Promotional imagery from 'Ride to Hell: Retribution.' Honestly, the game gets no better than this picture, right here.

Remember when we ran a piece on 21 games of VICE's lifetime, the magazine (and everything since) having been founded in 1994, that you really should have played? That was a bit of fun. This: not so much. But it's all about balance, light and dark, left and right, United and City. You can't have the good stuff without at least sniffing the slurry of shit that flows beneath it.

Here we have 21 of the absolute worst games to have been released since the last time England failed to qualify for the World Cup finals and Rednex had a British number one single. You didn't ask for them, you got them anyway, and they were fucking terrible. I'll let other people summarize these tragedies because, frankly, I don't want to be anywhere near them. And if you ever have been, I'm sorry. So, so sorry.

Drake of the 99 Dragons (2003, Xbox and PC)

"Don't ever start playing and you'll get a ton of lasting appeal... A good idea that went horribly astray and ended up disastrous." IGN

Charlie's Angels (2003, multi-platform)

"Bad, in just about every way, from the dated control system to the limited play boundaries surrounded by invisible walls, the poor camera, unsatisfying play mechanics and the sometimes-disturbing graphics." IGN

'Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing' gameplay

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003, PC)

"It's as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend." GameSpot

Superman (1999, Nintendo 64)

"It serves no purpose other to firmly establish the bottom of the barrel." GameSpot

Shaq-Fu (1994, multi-platform)

"The controls are mutilated, fucking atrocious... This game falls down the asscrack between basketball fans and fighting game fans, and doesn't please anybody." The Angry Game Nerd

Knack (2013, PlayStation 4)

"Devoid of anything resembling personality, creativity, or even a basic level of excitement." Giant Bomb

Fighter Within (2013, Xbox One)

"A misery of clichés, reaching for kung fu movie kitsch but delivering nothing of the sort." Edge

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

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013, multi-platform)

"Playing this is like listening to a roomful of barely competent musicians, each of whom is playing a completely different song. And every once in a while one of them kicks you in the groin. Also, you have sunburn." Polygon

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (2014, multi-platform)

"Filled with repetitive enemy encounters, cringe-worthy pervy jokes, and frustrating, unbalanced gameplay. This is not the ninja game you're looking for." GamesRadar+

Amy (2012, multi-platform)

"Amy fails on all counts. It's a characterless mess of themes and ideas swiped from a dozen better horror titles." Eurogamer

The Crow: City of Angels (1997, multi-platform)

"The Crow isn't just bad on a conceptual level—no, this game takes the time to reek on all fronts." GameSpot

'Ride to Hell: Retribution' gameplay

Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013, multi-platform)

"I don't think there's ever been a game that does so many things so universally poorly. Forget this exists, and continue your life as if it never did." EGM Now

Little Britain: The Video Game (2007, multi-platform)

"A game that has no redeeming features whatsoever. The epitome of a cheap cash-in." Darkzero

The Letter (2014, Wii U)

"A half-formed thought scribbled on a Post-it note... we can't help but wonder how this even made it onto the Wii U eShop. Warn your friends, write it off, and then move on." Nintendo Life

Girlfight (2013, multi-platform)

"The only way I could possibly recommend this game to anyone is if you have a blossoming interest in both breasts and fighting games, and are trapped on some sort of desert island with a PS3 that only has Girlfight on it." Hardcore Gamer

Over on VICE Sports: What Has Become of British Heavyweight Boxing?

Star Trek (2013, multi-platform)

"So immensely tiresome, so poor and such a cash-in... It's terrible, and not even 'fun terrible,' which is all you need to know." VideoGamer

Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (2003, Xbox and GameCube)

"It has only the bare requirements necessary to technically be called a game, and even these components are an ugly mess." GameSpot

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014, Wii U)

"Possibly the worst Sonic game ever made, which considering some of his previous lows is one of the harshest insults in gaming." Metro Game Central

'The Guy Game' gameplay

The Guy Game (2004, multi-platform)

"Not only does the game objectify women, it makes them look pretty darn dumb. Their failures are your gain, though, as when they miss an answer, they have to show you their goodies." Game Spy

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust (2009, multi-platform)

"Let's review some of the words used in this article: hateful, toss, stupid, tedious, terrible, dreadful, pathetic. That about sums it up, but just to be clear: do not buy this game." Eurogamer

Elf Bowling (1998, multi-platform)

"Asking me which Elf Bowling game in Elf Bowling 1 & 2 is better is like me asking you if you'd rather eat a spoonful of rat turds or hamster turds." IGN

What, no Colonial Marines? You can tweet @VICEGaming with your own duds of the past 21 years. Because there are plenty more that we ran out of room for here.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Illustration courtesy of NASA

This article appears in the August Issue of VICE Magazine

The first serious blueprint for building cities in space was drawn almost on a whim. Forty years ago this summer, dozens of scientists gathered in the heart of Silicon Valley for one of NASA's design studies, which were typically polite, educational affairs. But in 1975, the topic of inquiry was "The Colonization of Space," a recent paper by the astrophysicist Gerard O'Neill.

"The idea was to review his ideas and to see if they were technically feasible," said Mark Hopkins, an economist who was there. "Well, they were." So the scientists had a choice—set about laying the groundwork for real, no-bullshit space colonization, or hold the regularly scheduled series of seminars. "We said, 'To hell with that,'" Hopkins recalled. The ten-week program became a quest to outline a scientifically possible and economically viable way to build a human habitat in space.

What they came up with—designs for huge, orbital settlements—are still pretty much the basis for all our space digs today, science-fictional or otherwise. The Stanford torus, a giant, mile-diameter space doughnut that rotates to create artificial gravity, should look familiar: The off-world cities in Elysium and Interstellar are inspired by the concept. The torus, which scientists conceived to house 10,000 people, would need 10 million tons of mass and a radiation shield made from space metal.

At the beginning of the study, Hopkins said, more than half the attendants were skeptical. By August, nearly everyone—physicists, engineers, and economists alike—was convinced the space colonies were technically feasible. Now, 40 years since the first bona fide plans to set up shop in orbit, space colonies are officially over the hill. NASA hired artists to enshrine the concepts—influenced by the psychedelia of the era, they sort of look like 2001 on ayahuasca. Today, they're a staple of internet retroculture.

"One of the things going on in my mind was, why can't we have a space movement?" Hopkins said. For the record, he remains a staunch space-colonization advocate. "It's only a matter of time before it happens."

Photos by Tina Trachtenburg

A war over some of New York's smallest and most divisive residents has been brewing for a while now. In the latest skirmish, a 38-year-old man named Luis Rosado was arrested last Wednesday for illegally catching pigeons on Wyckoff Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Lieutenant John Grimpel of the NYPD told VICE that Rosado was arrested under the Agriculture and Markets Law relating to cruelty to animals. The law makes it a misdemeanor to carry an animal "in a cruel manner," and in punishable by jail time for up to a year or a fine of $1,000—or both.

