A psychedelic organ riff pours out of a taxi's stereo in Bangkok. I point at the radio and the taxi driver flips it off with a pleasant "Excuse me." He's used to foreigners and rich Thais looking down on his music, but I want him to turn it up, explaining I'm a Molam fan and headed to a nearby club to hear the same music live. He eagerly shows me a video on his phone of his granddaughter practicing Molam in her bedroom in Isaan. By the end of the taxi ride, we're both cruising to the tunes with grins on our faces.

Molam is country music that's been played in the Thai and Laotian hinterlands since the 17th century. Its Thai home is in Isaan, a region in the Northeast of the country where many working class people live. At its most simple, a traditional Molam act features only a singer and a khaen player, which is a bamboo mouth organ played vertically in bass tones designed to support a singer's voice. Beyond that, the most common additions to a Molam band are phin, a small lute with strings, drums, and bass.

Molam underwent a major shift in the 70s, thanks to the influence of the American GIs stationed at five army bases around Isaan. They brought psychedelic, rock, soul, and funk music with them from America via guitars, records, and radio stations broadcast from the bases. The Molam players absorbed these sounds and were intrigued by them. Entire riffs from bands like Black Sabbath and The Rolling Stones were incorporated into Molam songs from this era.

Until recently, Molam music was marginalized and dismissed as "taxi driver music," or entertainment for the lower classes. But with its psychedelic riffs and country jams, the genre is experiencing a new life worldwide, mostly thanks to Nattapon "Nat" Siangsukon, better known as DJ Maft Sai, who runs three record labels, a record store, and a club that is bringing modern Molam to international audiences. And the West is embracing it.

A vintage track by Dao Bandon was featured on the soundtrack of The Hangover Part II and Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band opened for Damon Albarn in Berlin in 2014. They also shared a stage with Smashing Pumpkins and Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Poland the year before that.

Maft Sai's label ZudRangMa Records, ships vinyl to fans in all over the world, with concentrated fan bases in Germany, Japan, and the UK. Two of his early compilations, Sound of Siam Volume 1 and 2, were key to introducing the genre to audiences outside Thailand. They feature obscure, hypnotic tracks from the 60s and 70s, and the second compilation earned praise from Western publications like The Quietus.

Studio Lam, his club, is celebrating its first anniversary this month. The tiny space, just a few doors down from ZudRangMa in Bangkok is a small, dark triangle that's packed even on nights when they are only hosting a DJ set. When bands like PBMIB play the club, the street in front is jammed with people drinking beer and yadong, a traditional Thai rice spirit made at the bar.

"In Bangkok, Molam hasn't been popular," Maft Sai explained to me. "A few years ago, I'd play a Molam track in a DJ set and Thais would shout out, 'This is country music, this is taxi driver music, why are you playing this shit?' But we continued throwing our parties and those people came back—and now they sing along with Molam."

Maft Sai at his record shop in Bangkok. Photo courtesy of Jim Thompson House

Maft Sai is from Bangkok but spent much of his life in Australia and the UK. "People from Isaan know more about Molam than me. Their parents listened to this when they were growing up, but they're ashamed to be part of this music. It relates back to being from Isaan, having darker skin, being working class, being in the rice fields. But after watching the Bangkok scene happen and an international audience for Molam develop, people are becoming less and less ashamed of Isaan-ness," he said.

Gridthiya Gaweewong is curator of the Molam Bus Project, run by the Jim Thompson House, a Bangkok artspace and museum. Her office is filled with crates of Molam records, some one-of-a-kind. She has been tasked with creating a Molam museum over the next five years but, for now, they have a mobile exhibit housed in a vintage bus that they take to events and festivals.

Gaweewong explained the bias against people from Isaan. "You're American, aren't you?" she asked me. "Isaan is like being from Idaho," a backwater burg to urban Thais who view it as the place where the city's taxi drivers and domestic workers hail from.

Old Molam records. Image courtesy of Jim Thompson House

Since Molam was looked-down on in Bangkok for so long, most of the famed musicians hadn't played in the city since the 70s. To procure live music for his popular parties, Maft Sai had to trek out to Isaan and knock on doors to find the old stars. Many of them had retired to villages and were raising chickens and buffalo. "It would take six months to organize a party because I had to track down all the vocalists and musicians and convince them to play. I would spend an entire year throwing two parties."

