All photos by the author

Comic Arts Brooklyn is an alternative comics festival that happens annually at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's carefully curated by the curmudgeonly Gabe Fowler, owner of Desert Island. He is the puppet master, and he pulls the strings.

Although comics are in the name of the event, CAB is, like all mass gatherings dedicated to the medium, essentially a craft fair. The New York Art Book Fair is a craft fair; New York Comic Con is a craft fair; everything where exhibitors rent a table and sell shit is a craft fair these days. What makes something a craft fair? Tote bags. If there are tote bags for sale, then ignore whatever the sign says, you are at a craft fair.

Don't get me wrong—I don't mean to malign mass gatherings. I like them and attend a lot of them. A good craft fair is a thing of beauty. It's just that there's so many, and more just keep popping up. People will be trying to lure me to some zine event while the things I acquired from the last art book, print, zine, comic, craft fair, or design convention still sit unlooked at it inside the tote bag I carried them home in.

The inside of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel gymnasium is lit in a way that makes all people photographed inside of it look like they're sickly and piss-stained. Don't worry—most of the people photographed weren't jaundiced, it was just the light.

I think I went off on a little digression there for a second. I interviewed Gabe Fowler about his beautiful comic convention. At the con, Gabe was wearing a denim jacket and tinted aviators. His hair looked impeccable, and I thought he looked as cool as he could possibly look, like the Adrian Grenier of comic-book conventions.

I asked Gabe a few questions about CAB, and he answered them.

VICE: What made you want to start your own comic convention?

This is Anne Ishii, who I like very much holding up a copy of Frontier, a comic published by the very famous Ryan Sands. Why am I not as beloved as Ryan Sands? That is fucking bullshit. I'm a cool comics lord like him.

Famed painter, animator, and cartoonist John Pham had a new issue of SCUZZI for sale. SCUZZI is his risograph printed zine where he just grabs pages from old computer and video-game magazines. Three years ago I had never heard of risographs, and now every motherfucker you meet is in love with a risograph. I can see why, they make everything look like a beautiful blurry dream. John Pham is so great. He is underrated by everybody except for me. I named his comic as the number-one best comic of 2014.

This is Jordan Crane, who I always think of as boyish even as his face gets wrinkled and his hair becomes grayer. He is a massive drawing genius and silkscreen-maker. His love of line and color is almost without comparison in this zine and comics world of ours. He puts comics out infrequently, but when they come out you had better grab it because you will never see that shit again. Here is Jordan holding up the latest issue of Keeping Two, a mini-comic series he makes with hand-silkscreened covers. I can't remember what the comics are about from issue to issue, but it seems to be about a couple who hate each other and lost their child.

This is Sammy Harkham's wad. America adores a dirtbag with money, and when you see the flannel and Misfits T-shirt and big unorganized sheets of cash like this you just think, "Good for you for accomplishing the American dream. You did it." Let's all congratulate Sammy Harkham on his wealth!

How did Sammy get that massive money stash, which he was brazenly counting like an Italian stereotype? He got it by selling his beautiful comics and the original art for those beautiful comics. Here is a beautiful panel from the original art for Cricket #5. If you see Sammy, make sure to congratulate him on his wealth, it will make him feel good.

Husband of famed VICE cartoonist Esther Pearl Watson, Mark Todd was present and showing off his wares. One of the coolest things he makes are these Garbage Zines. They are just a ton of magazine clippings, photos, pieces of fabric, random doodles, and postcards all stapled together into one zine.

Mark Todd also had these two fine silkscreened booklets for sale. One is about comics, and the other is a comic that tells the story of Star Wars in an abbreviated and highly enjoyable form.

Ginette Lapalme's table is always a beautiful spread of arts and crafts. You want a thing-a-mabob? She's got 20.

The concept behind this patch she was selling is that the purchaser can cut it into many smaller patches and sew them onto their clothing. This is the first time I saw someone do this.

This is Ines Estrada licking a copy of her hardcover book, Lapsos. She does the comics that go up on this site on Fridays. She just recently moved to Texas from Mexico. Welcome to America, Ines!

At one point I heard, "Hey Nick!" and these two guys, Dan Clowes and Rick Altergott, were behind me. Dan did the poster for CAB this year and was supposed to be premiering and signing his new book. Sadly, it was not finished in time. At one point, he was tantalizingly carrying around the book's proofs from the printer in a clear plastic folder. How many people considered knocking him over and grabbing the as-yet-unseen comic from Dan Clowes? Was I the only one driven mad with comics lust at the sight of what is probably an incredible work?

Here's me jumping in to take a photo with my heroes. Dan Clowes said so many nice things to me that it caught me off-guard. He said I was the "lone voice of sanity in comics journalism," which is strange because I feel like I've spent this past year slipping into mental illness. He also described me as kind and said that he agreed with all of my comics reviews and said that my bad reviews were always funny.

We also discussed how attracted we are to women with interesting teeth and how King of Comedy is Scorsese's best movie. Another topic of chatting was how both Rick and Dan came up with a lot of their concepts while riffing together, which I found interesting. A lot of people think that writing and ideas are things that you come up with in a vacuum by yourself. I've fielded Facebook for suggestions only to have friends admonish me for "trying to get others to do my work for me." It's neat to see that the best guys in comics workshop their ideas through casual conversations.

We also talked about how more adults are reading comics, but everyone has terrible taste these days and is reading comics that seem geared towards a middle-school or early high-school readership. We discussed how modern cartoonists aren't storytellers or writers anymore. Also he said he liked my art, too. It's overwhelming to know that Dan Clowes knows who are you and likes your creative product.

Actor and cartoonist Owen Kline asked Rick Altergott to sign a copy of Rick and Dan Clowes's college anthology, Psycho Comics. Rick took the opportunity to fix a mistake he had made in the original book. He'd forgotten to draw a head on the man in the middle panel so he repaired the drawing on this one issue.

This is Ben Marra, who frequently contributes art and comics to VICE and is a nice man. Here he is holding up his new book, Blades and Lazers.

Simon Hanselmann was barred from coming to America since he's a convicted felon, but the original art for this comic he drew was for sale for $700 and in the middle of it is a funny insult about what a shithead I am.

The comics were good and the tote bags were nice, but the highlight of CAB was definitely all the bossy signs that festooned the walls.

If you missed Comic Arts Brooklyn, then go check out Desert Island and look for my reviews of all the neat stuff I got in an upcoming comic column on this site.

Also follow me on Instagram.

Image via Rumblr

When I was 11, a kid who was bigger than me punched me in the stomach during a game of dodgeball and I cried. When I was 12, I punched a kid who was smaller than me in the stomach during a game of basketball. Even though I was the one who punched him, I cried anyway. When I was 23, I pushed a guy in the chest because I was drunk and we were talking shit to each other in line at a taco truck, but my friends made me leave before I could I could punch him (or, more likely, before he could punch me). I cried after this too, though I swear it was because I ended up not getting a taco. When I was 25, some dude punched me in the head outside a bar and I ran away before he could punch me any further. This is my total history of physical violence—skirmishes with middle-schoolers, followed by tears.

Because of my spotty history with violence, I really want to get in a fight. Not a fight that ends in me getting sent to the hospital; just a fair fight in which me and another dude my size punch each other a few times and feel better about being total marks.

So naturally, you can understand my momentary jubilation when I heard about Rumblr, aka "Tinder for Fights." The app, the news of which broke last week, promised to provide recreational fighters with the means for finding each other for some good ol' fashioned poundin'.

Would-be fighters should watch Fightland's documentary, "The Art of the Stance"

On Sunday night, the New York Daily Newswrote about Rumblr, reporting that the founders of "Tinder for fights" had claimed their app had "relatively substantial funding from private American investors." The founders pledged—or threatened—to unleash the app Monday at 5 pm EST.

Rumblr was fake, of course: anything that baldly anti-social was bound to be fake. But there was that one beautiful moment of possibility in which it seemed it was not fake and that some entrepreneur had decided to sell short on the idea that humanity was inherently good, and had cynically made an app that would have let strangers fight the shit out of each other. I genuinely think people would have used this until someone figured out a way to make it illegal.

To their credit, von Hughes, the company behind the prank, played it straight until the last possible second. Even in the face of a Business Insider story confidently announcing "The 'Tinder for fighting' app Rumblr is actually just a marketing stunt" and the fact that @getrumblr, the Instagram account associated with the app, didn't actually exist, the von Hughes people told me in an email that the app was "100 percent real" and that they'd love totalk to me after the app launched.

In the interest of journalism and not at all in the interest of making up for the certified pussification of my past, I signed up for the app as soon as it dropped, even before I could confirm its veracity either way. I gave myself a username (@fuk_u_bro) and a bio ("i'm not here to fight online, i'm online to get in fights"), and got to Tinder-for-fighting-ing. I was ready to fight some fools (and probably get beat up).

As soon as this fellow named @dudecati started chatting me in generic tough guy-isms, I realized that whole thing was definitely a sham. But still, it was pretty fun to try to talk shit to this robot-man.

Alas, then this happened:

It turns out Rumblr was the result of a creative consulting agency looking for a bunch of free, media-supplied publicity.

The team behind Rumblr spoke to me on the phone following yesterday's Big Reveal while they were sharing an Uber to Times Square. All three of them claimed to be college dropouts (one, Matt, told me he was 18) who made Rumblr as a portfolio piece to showcase their design, coding, and marketing skills.

"The joke's as real for as long as it can be," said a member of the von Hughes team who identified himself as Matt.

A developer who said his name was Andrew told me, "The original idea aired rather than before."

Follow Drew on Twitter.

This story appears in the November Issue of VICE.

This August, Mikhail Lennikov surrendered himself to the Canadian authorities after evading deportation for six years. An ex-KGB agent, Lennikov sought refuge in Canada after outing his old affiliates, but he was denied asylum and was meant to be deported in 2009. A day before deportation was scheduled, however, Vancouver's First Lutheran Church granted him sanctuary. And authorities just let that ride.

Governments have historically accepted some form of sanctuary, whereby criminals touch holy ground, call base, and mitigate secular punishments, for centuries. But modern states (and even most modern churches) have long rejected allowances for the practice, making Lennikov's case seem anachronistic. Yet he didn't pull this holy hat trick out of nowhere.