But Grimple was a bit mystified by my interest in the birds: Since when did pigeons become a bigger news story than people? he asked me.

As a matter of fact, bizarre pigeon happenings are nothing new in New York. In Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park, activists and people who feed birds are on a warpath over their beloved avian friends. Last Monday, Washington Square Park Blog reported that someone had pulled up to the western side of the park, thrown a net on the ground, and scattered birdseed on top of it. According to witnesses, hundreds of pigeons were netted and stuffed into the trunk of a car, which drove off before anyone could catch its plates.

Related: The Underground Squirrel Doctor of NYC

The NYPD told VICE that it has opened an investigation and found no evidence that someone stole pigeons from the park. But the local birders at Washington Square Park say they've seen a noticeable drop in the number of pigeons they see there.

"It sucks," said Tina Trachtenburg, an animal activist who's been feeding the birds in the park for 55 years. "Its really, really heartbreaking."

The local community of birders, many of whom visit the park every day, went so far as to hold a memorial service for the pigeons, and one has even offered a $500 reward for information about the pigeon bandits.

The saga of pigeon thievery in New York is surprisingly long and tumultuous. Last May, another man, 49-year-old Pablo Alomar, was arrested on 72nd Street in Manhattan for netting pigeons. And back in 2008, a pigeon broker was allegedly buying birds that were netted off the streets at a Brooklyn pet store. This broker happened to be the organizer of a large pigeon shooting tournament in Pennsylvania, the only state where shooting pigeons is legal and openly done.

According to the New York Humane Society, one of those hunts was scheduled for this past weekend, leading activists to fear that the pigeons they say were stolen from Washington Square Park have already met their maker.

It's illegal to capture pigeons in New York without a permit, and the city doesn't use any type of netting to control pigeon populations. But in Pennsylvania, it's a pigeon free-for-all.

Joyce Friedman, NYC coordinator for the Humane Society, told VICE that her organization has been trying to protect local pigeons from Pennsylvania hunters for years.

"The majority, about 70 percent, will not killed immediately and will suffer with gunshot wounds," Friedman said. "To have this be called a sport is absolutely inaccurate."

But hunters and disgruntled New Yorkers sometimes have a hard time sympathizing with the birds that share their city. There's no reliable estimate of the number of pigeons in the five boroughs, though as the New York Post reported in 2010, an old adage goes, "one pigeon per person," and the beasts produce 25 pounds of waste each per year.

Suffice it to say, pigeons can become a nuisance.

But there's not much humans can do about them. "Flock dispersal agents"—in other words, poisons—are generally not a viable choice for cities because other animals can be harmed by them, and because tourists don't normally want to see pigeons convulsing and dying on the sidewalks. Proposed bills that would slap anyone feeding pigeons have never become law.

Stories have been floated on quasi-medical blogs that pigeons might carry diseases and transmit them to humans through their feces. But according to the New York City Department of Health, the risk of infection is small, and those at risk are mainly bird owners, pet shop employees, and veterinarians.

And even stronger than policy are the voices of pigeon-lovers who, like their beloved, flock to New York. There's an organization devoted to saving wounded pigeons, the New York City Pigeon Rescue. There's even a Pigeon Appreciation Society.

Check out our documentary on pigeon racing in China.

In Washington Square Park, anger lingers over the missing birds. Trachtenburg says that, like the rest of New Yorkers, pigeons should be entitled to carve out a patch of city and live there unmolested.

"They survive in a city the way that we survive," she said. "Here these birds are hanging on for life and all we do is shun them. For New Yorkers, each pigeon you see is your neighbor."

Follow Melissa Cronin on Twitter.

Thailand is in the midst of an epidemic. Due to its affordability, "yaba," a methamphetamine-based drug, has supplanted heroin as the golden triangle's main product, and now Thailand is dealing with a generation hooked on this new and dangerous form of meth. VICE Japan went to investigate the drug and visit a monastery running a unique rehab program that involves daily group vomiting sessions.

North Bend, Washington, in 2015. Photo by Jeremy DK Sell

More on 'Twin Peaks' and David Lynch:

An interview with David Lynch
What It's Like to Use 'Twin Peaks' as Your Guide to Adulthood
A Place Both Wonderful and Strange
Revisiting 'Twin Peaks' by James Franco

On the first night of the 2015 Twin Peaks Festival in North Bend, Washington, I sit in the exaggeratedly beige banquet hall of the Snoqualmie Golf Course, surrounded by a couple dozen Log Ladies and Audrey Hornes. It's July in the Pacific Northwest, and this utterly normal event space is filled with friendly Midwestern-looking couples, long-haired guys in black, grouchy girls with bangs from Portland, Oregon, and the occasional tall, blonde woman whose leggy hotness is puzzling in this land of drizzle and sweaters. The dinner buffet is over, and so is the part of the night where everybody lines up for hours to get memorabilia signed by genuine Twin Peaks celebrities like Catherine Coulson, who played the Log Lady and was therefore asked to autograph a lot of sticks gathered from the surrounding woods.

Now it's time for the costume contest: I watch a convincing Man From Another Place in red pants and tailcoat dance across the front of this utterly normal room, pausing for a moment in front of the celebrity judges. A Log Lady stalks past, squeezing a soft, stuffed fabric log. Then a cardboard box, painted to look like a handheld voice recorder, walks to the center of the room on long legs clad in garters and fishnet stockings.

"And who are you?" asks the host holding a microphone to a small dark hole in the side of the box.

"Diane," comes the muffled reply, "I'm holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies." The room erupts in cheers and applause.

Man From Another Place with the author. Photo by the author

A fan dressed as a tape recorder. Photo by the author

For 25 years now, the Twin Peaks Festival has brought hundreds of fans to the mountainous, small-town region where David Lynch's critically-acclaimed series was filmed—overrunning the motels of North Bend and Snoqualmie, filling its diners with photo-snapping customers who order pie and bottomless coffee, and carving Twin Peaks graffiti into the area's many filming landmarks. This year there are fans from all over the country, and many from England, Norway, Italy, Germany, Sweden. Turnout is remarkable for a show that went off the air 25 years ago, and in the last few years attendance has only grown: The past four years have sold out, and this year's festival sold all of its 300 tickets in just ten days, almost a year in advance.

I'm one of those people who bought tickets the day they went on sale—and I've been wondering why ever since. What did I think I'd find at this gathering of fans and superfans? A living, breathing horde of David Lynch characters, each one unsettling and entertaining to watch? A portal into something strange, dark, and unordinary?

