked him what it was like to make this documentary.

VICE: I'm going to ask the typical question, but what got you interested in this topic?
Jake Witzenfeld: The three guys I followed in the film made a video that spoke to the Palestinian community inside Israel. They wanted to say that it's OK to be gay, it's OK to not want to get married, it's acceptable. This video is how I discovered them. I saw it online and I was like, "This is fucking fresh." I'd not seen a visibly Palestinian voice coming out of Tel Aviv, and it was a gay Palestinian voice.

What was directing the film like for you emotionally? I'm sure you got close to these three men.
In the beginning, I felt like I found Rosa Parks at the back of the bus. I found this political moment, and then they disappointed me in my projection of wanting that because they're human and political change comes about through smaller actions. I transitioned in my approach and realized that actually the story here was the story of these three friends who share an identity complex. It's a smaller story. It's not going to end with the region on fire or with, like, Arabs crossing the borders and embracing their brothers in the West Bank and in Gaza.

The ambivalence is cathartic, I think. –Jake Witzenfeld

Obviously people are going to have their opinions on this. It's a loaded topic. What were some of the issues that came up during your screenings? Did the audience have a reaction?
What I loved about the reactions is that what I wanted has worked, which is to try and cut through everyone's immediate, black-and-white, absolutist stances on the conflict, and move things into gray space. It's OK to feel ambivalent. My frustration in being surrounded by the Israel-Palestine discourse as a young Jewish guy from a traditional Jewish world and then [participating in] student politics and then spending time in Tel Aviv is that there's constant discussion. If it were as simple as having an opinion, it could have been solved by now. It's not that easy, but we're all locked into our views and anything that makes us feel certain. The ambivalence is cathartic, I think.

"Pinkwashing" is a term I've heard used in this discussion to describe the way Israelis talk about how tolerant they are towards LGBT people. But some see it as a distraction from the Palestinian question.
Well, it's not a film about pinkwashing, but obviously it came up. And being a British straight Jew telling the story of gay Palestinians in Tel Aviv, it's like the red light goes off immediately. I tried to include that aspect of their distaste for it. They don't go to Pride in Tel Aviv because they don't want to be associated with that. They're thinking about the checkpoints that their mates who are trying to come in from Ramallah to be in Tel Aviv for Pride don't get safe passage through. There was a moment where I'm filming Khader [one of the three friends] at Pride Berlin and this elaborate drag artist is walking along with a big Israel Pride sign behind him. Khader just turns around, looks at the camera, and rolls his eyes. As soon as I had that, I was like, "Awesome." Because I knew that the pinkwashing thing was going to be a concern, especially from people who are coming at this from a Palestinian perspective.

It was nothing about being Palestinian. It was nothing about being Jewish. It was nothing about any of that. It was just about helping a friend. –Jake Witzenfeld

I love that scene with Naim and his family, when he's trying to come out but he can't do it. It was so funny the way his family was talking because I was like, "Oh my God, that is my family." In so many ways, that is every Arab family. Like, "Why you don't move closer to home? You need to be near your family. You need to get married. Young people these days." It really resonated for me. How did you present the film to his family?
I told them that I was making a film about generation gap in the community. Naim wasn't out to them at that point. When I first met Naim, he told me he didn't want to talk about his sexuality on camera. I said that was completely fine. I didn't know what the film was going to be about. One evening, the guys were going for a drink, so I went down, drank with them, and started shooting really without any rationale, just capturing them hanging. Out of nowhere, Naim turns around and says, "I'm going to tell my parents. I've decided. It's time. I can't go on not being myself to the people who love and support me most in the world." I kept rolling obviously, and I was like, "Yeah? We're doing this?" He said yes. I think the film became a bit of a journey. I went through that whole thing with him. It was amazing that he gave me access, and it was also amazing just as a person to have that dialogue. It was nothing about being Palestinian. It was nothing about being Jewish. It was nothing about any of that. It was just about helping a friend. I think that intimacy comes through in the film.

What were some of the challenges you faced getting that kind of access, especially in terms of the Arab community?
I think I had to let go of my cultural baggage and assumptions and just be open. We shot Khader's sister's wedding. It was in deep Jaffa, like hood Jaffa, not gentrifying where-I-live Jaffa and where the boys live. We get there, and we're, like, this white film crew. We're in the middle of this wedding in someone's courtyard and that was the challenge, like being out of place but just trying to be comfortable. One of his cousins comes up to me at one point and starts yelling at me. "What are you doing here?" Then he grabs my arm and puts a big smile on and he's like, "I'm fucking with you." I actually found it to be a gesture of respect to me that he knew I could take that as a joke. It was a really special moment in the process. But there were some challenges to access. I'm pretty sure Naim's father thought I was working for the Shabak [Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service]. He interviewed me before I got to take out my camera. He asked me what I was doing there, and I just said to him, "I'm sitting on your couch," and he liked that. But yeah, there was a little suspicion there.


On VICE Talks Film: Talking to the Director of the New Amy Winehouse Documentary About Her Life and Death:


What kind of tension did you see between being Palestinian and being gay, as an identity?
I think the three leads share a complicated identity complex. On the one hand, it's about the fact that they're too gay for the village. It's their conflict with the heteronormative, chauvinistic Arab community that struggles with its sexuality. Two is national, with the state of Israel. Unlike their parents' generation who were much more hush-hush, gentleman's agreement with the state, they're like, "Fuck that, we're Palestinian. We like Israelis getting pissed off if we call ourselves Palestinian and not Israeli or Israeli-Arab. It's complex, but our grandparents were born here." The tension that comes out of that is real. Also, I don't think it's so easy for them to explain their Palestinian-ness to somebody in Gaza. They're sipping cappuccinos in Tel Aviv and running inside when the sirens go off, but others are having their houses destroyed or their families killed. They have Palestinian white guilt, which is something I'd never even thought about until I met them. But I do think their Palestinian nationalism is a legitimate expression. It's just a really different one.

So lastly, how did you manage to focus on the humans and not the politics?
Very naturally, because I was quite tired of the politics and very excited about the humans.

To host a screening, email collaborate@orientedfilm.com. Keep an eye on US screening dates and international premieres coming soon at orientedfilm.com.


Follow Sulome Anderson on Twitter.

So Sad Today: Better Living Through Meaninglessness

0
0


Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

Recently I got a fucked-up haircut. It wa­s one of those haircuts so minor that no one would even notice, but to me it was totally devastating.

I have a history of being devastated by trivial hair-care issues. This might be because I lack a core sense of self. When you lack a core sense of self, you come to define your identity around your physicality. Any minor physical problem becomes a major problem and you feel like you are disintegrating.

Also, my mother placed a religious amount of emphasis on physical beauty when I was growing up. Innately, I fear that if I make one small alteration in the wrong direction, then I will lose all the love: her love and the love of the universe.

I've also come to realize that my anxiety is more comfortable when I am involved in a contained drama. On some level, I think I choose to identify with a fucked-up hair experience—even when it isn't noticeable to the naked eye—because it's a lot easier to manage my anxiety around hair than, say, death or powerlessness or personal freedom or the question of what we are all doing here.

In The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker writes, "...as soon as man lifts his nose from the ground and starts sniffing at eternal problems like life and death...then he is in trouble. Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives...They 'tranquilize themselves with the trivial'—and so they can lead normal lives."