Over the past few decades, dozens of refugees have sought and attained sanctuary from deportation in churches in both the US and Canada. This was especially common in Canada in the 1970s, when Americans fled the draft, and in the US in the 1980s, when hundreds of churches extended sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing political turmoil. But even today, a couple dozen churches in both nations still run sanctuary networks, openly promoting the refuge they offer as a stopgap to counteract the effects of reactionary immigration policies.

According to Sean Rehaag, a law professor at Canada's York University specializing in refugee issues, these churches evade crackdowns because they flout, but do not break, laws. "Sanctuary does not prevent the state from enforcing , it is not clear that they're doing anything illegal."

That's a passive form of sanctuary. But American and Canadian authorities still find themselves functionally stalemated by it. They don't want the PR-nightmare optics of storming a church. Instead they try to wait immigrants out—often failing and making limited accommodations to those in churches.

Yet Rehaag thinks that if dangerous criminals (not just cuddly immigrants) use sanctuary, the public sours on churches, or too many people seek protection, this might override trepidation about making a scene. Knowing this, churches tend to turn away most sanctuary applicants, accepting only sympathetic and politicized cases like Lennikov's. But given the vagaries of politics, even this subtle sanctuary could collapse at any moment. So if you're fleeing justice in Canada, don't count on the church.

Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. Still via IMDB

In the 60s and 70s, Raquel Welch was the It Girl. She was young, beautiful, a successful actress and Golden Globe winner. But by 1980, her career was basically over.

She had been suddenly and awkwardly fired from MGM's production of Cannery Row, which MGM said was because she had been difficult and temperamental on set. But it wasn't her dismissal as much as Welch's ensuing lawsuit against MGM, which dragged on for six years, that would ruin her career for good. Welch came out on the other side with a win of $10.8 million—and a career that would never fully recover.

Today, 35 years later, Welch's lawsuit seems to foreshadow the one facing Kesha, who is currently locked in a legal battle that threatens to stretch on for years, taking her youth and her relevancy with it. The suits themselves are fairly different: Welch was protesting unfair professional treatment; Kesha's case has a frightening personal element to it. Welch sued because she was dropped from a contract; Kesha is suing because she can't get out of one. But both women sued in a desperate, wounded attempt to reclaim what was theirs—even though it put their careers at stake. And as Kesha's lawyer recently warned that if Kesha isn't allowed to release an album soon, her career will be over, the situation seems eerily reminiscent to Welch's.

Raquel Welch in Hannie Caulder. Still via IMDB

Welch rose to popularity in 1966, when she was cast in the film One Million Years, BC. The promotional poster featured Welch clad in a deer-skin bikini, and the image instantly launched her status as a sex symbol. She worked steadily, appearing in about 30 films after One Million Years, BC. But she wanted to act in more serious roles, instead of the bombshell beauties she typically played.

By the time 1980 rolled around, Welch was 40, and the perfect serious role was finally available. MGM was turning two of John Steinbeck's novellas (Sweet Thursday and Cannery Row) into a feature film, and the character Suzy, a prostitute, was just the sort of part that Welch longed to play. Plus, the director and producer wanted an actress with name recognition, and Welch had that in spades. She jumped through a couple of unusual hoops to get the role: She auditioned, which was uncommon for established actresses, and she agreed to do nude scenes, which until then she had refused to do.

And it paid off—she got the part. Principal photography for Cannery Row began on December 1, 1980, but by December 4, the film was already behind schedule and $84,000 over budget. Welch, who already had a reputation for being strong-willed, had made a few special requests on set: She wanted a trailer big enough for her hair and makeup artists, and she wanted an extra hour to get ready in the mornings before her set call, because she liked to do a preparatory routine that involved yoga.

All of this was approved by the studio beforehand. But when filming started, Welch's makeup trailers were too small for her crew, so she asked the production manager if she could get ready at home. According to Welch and witnesses, the production manager was totally fine with her request. After all, she was never late for her set calls, and the producer had even called her at home to compliment her on how she looked in the dailies.

On i-D: Seriously, How Is Hollywood So Obviously Sexist?

So it came as a total surprise when Welch received a hysterical phone call from that same producer, warning her that she was about to receive a letter from the president of MGM accusing her of breaching her contract.

That December, MGM sent Welch the dreaded letter, which said she'd been "terminated due to Welch's failure to comply with her contractual obligations." They went on to replace Welch with Debra Winger, who cost less and was 15 years younger. Welch, of course, was devastated, and believed that the studio had simply used her name to pull in funding for the film, and then kicked her off in favor of someone younger and cheaper.

She sued MGM, and the lawsuit stretched on for almost six years. It was ultimately decided in Welch's favor, but her film career had stagnated. Her reputation had been trashed, and she'd only gotten two acting jobs in those six years: A made-for-TV western called The Legend of Walks Far Woman, and a Muppet video, in which she played herself. It's true that she won what she'd asked for—reparations—but she lost six of her prime acting years, and her career never bounced back.

She spent the rest of the 80s and 90s acting in TV movies; later, she would become the face of a wig company, called HAIRuWEAR. Earlier this year, she told Closer magazine rather cryptically, "I don't look back. It's impossible to live up to your former self."

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In many ways, Kesha is nothing like Welch—she's a glitter-bombed pop star to Welch's screen siren—but they've both risked everything by suing companies much bigger and more powerful than them. When Welch decided to sue MGM, her friends insisted that she "shouldn't take on the big boys." And in Kesha's lawsuit, Sony Music itself has called it a "transparent and misguided attempt to renegotiate her contracts." In both cases, their reputations were at stake.

Kesha signed with producer Dr. Luke when she was 18, and this eventually led to her hugely popular first album, Animal. Beneath the surface, though, their professional relationship was allegedly plagued with contention and dread. In October 2014, she brought a lawsuit against Dr. Luke, in which she asserts that he abused her emotionally, sexually, and professionally.

The claims being made against Dr. Luke are scary, graphic, and have been well-documented on the internet already. There's an account of him allegedly plying Kesha with the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate, which he called "sober pills;" there's an account of him allegedly screaming at her until she ran, terrified and barefoot, down the Pacific Coast Highway. He allegedly refused to renegotiate her contract for her second album, despite the fact that in the music industry, platinum-level success like hers usually leads to new negotiations between artist and label. He even supposedly threatened to kill her dog. Dr. Luke denies these allegations and has filed his own lawsuit against Kesha.

Read: Kesha, Slut Shaming, and the Tyranny of Pop Music Patriarchy

At the end of October, Kesha's lawyer, Mark Geragos, filed a court injunction requesting that Kesha be allowed to record new music without Dr. Luke–something her current contract forbids. The wording is strong, almost panicked: "Kesha now faces an abysmal decision: work with her alleged abuser... or idly and passively wait as her career tick-tocks away... Her brand value has fallen, and unless the Court issues this injunction, Kesha will suffer irreparable harm, plummeting her career past the point of no return."

Kesha even has an affidavit from the former president and CEO of Universal Music Group Distribution, Jim Urie, to emphasize just how badly she needs to start recording again. "No mainstream distribution company will invest the money necessary to distribute songs for an artist who has fallen from the public eye, as is happening to Kesha at this very moment," Urie wrote in the affidavit. "Accordingly, if Kesha cannot immediately resume recording... her career is effectively over."

As the lawsuit drags on, Kesha is watching the peak years—or months, even days—of her relevance slip away, and there's not much she can do about it. If her case drags on like Welch's did, there may be no more yodeling, no more glitter canons, no more disheveled hair and green lipstick for her. In turning to the law for independence, both women found themselves even more trapped: caught up in a protracted system that wreaked havoc on their "brand value" and their professional aspirations.

On the day Welch won her lawsuit, she told the press: "I think what this shows is that it's important to stand up for your rights, and I hope that women in and out of Hollywood stand up for their rights when they feel they've been wronged." In hindsight, the quote is chilling and ominous; a warning that when women in and out of Hollywood stand up for their rights, they pay for it.

Follow Tori Telfer on Twitter.

(Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kevin S. O'Brien via)

Here is everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

• Mizzou Students Force Out President
  The president of the University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe, has resigned. It follows months of complaints by students about Wolfe's indifference to racism on campus, which reached a head when the football team said they wouldn't play until he quit. —CNN

• Blow for Obama's Immigration Plan
  A federal appeals court ruled against President Obama's plan to shield five million people living in the US illegally from deportation. An appeal to the Supreme Court is now the Obama administration's only option. —The New York Times

• Fall in Dropout Factories
  A report out today shows an estimated 750,000 students drop out of high school each year, down from 1 million. The Education Secretary said the goal over the next five years is to "eradicate dropout factories". —The Washington Post

• 300 Veterans on Death Row
  One in 10 death row inmates are US veterans, according to a new report. The Death Penalty Information Center study estimates 300 former military personnel are on death row, some who have been diagnosed with PTSD. —NBC News

International News

• Suu Kyi Wins Majority
  Aug San Suu Kyi believes her National League for Democracy (NLD) party has won 75 percent of seats in Myanmar, enough to form a parliamentary majority. "The people are far more politicized now," she said. —BBC News

• Russia Accused of Doping
  A World Anti-Doping Agency commission report has recommended Russia should be banned from all athletics competition. It accuses Russia of running a "state-supported" doping program. —AP

• Saudi Executions at 20-Year High
  Saudi Arabia has executed at least 151 people this year, according to Amnesty International. It exceeds the number of beheadings in recent years, usually no more than 90, because more judges have been appointed to clear cases. —The Guardian

• Police Camp Shooting in Jordan
  A Jordanian police captain shot dead two US government security contractors, a South African trainer and two other Jordanians at a police training facility. The captain was then killed in a shootout. No word yet on the motive for the attack. —Reuters

(Screen shot via)

Everything Else

• A Native American Tribe Just Burned Its Weed
  Fearing a federal raid, South Dakota's Sioux panicked and burned its entire marijuana crop. The tribe had hoped to open a pot resort but wanted to avoid a raid that might have damaged equipment. —AP

• Trumps Suggest Starbucks Boycott
  Donald Trump has blundered into the row over Starbucks' Jesus-free cups by asking: "Maybe we should boycott Starbucks?" One evangelical leader claimed Starbucks "hates Jesus" because the red holiday cups have dropped Christmas decorations. —CNN

• South Park Takes on Cop Violence
  This Wednesday's episode of the animated series will see the town's residents abolish the police. One of South Park's officers says "not all cops are racist, trigger-happy assholes." —The Huffington Post

• Biohackers Put Lights Under Skin
  The cyborg revolution is underway. The biohacking collective Grindhouse Wetware are implanting LED lights under their skin (warning: the post contains graphic images). —Motherboard

Fed up of reading for now? That's cool, don't sweat it. Instead, kick back and watch Mobile Love Industries, a film we made about how smartphones have completely changed the way modern relationships function.