All of those things, but also some sort of resolution. Watching Twin Peaks is simultaneously one of the most rewarding and least satisfying experiences in television: It's a show that revels in the inclusion of trenchantly anti-narrative scenes that undercut the gravity of Laura Palmer's murder, a show where solving the murder and capturing the killer happens in the middle of the second season and not only fails to resolve the danger but ultimately points to a much larger, unapprehendable threat. Even though the show slackens in the second season, fans seem unable to detach from the series emotionally, to let their love for it die: They watch with attentive displeasure, complaining on message boards about how the Evelyn Marsh or Windom Earle or Evil Donna subplot is ruining what used to be the best show on television.

With the 1992 release of Fire Walk With Me, the critically maligned feature film prequel that follows Laura Palmer's life in the week leading up to her murder, David Lynch managed to depict nearly every one of the nightmarish off-screen events alluded to in the series without offering up any answers or insight about them. At the same time, the sudden appearance of Annie (special agent Dale Cooper's love interest from the last episodes of the TV series) in Laura Palmer's bed—covered in blood and warning her about Cooper's possession in the series finale—gestures toward a new set of mysteries and reasserts the show's cyclical, unsolvable structure. Amid all the speculation about the new season of Twin Peaks that was recently commissioned by Showtime, helmed once again by Lynch after his brief departure from the project due to disagreements over the show's budget, what seems certain is that this new season will be just as willfully uncathartic, another installment of narrative blue-balling.

In this light, it makes a sort of sense that hundreds of people would make the pilgrimage to North Bend every year to dress up like your favorite Twin Peaks character and eat a lot of themed food. Freud would call it a repetition compulsion: the urge to reenact and relive scenes of trauma, in hopes of attaining a feeling of mastery over the material.

I know that I'm actually here in a real place called Snoqualmie Falls, but it's so much like the TV show—it feels like I'm nowhere at all.

On the second day of the festival, I pile into a gigantic bus with dozens of other fans for a tour of the show's Washington-state filming locations. This involves unloading ourselves in an orderly way, getting ourselves in position to take photos from the angle that will most closely resemble the exterior shots used in the show, and then loading ourselves rapidly back onto the bus. We visit the field where James Hurley filmed Laura and Donna picnicking shortly before Laura was killed; we visit the remnants of Big Ed's Gas Farm and Ed and Nadine's house, now painted a different color and looking basically like any other house. When the owner comes out to greet us, someone asks her to stand on the lawn and pretend to yell at us the way Nadine does in the pilot, and she makes a good-natured attempt, shaking a small fist at us while we take photos from many angles. We visit the bridge where Ronette Pulaski was found wandering comatose and bruised the day after Laura's body washed ashore. We visit the Sheriff's Station, now a school where they teach people how to drive racecars.

Because it's my first year at the Twin Peaks Fest, it's also my first bus tour. But for some of the regulars, who've been coming since the 2000s, it's their third or fifth or even tenth time. I recognize one of the fans on the tour from last night's celebrity meet-and-greet line, a middle-aged woman with drastically curly hair who's been to the fest for the past eight years in a row. She's scampering around ahead of me, asking the tour guide lots of questions that I'm pretty sure she already knows the answer to. Last night she was explaining her theory that David Lynch himself was going to make a surprise appearance at the festival on movie night, an appearance even the festival organizers didn't know about. The only reason she knew, she confessed, was because there were clues hidden in Kyle MacLachlan's Twitter account that only she knew how to decipher, in the time-stamps. She added that when she was younger, she had dated Charlie Sheen for a while and they had done "tons of blow."

At the exterior shooting location for the Roadhouse, our tour guide holds up a screenshot from the show, and we crowd around, taking photos of her arm holding the photograph, the still image and the real thing superimposed on one another. The building used for the Roadhouse exterior, now a combination inn and restaurant, is next to the smaller building used for the Bookhouse. We're allowed to stand in the parking lot behind the Roadhouse to take our photos, but we can't get too close—a couple years ago, our guide tells us, fans came too close to the house and ended up having to flee from a meth-head inhabitant with a shotgun who had gotten spooked by all the strangers taking photos. I take a few dozen photos of the Roadhouse and the Bookhouse, which is smaller than I had imagined, and unimpressive in dull-gray plastic siding. Visiting many of these filming locations is subtly disappointing: Before I visited the Roadhouse I had one clear, iconic image in my mind, of a motorcycle peeling out of the parking lot in the pilot episode, taking Donna to find James so she can tell him the police are after him for Laura's murder. Now I've seen too much: I know that the front of Lynch's Roadhouse is actually the back of this building. I know there's no neon sign around back, no motorcycles. There's no singular iconic image here: There are dumpsters out back, like a normal restaurant, and the whole place has been painted hunter green.

The Roadhouse. Photo by the author

Photo by the author

By contrast, the Salish Lodge and Spa, which served as the exterior of the Great Northern Hotel, looks exactly the way you hope it would. Perched at the edge of a 268-foot waterfall whose twin jets seem to tumble down to the water below in slow motion, looking at the Salish feels like you're back at home, sitting in front of a television and watching the opening credits while the Twin Peaks theme plays. The sensation is disorienting: I know that I'm actually here in a real place called Snoqualmie Falls, but it's so much like the TV show—it feels like I'm nowhere at all. To cope, I go to the gift shop and buy several postcards and some local honey. "It's so cool to see these places," says a young-looking guy with graying hair as we get back onto the bus. "I really feel Laura's spirit out here, so sad and beautiful. It's like this town is alive with her."

If it sounds nutty to imagine that a fictional person's spirit can haunt a real space, it doesn't change the fact that North Bend really has something of the spooky, uneasy atmosphere of Twin Peaks. The trees are dark and majestic, shrouded by mists that move with unsettling speed. At night, neon signs flicker outside of the local bars and cast weird, too-bright colors on the wet asphalt. This is a town where places still look the way they should: both the filming and non-filming locations have a stuck-in-time quality, with sparkly red vinyl in the diner booths and long trucks full of freshly-cut logs parked in the lots outside buildings. I stayed in the Sunset Motel, a one-star motel that snakes around a cramped parking lot. There was a dusty Sprite vending machine outside the office, and a one-inch gap at the base of the door to my room, through which light poured in all night long. One of the online reviews for the Sunset reads: "After I paid for my room I noticed a really strange man staring at me from his first floor window during the time I parked my car and the whole time I unpacked my car... Things started out uncomfortable."

On Munchies: We talked with David Lynch to learn about his philosophy of coffee

The most Lynchian moments occurred when I was by myself in town, far from the festival. Standing across from Twede's Café (the original filming location for the Double-R diner where Norma and Shelley serve coffee and pie to half the town), I see a very old woman leaning against the building and beckoning me over. I start to walk away, but she's so urgent it makes me hesitate. I cross the street and walk toward her. She's dressed in several different shades of beige, with hot pink blush across her cheekbones. When I reach her, she stops beckoning. "Are you OK?" I ask her. "Did you want to talk to me?" She just looks at me, opening and closing her mouth like she's about to say something, but nothing comes out. She is an extremely spooky old lady. I duck into Twede's and grab a seat at the counter. A large guy with two eyes that seem to be looking in entirely different directions notices me and asks me if I'm part of that Twin Peaks crowd. I admit that I am, and he starts asking me question after question about the show. "So the show's about a girl who got killed?" he asks. I nod. "Who killed her?" he asks. I tell him. "What, you mean he raped her" he asks, "In her own bedroom?" I nod. "That ain't right," he says, four or five times. "That ain't right, that ain't right."

