A Montreal synagogue. Photo via Flickr user Philippe Du Berger

A Montreal borough has banned new places of worship from opening on its main streets because local officials want to create a secular public space.

The majority (four out of five) councillors in Outremont voted Monday in favour of a zoning bylaw that restricts new synagogues, mosques, and churches from operating on Laurier, Bernard, and Van Horne avenues. Instead, religious spaces will be relegated to the outskirts of the borough, literally near the train tracks.

According Outremont Mayor Marie Cinq-Mars, the policy was created to revitalize businesses in the area; targeting religious groups "wasn't my purpose," she said.

But the hundreds of Hasidic Jews who live in Outremont are calling bullshit. Julius Grey, a lawyer representing two community members, said he will challenge the bylaw in court.

"Outremont's Jewish community is growing faster than other communities, and also attends synagogue at a high rate. It's clear that this bylaw directly targets members of this community, not to satisfy their needs but to threaten them," Grey wrote in a letter directed at council.

Grey said further demographic studies of the area need to be conducted, pointing out that observant Jews can't drive vehicles on Saturday and would need to walk half an hour to reach the strip where synagogues are permitted.

Jewish councillor Mindy Pollak, the lone voice of dissent on council, said the new rules are discriminatory.

"Is ghettoizing a place of worship really something we want to do in 2015 in Montreal?"

Apparently, it is. A petition supporting the bylaw has gained 900 signatures. Daniel Major, one of the authors reportedly said, "We do not want there to be fewer places of worship on Bernard, but simply that there are not more."

I guess that leaves lots of room for something less controversial, like a Trump tower.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user rpavich

Read: We Tried the Most Disgusting E-Cig Flavors So You Don't Have To

A new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that flavoring agents used in electronic cigarettes have been linked to lung disease, shooting further holes in the "vaping is totally safe, bro!" argument.

The study tested 51 types of flavored e-cigs and liquids from leading brands for diacetyl, acetoin, and 2,3-pentanedione—compounds which have proven to pose a respiratory hazard when inhaled. "At least one of the three chemicals was detected in 47 of the 51 flavors tested," the study found.

E-cig flavors like cupcake, cotton candy, and the exceedingly gross-sounding "fruit squirters" all tested positive for the presence of diacetyl, a chemical that causes a debilitating respiratory disease nicknamed "popcorn lung."

Cute as the name may seem, popcorn lung (or Bronchiolitis obliterans) can do serious damage to your insides when inhaled—it got its name after the diacetyl in microwave popcorn started wrecking the lungs of factory workers.

"Recognition of the hazards associated with inhaling flavoring chemicals started with 'popcorn lung' over a decade ago," Joseph Allen, lead author of the study, told the Harvard Gazette. "However, diacetyl and other related flavoring chemicals are used in many other flavors beyond butter-flavored popcorn, including fruit flavors, alcohol flavors, and, we learned in our study, candy-flavored e-cigarettes."

Many of the questions about e-cigs and their effect on health have, in the past, focused too narrowly on nicotine, according to the study.

Karla Diaz and Emilio Venegas Jr. recreate a recipe for prison "tamales." Photo courtesy of Karla Diaz/Prison Gourmet

Karla Diaz is not a chef, but she's gained a dedicated following for the food she makes. A performance artist in Los Angeles, Diaz has spent the past six years demonstrating how to cook dishes like tamales made out of of Cheetos, soup from Corn Nuts and pork rinds, and orange chicken made with instant ramen and strawberry jelly. She doesn't use a stove, a blender, or conventional utensils—just tools that can be built out of trash bags and toilet paper, and ingredients she would find if she were incarcerated. She calls it "prison gourmet."

Cooking in prison is a rite of passage for inmates, and Diaz isn't the first one to bring it to the masses. There's The Convict Cookbook, a collection of recipes from prisoners at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington; Jailhouse Cookbook: The Prisoner's Recipe Bible, written by a chef-turned-convict; and From The Big House To Your House: Cooking in Prison, 200 "easy to prepare" recipes written by inmates at a woman's prison in Gatesville, Texas. In Piper Kerman's memoir, Orange is the New Black, there's a recipe for prison cheesecake—graham crackers, lemon juice, vanilla pudding mix, margarine, and coffee creamer—that inspired a scene in the television series, in which Chang fashions her own croquettes from smashed-up peas, Fritos, and hot water. Even Martha Stewart reportedly learned to cook for herself in prison.

For those who haven't been inside, it may be hard to imagine how crunched-up Cheetos and hot water, molded into something vaguely reminiscent of a tamale, could be worth the effort . But Diaz, and others who've studied DIY prison recipes, say cooking meals in prison isn't really about the taste—it's a reminder of humanity, community, and the person you were on the outside.

Back when Diaz was still an art student, her mentor, Manazar Gamboa—a well-respected poet in Los Angeles—introduced her to his "special recipe," a makeshift tuna casserole that he'd developed during the 17 years he spent in and out of state prisons. He maintained that was his favorite thing to eat. "I think it was tuna, mayonnaise, hot sauce, pickle juice, and then crackers," Diaz recalled. "It was... not good."

But it stuck with her, and when her brother was sent to prison in 2010, she started thinking about what he would eat. The commissary selection horrified her—all chips, Cheetos, and ramen. So she decided to start writing letters to people she knew who were in prison, or had served time, asking them if they'd ever made DIY meals from commissary food.

She turned the exercise into an art piece for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's EATLACMA in 2010, giving a two-hour performance that demonstrated how to make one inmate's version of cell block orange chicken. The recipe was a stomach-churning combination of pork rinds (a substitute for chicken) and strawberry jelly mixed with Kool Aid, which best replicated the color and consistency of orange sauce. At the end of the performance, she offered free samples.

"It tasted terrible," she told me. She wrote back to the inmate who had sent her the recipe and said, This is terrible. How did you get used to that?

She was surprised by his reply. "He said the reason he made that was because it reminded him of the times he used to make orange chicken with his daughter. When he ate it, he thought of the time he spent with her. It was really sweet."

Orange chicken made with commissary food items, based on a recipe from Jason Talavera. The recipe was sent to Karla Diaz by Talavera's daughter Sheris. Photo courtesy of Karla Diaz

To date, Diaz has received over 200 recipes from prisoners in California. Most of them are extraordinarily precise, and get inventive in their cooking techniques: "I use a six-by-six paper box, a 12.5 oz cereal bag (with no holes), a plastic bowl as lid, and a stinger (a utensil for boiling water with electricity)," wrote a man in Corcoran State Prison, detailing his method for cooking beans and rice to make burritos. An inmate from Tehachapi State Prison described using a towel to insulate cooking items: "Add two 16 oz. cups of hot water, then tie off the bag and warp it up in a towel and set it to the side for up to 30 minutes to let it fully cook through."

There's a recipe for menudo, a traditional Mexican soup, that substitutes in pork rinds, chili lime-flavored Corn Nuts, and a package of tortillas. Another recipe, for tacos, uses the flavor packet from a chili-flavored Top Ramen package to add spice to refried beans and instant rice. There's one for makeshift sweet and sour pork, which combines pork rinds with a sauce made from jelly, Kool Aid, plus one Top Ramen seasoning packet and a healthy dose of imagination.

"All of these letters are from inmates in California, so it's all West Coast recipes, Mexican recipes," Diaz told me, adding that she plans to expand the Prison Gourmet project next year, during a residency at Tulane University in New Orleans. "I'm excited to go down to the South to see what kind of special recipes are there."

Watch: How-To Make Prison Style Sweet and Sour Pork With Andy Roy

The most common recipe Diaz receives is for something called "spread." Making spread is a highly customizable process, but it usually involves a base of instant noodles, topped with crushed chips, Cheetos, or whatever else an inmate has on hand.

Sandra Cate, a professor of cultural anthropology at San Jose State University who has studied the culture surrounding spread and wrote a paper on the subject in 2012, described the meal as an alternative to a jailhouse diet that's typically "bland, monogamous, and insubstantial," and said it reminds inmates of their life on the outside.

Cate's paper, published in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Cultureleans heavily on interviews conducted by her husband, Robert Gumpert, who has spent the past nine years working on a portraiture project based in San Francisco County jails. He goes into jails and offers to take portraits of inmates in exchange for their stories—and often, they wanted to talk about food.

"Most spread is made by boiling water and throwing ramen noodle sin it, and you use those noodles as a base and you combine that with whatever interests you," Gumpert told me. "Whatever your taste buds want—ground-up Cheetos, jalapeños, canned oysters, tuna, Cheez Whiz, Slim Jims, any number of things."

Back when jails were more permissive about microwave use, Gumpert said, he met an inmate who made Chinese-inspired spread by frying noodles in mayonnaise in the microwave. "I had some of it and it was completely... different," he told me. "I mean, we're talking about people who are experimenting."

"In a situation where you have basically zero control of your life, gives you an opportunity to have some control of your situation." — Robert Gumpert

According to his research, inmates make this kind of food for a variety of reasons: Food in the jail cafeteria is bland; mealtimes are awkwardly early (dinner in the San Francisco County jails is delivered by 4 PM) and inmates get hungry at night; eating spread reminds them of the food they ate on the outside. But it's also about having control, in an environment where everything else is decided for you.