This is not to say I haven't had some legitimately awful hair experiences. When I hit puberty, I began having nightmares about the Holocaust and my wavy hair grew in like a giant crown of bristly pubes. One time I accidentally gave myself horizontal blonde tiger stripes and was forced to get a buzz cut. There may be some residual trauma from these situations, but not the kind of post-traumatic hair syndrome that would warrant the grandiose reactions of terror, dread and self-hatred that I experience whenever I get a haircut that is 'slightly off.'

In the case of this recent haircut, I had asked the hairdresser to thin out my Jewfro a little. The hairdresser was hot, disinterested, and not the type of person I felt OK telling to stop when he picked up a razor and swiped it 30-40 times throughout my entire head. By the time he was finished, what remained looked more to me like a giant head of split ends than a haircut. I told him it looked great. Then I went into emergency mode.

From the bathroom at the hair salon, I filmed a video of myself and asked into the phone, Do I look like Pete Wentz?! I sent it to five friends who all affirmed that I did not. They said my hair looked no different than usual. This assuaged me until the following morning, when I awoke at 4 AM and began compulsively googling: razor damage, razor cut nightmare, Ashlee Simpson. I texted a friend who cuts hair, then raced in to go see her first thing that morning. She trimmed the ends and it seemed to look better. I thought I could live with it. But, of course, I was wrong.



Later that day I got on a plane to New York for a work trip. Sandwiched between two elderly people, I began taking more pictures of the hair mid-flight, convinced that the trim had done nothing. I decided that it wasn't so much of a Wentz look, but a Bret Michaels. From the air, I sent out a pained tweet asking if there was a hairdresser in NYC who could come to my hotel when I landed late that night. I said I would pay in cash and retweets.

When I landed in New York, I realized it was a bad idea to entrust my hair to a stranger. The following day, I made an appointment with a person I used to see in NYC. He had been "the fixer" for me in many prior perceived hair emergencies and I knew that he could handle the situation. Until then, I prefaced every human interaction with, I'm having a hair emergency. I didn't want anyone passing judgment on my hair without knowing that I was already well aware of the situation. The thing was, no one noticed anything.

At no point during the freakout did I say to myself, This is not a true emergency. At no point did I say, It's hair and it will grow . I thought, Disaster. I thought, It's all over. I also remember thinking for a second, It kind of feels good to be worrying about my hair and not death. Like, I was a little conscious of what I was doing. I was trading an existential fear for a tangible one.

When "the fixer" fixed my hair, I finally allowed myself some peace. I felt calm for the first time in days. But then, some unexpected new feelings set in. I began to experience a sensation of loss or homesickness: as if I had suddenly lost my sense of purpose and didn't know what to do next. I maybe even felt disappointed. Like, I missed having the crisis to attend to. I missed the contained meaning it gave me.

It's no coincidence that all of this occurred while I was traveling. When I travel, I feel more existential anxiety than usual, because the signifiers and daily routines that I usually use to cobble together an identity—however false—are no longer available. Without the recognizable anchors, I start to feel like there is only nothingness. What would I be forced to feel if I was not obsessing about something?

The state of obsession provides me with a mission of sorts, a raison d'être that also staves off depression. If nothing else, there's a solid adrenaline jolt. I give myself missions like this all the time, simply by making the inane seem urgent. I wait for a text and feel that I will die if I do not receive it. I shop for a piece of clothing that I suddenly must have, or else I will not be a complete person. I weigh myself 12 different times in the morning until I get the number that stills my heart. If I don't get the number, I restrict my eating. Through each of these empty behaviors, a deeper emptiness is kept at bay.

There is something both painful and comforting about hitching my well-being to ephemeral concerns. I guess facing the transitory nature of existence is simply too sad. So instead I turn my fleeting obsessions into momentous occasions, seemingly earth-shattering, and it gives my life a point—at least for a while.

Becker writes, "The ironic thing about the narrowing-down of neurosis is that the person seeks to avoid death, but he does it by killing off so much of himself and so large a spectrum of his action-world that he is actually isolating and diminishing himself and becomes as though dead."

When I think of the feelings—both anxious and depressed—that I am running from in the height of these obsessions, they are best described as a state of Is that all there is? It's weird that I am able to escape my feelings about the banality of life by focusing on things that are, in themselves, vain and superficial. It's weird that it works.

Perhaps some day I will no longer need to affix myself to these obsessions. Perhaps I will sit comfortably in the depth of a moment, rather than running in circles. For now I am a girl who obscures the infinite. I look at my hair and think, This is all there is and take refuge in the insanity.

So Sad Today is a never-ending existential crisis played out in 140 characters or less. Its author has struggled with consciousness since long before the creation of the Twitter feed in 2012, and has finally decided the time has come to project her anxieties on a larger screen, in the form of a biweekly column on this website.

Prosecutors Detail Sandra Bland Autopsy Report

0
0
Prosecutors Detail Sandra Bland Autopsy Report

I Entered Over 1,000 Competitions in a Month and This Is What I Won

0
0

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

It's Saturday morning and I'm 11. I walk downstairs to make myself an enormous combo bowl of Chocolate Snaps, Rice Krispies, and Frosties—early onset diabetes in a dish—and turn on the telly to watch SM:TV Live. Some little bastard called Greg has just won a Hitachi stereo with a built-in MiniDisc player. Ant and Dec are both doing their thin smiles and Cat Deeley's going, "Exciting, isn't it, mom?" gesturing to Greg's mom, who's grimacing in the dark behind the young seated audience.

I think to myself: Why is it always kids called Greg from Welwyn Garden City who win Hitachi stereos and Dreamcasts? Why can't it be me?

Over a decade later, I've realized the big main reason I never won any competitions is because I never entered any competitions. So, for the first time in my life, I thought I'd do just that. I googled "enter a competition" and a news story about a woman who calls herself Di Coke appeared. Di Coke is a 40-year-old "comper"—a serial competition enterer—who enters a staggering 400 competitions a week and claims to win £15,000 [$23,000] worth of prizes every year. Doing literally exactly what she does, I thought, I could definitely make at least £1,250 [$1,950] in a month.

WEEK ONE

As I'm a peon with a taste for masochism, I spend the majority of my week at work, so I can't comp full-time. But what I can do is wake up at oh-my-God-for-fuck's-sake-o'clock, cycle to a cafe near work, and sign up for a bunch of stuff that's going to clog my inbox up with spam. On that note, I figured a comp-specific email account would make sense, and a believer in positive affirmations, I thought my email address should be this:

"Sam is going to win" would be the mantra I would repeat with every competition I entered, increasing chances of winning by a percent each time.

PrizeBug is a site that collates competitions from across the internet to one site, then when you click on one link, takes you to the original site and opens about 400 pop-ups. I'm cheap and easy, so I was after anything and everything: iPhones, iPads, PS4s, a holiday to New York, a Fiat 500 (why not?), and even a Dyson car cleaning kit—not that I own a car, but I might one day, and anyway, owning as much stuff as humanly possible is always a good thing, right?

As I punched in my personal details and positive e-mail address, a page—sometimes more—of opt-in/out questions appeared. Some of these had weekly charges, so unlike with Apple's terms and conditions, I'd actually have to read these and stay vigilant.

After my first session, I'd entered 58 competitions, and it wasn't even 9 AM. I went to work, sat down, and began doing my repetitive task for the day, but I couldn't concentrate. Images were flashing through my mind: packages being delivered; "sorry, we missed you" cards from the postman; me listing unwanted prizes on eBay; me standing behind a sweaty, exasperated man in line at the Post Office, sending off those eBay parcels; me visiting places I'm likely to get heat rash; me driving to the home that Ant and Dec and their wives all share to wave my Dyson car hoover around, screaming, "Fuck you, Ant! Fuck you, Dec! I did it! I finally fucking did it!"

