All photos by Jake Lewis

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The government's badger cull is back for a third year, and Queen guitarist Brian May still isn't happy about it. How unhappy is he? Well, he's released a version of classic internet anthem "Badger Badger Badger," he's helped set up a badger-based lobby group called Team Badger, and yesterday, he decided to stage a badger funeral procession in London, from Millbank to the Houses of Parliament, just to tell the rotters in Cameron's Pinochet-esque Badger Death Squads that enough is enough.

The government shot 2,263 badgers last summer, in an effort to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis, a disease that has never quite been stamped out in British dairy herds.

At one point, making a speech to the protesters, the Labour MP Angela Smith pointed out that for all their emphasis on frugality it had cost the government £7,000 [$10,768] per badger death—£17 million [$26 million] on the program in total. I looked around. Was everyone thinking what I was thinking? ('I'll do it for £5,000 [$7,692], no bother, no questions asked.') If they were, they weren't letting on.

The problem, in (very) brief, is that badgers are carriers of bovine tuberculosis, so you can do what you like to the cows, but if the badgers keep coughing on them, then the mess never gets properly sorted and you have a sick herd. A 2010 Defra report put the cost over the decade around £1 billion [$1.5 billion]. Solution? Kill badgers, according to the National Farmers' Union (NFU). Not so, according to May and about 80 badger-loving young people he'd managed to persuade to don black and participate in his piece of press theater.

We arrived at Dr. Brian's Badger Funeral just before midday, and already a few dozen press photographers were milling about, while May, resplendent in what he described as a "ratskin coat" he said he'd picked up in Venice, answered questions from two different ITV reporters about the judicial review he and Team Badger were submitting against the cull. "We're very optimistic," he said.

The hearse turned up, and the protesters and May posed in front of it until the press pack seemed to have "got the shot." Everyone tried to avoid mentioning the uncomfortable fact that the previous day this hearse had probably contained a granddad who'd had emphysema.

"Team Badger," it said on one side. "# failing badger cull" it said on the other. "Sparing his life from this monstrosity" said one woman's placard. "Another one bites the dust": no one said that.

"Here, Brian, can I get a photo with you and me and my granddad?" asked one guy, very visibly not protesting on account of his bright pink shirt.

"Only if you're going to march with us," said May, grumpily."This is work for me, you know."

"Yeah, sure we will," said the bloke. "There you go, that's one for ya..." he said to his granddad, as the pair of them sloped off up a side street before the march had even begun. They had abused Brian May's credulousness in order to get the picture they wanted. But then, that picture would always be sullied by their poor moral choices. May could at least content himself with that.

Soon the badger lovers were steeling themselves and setting out on the arduous six-minute walk from St. John's Square to the Palace of Westminster, where they were met by another crowd of protesters, beneath the statue of George V, badger-lover first, King Of England second.

May kicked things off by giving a little speech about how this "callous regime" fails to follow the advice of the very scientists they'd appointed to look into the issue—last week, the scientists called for an end to the cull. The evidence, everyone who spoke pointed out, was that the cull simply wasn't effective. Ninety-odd percent of dead badgers were healthy. This was all politically motivated—the government was, for some reason, in the pocket of "their mates in the NFU."

Soon, it was the turn of Hilary Jones, Ethical Director for cosmetic company LUSH, a veteran of these kinds of events, who also managed to set off the klaxon for First Mention Of The Iraq War.

On Noisey: It's Time to Start Taking Justin Bieber Seriously

At this point, a bunch of blokes in cycling gear were clustered round a trestle table replete with reasonable quality sandwiches. "Cycle For Sepsis," the legend on the backs of their cycle suits proclaimed. They were in high spirits, as they'd clearly recently cycled successfully for sepsis. "Simon! Simon! Simon!" they chanted—perhaps this was the name of the sepsis-sufferer for whom they'd been cycling. They posed for a laddish team photo by the barricades but the badger crew peered over at these noisy troublemakers. Someone officiously shushed them.

Sadly, it appeared that British politics couldn't incorporate both anti-sepsis and pro-badger fraternities. Only a badger with sepsis could have brought them together.

Veteran cause-botherer Caroline Lucas was there, too. "We are the people we've been waiting for," she said by way of a finale. Oh, Caroline, bet you say that to all the causes.

The next speaker was Peter Martin, head of something called the Badger Trust. Like Brian May himself, Peter Martin had a distinct air of badger to him, just in a subtly different way. His wide back hunched up to a point, exaggerated by his heavily-shouldered suit. He seemed like he would win in a fight with a baboon, that sort of thing. "Badgers," said Peter Martin, his voice a crescendo, "are having their brains blown out, onto the walls of caves." This seemed a very graphic way of framing things. Yet he said it again, later. "Badgers are having their brains blown out, onto the walls of caves, and even the grass around..."

Was Peter Martin a bit like your mate who talks about how much he hates gays and the horrible things they do with their plump, ripe, firm penises? Was he maybe a little too interested in these badgers' brain splatters?

Related: Watch our documentary, 'Big Cats of the Gulf'

As the speeches began to blur into one, I observed a Japanese woman who was passing by applying the zoom on her camera to breaking point, zooming in and in and in, until only Brian May's distant face was visible on the screen, a grayish haze of Lego-man pixels. She clicked the shutter.

Then it was the turn of "TV's Marc the Vet." Who sounded the klaxon for First Martin Luther King Quote. He omitted MLK's legendary "Stop Splatting Badgers' Brains Out On The Walls Of Caves And The Grass Around Them, You Horrible Shits" speech, choosing instead to concentrate on something more anodyne about how the "arc of history is long but in the end always bends towards justice."

Iain McGill is a vet who apparently "blew the whistle" on BSE back in the 90s. Which is fascinating, but everyone had lost interest by this point. Arms ached with placards maintaining the ineffectiveness of culling. The man with a guitar who had been singing a Buzzcocks-style version of "We Are the Champions" with the words changed to better reflect badger rights, hopped from foot to foot.

Brian said a quick thanks, the protest was over, and the crowd gradually ebbed away. The protesters, back to their ordinary lives. TV's Marc The Vet back to TV Land. May, back to his Sussex rock mansion, occasionally climbing to the highest balustrades to practice playing "God Save the Queen" on his guitar, in anticipation of the Queen's platinum jubilee in 2027. God save this marvelous man. And God save badgers.

Follow Gavin Haynes and Jake Lewis on Twitter.

Promotional image for 'Where to Invade Next' courtesy of Sunshine Sachs

Michael Moore has been prodding and provoking the American economic and political establishment since his 1989 movie Roger and Me marked him as one of our era's most important documentarians. In the years since, his first-person aesthetic has been adopted by filmmakers like Morgan Spurlock, and he's turned out a series of controversial docs targeting America's obsession with guns ( Bowling for Columbine, 2002), the war on terror ( Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004), health care ( Sicko, 2007), and the economic crisis ( Capitalism: A Love Story, 2009).

His latest project, titled Where to Invade Next, premiers Thursday September 10 at the Toronto International Film Festival, and takes an in-depth look at the US's state of perpetual war. VICE sat down to talk with Moore about America's place in the world, how it feels to walk around carrying a giant US flag, and why he's actually optimistic about the future.

VICE: How did you come up with the title Where to Invade Next? Is it a ploy to get people's attention?
Michael Moore: When people would ask, "What are you working on?" and I would give them the title, what was interesting about their response was that knowing look, and the nervous laugh. Like it's a funny title, but it's only funny because it might be just so true.

"Ignorance is the most important ingredient of fear. And fear is the most important ingredient of hate. That's the equation"

I think when the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, I had the feeling of a real sense of relief, that all this arms buildup and massive spending budgets for the Pentagon was all going to go away now, and we were going to live in this peaceful world. But no, we have to have another enemy. And because so much of our economy and so much of our power structure is set up with that at the core of it—the very thing that Eisenhower warned us about, the military-industrial complex—it was like, Oh, I get it, we're going to be in a state of perpetual war here. There's always going to be a new threat, a new bogeyman. And so the title is, in its own way, a satirical attack on what seems to be an actual real thing. And sure enough, when one thing starts to wrap up, they start talking about Iran or there's you know somebody else we have to gear up for, somebody else who is going to kill us, and they know how easily frightened people are, especially Americans. When you isolate yourself, when you don't know the world's cultures—ignorance is the most important ingredient of fear. And fear is the most important ingredient of hate. That's the equation. You start with ignorance, which leads to fear, which leads to hate, which leads to violence. But you gotta get the ignorant part down, you gotta keep the public ignorant, and that way you can tell them that Iran's the new thing that's gonna kill you.