Ivan Henry and Tanya Olivares leaving the BC Supreme Court in August. Photo courtesy Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

When Tanya Olivares was nine, her father, Ivan Henry, was arrested by Vancouver police for a string of heinous sexual assaults. She wouldn't see him outside the walls of a prison until 27 years later, in 2009, when the courts determined that he had been wrongfully convicted.

To Olivares, though, it was too late. She and her family had already paid the price.

"People say, 'Oh you're lucky because you're weren't in prison and you're not living how they're living,' but I live in my own prison. I've lived here for years," she told VICE.

Olivares, now 42, is the mother of two grown children. She said that her children have both suffered greatly because of their grandfather's imprisonment, largely due to her own demons. The long-lasting grief from the loss of both her mother and sister to drug addictions has significantly affected her emotional well-being, especially when trying to be a stable and clear-headed parent. Similarly, she now has to live in a world where her father is free from prison but not from the paranoia he developed from being there for so long. Both aspects have had a tremendous impact on her psyche and her approach to raising her own children.

"It's just such a big problem because you think that you just lock the guy up and put him away and he's gone," she said. "But it's not that easy. It affects everybody who's left behind and all the people connected to them."

Back in 1983, when Henry was taken away, Olivares was living with her mother and her sister in Vancouver in what she describes as a "perpetually unstable" living environment. Her mother tried to protect Olivares and her sister from the gritty details of her father's whereabouts and condition by downplaying the case at home.

During the early years of her father's imprisonment, Olivares said her family was constantly relocating to different locations around the Vancouver area in order to evade death threats and harassment that bombarded them after the news broke about her father's arrest. But every new locale required a new, more-believable swath of lies that Olivares had to make up to keep the truth about her father from slipping out.

"We had a lot of questions from kids I would meet and, you know, they would ask me where my dad was and I would have to come up with reasons, other than saying he was in prison of course, because I was very embarrassed."

"I finally came to the conclusion that saying my parents were divorced didn't work because then they'd say to me, 'Well, why don't you go visit him?' or 'Where does he live?' It's at that point that I just started to tell them he was dead. That he was gone and he wasn't coming back."

The lies, she said, were crushing. When the release of a report urging for Henry's acquittal made news in 2006, the details of his case were plastered across the internet for all to see. In response, Olivares said she panicked and immediately tried to get ahead of the grapevine by reaching out to friends and family she had lied to, all in a desperate attempt to retain their trust.

"I remembered all the media from when I was a kid and thought that this was going to go haywire," she said. "I scrambled and had to start telling to people, which was really difficult. Like, 'Oh, by the way, all these years I've been lying to you. Here's the truth.' It was incredibly heartbreaking to do, I still don't know how some of them feel."

As time went on without Henry in their lives, Olivares' mother's drug addiction strained on the family. When I broached the topic, Olivares voice lowered and became arrhythmic as she talked about the final years living with her mother, between 1988 and 1990.

She noted that while school was often the best place for her to be because it allowed her to "escape the house for a while," she was constantly worried about what she would find after coming home. Often she'd come home to find her mother high and passed out on a table or the floor.

"Who knows? She could have been really stoned, she could have been dead herself. My mom nearly overdosed a gazillion times," she said. "It was just a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear. We were always living white-knuckled in terms of what was going to happen next."

Despite multiple attempts at weaning her mother off drugs, they eventually killed her. Olivares was just 17, and her sister Kari, only 15 at the time, was left entirely under her older sibling's care. Olivares told VICE that their extended family abandoned them, except for her grandmother on Henry's side of the family, whose only impediment for taking care of them was location. The grandmother lived in Regina, Sask., and Olivares and her sister needed to stay close to their father in BC.

The weight of living on their own took a huge toll on her and her sister as they struggled to survive and figure out their lives growing up without parents to guide them along. Olivares told VICE that, ever since her father went away, she never felt like she had a true childhood. She said that almost all of her days were riddled with fear and worry about the uncertainty of her future, the well-being of her sister, and the mixed emotions she had because of her father's imprisonment. He wasn't there to be with her and that hurt, but she also believed her father to be innocent, and that wasn't something she was ready to give up.

For years, Olivares' only connection with her father was through handwritten letters and the prison landline, the latter of which was a rare blessing considering he spent some of his earlier years in solitary confinement in a prison outside the province.

She would see him in person for the first time since his imprisonment in 1994, four years after her mother passed away. This prompted Olivares and her sister to begin petitioning the province to have another look at his case, a battle they fought right up until his release in 2009. It was during that time that Olivares' sister also became addicted to drugs, which ultimately ended up killing her earlier this year.

Today, Olivares and her father are entangled in a vicious legal battle with the BC government and the City of Vancouver for compensation to make up for the nearly three decades Henry spent unjustly behind bars. Just this week, the lawyer representing the city of Vancouver made a scathing argument to the BC Supreme Court to deny Henry's compensation based on his previous track record of crime prior to being locked up (which included attempted rape), making the argument that even if the sexual assault charges were unjust, he would have ended up in jail anyway.

Although Henry hasn't told Olivares about what he experienced while locked up, she assumes the worst from what she's observed while living with him. Henry, who Olivares says lives in "constant paranoia" from his time in prison, often wakes up in the middle of the night on alert. He yells from nightmares and hurts himself in his sleep. Overall, Olivares describes his imprisonment as a "generational problem."

"My dad, you know, he won't have conversations with me regarding his treatment in prison. I take it that it wasn't very good," she said. "I mean, he has told me some things, but he restrains a lot, just like I won't tell him many details from what I suffered from growing up. My dad still struggles a lot with the thought of having missed so much of his life with us, I don't want him to feel worse than he already feels by giving him all the details of the stuff I had to go through with my mom, and I think he does the same with me."

Despite everything—the struggle she had growing up, the loss of her mother and sister, and now the fight for Henry's monetary compensation—Olivares says what she wants back the most is time. She acknowledges, however, after everything that's happened, it's something that can't be returned.

"I have to speak on behalf of my sister as well, because she's not here anymore to speak for herself and that...Y'know, not having your father in your life for all those years and especially knowing that he was in there unjustly. It takes a profound effect on every part of your life. My sister and I didn't know what it was like to have a complete family, to grow up whole. That hurts more than anything."

"Nothing will bring back those years. Nothing's ever going to change—they're gone."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

We love Magnum Photos. Look: we even have a column called "VICE Loves Magnum" (which contains 20 different galleries of some of our favorite work from the world-famous photo agency) to really nail the point home.

So when we were offered some exclusive images from their new online project, we said, "yes please." For "Up Close & Personal: The Most Intimate Photos from Magnum," over 60 of the agency's photographers and artists were asked to interpret the theme of intimacy and pick an image from their archive that exemplified that interpretation. From yesterday until this Friday, November 13, you can buy every chosen print, signed or estate stamped, for just £66 each.

Below is a selection of some of the work on sale, with explanations from the photographers as to why they picked the photo they chose.

Richard Kalvar

"What could be more intimate than a Tokyo sex school (whatever that is), particularly lesson 437B, the 'Sucking of the Toes'? I spent five months trying to become intimate with Japan, but even when I got very close, I remained on the outside. The glass wall of language separated us. I could see inside, but not really understand what I was seeing.

It might have been better if I knew what was going on here. Or maybe not, because in my ignorant curiosity, I had to look harder and let my imagination play. So we became more intimate, in an unexpected way."

Thomas Hoepker

"I took the picture in the fall of 1983, at sunset at the old docks in New Jersey with a view towards the World Trade towers in New York City. I had heard that there was a traditional Lovers' Lane, a meeting place of young people in their cars, bringing booze and sometimes drugs. The sun was setting and the towers across the river were glowing before it became too dark to take more pictures."

Nikos Economopoulos

"Some years ago I was tracing aging storytellers in the Aegean islands. I came across this 90-year-old woman in Karpathos, one of the remotest and most pristine places in the country. She welcomed me into her modest abode with immense generosity and trust. Among her few belongings, there was this bird; a toy that someone had left there. It stuck out, as it was perhaps the only thing that didn't have some very specific use, so I asked her . Her eyes lit with joy. She asked me to follow her outside, to show me all the things her bird could do in plain daylight. And there she stood, on the little terrace overlooking the vast sea, playing with her bird as innocent and blissful as a small child."

David Alan Harvey

"Intimacy can manifest itself in a photograph literally, showing actual intimacy between people, or be implied in the image through an act of deep internalization. A bit more mysterious... a tease, maybe?

For years as a photojournalist, my job was to be didactic, but now my tack has changed: I still believe in bearing witness, yet I am way more inclined to leave my audience with unanswered questions. Why does everything need to be resolved? Isn't there great pleasure in imagining what might be happening?

I am too involved, too much a part of the story, for my work to still be considered photojournalism. Yet perhaps the new work may still fall into some interpretations of documentary. I don't care. I'm simply on a river that's taking me wherever it goes."

Constantine Manos

"This photograph, which might be entitled 'First Encounter,' was made on Main Street in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1988 during the annual Bike Week—when thousands of bikers pour into the small town to ride their bikes around and have fun. Main Street was lined with parked motorcycles, their owners perched on the seats watching the parade of roaring bikes go by. Looking for pictures, I had my eye on this female biker with a beautiful body when a male with a beautiful body approached her. Cutting out the faces, I concentrated on the handshake: the first encounter of two bodies. When I left, they were engrossed in deep conversation. Who knows what happened after that?"