Checking my emails became a source of excitement. No more would I click refresh, full of hope, before finding two automated messages about unsuccessful job applications. Now, the only emails I'd receive would be ones telling me I'd won a car (or a load of spam emails telling me I need only take "one simple step" to enlarge my penis).

At the high tide of the week, I'd successfully entered 347 competitions, just under a pro's weekly output.

TRENDING ON NOISEY: Drake Responded to Meek Mill's Ghostwriter Accusations in the Most Drake Way Possible


WEEK TWO

No wins yet. Just a series of emails saying stuff along the lines of: "Congratulations! You've been shortlisted to enter!" or "Well done, samisgoingtowin@gmail.com was exclusively selected!"

Was I just giving my personal details away for free to some shady advertising behemoth, allowing them to be sold on to companies that would then relentlessly pitch me products I have no absolutely interest in? I thought the world was better than that—that we all learnt a lesson about not being dicks to each other after Nasty Nick was vilified by the national press 15 years ago. Have we taken nothing from that?

Soon, I came across ThePrizeFinder, home to a staggering amount of competitions, which, again, linked you to other pages to enter, sending new pop-up pages flying around my screen like that bit at the end of Solitaire. This helped me re-focus. I barely took my eyes off my laptop, utilizing the keyboard shortcuts expertly and positioning my cursor in the most efficient place possible for scrolling through pages.

Two weeks and 500 competitions later, my enthusiasm was justified—I hit my first jackpot: a free chocolate bar that some poor intern was going to have to package and post to my home address.

WEEK THREE

With a slightly melted chocolate bar the only thing I had to show for two solid weeks of competition entering, I went in search of more experienced compers, hoping they'd be able to help me out. Conveniently, MoneySavingExpert forums hosts a whole community of compers who regularly post new competitions and answers to competition questions.

One user, who wished to stay anonymous, was helpful and pragmatic when it came to comping. Suggesting to start by entering the comps that were ending soon, then the "instant wins," then the social media comps that only lasted for a day or so, and lastly entering comps that utilized skills I was good at—as fewer people enter them.



Interested in hobbyists are you? Try our documentary The Mystical Universe of Magic: The Gathering:


Another user, who'd only been comping since August of 2014 (I worried about seeking advice from a n00b, but I didn't have much choice at this point), put in around three hours a day during the week and over ten hours over the weekend—and it had actually paid off. They had won a range of prizes, most notably an Accurist watch worth around £300 [$465] and a signed Motörhead drumhead, similarly priced.

Midweek, I was beginning to lose steam. During my break at work, enjoying a Bianca-banana (one with lots of freckles) I got a call. "Hi, is that Sam?" the lady asked. I confirmed, eagerly anticipating what she wanted with me. "We're just calling to let you know that you've won the opportunity to see The Darkness live at Absolute Radio!"

"Shit! That's sick!" I said, embarrassingly. She confirmed my email address and we laughed together. Oh, how we laughed—me at the fact "samisgoingtowin" had actually helped; her, presumably, in joy that someone out there was definitely leading a sadder existence than her.

After this moment of elation, email addiction took hold of me; hope of a similar high had come to fill my bones every time I entered a competition.

WEEK FOUR

The Darkness. Image courtesy of Bauer Media.

I hadn't experienced live music in a long time; it had become a fond, distant memory, like Dwight Yorke, or running for a couple hundred feet without feeling like I'm going to be violently sick. So, I have to say—and yes, I know this is a band defined by pinstripe catsuits and guitar solos—I was quite excited about going to a real-life gig.

I arrived at the station's headquarters to find it filled with real The Darkness fans, who were genuinely excited and had pre-ordered their new album. "FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!" was playing over in my head.

Hawkins, a mended man after going to rehab for alcohol and cocaine abuse a few years ago, was all self-deprecating humor, which is always kind of charming. And, by the end of the show, I too believed in a thing called love—even if it is highly unobtainable, embellished with Hollywood imagery and requires quite a lot of money to get it going.


After nearly a month of slavishly entering every competition I could, I still wasn't satisfied. A chocolate bar and tickets to see The Darkness are fine, if you like chocolate and The Darkness, but I wanted an object I could hold in my arms that wouldn't melt—like a car. I wanted a fucking car.

The final days of my challenge approached and I was still going at it, hitting the 1,000 competitions mark. I couldn't give in. I wouldn't give in. Then, everything changed.

Two consecutive wins in the space of three minutes. Free copies of the novel The Forgotten Sisters and a book about an artist walking along the southwest coast of England, A Brush with the Coast, were mine. Determination, perseverance, and positivity had finally culminated in something I could hold, that I could show to friends and take the below photograph of, before leaving it on a shelf and forgetting about it until I have to move house.

So what did I learn? A) That you really shouldn't put too much hope in making a living out of entering online competitions, and B) that cafes get really weird with you when you sit in there for hours at a time entering competitions and not buying any coffee.

Follow Sam on Twitter.

Romania's 'Sewer People' Have Been Raided by Police

0
0
Romania's 'Sewer People' Have Been Raided by Police

Breaking Up at a Bar Is a Beautiful Disaster

0
0
Breaking Up at a Bar Is a Beautiful Disaster

A Black Man's Guide to Surviving Encounters with the Cops

0
0

Photo via Flickr user Steve Baker

This story was originally published by the Marshall Project.

When Eric Broyles was nine years old, recklessly riding a bike through his Hamilton, Ohio, neighborhood, he had a tense encounter with a police officer: He fell off his bike, sending it rolling into the street, nearly hitting a passing police car. In response, the officer chastised him, using a racial slur.

Broyles, now an attorney, wrote about the incident—one of two unpleasant police encounters that he details—in his new book, Encounters with Police: A Black Man's Guide to Survival. "I was stunned," he wrote. "I was so terrified because I did realize that I could have been run over and then I was mortified by the police officer's racial slur."

On VICE News: Sandra Bland "Previously Attempted Suicide," Jail Documents Littered with Discrepancies Say

Those experiences, as well as the recent spate of high-profile police shootings, inspired Broyles—who co-authored the book with his friend, Adrian Jackson, a 25-year veteran of an Ohio police department—to provide African-American men a guide for handling their own interactions with police. Below, he reflects on recent shootings, the reasons why police encounters escalate, and why his book's message, "comply now and contest later," couldn't be more relevant.

Carl Stoffers: What made you want to write this book?
Eric Broyles: There were three incidents that motivated me to write the book. The Eric Garner and Michael Brown killings, and John Crawford, the young man who was shot [by police] in the Walmart in Ohio. My college classmate is the family's lawyer in the Crawford case, and by talking to him and hearing the frustration from the family and community, I wanted to put together some information to help young people, of color in particular.

The book is subtitled, "A Black Man's Guide to Survival." Why focus on men?
The tools in this book can be used by anyone, but it's geared toward men of color, and the reasons why are obvious. I don't think I need to list the names of all the black men that have died in confrontations with police recently.

With the release of the Sandra Bland video, there has been a lot of confusion about a police officer's authority during a traffic stop. What are some of the things a police officer can and can't order you to do?
It really depends on the nature of the stop. Police officers are entitled to give certain commands to create a safe environment for themselves. If they feel there is a threat of some sort by a person they pulled over, they have the right to make certain requests to reduce their risk of being harmed. In terms of telling her to put her cigarette out, the only justification would be if the officer thought it posed some sort of threat, like if she were to flick it in his eye.