Related: Kathryn Bigelow Talks with the Filmmaker Behind the Mexican Drug War Documentary, 'Cartel Land'

Is that where this next election cycle is heading?
Well, I think that the people that like to propagate war and fear are definitely going to attempt to do that. They've got a big problem though, which is the younger generation, the 16- to 35-year-olds, have had a good decade or two of the internet. So they may not have passports and they may not be able to go see the world, but they have access to information that means the younger generation simply isn't as ignorant, and can't be fooled as easily. And I think that that's going to be a big problem for anybody who wants to run a campaign based on that kind of fear. So I'm actually somewhat optimistic that it won't work to run and get elected on this anymore.

The film begins with you reciting a litany of US military failures over the years. How do you think the Pentagon sees those wars? How does it see itself?
Well in the first minute of the film, I'm saying something that doesn't get said in the United States, which is: "We lost the Vietnam War. We lost the Korean War. We lost the Gulf War." We've basically allowed the Pentagon and the right wing to define what winning a war means, but I think winning a war means that you defeat the bad guy on the other side and the bad guy is no longer in power. And that's not what happened in Korea. The analogy to that would be like if at the end of the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis ran everything south of Maryland, and we claimed victory.

On VICE News: How the CIA Helped Produce "Zero Dark Thirty"

There's this powerful idea late in the film, which was this sense of embracing national history—the good but also the bad. We understand the damage of PTSD—there's an alarming rate of suicide among veterans—but are we blind to a more subtle nationwide trauma after years of conflict?
Oh, absolutely. It's one of the reasons that I titled the film this way, and why I get the reaction that I get when I tell people the title. Because they just know it's all too true. They know that those in charge are not done using our young people as fodder for whatever crazy idea they have next. And frankly, I think that there's a national PTSD problem here. I'm not talking about the troops, but rather a country that hasn't figured out what's going on, where people are nervous about everything. It's never good to live in fear. If you have a child that's afraid to go to sleep at night because he or she thinks there's a monster in the closet, the way that you get the child to go to sleep is open the closet door in the bedroom and turn the light on. In other words, when the ignorance is dispelled, they are then able to relax and fall asleep.

"In America we keep saying, 'We're number one, we're number one,' and it's at the point now where we need to think about who we are really trying to convince."

But don't you also think that the country has to be open to introspection? The narrative of American exceptionalism—the idea that this is the best, bravest, most free country ever—to me suggests a culture that is not introspective. Do you think Americans are introspective?
Well, I think that American exceptionalism will be the death of us. It's almost like saying we don't really need to find a cure for cancer 'cause we're big enough and brave enough to suck it up and get through it. It's the sort of belief that we're on top when we're not.

What do you think politicians are trying to say when they talk about American exceptionalism?
They're trying to make people feel good, who deep down inside don't feel good... In America we keep saying, "We're number one, we're number one," and it's at the point now where we need to think about who we are really trying to convince.

The facts don't bear it out. We're not number one in education, we're not number one in mass transit, we're not number one in healthcare, we're not number one in... name it, you know?

So is your film documenting the death of the American dream?
I think you could say that about my earlier films, but I think that that so-called dream is already dead. And people know it. But they also really realize that it's also just what it says it was: a dream. It wasn't the American reality. It was a dream. And the dream has become a nightmare for millions of people because they're not going to get the life that their parents had, and they know their kids are not going to get to have the life that they've had.

There doesn't seem to be anything that forces the American worker out into the streets anymore, in the way that they would be taking to the streets in other countries. What happened to that spirit of protest?
I think that people give up before they try. And they give up because they have enough examples of when you do protest, nothing happens. I mean look at one month before the Iraq War started, how many millions across the country, across the world, took to the streets on that day in February? Largest demonstration in the history of the world. And four weeks later? Fuck it. [Bush] is bombing Baghdad.

Would you say then that, essentially, the American public has been beaten down, and are hopeless? Isn't that a sad thing for you as an American?
Well, yes and no. I think historically people have felt beaten down many times in the past and things change and things do get better. You know, 11 years ago in the 2004 election, when all those [state] constitutional amendments were passed banning gay marriage, that looked like the end of that for our lifetime. And it was a big "fuck you" to anybody who was gay, and I remember a lot of people who were gay feeling like, What's the point? Why don't we move to Canada because Canadians accept us and they'll marry us . But, that's not what happened. What happened was, people picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and started the fight anew. It wasn't so much a political movement, it was a personal movement. I think what turned the country around was that in those ten years, gays and lesbians and the people that are not accepted by the heterosexual majority came out of the closet more and more to their friends, their neighbors, their classmates, and coworkers. When it's your daughter who says, "I'm a lesbian," when it's the little old lady who lives next door to you who says, "I'm a lesbian," it becomes harder to hate. So I think gays and lesbians made this happen themselves, and the hate kind of peeled away, once more and more people came out.

I actually feel that there is going to be a revolution of ideas and a shift in public opinion soon that will require politicians to get on the bus or be thrown under the bus.

"The majority of Americans know that as a country, we are not thought well of these days."

While you were traveling around the world to make the film, did you confront a lot of anti-Americanism?
Yes and no. The most uncomfortable parts of the film were walking around this planet carrying a big-ass American flag. I was walking down the Champs-Élysées in Paris with this massive flag on a pole and I'm like, Why have I painted a target on my back?

Did you really feel like that? Was it a little bit awkward holding an American flag?
Not awkward, I wouldn't say awkward, I would say it was a little disconcerting in the sense that I knew I had to be prepared for somebody coming up and hitting me, spitting on me, if somebody had a weapon...

Why did you fear that?
Because I think the majority of Americans know that as a country, we are not thought well of these days. Now, as people, we are beloved—people love being around Americans. They really, really do like us.

So did you experience any real hatred over America's foreign policy, for instance? Did anyone confront you over that?
I would say certainly three-quarters of the people I interviewed in the film on their own brought up American foreign policy and the wars. They would say, "If you want to do something for the world, stop invading. Stop starting wars, stop being belligerent, stop being a bully, you know, 'cause you're actually really cool and you're really good, and you've got a great belief system, and you've got a great constitution, and we'd like to be like you, but you make it really hard because you allow your leaders to do some pretty awful things."

The last 25 years—with the emergence of globalization, cheap labor markets elsewhere in the world and the movement of labor—have caused America to become kind of xenophobic, wouldn't you say? And how is the xenophobic public going to go to a film called Where to Invade Next?
Well whenever I say the name of the movie, I always add the sentence: "It's a comedy."

You want people to know that right?
Yes I want them to know that. I want them to know that what they're going to get is not necessarily what they think they're going to get, and that's going to be part of the fun of the movie and part of the surprise. I'm only attempting to do what any filmmaker does, to give you some moments of great laughter, great tears, and make a few of you leave the theater thinking about things.

"The crew had their own title for the movie, which was Mike's Happy Movie."

This feels like a patriotic film, it doesn't feel like the caricature of Michael Moore as a mad-as-hell liberal. Where are you at in your heart and how much of you is there in this film?
I've had my own shifts in my life in the last year or so. My father died in 2014. And I got divorced and I think I had sympathy for middle America, and that sense of feeling both hopeless and helpless. And when both of your parents are gone there's that sense of being an orphan. But it wasn't bad. It had a weird effect on me—I was sad, I wasn't depressed. In fact I was really encouraged and watching him pass away gave me I guess maybe a different—respect isn't the right word— enthusiasm for life and the possibility of what could be.

That comes through, the film is very life-affirming.
The crew had their own title for the movie, which was Mike's Happy Movie.

Are you trying to put positive vibes out in the world? I mean, you're talking very optimistically about a revolution of ideas...
Yeah I think it is going to happen, it's going to be led by young people. It's going to be led by African-Americans, it's going to be led by women. And they're already doing it. And some of these movements are also the children of Occupy Wall Street, that a few years ago showed the population that people would actually speak out against the issues of economic power and economic injustice.

So a nonviolent American revolution of ideas around our social contract, the basics of any liberal democracy, you think will happen within the next five years?
Within the next two or three years.

How eager are you to get the film in front of Americans and talk to them about it and your ideas?
I took Fahrenheit 9/11 across the country—I did 60 cities in 42 days. I hope to do something similar this time across the country. We've already checked into how could we get one of those rock-and-roll [tour] buses and just firestorm the country with this movie and show it in as many cities and hamlets as we can park the bus in.

Is that part of the joy for you in the release of a film, and this one in particular?
I like getting out there, I find people fascinating, this is an amazing country, I love this country. I know it pretty well, I've crisscrossed it many times and I think that I have—I'm trying to think of how to put this into words... There's a place that love holds in all of this, you know, real love, not the Hallmark-card love. I'm talking about a real empathy and love and inner core that feels very connected, and I love that feeling.

Where to Invade Next debuts Thursday September 10 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Some ye. Photo by Adam Swank

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

A court heard yesterday that a woman from Kent, England named Nicola Austen bought 12 bags of cocaine to ensure her daughter "had a good time" on her 18th birthday last January. Along with the coke, Austen also ordered a limo for her daughter, just to make sure her 18th birthday wasn't all shitty, like mine was, when I got a weird bulky TV from Tesco as my main present and an odd family party where I wasn't allowed to get drunk and we all ate vegetarian lasagna. That, versus getting extremely geared up in the back of a limo? I will take the limo cocaine and the arrested mom, thanks.