Burt Glinn

"Chicago, Illinois: Two young protestors rest outside the convention hall during the turbulent 1968 Democratic Convention. Burt Glinn was a staunch Democrat from a left wing family. He covered the 1948 Republican and Democratic conventions when he was barely out of college at Harvard University.

Also, by this time, he had already completed two years of service in the Army. Burt captured many fiery, passionate, and unselfconscious moments on the convention floor with the delegates. I was very sorry that he didn't live to see Barack Obama get elected in 2008. Burt was a big believer in Barack's socially liberal and democratic sensibilities."

– Elena Glinn, widow of Burt Glinn

Cornell Capa

"Many photographers find that to make a living they have to shoot pictures as 'professionals,' producing work classified as commercial, about which they don't really care beyond the obvious; they pursue their personal work, the photographs that engage their feelings and that provide satisfaction 'on the side.'

I have been very fortunate. The photo essays I shot for Life and other magazines not only gave me a steady, albeit modest, income, but also were my personal work. For me there was never any distinction between commercial and personal. I worked on stories that interested and excited me, stories about which I had strong feelings and high hopes, and I directed all my talents and energies into that work."

— From Cornell Capa. Peter Fetterman Gallery, 2002

Antoine D'Agata

"Beyond the fundamental hypocrisy of photographic production that feeds on human misery with the pretense of disseminating information or raising awareness, the proliferation of compassionate iconography neutralizes discernment, tames brutal instincts, and induces the risk of safe intimacy and deceit under the autocratic reign of appearance.

I choose to adopt hacker strategies, forging a secret, illicit, immoral language, deconstructing protocols built by the hegemonic ideology with the explicit intention of contaminating, perverting, and destroying it. The act of photographing accepts no compromise: It involves pushing the physical limits of life and possessing the world through absorption and adsorption.

Photography is a source of disorder because it carries within itself the seeds of action, unleashing the rage that makes bearable fear and desire. To be, to love, to think, and to suffer are no longer enough. One has to be a saint or a mad man."

Tim Hetherington

"It's hard to imagine Tim not making an intimate picture. He approached everyone with curiosity and an open heart that few could resist. He left behind a world of people who knew him as a friend, however brief their encounter. Tim met Jonathan on the streets of Kinshasa in 2001. Jonathan had been living on the streets for five years, having been bullied by his stepmother. Tim's notes tell us that his dream was to learn to write and to be a good father."

— Stephen Mayes, Tim Hetherington Trust

Carolyn Drake

"I find that intimacy comes from conversation, and on good days that may lead to an unexpected moment. After spending three days tracking bears, wolves, and insects with Çagan Sekercioglu, I ended up at his bird banding station in a village near the Armenian border. Çagan is an ornithologist and conservation biologist. The challenge was to make a portrait of him together with the tiny birds his team was banding—people and birds exist on different scales. At his suggestion, borne out of the time we spent together, I stood outside of his trailer while he released the tiny birds from inside."

See more from "Up Close & Personal: The Most Intimate Photos from Magnum" and buy the prints here.

Norris Greenhouse Jr., left, and Lieutenant Derrick Stafford. Photo via Louisiana State Police

Last Tuesday night, around 9 PM, Megan Dixon argued outside of a bar called TJ's Lounge in Marksville, Louisiana, with her fiancé, Chris Few. After the spat, she sped off with a friend while Few went to pick up his autistic six-year-old, Jeremy Mardis, from a relative. Later, the couple met up at a stoplight, and Few got out of his car at the intersection in hopes of coaxing Dixon into coming home.

"I wouldn't do it," she later told the Guardian. "I'm stubborn."

That was the last time the three of them were together.

Soon after the stoplight exchange, two black-and-white cars with flashing lights pulled up behind 25-year-old Few and his son, according to Dixon. A chase ensued, followed by a confrontation outside of a state park that left Few shot in the head and his child dead after being riddled with bullets. The official accounting of the incident remains murky at best, and it's fair to wonder how either of the officers who allegedly shot at Few and his son still had their jobs in the first place.

On VICE News: Was the Pinochet Regime Behind Pablo Neruda's Death?

On Friday, 32-year-old Derrick Stafford, a lieutenant with the Marksville Police Department, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23 and a full-time city marshal in nearby Alexandria, were charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. Both officers were working as part-time deputy marshals at the time of the shooting, a gig usually associated with serving court papers rather than shooting at civilians. Both had also been repeatedly accused of callous violence in the past.

Easily the most startling accusation: In October 2011, Stafford was indicted by a grand jury on charges of aggravated rape against two different women, according to The Town Talk, a local paper. However, the case was dropped in May 2012—the same year that Stafford allegedly broke a 15-year-old girl's arm when breaking up a fight.

Stafford and Greenhouse, Jr. have also been accused of inflicting mob violence. In 2013, a still-pending lawsuit claims, they helped pepper-spray a crowd of people.

This July, a man named Ian Fridge sued the city of Marksville and a slew of officers—including Stafford and Greenhouse Jr.—after he was arrested an an Independence Day event. The libertarian was arrested for carrying a gun, resisting arrest, and assaulting Stafford. In a complaint, which is embedded below, Fridge alleged that officers antagonized him by saying things like, "You definitely aren't a local boy" and that he shouldn't have a gun because "there are women and children around."

Later, Fridge alleges, the officers pinned him, Tasered him, and then deleted a phone recording he had on his phone that captured the encounter.

The Associated Press interviewed Few's lawyer, Mark Jeansonne, who said that as of Monday, his client was still in the hospital and did not yet know his son had been killed.

Adding to the confusion surrounding the case, local District Attorney Charles A. Riddle has recused his office from investigating because one of his prosecutors is the father of Greenhouse, Jr. Greenhouse and Few also apparently knew each other prior to the fatal encounter, CNN reported. The state attorney general's office is poised to pursue the case instead, according to the AP, and bond for both officers has been set at $1 million.

One of the key pieces of evidence for that prosecutor to rely on is the footage from the body camera worn by a third responding officer, Marksville Police Sergeant Kenneth Parnell. Neither Parnell nor Lieutenant Jason Brouillette, another city marshal who was at the scene, have been charged with any crimes, and they are not believed to have fired their weapons. Local cops only recently began wearing the cameras, Mayor John Lemoin told CNN.

Colonel Mike Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, has already seen that body cam footage, which allegedly shows Few putting his hands up before the officers unloaded.

"It was the most disturbing thing I've seen," he said. "I will leave it at that."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Marksville Police v. Ian Fridge

Image via Wikimedia Commons

World attention is focused on Myanmar right now, as the results of the nation's first free election in 25 years are being released. And it's looking like it's going to be a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League of Democracy (NLD). On Monday afternoon, Htay Oo, acting chairman of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—which has held office since late 2010—conceded defeat.

At present, it's still unclear whether the NLD will form a majority government. In order to do so, they need to gain 67 percent of the votes, as 25 percent of parliamentary seats are automatically allocated to the military.

Many never thought they'd see the day Myanmar, also known as Burma, would hold another democratic election. In the 1990 general election, the NLD also won a majority, but the military rulers refused to acknowledge their victory and subsequently held Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years. Elections held in 2010—boycotted by the NLD—established a quasi-civilian government, ending almost 50 years of direct military junta rule.

VICE spoke with Dr. Nicholas Farrelly, director of the Myanmar Research Centre at the Australian National University, to see what this watershed moment means for the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

VICE: The NLD look set to win this election. What are the implications for the citizens of Burma?
Dr. Nicholas Farrelly: The implications are threefold. First, everybody's been waiting a long time for a chance to have their say about how their country is run and the vote on Sunday is the best chance they've had to send a message to the authorities in the past quarter century.

Second, it's an opportunity for the NLD, which of course has never been able to hold any meaningful power, to show what it can do when it's forced into heavy duty negotiations.

And third it gives everybody a really strong impression of just how much has changed in Myanmar these past four or five years. It's worth mentioning, that as recently as November, 2010, the country held a general election, which was profoundly undemocratic. The election that's been held this past week looks to have perhaps scraped a pass mark. It's not the most credible election that's ever been held, but it's certainly a great improvement on what happened back in 2010.

The R2D2 heels in question. All photos via Irregular Choice.

Describing the shoes Dan Sullivan designs as "eccentric" would be to do him a disservice. his shoes look like they were designed by an eight-year boy let loose for the first time in the arts and crafts section of a Toys "R" Us.

Sullivan is the founder and designer of Irregular Choice, which sells shoes to help you "stand out from the crowd." In case you don't use your footwear to say, "I'm wacky, I am," what this means in practical terms is shoes with Yoda figurines in the heel, yours for £195 plus shipping.

Irregular Choice hit the headlines recently in the UK after Labour MP Angela Rayner used House of Commons-headed notepaper to fire off a faintly threatening complaint letter when she failed to get her hands on a pair of sold-out £195 Star Wars–themed heels with four-inch R2-D2 heels.

We reached out to Sullivan to find out about his customers, his craziest designs, and how exactly he incorporated a flashing lightsaber and Darth Vader sound effects into a pair of shoes.

VICE: Hi Dan! Where do you get your inspiration?
Dan Sullivan: I get ideas in my sleep, or when I'm falling asleep. That half-awake, half-dreaming time is really productive. Or sometimes when I'm on a plane, or walking around with my earphones in. I just let my mind wander to see how creative I can be. But having the idea is the easy part. The hard part is actually making the shoe.

So how do you actually incorporate R2-D2 or a flashing lightsaber into a shoe?
We start off modeling all the effects in 3D. Then for the Star Wars collection, we sent the mock-ups to Lucasfilm, and they checked it and said "Yoda's eyes need to be a bit bigger," or whatever. Then we send the images to the heel maker, who hand-carves the prototype in wood. He's done bunny heels, ice cream heels, unicorn heels, Santa heels for us; the lot.

Tell me about the famous Star Wars collection.
For the Star Wars launch, we had people traveling through the night to get to the store for the opening. We had one lady who flew down from Scotland, ran to the shop, bought her shoes, and flew back straight away. Another woman started saving her money for the Star Wars collection as soon as it got announced, before she even saw the shoes online. There are so many people who are just beautiful fans.

Why do you think Angela Rayner liked the R2-D2 heels so much?
I don't really want to comment too much on the letter specifically. But those R2-D2 shoes were our best-ever seller. We sold out the entire run—3,000 pairs—in half an hour. Apparently they're being sold on eBay now for £400 .