When I look out the window, the beige woman has vanished into the mist.

The photos turn out looking gruesome, but they're having such a great time taking them, laughing and cheering and reciting the lines: "She's dead... wrapped in plastic!"

On Monday, the last day of the festival, we drive nearly two hours in our separate vehicles to get to the Kiana Lodge on Bainbridge Island, the building that serves as the interior of the Great Northern Hotel and the exterior filming location for the Blue Pine Lodge, Josie Packard and Pete Martell's home. I'm tired from rushing to make it to events—the David Lynch movie night at the North Bend Theater, the celebrity picnic at Olallie State Park, the Sunday buffet at the Roadhouse—but I'm sad to say goodbye. For all their fascination with the sites of morbid fictional events, Twin Peaks fans appear to be a friendly, earnest, and unexpectedly normal bunch of people. They're smart and good-natured, and only one of them gave me the creeps—a pretty good-looking middle-aged man dressed like Leland Palmer in a tight turtleneck and blazer, who kept winking at me all through the banquet dinner even though his wife was sitting right next to him. They're welcoming and fun and they can answer complicated trivia questions like, "Where did Ed and Nadine go for their honeymoon?" (Answer: Eagle Pass, Montana) and "What special feature is found in the issue of Flesh World that the letter B from under Ronette's fingernail comes from?" (Answer: "Swingers club for standard poodle enthusiasts").

It's like the Log Lady says in a video message to David Lynch that was screened earlier in the festival: "They're big fans of your work. They're lovely people, sweet and naïve. They're not weird."

Watch: The Real 'True Detective'

At the Kiana Lodge, festivalgoers eat boxed lunches and take photos of the interior of the lodge from every angle. Josh Eisenstadt, a filmmaker and superfan who claims to have a photographic memory of the entirety of the series, leads us on a tour of the grounds, pointing out all the places where different characters sat or stood during specific scenes. He walks over to each location and delivers their lines, playing Audrey Horne and then Ben Horne, and then the receptionist in order, as dozens of fans applaud and take photographs.

Josh stops in front of a pine tree by the edge of the water. "Does anybody recognize this tree?" he asks, pointing at a gnarled pine tree whose dark branches bend toward the water. "How about this branch," he continues, "does anybody recognize this branch? It's the branch from the opening scene of the intro. This is the exact branch that the bird is on." We take hundreds of photos of the bird branch. There are so many people taking photos that every one of my shots has at least two other sets of hands in it, hands taking pictures of the exact same thing.

Photo by the author

Photo courtesy of Samantha Weisberg

By the edge of the water, behind the lodge, is a pebbly shore where the massive, bleached trunk of an old conifer rests. This is, in fact, the exact location where Laura's body is found in the first scene of the entire series: washed up on the pebbly banks, wrapped in thick plastic. For this, our last day here, the fans are taking photos of each other wrapped in plastic film, laid out on the shore like dead, blue-lipped Laura Palmer's corpse. They dampen their hair, they arrange each other on the ground so that it looks more real. The photos turn out looking gruesome, but they're having such a great time taking them, laughing and cheering and reciting the lines: "She's dead... wrapped in plastic!"

As I watch, I begin to see that the obsession with locations, photos, reenactments is not just a way of managing or neutering the raw horror of the scenes. Twin Peaks told us that the world we knew, which looked so ordinary on the surface, was stranger than we had ever imagined: Malevolent spirits might dwell above the convenience store down the street, a housewife could become possessed by a grotesque and supernatural strength, a murdered girl could live on in some other place connected to our own—but only in the same way that a face is connected to its reflection in the mirror. It's not surprising that we'd want to bring the strangeness of that world to our own, forcing it to happen again and again before our eyes, if only for the duration of a photograph.

Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the forthcoming debut novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine (Harper, 2015) and Intimations (Harper, 2016), a short story collection. Follow her on Twitter.

VICE spent the day with filmmaker Matthew Heineman during his first visit back to Mexico since the making of his unflinching documentary Cartel Land, which chronicles the plight of vigilante groups north and south of the border rising against gruesome drug cartels.

During his visit, we went to the premiere of the movie and spoke to some of Mexico's key journalists about the film's local impact and how its altered their perspective on the complexity of citizen's taking matters into their own hands.

The film, which VICE is helping to distribute, is now in theaters across the country and you can connect with the film on Facebook and Twitter.

Check out more from Frederic Fluery over on his Twitter and website.

Image via Flickr user BagoGames

This summer, the classic anime Dragon Ball Z returns to us through the release of Resurrection F, a movie that opens up in the US this week. The return of Dragon Ball Z is not the same as the return of Wet Hot American Summer, The X-Files, even Entourage. Unlike those franchises, which are, to a degree, governed by the fact that their stars' appearance changes with age, characters in the cartoon world of DBZ remain out of time: deathlessly taut and undeveloped, or superficially aged according to the convenience of the story the show wants to tell. There's never a new context to their reappearance, no cracks about how Turtle got skinny, no visible lines on Paul Rudd's face to remind you that a 46-year-old man is playing a 16-year-old, and that's the joke. A new Dragon Ball Z cartoon is only that: A new Dragon Ball Z cartoon. And though the film hasn't gotten the same kind of mainstream media attention as, say, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, it's worth looking at how the series has endured for nearly 30 years.

Dragon Ball Z, which began as a manga in 1988, debuted on Japanese television in 1989, and finally made its way to America in 1996, was a fairly straightforward show. It followed the exploits of Goku, who was loosely based off the Monkey King of Chinese mythology, an alien raised on Earth who was trained to be a great fighter. The titular dragon balls were a set of magical totems that, when collected, would grant the bearer one wish as fulfilled by a giant dragon; their existence was mostly a MacGuffin that let the action to get started. (They were usually used to bring someone back to life, rather than, say, cure cancer or make Baja Blast purchasable outside Taco Bell.)

Dragon Ball Z takes place after its companion show Dragon Ball, which chronicled Goku's childhood—by the time DBZ begins, he is an adult, married with a child, and seemingly settled into the good life. Goku's domestic bliss at the onset of the show is interrupted by an alien named Raditz, who turns out to be his brother, informing him that Goku is a member of the Saiyans, a conquering race of warriors whose home planet was destroyed, forcing them to survive throughout the cosmos. His brother wants to conquer Earth, but Goku, because he's grown to love his terrestrial friends, is spurred to defend his adopted planet. They fight, leading to Goku's eventual victory, and the opening of a can of worms that wouldn't close until dozens of enemies and hundreds of DBZ episodes later later.