That said, the police were having none of it, and raided her home in Tunbridge Wells, finding drugs worth £300 [$460] hidden in compartments in Austen's windowsill. Austen—who has six previous convictions, including possession—admitted to possessing cocaine with intent to supply, and confessed that she was planning to have a massive night out with her daughter.

Prosecutor Craig Evans told the court: "They were going to London in a limousine and she [Austen] wanted to ensure they had a good time." Speaking from her home on Monday, Austen told the Daily Mail: "It's all been blown out of proportion. I've had enough. It isn't exactly the scoop of the century, is it? It was a party."

Above: Nicola Austen

Current street prices for cocaine seem to indicate that Austen's gear was of decent, if not fantastic, quality. Maybe it's best to save the really good chang for your daughter's 21st?

Anyway, she was given a nine-month suspended sentence and 250 hours of unpaid work. The moral of this story is: don't buy your daughter cocaine for her birthday, but if you must, make sure to hide it somewhere better than in a windowsill.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Flakka obtained by the feds in Florida. Evidence photo courtesy Drug Enforcement Administration

Richard McNeal Hillman had grand aspirations for a drug dealer. According to his plea agreement in federal court, the 54-year-old from Tennessee trafficked 30,000 grams of alpha-PVP in Virginia between 2012 and 2014. Court documents suggest Hillman was part of a network that spread alpha-PVP, a Chinese-made synthetic stimulant banned in the United States and usually known as flakka, throughout North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky.

Hillman, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute alpha-PVP and was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison on August 13, allegedly told investigators from a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task force that his goal was to control the "gravel" trade in Virginia and become the state's biggest gravel dealer.

Previously: The DEA Is Cracking Down on Flakka Smugglers and Dealers in Florida

Alpha-PVP, flakka, gravel—whatever you call it, the drug has generated a whirlwind of media attention and public awareness campaigns in recent months thanks in part to the allegedly volatile effects it has on users, who can get high for hours on just a tenth of gram, which costs between $2 to $5 on the street. (That's still less than the dollar or so a healthy dose of K2—a.k.a. spice—will cost you in Brooklyn.)

But whereas K2 use has largely been covered as a problem plaguing America's homeless, flakka's proliferation (and concern about it) has been a bit more mainstream. MTV went so far as to do a True Life episode on flakka addicts.

Watch our documentary on K2 addicts in the UK:

In Florida, which remains the nexus of the flakka craze, users have impaled themselves on the security gates of a police station, darted into traffic wearing only their birthday suits, and made sweet love to trees. On a more serious note, officials in Florida's Broward County claim alpha-PVP contributed to the deaths of at least 16 people between September of last year and this April. Similar stories have been reported in Illinois, Houston, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, where Hillman wanted to reign supreme.

The two-year-long investigation into Hillman and his cohorts provides a window into how and why the flakka black market has emerged so quickly. At the same time, as the DEA works with local and state law enforcement agencies to crack down on alpha-PVP dealers, its popularity has probably reached its apex and could soon be replaced by another unregulated synthetic drug, according to a top DEA official.

"As we move forward, I don't think it will be around for much longer," said A.D. Wright, special agent in charge of the Miami DEA office, which is responsible for all of Florida. "I don't mean it is going away," he added. "[Chinese drug labs] alter the chemical compound and we have to start all over again."

Such is the quandary law enforcement faces in going after synthetic drugs with formulas that change as fast as the feds can regulate or ban them.

During a sit-down interview with VICE, Wright said his office is working 17 cases involving alpha-PVP trafficking. "We are seeing it with poly-drug traffickers," he said. "Flakka is not the only commodity they are dealing. [The dealers] go from crack cocaine to molly to other types of synthetic drugs."

The first federal cases in Florida solely focused on alpha-PVP trafficking were filed in May. A criminal complaint in Palm Beach County federal court against Kevin Bully, a Fort Lauderdale man with previous arrests for molly and cocaine trafficking, and his ex-girlfriend Jaime Nicole Lewis accuses them of bringing several kilos of flakka into south Florida from Hong Kong between March and April. Both cases are still pending.

In June, two central Florida men, Michael J. Hernandez and Jonell Phillip Vega-Mercado, were charged in Miami federal court for conspiracy to import 24 pounds of alpha-PVP. Undercover agents busted them attempting to retrieve their package sent to a bogus address. Hernandez and Vega-Mercado pled guilty last month.

As is usually the case with a hot new product, drug dealers have flocked to alpha-PVP because of immense profit margins. "With a few strokes on a keyboard a trafficker can find a source and buy the product," Special Agent Wright told me. "It's just like shopping on Amazon.com."

A doper can get a kilo from a Chinese source for between $1,500 to $2,000 and then sell it on the streets for $6,000, Wright added.

On Motherboard: What I've Learned as an Internet Drug Dealer

The Miami DEA office first came across a substance that tested positive for alpha-PVP in 2012 when agents were collecting random samples of K2 and bath salts sold at retail outlets around Florida. "Back then, it cost $80 for a half gram," Wright said. "Now you can get a tenth of a gram for $5."

Hillman was already deep in the gravel game when he caught the attention of a DEA-led task force that had begun a criminal probe in 2012 against his chief supplier, a North Carolina man named Randall Scott Braddock. When Hillman was arrested on March 16, 2014, investigators found 100 grams of alpha-PVP wrapped in two silver baggies in his car, as well as ammunition for pistols of various calibers, according to his plea agreement.

The court document also states that Hillman admitted to obtaining 100 grams of alpha-PVP every other day between 2012 and 2013. A year later, he was getting a kilo of alpha-PVP a week.

Braddock, Hillman's supplier, allegedly imported and distributed between 35 and 75 kilos of alpha-PVP between 2012 and 2014, according to a proposed plea agreement he entered into with federal prosecutors in July. Braddock sold large quantities to customers like Hillman, who would then break it down into smaller amounts sold on the streets of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

According to the plea agreement, Braddock admitted that he imported alpha-PVP from China via a company called Kanshuo Biotech Co. He would communicate with a Kanshuo employee only identified as "Alice" via email.

For instance, in a November 2, 2012, email Braddock sent Alice that was obtained by the DEA via search warrant, he praised the quality of the drugs he was receiving. "Please send me 500 grams of alpha-PVP the good batch as you always do as soon as u can," Braddock wrote. "Thank you." He would subsequently wire the company $800 through Western Union.

After 500 grams of alpha-PVP was seized by DEA task force officers when he was pulled over in Weaverville, North Carolina, on January 8, 2013, Braddock had his business partner Josh Lindsey take over emailing Alice. On January 12 of that year, Lindsey wrote, "Be careful sending to Tennessee and North Carolina bc Scott Braddock got trouble!! But South Carolina is OK!" Lindsey added, "Yeah I like when u label acrylic paint!! And no more sending to North Carolina!"

Alice responded later that day. "Hi, what trouble Scott Braddock have now?" and later noted, "Apvp is now crystalline powder not crystal."

Braddock continued to deal flakka after being charged and released pending trial, and was arrested again on October 2, 2014, following a meeting with a confidential informant who pretended she was interested in paying $50,000 for the contact information for Alice and Kanshao.

The DEA's Wright said the only real way to stop the proliferation of synthetic drugs is for China to clamp down on production labs—and suggested that the feds are poised to make headway in their efforts to target the stuff at the source.

"The Chinese government has to come on board and start regulating some of these chemical components," Wright said. "I'm guaranteeing a few months down the road, there is going to be something else out there with a different name and different problems."

Francisco Alvarado is a freelance investigative journalist based in South Florida. Follow him on Twitter.

Jack Saddleback, in green shirt and blazer, welcomes U of S students during orientation. Photos by Geraldine Malone unless otherwise stated

While shaking hands, handing out day planners, and getting students to vote on a silly costume he would have to wear, University of Saskatchewan Student Union (USSU) president Jack Saddleback also tries to answer many questions about himself.

Saddleback faces a lot of queries because he represents so many different identities that many students—especially those coming from small towns or other countries—have never come across in their life. Saddleback is a Two-Spirit, Cree, transgender, gay man.

"I find with my own identities and how they intersect, I take on that responsibility to just be open about myself because I think about what my life was like when I was growing up. I think about that young person going through those school systems and I think about how alone I felt at that time," Saddleback told VICE. "I don't want that for another youth, I don't want our future generations to have to go through that. I want them to see themselves in these places, in these institutions, in our society as a whole. I find it's important for me to be able to speak out and be proud about who I am, and those struggles I've had to go through are a part of my story."

Saskatchewan has a complicated history when it comes to Saddleback's Aboriginal heritage and his LGBTQ identity.