What is it about R2-D2?
Everyone loves R2-D2! He's the cutie, isn't he? It's his cute voice! He's got that Japanese feel to him, too.

I'm more into the Yoda shoes.
Yoda's one of my favorite characters. Other people had done Yoda prints on shoe uppers before, but I wanted to come at it from a different angle. So many people think that Star Wars is just masculine, but it has such a big female following, too. So I wanted to see what we could do with heels—I wanted the Yoda heel to be the big feature.

How technically challenging are these shoes to make?
On the Star Wars heel we've got speakers and lights in the platform. So you press a button and it makes lightsaber sounds or R2-D2 sounds. It's really challenging to get the speaker and lights into the platform of the heel, I've never heard of anyone else doing that. We had wanted the Darth Vader voice, but unfortunately Lucasfilm wouldn't allow it. Something to do with copyright issues.

What's the most difficult shoe you've ever made?
Maybe the Balletomane wedge. A friend of mine asked, a few years ago, when are you going to make some ballet pumps? She just wanted the standard ballet flats everyone wears.

And I thought, what if you take a ballerina music box, and put the ballerina inside a Perspex heel, like she's in a glass cupboard? And when you wind up the heel, the ballerina twirls around and it plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," like a music box? It was difficult to fit that all in, but we got there.

Can you tell me a bit about the kind of customers you have?
We've had customers who've moved house so they can convert a room into an Irregular Choice room for all their shoes. One lady told me she'd been offered two jobs, and she took the one nearer our Carnaby Street store so that she could walk past our window every morning.

There are collectors who spend tens of thousands of pounds on the website each year. This lady in the shop the other day, she told me that she'd bought 56 different versions of this one shoe we do. She said to me, "Every time you do a new color, I buy it." I didn't even realize I'd done 56 colorways of that shoe.

Related: Watch our new film 'Unicorns' about London's hedonistic polyamorous unicorn movement

How comfortable are these shoes to actually wear?
We try not to cripple people with what they're wearing, so we have test models based in our factories in China. But we design all the shoes over here in the UK.

We know that a lot of people don't like wearing high heels. For example, if you're a hairdresser you don't want to be walking around in heels all day. So for them I'd probably recommend the C3PO or Darth Vader flats.

Your shoes are really out there—for example, these light-up unicorn trainers. Is anything too much?
Every girl loves a unicorn, don't they? But we wouldn't do anything just for the shock value, or swear or be rude. We're about fun. It's all about being on the rainbow side of life.

Your shoes definitely attract attention.
My shoes are "wow" shoes, definitely. A good friend of mine met her fiancé because she was wearing a pair of my "I Love You" heels in a bar. A guy came up to her and was like, "I love your heels," and now they're engaged.

I think, if you're wearing something fun, it makes people happy. People think you're more approachable when you wear something nice, you know. I'll walk around in a jumper with a bunny rabbit on it, and people will smile at me.

Everyone else just walks around, so busy in their own worlds. But when you show off your fun, creative side, people are more open to you! When you have hearts on your heels—well, hopefully they will bring you love.

Follow Sirin on Twitter.

A Calgary police officer. Photo via Flickr user Thank you for visiting my page

Calgary police recently addressed gang violence in the city in light of two shootings that went down in residential communities. Two men were injured in the targeted hits; no one died.

During a press conference, the cops said the 50 to 100 or so gangsters operating in the city are a new breed, a "fluid group" less identifiable than what we'd see in the past.

"The old days of 'blood brothers forever' and the signs—we are not seeing that in Alberta anymore," said Staff Sgt. Quinn Jacques of the Guns and Gangs Unit. Police chief Roger Chaffin added, "They could be standing beside you, in the same bar as you...you wouldn't look at them and say, 'Hey, there's a gang member standing there.'"

It seems the cops may be getting their frame of reference from The Warriors because, at least according to Simon Fraser University criminology professor and gangs expert Robert Gordon, organized criminal groups in Canada haven't been operating like that in decades.

"They're not the street gangs of West Side Story," Gordon told VICE.

"The last time there was any significant street gang activity with people running around wearing different colours—that sort of classic American inner urban street gang activity—we haven't had that since the late 80s, early 90s."

Calgary's Jacques also warned the public that these newfangled gangsters don't have the same principles as old school gangs.

"They are, I hate to say it, but they are thrivers. They develop relationships with who they need for what they need, and once that is no longer of value to them, they move on."

Again, according to Gordon, this is nothing new. Essentially, gangsters are entrepreneurs operating in the same area and taking advantage of the market (mostly for weed). He shut down the cops' theory that the recent downturn in the oil patch economy may have played a factor in the boom in gang activity.

"They're really just organizations or groups that are concerned, primarily I'd say, with the illegal drug trade."

As for why they aren't branding themselves outright, Gordon said "because that's a stupid thing to do."

The police stated that people "could have and should have died" in the two shootings, and are predicting an 80 percent increase in weapons seizures in the city this year. But they seem somehow surprised that gangsters are turning to gun violence to sort out their disputes. In particular, Jacques said, "It's new that we see criminals bypass all reasonable methods of settling a dispute and escalate right to guns." He said the suburban location of the shootings put everyone at risk. "These people are so irresponsible and so evil... that they would just shoot one another in a residential area when people are tucking their kids into bed, reading them a bedtime story and they have bullets whizzing through their nursery."

The rash of violence might be new to Calgary but using firearms to deal with enemies is "standard" in the drug trade, said Gordon, pointing out there's no "dispute resolution centre" for gangsters. It also feels somewhat alarmist to conjure up the image of bullets whizzing through a baby's room, when that's not even close to what happened in these two incidents. Yes, at some point innocent people might get caught in the crossfire of a shooting, but preemptively predicting that scenario borders on fear-mongering.

Gordon told VICE the statements sound "like an attempt to leverage the situation to get more funding for police in Calgary" and that increased enforcement isn't likely to be very effective in combatting the problem. Marijuana legalization, on the other hand, "will kick the legs out from underneath a lot of these groups."

While the police are rightfully concerned about the violence in their city, holding a press conference filled with speculation, misinformation, and fear-mongering hardly seems like the most effective course to plot.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Police at last week's Million Mask March

After a bit of a lull, London's had a busy couple of weeks for rowdy mass street gatherings. Halloween saw huge crowds descend on a building in Lambeth for an illegal rave, and last Thursday thousands of people in masks tried to change the world by setting some flares off in Westminster.

If you saw the police response to either, you'll have noticed the officers up the front getting to know everyone with their batons. However, once everyone's gone home and night has turned to day, another group of police will be put to work—those who can identify someone purely by his nose, or from his distinctive lope as he makes his getaway. No gadgets, no state-of-the-art drone technology, just a room full of men and women whose memory for facts and faces would make them lethal at a pub quiz.

These officers—"super recognizers" (SRs), as they're known in the Met police force—are increasingly being used to crack the toughest crimes, from a single cold case murder to policing problematic events or clearing up arrest warrants from a riot.

In a nondescript room at New Scotland Yard, a small team will be staring hard at screens of images—snapshots of faces covered by hoods, noses peaking over scarves, and glimpses of tattoos appearing under shirts—all taken during the two disturbances to have hit London in the past ten days. Full-time officers with a special skill for memorizing faces they barely know, they'll be trawling through to see if any details spark a recognition of a previous offender; very often they only need a tiny part of someone's face to get a successful conviction.

The Million Mask March in Westminster was supposed to go off peacefully—as was the Scumoween rave in Lambeth—but after factions from each event got a bit out of hand, police will have collected all the CCTV and online footage that focused on the affected areas for study. From there, the net will start to close, especially if anyone captured in photos or videos has been nabbed before. The Met police make 250,000 arrests each year, but with many being repeat offenders (500,000 crimes per year in the UK are committed by re-offenders) the same characters turn up again and again. Across London's 32 boroughs, many might evade capture if they took their crimes across town, but now—with a collected group of memory officers analyzing faces—they soon get pulled in.

Super Recognizer Co-ordinator Paul Smith of the Central Forensics Team says these memory cops are vital to police work. "These guys can spot a crook even on the grainiest CCTV footage, recognizing a suspect just by their gait, a glimpse of their eyes above a scarf. Anything," he tells me. "We can then do the police work to double-check they were there and get them prosecuted. I've seen a super recognizer recall an offender's date of birth, cell number, and cohorts just from a glimpse of a CCTV image."

Police officers hanging out at Notting Hill Carnival

At big crowd events like protest marches or Notting Hill Carnival, with the help of CCTV, these SRs can identify 170 suspects a week in the capital. Even on individual high-profile cases—such as the Alice Gross murder in west London—the super recognizers can make the breakthrough. Despite there being some 600 officers used in the original search for the missing schoolgirl, it was only a team of super recognizers exhaustively studying CCTV footage that not only located her body, but also drew attention to prime suspect Arnis Zalkalns.

Any suspect who has been arrested by a super recognizer will have had more than their fingerprints taken. Smith says, "It's a very intimate thing arresting someone. An officer might have to detain someone in the street and hold them there, take them back in the van to the cells. They interview them, keeping eye contact seeing if they're lying. These super cops will remember every detail—if they see them again, they'll know."

The success of the super recognizer cell was born out of the London riots of 2011, which damaged 48,000 businesses across London. The Met had hours of CCTV footage depicting offenses being committed, but no way of identifying who those committing the offenses were. A summit of the Met's best memory men were called to mop up hundreds of suspects. Police chiefs initially hoped they might single out a few dozen outstanding warrants, but what happened was extraordinary: hundreds of cases were solved in one fell swoop. One officer, PC Gary Collins, used his 20 years experience working with gangs in Hackney to make 180 identifications after the riots.

Read on Motherboard: Are Photographic Memories a Hollywood Myth?

But the job isn't as simple as seeing a face and having a moment of instant recognition; it can often require studying reels of film for hours, says PC Collins. "I had watched hundreds of hours of the riot footage but there was one guy we couldn't get. It's hard enough anyway, as nearly all the riot footage was at night, the CCTV footage was grainy and there are people in the way. He had a bandana over his face and was wanted for robbery, vandalism, all sorts. He also committed a violent assault on a passerby. Very often a crook will keep the scarf over their face, but then, after the crime, take it off and you get a view of their face. This guy didn't."