"You decide what you buy at the commissary and what you're going to make out of it and how it's going to taste," Gumpert said. "In a situation where you have basically zero control of your life—you're told when to get up, when to shower, when you're allowed to talk—this gives you an opportunity to have some control of your situation."

On MUNCHIES:In Prison, Sharing Ramen Can Be More Powerful Than Gang Affiliation

According to Gumpert, you can go to nearly any jail or prison, in any nearly country in the world, and find its inhabitants making their own version of spread. "I've talked to people in England, and it's there. I've seen it in Mexico, in Asia," said Gumpert. "The recipes are different, but the ingredients are similar."

One place where it doesn't seem to exist is Denmark, where inmates are allowed to prepare their own meals. Last year, Linda Kjaer Minkea, a law professor at the University of Southern Denmark spent 13 months interviewing prisoners in a Danish maximum security prison to evaluate the "self-catering" system, and found that not only did inmates appreciate the opportunity to make their own food "according to their taste and cultural diversity," but Cooking was correlated with better behavior in the prison, and greater self-esteem among inmates.

Karla Diaz and Antonio De Jesus Lopez recreate recipes from "Prison Gourmet" as part of the group show Let them Eat LACMA by art collective Fallen Fruit. Photo courtesy Karla Diaz/Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 2010

The inmates interviewed for Cate's anthropology paper said spread was what helped them get through their time behind bars. One inmate, Max Hackett (who was known as "the pie guy" for his "legendary" DIY apple pie), credited spread for helping him overcome his addiction problems and "focus on good qualities" in his life. "It's like this premier meal of the day," said Trent Mohammed Prader of spread, when interviewed by Gumpert. "It's a top-of-the-line meal, like a filet mignon."

Brennan Owens, another inmate interviewed for Cate's paper, said spread wasn't "something you'd put in a gourmet book. It's something for the jailhouse."

Diaz disagrees. "The idea of 'gourmet' is something high-quality, high taste. That's not what this is," she explained. The ingredients aren't fancy; the technique, although creative, is improvisational. The DIY recipes are special, Diaz said, because of what they represent to the inmates—a chance to feel like a human being again.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Getting all up in that mystery "sauce." Screenshot via Quake Matthews.

In a bold political move that will likely cement his legacy, Halifax Mayor Michael Savage has declared the donair—a mystery meat wrap for drunks—the city's official food.

The decision came after months of discussion, completely useless staff reports and amazing dad jokes like Councillor Tim Outhit's one-liner, "If we don't do this, won't we all falafel?"

Shit got heated at Tuesday's Halifax Regional Council meeting, where local officials debated the merits of giving the saucy meat-and-tomatoes sandwich official status.

According to local journo Jacob Boon, one councillor asked if the donair could be considered "an" official food instead of "the" official food—a distinction that would leave the door open for more publicly-funded munchies-related dialogues at future council meetings. Councillor Bill Karsten, in showing solidarity with the outsiders tuning in to this story, expressed confusion as to whether or not the declaration was "a fun thing" or a "serious thing."

We don't know, Bill. Maybe ask your fellow Councillor Linda Mosher, who led this whole crusade and has been quoted saying things like "It's like a cult, people are obsessed with donairs here."

In the end, it was a nail-biter seven-to-seven vote with Savage weighing in to break the tie, although we think this trashy rap music video—filmed in the famed King of Donair— may have been silent influencer.

Council then moved on to the next item on its agenda: addressing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Gotta hand it to those politicians, they have their priorities straight.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

On Monday, Donald Trump stepped in what appears to be his biggest pile of rhetorical poop yet. In light of the recent terrorist-related attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, the billionaire GOP frontrunner released a statement suggesting a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," a move so next-level extreme that some on Twitter speculated it might not even be real.

Of course, it was, and now, the obligatory Backlash to Something Trump Said has begun. But unlike that time he called Mexicans rapists—or the time he hinted that Fox New's Megyn Kelly was on her period, or when he said a Black Lives Matter protester removed from his rally maybe "deserved to be roughed up," or when he compared Ben Carson to a pedophile, or said American Muslims should be tracked in a database—this time it seems as though the stink may stick. Hell, even J.K. Rowling is pissed.

In a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest offered a stern rebuke of Trump's latest WTF, saying that in addition to being unconstitutional, the suggestion is "toxic" and "offensive," and also referring to Trump as a "carnival barker" with "fake hair."

"What Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president," Earnest told reporters.

The outrage over Trump's remarks isn't limited to Democrats. US Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps looking to get out of the basement of the GOP presidential race, addressed Trump's supporters on CNN Tuesday, wondering what exactly they thought they were getting out of their support. "He's a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," Graham said. "He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for... He's the ISIL man of the year."

Carly Fiorina, who's had her own run-ins with Trump in the past, said she believed he "always plays on everyone's worst instincts and fears" and that not allowing Muslims into the country is a "dangerous overreaction."

Image via Flickr user Christian Heilmann

To address all these complex and important questions, we went to the highest academic authority, random people on the streets of Melbourne.

Ally, 22, student

VICE: Hey Ally, what will 2016 look like?
Ally: I'm seeing lizards. I'm hoping lizards make a comeback in fashion—lizard prints, that would be good to see. I really like lizards.

I didn't expect you to go straight to lizards. I thought you'd talk about politics?
I reckon Malcolm Turnbull is slowly going to reveal himself to be a real keen kind of racist. Inch-by-inch, he'll just slip up. Trust me.

What will we see in tech next year?
I think there's going to be some robot action. Robots are going to make their voices heard in 2016. Honestly, I predict a half robot Australian cabinet by the end of next year.

Sky, 22 and Jade, 23 both unemployed and loving it.

Sky: It's going to be a great year.

That's positive, what's your dream for 2016?
Sky: That Australia says yes to gay marriage.

What kind of technology trends can we expect?
Sky: Jade loves Tinder.
Jade: Shut up.

Don't be ashamed. Tinder's great.
Jade: I've only had it for two days! I'm going to delete it. New year's resolution.

Jack, 19, Gemma, 17 both students

Jack: I really don't know. It's just impossible to know.
Gemma: I'm doing my last year of high school next year, which I'm guessing is going to be stressful.

As teens, where do you see pop culture heading in 2016?
Jack:I feel like perhaps in popular music more experimental stuff is starting to break through into the mainstream.
Gemma: Hoping for fewer Kardashians.

Is 2016 the year we discover life on Mars?
Jack: I feel like that's a 50/50. I know we've found water now. It could happen, hey.

Alistair, 34, software developer

Alistair: I think it's going to be more of the same. Can't imagine there'll be a whole lot different between now and then. I feel like the situation in Syria will continue to simmer, the liberals will be in power, we'll still be talking about the Paris attacks.

Same shit, different year?
Pretty much. Can't see a whole lot of change or progress happening. It's depressing, really.

How about scientific progress? What are you hoping for?
Maybe a cure for cancer. They've got to be able to cure at least one of the cancers.

Yeah, like one of the minor cancers? Surely that's not too much to ask.
I think it's fair.

Thomas, 27, self-proclaimed good guy

Thomas: I think climate change is going to become the number one issue. I just think it's necessary. It's time.

Are federal politicians going to take charge and address big issues like that?
I hope so, but at the end of the day, everything that's bad for the world is run by business.

It feels like you've been thinking about this.
Unfortunately, money rules the world. Watch the documentaries about it, you wake up and realise. I'm not big into politics, I don't even really care, it's easier to sleep at night not worrying about it. I try and do my bit where I can, live a peaceful existence.

Heavy.

Gabby, 17, student

Gabby: I reckon it's going to be an awesome year.

Good for you, nice to see some youthful optimism.
I'm feeling good about it.

What kind of cool developments are in store?
I think that iPhones and smartphones are going to get better.

What's the dream app you want to see in 2016?
Basically an app that makes them more structurally stable. Like, they don't break as easily. Also, would love someone to explain to me what iCloud is next year.

I'm with you. What are your other hopes for 2016?
That Melbourne's weather improves.

Jake, Davie, Tom, Matt, in their twenties, work together at their own fashion label in Sydney

Jake: Next year? It'll probably be full of natural disasters.
Davie: Yeah, heaps of natural disasters.

Oh you're going straight for it. Maybe throw in some celebrity deaths as well.
Jake: I don't want any more Kim and Kanye. That's my hope for 2016. I don't mind Kim, but Kanye is the worst. In my opinion.

Agree to disagree. Will gay marriage be legalised next year?
Jake: Yep, fingers crossed.
Tom: Late 2016, definitely.

Are we going to legalising marijuana?
Tom: Nope, that'll never happen here.

How about driverless cars? Any freaky robot technology?
Tom: I hope not. If so, I quit.
Matt: Yep, I'll move to the hills.

Any dumb food trends? What are you guys eating today?
Davie: We're eating burgers. Probably Japanese will get big, I reckon. And more meat. Heavy meat diets.

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Burgers and dressing gowns, Schoolies 15'. All photos by Chris Stevens.

There was a time when schoolies didn't exist. The Gold Coast in the early 1970s consisted of reclaimed heathland, fibro shacks, and a sprinkling of early high-rises and gaudy hotels. People just finished school then. They didn't go to Queensland and spend a week drinking. They didn't embarrass themselves on Snapchat.

Then a Broadbeach hotel manager named Geoff Lewis changed everything. He took the Spring Break party model from Florida, marketed it around the Gold Coast, and founded an institution. Today Geoff is a 74-year-old retiree, still living in the area, so I called him up to hear the journey.