What, if anything, could Sandra Bland have done differently during that traffic stop?
Because you don't know what a police officer is doing at the time of the stop—whether they're investigating a homicide or looking for a suspect whose description you fit—we suggest you err on the side of complying with police demands. I don't know that I saw anything in her behavior that would raise the threat level to the officer. But as a general matter, citizens should comply with police requests. Even if the citizen is correct, they have a forum to address wrong behavior by police officers, and that's through the complaint process or litigation. It's certainly not something that you do at the time of the encounter.

Many people make it a point to know and express their rights when dealing with police. In the Bland tape, she tells the officer twice that he does not have the right to order her out of her car. Does familiarity with the law sometimes become a double-edged sword during police encounters?
I think that when [someone] knows his rights and encounters a police officer who is a true professional, I don't think you'll have any incident.

So would you say that knowing your rights helps more than hurts?
Yes. But I understand the frustration that African Americans, in particular, may feel at the notion that they have to subjugate their constitutional rights in order to survive a police encounter. But until we work through some of the cultural issues and training issues in police departments, my objective is to get people home safely. That's why the theme is "comply now, contest later." It's not about leaving an encounter with police without your dignity in place.

Should police also be responsible for adjusting their behavior during these encounters?
It's always the police department's responsibility to act without bias, so I'm not giving a wink and a nod to bias or prejudicial behavior. I'm recognizing the reality that it's going to take time to change that. It's absolutely the police department and the police system's responsibility to root out bias, racism, and profiling, 100 percent. But during the time it takes to root that out, over the next 10, 20, 50 years, how many lives are you willing to sacrifice?

You wrote about an incident in which you were pulled over and surrounded by several cops. Eventually you found out they were looking for a murder suspect with a similar vehicle. There was a communication disconnect throughout the incident.
I was a black male in a two-door silver coupe. The officers were looking for a murder suspect who was a black male in a silver two-door coupe, but I didn't know that. So, if they would have told me that at the time of the encounter, I would have been upset but I would have understood.

Have you received feedback about the non-confrontational message of the book?
Some people take this as I'm asking them to be a coward or swallow their pride, and I tell them that it's a false equivalency. This book is about teaching young people how to position themselves to fight this battle.

Have people expressed a desire for more confrontational methods of dealing with police?
Sure. But what do you get from trying to beat up a police officer? You have no bragging rights for beating up a police officer. There are two types of people who beat up a police officer: Number one, the person's dead. Or, number two, they're talking about it in a prison yard.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This article was published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.


The VICE Guide to Right Now: Illegal Drugs Found in Canadian Drinking Water, Little Fishies Could Be High on Your Cocaine

0
0

Oh yeah. This fish is definitely on something. Photo via Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar

Read: I Watched Former Drug Addicts Give a Reality Check to Schoolkids in London

There are drugs in the water. That's what a recent study from McGill University in Montreal says, although it's also arguably a pretty common-sense conclusion: people do drugs (legal and not), they excrete some of those drugs into toilets, and the drugs travel in the water back from whence the water came. All very disgusting but ultimately predictable.

The problems are that drugs are making it through water-treatment processes to be discharged in "clean" water and sent back into rivers and lakes, and that these drugs can affect aquatic life. The study found cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, ephedrine, opioids, and more in various water samples from the Grand River watershed in Southern Ontario, "albeit in low concentration."

When treated water was found to contain drugs, it was usually not in any amount that would affect humans' health in any way, but fish are much smaller and more likely to be exposed to contaminated water (by dint of their living in water). While most prescription drugs have been tested for their effects on fish, many illegal drugs have not.

Even at the low levels that make it into treated water, the study's lead author Dr. Viviane Yargeau said that "there is an effect on the endocrine system or on the behaviour of fish that might affect the fish population and the aquatic environment."

The solution to this problem, according to the research team, is better water-treatment procedures. Yargeau and her team have begun a five-year study into wastewater contamination to that end.

"We believe that if improvements are made to wastewater treatment plants to protect the sources of drinking water, this will prove a more effective way of dealing with the problem in the long run and would also protect the aquatic environment and all the plants, insects and fish that are found there," said Yargeau.

In the meantime, maybe someone should start studying what the hell all that coke is doing to the fish.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: A Muslim Guy In Michigan Is Reportedly Having Construction of His Summer Camp Blocked by His Islamophobic Neighbors

0
0

Screencap from the movie Meatballs, via Paramount Pictures

In-depth coverage of Islamophobia:

British PM David Cameron Should Be Ashamed of His Speech on 'Extremism'

How I Accidentally Moved to the Bigot Capital of Europe

This Former Far-Right Gang Member Is Touring Britain and Apologizing to Muslims

David Salha, a mattress store owner in a town 200 miles north of Detroit is planning to turn his vacation home into a summer camp. However, the construction, which requires a specialized permit from the county, is reportedly being delayed because Salha is Muslim, and the local officials are concerned that he's planning to train terrorists.

According to an in-depth report by The Huffington Post, the Ogemaw County Planning Commission is the body responsible for approving requests like these, and, so far, they've only delayed it. Locals who have voiced their concerns about Salha's plans have cited causes other than terrorism like impact on the environment and noise. But terrorism appears to be a big part of it.

At a recent meeting of the commission, a citizen named Carol Sappington spoke up, saying, "I have heard on the news that in every state in the United States we have an ISIS group," and "I think the citizens ought to keep an eye on what is developing."

Salha's application is online, and it features a detailed explanation of precisely what's developing. If he's planning to train terrorists, he's going to be doing so, it seems, while paying homage to classic eighties summer camp movies. The detailed plan in the report features construction of eight cabins with a capacity of fourteen people each including two adult supervisors. There'll be a dining pavillion, an office, shower facilities, a security shed, an archery range, hiking trails, kayaks, canoes, paddle boards, fishing boats, a dock, and not a single cinderblock hut where campers will learn to create IUDs for the glory of Allah.

At an earlier meeting of the township board in June, the innuendos about Salha being a terrorist were even more overt. For instance, one attendee named Tim Reetz voiced a lot of really interesting concerns about this summer camp:

"That is a perfect location for a training cell—out of sight and out of everybody's view and everything else. A hell of a lot can go on in a situation just like that, and it's too suspicious for me. I think there should be some extensive background investigation into the owners of the property and the people that want to develop the property and their associates. The people that do that would be the FBI, and I think there should some contact made officially from the board to the FBI and the ATF."

The council at that meeting voted unanimously to deny Salha his permit.

"It was disgusting. It made me sick to my stomach," Salha, whose wife and stepson are Christians, told The Huffington Post. The writer, Kate Abbey-Lambertz, noted that Salha was eating a burrito during the interview, even though it was Ramadan, and he was supposed to be fasting.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: A Former Baltimore Cop Tried to Throw a Benefit for the Officers Charged in Freddie Gray's Death—in Blackface

0
0

Photo of police car via Flickr user Joe Flood

Read: When Freddie Gray Protests Broke Out Across America

Former Baltimore Police Officer Bobby Berger has been imitating the infamous and incredibly offensive blackface performer Al Jolson since the 1980s, when he got fired for performing the act off duty. He was reinstated after suing the police department with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, but ultimately retired from the force after settling for $200,000.

Now Berger is back on the scene, determined to raise cash to support the six Baltimore Police officers who face criminal charges over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Berger, now 67 years old, told the paper he sold 600 tickets for $45 a pop before the venue slated to host his performance, Michael's Eighth Avenue, backed out. It's unclear where he'll go from here, or if the show will happen at all.