After studying the film, PC Collins finally caught his man, Stephen Prince, a 23-year-old from Hackney who was jailed for six and a half years for a number of offenses, including assault, burglary, arson, and theft. "It took weeks of watching tapes," says PC Collins. "We'd get a bit of an eye, then his nose, cheekbones. Then he'd get his mobile phone out and that'd be another piece of the puzzle. We'd study his build, clothes. Finally, I cracked it. I finally got a picture of what he looked like and we could bring him in. I was really proud of that—we'd worked so hard to get him and we caught him a whole year after he thought he'd escaped."

Related: Watch our new film about the 'Cleveland Strangler'

Others soon followed, despite thinking they'd escaped. Joel Lettmann, 24, and Huseyin Onel, 20, were also nabbed months after their role in the riots for multiple burglaries and violent disorder, respectively. "It's very satisfying. These crooks think they've got away and then suddenly they get a knock on their door and they're hauled in," says PC Collins.

Super recognizers have also been used preventatively in London, fishing troublemakers out of crowds before then can do any damage. In October of 2013, pickpockets lifted 140 phones from an Arctic Monkeys gig in just one night. Police were led to believe a professional pickpocket gang were deliberately targeting Monkeys gigs as fans wouldn't be suspecting people that knocked into them mid-song. When the band rolled into Earls Court a few weeks later, the Met carried out a sting that scooped up dozens of known pickpockets before they entered the site. That night, there were only a handful of thefts reported.

Bizarrely, there is one major gap in the super recognizers knowledge: ethnicity. DCI Mick Neville of the Central Forensics Team says that—even if it isn't a politically correct statement—human beings are better at identifying their own race than they are others. "It's backed by science that we do need more ethnic officers to help us have a broader range identifying different suspects," he says, adding: "Super recognizers are providing a vital service not only in catching offenders but also in totting up all their offenses—we can now pinpoint offenders for multiple crimes rather than just a few."

Follow Andy Jones on Twitter.

A screenshot from the CCTV footage of a teenager attacking an 87-year-old woman

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

There's no doubt that recently, some young women have behaved appallingly. On Monday, a major story broke in the media of a teenager punching an 87-year-old on a bus in Croydon, London. A 14-year-old girl was arrested after CCTV footage surfaced, but what does it prove? Enter The Rise of Female Violence—a BBC3 documentary which aired on Monday night, and which tried to unpick the issue of this alleged Very Modern Problem.

There was plenty of stuff to take away from the documentary—mostly in the form of astonishing anecdotes. But, despite wanting to "challenge our perceptions of gender," the show relied on gender stereotyping that undermined itself at every turn.

Its premise is that "girl violence is on the rise." Except, it isn't. Or at least, they can't find any statistics that really prove it is. And why is this a now problem rather than a five-or-ten-years-ago problem? Because Solange appeared to attack Jay-Z in an elevator in 2014, Rihanna made the Bitch Better Have My Money video, and some blurry footage of women brawling has been uploaded to YouTube fairly recently. That's why. While ignoring the fact that women have been violent since forever (from Boudicca to Rose West), this program focused on modern women. The makers seemed quite surprised that women can be assholes and worked backwards to find out why ladies are getting rowdy outside a bar instead of, I don't know, staying at home and doing tapestry.

While no real evidence is used to show that this is something on the up, there are some extraordinary stories. One Leeds bouncer says that he once saw a woman attack a man with a stiletto and it got stuck in his head. As in, the spine of the heel was sticking into his skull. And there does seem to be a consensus among bouncers that women are becoming more aggressive. But there were none of those boring old facts and figures to make it all stand up. We're told that knife crime is up 13 percent, and one in three cases of domestic abuse has a female perpetrator, but that doesn't tell us very much about women.

The Leeds section of the program isn't a dead loss though, because it's here that presenter Alys Harte introduces us to Izzy—aka Isabella Sorley—who was jailed for sending abusive tweets to feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez. Izzy, as she's referred to in the program, "reckons she has around 30 convictions" for drunken, violent behavior. While this is pretty attention-grabbing, if only for its vagueness, we're also told about Izzy's serious problem with alcohol that leads to her waking up in police cells time and time again. But it's difficult to know what to do with her story. She needs help, and she is advised to stop drinking altogether. At the end of the program, she is spared jail after fighting three police officers, attacking a detention officer in prison, committing a racially aggravated assault, and attacking a hospital worker. Some argued that she was only let off because she's female. It's tricky to know where her story fits into a supposedly uniquely female narrative.

Elsewhere, the film explores some interesting ideas about how we view gender and violence. In a hidden-camera set-up featuring two actors in a London park, people barely flinch when the female actor slaps the male actor across the face and screams at him, but they are deeply concerned when it's the other way round.

After the show aired, this prompted some predictable "shoe being on the other foot" commentary on Twitter. But this isn't just about "reverse sexism"; rather, it's about what our society expects of men. It expects men to be strong, to be in control of any situation, and, above all, expects men to have no emotions whatsoever. Suicide is the leading cause of death for all men under 50 in the UK, and many have linked this to the weight of expectation and lack of sympathy for men in society.

Again, the math department at the BBC comes out with another statistic that doesn't tell us very much—that while women account for 15 percent of arrests, they make up only 5 percent of the prison population. The show winds its way to the conclusion that female violence is always taken less seriously, but there are statistics that undermine this. Keep in mind that 80 percent of women in prison are there because of non-violent offences, and that women ultimately receive harsher treatment from the Criminal Justice System than men for equivalent crimes. Consider, too, one 2009 survey that found that despite the fact that the vast majority of domestic violence perpetrators are male, women are three times more likely to be arrested for incidents of abuse.

It wouldn't take a gender studies undergrad to notice that throughout the show, the word "girls" is used in lieu of "women"—whether describing teenagers or twentysomethings. And it truly grates. It conjures up the image of four-year-olds in fluffy party dresses kicking ten shades of shit out of each other, when it's really adults with difficult pasts drinking way too much or losing their minds and stabbing their sister.

What The Rise of Female Violence really shows is that splitting people into "girls" and "boys" achieves very little. Ultimately, these are ugly, everyday human problems. Drinking too much. Having a violent upbringing. Feeling like you're not respected. Pack mentality. Mental illness.

Instead of clinging to the sugar-and-spice or slugs-and-snails ideas of what we're supposed to do, it would be much more sensible for us to accept that girls—sorry, women—can be every bit as scary, violent, and irrational as men. If there's a moral to the story, this is all there is.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

Diane Bond. Photo by Patricia Evans

"It's like a nightmare," she said. "All I did last night was cry."

Those were the words of 48-year-old Diane Bond to Chicago journalist Jamie Kalven in April 2003. At the time, Bond was a single mother of three living in one of the city's last public housing high-rises, and Kalven was reporting for an online publication out of a vacant unit. During their conversation, Bond confided that a group of tactical police officers had assaulted her and ransacked her home the previous evening.

Because of their reputations for brutality, these officers were known on the streets as "The Skullcap Crew." At Kalven's urging, Bond filed an official complaint against the officers.

Neither Kalven nor Bond could have expected what happened next.

Bond filed a civil rights lawsuit and won a settlement in 2007—the city admitted no wrongdoing, of course—and a watershed court decision in Kalven's name came down last year. In that case, Kalven v. City of Chicago, police misconduct records previously kept sealed became public record.

Related: City of Silence

"Ms. Bond wanted more than anything to prevent officers from hurting others the way that they hurt her," said Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who represented Bond. "We had to find a way, and Jamie Kalven stepped up to lead this fight."

The coup of long-embattled information has now given rise to the largest known repository of police disciplinary records, a new online data tool that launched this week in Chicago. Dubbed the Citizens Police Data Project, it aims to serve as a national model of accountability for law enforcement. Amid a national push to open up policing to more scrutiny—23 states still keep police disciplinary complaints confidential—the project puts Chicago near the front of the pack when it comes to documenting how cops avoid punishment over misconduct complaints.

"In Diane Bond's case, she endured a series of horrific abuses by the hands of the same officers," said Samantha Liskow, a civil rights attorney who served on the legal team in both Bond's suit and the Kalven case. "That's the kind of thing that data can blow the lid off of."

The Citizens Police Data Project houses more than 56,000 misconduct complaints for more than 8,500 police officers. The interactive tool is a product of a collaboration between the Invisible Institute, a production company on the South Side of Chicago—where, full disclosure, I work as a journalist—and the University of Chicago Law School's Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. The database includes three pools of information garnered through Freedom of Information (FOIA) and civil rights litigation for dates ranging from 2001 to 2015.

As you might expect, the data shows a significant pattern of racial bias, with black Chicagoans accounting for over 60 percent of total complaints against cops, and less than 25 percent of sustained—or not dismissed—complaints. Less than 3 percent of allegations lead to disciplinary action, with even lower rates for officers charged with high numbers of complaints.

Other revelations from the newly released data: Punishments for rogue cops are not aligned with the seriousness of the offense. The average discipline for administrative violations, such as having secondary employment, was 16.5 days. Meanwhile, of 40 officers accused of sexual assault, just one was fired, seven resigned, and two were suspended—for a matter of days.

The data also shows the majority of officers—82 percent of the total force—receive only zero to four complaints over the course of their law enforcement careers. Where the bulk of the alleged misconduct occurs, however, is among "repeaters," those officers with more than ten complaints, who represent more than 10 percent of the Chicago Police Department and yet receive 30 percent of all complaints—four times the amount as the rest of the force.

"What police officers do on the job is a crucially public function. How they behave has huge importance to the lives of many citizens," Liskow said. "Residents of certain neighborhoods where abuse is rampant completely lose faith in the department."

But Kalven hopes that this new data project does not further disillusion or disenfranchise affected communities. Rather, he seeks to inspire them to participate in the process of civic accountability by requesting and sharing records and reporting their experiences, as the Invisible Institute has done through its human rights documentation project, Youth and Police.

"Transparency doesn't happen on its own," Kalven said. "It's up to us as citizens to make it happen and address abuses when they occur. Information is critical to our ability to do that."