VICE: Hi Geoff, can you explain how this all began?
Geoff Lewis: So I was the General Manager at the Broadbeach International Hotel in 1975, which has now been torn down. Around November/December business was very slow at the hotel. There just weren't a lot of large celebrations for kids leaving school.

Which inspired you to see what they were doing in the States?
Yeah so back then I would go to a hotel show every year in Chicago. In 1975 I was discussing with delegates in the US what the market situation was like in Queensland. Someone suggested I go to Fort Lauderdale and have a look at Spring Break. So I did and there were these massive hotels, big pools right on the beach, and thousands of students. I couldn't believe it. It was all about pool parties, wet t-shirt contests, egg throwing competitions, and music. The drinking age was 21 and they still managed to get alcohol to everyone. The whole experience left a massive impression on me.

Ground zero. The foreshore.

Did you think something like Spring Break would work here?
Yeah, after Spring Break I was like, I have to do this.

How did you start?
So in 1976 we promoted to university students in Queensland, but specifically about this celebration. I went to Armadale and other universities to put out flyers but mostly news travelled through word of mouth. The only concern I had was getting a liquor licencing extension. Back then we were only licensed until 10pm and in those days you had to make an application for a late license.

Describe how the first schoolies celebrations went down? Did you follow the Spring Break model?
We made it different but there were some things that were the same. Ours were a bit boozier. The celebrations started at 12pm and ended at 12am. We were very well organised. I had an entertainer who hosted. People were singing to American Pie for about a quarter of an hour and The Angels' Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? Including that awful chorus they had.

How many people attended?
There were 500 people I reckon.

Were drugs an issue back then?
There were no drugs that we knew of at the event but yes, there was an issue with people getting drunk. We tried to control it. Initially we had four security guys but we ended up doubling that. It was different to control than today, but if people were playing up we just kicked them out.

Straight to Instagram

How did the police and parents react?
We were really expecting to have university students but we ended up with all these underage kids. I thought the police were going to close us down because of the noise on the first day but we had a chat with the police and they told us we needed to help them identify underage kids. There was no identification like there is now and very few of them had licences but the police were fantastic, they just required signed declarations.

Did schoolies make you rich?
The hotel certainly did very well. During that period of time we doubled the beverage business. We were probably the biggest bulk beer outlet in Australia in those days. It was full on but actually I think the 80s were our peak.

What was your most memorable schoolies experience?
The most memorable in Queensland was when Abigail, you remember Abigail right, from the television show Number 96 ? She was such a huge celebrity back then and her involvement really helped. She was a part of the wet t-shirt contest and all the kids were like, show us your tits! Of course she did.

What are your thoughts on schoolies these days?
What's funny is that I seemed to cop a lot of blame. But in all honesty I think everyone's doing their best to control schoolies. It's a very different situation today. At times I think it's gotten out of hand but I'm happy what they're doing with it. The real problem is the licensing laws. I'm concerned that people can still be drinking in the early hours of the morning. There's just been a massive change in our drinking culture.

Follow Mariam on Twitter

Ronald Johnson's mother, Dorothy Holmes, speaks to media and activists at the site of her son's death last year. Photo by the author

When Lorenzo Davis arrived at the corner of 53rd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on October 12, 2014, he found a familiar scene: A black man had been shot and killed by a Chicago police officer, and detectives were running the show. So Davis, an investigative supervisor with Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), started working outside the crime tape, looking for nearby surveillance cameras that may have captured the incident—the fatal police shooting of 25-year-old Ronald "Ronnie-man" Johnson.

He knocked on doors in case anyone in the graystone apartments that line King Drive across from Washington Park had seen the shooting. Davis hoped to find people milling about the sad scene and to learn what they knew, what they saw, and what they heard. But he found no witnesses and no cameras.

So he waited.

With the announcement on Monday that the Department of Justice is launching an investigation into the Chicago Police Department, there has been much talk from federal, state and local officials about how CPD can and should change. The release of grisly dashcam footage of Johnson's killing on Monday only fanned the flames. But IPRA—where Davis worked following a 23-year career at the Chicago Police Department that ended with his retirement at the rank of commander—has been a virtual afterthought, despite being the body tasked with holding local cops accountable.

At a press conference two weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and since-resigned police Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced the creation of a new police accountability task force, essentially conceding at the agency wasn't doing its job.

"Since then," Davis said of police and the mayor, "they're staying away from talking about IPRA."

The IPRA plays an important, if somewhat vague and secretive, role in Chicago. Each time someone is shot by police, news stories end with, "the Independent Police Review Authority is investigating." But what does that mean? How, exactly, does an investigation work?

The agency does not make its internal policies public, as CPD does with many of its directives, so some in political, media and legal circles have a fuzzy understanding of the procedural work IPRA performs in the wake of an officer-involved shooting—or "OIS," in Chicago police jargon.

But Davis, who very publicly quit IPRA after he claimed former Chief Administrator Scott Ando told him to reverse his findings on three fatal police shootings, opened up to VICE about how the agency operates. (A request for comment from the agency was not returned.)

Davis was the investigative supervisor who worked Johnson's death last October, and his account of events that night not only shows what happened in the wake of the killing, but provides an inside look at just how hard it is to make bad cops pay in Chicago.

After canvassing the scene for witnesses to the shooting—and finding none—Davis says he followed detectives back to the District 2 police station at 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue, where a march and protest over Johnson's death was held Monday night.

The cops at District 2 and other stations had an unofficial policy that IPRA investigators were not allowed to walk freely around the station, Davis told me. So he waited in an interrogation room for his chance to interview the two categories of witnesses—responding officers (or R/Os in police jargon) who saw the shooting, and civilian witnesses who might also have information regarding the incident.

"Sometimes you're waiting for six, seven hours," Davis said.

He had learned through his experience at the agency to ask cops to let him know when detectives and representatives from Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez's office were finished with their interviews. That night in District 2, Davis recalls a familiar scenario: After waiting for hours for his chance to conduct interviews, he finally asked an officer whether the witnesses were available.

"Oh, some of them already left," Davis remembers the cop saying.

This was not an uncommon practice, he claimed.

"They're sneaked out often," Davis said of witnesses, "and you're told, 'Oh, well they went home.'"

Exacerbating Davis's struggles, witnesses were sometimes reluctant to speak with IPRA investigators after being interviewed by detectives and state's attorney representatives—whether because they were exhausted or feared getting wrapped up in the terrifying web of local law enforcement.

"In one case," Davis recalled, "a witness left town after talking with detectives."

Read a first-person account of an alleged police beating in Chicago and its aftermath

Protestors at the National Roundtable on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Ottawa in February 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the Assembly of First Nations to lay out his government's plan for restoring its tattered relationship with Indigenous people. Speaking in Ottawa to chiefs and community leaders, he described the need for a "a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples, one that understands that the constitutionally guaranteed rights of First Nations in Canada are not an inconvenience but rather a sacred obligation."

By noon, the ministers of Indigenous Affairs, Justice, and Status of Women—all women, one of them Indigenous—stood in the foyer of Parliament Hill to launch what is surely the crown jewel of the plan: the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Families and activists have been calling for national attention into the startling rates on Indigenous victimization in Canada for years. While homicide rates have been falling nation-wide since 1990, the proportion of Indigenous female victims has risen—from 14 percent to 21 percent this year. In an echo of the Black Lives Matter movement, the names of each new victim has become emblematic of the systemic tragedy: Rinelle Harper, Tina Fontaine, Loretta Saunders, Cindy Gladue. These deaths often go under-investigated, as though the risk factor of being an Indigenous woman is explanation enough.

Read: Jane Gerster's Series on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Under Stephen Harper's rule, there was steadfast resistance to calling an inquiry. Conservatives often invoked what Americans might recognize as the black-on-black crime explanation: the idea that most crimes against marginalized people are committed by marginalized offenders. Former Conservative minister of the Status of Women Kellie Leitch suggested that 91 percent of Aboriginal women are killed by an partner or acquaintance, likely Aboriginal. (This statistic has recently challenged in an in-depth analysis by the Toronto Star.) The less-than-subtle implication is that "these people" are simply killing each other. It's a classic denial of structural inequality, found in the heartless conservative handbook alongside "Poor People Are Lazy" and "She Was Asking For It."

The most notable aspect of Tuesday's announcement was the change in language from those not-so-distant Harper days.

Tuesday's event began with a recognition from each speaker that Parliament stands on "the traditional territory of the Algonquin people." This practice, standard in much of Western Canada, has yet to become part of Canadian political discourse more broadly. While it may seem like a basic politically correct gesture, it isn't. It's a reminder that our presence is what we call Canada remains in many ways unresolved — it's supposed to be unsettling, not comforting. (The Capital Region is currently involved in treaty negotiations with the Algonquins of Ottawa, which makes this statement less empty gesture, than legal reality.)

Installation Shot from the Show

Motelscape is an immersive installation that appeared inside of the Love Suite in the Miami Princess Hotel on December 4. The show—organized by artists Marina Fini, Signe Pierce, and Sierra Grace—featured custom neon and LED light pieces by Sydney Krause and a commissioned Tumblr curtain collage by Peggy Noland.