Finding the musicians wasn't the only stumbling block to getting this music back on the map. ZudRangMa Records has been putting out reissues and vintage compilations of Thai music since 2010. "Back then, we might sell just seven copies a year in Thailand. I realized that we had to promote it abroad." That was when taste-making record shops All That Jazz, Rough Trade, and Soul Jazz in the UK started stocking and promoting this music.

The compilations featured covers with traditional Thai cloth and were marketed as "Thai funk." Influential Thais that lived and traveled abroad saw them and bought them. They'd come back to Thailand and show them to their friends, who would start coming to events. According to Maft Sai, the idea of Molam as respectable was a hard pill for urban Thais to swallow until they saw that it was sought after by foreigners.

The 20th century strain of Molam music features trippy riffs, hypnotic patterns, and drawn-out, inventive solos. Maft Sai's favorite era of Molam is slightly older than he is, though. "The modern Molam sound actually comes from the 70s. It's like reggae. They use the same lines but each band uses slightly different instrumentation and style. Some use the traditional phin and khaen, some use a brass band; some add guitar or keyboard."

According to Piyanart "Pump" Jotikasthira, the bass player of Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, "What makes Molam psychedelic is the khaen. It has that surreal sound that people recognize. It's the way it lengthens the notes." Khaen can recreate the drama of a pipe organ but the sound can be better controlled and manipulated as the player breathes into it.

John Clewley, a music writer and musician from the UK who's been living in Thailand since the 80s, agreed, saying, "For foreigners, the khaen is a big draw. People have never heard or seen this before. Khaen players can do these big cathedral chords, like power chords, and people are amazed."

Clewley first encountered Molam at a village party in Isaan, where he lived with his Thai wife. "I loved it. I danced with the all night. It reminded me of Irish folk music, but instead of a fiddle, you've got a khaen. They start playing at 9PM and finish at 5 in the morning. We once had a party at our house and one of the bands played. The whole village, all 300 people, came. In the morning, there were people asleep in the bushes. It looked like the aftermath of a war. When they woke up, they just walked off and got noodles."

Maft Sai agrees, "If you want to see the real-deal Molam, you have to go to a private party in the country where they kill a cow, the whole village shares it and they play music until 10 in the morning."

If that sounds too intense, try a crash course in Molam by stepping into a Bangkok taxi and asking the driver to play you his favorite songs. He'll probably be thrilled.

For more on ZudRangMa records, visit its website here.

Follow Laurel on Twitter.

Former State Senator Frederica Wilson calls for ex-felons to have their voting rights restored in Florida in 2003. Well over a decade later, the state remains one of the harshest in America on ex-cons. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Desmond Meade's life unraveled in 1996, three years after he finished a stint in a military prison for drug use and larceny committed while serving in the Army.

"My mom passed away and I dove into drugs big time," the 48-year-old Miami, Florida, native tells VICE. "I was addicted to powder and crack cocaine."

Over the next five years, he says, he racked up felony convictions in his home city for aggravated battery, battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, cocaine possession, and fraudulently using someone else's identification. After bouncing in and out of Miami-Dade County jail and probation, Meade was found guilty of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in 2002, earning him a three-year state prison sentence.

Today, Meade is clean and sober, hasn't been arrested since he was released early in 2004, has a law degree from Florida International University and is helping lead a ballot petition drive that would give state voters the opportunity to decide whether an estimated one-and-a-half million Floridians with felony convictions should have their civil rights restored.

"America is a country of second chances," Meade says. "The only way to change things is through a citizen's initiative that lets voters decide whether an ineligible person should be allowed to vote once they have paid their debt to society."

Fifty-one years after civil rights leaders Hosea Williams and John Lewis led voting rights activists on a brutal and bloody march out of Selma, Alabama, toward the state capitol of Montgomery, nearly three-dozen states deny or limit felons' right to vote. Florida joins Iowa and Kentucky as the only states in the union where a person's voting rights are banned for life unless restored by the governor or a clemency board. Civil rights advocates claim barring felons from voting disenfranchises minorities from participating in the Democratic process; according to 2015 data released by the Sentencing Project, one in 13 African Americans nationwide is unable to vote due to felony convictions.