That's the short of it. The long of it is that Dragon Ball Z was a show about fighting. Diplomacy solved nothing on this show. The villains, categorically evil (except for when they occasionally fell in love and magically turned good), were always there to conquer. The heroes, noble and self-sacrificing, were always there to fight back. The formula was simple: A villain would show up, and he'd win—that is, until, after much training, the heroes finally overcame. Then, once the dust had settled, an even stronger enemy would arise. At first, the villains were only strong enough to blow up a city. Later, they could wipe out all of existence. As the threats escalated, you'd wonder: How are the heroes going to get strong enough to deal with this?

The strength of these characters was measured through power levels, the equivalent of Star Wars' Midi-chlorians—an ambiguous unit of value that roughly told you how many planets someone was capable of blowing up. First, it was a big deal when someone's power level was over 9,000. Later, over 1 million. Later, even higher. Over time, that meant the characters were reduced to math. They became sports. The who-would-win hypotheticals of any basic fandom—hey there, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice—were reduced to cold-hearted arithmetic, pushing lesser characters like Krillen and Yamcha out of the way as the power levels of Goku, his son Gohan, and his frenemy Vegeta skyrocketed and the stakes got higher and higher. Leads became background players, content to clap in support and watch the Saiyans grow bigger muscles and even bigger hair. (At its wildest, Goku's hair resembled an overgrown bushel of bananas.) Dragon Ball Z didn't make character decisions based on who was more interesting, but on who was better at punching.

DBZ cosplayers. Image via Wiki Commons

There's something very childish about this logic—storytelling by way of slamming action figures into each other to see which one breaks first. Dragon Ball Z was hardly the only anime or children's show to work this way: Power Rangers, Pokemon, Jackie Chan Adventures—take your pick. Escalating threats are an easy way to keep a story going, and to make for a series of tidy emotional climaxes—good defeated by evil, which is then defeated by good.

What made Dragon Ball Z so exciting was the widescreen action, in which cities were decimated and planets blown up, the nihilistic death drive of the villains, and the rigorous physicality of the conflict. The fighting wasn't delegated to monsters and robots, or done with guns and swords—it was brutal, hand-to-hand combat with each punch, kick, and ki-focused fireball creating a trail of blood and bruises. The American version edited out the blood and explicit death of the Japanese original—instead of dying, characters were "sent to another dimension"—but nobody, not even kids, was fooled. The characters knew right away when someone's power level had increased, because it always meant someone was about to get their ass kicked. (Blessedly, there was no Michael Bay in the studio to wonder what would happen if a rail gun was used on one of the Saiyans; guns held no power here, and governments were never motivated to intervene on behalf of the planet.)

Regardless of the show's actual demographics—nine- to14-year-old boys were its core audience—DBZ was an aggressively masculine program. The characters didn't just get stronger by working out, but by getting angrier. The faces and sounds the characters made while leveling up—it was akin to working out, and to, well, fucking. The series really opened up when we were introduced to the Super Saiyan—a heightened state of power that Goku and the other Saiyans achieved by becoming so angry their veins practically exploded. If I remember my younger self as a knot of emotions prone to tantrums, then I see how watching a show in which screaming = stronger might have been appealing.

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"I don't like violence," novelist Don DeLillo wrote in Underworld. "It scares the hell out of me. But I think I see it as an expanding force in a personality. And I think a man's ability to act in opposition to his tendencies in this direction can be a source of virtue, a statement of his character and forbearance." Dragon Ball Z took this idea as a literal expansion—check out how their muscles bulged with even one round of training—by blessing normally good men with amazing abilities to see if they could hold true to their hearts rather than become a conquering brute. What's important to remember, then, is that if the characters got angrier in order to get stronger, they did so because they needed to.

The simplicity of this "might makes right, and the rightest might is the mightiest" ideology was resonant because it's nice to imagine that good wins, and that winning can be achieved by trying harder. Look at someone like MMA star Ronda Rousey, who proudly wears Dragon Ball Z shirts, or Chicago bop crew Sicko Mobb, who named two tapes of dizzingly energetic hip-hop after going Super Saiyan. Dragon Ball Z was a show about how to never stop going in, no ifs, ands, or buts. If it did not carry the same thematic eloquence of an Evangelion or Spirited Away or Akira or Fist of the North Star—well, that was kind of the point. Even death couldn't stop the characters from going in, as they were only a dragon ball–facilitated wish away from coming back to life. The deceased would simply hang out in heaven, waiting to rejoin the eternal fight.

The new Dragon Ball Z movie, which opens in America this week, promises more of the same. First, we see that Frieza—perhaps the most notorious of the show's villains—has been resurrected following his untimely death, and sent in the direction of Goku and his friends. As the trailer shows, it looks like he's stronger than ever. Will Goku find a way to overcome? Yes, unless everything we have been taught about Dragon Ball Z has been a lie. If this is somewhat predictable, it's at least a satisfying predictability, brought to life by characters recognized by fans and narrative structures that still ring out as righteous. There's always another fight to be won, another enemy to be defeated, another new haircut to gain by screaming yourself hoarse.

Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

Photo by themostinept via Flickr

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Abuse is still rife in religion. Earlier this year, the Methodist Church of Britain released an "unreserved apology" for failing to protect children and adults, following a report that uncovered 1,885 alleged incidents of abuse in the Church dating back to the 1950s. Ministers and lay employees are said to have been involved in 25 percent of cases, with over half of those involving ministers being of a sexual nature. There are six ongoing police investigations.

Modern history has been riddled with revelations of religious child abuse. Almost every week brings with it a story relating to some scandal somewhere. Though not an exclusively modern problem, it's been tasked to us to fix, a task not always welcomed by authorities and religions themselves; inevitably, with many reports of abuse comes one of denial and coverup. It's because of this that, before we solve this problem, we must first tackle the link between religion and child abuse, and establish whether—with religion not going anywhere soon—we're simply wasting our time cleaning up institutions that are endemically abusive.

Related: Everything We Know So Far About the Pedophilia Allegations Against Former UK Prime Minister Edward Heath

For many British people, it's perhaps natural to assume the problem of religious child abuse is a Catholic one. How could it not be when, for years, the news ran rampant with stories of priests abusing children? The coverage was warranted: from 2001 to 2010, the central governing body of the Catholic Church considered sex abuse allegations concerning about 3,000 priests dating back 50 years, some against children as young as three.

But as the Methodist allegations reveal, this is far from being a Catholic-only problem. Furthermore, on the Protestant side of things, the Church of England revealed last year that they were investigating the personnel files of thousands of clergymen and women as part of a probe into allegations of abuse, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, expecting more to be uncovered, saying it's something he deals with "every day."