With 20 different schools throughout the province, the last federally-run residential school only closed in Saskatchewan in 1996. Saskatoon's history holds the dark legacy of Starlight tours, and recently the stories of residential school survivors published on New Yorker magazine's Instagram account have reminded people that the struggle for many who call Saskatchewan home isn't close to over.

At the university itself, Annie Maude (Nan) McKay was the first Aboriginal graduate in 1915. She held a BA degree with Honours in English and French, and soon after worked in the University Library. Although there's no record of McKay talking about her gender identity, on campus there is actually a photo of McKay and another woman known as "Hope" kissing behind Saskatchewan Hall residence in 1914.

Nan McKay and "Hope." Photo courtesy University of Saskatchewan

By 1971 a small activist organization was formed on campus called the Gay Students Alliance. But in 1975 the U of S Dean of Education suspended a graduate student named Doug Wilson from supervising student teachers in the public school system because of his identification with a proposed campus gay group. That led to a major legal and political battle that played out in national media, which Wilson eventually lost.

There has clearly been a lot of progress since then, but even as recently as 2005, 600 people came out in Saskatoon in support of a traditional definition of marriage. The March for Marriage included speakers like Conservative MPs Maurice Vellacott and Brad Trost.

At 26 years old, Saddleback has seen a lot of these changes, both forwards and backwards, play out before him, "The openness to understand about complexities of the human experience was not at a point where people were willing to learn."

He grew up on the Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alberta in a traditional Cree family which practices non-interference where "as long as the child is happy, the community and the family are happy."

"I was able to go about and be the gender-queer kid that I always was," Saddleback said.

"As I got older and as I got into the actual elementary school system, that's when my family really started to encourage me to fall into the female gender binary because I was born a female. To go into the school system and constantly have other kids ask are you a boy or a girl? I always had to identify by what was between my legs as opposed to what was in my heart. That created a lot of anxiety, a lot of feelings of isolation, and not feeling as if I could relate to anyone else because I couldn't see anyone else like myself as a young person."

When Saddleback started to go through puberty, the societal pressures became too much and the depression took over.

"It was almost as if I was at a cliff and I had to either conform or not conform, and that not conforming was very volatile, it was scary, and I didn't know that I could transition at that time," Saddleback said. "My only understanding that I had was suicide. I was hospitalized twice after I started puberty because I had tried to take my own life. That put a lot of hinderance on my own ability to finish school, to actually feel like I could go to school, to relate to my peers and the people around me."

He ended up dropping out of high school and living in Calgary. Although his family supported him in whatever ways they could, Saddleback was lost in himself and in the world. Youth suicide rates for Aboriginal people are six times higher than the national average and roughly two thirds of trans* youth think about suicide and around one in three attempt it. Saddleback says he "was a part of that statistic."

"I had to battle with my gender identity and kind of figure out and question, 'Am I really OK being this miserable for the rest of my life?' Then I met another trans* individual in a queer youth group and it dawned on me that I can be happy all the time," Saddleback said. "That's when I decided at the age of 18 that I'm going to go for my dreams and I'm going to go with what feels right inside. I am a man and here I am."

That moment completely changed his life and he decided to move to Saskatoon to get his high school diploma. The next step was applications for scholarships and eventually first steps onto the campus grounds—something he was reminded of last week.

"I would have never been able to see myself sitting behind the USSU president's desk. This is just something that's so surreal to me even from the time when I was thinking about coming to university," Saddleback said. "I never would have thought I would be in a post secondary education institution. I didn't see my skin colour here, I didn't see my gender identity here, I didn't see my romantic orientation here. Therefore, I couldn't really imagine myself in this position."

Saddleback quickly got involved on campus as the Pride student coordinator, then the USSU Vice President of Student Affairs, and was part of the group in 2014 who worked to change the university's discrimination and harassment policy to protect transgender people.

He won the USSU presidency last March and is the third consecutive Aboriginal president in four terms but the first trans* and Two-Spirit president in the university's history. After researching universities across the country it also seems safe to say he is also the country's first Two-Spirit student union president.

"That would be interesting if I was. It would be really humbling and eye opening for individuals that we finally have something like this taking place," Saddleback said.

Having so many intersecting identities and representing multiple minorities on campus is a responsibility Saddleback doesn't take lightly. Many of the approximately 18,000 students are coming from smaller communities throughout the province where they may have never met an Aboriginal person, gay person, or transgender person, let alone someone who recognizes all of those identities. Moose Jaw had it's very first Pride parade this summer, Prince Albert's first parade was in 2007, and even in 2013 a transgender bride-to-be was asked to leave a store in Saskatoon as she shopped for her wedding dress.

"I'm from a small town just south of Prince Albert. We didn't have a lot of Aboriginal people and—not that I know of—was there anyone who was transgender," fourth year commerce student Chelsea Harrison, said.

"It's great to come to campus and see someone live openly like that... You don't really hear about trans* people much in the media in these leadership roles. I think it's great that he can be in a position of power like this and he can give other students someone to look up to."

"I think it's really important in that he's a role model for people who are transgender so they feel comfortable with who they are," said third year physiology and pharmacology student Ashley Palmer.

"I think him having that position is important for him to be seen as a role model for people who are not transgender... If you've never seen a transgender person before, it would be a really good impression."

Saddleback blushed a little as he heard his name again. Although he has taken a role in the spotlight, it's not a natural one.

"It's kind of weird. I'm actually like a really shy guy. I look like I'm really calm and cool but inside I'm like, Oh my God they are recognizing me. I fanboy over their fanboying," Saddleback said with a laugh.

"At the same time it's really humbling. I just think about that young Jack who decided to put the knife down and said 'This is not my time.' I think about where I am right now and realize now is my time, now is my time to shine."

Follow Geraldine Malone on Twitter.

Being naturally squeamish and five kinds of repressed, I didn't immediately love the idea of watching women menstruate. I was down with Rupi Kaur's protest against Instagram. I dug Petra Collins' psychedelic vag tees. But something about full-frontal free-bleeding seemed a little too "much" for my delicate twenty-something sensibilities.

It's a good thing Vancouver photographer Jackie Dives is a certified doula. She eased me into her collection of period portraits one at a time, reminded me to breathe, and made me feel like the whole experience was totally worth it. I came out the other end convinced everyone should air out their traumatic visions of couch stains and pregnancy tests, like, once a week at least.

VICE: You've made a short film about women's first periods. You've photographed home births. And this latest photo series is about women and their menstrual blood. Tell me about how this all started.
Jackie Dives: I started the period work because I had issues with periods, and it was super cathartic for me. Right up until I started doing this kind of work, I had some shame issues.... My own embarrassing story of when I got my period for the first time. Now I've just become known as the period girl. I literally have friends of mine texting me "Hey look at this period splotch on my bed, it's in the shape of a heart." I am that person now.

How does a text like that make you feel?
I love it. The reality is that even in our 30s, we make messes. There's no woman in the world that doesn't have a pair of underwear with some kind of mark on it. Nobody's figured out how to handle it, it's just something that happens all the time. I don't want to apologize for that anymore. Like why do women slip a tampon up their sleeve when they go to the bathroom at a restaurant? Why is it a secret?

Was there a specific moment that set you down the path to friendly neighbourhood "period girl"?
I was invited to [Unmentionables Film Festival in New York City], and at the festival two things happened: the first was that I was surrounded by women who were not afraid to talk about their period. It was like I found my people. Because that's the stuff I want to talk about.

And the second thing was at the cinema where we were all mingling. There was a photography exhibit and it was women's menstruation-type photography. At first I was like, "Holy shit, I've never seen anything like this before." But then there were a couple things about it that didn't sit right with me. I was trying to figure out what that was, and I found out while talking to the photographer.

I asked her, why are they in black and white? Because it's blood! Blood is red. To put it in black and white is really toning it down. And the other thing was, none of the women's faces were in the photos, and to me that wasn't eliminating the shame aspect. It was like these women were posing for the photos under the condition that their faces weren't shown.

I wanted to do my own interpretation. I wanted to do it the way I think it should be done and that meant colour, and faces. And I thought there's no way in fucking hell anyone's going to do this with me. [Laughs]. But I was wrong, which was nice.

So you meet with women who are on board with your vision. What transpires?
For the most part, I go to someone's house and they usually take off their clothes. They'll take out their diva cup or do whatever they usually do. I'm interested in conveying each woman's feeling or mood about their period in whatever way makes sense to them. It's hard to surprise me. I don't want the photos to be sexy or intense or crazy or whatever. Just like, "This is me and my blood." The point I'm trying to make is that's not gross. It's just OK.

Smell wasn't something we talked about a lot. Smell was present. I was very much aware of their menstrual smell. But on the other hand I've been to births so I've smelled all the smells ... I don't know if you know this but I actually volunteered for a non-profit that would send a photographer in when a woman lost her baby. I would take photos of the dead baby. That's the craziest shit I've ever done.