In Florida, 23 percent of the 1.5 million felons ineligible to vote are black—and roughly the same portion of all black eligibles can't actually vote because they're ex-cons.

The latest felon rights restoration effort in Florida comes just a few years after voter identification laws that critics say hurt Democratic candidates gained nationwide traction. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is on the cusp of winning his party's presidential nomination in part by fanning the flames of racial and ethnic division in America.

For some perspective, those ex-cons who can't vote might easily have decided the 2000 presidential race given George W. Bush technically only won Florida by 537 ballots. And they could well have been the difference in the 2014 Florida gubernatorial race in which incumbent Rick Scott narrowly beat Charlie Crist.

"Florida is one of the states with the harshest felon disenfranchisement laws," says Leah Aden, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "Absent federal legislation or courts striking down these laws under the Voting Rights Act, ballot initiatives, state legislatures and gubernatorial executive orders have been the only avenues for restoration of felons' rights."

Of course, groups that oppose automatic rights-restoration for felons argue people who commit crimes must show they have redeemed themselves before rejoining the democratic fray.

"You can't assume people are going to turn over a new leaf the day they walk out of prison," says Roger Clegg, president and general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think-tank. "The unfortunate reality is that some people who walk out of prison walk back in."

In the last few years, the NAACP, along with the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have worked in various states to challnge laws barring felons from voting. For instance, civil rights groups lobbied Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and his predecessor Bob McConnell to push through executive orders that allowed the state's non-violent felons and anyone with a felony drug offense to have their voting rights restored at the end of their sentence. Those orders also effectively reduced the waiting period for violent felons from five years to three.

In 2013, Delaware Governor Jack Markell and his state legislature agreed to amend the state Constitution to allow non-violent offenders who complete their sentences to vote. Last year, approximately 60,000 ex-felons in California were granted the right to vote after the state agreed to settle litigation over laws blocking low-level offenders under community supervision from casting ballots. And just last month, the Maryland legislature overturned Governor Larry Hogan's veto of a bill that allowed felons to vote before they complete probation and parole.

In the Sunshine State, progress has been harder to come by. Meade co-founded the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition in 2011, shortly after the state Clemency Board—comprised of Republicans Governor Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater—eliminated 2007 reforms passed by Crist, his predecessor. Under Crist, past offenders convicted of less serious felonies could have their rights restored without a clemency board hearing; more than 150,000 people regained their voting rights while Crist was in office.

But Scott, Bondi, Putnam and Atwater reinstituted the lifetime voting ban for felons unless clemency is granted by the board or the governor. At the time, Scott told the News Service of Florida: "Felons seeking the restoration of rights must show they desire and deserve clemency by applying only after they have shown they are willing to abide by the law."

In addition, nonviolent offenders now have to wait five years after completing all terms of their sentence, including probation and parole before they can even apply to have their civil rights restored.

For his part, Meade says he applied for clemency in 2006, but that it was delayed due to a backlog of more than 100,000 applications for rights restoration. Under the rules enacted by the Scott-led clemency board, Meade falls in a new category of felons who must wait at least seven years after completing their sentences because of his convictions for aggravated battery and firearm possession. Spokespeople for the four clemency board members did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and voicemail, though in January of last year, Bondi spokeswoman Whitney Ray told the Sun Sentinel, "This issue is about felons proving they have been rehabilitated before having their civil rights restored."

So a conservative political establishment that continues to have success in off-year elections stands between hundreds of thousands of ex cons and the voting booth.

Two years ago, the Florida Restoration Coalition teamed up with the ACLU, NAACP, and the League of Women Voters to form Floridians for a Fair Democracy, a political committee handling the petition drive to have the state's citizens decide if felons should get their voting rights restored. The group needs more than 600,000 signatures to get on the ballot, but should the measure go before Florida voters, it will mark the first time since 2006 that regular people decide whether felons should be able to vote, according to the NAACP's Aden.

That year, a state coalition in Rhode Island that included local chapters of the ACLU and NAACP led a successful ballot initiative to restore the voting rights for felons on probation and parole.