Fini, Pierce, and Grace are all artists who build unique worlds through their photos and videos, and the curation of a physical space seems like the next logical step for them. Inside Motelscape, everything can be repurposed and reimagined for art's sake: towels, bedsheets, whatever. Fini debuted a new series of handmade plexiglass furniture that complemented the room's light show. The love motel's heart-shaped bed and jacuzzi, stripper pole, and ample infinity mirrors added to the simulated paradise, and the show was a welcome alternative to the cubicle-esque, white-walled art fairs that have come to oversaturate South Beach during Art Basel.

Below are highlights from the show :

Signe Pierce

Sierra Grace

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Faith leaders in Minneapolis demanding that officials release video recordings of the police shooting of Jamar Clark (Photo via Flickr user Tony Webster).

Everything you need to know in the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

• Pentagon: Trump Endangering US Security
  A Pentagon spokesman has warned that Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric undermines US national security. Peter Cook said talk of banning Muslims "bolsters ISIL's narrative". —CNN

• FBI's Police Shooting Data a 'Travesty'
  Federal investigators are to dramatically expand the information it gathers on police violence, tracking all incidents in which officers injure or kill civilians. One senior FBI official called the current system "a travesty". —The Washington Post

• Supreme Court Reconsiders Affirmative Action
  The Supreme Court today considers a landmark case over the use of race and ethnicity in university admissions. Proponents of affirmative action fear the conservative-leaning court is prepared to strike down the policy. —USA Today

• Chemical Giants in Merger Talks
  Chemical companies Dow Chemical and DuPont, both with a market value of around $60 billion, would form the second biggest chemical company in the world. Although talks are still ongoing, an announcement is expected soon. —The New York Times

International News

• Syrian Rebels Leave Homs
  Syrian rebels have begun evacuating the last area they hold in the city of Homs under a UN-backed ceasefire agreement reached with Bashar al-Assad's government. About 800 people are leaving on buses for the Idlib province, which is still in rebel hands. —BBC News

• Bitcoin Founder Raided
  Australian police have raided the Sydney home of Craig Steven Wright, the man reported to be the creator of Bitcoin. Police said the raid was about Wright's tax affairs, and nothing to do with the digital currency. —The Sydney Morning Herald

• Bataclan Attacker Spent Time in Syria
  French police have identified the third attacker who blew himself up at the Bataclan venue in Paris. The man has not yet been named, but a judicial source has confirmed he had traveled to Syria from France in 2013, returning in 2014. —Reuters

• South Korean Arrested Over Japanese Shrine Bomb
  Japanese police have arrested a 27-year-old South Korean man suspected of bombing the public toilet next to a controversial Tokyo war shrine.The Yasukuni memorial is dedicated to Japan's war dead, including some convicted war criminals. —The Japan Times

Reykjavík Cathedral, the mother church of the state's Evangelical Lutheran Church. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

• North Face Founder Dies in Kayaking Accident
  Douglas Tompkins, founder of the outdoor clothing company North Face, has died after his raft flipped over in a Chilean lake. The US entrepreneur had bought up huge swathes of South America in the name of conservation. —The Guardian

• New Religion Starts Up in Iceland
  Over 3,000 Icelanders have signed up to Zuism, a religion which follows the practices of "the ancient Sumerians". They're actually just angry about the $80 everyone pays each year to support state-sanctioned religions. —Slate

• Businesses Speak Out On Student Debt Crisis
  Leading business groups are raising concerns about the debt burden on young graduates. The National Association of Realtors is worried millennials "aren't in a position" to enjoy the American Dream. —Rolling Stone

• China Cracks Down on Illegal Internet Cafes
  The government has had enough of sketchy net cafes. There's a drive to flush out venues who don't comply with licensing laws on porn and gambling. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'The Struggles of LGBT People in One of Europe's Most Homophobic Countries'

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Four decorated former soldiers—veterans of the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya—stand at the gates of the UK prime minister's office at Downing Street, bearing their medals aloft.

"If you look close enough," says Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran Daniel Lenham, holding his towards the scrum of press photographers, "you can see the reflections of dead Iraqis; you can see the embers of Libya; and you can see the faces of the men and women of the British Armed Forces who didn't return, and also of those who did so with lost limbs and shattered souls."

The ex-soldiers have come to express their disgust at Parliament's decision to extend its military campaign in the Middle East into Syria. They're members of an organization called Veterans for Peace—a campaign group that can fuck with the military ethos more effectively than anyone else because they know where the bodies are buried.

Gulf War veteran Kirk Sollitt holds his medal aloft

"By bombing in Syria, vulnerable sentient beings—men, women, and children—are being killed," says Gulf War veteran Kirk Sollitt. "We cannot sow bloodshed and reap peace."

One after the other the men throw their medals—"worthless trinkets"—to the wet cobblestones outside Downing Street, where they lie, their ribbons fluttering pathetically in the wind.

"It's a very difficult thing for a soldier to give up his medals," says former Special Air Service commando and Veterans for Peace coordinator Ben Griffin, who came to the ceremony on Tuesday with the medals of Dave Smith, a disabled veteran of Northern Ireland who was not physically able to attend. "We are doing this to send out a message to the public."

Throwing their hard won symbols of military honor to the floor is, says Griffin, a challenge to the government and employees of British arms companies.

"We've got no trust in the government to do the right thing over this," he says. "We don't expect them to stop the bombing. We fully expect them to start bombing other countries in the future."

"Fighting in Syria has now become a matter of conscience," says Griffin. "If you work in an arms factory, we think you should walk out. Stop making the bombs that are being launched on these countries. If you're filling up a fighter plane with fuel, stop it. If you are flying missions over Syria to bomb that country, don't release the bombs. This is a matter of personal conscience. Everyone should search themselves: do I believe in this? Is this the right thing to do? And if you believe it's wrong, you have a duty not to do it."

For Daniel Lenham, who served in the RAF from 2002-2014 as an aircraft weapons technician, the reality of what he was doing in the military took years to sink in.

"Basra shook me up," he says. "The fact that you're on a base, the majority of personnel remaining within the wire, creates a 'shooting fish in a barrel' syndrome, where a lot of the attacks would be mortars and rockets coming in. You would find yourself on the floor a number of times every day due to incoming."

The defining moment, however, came while he was deployed in Italy, loading bombs onto planes destined for Libya.

"Although I wasn't in a hostile country and I wasn't under any direct threat of fire," he says, "I was loading high explosive weaponry to aircraft, knowing that it was then going to be taken to another country and dropped on people—irrespective of whether they were terrorists, insurgents, or just the local population."

Seeing the "embers of Libya" reflected in his medals was, says Lenham, not necessarily an exaggeration.

Related: Watch 'The Real 'X-Files'?'

"When we were in Italy the aircrew would return with footage taken from the under aircraft camera," he says. "It was macabre. There wasn't any cracking open of beers—but there was certainly a twisted satisfaction associated with it, as you can imagine. For me it reinforced the devastation that was being incurred just by you carrying out your job. You would see footage of the weapons being released from the aircraft and hitting the supposed targets."

An hour before their protest, the former soldiers had assembled beneath Nelson's Column, bearing the dead Admiral's most famous command booming down: "England Expects Every Man Will Do His Duty." The question today is—duty to whom?

Jim Radford

"People are beginning to see through the propaganda, the illusion," says WWII veteran Jim Radford, who came along to show support. "Generations of young men have been brought up to believe that if society sends them to war there must be a good reason for it. They wouldn't send us to war if it wasn't necessary would they? They wouldn't ask us to kill people if there wasn't a real threat? We're obviously doing the right thing, difficult though it may be. People are questioning that. And they're right to question that."

"We want every soldier to question," says Radford. "People seem to forget history. The Nuremburg Trials, in 1946, established in international law, very firmly, that soldiers not only have the right—they have the duty to question orders when they're told to do something that they think might be against international law or against common humanity."

Veterans for Peace's position isn't controversial: "War is not the solution to the problems of the 21st century" is their thought for the day. But their own solution—a call for mass disobedience, mutiny even—is. Once they might have been executed for it. Today, under the Incitement to Disaffection Act, they could still technically go to prison for it. But, as the military lurches from one recruitment crisis to the next, the last thing it wants it to turn a group of pacifists into martyrs. Indeed, as recent figures suggest that less than half the British population support the bombing of Syria, there's every possibility that those who refuse to bear arms are on the winning side.

"We have seen first hand the destruction and the devastation caused by these bombings, these attacks," says former SAS trooper Ben Griffin. "By bombing these countries we are killing families, we are destroying homes, we are radicalizing people, and we're making the refugee crisis even worse. It is clearly not the solution to the world's problems."

Follow Charlie on Twitter.

When is it acceptable to leave a friend to die?

Invisible, Inc., the fantastically named turn-based stealth game from Klei, is my standout strategy title of 2015 (and one of VICE's top 20 games of the year), and it has one main mission. It wants you to be decisive.

Over the course of the game's campaign you'll make a multitude of choices. Sometimes the questions it asks will be simple, but more often than not you'll be trying to choose which result screws you over the least.

Most strategy games with choices start to feel tired after a few hours: Either the options are too restrictive or too asinine. In many, it rarely feels like a choice truly matters, which can make people feel cheated or the entire process feel stale.

All 'Invisible, Inc.' screens via Steam

The reason Invisible, Inc. is the highest-placing strategy release on VICE Gaming's end-of-year round up, and my own personal game of the year, is that every single decision matters. Whether it's closing a door, upgrading an agent, or leaving half my team behind in an enemy stronghold, either/or moments that seem trivial or incredibly important can both lead to significant consequences.