Between 2008 and 2011, Britain's madrassas—Islamic religious schools—also faced more than 400 allegations of physical abuse, according to a BBC investigation, with a senior prosecutor saying the number likely represented the tip of the iceberg. Children as young as six reported being hit with sticks, punched in the back, slapped, kicked, and having their hair pulled. Child sex abuse also appears present in the Orthodox Jewish community, the Channel 4 Dispatches program uncovering 19 alleged cases in the UK in 2013, none of which had been reported to the police.

Startling is the difference between these religions, how not just their beliefs vary but the origin and class of their practitioners, while simultaneously being similar in certain tragic areas. This continues in the United States, where the Mormon Church faces constant accusations of child abuse, one of most famous proven cases being Warren Jeffs, the Fundamentalist leader who was jailed for life in 2011 for taking girls as young as 12 to be his brides.

There's also Christian Science, particularly popular in the US, which recommends no medical care for its practitioners. Its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, defines "flesh" as "an error of physical belief; ... an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation"—a definition that's also led to numerous child deaths over the years.

Scientology opposes psychiatry, having members sign waivers that state "all mental problems are spiritual in nature"—including depression, hyperactivity, and learning disorders—denying them and their children care. Testimonials from former members also state that children can sometimes be separated from their parents and forced into hard labor from as young as eight.

So what's causing this abuse? In reality, "religion" is a generalized term. Better to specify what kind of religion—or, better still, what kind of culture—fosters it, and how there are varying degrees. Janet Heimlich, one of the world's foremost authors on the topic and writer of the book Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, says children are more vulnerable to abuse and neglect if they live in religious authoritarian cultures.

"There are three perfect-storm factors that identify a religious culture or community as authoritarian: One, the culture has a strict, social hierarchy. Two, the culture is fearful. And three, the culture is separatist," she told the Huffington Post in 2011. "The more intense these three factors are—the more authoritarian the culture is – the more likely children will be harmed."

According to the American initiative the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), one in four girls and one in six boys in the US will be sexually abused before the age of 18. Away from religion, the reporting rate of sexual assault is about 32 percent. Now consider that statistic in the context of religions where, as Heimlich says, sometimes "the good of the faith community as a whole takes priority over members' individual needs," and it's fair to assume that the reporting rate may well be lower among believers.

Take Catholicism again, whose hierarchy not only failed to report allegations to authorities but who deliberately moved priests to other parishes where the abuse sometimes continued—or the Irish police, who merely reported allegations from children back to the Church before allowing the alleged perpetrators to flee the country—and one might get a sense of what's sometimes facing victims of religious child maltreatment.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, who blew the whistle on abuses within New York's Orthodox Jewish community. Photo by Christian Storm

Or what about the more recent cases against Orthodox Jews in Melbourne and New York? When victims went to the police, they and their parents were called moserim ("informers") and under the Rabbinic law of mesirah (it's forbidden for Orthodox Jews to report others to secular authorities) were essentially excommunicated. Meanwhile, if victims followed protocol and reported the abuse to Jewish authorities, these almost never went to the police, instead handing out homespun punishments like making perpetrators apologize, pay financial restitution, and relocate to Israel.

"Part of what has allowed abuses to continue unabated so long in very large religious institutions, such as the Methodist Church and others, is the power they have over congregants," Heimlich told me. "They have the power to not only convince them they should not report abuses to outside authorities, but to tithe [give money]. These institutions also have power over politicians, who can be lobbied to keep statutes of limitations short, which, of course, benefits the institutions financially and keeps cases of abuse hidden from the public eye because survivors don't get their day in court."

Here in secular Britain, consider the recent Rochdale debacle, where girls as young as 13 were plied with food, drugs, alcohol, and gifts so they could be passed around a group of men for sex, where, eight years previous to prosecution—during which the abuse continued—both victims and perpetrators were named in an internal police report, about which nothing was done. Greater Manchester Police constable Sir Peter Fahy told ITV that officers had developed a "mindset" that victims in sexual abuse cases were "unreliable" and that, regarding the report, senior police and council officers claimed the data had been "fabricated or exaggerated" while subjecting the report's author to "personal hostility." To this day, no officer has been charged.

It seems, regardless of what context child abuse takes place in, or where, it's hard not only to speak about these crimes but to have them listened to. Clearly, child abuse is bigger than religion—for example, Catholic priests are no likelier to commit sex abuse than the average male, celibacy having no proven bearing. Also, it isn't just religions that protect perpetrators—what about the Jimmy Savile case?

Though uncorroborated, he's said to have committed 214 sex acts, some against children as young as eight, at 13 NHS hospitals, as well as on BBC premises. There have also been allegations against the Scouts. And what about the most protective institution of all, the family, where 80 percent of child abuse takes place?

Related: Watch our film about gay conversion therapy in America.

Yet, accounting for their prevalence, power, and international reach—and that a lot of non-sexual abuse can be directly related to rules and scripture—many religions do seem uniquely toxic in this area. Perhaps most toxic is the broken sense of trust felt by victims and victims' parents, having given religions their love, spirituality, and innocence in the belief they were right and moral, only for them to obliterate that trust. One priest, one vicar, is bad. Denying, stigmatizing, and avoiding responsibility on an institutional level is something else entirely, decades-late apologies or not.

Children who survive abuse may experience feelings of guilt, fear, and shame. They may suffer from self-hatred, low self-esteem, and depression. As adults, they're likelier to find themselves in abusive, dangerous relationships and have problems with intimacy. They're also likelier to kill themselves. To say we must crack down on this is an understatement—as is that eradicating all institutions would make it easier—but we live in the real world, and certainly there's an argument to be made that innocent believers, of which there are many, needn't be tarnished.

Another renowned writer on the topic, Katherine Stewart—author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children—told me about the role played by those who I'll call "average peaceful" believers.

"Of course, there is no guilt by association, and people aren't directly responsible for the misdeeds of their coreligionists," she said. "But they do have a significant responsibility. Questions of morality are, to some degree, questions of paying attention. When people join a particular religious group, they don't have the luxury of not paying attention to what that religion and its hierarchy are doing. It doesn't mean they are responsible for misdeeds, but it is irresponsible to maintain ignorance of a pattern of allegations of abuse."

READ ON VICE NEWS: More than 1,000 Jehovah's Witnesses Have Been Accused of Child Sex Abuse in Australia—and Police Never Knew

Going forward, we're obviously in an imperfect position, forced to rely to a large extent on authorities like the police and social services, which—in the past—haven't always been particularly effective at dealing with these issues. We need to encourage them to be more open and connect more frequently with religious communities, ending what's been a wait-and-see environment of negligence. When abuse is suspected, a support group structure is needed to monitor a child's situation, as are nurses to evaluate their care-taking arrangements, with pediatricians in schools also helping spot it. Videoconferencing has also been used to diagnose abuse in remote areas, so there is certainly cause for hope.