The president of the NAACP's Baltimore branch, Tessa Hill-Aston, told the paper she thought the show was "disgusting."

"Right now, with all the things that are going on in Baltimore and also with all the issues with the Confederate flag, this is just putting more salt in the wound," she said. Even the police union expressed disapproval, and a lawyer for one of the six indicted cops who ostensibly might benefit from the sordid affair said the whole thing reeks of prejudice.

But Berger swears he doesn't think the routine is racist. Instead, he claims, he's only trying to help out some fellow cops.

"It's coincidence," he told the Associated Press. "There's no racial overtones to this show. There's nothing racial to the show."

Nothing racial at all, except maybe the fact that he's literally painting his face black.

How Liberals Finally Started Winning the Minimum Wage Fight

0
0

Like same-sex marriage and legal weed, the $15-an-hour minimum wage can be traced like dominoes across the American urban landscape. First, it was Seattle, which, last June, became the first major city to raise its minimum wage to $15, the highest in the country and more than double the federal standard of $7.25. Then came San Francisco, followed by Los Angeles this May. In Washington, DC, voters will consider a $15 minimum wage initiative on the ballot next year. Other cities have approved more modest increases: $13 in Chicago and Kansas City; $12.25 in Oakland; $11.50 in San Diego.

This week, the living wage movement knocked over another domino—and a big one at that: New York. On Wednesday, a panel appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo approved a $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers throughout the state. Like other similar measures in the US , the 70 percent wage increase will be implemented in annual bumps of $1.50 starting at the beginning of 2016, although the raise will come faster in New York City, due to the higher costs of living. The state's labor commissioner is expected to sign off on the change in the coming weeks.

The move is a major milestone for the fast-food worker movement known as "Fight for 15,"which got its start in New York City. Over the past three years, workers across the city—and the world—have demonstrated for higher wages, staging walkouts, strikes, and sit-ins with the help of labor unions. The movement found an ally in New York's progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio, who included the wage hike in his left-wing 'Contract for America' proposal earlier this year. But without the power to set the city's wages, De Blasio was only able to voice his support for the wage hike—and responsibility ultimately fell to the state's more moderate Democratic governor to take action.

"When New York acts, the rest of the states follow," Cuomo said in Manhattan on Wednesday, citing the same-sex marriage bill that he pushed through the state legislature in 2011. "We've always been different, always been first, always been the most progressive."

While New York isn't necessarily first to implement the $15 minimum wage, the move is nevertheless significant—even if it only applies to fast-food workers. And the initiative is unprecedented, in that it applies to an entire state, not just a city inside of it.

"This is a fight that is being waged—and won—in many cities across the country," Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ SEIU, the city's largest private-sector union, said in a statement. "As cities such as Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles enact a $15 minimum without any loss of business or shrinkage of the economy, we are confident other localities will hear low wage workers' voices and respond."

As the Fight for 15 movement scores victories in some of the nation's most progressive cities, it has dragged Democrats along with it. On the national stage, most Democratic pols still stop short of pushing such a big increase, settling at something closer to $12-per-hour, which is the rate President Obama has proposed for the federal minimum wage. Vice President Joe Biden stuck with that number on a visit to Southern California Wednesday, even as he applauded workers in the state for their efforts to raise the local minimum wage to $15.

But with the momentum in their favor, living wage proponents seem increasingly unlikely to show deference to more moderate Democratic leaders. And they've found a champion in 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Senator who on Wednesday introduced legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. He also called on Obama to use his executive power to raise the hourly wage for federal contractors to $15.

"Today, we send a very loud and clear message to the United States Congress, to the president of the United States and to corporate America," Sanders told a crowd at a rally in DC. "In the richest country on the face of the earth, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty."

For the rest of the Democratic presidential field, the $15-an-hour minimum wage has become something of a litmus test. Presumptive frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who has yet to be fully embraced by organized labor, has not yet taken a position on the $15 raise, telling reporters in New Hampshire that she is behind "the local efforts that are going on that are making it possible for people working in certain localities to actually earn $15." The issue is almost guaranteed to come up during the party's primary debates, though, given that both Sanders and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley support the $15 standard.

Critics of a minimum wage hike have cited the high costs they could inflict upon small businesses and consumers—as detailed on this index card one Seattle diner has been leaving in lieu of a tip. Economists, for the most part, are split on the macroeconomic impacts of wage hikes, but most agree that they do reduce poverty.

"In general, the business community appreciates less rather than more government regulation," said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, a major business organization whose members include Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. "But I think the business community would be interested in a national increase to the minimum wage rather than a selected, targeted mandate. That's much more easier to sell, and creates a level playing field by capturing all businesses."

Calling wage stagnation "the issue" of our time, Wylde said that it made sense to apply New York's wage hike only to major chain restaurants, and predicted that other places would adopt wage hikes with similar restrictions. "The idea has always been not to hurt small businesses," she said. "This hike is targeted at larger national operations, not small start-ups. It may will be contagious, in terms of other states or cities who want to address the issue of wage stagnation."

Unsurprisingly, progressive activists have taken a far more strident view. "A generation of trickle down economics failed," Dan Cantor, national director for the Working Families Party, said in a statement to VICE. "The right way to put American families back on track is to make sure people are paid what they're worth. This is a movement that's only growing. Poverty wages are wrong."

"In a decade, we may look back and wonder what took so long."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: How ‘Fallout Shelter’ Turned Me into a Miserable Prick

0
0

No time for feelings, this reactor needs servicing.

Freemium mobile game Fallout Shelter earned over $5 million in its first two weeks on the market. And that's on iOS only, before its upcoming port to Android. I really don't get how this happened. Who are these people, spending so much money? All Fallout Shelter has done for me is made me realize a) just how much of a horrible prick I really am, and b) the world is a dank and depressing place. And I don't need to pay anybody anything to find either of these things out.

If you don't know what Fallout Shelter is, it's a free-to-play (plus all the usual in-app purchases) management sim thing that Bethesda whacked out to whooping applause from flabby-jawed fanboys at E3 2015. I downloaded it because I'm a fan of the Fallout series, and also of dressing people in clothes and dragging them around rooms that I've built and making them work for me. If that's the kind of thing you're into, then you might enjoy it for a little bit, just like I did. That is, of course, until it makes you realize that if there were a genuine nuclear holocaust, the last person who should be in charge of things is me—or you, for that matter.

Let's just wait here in the dark until the baby comes.

You're basically the overseer of a nuclear bunker that's home to some of the last surviving humans on Earth. You put them to work running your shelter, either in the power plant, water science place, doing something on the radio or some other seemingly useless task, and you're responsible for keeping them happy by giving them food and that. You're also in charge of repopulating the world by slapping your dwellers together in the sweaty-walled confines of the living quarters and watching as some of the worst straight-white-boy-Tinder-chat erupts into your survivors slinking off for a fumble in the toilets to try to forget about when they had to push a pillow over their grandma's face when the bomb hit.

I haven't had a couple not get pregnant yet. There must be something about having my frowning, chubby face watching these people rub their sexy bits together from the other side of the phone screen that acts as a better aphrodisiac than lies on GCSE results night. The hit ratio for couples getting up the duff in my shelter is off the scale.

Article continues after the video below


Need cheering up? Watch VICE's documentary on the Philippines' Cemetery Slums


This is how Bethesda thinks babies get made.