You see, you've got just 72 hours to try and pull back the broken remnants of your spy agency, so you're struggling with a lack of resources, with time foremost amongst them. At the end of this allotted period, you have to send everything, and everyone, you've managed to pull together on what looks like a one-way suicide mission.

Complete the mission and the campaign ends as a success; fail and your agency is wiped out, torn apart by the cyber-corporations looking to take it down. Your mission is grueling, and you'll need every single asset you can get your hands on to make it through.

Invisible, Inc.'s brilliance really becomes apparent, though, when you run out of options. It isn't a game about happy endings but making do, and you'll be asking yourself awful questions over the course of the game's short but infinitely replay-encouraging campaign.

Around the midway point, the situation will fall apart and Invisible, Inc. will ask you to consider the unthinkable. One of your agents will find themselves trapped by guards, while the rest of your team are assembled at the exit. Can you leave them behind? Should you leave them behind?

Because you have total control of this broken team of spies you also have full responsibility. So when you're staggering injured through an enemy facility one thing is abundantly clear: you caused this.

'Invisible, Inc.' launch trailer

Perhaps you could have prevented it with just a few more charge packs or an EMP grenade. If you'd brought those with you, maybe you could have made it. Maybe you could have done better.

You'll fail time and time again. Then you'll dust yourself off and start over.

The act of survival in Invisible, Inc. is quite simple—until you start taking risks. By rationing everything so heavily, the framework encourages you to play the long odds, to reject the safer option. You never have enough cash, time, energy, or items; but if you bet it all you'll be that much better prepared for the final struggle. If the gamble pays off.

Invisible, Inc.'s opening cinematic lays the dire situation out for you. Your agency has already lost, your top-secret headquarters has been seized, and you're all out of options. You're hanging on by a thread and you've nothing more than a pair of agents and an AI to try and turn the tables.

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Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'The Real "X-Files"?'

You do this by running missions against the corporations that rule the game's world. These companies have their fingers firmly embedded in their own respective pies—biotech, robotics, weaponry. You're going to make enemies of all of them in the next few days as you attack their facilities while on the scrounge.

Every agent you rescue, augment you install or skill you upgrade will give you a better chance come the endgame, but similarly this means anything left behind on one of the missions will severely hurt you. Everything you own, including your agents, has a dollar value that lets you know exactly the value of what you're not able to take.

And you will be leaving things behind often, too. The alarm level during missions rises on every turn, going faster if you're spotted; and as it climbs, so the mission becomes more dangerous. You're always aware that time is running out: should you try to make it across to the office to raid the safe, or abort the mission before the extra security guards arrive?

Getting out of trouble isn't as easy as getting into it. When a guard spots you they'll aim their guns, and any following movement that doesn't break their line of sight or take them down will end with your agent bleeding on the floor.

Depending on your difficulty, the game gives you a couple of do-overs in the form of a literal rewind that'll take you back to the start of your last turn. This gives you the chance, just a couple of times per mission, to know the consequences of your actions and try again—but it doesn't take you far enough into the past that you can change the bigger situation. It's a great mechanic, and one the teenage me would have killed for while playing Jagged Alliance 2 and old X-Com games.

Crucially, Invisible, Inc. never feels unfair. Its rogue-like level design means that you'll occasionally find yourself shit out of luck, but as there's no optimal way to play you're never punished for taking a risk or trying a different angle.

So why do I always feel so bad? Why am I haunted with the memories of the time I left Internationale trapped in a room with two guards? Why do I have a pathological inability to leave a facility until I've looted everything my agents can stuff into their baggy pockets?

Invisible, Inc. has taught me that I'm a monster, but also that sometimes, just sometimes, the end justifies the means.

I could spout another several thousand worlds about the beautiful world, the cyberpunk aesthetic, or why Nika is the greatest spy of all time, but for now let's keep it simple. Invisible, Inc. is the most exciting strategy game I've played in years, and my favorite stealth game of 2015, too (and it had some competition). Get it.

Invisible, Inc. is out now for PC and Mac, and placed 19 on VICE Gaming's top 20 games of 2015—read the full list here.

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Jacquie Johnston-Lynch (left), Head of Service at Tom Harrison House, leads a group therapy session.

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Like dozens of other young British soldiers who served in Afghanistan, Grant Thomas left the Army minus a leg. Only, his injury was not caused by the gunfire he dodged while serving as an 18-year-old private in the Parachute Regiment. Nor did he step on a buried Taliban bomb.

Thomas lost his limb after kicking through a plate glass window in a moment of drunken frustration in June of 2010, nine months after returning from tour. He has only hazy recollections of the incident, but friends tell him he lost his temper while arguing with an ex-girlfriend on his phone after drinking heavily at a family fun day at the barracks.

Now 25, Thomas, still bearing the muscular build and close-cropped hair typical of a Para, makes himself comfortable by unscrewing a carbon-fiber blade moulded to the stump of his right leg and leaning the springy assemblage against his chair. As much as he loved his six years in the Army, which he joined at 16 to escape the drugs and joblessness blighting his home near Liverpool, he can't help but feel a little rueful about the irresistible peer pressure to drink himself into oblivion.

"Every time I drank it was police cells, hospital, or me getting knocked out and carried back," he said, speaking at Tom Harrison House, a newly-established rehabilitation center for ex-forces battling addiction located in Liverpool's Broad Green area. "I just put a mask on and say I'm fine, but eventually every man will break. It got to the point where I had nothing left—that I wanted to stick a bullet in my head."

Thomas's sleek prosthetic is a rare tangible symbol of the damage done by alcohol to the British Army, where a hard-drinking culture poses risks to the most vulnerable that can be every bit as deadly as serving in a war zone. In two years meeting ex-forces across the country to research my new book, Aftershock, the Untold Story of Surviving Peace, I saw the impact firsthand: broken relationships, lost jobs, violent offenses, and, in the worst cases, a fatal descent into alcohol-related illness or suicide.

The battles fought by Thomas and others at Tom Harrison House, a rare example of a British military charity set up primarily to treat addiction, suggest that remarkable transformations are possible with the right support. But their stories also shed light on why the system is failing many other former service personnel who are being left to fight their dependence on drugs and alcohol alone.

"Every layer of this field is just permeated with shame," said Jacquie Johnston-Lynch, a former social worker and addictions specialist who founded and runs Tom Harrison House. "There's shame on the part of the guys who come to us, and shame on the part of the MoD . Families are ashamed as well. No wonder our guys go to the bottom of the pile."

Alcohol has been central to military life since armies began; the term "Dutch courage" derives from the gin that fortified 17th century English troops fighting in the Low Countries in the Thirty Years' War. During the harsh winter at the start of the First World War, the Army reintroduced a rum ration to stiffen resolve. Only in more recent years have researchers begun to quantify the scale of the military's alcohol problem.

In a paper published in 2007, the King's Centre for Military Health Research found that the rate of "hazardous" drinking among military males was 67 percent, compared with 38 percent for civilian peers. When it came to "severe" problems, proportions in the military were almost three times higher for men and nine times higher for women. Those at greatest risk included young soldiers who had seen combat—men like Grant Thomas.

Significantly, the figures suggested that the prevalence of alcohol misuse was far greater than that of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the psychological injury often associated in the public mind with soldiers, which affects an estimated seven percent of those who serve in front-line roles, according to the King's Centre.

Despite the scale of the problem, there is a glaring lack of specialist addictions support for former service personnel. In theory, they can access services run by the NHS, which has appointed a network of "Veterans Champions" to improve mental health care for ex-forces. But funding for such care is under huge pressure and clinics often cannot help former soldiers if they have active trauma symptoms, which can trigger aggressive outbursts or attempts at self-harm. Former combatants, for their part, are often understandably wary of opening up about their most painful war-time memories among civilians they have only just met.

"This is the elephant in the room," said Keron Fletcher, a retired consultant psychiatrist with 17 years of experience of working with ex-forces with addictions. "This is the biggest mental health problem among serving and former personnel, but there's an appalling lack of support."

Britain's military charity sector, which serves a quasi-official role in caring for ex-forces, has mostly treated addiction as an afterthought. The emphasis has tended to be on guiding soldiers through the often fraught transition to civilian life by helping them find decent homes, jobs, and support in their communities rather than tailoring specific services for the notoriously difficult business of beating addiction and preventing relapse.

In 2014, a government report found that some 350 service charities offering a wide range of welfare support or psychological intervention raised a combined annual income of £400 million . Tom Harrison House, which runs on a shoestring, says it is the only charity running a residential rehabilitation program exclusively for veterans and reservists with drug or alcohol problems—though many others support clients in the often exhausting task of navigating over-stretched civilian addiction services.

Johnston-Lynch saw the difficulties of treating ex-forces in existing rehab centers firsthand when she was managing the Liverpool branch of a national addictions charity. Noting an unusually high drop-out rate in the first few weeks, she discovered that almost all of those who had left early were ex-military.

"They said: 'We didn't want to break down in front of people because, if we did, that would be disloyal to people who were still serving,'" she said. "There's a group of men who are just so fearful around civilians that the only place in which they'll do it is with other veterans."