Heimlich believes the best way we can make a difference is "to encourage religious organizations and professionals to be educated about religious child maltreatment, which is what my nonprofit organization, the Child-Friendly Faith Project, does. Every person of faith should be asking administrators and religious leaders of their church, synagogue or mosque to learn about religious child maltreatment, how it impacts child development and what is needed to ensure that child abuse prevention policies are effective."

Stewart adds: "If a religion places a huge stress on obedience and parental authority, sanctions corporal punishment, and emphasizes female disempowerment or subjugation, or the subjugation of other ethnic or religious groups, it lays the foundation for abuse. Of course, this principle does not just apply to religions. If members of any group or community suspect there may be abuse within their midst, they are required to pay attention and address it. We should all demand openness, transparency, and investigation of any allegation of abuse."

Lastly, though apologies mean little in the face of decades—perhaps centuries—of abuse, religions like the Methodist Church recognizing what they've done creates an openness around abuse, making the environment more accepting for victims to come forwards. They also reflect an invitation for people to observe these religions more stringently, a transparency which, in the Catholic Church, has seen abuse by priests drop sharply in the last 20 years. In 2010, accusations of a sexual nature numbered eight cases in the United States, a significant drop. And though there are many other religions out there where abuse is still rampant, surely, if the Catholic Church can begin getting its act together, others can too.

To read more about child abuse, and help fight it, visit the National Children's Alliance.

Follow James Nolan on Twitter.

Sediment-laced water entering Quesnel Lake at the base of the former Hazeltine Creek. Photo by Farhan Umedaly

On August 4, 2014 an estimated 24 million cubic metres of mining waste and water spilled from the Mount Polley mine tailings pond and flowed down Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water for the town of Likely, BC, and home to an estimated quarter of the province's sockeye salmon.

"Is Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America?" asked the 'New York Times' in 2008. Photo courtesy of Comedy Central

More on Jon Stewart and 'The Daily Show':

Jon Stewart Did a Surprise Stand-Up Set at the Comedy Cellar Last Night
Jon Stewart's Amazing Longevity
The Many Tongues of Trevor Noah

In a television landscape of "late-night wars" and catty putdowns, the transition of talk show leadership has earned a reputation as abrupt and cold-blooded. Yet the last year and a half—the post-Leno era, we'll call it—has resulted in an unprecedented amount of late-night host reshuffling, filled with extended, teary goodbyes and enthused introductions.

The shakeups began in February 2014, when Jimmy Fallon succeeded Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. That same month Seth Meyers filled Fallon's former desk at Late Night. Less than a year later, in December, The Colbert Report shuttered its gates so that its eponymous host, Stephen Colbert, could begin preparations to helm The Late Show, which the longstanding David Letterman vacated in May of this year. This January, Colbert's cable replacement, Larry Wilmore, premiered The Nightly Show. Two months later, The Late Show's more nocturnal sibling also saw a change of face: Brit James Corden supplanted Scottish-born Craig Ferguson on The Late Late Show. And of course tomorrow Jon Stewart will air his final episode of The Daily Show, concluding a 16-year run. He will pass off the comedy-news baton to Daily Show correspondent Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old surprise pick from South Africa.

The first episode of 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,' January 11, 1999. Courtesy of Comedy Central

Of all these departures and transitions, Stewart's might be the toughest to take. Letterman was the intellectual heir to Johnny Carson, but the gap-toothed icon is nearing 70 and spent 33 years on network late-night. His resignation saddened many, but shocked few. Meanwhile, 52-year-old Stewart's decision not to renew his Comedy Central contract—especially on the eve of an election—has left people dumbstruck. Like Letterman, he's not leaving one network for another—he's simply leaving our living rooms and laptops.

To progressive-minded adults, there are few sights more soothing than Stewart furiously scribbling on his blue script as the camera arcs over Comedy Central's world-news headquarters in Hell's Kitchen to the tune of "Dog on Fire" by They Might Be Giants (Stewart's mug is even featured on baby onesies). Since 1999, the eleven o'clock hour has began with the words, "Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Jon Stewart" followed by exactly 22 minutes of Stewart addressing viewers before bidding farewell with a confounding clip called the Moment of Zen.

Stewart injects the show's four nightly segments with geopolitical lessons and staccato laughs while parsing through duplicitous talking-head sound bites and bantering with his team of satirizing correspondents. Onscreen, Stewart critiques how the 24-hour cable news networks—often aided by paranoia and unnecessary virtual set pieces—deliver the headlines. In turn, the 18-time Emmy-winner's dissection of the news has become, itself, newsworthy. Whether it's his parsing of the Emanuel AME Church murders in Charleston, President Obama's visit to the set in July, or former New York Times journalist Judith Miller's appearance in April—when the comedian greeted Miller with the accusation that she "helped the administration take us to the most devastating mistake in foreign policy that we've made in 100 years"—Stewart has the proven ability to launch a thousand #hottakes.

It's hard to envision Minnesota senator and former SNL castmember Al Franken winning his 2008 and 2014 elections in a climate without Stewart, who helped solidify the suspicion that our funniest people might also be our smartest people.

Although the idea of a "political comedian" entered our cultural lexicon with Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, today Bill Maher, Marc Maron, and Stewart have resuscitated the genre. Stewart may claim to be just a comedian, like he did when former Crossfire host Tucker Carlson objected to Stewart calling him a partisan hack in 2004 and Stewart deadpanned, "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls." Yet in 2008, long after Crossfire was cancelled, critic Michiko Kakutani asked in a New York Times headline, "Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?"

Since then, the former stand-up and MTV host has wielded actual legislative influence. For instance, earlier this year, when Stewart ridiculed the archaic wording of the Choice Program offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs—which only offered medical coverage to individuals who lived within 40 "as-the-crow-flies" miles of certain Virginia facilities—the statute was changed to include those living within 40 drivable miles. Back in 2010, an estimated quarter of a million people marched alongside Stewart and Colbert in their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a response to conservative pundit Glenn Beck's Rally to Restore Honor. President Obama even welcomed Stewart to the White House twice to talk politics. It's hard to envision Minnesota senator and former SNL cast member Al Franken winning his 2008 and 2014 elections in a climate without Stewart, who helped solidify the suspicion that our funniest people might also be our smartest people.

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Prior to Stewart, comedian Craig Kilborn hosted The Daily Show for three seasons. When Stewart got the gig, the title of the program was lengthened to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart , rebranding the series as Comedy Central content awarded the Stewart stamp of approval. This precedent will continue with Stewart's successor when The Daily Show with Trevor Noah premieres on September 28.

Despite the tweak to the title, The Daily Show brand has become synonymous with Stewart's signature blend of sincerity, indignation, and snark. Despite the seemingly plum job, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, and Amy Schumer all turned downthe opportunity to host the newest incarnation of The Daily Show. "I think that was his show," C.K. told me on the red carpet of Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary special in February 2015.