The data project is growing as more records become public, but the police union has waged its own legal fight to block public access to the full archives of Chicago police disciplinary records. Earlier this year, the city agreed to turn over its list of misconduct complaints for all officers, dating back to 1967, but an injunction secured by the Fraternal Order of Police has barred officials from releasing all but the last four years of data. The Invisible Institute filed an amicus brief in support of the City's position to release the records, arguing they are critical to charting the path to police reform in Chicago.

"We're trying to prevent a bonfire of records," Futterman said. "These records document a history of police torture; they reveal patterns of police abuse, and they save innocent peoples' lives."

Follow Alison Flowers on Twitter.

Check out more from Julian Glander at his Twitter, Instagram, and blog.

eSports team Ninjas in Pyjamas collect a check after winning a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition. Image via Wiki Commons

Craig Barry is very aware that others have tried to put video games on TV before him and failed. MTV. USA. NBC. ESPN. Next in that of alphabet soup of networks is TBS, who starting early next summer will be digitally broadcasting 30 hours of eSports per week during ten-week tournaments, with two-hour live broadcasts on Friday nights.

"I don't think that we're looking to change the landscape of how people consume eSports," the Turner Sports executive vice president and chief content officer tells me. "We're looking to expand it."

Though eSports is a massive industry with a $612 million global market value and countless fans, that audience tends to remain a digital one. To wit: over two million people tuned into the Twitch stream of this weekend's BlizzCon, while a mere 120,000 people tuned into ESPN's April broadcast of Blizzard title Heroes of the StormHeroes of the Storm.

TBS isn't particularly worried about coming out of the gate with a massive audience, Barry tells me. "I think, in the past, we've seen some people trying to change the approach of what they thought eSports should be on a different platform and I don't think that's the way to approach it all," he says.

The difference in Turner's plans, Barry says, is that they're not looking to horn in on what's already in place. This means tethering their eSports hopes and dreams to the first-person shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive and building the audience for their eSports league both online and on TV. "You have to keep the structure and the authenticity from a digital platform and just make sure you can translate that correctly to a linear one," he says. "It really starts with a philosophy and understanding of the space, how important that authenticity is in the space, and not to fuck with that."

Watch the first part of our documentary on eSports

The next eight months are crucial for the Turner eSports team. They're looking to leverage their already existing digital products—Bleacher Report, NBA.com, NCAA.com—to promote and build momentum for the forthcoming eSports league. More importantly, Barry and company are producing their roster of on-air talent, signing teams, meeting with partners, and trying to find ways for everyone to benefit from what he often refers to as the "ecosystem" they're building.

Despite TBS's best intentions, there are others who see TBS as another name to add to the flop list. "When televised eSports have been attempted in the past they've usually been done very poorly, and then the concept of eSports was blamed when bad shows inevitably failed," eSports Today's Andrew Groen told Atlanta's alt-weekly Creative Loafing after news of Turner's initial deal broke.

"We're not naive to the platform we feel is the most dominant to eSports, which is digital," Barry says, adding he felt that whether or not it's broadcast on TBS or a MacBook doesn't necessarily matter to today's gamer, or any sports fan for that matter. At the heart of any competition, whether participating or spectating, are emotional connections, something he believes his team will provide. Barry says the approach is analogous to how ESPN worked to establish its Ironman World Championships as something someone who doesn't necessarily give a shit about freakishly strong humans can enjoy, saying that ten years ago the competition was solely focused on the contestants' feats of strength rather than their story.

With that in mind, the TBS team recently traveled overseas to document the transition of the Australian branch of the Renegades gaming crew from their homes to Las Vegas. "These people are leaving their friends and families and they're going in search of fortune and fame. We've heard this story," Barry says. "This is not a new narrative for people who are trying to leverage a skill or talent and try to chase their dreams, and that's a really important part of what's going on in eSports."

He says TV's failed in the past because of the wrong reasoning behind it. "TV's not a replacement; TV's an addition," he says. "We're still completely committed to the digital space, but if we have an opportunity to introduce eSports to a wider audience and create an experience that may be a little more dynamic or has a little bit different of angle on it we should be able to explore that. I think people should be open to that."

Follow Gavin on Twitter.

Richard Lapointe leaving Connecticut Superior Court on October 2 after learning he wouldn't be re-prosecuted for murder. Photo by the author

Trying to strike up a simple conversation with Richard Lapointe can be difficult. The 70-year-old has Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a congenital brain disease that gives him an intellectual and physical handicap. It messes with his balance, his hearing, and makes him super gullible. I met him about three times before he recognized me.

Yet this is the same man who prosecutors say raped, stabbed to death, tied up, and set fire to a Connecticut woman in 1987.

Lapointe was freed on bond in April after spending almost 26 years in prison for a crime he was never tied to by forensic evidence. And even though prosecutors last month decided not to try and re-convict him after the Connecticut Supreme Court said he deserved a new trial, they still seem to think he's guilty and refuse to admit they were wrong, a testament to a glaring lack of accountability exacted on prosecutors across America.

Since 1989, only 1,700 inmates have been exonerated in the US, and cases like this one raise the question of what, exactly, prosecutors should do when they get a case so wrong for so long.

Lapointe now lives in a group home, barely able to walk on his own power. Until he was swallowed up by the criminal justice system, he worked bagging groceries or washing dishes in the town of Manchester, near Hartford. He had a wife, who was also disabled and a son. Since his imprisonment, he has been estranged from both.

On March 8, 1987, his then-wife's grandmother, 88-year-old Bernice Martin, was found dead inside her apartment in town. She had been stabbed 11 times, but an autopsy suggested she died as a result of strangulation and smoke inhalation. The murder went unsolved for two years, until detectives made Lapointe their suspect and arrested him in July, 1989. He went on to face a jury trial in 1992, was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Since then, his case has attracted attention from local journalists, concerned citizens, and activists who make it their business to fight wrongful convictions. These advocates pointed out that the state's case against Lapointe was based on three bogus confessions he signed during an almost ten-hour long marathon interrogation session in which Lapointe was nudged by detectives into admitting his "guilt." The interviews were not recorded and he had no lawyer with him. Detectives told Lapointe things that weren't true, like that they had evidence linking him to the murder. They falsely said his wife told them he did it, and that maybe he had a blackout, according to his supporters.

"It is a kind of brainwashing," said Steven Drizin, a clinical professor at Northwestern University School of Law. "For most suspects, especially suspects who are naive and trusting, like Richard Lapointe, they don't understand that police officers are allowed to lie. And when they are told there is evidence against them that links them to a crime, it sends them into a crisis."

At the end of the interrogation Lapointe signed a statement that said, "If the evidence shows that I was there, and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don't remember it."

Lapointe went to prison because the jury at his murder trial bought the manufactured confession. His advocates fought and fought for him while a succession of prosecutors made sure he stayed behind bars. But this past spring, the state Supreme Court upheld an appellate court ruling that Lapointe deserved a new trial. The court ruled that a detective's note detailing the burn time of the fire that would have supported Lapointe's alibi, was withheld by prosecutors at his original trial. That sort of evidence is known as "Brady material," information that could point to a defendant's guilt or innocence. Lapointe said he was at home watching television when the incident went down, and the note referred to the account of two fire marshals whose assessment of the blaze seemed consistent with that.

On October 2, prosecutors announced that they were dismissing the rape and murder charges, but stopped short of calling it an exoneration. Due to what the state said was the sheer passage of time, contaminated evidence, and a lack of living witnesses, it would not be able to prove that Lapointe was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Despite my decision to nolle the charges today , it is the state's belief that the defendant is responsible for the assault and killing of Bernice Martin. The evidence submitted to a jury led to such a result, the conviction was based on sound evidence, and subsequent appellate court decisions do not change the state's view of the evidence," Hartford Prosecutor David Zagaya said in court, adding that "this is no way an exoneration by the state."

Lapointe's name has been entered into the National Registry of Exonerations, a database of people in America who have been wrongfully convicted and subsequently cleared. Yet prosecutors maintain they conducted a fair and just investigation.

"There never was or has been any allegation that the police investigation or the prosecution of the defendant involved misconduct on anyone's part," Zagaya said in court. But if withholding a piece of evidence at trial, or coercive interrogation techniques isn't misconduct, then what is? "I think it's blatant misconduct, and they're getting away with it," said Don Connery, an independent journalist who writes about wrongful convictions.

If Lapointe is innocent, who killed Martin? At this point it seems likely that we'll never know; the case is officially closed, though Connery maintains that it should be open since the real perp was never found. (The Hartford State's Attorney's office did not respond to a request for comment.)

The theories are out there, including that the man responsible is a man named Frederick Merrill, who was dubbed the "Peanut Butter bandit" after escaping from prison in Connecticut because his mother sent him a jar of peanut butter with a gun inside. Witnesses say he was seen at an area bar the weekend of the Martin murder. Someone also reported seeing a man matching his description fleeing from Martin's apartment the night it was set fire. Three days later, Merrill was arrested after a brutal killing a few miles away that bore an eerie resemblance to Martin's. Again, an older woman was raped, stabbed, and tied up. Merrill was never questioned by local police because he escaped and fled to Canada, where he committed another sexual assault, and escaped from jail in Toronto by sliding down a drainpipe. Eventually, he served a 12-year prison term there and is currently in Connecticut state prison.

Check out our documentary about late VICE Prison Correspondent Bert Burykill navigating the outside world upon his release from behind bars.

Entering the world again as an ex-con is always strange, but Lapointe's condition adds an extra layer of difficulty. In the time I've spent with him I've seen his mind get blown over and over again. I watched him take his first selfie after leaving court. Every time he saw my iPhone, he asked if he could have it. He was in awe at the small size of cars, and shocked at the news that his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, won three World Series while he was locked up.

But even as he began to taste freedom, Laponte remained paranoid at the specter of the criminal justice system swooping him up at any moment and hustling him away to prison again. Before each court date, I watched him ask if he was going back in. Supporters told me he even tried to jump from moving cars on his way to appointments. After dinner, he was always quick to clean up, a job he was responsible for in prison. It's safe to say Lapointe is still a prisoner in his mind.