The realization prompted Johnston-Lynch to quit her job and raise money from donors to create Tom Harrison House, named after a grandfather of the project director who had served in the Navy in the Second World War. Occupying an imposing Victorian residence in a quiet suburban street, the charity began admitting clients in July of 2014, and more than 50 people have since passed through its program, which can last from 12 to 22 weeks.

"We just took a leap of faith and said: 'Right, lets do it,'" said Johnston-Lynch. "We're not big flag-wavers. We're more about the injustice—particularly for men who come from working-class communities."

The charity offers group work, weekly sessions of equine therapy, yoga and mindfulness, and one-on-one support. The idea is to restore a sense of connection and purpose by helping clients to confront the underlying drivers of their substance abuse and repair relationships.

Related: Watch 'Cadets', our film about the UK's Army Cadet Force.

While civilians in rehab can take weeks to form meaningful bonds, Johnston-Lynch said the camaraderie shared by ex-forces means they rapidly connect in no-holds-barred group therapy sessions characterized by a plain-speaking military bluntness that would make the average civilian wince. Graduates can stay involved as volunteers, and staff keep in contact with them via a WhatsApp group.

"They take all their military principles and use them in a treatment center, which puts them on a path of recovery much quicker," Johnston-Lynch said. "If we know somebody has relapsed we call that 'warrior down' and we go and see if they need help."

Among the volunteers is an ex-soldier named Tony, who served in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and had become so emaciated drinking three to four bottles of white wine a day that he could barely walk up the stairs when he was admitted on his 60th birthday. Cleaners later removed 130 empty bottles from his home.

"At the end of the day, this is very much like a war zone, because the consequence of not getting yourself clean and sober is death," he said.

Now sober, Tony visits Tom Harrison House to support younger men such as Thomas. The ex-Para said he had left the Army with about £350,000 in compensation, insurance, and other payments, but soon squandered his savings as his drinking gave way to new addictions to cocaine and online roulette.

"I'd got paranoid the Taliban were coming through the door. I'd have knives stashed around the room," Thomas said. "I'd gamble to take my mind off it."

He eventually attended a private rehab center, but his descriptions of his experiences in Afghanistan upset other clients. After two weeks he called his dealer, who threw him a packet of cocaine over the wall. At the ten-week mark in Tom Harrison House, by contrast, Thomas has suffered no similar relapse and has deleted 200 of 240 contacts on his phone—keen to sever ties with anyone he fears might lead him back down a path of drink and drugs.

Bill Haniver, an ex-soldier recovering from addiction, takes part in a group therapy session at Tom Harrison House, Liverpool.

Among much larger military charities, there is a growing recognition of the need to do more. Combat Stress—Britain's biggest mental health charity for veterans—has ear-marked £2 million a year, has begun offering support with problem drinking face-to-face or via phone or Skype as part of its new Hidden Wounds psychological wellbeing service.

But such initiatives are only scratching the surface, and there is still a lack of specialized care for one of the most vulnerable groups of ex-forces—those who drink to blot out the flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, and mood swings associated with PTSD. Experts say such complex cases should ideally be treated in an in-patient detox unit capable of providing an integrated approach to tackling both their addiction and their underlying trauma—a service currently unavailable anywhere in Britain.

Meanwhile, Tom Harrison House does what it can but faces a constant fight for survival, partly because local authorities or regimental associations who might fund other forms of support tend to assume that NHS addictions care will suffice.

Bill Haniver, who served for 30 years in the Army, said he had been forced to take a £1,500 toward his son's care. For veterans such as Frank Hampson, 57, who sold his medals to buy alcohol, any price is worth paying.

"Only six weeks ago a doctor told me: 'You keep drinking, you're dead in six months.'" he said. "This place has saved my life."

This post has been updated and some names have been changed.

Follow Matthew on Twitter.

Matthew Green's new book Aftershock: the untold story of surviving peace documents the private battles of soldiers and their families struggling to adapt to life after the war zone.

(Photo via Frederick Dennstedt)

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Middle-class parents are accidentally turning their children into posh raving alkies by giving them wine at home from a young age, according to a new study. Very hard to relate to this because I was introduced to alcohol the proper way—on a cold bench in a children's park, a load of 20p pieces collected and given to an older teen to go Londis and get a communal bottle of White Lightning, more backwash than alcohol, more spit than fizz—but then I have been to posh friends' houses and seen them have a tiny glass of wine poured for them by their dad and I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that this is what posh dads always say when pouring their sons or daughters a special small posh glass of wine: "This is what they do in France." Always, every time. Posh dads are incapable of pouring half glasses of wine without mentioning France. "They thin it down with water," posh dads are saying. "And the women there... by God." Posh dad getting a faraway look in his eye, like he gets when you give him a catalogue of gilets. "By God."

Anyway, here are the top-level facts from the study, in case you want them: It's this whole pioneering thing from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, a body funded by the UK Department of Health, that surveyed some 120,000 under-15s to document their drinking habits. They found that 70 percent of under-15s in the least-deprived areas (posh kids) had tried alcohol, compared to 50 percent of teens in the most deprived areas (scratters). Posh kids were twice as likely as the underclass scum to be regular drinkers (8 percent vs. 4 percent), and more likely to grow up to be current drinkers (66 percent vs. 44 percent).

It's technically legal to give children between the ages of five and 16 to drink alcohol at home or on private premises (FIVE. IMAGINE GIVING A JÄGERBOMB TO A FIVE-YEAR-OLD. THE CARNAGE.) but obviously, in light of the latest research, charities such as Alcohol Concern are suggesting that maybe you don't do that. "Studies have shown that parents are often the main source of alcohol for underage drinkers," director of campaigns Tom Smith told The Times. "All the research indicates that the younger someone starts drinking, the more likely they are to have problems with alcohol in later life. The evidence suggests that the safest thing parents can do is set clear rules and boundaries for their children about alcohol, and give them an alcohol-free childhood."

So yeah: Not to be a party pooper or anything, but the overwhelming advice properly seems to be "don't give alcohol to children." I know, I know. Health and safety gone finally mad. You can't say "mad" these days, though, can you? You've got to say "mentally misshapen." More bureaucracy from Brussels, no doubt. The EU is a joke. Top you up? You know who has it right about Europe: Nigel. Shame about his shifty eyes, otherwise I would have voted for him. Oh, go on then, another dribble. Thing about Europe is—apart from the French women—it's mostly pointless. More moussaka? Nigel isn't afraid to say: Bomb the fuckers and leave the ski slopes for us. What this country needs is a kick up the backside. Listen, can you kids get me some ganja? I'm deeply, deeply unhappy.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

All stills courtesy of Borscht Corp

The Texas-born, Brooklyn-based artist Terence Nance burst onto the scene in 2012 with his feature debut An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. The film, executive-produced by Jay-Z, Wyatt Cenac, and dream hampton, is a kaleidoscopic, Afrofuturistic blend of romantic drama and confessional documentary, in which Nance, who plays himself, ruminates candidly over past, present, and future loves. In addition to starring, Nance wrote, directed, partially scored, and animated the film, which marked the arrival of a singular talent. Its joyful formal experimentation (films-within-films, Afrofuturistic animation, documentary inserts) and avoidance of conventional narrative signaled the arrival of a filmmaker refreshingly uninterested in cleaving to predetermined categories.

Although Nance has yet to follow up with another feature, he's kept busy working in short format, making films as diverse as the beguiling, beautifully choreographed "You and I and You" video for indie rockers the Dig, and the starkly monochromatic "blackout," which evokes contemporary police brutality via abstract dance, unsettling sound design, and narration by American civil rights attorney John Burris.

Watch an exclusive trailer from 'Swimming in Your Skin Again,' starring Norvis Jr.:

His latest short, Swimming in Your Skin Again, is produced by Miami-based multimedia company Borscht Corp, and is a collaboration with his younger brother Norvis Jr., a talented and accomplished filmmaker and musician in his own right. Visually ravishing and provocatively ambiguous, the film stars Norvis Jr. as an unnamed figure embarking on an elliptical, spiritual tour of life in and around Miami, including the Catholic Church, the swamp, the backyard, and the water. Clocking in just north of 20 minutes, this arresting swirl of color, sound, and mystical imagery is designed to simultaneously seduce the eyes and stoke the synapses. I recently spoke to Nance to discuss his inspiration for the film, the racism of certain development types, and the pitfalls of Stonewall.

VICE: Other than your film being commissioned by Borscht, how did it come about?
Terence Nance: I was in Miami, and I wrote it on the beach, based on the first line of a song by Norvis Jr.: "Swimming in your skin again / Blinded by your elegance." While writing, I was hearing about how Miami was sinking under rising sea levels, and thinking about the cultural mix of the place. That all fed into the script. I sent it to Norvis, and he approached working on it like, "We can't do this, we can do this, we can't do this," and certain details he just changed. He added in that everyone should be wearing yellow, and he added the disclaimer at the beginning. Basically the next draft of the script is the one we went with.

The film has a dreamlike, free-associative quality. Is that reflected in your process?
I was trying to obey impulses and not force myself to formulate a rationale for any given creative decision. I've been thinking about creating art as more like a bodily function, just pushing it out, manipulating it less. You take in information and stimulus on a daily basis, and the artwork is exhaling. The process of making Swimming was like respiration, or like eating and taking a shit. Or like seeing and dreaming. Things you have to do. The result is something that may seem non-narrative, but every time I watch it I see something that ties it together that I did not intend.