Stewart first emerged as a bona-fide deliverer of the news when Comedy Central asked him to anchor their election coverage in 2000. Because Stewart has proved himself able to unravel election spin (and a desk-side chat with him has become practically a political rite of passage), the thought of next year's contest without Stewart on the scene only increases our national malaise toward the growing list of candidates.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has proved a mainstream talent incubator on par with SNL or American Idol.

Another reason politicians may have begun paying more attention to Stewart was the publication of his New York Times best-seller America: The Book, which he wrote with his Daily Show scribes. The 2004 tome—a faux textbook with a foreword "by" Thomas Jefferson—was banned for sale at outlets like Walmart for featuring a Photoshopped rendering of the nine Supreme Court Justices naked. After the success of America, publishers were much more inclined to ink book deals with comedians (see subsequent releases by Daily Show correspondents Lewis Black, Samanthe Bee, and Stephen Colbert).

Stewart's reputation recently took a hit when news of an altercation revolving around the 2012 election surfaced. Last month, former Daily Show writer and correspondent Wyatt Cenac recalled the dust-up on an episode of WTF with Marc Maron. When Cenac, then the show's sole black writer, confronted Stewart about what he felt was an insensitive impression of black Republican candidate Herman Cain, the host allegedly told Cenac, "Fuck off! I'm done with you." Cenac left the show one month after the election.

VICE Meets Senator Chuck Schumer, arguably the most powerful Democrat in Washington after Barack Obama:

During Stewart's penultimate week, the show averaged about 1.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, about 200,000 less than the latest episode of Teen Mom on MTV. Still, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has proved a mainstream talent incubator on par with SNL or American Idol. Former correspondents Colbert, Wilmore, and John Oliver each went on to host their own programs, and retired correspondent Samantha Bee has her own TBS talk show in the works. In 2000, Steve Carrell—who this year earned an Oscar nomination for Foxcatcher—left his correspondent post to concentrate on feature films. When Stewart took a summer hiatus in 2013 to direct the film Rosewater, John Oliver served as interim host, asserting himself as Stewart's presumed successor. Instead, Oliver inked a deal with HBO and developed an acclaimed weekly series called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Stewart, Colbert, and Oliver have all won Peabody Awards for their shows, the highest honor in broadcasting).

Last week, Stewart dropped by for a ten-minute set at the Comedy Cellar, taking his first crack at stand-up in over a decade. Hopefully, this means that the man who once called FOX "the lupus of news" will remain a public figure in his post– Daily Show life (he's stepping down to spend more time with his wife and two children and to run an animal-rescue mission in New Jersey). The only upside to losing this comedy-news hero? Chances of a real-life Jon Stewart sighting just increased significantly.

Image via

I remember starting my first job, flipping burgers at McDonald's; aged 13. At that time I was pumped to be getting $5.55 [$4.08 USD] an hour, but the real juice came from working weekends and public holidays. That's when penalty rates kicked in and my wage surged to as much as $8.30 [$6.10 USD].

The same setup still occurs today with workers receiving a 125 – 150 percent increase in wages on Saturdays, a 175 percent increase on Sundays, and a 250 percent increase on public holidays. Why does this happen? Because it sucks to work when others are kicking back.

With Australia's latest Productivity Commission draft report just released, this may all change. While it recommends more traditionally skilled workers—those in the nursing, emergency, and police sectors—keep their penalty rates under the workplace relations system, the report calls for hospitality and retail workers to have weekend and public holiday rates cut.

Hospitality and retail comprises 17.6 percent of the Australian workforce, or just over two million people, and you won't be surprised to hear that the largest portion of these workers are young adults (15 - 24 year olds). Under the changes, Sunday wages would be cut to Saturday loading rates, and public holiday rates would go down to Sunday's penalty rates, meaning less money for some of Australia's lowest earners.

The plus side? According to Jetty Research conducted on behalf of the Commission's report, 39,000 extra staff would be employed nationally on Sundays and public holidays as a result of reduced penalty rates, and 60,000 extra hours of employment would be generated.

When I spoke about this to a representative at the Australian Industry Group, a specialist group on policy, workplace relations, and the economy, they sent me a statement which said "Australia's current system is not delivering the adaptability that employers and employees need." In other words, business leaders feel the cuts are necessary, and that employees will ultimately benefit.

To find out how likely these aforementioned benefits are, and to get a picture of what a post-penalty Australia might look like, we chatted to Professor William Mitchell, an expert on Economics from the University of Newcastle. He gave us a different view on the matter.

VICE: Do you think it's a good idea to cut back penalty rates?
Professor William Mitchell: I don't agree with it. We need to maintain penalty rates. They serve a valid function and allow for lower income workers to receive a better income.

If the cuts go ahead, what will it do for workers in the hospitality and retail industries?
It will result in much lower wages for workers. It will result in workers being pushed closer to the poverty line.

But the report is saying the penalty cuts will result in more work. That's a good thing, right?
People say that it will stimulate employment but I believe it is erroneous. All this will do will give bigger profits to business owners.

So you don't think those profits will flow on to workers?
Many businesses that are currently affected by penalty rates are already highly profitable. Employees will be the ones that suffer, as business owners won't pass the extra profits onto workers.

Will the cuts at least make things better for consumers? Will prices come down?
Prices will remain the same; it's just that owners will increase their profits. At the end of the day workers are consumers as well. If it's about stimulating the economy it won't happen, as people are making less money and therefore will not spend it.

What will it do for the economy as a whole?
I believe the economy will slow down. This will take out a considerable portion of wages and that will result in the economy slowing. Consumers won't find cheaper food, it will just undermine spending because, as I mentioned before, workers are consumers.

Doesn't it all come down to the idea of a meritocracy? Restaurant owners have been advocating for a US style tips-based structure in which customers reward workers for good service. Would such a system work in Australia?
It isn't in our culture to do that. It would be extremely hard to implement, as we have never done that. Although I often tip when I dine out, it's not embedded in Australian society to do so. We should get a decent wage for the work that we do, especially if we are going to give up our weekends and public holidays.

The recommendations imply weekends are more valuable to skilled workers than unskilled workers. Is this an economic principal?
The economic claim is that if you lower prices, spending will increase and so will employment. This has always been the argument, especially by the Australian Arbitration Commission. There is, however, no substantive proof on this though. If you cut the wages of workers there will be less spending in the economy.

If it were up to you, what would you do with penalty rates in Australia?
I would keep them. They serve as a good function for low-income workers to earn a better wage. They serve to assist workers. They are giving up precious time with families, especially on the weekends and they deserve to be rewarded for that.

What advice would you have for young people working in these industries?
Not really my place to comment. I would advise to try and get a higher education and leave but that is not for me to decide, it's up to the individual.

Follow Edward on Twitter.