While the Florida committee missed a deadline to get the felons rights question on the 2016 presidential election ballot, Meade says the group is confident the measure will go before voters in 2018, Scott's last year in office.

And that this time will be different.

"It's a pretty challenging task," Meade says. "But as we go out in the community and engage voters, there is overwhelming support for this initiative."

Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Ted Eytan

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

US News

• Clinton and Sanders Call for Governor to Resign
  Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both used the the democratic debate in Flint to call for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to resign over the city's water crisis. The pair clashed on guns, the auto industry, and Wall Street bailouts. Sanders said Clinton's backers "destroyed this economy."—USA Today
• Cruz-Supporting Pastor Shot in Idaho
  Idaho pastor Tim Remington was shot and critically wounded in his church's parking lot, a day after he delivered the prayer at a Ted Cruz campaign rally. Police identified the suspect as Kyle Andrew Odom, a white man in his mid-30s who is still at large.—NBC News
• Anti-Trump Money Pours In
  A series of conservative groups determined to stop Donald Trump are deploying $10 million in attack ads ahead of the March 15 primaries. It follows Trump's losses to Ted Cruz in Kansas and Maine, and closer-than-expected victories in Louisiana and Kentucky. —The New York Times
• Women Dies in Flooded Car
  Chia Xiong, 51, died after being trapped in a car submerged in floodwater on a section of highway in Northern California. A storm in the state led to the evacuations in some low lying areas, and thousands lost power after powerful winds toppled power lines. —The Washington Post

International News

• EU Asks Turkey to Take Back Migrants
  Turkish and EU leaders are meeting in Brussels for an emergency summit on Europe's migrant crisis. With some 30,000 migrants coming from Turkey now stranded in Greece, the EU will press Turkey to take back economic migrants, pledging $3.3 billion in support. —Reuters
• Sydney Factory Gunman Shoots Himself Dead After Siege
  A gunman at the centre of a six-hour stand-off with police at a Sydney factory has shot himself dead. The siege began after the gunman opened fire at the factory, killing one man and injuring two others. Police found three factory workers alive inside the building. —ABC News
• Suicide Bomber Kills Eight in Pakistan
  A suicide bomber who blew himself up outside a court in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least eight people, and injured 18 others. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but it follows attacks on police targets by the Pakistani Taliban. —Al Jazeera
• North Korea Threatens 'Indiscriminate' Attack
  North Korea has threatened an "indiscriminate" nuclear attack and a "pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice" on the US and South Korea, as the two countries begin military drills. The exercises happen annually in South Korea and generate fiery rhetoric from Pyongyang. —BBC News

Kesha. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

• The Godfather of Email Dies
  Tributes have flooded in for Raymon Tomlinson, the man credited with inventing modern email, who died at the age of 74. His company Raytheon said he was "a true technology pioneer." —The Guardian
• Peyton Manning Retires
  Denver Broncos quarterback and Superbowl champion Peyton Manning will announce his retirement at a press conference today. The five-time NFL MVP will step away after 18 seasons. —ESPN
• Kesha Receives Human Rights Award
  Kesha gave an emotional speech after being awarded the Human Rights Campaign's Visibility Award. "My message has always been about being yourself," she said. —The Huffington Post
• Total Eclipse Due This Week
  NASA scientists are hoping to learn new things about the Sun from a total solar eclipse due March 9, visible in South East Asia. They will study the Sun's atmosphere, or corona, in a bid to discover the acceleration of solar winds. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'How the Philippines's Strict Laws Have Driven Women to Seek Backstreet Abortions'

The sleeve for Data Discs' 2016 vinyl version of the 'Streets of Rage 2' soundtrack

1992's Streets of Rage 2 isn't simply one of the best Mega Drive games of all time. It also had—has—one of the greatest soundtracks of the 16-bit console era. SEGA's side-scrolling fighter, the sequel to the company's original cooperative brawler of a year earlier, was largely accompanied by the music of Yuzo Koshiro. Twenty-five at the time of the game's release, Koshiro's work had been heard on preceding titles like action-platformer ActRaiser on the SNES, the Game Gear-specific version of Shinobi, and the first Streets of Rage. But SoR2 was something else.