The film has been shown on big screens at festivals, but it's premiering online, and that's where it'll have most eyes on it. Was that how you envisioned it?
If we'd had more time and money, we'd have done a feature, but we did what we could with the resources we had. I think that it's definitely a better experience in a theater, even though it's always been a hard-sell to argue that your short film should to be watched in a theater! For something like this, short and bizarre, the idea of being fully engaged by it rests, to an extent, on seeing it in a space where you're required to only engage with it.

What are the benefits of putting your work online?
It helps to stay engaged with the industry and your audience in general. If you're only making features, they take a long time to make, and you risk having nothingbearing your name in between. So I stay active, and my name remains in certain conversations, which has a positive effect on my ability to find financing.

At the same time, by doing so, my attention is divided, so it becomes more difficult to work on the next bigger thing quickly and efficiently. I'm still negotiating how to make both things work. In the case of Swimming, there's an obligation to it: I was going to do something with my mother and my brother. It's not optional!

What is it like at the moment being an experimental, "art-first" filmmaker, and trying to attract funding? History is full of great black filmmakers who've struggled to raise funding to tell personal stories outside the mainstream, like Julie Dash and Haile Gerima, both highly influential stalwarts of the LA Rebellion who have struggled with recent crowdfunding campaigns.
I've encountered wildly racist development people and investors, where I'll tell them an idea, and there's black characters in it, and they'll say, "This is cool, but do you have something for a Brad Pitt-type, where he discovers something, and then that gets us into the story?" Those stories are ubiquitous and sad, but they are reality. White supremacy is a real thing, which can have a very real effect on our ability to be prolific, to find the money to make films. I think that's always existed. A lot of my woes have been related to the expectation I had that the wealthy black creative community—black actors, producers, directors, musicians, who have a lot of money, who have development deals at major studios or pools of cash, black film financiers—would be in contact with people from my community about funding "art-first" black films. I've found that the wealth class in black media and film seems disinterested in the vast majority of emerging black writer directors, or at least I have not found them to be vigilant about being in contact with the majority of my peers.

Do you think artists have a responsibility to be political?
I think artists do, but all people do. If I was a janitor, I'd feel that I had a responsibility to be informed. That's what being political means for me: acknowledging your role in a community and putting forth the effort to play that role to the best of your ability. The climate that we are in, unfortunately, requires a whole lot of vigilance from a community to ensure that a system of government is adequately serving them. If you are apolitical—as artists or anyone else—then the system will do with you what it will. We know that to mean that the system will treat you like a number.

You also do a line in film criticism, and your reviews are notable for how you connect the work to real-world issues of politics, representation and race—I'm thinking of your takedowns of Exodus: Gods and Kings, which features browned-up white actors in Middle Eastern roles, and Stonewall, which diminished the role of queer and trans people of color in favor of centering the narrative on a hunky, and totally invented white boy. You don't always see that approach to film criticism.

I think it's important to note that Hitler was nobody without Leni Riefenstahl. Media matters. It's a tool. I don't understand where anybody got the idea that a piece of media is inert, or not influencing behavior, or public opinion, or people's understanding of social dynamics. I don't know who even trafficked in that idea that any information is benign; all information is active. The most active information in the world right now is the Bible, or the Quran. That information is thousands of years old—fact or fiction—but it's pushing people in all sorts of directions. And that's words on a page.

The idea that images flashing at you are not doing the same thing is false, so films have to be evaluated as such. If you look at Stonewall on Rotten Tomatoes, it's a nine percent critic rating, and 92 percent audience rating, which means that people who are going to see it and then reviewing it on RT are loving the shit out of this movie, even if they're aware going in that it's a "bad" movie. Its quality level does not cancel its ability, as a piece of conversation, to change people, to change their behavior, what they say to other people, or affect whose life they value and whose they don't. If you are a white male, you don't have to think about these things so much, because the conversation is mostly set up to sing your praises in the world. If you're living any other cultural experience, it becomes clear that the media is set up to devalue you and make sure you remain powerless. So for me, given that a lot of media is actively devaluing me and my culture, it is important for me to at least call it out.

What's next for you, film-wise?
I'm trying to cast [for my next feature, titled The Lobbyists]. Casting will help me find the financing easier. I want to shoot it next year, even if I need to shoot it on my iPhone. I'm going to shoot something else even cheaper next year—something's coming out very soon. Financial circumstances can't dictate whether I'm going to do it or not. I want to make four features in the next five years.

Follow Ashley on Twitter.

Swimming in Your Skin Again premieres today on Nowness. Norvis Jr.'s EP Coming Down can be found here, and his new EP, Pyrrhic Victory Disc 03 is out March 4 on Tape Club Records.

At a Bronx courthouse in early August, a defense lawyer made a rather unusual request: that the judge set bail and immediately take their client into custody. The judge told the lawyer that no bail was necessary and that the defendant, Teddy Irving*, was free to go. But Irving's lawyer knew that leaving the courtroom not in the custody of the Department of Correction (DOC) could very well end with her client never stepping foot in the country as a free man again.

Behind Irving stood two plainclothes Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, who moments before had tried to arrest him in the hallway of the courthouse, he told me. The officers had arrived as part of an extensive effort by ICE to circumvent a New York City statute that limits local law enforcement's collaboration with the federal agency. After a lengthy explanation by the defense lawyer as to why they were arguing in favor of the very thing they usually fight against, the judge relented, and Irving (who has a green card) was taken into custody.

For now, Irving was safely in the hands of the New York City criminal justice system.

On VICE News: 100 Days in Prison and a Lawyer Shot Dead: Turkey Still Won't Let Our Journalist Go

"I was waiting for my attorney outside of the courtroom, when two gentlemen who were standing near the entrance to the courthouse both looked down at a sheet of paper, nodded heads and then walked over to me," Irving told me. "They approached me and asked if I had a court appearance. I told them yes. In my mind I'm thinking they're someone from social services. Then they pulled out an ICE ID. They told me they needed to secure me and take me downtown. I told them I was about to see a judge to close out my case, but they said that wasn't important anymore." As the ICE officers escorted Irving out of the courthouse, he caught his attorney's attention, who quickly convinced the two officers to allow her to finish the case, which stemmed from a domestic dispute.

Thanks to the quick thinking of Irving's public defender, he was spared detention by ICE, but across New York City, courthouse arrests of immigrants have become a regular occurrence, according to defense lawyers and advocates. This new tactic has the potential to turn any interaction with the criminal justice system into a months-long nightmare, played out against the backdrop of an intensifying national debate on immigration. Across the country, ICE has ramped up courthouse arrests in recent years, often focusing on individuals with felony convictions from decades ago, like Irving. The city's courtrooms are just the latest battleground.

"ICE is trying to create an environment where it becomes incredibly difficult for cities to pass laws that lower their levels of cooperation with them," Mizue Aizeki, deputy director of the Immigrant Defense Project, a national advocacy group, told me. "What they're saying is, 'Well, you didn't want us to take them from the police or the jails, so we're going to take them from their home, or the courthouses.'"

Last year, New York City joined a growing number of municipalities with laws limiting their cooperation with ICE. The city would no longer detain people for up to 48 hours after their regular release date until the federal agency determined their immigration status. Effectively shut out of the criminal justice system in America's largest city, the agency resorted to courthouse arrests and raids on homeless shelters to help fill their 34,000 detainees per day quota. The quota, a congressional mandate that keeps ICE facilities full at all times, has apparently emboldened the agency to track down individuals with deportable offenses committed decades ago, as well as target individuals who have been arrested for crimes as minor as petty larceny or disorderly conduct.

Sarah Vendzules, an attorney for Brooklyn Defender Services, testified in front of the New York City Council in October on the prevalence of courthouse arrests and home raids that her office was dealing with following the passage of the 2014 reforms, known as the Detainer Discretion Laws.

"ICE is picking people up at the courthouse for things they did maybe 30 years ago, where they now have kids, they have a family here, they're completely rehabilitated and have full-time jobs, and none of that is being taken into consideration by ICE," Vendzules told me.

Coupled with the NYPD's renewed focus on "broken windows" policing under Commissioner Bill Bratton, more and more people are finding themselves involved with the criminal justice system on marginal, quality-of-life arrests. But minor charges have a way of becoming major issues when the feds are desperate for bodies.

"The things that people get picked up for and make them deportable are just so minor," Vendzules said. "Turnstile jumping or using your kid's Metrocard, those are thefts of services and are considered 'crimes involving moral turpitude.' Just two of those make you deportable."

Since ICE can no longer obtain information about non-citizens from the NYPD or DOC without a judicial warrant, they're now scanning court rolls and gathering information from homeless shelters to find individuals they believe to be candidates for deportation, advocates say. A source at ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations told VICE that as of last week, they had made 27 arrests at or near courthouses in 2015.

"One of the challenges that we face in this modern era is that there's so many ways that information is available to immigration officials," Aizeki told us. "ICE has a pretty extensive surveillance infrastructure. They have a wide range of city and federal employees who will share information with them. Up until last year, it was someone's job at the city probation office to provide address information to ICE so that they could be picked up."

While home raids remain the leading inciting incident for deportation proceedings, courthouse arrests have become an important tool for the feds to find people whose address they don't know, or when they're concerned about the legality of a possible home raid. As Aizeki explains, "I think probably what's happening is ICE is going undercover at courthouses to skirt the constitutional protections people have for letting ICE enter your home without consent."