Unfortunately that's probably the only thing I'm actually good at in Fallout Shelter and it's not anything to brag about because you basically haven't got to do anything for the sexy times to happen. I started to realize pretty early on that I was utterly rubbish at keeping my dwellers happy for more than ten minutes, even when I was letting them fuck each other all day and hang out in my old-timey restaurant.

The result of this is that my shelter soon became full of depressed pregnant women and the worst thing is that they still have to work all day, rather than stick their feet up and pick out colors for the nursery (also, there is no nursery; kids are born already able to walk and just stroll around your shelter watching you labour all day, the workshy little chump-nuggets). I've had some pretty traumatizing game experiences in my time, but watching a gloomy pregnant woman moan to the guy that chucked his grotty beans up her while also maintaining essential, life-maintaining power for her co-habitants is definitely up there in terms of bleakness.

You're smiling now, love. Just you wait.

At one point, my underground bunker of doom started properly getting me down, and I felt actually embarrassed when a new lady would turn up outside the vault with a big smile on her face, unaware that within the hour I'd have her pregnant and purifying the water supply for a bunch of dismal fellow shelter dwellers.

As if having to deal with a slurry of forlorn yet very fertile women wasn't bad enough, Bethesda made it a thing that even though the pregnant women are fine to work with dangerous and intense looking machinery, if there's a fire or an attack of some kind the non-fetus-filled women will help out while the baby mamas to be will lose their shit and start running around screaming, something which not only pissed me off but also other, smarter people like Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian.

On Motherboard: A Photo Tour of Nuclear Limbo

When did it get like this?

So thanks to Bethesda's annoying portrayal of such women as feckless, screaming baby-vessels, this meant if I was attacked by Radroaches (dog-sized bugs) someone was bound to die, and a lot of the time they were the fathers-to-be, meaning that the kids in my game were born into already tragic families.

Sheena never stood a chance.

Then it hit me: I just didn't give a shit about any of the people I was meant to be looking after. And that's not my fault, it's Bethesda's, because there just doesn't seem to be any point to any of it. Maybe there's a big end game that I'm yet to reach – though a quick Google would suggest not – but the game has pretty much stayed the same from when I had just a couple of rooms to now, where I have several floors of sickly looking, utterly despondent dwellers. I don't need this amount of guilt in my life, so I'm jacking it all in. I'm sure the actual end of the world won't be as fucking miserable as the couple of weeks I spent with Fallout Shelter. But spend your money, if you must: you're merely adding to the already substantial cost of human suffering.

Follow Gav on Twitter.

More from VICE Gaming:

Photographing the People of Los Santos: A 'Grand Theft Auto' Photo Gallery

Six Suggestions for Ensuring 'Dark Souls III' Is a Series Best

Hey Internet Trolls, Nobody Cares About Your Frame Rate Woes


VICE Vs Video Games: I’ll Never Love (or Hate) a Console Like I Loved (and Hated) the PSP

0
0

The Sony PSP. Image via the Classic Game Room YouTube

Love stuff about retro gaming? Check out more articles from our archive:
I'll Never Love Another Console Like I Loved the Mega CD
Mission Imperfection: A Love Letter to 'GoldenEye 007'
'Castlevania' Is the Game That Made Me an eBay Addict

In George Orwell's 1984—a satirical novel everybody used to think was pretty neat, until Western governments started treating it as a human rights handbook—citizens of Oceania are required by law to spend two minutes each day expressing pent-up resentment at gigantic images of the regime's enemies. The idea is that all their negativity is projected firmly away from the real causes of inequality and injustice, so that Big Brother and chums can enjoy their morning coffee without some firebrand lobbing a half-brick through the panopticon window.

Gamers aren't running short of things to revile at present, justly or unjustly—that Samus-free Metroid spin-off for 3DS, the Batmobile of Arkham Knight, the recent horrific plague of women asking to be portrayed as human beings, rather than orifices linked together by strands of chainmail bikini. But on the off chance that we near the brink of insurrection for want of cultural trends or Labrador-like AI tomfoolery to scapegoat, I'd like to propose a subject for the games industry's first formalized Two Minutes Hate. His name is PSP Man and his game, sirs and madams, is Streetwise Multimedia Functions.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with the underlying "man" component of "PSP Man." I'm sure he's a perfectly nice fellow. But I find it impossible to look at this image—at that big-dog belt buckle, at that hint of an assured pout and, above all, at the lumpily accessorized console dangling from one hand in an achingly suave attempt to whip the carpet from beneath emerging smartphones—and not feel the urge to vomit. Marvel as his suit jacket billows! Swoon to that come-hither stare! Now there's a guy who isn't letting a trifling matter like basic road safety come between him and the glorious on-the-go future.

Among the PSP's many and exciting failings was the distinction of getting demographic expansion utterly wrong, around the same time that Nintendo and Apple were getting it very, very right. Nintendo managed this by skewing ever further towards younger players and their parents' wallets, arming its acclaimed DS with a gimmicky but charming touchscreen while turfing out a mixture of proven brands and light-touch lifestyle sims (most notably, Brain Age and Nintendogs). Apple pulled off a similar trick with the phone market by channelling the satanic energies of iTunes and delivering the world's first boutique handset.

Sony, meanwhile, set out to persuade hypothetical affluent 20-something hipsters that they needed an MP3 player the size and weight of an Aztec writing tablet, while laboring to convince existing PlayStation customers that the best way to play GTA III is by way of an unwieldy plastic nipple. The result was a bit of a travesty, as rapturously as the likes of Lumines and WipEout Pure were received—a handheld gaming console tripped up by its, ugh, "broad entertainment" ethic, and a multimedia box that suffered for its layman-unfriendly DualShock button layout and costly excess of computing power.

Of course, some would object that the PSP's 70-odd million lifetime sales are anything but tragic, that coming second to the creators of almighty Pokémon in the dedicated handheld sector is nothing to be ashamed of. And to these people I say: Did you know that PSP Man likes gaming in the bath? Because there are some PR sins even a respectable installed base can't wash away.

And all that's before you consider the genuinely unsavory elements of PSP's marketing, such as that mischievous appeal to racial stereotypes in Belgium, or the "All I Want For Christmas" astroturfing campaign of 2006 ("Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever," quipped an evidently super-penitent Sony of America after SomethingAwful users blew through the pretense). I'm not going to dwell on those upsets, though, because it's time for an embarrassing if predictable confession: I'm actually a guilty fan of the PSP. It's perhaps the most broken-by-design piece of hardware I own, but it's also the machine that gave me my start as a games reviewer in 2007, and one I've spent many a happy hour with while coaching down from my native Yorkshire to my girlfriend's place in London.

It was a real struggle, mind you; a fractious enthusiasm wrung from the sopping, post-Friday-night bar towel of frustration and despair. Chief among PSP's drawbacks is the storage format, Sony's now-deceased Universal Media Disc—a daftly shrunken cousin of the DVD, tucked inside a cheap plastic case that handles the stress of the average commute about as gracefully as a balloon animal being shoved through a wasp's nest. We have the UMD principally to thank for the PSP's lackluster battery life, to say nothing of its awful loading times. Spin up the optical drive rather than playing from solid-state storage, and it'll last you an evening at most.


Related: Watch VICE's new documentary, 'ICEMAN'


PSP's biggest problem is conceptual, however. It all comes back to the promise of a "PS2 in your pocket." This was a promise the handheld wasn't really equipped to fulfill, for starters—its specs sit somewhere between PS1 and PS2, and the presence of just one analogue input would have forestalled many a porting initiative even if the much-detested nub weren't tailor-made to grind your thumb to the bone. Broadly, it was also a formula that created a certain sales momentum while imposing a glass ceiling on creatives, choking off new design approaches that might have made the most of PSP's specific capabilities, and thus cheating the platform of an identity.