Apparently arranged using an NEC PC-8801 and a personalized twist on BASIC, Music Macro Language, Koshiro's contributions to Streets of Rage 2 were hugely influential. He was responsible for all but three tracks on the game—said trio coming from Motohiro Kawashima—and contemporary artists and producers like Ikonika, Labrinth, Joker, and Just Blaze have cited him as an essential influence on their work. But that doesn't mean everyone with dance music in the blood has actually heard his stuff.

Angus Harrison is staff writer at VICE, Thump, and Noisey in the UK. He's pretty much a walking, talking encyclopedia of electronic beats and breaks. But ahead of me sitting him down to listen to the soundtrack to Streets of Rage 2—it's receiving a beautiful double-vinyl release through London's Data Discs in April (it has previously released the soundtracks to Super Hang-On and Shenmue, among others)—he'd only known Kushiro through reputation alone.

"I know of Koshiro because of his links to club music, though even then my knowledge is quite vague," Angus tells me, as we sneak away to a corner of the VICE office for a listen. "I know that he's someone who brought textures and sounds of club music, especially 1980s club music, into video games soundtracks." I figure it's best to begin at the beginning.

Mike Diver: Let me play you "Go Straight." This is the music from the first level of the game. I'm putting you on the spot a bit here, but what does this remind you of, maybe, from a more contemporary perspective?
Angus Harrison: So that's the start of the game? Jesus. I'm struck by just how direct it is. It's like a big acid house tune. I was expecting something that used instrumentation or structures from club music—but that is basically a fast and hard acid house track. Stuff like Vamp's "Outlander" is an older tune that's pretty similar, in terms of its pace and the tone it sets. In terms of artists making music like that today, I mean, it'd be people making deliberately throwback stuff.

Well, this game came out in 1992, and even then Kushiro was using some pretty dated gear—he wrote most of this soundtrack, I'm led to believe, on a PC-8801, which the internet tells me was first introduced to the Japanese market in 1981. I'm sure he used a later model, but all the same—he wasn't quite "with the times" when making this music.
I think an interesting thing to me, which might be overanalyzing things, is the juxtaposition of the music of that era being tied to this sense of communality and love—all around the arrival of ecstasy—and it being put under this game of fighting, this violent experience. But then, it kind of makes sense, because that beat is so aggressive.

The game was made in Japan, but actually came out in the States before anywhere else. Do you feel this sounds like a Japanese artist's take on the sounds coming out of the clubs of the West?
I can see how it might be, though I'm aware that those sort of sounds weren't really reaching Japan at all. Well, that's simplifying things—they were, but not in any kind of comprehensive way. I think you'd probably have to go to where that music was being made to get it. You'd have to physically leave Japan to experience a house or techno scene in a fundamental sense. But, that being said, you can hear this strange conglomeration of different things in the track. It feels totally natural, but there are shades of Detroit techno coming through. There's also this Manchester, Hacienda–type acid house.

I'll play another one. See what you make of this. It's "Dreamer," which comes quite early on in the game still.
This is really interesting. On the one hand, those piano chords are very house; that's like a foundation of house. But a lot of the other stuff going on, that synth melody for example, that's kind of like what some Glaswegian producers have been making in just the last five years—like Rustie and Hudson Mohawke. And I guess by extension, that's bled into the whole PC Music scene, with this high-octane, often slightly tacky-sounding, sugary music.

Because this was designed for a video game, and not to be played out on stereos, you have compression—but that's a quality that a lot of producers now are putting into their work, deliberately. I think you can definitely hear some of this in Rustie's recent stuff. He's maybe stepping more into happy hardcore territories, but he has these very spacey passages. His music is more amped-up, but it has that same deliberate tackiness—and I use tacky in a positive way.

Cool. Let's try "Slow Moon."
See, this feels like a bridge between disco and house. That slower pace, and the way the bass line is walking, I feel that if that was a full production, made today, it'd have more live instruments and probably a string section. It's got that luxurious sound—it's warmer than what I've heard before.

It's a bit like the early stuff Frankie Knuckles was doing, taking disco and producing this fuller, but still driven sound. It's a little like the dance music you'd hear in France just before Daft Punk came out, like a form of garage—not UK garage, but in terms of Brooklyn's Paradise Garage, like what Larry Levan was DJing there. That, to me, sounds like it's a huge-sounding record restricted by the equipment he had at the time, and the medium he was writing the music for.