I can't even handle that. But why?
Well, why not? Let's say you're nine months pregnant, you make it to the hospital and for some reason your baby doesn't make it. You want something to remember them by. The nurses in the hospital know about the company, it's a non-profit, nobody gets paid, it's all volunteer. The nurses would suggest it to the couple.

Maybe you never look at it—maybe you have it in an envelope under your bed—but you know it's there. Sometimes we'd go in and take the pictures and never send them. They'll say, "Come in and take them, but we don't want to see until we're ready." And that could be years.

As an artist and a human, what do you take from an experience like that?
I felt like I was giving someone a huge gift. Because I'm emotionally capable of doing it, I thought it was amazing. Every time I went in to do one of those shoots it would refresh my memory about why I do the work I do. The circumstance was obviously terrible, but it was a way to do something good in that terrible circumstance.

Are bodies a theme in a lot of your photo work?
In a roundabout way, yes. It was never an intention, but obviously something that I'm drawn to. I've thought about it only because I've been asked, and I've come to the conclusion that it's about vulnerability.

You've mentioned your own first period experience being kind of shitty. Can you tell me about it?
I got my period when I was at summer camp, and I knew what it was because I just knew that stuff as a kid.

I'm at summer camp, I get my period and obviously I want to go home. The thing I don't necessarily want you to publish, because my mom will read this article, is she sends my stepdad to pick me up, which is mortifying in itself. Then she looked at me and said, "Aren't you a little young for this?" That made me feel really awful. I was 11, which is actually the average age.

[Editor's note: She's now fine with us publishing that anecdote]

That's heavy, but probably pretty common among kids new to the menstruation thing.
Yeah. Women get their periods and they don't know what's happening to them. There's women out there who have never seen a period before. I mean why would you have seen a period, right? There's no photos out there to look at.

I had a friend who wanted to do the period photos because her dad told her it was dirty when she was young and she needed to heal from that. She wanted to do the photos but couldn't bring herself to do them. But I think for the most part the women who have participated have done it because they feel strong. I don't know if they feel strong because they've overcome something or if periods were a good experience to begin with.

My bottom line on all of it is: this is it. It smells, it looks like this, it is all of these things—deal with it. I don't want to apologize for being smelly or dirty or gross because I'm female, because this is a thing that naturally happens to me.

For more of Jackie Dive's work please visit www.jackiedives.com or follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

All photos by the author

The trouble with Cotopaxi, Ecuador's largest volcano, is that no one knows when it's going to blow.

"[It] isn't going to explode little by little," says Mauricio Andrade, a café owner in Latunga, a town near the base of Cotopaxi. Roughly 16 miles from the volcano itself, Latacunga has benefitted from Cotopaxi's renown in the form of tourism, but now stands directly in its line of fire. "There will be a boom, and everything that's in its path—water, rocks, trees—will be brought down in gushing streams of lava. In 30 minutes it could take out half of the city. But we don't know when it will happen."

El Gringo y La Gorda, Mauricio's café, serves a cocktail called Cotopaxi, as well as one dubbed Fin del Mundo, or "End of the World." He was in Latacunga on August 14 when Cotopaxi woke up after 70 years of relative calm, issuing ash and smoke from its mouth. That day, the Ecuadorian government raised the volcanic activity alert level. The next day, Latacunga's airport was closed. Two days later, President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency.

"The city just went crazy," Mauricio says. "We kicked opened our doors and we took what we could and we just ran. We were not prepared with masks or first aid kits. It was mayhem."

The town of 70,000 is now on volcano watch. According to a statement from the office of Minister of Security Cesár Navas, an eruption of Cotopaxi would affect around 300,000 people.

Cotopaxi is the third largest volcano in the world. Its crater is roughly 2,600 by 1,600 feet wide. It is 20,000 feet above sea level. And it's covered in snow.

Here's the other problem: Latacunga is intersected by three rivers—San Pedro, Cutuchi, and Illuchi. In an eruption, simulations done by the Geopolitical Institute of Ecuador predict these rivers will overflow with lahars—a mix of melted ice, lava, and whatever other debris get picked up along the way. The banks would burst and potentially wipe out anyone living by the river between Latacunga and Quito, about 30 miles away. In other words, the top of the volcano is a ticking time bomb.

To many all this means one thing: run.

"A fifth of the community has left," claims Mauricio. "Some forever, some temporarily. The little tourism we had is gone because most people come to see or climb Cotopaxi and the national park is closed. And now because people don't know what's going to happen, they're holding on to their money to wait and see what happens. They're scared."

Hotel owner Enrique Naranjo says he has lost 80 bookings in the past month. His friend's Mexican restaurant Guadalajara has closed down, he claims. Valuable artifacts have been removed from the local museum. And even the town's famous Mama Negra festival has been cancelled—which is ironic when you consider why it's held.

Mama Negra celebrates the town's salvation from the 1742 eruption of Cotopaxi. According to folklore, when Cotopaxi exploded people from the church decided not to evacuate but instead carry a statue of the Virgin of Mercy in procession in the streets and pray for mercy. This, so the story goes, calmed the volcano's fury. And now, every year there's a big party to celebrate.

But when you're on Volcano Watch, nothing else matters but Cotopaxi—not even the virgin who saved it.

Police sergeant Carlos Culinya of the nearby town Cumbayá is manning a stall at the town's Feria de Seguridad, which roughly translates to "Security Festival" in English. The event's vibe is odd, somewhere between a fair and a day of public safety demonstrations. Reggaeton blasts from stereos; there are fire engines and giant blow-up policemen. Kids are learning how to ride Segways. Others pretend to get rescued. But beneath the upbeat mood of the kids, there is a feeling of deep anxiety among parents.

Since the explosion, there have been 14 practice evacuations across danger zones to the volcano's north, east, and west. Culinya explains, "We are training people to know where the information centers and the secure areas are. We are teaching people house by house, suburb by suburb, all along the river. Because we don't know when, what, or if something will happen."

"We came to see what's going to happen with the volcano, to see what areas will be affected and what areas will be safe," says Elena Perez, a local mother of two. "We are trying to see what areas are in the danger zones so we can make a plan. For example, if the kids are in school where should they wait for us? Where we should pick them up? Where will our family meet? If we can make it, I mean."

One child asks a security official, "Will the gas stations explode?" The response: probably.

As part of the effort to prepare the public for the worst, volunteers hand out Emergency Plan brochures. The front page has a picture of an angry exploding volcano with a house sliding down it. A man, a little girl holding a teddy bear, and a cow look on. In big bold letters it reads, "Volcanos were here before us. Respect their space and you won't get hurt by an eruption."

It's a child-friendly interpretation of the Cotopaxi situation. But it's hard for locals to be cheery when there are news updates of increased volcanic activity, or when posters tell you how to dispose of ash (not in front of the gutter) and others explain how to care for a passed-out dog (gently lift them with a towel).

And adding to all the anxiety are the rumors. An audio message was leaked claiming the government was hiding the seriousness of the situation. The message was dismissed by the government (their response is here) but controlling hysteria continues to be a challenge.

Related: Alone in the Zone

As with any emergency, there are those who don't take it seriously. Someone has created a Volcán Cotopaxi Twitter account, posting "Roooaaar!"

"Social media has been a problem," admits Juan Zapata, Security Chief of the Quito metropolitan zone. "Someone makes a comment and all of a sudden everyone is panicking. We didn't have that problem back in 1742."

But for most, especially those in Latacunga, there is a tangible fear that their town is on the brink of destruction.

"We're trying to be positive, to put on a good face for the few people who come but we're nervous, obviously," says Mauricio. "Almost every day we've had ash and smoke. Every day it's more constant."

On Motherboard: Volcanic Eruptions Did Not Kill the Neanderthals

He looks down at his rubber bracelet, decorated with the words, "I love Latacunga." Despite the steady fall of ash, miles-long columns of smoke, and thick smell of sulphur, he is determined not to leave the town, whatever the risk. But he is forgiving of those who do.

"We can't judge the people who leave because they had to leave. They wake up in the middle of the night, afraid they'll be swept away by lava," he says.

For now, the town and other areas in the danger zones remain under alert. There will be more practice evacuation, more brochures, more updates, but ultimately no more answers.

As Mauricio says, "We're left with huge questions: When is it going to happen? How big will it be? Will we survive? After it happens how much damage there be? We just don't know."

Follow Melissa on Twitter.

Read: Two Vodkas and One Iced Coffee with Salman Rushdie

This week, Coca-Cola brought their discontinued 90s soda Surge back to life, and another generation of middle schoolers are about to go fucking nuts.

The caffeinated Mountain Dew rival disappeared 12 years ago, but Coke has decided to bring the citrus soda back to grocery stores after an internet-only, limited-run sale of Surge six-packs sold like crazy last year, according to CNN.

Coke presumably discontinued Surge due to dwindling sales after parents discovered that the soda a) wasn't particularly healthy and b) turned pre-teens into amped up lunatics like a kid's version of flakka. Now, those kids are all grown up, and their nostalgia-driven longing for the iridescent drink caused them to wipe out Amazon's entire supply of $14 12-packs last year.