That's a shame, because what quirky originals the PSP can boast of are pretty compelling. I still recall the first time I laid eyes on Patapon, the feisty, bouncy, beautifully weird rhythm action strategy game thingy from Pyramid and Sony Japan. It's a fitting exclusive for a handheld that's trying to topple the legendary Nintendo DS, pitting an army of dinky, singing, disorderly eyeball warriors against enormous mythical creatures and fortresses. You command this army not with a cursor, but by tapping out drum riffs that correspond to broad "attack," "defend," and "retreat" commands—a winningly unconventional gambit that also seems far more in tune (sorry) with the pulse and ebb of actual battle morale than drag-selecting groups and placing waypoints.

'Patapon'

Patapon is also a celebration of the PSP's still-gorgeous widescreen, its world map a roll of parchment unfurling from left to right. So is LocoRoco, one of the console's earliest critical darlings, and another game that embraces how music can be more than a peripheral feature. The aim here is to gather up all the titular LocoRocos on your way to the exit, adding another layer to the game's J-Pop choral score for each LocoRoco gathered. The catch is that the LocoRocos lack arms and legs, so you'll have to tumble them past obstacles and threats by tipping the landscape left and right with the shoulder buttons—a rocking motion that gently emphasizes the expanse of screen estate in play—or hitting both at once to rebound your smiling, squashy charges onto platforms.

'LocoRoco'

A stronger push in the direction of digital distribution might have helped such titles find a following, while paving the way for the quick-fix endless runners, lightweight management sims, and physics puzzlers that have come to reign supreme on iPhone. As it was, Sony's unadventurous store and network offerings were quickly outpaced by indie coders, who wasted no time turning the relatively easy-to-jailbreak PSP into a bustling homebrew platform. Following in their footsteps, of course, came the pirates. Dubious as it is to equate every pirated copy of a game with a lost sale, it's likely that the virulent spread of cracked software on PSP played a part in killing off sales of all but the biggest brands—or at least, scaring off publishers given to all-or-nothing responses in the face of copyright theft.

In recent years the PlayStation Portable brand has come to be seen as firmly auxiliary, a facet of Sony's war for control of the living room, rather than something worth pursuing for its own sake. The original handheld's rarely exploited Remote Play feature has flowered in the age of its successor, the PS Vita, with all PS4 games compatible as standard. It's a neat little feature—playing Destiny on the loo is truly the mark of a civilized man—but it has even more of a diminishing effect on Vita's uniqueness and prowess as a platform than the old rallying cry of a "PS2 in your pocket." Turns out all you need is a screen and a Wi-Fi connection.

On Motherboard: When I Was Five, I Was a Game Boy

The PSP was finally discontinued in Japan last year, after several years of steady yet unremarkable sales. Its successor is likely to face the same fate much earlier in its life, going by Sony's disinclination to talk figures and the seemingly indefatigable rise of smartphones and tablets as venues for great games. On clear autumn nights, rumor has it that you can still hear PSP Man wandering the empty tarmac of West London, would-be Game Boy killer clutched to his chest like an absolution that will never come. I can't say I miss the guy, but I do mourn the terrific gaming handheld that might have been.

Follow Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on Twitter.

China Has a Grey Market for Australian Baby Formula

0
0

Packages of baby formula and vitamins to be sent to China. All photos by the author.

Chinese students and tourists are loading up on infant formula and health supplements to sell online or send home to relatives. Australian dairy products have been in high demand since the 2008 milk formula scandal, where 300,000 Chinese babies fell ill after drinking melamine-tainted milk.

Confidence in Chinese dairy products has remained low since, with Chinese nationals trusting foreign imports over domestically produced goods. It's a boom Australia's dairy industry is keen to cash in on, but China's current tariffs on imported milk make it cheaper for Chinese travelers and students to buy milk powder overseas and send it home.

In Australia, a tin of powdered formula costs an average of $25. Demand in China means that same product can be sold for up to $100. At the time of writing, international shipping for a 900g can is $32, clearing $43 profit per tin.

The trend has resulted in the supermarkets of Melbourne'scentral business district (CBD) enforcing limits on the number of milk powder cans that can be bought at a time. The decision comes after complaints that Chinese nationals are depleting supplies for local families. At Big W in Melbourne's CBD, customers are limited to four tins per transaction, while the Woolworths next door allows six cans of toddler powder to be bought at a time.

Inside one of the makeshift shipping offices.

Keen to capitalize on the market, a number of logistics services specializing in shipping food products to China have recently sprung up in Melbourne's CBD. They cater specifically to Chinese individuals stocking up on infant formula and other health products, and offer cheap shipping to China.

It's a competitive market. On one street in West Melbourne, just outside the CBD, there are six businesses, almost side-by-side, specializing in the same service. Some are no more than a bare office space with a couple of weighing scales, stacks of boxes, packaging foam, and a desk. One tiny store operates out of what looks like a garage space. VICE hit up a few shops to ask why China's in love with Australian infant powder and health vitamins.

Some of Bessie's customers send seven boxes of baby formula to China a week.

Bessie has been working at Chang Hong Travel for a year. In addition to their shipping service, the shop also stocks health supplements and milk powder next to classic Australian souvenirs such as Ugg boots and stuffed kangaroos.

She tells me that the most popular item people send is infant formula. She's seen customers send seven boxes per week back to China. Each box contains six cans.

"People go to Chemist Warehouse and then they come here to ship it back home to China," she says. "For some people it's a business. Some are just Chinese moms who live in Melbourne and buy this for their friends and send it back home."

Jack readying parcels to send to China.

It's the same story next door at another logistics shop. When I enter, shop assistant Jack is answering one of the many mobile phones behind the counter.

For him, supplements are big business. "Counterfeit food products are a big concern for the Chinese," he tells me. "That's why Swisse and Blackmores are two of the most popular health supplement brands. You can buy them in China, but if you buy direct from Australia, people think it's more legitimate."

Jack feels Chinese nationals' buy Australian because they're concerned about counterfeit products at home.

He says some of his customers are operating online businesses through Chinese social media channels like WeChat or selling through TaoBao (China's version of eBay). In his experience, sellers are young Chinese nationals, studying in Australia and selling health products through their extended network back home. Six cans of infant formula are usually sold for between $40 to $50 online.

"It's a good deal to buy overseas because you don't have to pay the 30 to 40 per cent Chinese commercial tax on top. You just send it back as a personal parcel," he says. "This kind of business happens outside of Australia, too. Among Chinese people, Japan is famous for rice cookers and nappies, and the US is famous for cheaper luxury goods."

Some stores keep spare supplies of formula incase supermarkets run short.

I head to Chang Jiang International Express, a popular logistics store operating on Swanston Street. It's situated opposite QV, a shopping center with a range of supermarkets and pharmacies.

Store assistant, Katherine, says supermarkets sometimes run short of infant formula, which is why Chang Jiang stocks a couple of spare boxes. Again, infant formula is the most popular item being shipped from here.

Courier services like the one Katherine works for first established themselves in outer suburbs with a large Chinese population and only recently branched into the Melbourne CBD. Katherine tells me the Swanston Street branch ships 200 packages a day. That averages to about five tons of goods per week.

Alice stocking up on vitamins to sell through her online shop.