In a statement, an agency spokesman said, "ICE has specific policies in place that address arrests made at courthouses and other sensitive locations. Such arrests are only considered for cases involving aliens who meet ICE's highest priorities, such as national security threats, gang members and convicted felons. Absent exigent circumstances, immigration arrests made at or near courthouses are planned in advance and approved only after considering other options. When such an arrest is made, ICE officers have developed specific, detailed information about the target, to include photographs and other personally identifiable information."

Check out our documentary about a purgatory shanty town deported immigrants found themselves in on the Mexican side of the border.

While the new detainer discretion laws shield individuals like Teddy Irving while they're in custody, that protection can only last so long. After Irving was released from jail and his charges were dropped, he says he received a call from an individual who claimed to be working for the Bronx courts system.

"They wanted my address for some reason, but my case had already been closed," Irving told me. "Once I saw that the area code they were calling from was 212, which is the Manhattan area code... I knew something was fishy. I ended up giving them my mother's address, and soon enough ICE came by her house with multiple officers looking for me."

ICE also contacted Irving's place of work, Irving said, but his employer declined to disclose his hours or address.

"ICE has historically been ruthless in pursuing their quotas," Brooklyn City Councilman and Immigration Committee Chair Carlos Menchaca told me. "We weren't naive enough to think that we wouldn't have to keep battling the federal mandate for detainers. But what we needed to do was to create a space where municipalities can step up and set the tone for new policies that can really help change things on the federal level."

In the meantime, what was already a fraught relationship between immigrant communities and the criminal justice system has deteriorated further. Even centers for essential social services have become targets. "People are afraid to go to court, drug treatment facilities, probation offices," Aizeki said.

"These are tactics by ICE that are fueled by the power of fear," Menchaca added. "We are trying to remove those opportunities for them every step of the way." Among other things, advocates like Mencheca are hoping to expand the requirement of a judicial warrant for immigration arrests to all city courthouses.

In November, Teddy Irving's mother had brain surgery, but he's been unable to drive her to doctor's appointments or visit her with regularity due to fear that the feds might be waiting for him.

"I'm paranoid man, I really am," he said.

It would appear he has every reason to be.

Follow Max Rivlin-Nadler on Twitter.

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

We've had our top 20 games of 2015, and a run through some of the standout indie releases of the year. But, inevitably, there are always titles that fall through the cracks. Here are eight games that you should give a little time to, when you've finally collected all the cassettes in Metal Gear Solid V and that neat Viper gear in The Witcher 3.

Grow Home (Ubisoft Reflections)

Grow Home is like nothing else on you'll read on this page, because it's published by one of the biggest names in the industry, Ubisoft. Given the hype they put into most titles, it was a shock that this was released with absolutely no fanfare, and initially sent off to die as a PC-only game. It was even released on Steam rather than uPlay, that's how little Ubi appeared to care about it.

But it's a wonderful game all about a little red robot, who you control, searching around a gloriously colorful environment. It's almost tech-demo-like in its simplicity. Controlling either arm on the triggers, you have to climb around beanstalks finding diamonds, eventually gathering enough to unlock a new ability which will let you climb higher, and go further.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why it's so rewarding, but there's definitely something to be said for the emotional attachment you get from a world that doesn't really want to harm you, and is there ultimately to guide you onwards and upwards. Plucking a flower and using it to glide safely across a chasm that BUD (Botanical Utility Droid) would otherwise fall afoul of, before clearing away a load of rocks to reveal a glowing reward, is genuinely great.

It might be quintessentially Ubisoft in how you grab walls and climb up them (though there's no towers in sight), but Grow Home is very much a small project from a few people that touched the hearts and minds of anyone who played it. Oh, and it came to PS Plus in the end, so PS4 owners have no excuse for missing this one.
Adam Cook

The Escapists (Mouldy Toof Studios)

It was an early access release in 2015, but The Escapists came to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the first half of 2015. The one-man Mouldy Toof Studios is behind this wonderful prison escape game, a tongue-in-cheek look at the inner-workings of well-known slammers. You progress by beating up, robbing, trading, and laboring in the prison to earn money and items—collect enough, and you can eventually MacGyver your way out of it. Or at least attempt to. The game hits a suspense-filled step when you realize that just one wrong move can cost you everything you've worked towards, and reset your progress. But with that risk comes a whole heap of recommended fun. Sean Cleaver

Read more: Discussing the Plausibility of Video Game Jailbreak with a Real-Life Escapee

Westerado: Double Barreled (Ostrich Banditos)

Imagine a Zelda game if you could do anything you wanted to the characters around you, and every interaction had an effect on both the story and how other people saw you. Sounds pretty great. Then factor in a story of cowboy revenge, set in the Wild West, that invites the player to kill their uncle at the very beginning, the same guy who's also helping you through the game's tutorial. That's exactly what you can do in Westerado. (Your uncle, by the way, comes back as a ghost, wondering just why you offed him. Which is fairly delightful.)

You go from town to town, discovering more about the bastard who ruined your life and killed your family. Retro visuals truly belie the game's refreshing take on the mystery/detective genre. As you play out quests for residents—there's a brilliant one early on where a woman sends you out to bring home her drunk husband, but you can choose whether that's dead or alive—you eventually uncover who the despicable desperado was, and can point the finger at them. And then a gun. AC

Kitty Powers' Matchmaker (Magic Notion)

Kitty Powers' Matchmaker sees the eponymous drag queen (the game's developer, Rich Franke) managing a dating agency that you actually control the fortunes of, by steering each date to, ideally, a happy ending. It first came out on iOS and Android in 2014, but 2015's Steam version proved a more exciting and, frankly, hilarious experience than the original mobile game. Kitty's wonderful enthusiasm and incredibly dry humor comes across as you navigate the (literal) puzzles of dating, taking control of your clients' actions in order to find true love, order the right dish, and keep small talk going. All of this is coupled with upgrades to the agency and harder challenges. Marvelous. SC

Read more: Kitty Powers' Dating Tips for First-Timers

Crypt of the NecroDancer (Brace Yourself Games)

Any game that lets you plug your own music into it is going to be worth paying at least a tiny bit of attention to, right? Before Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 came back to try to reinvigorate the music genre, Crypt of the NecroDancer was out ahead of them both, showing how great pushing buttons in time to beats can be.

Mixing roguelike dungeon exploration with a rhythm game sounds like madness, but this is an absolute masterstroke. Each new character you unlock allows you to change how the game plays. The starting avatar has to move in time with the music, and hit enemies that are also shuffling about on their own beat. Hit them the wrong way and you'll take damage, and it all makes for a brutally difficult yet satisfying game. Later, you can break the barriers that lock into the music and move around, but each character has its own unique way to play, that makes it hard to pick your favorite. And hell, if a game lets you play along to Roy Orbison's "You Got It," it's got to be worth playing. AC

Spectra (Gateway Interactive)

What's not to like about Spectra? For all the nostalgia we have for games like Wipeout and F-Zero, we actually have a great game here already. Released back in July on Xbox and Steam, Spectra sees you control a ship along a Tron-recalling wireframe track, avoiding blocks and collecting yellow cubes for points. The catch? It's super fast. Aided by the wonderful 8bit chiptune music of Chipzel, it makes you glide with hubris, panic at difficult sections, and is incredibly moreish. If you've just picked up an Xbox One, it's a good shout for those short sessions where you just want to blow off some steam with a game, without committing to a serious sit-down. SC

Read more: So Can Anyone Make Chiptune Music?

60 Seconds

The titular 60 seconds are very much only a small part of this game. You have a minute to run around your house from a top-down perspective, grabbing water, food, supplies, and your family. Literally. You throw everything—and everyone—down into your shelter, just as the bombs go off, Fallout-style.

Once in the bunker, you're in a choose-your-own-way text adventure. Whether you brought your whole family or not will be a key factor in how long you survive, as will the amount of food and water, and even what entertainment and weapons you chucked down the shoot. Basically: the better you perform in the 60 seconds, the higher your chance of staying alive for the longest time.

As desperate survivors try to trade at your door, all you see is text over the screen showing your concrete bedsit and the state of decay your well-being is stuck in. Do you feed your wife today? Is it OK for you drink some of the water? Do you send your fit and healthy daughter out into the irradiated wasteland to scavenge for whatever she can find? Yes to all of the above, because eventually you'll all fucking die anyway—it's just a matter of when, and how dark it all ends up looking before you croak. Less buggy than Fallout 4, 60 Seconds! is one of the most addictive little games you most likely didn't play this year. AC

The Long Dark (Hinterland)

The Xbox One Game Preview service was launched to a lot of whooping back at E3. The idea is that games can "trial themselves," like Steam's Early Access, before a general release. The big noise went to the now fully released Elite: Dangerous and the yet to appear on consoles DayZ. But 2014's The Long Dark also came to the program, and you may have completely missed it if you weren't keeping up with Xbox's Preview schedule.

This survival simulator is actually just that for a change all about survival. Stranded in the wilds of Canada after an event cripples everything, you have to survive the freezing weather and open space, the animals that want to eat you, and scavenge for medical and food supplies whenever an opportunity arises. The game's presentation of the harsh Canadian elements is evocative of Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. The game's still not finished, but for console users who only have Minecraft as the big survival go-to, stick this on with some of Eddie Vedder's solo albums in the background and you'll soon enough be lost, too. SC

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