If you feel a great swelling of desire to track down a can and relive your childhood glory days, you can find the soda on shelves in the Midwest and the South. And if you're doomed to live in one of those states that doesn't happen to sell Surge yet but crave the green fizzy nectar, don't worry—Amazon's got you covered.

Demonstrators gather in front of Queen's Park to protest against Ontario's new sex education curriculum in February 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

In his 20s, Amir, a transgender Muslim man, fled his home country for Canada because he assumed his religion would never accept him.

He was wrong.

The 45-year-old, who does not want to be identified due to privacy reasons, said he received a blessing to go through with his transition from a high-ranking imam, a step he credits with gaining his family's support.

Now Amir is condemning an online guide for Muslim parents on how to navigate Ontario's new sex-ed curriculum, claiming that its author—a principal at a Muslim school—is perpetuating homophobic and transphobic views.

"She's talking about Islam and she doesn't represent Islam," Amir told VICE. "As a principal, if she wants to do good for the kids, she needs to do more research... because she can save people's lives."

Rolling out this school year, the province's updated curriculum addresses topics like same-sex relationships, gender identity, consent and masturbation. Despite being fairly banal by modern standards, it has been subject to much controversy, with many parents hosting demonstrations and pulling their kids from school this week as a sign of protest; roughly 35,000 Toronto schoolchildren were absent following the unveiling of the curriculum last spring.

To "help" Muslim parents wade through the new subject matter, Farrah Marfatia, principal of Mississauga's Maingate Islamic Academy, recently released a guide called "How to talk to your Muslim child about topics in the Ontario Ministry of Education's health education curriculum."

It's filled with charming nuggets like this:

"Homosexuality is considered to be a sin in all major monotheistic religions including Islam." And, "Anal sex is not allowed for Muslims because it is an act committed by homosexuals and leads to sickness and is one of the deadly sins in Islam." It also references a story from the Qur'an in which people engaging in anal sex were punished with a "shower of stones."

On gender identity, the guide says: "If you are born a boy, your gender identity is Male. If you are born a girl, your gender identity is Female. You cannot be a boy if you are born a girl and you cannot be a girl if you are born a boy. Allah does not make mistakes. We cannot go against what Allah wants for us because Allah knows what is best for us."

Marfatia declined an interview with VICE for this story on account of being "busy." Speaking to the Toronto Star, she said her guide is targeted at Muslim parents of kids in public schools and that imams and public school teachers "gave it their stamp of approval." As of Monday, Marfatia said the guide had received 2,500 views.

Amir pointed to Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution where an on site therapist is trained to help trans individuals, as proof that Marfatia is misinformed.

"This is really ignorant," he said. Recalling his own isolated past, he stressed the importance of having good information available to young Muslims.

"If I was a suicidal person, I would have been gone a long time ago."

Toronto social worker Rahim Thawer, 30, who is Muslim and queer-identified, said the guide callously puts faith and being LGBTQ at odds.

"By talking about a Muslim interpretation of the curriculum that excludes LGBT people, she's literally erasing our existence," he said. "Anybody who hasn't written off LGBT people might do so because she's spoken with a kind of authority about what Islam is."

In a section that seems contrary to communication in a Snapchat era, Marfatia advocates for "segregation" when kids enter Grade 4.

"Boys should play with boys and girls should play with girls," she writes. "This concept of segregation should extend into the world of social media and electronics; children should avoid texting or building online relationships with persons of the opposite sex."

Farzana Doctor, a Toronto-based registered social worker and author, characterized that advice as "foolhardy."

"An approach that keeps different people separate only reinforces misunderstanding, stereotypes and sexism," she said.

Doctor believes Marfatia's words are dangerous, especially for young members of the LGBTQ community.

"If they perceive they're doing something sinful or they can't speak to any of the individuals around them to get some support, they're going to be incredibly isolated," she said.

"What do incredibly isolated young people do—they hurt themselves, they kill themselves."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Image via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

As of today, Queen Elizabeth II is the longest serving monarch in British history, finally overtaking Queen Victoria's mammoth reign of 63 years, seven months, and two days. To celebrate, the media has treated us to a veritable feast of never-before-seen photos of "the real" Elizabeth picking out curtains and laughing, as well as a handy interactive guide to her life. But we've also witnessed an onslaught of debate from historians and commentators about whether she's done anything apart from sip Twining's tea, shake people's hands, and wrestle with her corgis for the past six decades.

While historian David Starkey has argued that, "She has done and said nothing that anybody will remember," others have gone so far as to suggest that she should be Elizabeth the Last.

Despite the critics, it's the "shy royalists" that still win out. You might only see them waving their Union Jack flags once in a while—at the Queen's Jubilee or outside a hospital during a royal labor—but that's not to say the nation doesn't have plenty of love for the royal family (well, for most of them). Put it like this: A 2012 Ipsos MORI poll found that 79 percent of Britons want to keep the monarchy. And a survey conducted by YouGov recently found that our current Queen is the most popular monarch ever. Take that Henry VIII.

But who exactly are the royalists congratulating HRH on her ability to, well, not die? Sure, it's your gran and Amanda Holden. But it's also many of your mates, too. While public perception would suggest that young people are anti-royalist, recent polls have shown that increasing numbers of youngsters support the monarchy. To get a clearer idea of who exactly these people are, I spoke to some of the young royalists who'll be raising a glass to ma'am today.

Sean Okeeffe, 24, is the deputy editor of Royal Central, a news site dedicated to the monarchy. "The royals are my main hobby, and I dedicate two hours a day or more to researching," he tells me. "It's not rare to find young royalists because of Will and Kate. Lots of writers for Royal Central are in their early twenties or have just started university and are even younger."

Having juggled his royal writing with his day job in retail for over two years, Okeeffe says his initial interest can be traced back to his family. "My family have always been interested in the royals, and my brother's in the military, so obviously he has an interest in them," he explains. "My royalism stems from my patriotism. The royal family is the epitome of Britishness.

"When you mention the Queen to someone halfway across the world, they think of our British Queen," he reflects. "I love the Queen's devotion. I've never known another monarch and neither have my mom or dad."

Okeeffe's affection doesn't just stop at the Queen—he's got a lot of time for the whole royal family.

"I really enjoyed the Royal Wedding. You wouldn't see people camp out for two weeks to see a royal baby in other countries. It's a very British tradition. I don't think it's fanatical. I think it's a nice thing to do. It makes you proud," he argues.

Okeeffe is not alone. Fellow royalist Ned Donovan, 21, took equal pleasure in the Royal Wedding. "We had the day off because I went to boarding school. We had a big lunch. It was great fun," he recalls. "Kate and Will are the image of the changing monarchy. I think they'll change how monarchy is defined. People have more affinity with them than they do with the Prince of Wales and Camilla."

WATCH: We met up with the people obsessed with Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding:

Where does Donovan's interest come from? "Well, I've always been interested, but my interest was piqued when I worked for the Royal Collection in Buckingham Palace for a summer," he explains. "Britain works best under a constitutional monarchy. I simply think it's how it works. I would rather have the Queen—who has, for 60 years, never revealed her politics—than have an elected president from any party. As English people, I don't think we like politics getting above people."

For this reason, Donovan argues that the royal family ultimately eclipses and rises above politics. "People wouldn't camp out to see David Cameron open a hospital, but they would camp out to see the Duchess of Cornwall open a hospital," he tells me. "We're patriotic by proxy through the monarchy. If we started putting up flags for any other occasion people would think that was strange."

Ned Donovan

As such, Donovan argues that royalism among younger generations is far more common than many realize. "Many of my friends are royalists," he says. "I don't think people who camp out and have rooms full of pictures of Princess Diana are your average royalists; the chances are, the vast majority you'd ask in the street probably are."

Just like Donovan, Paul Constable, 27, also describes himself as a loud and proud royalist. "I've never been shy of telling anyone I'm a royalist," he tells me. "Ever since I can remember I've had an interest. I used to do all my mini projects on the royal family at home as a kid. I think the British public has a strong link to tradition and I don't think they like change. The royals give an element of what Britishness is and provide security."

Like Donovan, Constable argues that there are far more young royalists knocking about than many realize. "I think a lot of young people like the Queen and respect that she's been on the throne for so long," he argues. "I also think Prince Harry is respected among young people. They can identify with him because he's a rebel, he's normal, he's in the army; he goes out and parties."

Nevertheless, Constable maintains that he doesn't like the gossip side of things. "When stuff comes out in the media and the royals get abused, it annoys me. I suppose that does make me a nerdy royalist," he says. "I've seen the whole royal family—including the Queen—in real life at the Order of the Guard ceremony in Windsor. I was two arms length away from the Queen!"