While scoping out the shipping businesses, I spot two girls with a haul of Chemist Warehouse bags. They tell me they are posting orders from their online shop. Alice says they've had 50 orders since they began selling three months ago and they come to the shop to send things off once or twice a week. They show me their haul. It's mostly Swisse and Blackmores vitamins, along with some Elevit and children's vitamin gummies.

Several people I speak to in the store mention that their families prefer Australian vitamins over those produced in China, for fear of pollutants and contamination.

Alice's bags.

China's appetite for Australian food and health products shows no sign of abating. Late last month, China's second largest e-commerce site, JD.com, launched its "Australian Mall." The new portal sells authentic Australian food products to Chinese consumers, who are willing to pay a premium for them, sometimes at twice the retail price in Australia.

While the rationing of infant formula at supermarkets and other health products at pharmacies is getting on the nerves of some, it's likely to continue until the domestic Chinese market manages to keep up with demand. The trend however, has placed Australia's food manufacturing industry in an opportune position to expand their markets, and judging by the emptied supermarket shelves, they'd be silly not to.

Follow Emma on Twitter.

Portraits of Blind Children in Rural China

0
0

Students at the Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Mao Zedong once observed that "the blind are the ones suffering the most in this world," however, the actual reality of blindness is difficult for many people to grasp. Lijie Zhang's Blind Spot photo project aims to fix that by documenting the lives of blind children in rural China.

According to official data, China has about 17 visually impaired people (both fully blind and low vision), accounting for 18 percent of the world's total blind population. Seventy percent of these people live in rural areas, particularly in the impoverished middle and western parts of the country. Young blind people face especially challenging circumstances. When they reach the age for compulsory education, they are often forced enter special schools, instead of studying alongside their able-bodied counterparts. As a result, they are largely isolated from society.

Through her camera lens, Lijie Zhang captures this predicament with the hope that her images will create awareness for the plight of the blind so that more is done to improve their treatment in China.

Lunch break. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

A pair of beautiful hands needs a little trim. Personal hygiene standards have to be lowered because of the inconvenience and incapability. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Running back to his dormitory, this boy fell into a small pond and got wet totally. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Footprints in a shared dormitory. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

A boy playing with his cell phone in the dorm. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Playing in the yard. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Waiting for dinner outside of the cafeteria. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Using his low vision, a boy tried to help his friends feel the thorn on the roses. Meng Jie School for the Blind, in Hebei, China, 2014.

Cry-Baby of the Week: A Florida Tollbooth Fired an Operator for Paying a Driver's Fee

0
0

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

Cry-Baby #1: Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority

Screencaps via Google Maps and YouTube

The incident: A tollbooth operator paid someone's toll after realizing he'd undercharged them.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He was fired.

Vladislav "Sam" Samsonov (pictured above) has been working as a tollbooth operator at the Gasparilla Island Bridge in Boca Grande, Florida for 29 years.

According to a report on NBC News, Sam was working the booth last week when he failed to notice that a man driving an SUV was towing a trailer, and charged him as a car, rather than as a car with a trailer.

Once he noticed his mistake, Sam says, he paid the $5 difference in price with his own money. "It was entirely my fault, I wasn't paying attention, Sam told the Boca Beacon. "So I put the money in the drawer."

The next day, the Beacon reports, Sam arrived at work to find a note attached to a copy of a memo that all staff had been sent in February. The memo had been sent to all staff, asking them not to pay customer's tolls. The attached note allegedly read: "This letter is dated Feb. 23, 2015 and I know you saw it, yet on July 3, 2015 you did it again. Why? This letter clearly states the consequences. Please see me."

Sam said that when he spoke with his supervisor, he was told they were going to cut the number of days he works from five to two. When he refused the new hours, he was fired. "If I can't be trusted for five days, how can I be trusted for two days?" said Sam.

Sam told NBC that he would look for more work, but was sad to be leaving his job at the toll. "In my eyes there was no crime committed, I just helped somebody out," he said.

Cry-Baby #2: Houston Police Department

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman left her children 30 feet away while attending a job interview in a mall food court.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: She was arrested.

Earlier this week, 24-year-old mother-of-two Laura Browder (pictured above) was called in for a job interview at the Memorial City Mall in Houston.

As she was unable to organize a babysitter, Laura took her two children–a six-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy–along to the job interview with her.

Speaking to Houston's KHOU, Laura said that she bought her children some food from McDonald's and sat them at a table in the mall's food court. She says that while she had her interview, she was seated 30 feet away at another table in the food court, with both of her children in full view. She was offered the job on the spot.

When Laura returned to her children, she was arrested by an officer from Houston Police Department. Police say they were alerted to Laura's kids because they were crying. She was arrested and charged with abandoning a child with intent to return.

The children were taken to the mall's security office before being released into the custody of Laura's cousin.

Laura was released later that day after appearing in court. Her children are now back in her care. Syracuse.com reports that Child Protective Services are "still in the early stages of their investigation" into the incident.

In a statement, Laura said:

This was very unfortunate this happened. I had a interview with a very great company with lots of career growth. I am a college student and mother of two. I would never put my name, background or children in harms way intentionally. I have a promising future ahead of me regardless of what the media tries to portray me as. A judge released my children to me knowing that I was a good mother who just made a not so smart decision. My children weren't even 30 yards away from me, I fed them and sat there with them until it was time to meet with my interviewer. This too will pass and I am not concerned with outsiders have to say or what they think.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A woman who allegedly pulled a knife on some teens because the wi-fi wasn't working at a Taco Bell vs. some police officers who arrested a guy for charging his phone on a train.

Winner: The phone guys!!!

Follow Jamie on Twitter.

A Texas Prosecutor Ruled Sandra Bland's Death a Suicide

0
0

Sandra Bland. Photo via Facebook

When the Waller County Sheriff's Office first told America that Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old civil rights activist from outside Chicago, had hanged herself with a plastic bag in a Texas jail cell, it set off a social media firestorm. But on Thursday, a local prosecutor named Warren Diepraam confirmed the medical examiner's assertion, saying, "I have not seen any evidence that this is a homicide."

In a press conference Diepraam, the county's first assistant district attorney, said that Bland had as many as 30 cuts on her wrists, and the Waller County Sheriff's Office has indicated that during her intake interview, she spoke about a suicide attempt from last year, the New York Times reports.

Diepraam also noted that initial tests suggested Bland had marijuana in her system, but that an additional test is still underway.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about Bland's time in jail. A woman Bland shared a cell wall with named Alexandra Pyle described her to ABC 7 as "sort of distraught" throughout her three days in custody. She was allegedly crying so much she was difficult to understand, although the two attempted to communicate through a chute.

Pyle said that Bland was crying because a friend didn't come bail her out and because she was isolated in her own tank, whereas all the other inmates were kept together in another one.

"I don't think the guards did anything," she told the local affiliate. "I mean it's a tragedy either way. I don't think she should have been in the other tank, alone by herself... because we're over here, we're trying to keep each other laughing all the time, and she's over there hearing that. That would make anybody sad."

It's still unclear how Bland was able to get a plastic bag inside her cell. Her family has conducted an independent autopsy, which was apparently completed Sunday, although the results have not yet been released. They're also calling for a federal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into her death.

A video of the traffic stop that landed Bland in jail was released Wednesday, and much of the attention on the case has focused on how Officer Brian Encinia threatened her with a TASER for not putting out her cigarette. The Office of Texas Public Safety has indicated that the interaction violated their "courtesy rules," and Encinia has been placed on desk duty.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images