Lapointe's life is still not back on track—all he wants, he told me, is a regular job where he can go back to working with his hands. His supporters aren't satisfied with the outcome, even though Lapointe has been freed and even though he might get a payday from Connecticut if he sues over his conviction. And the worst thing, his advocates say, is that no one was held accountable.

"The state of Connecticut has won," Connery told me. "They have managed to put an innocent man in prison for over a quarter century and paid no consequences."

Follow Justin Kloczko on Twitter.

Illustrations by Alex Jenkins

It happened again. I hooked up with someone—this time, it was an adult skateboarder—who repeatedly told me he wanted to see me again. This foolishly made me believe he might want to see me again. Rather than respond to my text two days later, he chose to pull the digital version of that scene in every teen movie where one pretends to be a lifeless mannequin while on the run from mall cops. Weird, he was just here a minute ago...

The kids these days call it "ghosting," though I'm partial to saying that I was "mannequined." Whatever the term is, it's not a new dating phenomenon. Having a perfectly nice date/romantic encounter with someone, promising to see that person again, and then proceeding to ignore their attempts at communication as if they were a debt collector is the oldest trick in the book. If you haven't been ghosted, you either have some sort of freakishly impeccable dating life and I hate you, or you have no dating life at all and I pity you.

Read: I Interviewed Four Women Who Rejected Me to Find Out What's Wrong With Me

It's not the dating dead-ends that bother me. I've been on countless subpar first dates where neither one of us chose to follow-up. That's not ghosting; that's just life. What I'm talking about are instances where I thought we were both feeling each other, and then never heard back from them again. Is it really so hard to reply to a text?

I decided to track down some of the men who've ghosted me to finally get some real answers. Sadly, the adult skateboarder declined to participate—he's still pretending we never met. But a few others did agree to answer the questions that have been on my mind for quite some time. Here's what they had to say. By the way, these names have been changed, because duh.

Mike

I met Mike two years ago, through mutual friends. Then, last year, we saw each other at a party and hooked up. We spent most of the next day together. He drove me home, we exchanged numbers, and I texted him in an attempt to repeat our hook-up. He never replied.

VICE: How do you think our time together went?
Mike: I think it went well. You're a cool gal and I've always had a good time hanging with you.

Right, so then... Why didn't you text me back?
The main reason is that, at that time, the thought of any sort of relationship was scary to me.

So you decided it'd be better to ignore me than tell me that?
I remember we had a conversation about the way I was feeling early on. After some time had passed, I remember you sending me a very straightforward text, and I told you how I really respected the directness of the message but wasn't interested.

Have you done this to other people?
Yeah, I've been on first dates and then never bothered to see them again. I always try my best to communicate my feelings in situations like this. If we don't sort of just stop talking to each other, and that person is actively trying to pursue something with me, I will definitely tell them how I feel.

Did I give off any red flags?
I really can't think of any. I also felt like we were feeling mutual about not being interested in pursuing anything further.

Have you ever been "ghosted"?
Yes. It's a little annoying to get no response from someone. It's even more annoying if that person expressed interest in seeing you again, especially if they say "I'd like to see you again" or whatever the case may be. Being lied to isn't a nice experience for anyone.

Watch: Maureen O'Connor Dishes on the Messed Up World of Online Dating

Peter

Peter and I met a few months ago on Tinder. We went on one date, which was pretty decent, and we ended up making out. I attempted to go on a second date, because I personally believe it takes more than one date to really feel someone out. But obviously that didn't happen, because I was (say it with me) ignored.

VICE: What did you think of our date?
Peter: I thought we had a good first date. It felt like we had similar opinions on a lot of things, similar views on the people and situations around us. I thought we communicated well and were pretty honest about why we were on Tinder and what we were looking for. I enjoyed meeting you, learning about who you are, and spending time with you, and thought that you reciprocated some of those feelings?

Well, yeah. So why didn't you text me back?
I'm on Tinder and I go on dates and try to meet people with the hope that I'll find something a little healthier than a casual relationship. I haven't met many people on Tinder so far that seem like they're in a similar place as I am, so most of my Tinder experiences have been casual and short-lived. Although I felt pretty good about our first date, I didn't really see us having something that would end up replacing the casual relationship I have with my ex right now.

Why did you choose to ignore me rather than tell me how you felt?
I probably should've been more clear about what was on my mind, but I usually tend to ignore problems or conflicts until they go away or until I'm forced to deal with them. And that seems to be the default way to tell someone on Tinder that you're not interested.

That's sad. You didn't feel like you owed me some kind of response?
Yes, a response was probably owed. But my personality unfortunately lead me the other way. I am sorry for that. But people and their thoughts can change pretty quickly, and like I said before, the mercurial nature of online dating and Tinder seems to lend itself to people heating up and cooling off really quickly.

Have you done this to other people?
Yes I have, but not as many times as other people have done it to me! Not trying to justify my actions, just trying to give them context.

So you've been ghosted too?
Yes, many times, all of those situations. And it's always sad. Because you take it personally and rarely get any kind of closure. And it makes me feel shitty when I do it to other people. But I also kind of think that it's part of what makes the online dating scene so appealing? Since you don't have friends in common or weren't introduced through some other channel, it's not the end of the world if you just drop off the face of the earth. I just try to learn something from the experience and move on knowing that if someone "ghosts" me, it wasn't going to be a great situation either way. I don't know, I'm still trying to figure all this out.

Bad News: Online Dating Is Turning Us All Into Tamagotchis

Mickey

Mickey and I have known each other since college. We were never close friends, but we reconnected when he moved to Los Angeles. We hung out a few times as friends and then one night, after plenty of drinking, we went for the hook-up. After that, Mickey and I stopped being friendly with one another. Like, completely.

VICE: Remember that time we hooked up? How do you think that went?
Mickey: Went well. I thought it was hot.

Why didn't you text me back?
I was super nervous about it in the first place. I'm fairly prudish about sex I guess—I haven't slept with anyone since you, not even a kiss. In my head, you were the sexually confident and casual one and I thought I was following your lead into a casual sexual encounter. We'd been friends a while and you seemed open to "hooking up" and I thought, Well, if she thinks this is chill then I guess I can be chill too. When it felt like you were looking for more, I got nervous because that's not how I saw our relationship.

Couldn't you have just said that instead of saying... nothing?
Yeah. When friends tell me they just say what they know the other person wants to hear—because it's easier—I'm bummed on it and tell them they shouldn't do that. Just perpetuates shit.

Have you ever been ghosted?
Sort of. I made out with a girl once, stayed at her place, and she dropped me off at mine in the morning. It was sweet. Then, the next two times I texted her she ignored me. It made me feel insane. It was hard to believe how much it affected me. I remember texting someone at some point saying, "I now know how 'crazy girls' feel!" Then she came into my work and invited me to something with no acknowledgement of her neglect. I felt terrible to be ignored.

Did you know your brain treats rejection like physical pain? Read all about it on Motherboard.

So, there you have it—some combination of oblivion, bad communication, and genuine regret.

Talking to these guys made me realize that so many of our actions in dating are based off assumptions. Rather than say what we feel and letting each other know our intentions, we assume that we're all on the same page about everything. Mike claims to have told me he wasn't interested, but that definitely never happened. On the other hand, I wasn't really interested in becoming his girlfriend, but he didn't give me the opportunity to tell him that. The fact that every single one of these guys had experienced what it's like to be ignored—but still saw it as the only viable course of action—blows my mind.

Of course, I'm also guilty of not fully communicating my intentions, because I'm so often duped by my own assumptions. From now on, can we all just try our best to say what's on our minds—regardless of whether or not that'll end up with you getting naked on someone's bed? Ghosting does not make for a healthy dating environment, and we're helping no one by letting it continue to pollute our sex lives.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

If he becomes famous in the States, Wilson is just waiting to be satirized by Jon Daly. Photo via Facebook/W. Brett Wilson

Read: Inside the 'Asian Men Black Women' Dating Scene

Calgary's city council is voting today on whether or not to allow Uber to operate in the city. Hinging on that vote is the promise of a $100,000 donation to Calgary's libraries, which entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former Dragon's Den "dragon" W. Brett Wilson has promised if Uber is allowed into the city.

The name "W. Brett Wilson" is synonymous in Calgary (and much of Saskatchewan, from whence he hails) with outlandish acts of largesse, like donations to create the University of Saskatchewan's Wilson Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence and to the Southern Alberta Institute of Urology.

Philanthropy is usually a good and in an economic system like ours that leaves public institutions perpetually starved for cash, arguably necessary thing. But to tie charitable donations to political demands gives the obscenely wealthy members of society an unfair advantage over the rest of us. Or, rather, it adds to their many existing advantages. In making this demand, Wilson is showing his hand—he doesn't really give a shit about the library, even though it's an invaluable resource, especially for low-income people.

Wilson says he has no ties to Uber and isn't receiving any money from them, and he's probably telling the truth. As a successful Silicon Valley start-up and embodiment of the new "sharing economy," Uber probably carries enormous appeal for a man who has been called an "ultra-preneur" and will drop a million dollars to encourage university students to follow in his hyper-capitalist footsteps. He probably didn't need any nudging to support Uber's bid for access to Calgary.

Calgary's city council votes today on whether or not to approve Uber's bid to operate in the city, so we'll see soon enough if Wilson gets his wish.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

Read: Shia LaBeouf Did Some Kind of Super Artsy Thing in Los Angeles

Shia LaBeouf is a lot of things—a performance artist, a rapper, a guy who once had a rattail that probably smelled like old towels—but it was the acting that got him to where he is today.

And it turns out that where he actually is today (and for the next three days) is at the Angelika Film Center in New York City, watching every single one of his movies, back-to-back-to-back, and so on. He's even inviting the public to go watch with him, free of charge, in case you feel a strong desire to revisit Holes.

For those of you who don't live in NYC but still really loved Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, worry not—Shia is live-streaming the event, so you can keep tabs on what snacks he eats and which movies he elects to sleep though (smart money's on the Transformers sequels).

The project, which runs 24 hours per day through Thursday, is called #ALLMYMOVIES and is a collaboration between Shia and artists Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö.

If you've got some free time, swing by the Angelika and let Shia know that his movies are fine and all but the project would be better as a week-long marathon of Even Stevens.