And yet, the question still remains: why do so many young folk—the group who you'd traditionally expect to be republican, or at least indifferent—support the British monarchy so fervently? Especially when the royal family cost us so much—an eye-watering £200 million [$307 million] every year, to be precise—and the wealth gap just continues to widen.

Perhaps it's because, as Constable suggests, the royals have provided us with a sense of security and continuity during a period of historical and political uncertainty. Or maybe it's that young people are simply more conservative (with a small, and a big, "c") than we care to believe. After all, the Conservatives are now the most popular party among university students.

WATCH: More from our Rule Britannia series

There isn't one definitive answer as to why, but the royals are evidently enjoying something of a heyday among Generation Y. With Prince William now classed as the most popular royal, it's clear that the face of the monarchy is fast changing and becoming more appealing to millennials.

Still, it's important that we continue to hold the royal family to account instead of swallowing all the pomp and circumstance unthinkingly. Branded "Waity Katie" by the media because she hung on eight years before Will popped the question, you could say Kate Middleton has breathed new life into the idea that women should be defined by who they marry. After all, what's so fairytale about relinquishing your identity, privacy, and vocation to marry a prince?

While the royal family are by no means the most pressing problem that Britain faces, the typically-Tory "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" anachronistic mindset isn't without faults. The royal family might claim to be impartial, but—like all of us—they have their own opinions, incentives and interests to protect. If Prince Charles' countless lobbying letters to political ministers don't prove that, then what does? We'll never know what is really said in the weekly meetings between the Queen and prime minister, as the monarchy is the only public body exempt from freedom of information laws. No written record is made of the private meeting, and both parties ensure the information is never disclosed.

In turn, the activities of the royal family continue to remain a mystery to the British public. The Queen might have witnessed the fall of the British Empire and the Berlin Wall, and met the major figures of the last century, but we know very little about her private or political life. God knows what she does when she's bored of wandering around her 700-room-palace picking brooches and outlandish hats. The Queen might keep a diary, but we won't see it for decades to come.

Without sounding like a scrooge, today is at best underwhelming and at worst a hollowed out pantomime of royal fantasy. Just like the Queen's speech on Christmas day, it's easier to snooze through than vicariously celebrate.

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On Wednesday, Apple announced a bunch of new products. During the keynote address of an event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that was just one big keynote address, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the word "incredible" a lot, and promised "monster announcements across several of our product lines."

After a bit of talk about some new features for the Apple Watch (mostly medical applications and new cosmetic options), they moved on to the main event: new products. There's a new giant iPad called the iPad Pro, a new Apple TV that's also kind of like a game console, a new line of iPhones called the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.

THE NEW GIANT IPAD called "iPad Pro":

Cook called the iPad the "clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing," and promised that today's announcement was "the biggest news in iPad since the iPad." Get it? He meant literally biggest. Maybe in the hopes of recapturing some lost consumer enthusiasm for the iPad, Apple has introduced one with a bigger screen. They announced it by rolling a video showing their massive new tablet drifting through space like a Star Destroyer (see above).

These come out in November. The cheapest one will be $799 for 32GB. There'll be a 128GB Model for $949. You can also pay $1,079 for a 128GB version with LTE.

At 12.9 inches it's not exactly the "iCoffeeTable" some of us imagined in years past, that would have competed with novelty Android tablets and touchscreen-enabled TVs. Instead, it's less than an inch bigger than the screens on the current line of MacBooks. Big, but not something you can go surfing on.

The iPad Pro has an upgraded processor "1.8X faster" than the current top of the line. The added speed, along with its bigness and extremely high resolution retina display (2732 x 2048, the highest resolution of any iOS device), allows it to run two apps side-by-side in a sort of modified, asymmetrical dual portrait mode.

There were also new accessories. There's something called the iPad Smart Keyboard, which is folded into the cover, much the way Windows Tablets have an integrated rubberized keyboard. That will set you back $169. Then they rolled out a stylus, which they've dubbed the "Apple Pencil."

People screamed at the announcement of the stylus, probably because they're old-school Apple people who feel feelings about the Newton, an early 90s Apple tablet that came with a pointed stick. Apple Pencil costs $99.

THE NEW APPLE TV THAT'S ALSO KIND OF LIKE A GAME CONSOLE:

There are 389,035 ways to stream content to your TV over the internet, and Apple TV is Apple's. It's neither a hit nor a flop, it's just a thing that's kind of been there since the product was released in 2007. But Tim Cook has ambitions with the new Apple TV. He complained that TV was technologically stagnant and said, "Today we are going to do something about that."

What they're doing about that is, they're adding apps, Cook explained. But while third party apps for your TV are probably going to add functionality none of us know we want yet, the most impressive out-of-the box feature was—as dumb as this sounds—integration with Siri, assuming it works the way it looked in the demo.

"Show me the episode of Modern Family with Edward Norton," Jen Folse (above) said into the new Apple TV remote—which has bluetooth, and charges like an iPhone. It searched across streaming services, and dug up that one particular episode. A moment later, when an actress's line-reading was a little hard to understand during playback, Folse went "What'd she say?" And Siri jumped back 15 seconds and temporarily turned the subtitles on. Which shows that when they were building this new Apple TV, they put in some thought about how people watch TV now.

The new Apple TV has a completely revamped operating system called TVOS, and it's going to allow you to browse a TV section of the App Store. Some of those Apps are games. Very Wii-ish games.

They spent a few minutes demoing a version of Crossy Road, which is an iOS game that's basically Frogger but with chickens. The message: There will be games, but don't expect Call of Duty.

When this comes out in late October, the $149 version will be 32GB, or you can pay $199 for a 64GB.

THE NEW LINE OF IPHONES—iPhone 6S and 6S Plus:

Maybe more than anything else in the lead up to New Product Rollout Day, Apple somehow got us all wondering whether the inevitable new iPhones would come with a new model number (7), or an "S" suffix.

It's an "S," and the biggest cosmetic difference with this is that you can get them in gold, and a popular new "rose gold." But never fear: the iPhone 6S and the still-rather-huge iPhone 6S Plus have had their guts tweaked as well.

The flagship innovation seems to be "3D Touch," a new force-sensitive clicking ability. It's not unlike "Force Touch" the creepily-named tactile feedback feature recently introduced on Apple Watches and Retina MacBook Pros. It allows you to tap something, or click a little more deeply, as it were, and get a different response. The demo showed how it can be used to preview the body of an email. Instagram offered a similar previewing option with 3D Click. Time will tell what uses other third party developers find for this, but they're creative people.

As far as other updates, the computer brain of the new iPhone has been beefed up—there's an A9 Chip and M9 Processor if that means anything to you. Apple showed that off by showing a guy playing graphics-intensive games, so you know it's working. The rear-facing camera is 12 megapixels, and can now take 4K video, in case you can find a 4K screen to play it on. They also played up the ability to take serious photos, even in low-light conditions, promising that their samples weren't retouched:

Photos come with a new software option called "Live Photos," which, when turned on, captures 1.5 seconds of video just before and after you snap the photo, creating this effect where the subject seems to be "alive." It's a little bit like a newspaper in the Harry Potter universe when you scroll through your photos. Presumably, photos of recently-dead loved ones will be more devastating than ever.

The subsidized price of the new line of iPhones—meaning you pay for a more expensive plan in exchange for a phone with a lower price out the door—is no different than the current starter price for the flagship phone: $299 for the cheapest one. But, noting that customers pay on installment plans, they revealed that you can also pay retail at $31-a-month on a two-year plan.

And for the hyper-consumer of Apple stuff, they also rolled out a new "iPhone Upgrade Program," which gets you a new iPhone every year if you pay $32 per month, forever if you want, because the product cycles will never end, and there will be something new for you to upgrade to every year until you are dead.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

A screenshot from the original 'Super Mario Bros.'

I'm 34, so I've basically grown up with Mario. He's a fairly good icon to follow in terms of improving your life—Mario is almost always better than any of his competition. Rather than be discouraged by his almost continuous run of excellence, which now spans 30 years, I've constantly been inspired by the lessons his games have provided. And, thankfully, he also sometimes gets it wrong, just like all of us.

'Super Mario Bros.' taught me how to be the best

It taught me, back in 1987 or so, that to reach a goal you have to fail first. Lots of times. "But our princess is in another castle," ad infinitum. "Good, and besides, she's not a prize to be won," I probably thought, because I wanted more of that sweet, sweet level design. Each little failure was accompanied by a new, rewarding journey. The intricate design that so entertained and infuriated us all encouraged continual trying. It never felt unfair, or like I couldn't ever "do" it. This wasn't necessarily true with games before this one, at least to the six-year-old me. There was enough leeway in my pit leaps and collisions with trickily placed enemies to make me think, "Let's try this again." Giving up wasn't an option because the flagpole, castle, or boss was just up ahead. It also taught me that games were flipping awesome and prepared me for a life mostly spent indoors.

A screenshot from 'Super Mario Bros. 2'

'Super Mario Bros. 2' showed me that you can change the rules and still be on top

It's not even a Super Mario game. Somehow, we got labelled wusses, and couldn't have the ultra-hard Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros. Instead we got a repurposed platform affair that had almost nothing to do with the finely tuned design and mechanics of the first game. Yet, it's still brilliant. How? It matches elements in the same way the first did—it maximizes ability, intrigue, and reward, balancing them carefully upon skill and reactions. Also, it gave me the option to make the oft-kidnapped Princess Toadstool or put-upon slave Toad the heroes. It showed me that repeating winning formulas, and popular story and design choices aren't the only way to make great things; Super Mario Bros. 2 proves that both inherent and learned skill can transform something from good to really quite great (and if you stick the right brand upon it, sell a bucket load).

'Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels,' conversely, taught me that you will fail lots of times and life is completely unfair

I hate you SMB: TLL. You're the worst and a bully.

A map screen in 'Super Mario Bros. 3'

'Super Mario Bros. 3' let me know there are different routes to success

SMB3 could be summed up to me in one word: maps. And with maps come navigation and choice. The paths through the game were still relatively linear, but now I could walk past a stage and never have to play it, visit Toad's house for some free swag, run into moving Hammer Bros. stomping across my chosen road, and chase wooden airships halfway across the land. And that was without entering a level. I could play before playing. I could pretend I was exploring an entire world, not just parading across parallax playgrounds, and it allowed me to think beyond the linear narrative. I could choose where to go, and I knew it each time would be a slightly different journey. We take this for granted now, but SMB3 did this for me first. Not taking a traditional route became one of my favorite things in life.

A screenshot from 'Super Mario World'

'Super Mario World' brought home that life is full of hidden surprises, and working for them is reward in itself

Ninety-six exits. That's a lot. How did I find them all? Probably guides. But Mario somehow gives us the desire to keep searching instead of cheating. It encourages you to know your limits, and think beyond them. Can I fly all the way up there? Is there an invisible door in this ghost house? Do I have the skills to finish Tubular? It was always a tightrope of exploration, accidental discovery and working to achieve the seemingly impossible. For a while I couldn't use that stupid flying cape, so the Cheese Bridge Area secret exit was out of my reach until I practiced and worked out how to swoop and dive. Finally getting that secret exit forced me to get better instead of just settling for completing the game. Why? I guess I've never wanted to miss out on anything, even the small things. Your reward for completing the Star Road secret levels—hours of failing miserably, and controllers thrown because of your rubbish sticky fingers—was less than fair exchange. But I'd still do it, wouldn't you? It's not all about the destination.

New on Motherboard: 'Super Mario Maker' Almost Convinced My Girlfriend to Like Video Games

The title screen of 'Super Mario 64'

'Super Mario 64' said that growing up means a change of perspective and a greater appreciation for new ways of doing things

The biggest leaps in Mario gameplay happened in Super Mario 64. Platforming left to right was no longer enough to depict the journeys I desired. As a teenager, childish ideas had no chance of getting me through life. For the first time, I was seeing Mario in a set of fully formed worlds. What's more, his goals had changed. No longer was I guiding him to the end of a level. Instead, I was exploring high and low, gathering red coins and finding stars based on level title clues. It made for an engrossing game with a variety of approaches to living in its strange lands. You could get just enough stars to go swing Bowser into explosives, or you could seek out all 120 of them. You could nab a brag-worthy speed run or just replay that penguin ice-slide race over and over. Like being a teenager, you realize how deep the world around you is, and that you've simply been shuttled from your childhood to adulthood by the slim corridor of school. Super Mario 64 opened up amazing possibilities in gaming just as preparing to leave school saw my life choices open up before me.

Promotional imagery for 'Super Mario Sunshine'

'Super Mario Sunshine' taught me that you don't always get it right, but that doesn't really matter

In the name of change, all of us—even the original Mario maker himself Shigeru Miyamoto—can get it wrong. This was my (awesome) GameCube period, and the console came along just as I hit a roadblock in life. Sure, Sunshine wasn't awful. It's actually really very good in places. I enjoyed it immensely at the time. But then, I really enjoyed working in a video game shop for a while. Things change. Taking the point of the game away from us (Mario's legs and acrobatics) was a brave move. You rely on jets of water to cross gaps. You find cleaning endless globs of paint soothing. Crucially, you start cruising instead of exploring. And suddenly your safety net (the FLUDD apparatus) is stolen, you're sent back to basics, and you fail spectacularly—those "retro" platforming levels were fiendish. And the camera was broken—your vision obscured by circumstance—and that blunted scope and ambition. Still, there are elements here that may have led to some of Nintendo's better moments in recent years: Splatoon and Super Mario 3D Land / World seem to have taken influence from this game. Similarly, I learned to talk to people, found out what was important in life, and started to follow my real passions. Now, I'm getting paid to write an article about video games rather than selling them—dream big, kids.

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Related: Watch VICE's documentary on competitive gaming, eSports

'New Super Mario Bros.' made it clear that nostalgia gets us nowhere

Sure it's fun reminiscing and sticking to the old, and the original DS game was a fresh look at a long-loved classic franchise all but left behind by the home console evolutions. But one thing Super Mario helped me believe was that you keep on moving forward, perhaps nodding at the past respectfully. But as 'New' turned into a sub-franchise, I realized it wasn't really doing that. I suppose that's okay—there's a place for wallowing in times past—but I'm not keen to play this game's lukewarmly received 3DS sequel, for example. The fun but disposable multiplayer of the Wii and Wii U versions are silly fun, but they're just a temporary distraction. They don't have the substance to make an impact on my gaming life. Why dwell on the past? I had started to stagnate in sticking with something I was familiar with around the time New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released. But I'd learned enough to get on with my life—you always do better when you seek out new things.

A screenshot from 'Super Mario Galaxy'

'Super Mario Galaxy' showed me that the sky is never the limit

Why stop at those fluffy clouds and that steel-gray expanse? Reach for the moon, the stars, and those huge planets above. By bringing Mario to his back-flipping, platforming origins and flinging him headlong into space, Nintendo's imagination felt as infinite. It's a crazy idea—long has Mario been attached to a handful of worlds within one game. Here, he leaps from planetoid to planetoid, each with its own enemies, landscape, and physical rules, all in one level. "You want to get creative?" Galaxy asks. "Go nuts." Be unafraid to skirt around untouched ideas or to throw a lot of things together and see what works. Some of the things you do will be successful, and some won't. But the higher you reach, the better you can be. For me, Mario was always the best, with no real peers or comparisons, and then this (and its sequel) happened and pretty much left everyone light years behind. Mario kept reaching and never looked back. Good advice.

Promotional artwork from 'Super Mario Galaxy 2'

'Super Mario Galaxy 2' proved perfection can be achieved so long as you try and try again

The Perfect Run is my gaming nirvana. It's superbly designed, with things that on a first play would seem impossible to the average person. But for those of us who clawed to get there, and then worked hard to complete that one-shot level of intricate chaos, we knew what it took and that it was totally worth it. With no mistakes allowed, it takes tons of practice to truly finish this game. If you manage it, and flow through it with little delay, it looks like an animated Rube Goldberg machine and it is beautiful. I can't tell you how many times it took before I made it. All I know is that 25 years of playing Mario had built me up to this moment. And whenever I think of quitting something that seems complicated, or because I lack inspiration, The Perfect Run will replay in my head and I'll keep going.

A screenshot from 'Super Mario 3D World'

'Super Mario 3D World' taught me that we become greater with each other

Finally we have a multiplayer Mario outside of the 2D and Karting arenas that actually enhances the single-player game. Experienced solo, there's several lovely pockets formed of classic Mario gameplay and design. But it all seems slightly empty, and it isn't until you recruit others to play with you that you realize why. This is entirely unusual for Super Mario games, and while it has dabbled with half-hearted multiplayer experiences—from the take-it-in-turns original to Galaxy's collector-thon remote waggling—this is when being with another suddenly fits in Mario's life plan. I just moved in with someone incredibly special, for the first time. And we both understand how much we improve each other's lives. I'm glad Mario managed to figure this out around the same time I did. I always wondered if he'd ever work that out.

Promotional artwork for 'Super Mario Maker'

'Super Mario Maker' says that creativity is infinite and that we can all become immortal through our work

Immortal I say. Maker is the perfect coda to 30 years of Super Mario games. We finally get the chance to take our extensive knowledge and personal experiences of what's come before and use it to frustrate, trick, annoy, anger, bewilder, amuse, petrify, inform, inspire, educate, entertain, and define ourselves, our friends and complete strangers. Whatever we choose to do with our lives—or our level designs—we can make a difference to someone, even if it's just us. Live through others in art; learn the lessons of perseverance, failure and success; and then make your own. That's what Mario has taught me.

Super Mario Maker is released for the Wii U on September 11. More information at Nintendo.com.

Follow Brad Barrett on Twitter.