From what you've heard so far, would you guess that Koshiro had a pretty decent record collection at the time of writing this music?
Definitely. To me, he sounds like someone who's... Well, he's really tapping into all of electronic and dance music, at once. And this soundtrack is like being hit by a wall of that, because it's not specifically attached to one scene. There are so many shades of basically all of what was going on in several different places at that time, which I find really interesting. That definitely suggests he had a pretty wide selection of records.

A look at the forthcoming Data Discs release

OK, I'll throw on a couple more, starting with "Under Logic."
This is a classic, like, hands-in-the-air screamer. I'm amazed at the sound he's achieved, how full it is. I know I said earlier that he's restricted, but this really isn't, it's totally full on.

The last track I'm going to play is a boss theme, actually. It's called "Revenge of Mr. X." It actually plays right at the end of the game, when you face off against the final boss, who's obviously called Mr. X.
This has a lot more layers to it than what my head says there should be in an early 1990s video game. I know that electronic music and video games are closely linked, but I always thought that composers for games were just using, like, interesting synthesizers from the dance world. I didn't realize that anyone was making full-on dance tracks for a video game. Because that's basically what these are. This one has a real Detroit techno feeling to it.

Streets of Rage 2 is a game with very few guns in it. Actually, I think the only one in the whole game, in terms of one that fires bullets, is used by Mr. X as this track plays. Does the track maybe capture that—does it feel slightly, I guess, mechanical? And deadly?
There is that sense of extra threat to it. I think it's interesting that, for music like techno and house, the capacity for interpretation is so diverse. It's music to be played in dark anonymous spaces, by anonymous people. So you have that shut-off with the visuals—but you make your own visuals. And you telling me this is a boss track, of course it is. Of course, he's unleashing hell.

The game is beatable in an hour, or not much more. Do you think its short duration helps the soundtrack have this legacy, because it's almost album length? Not one track ever outstayed its welcome—unless you really, really sucked.
I can see how that would be the case. With a collection of tracks like this, it's advantageous that it all sits together quite coherently. The connection you form between the music playing and what you see on the screen, that must also help the game's legacy. Having heard this particular track, like, you know where that is in the game. And that, to me, says a lot about what impact this music has on the legacy of the whole game. Because it must make other people nostalgic for it, and immediately remember what level that certain track is from.

There might be a clear comparison to draw here between the gaming experience and the clubbing experience. If you try to explain gaming to outsiders, they might just think it's sitting in front of a screen, pressing some buttons. Clubbing might seem like standing in the dark, dancing to repetitive music. But there's a similarity between them, where the repetitiveness isn't about one singular moment, but finding an experience within a pattern. It doesn't surprise me that music works so well with video games. Clubbing and gaming are both about dedicating time, and finding that experience for yourself.

Do you think you could slip one of these tracks into a set today and get away with it?
I think you could totally get away with it. I reckon if you were playing a big room, doing a house set, and you dropped "Under Logic," the crowd would go wild. With that break, there's no way people wouldn't have their tops off.

Find more information on Data Discs' Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack release, expected out in April, at the label's official website, here.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Illustrations by Dan Evans

There are now so many UK actors in Hollywood that Americans are trying to mobilize to stop them getting all the roles. Tom Hiddleston, Ben Whishaw, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Sheen, and David Oyelowo basically have a standing invitation to award ceremonies while David Harewood, Damian Lewis ,and Dominic West have proven that, if you can get the accent right, you don't need to be American to be huge on American TV.

Many of the stars leading this takeover graduated from one of three small prestigious drama schools in London: the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada), London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (Lamda) or the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In the acting world, these institutions are as prestigious as Oxford or Harvard, and have been producing movie stars for generations. Their training is all-encompassing, focusing heavily on method acting and movement.

To outsiders, their methods can seem bizarre, such as spending hours every week just learning how to stand still or going to the zoo to study the movement of the animals. Much of the training gets to the very essence of an actor's presence; it's a way for them to bare their soul.

To find out what really goes on at drama school we spoke to three people who graduated in the past five years. They asked us to change their names so they wouldn't be ostracized from all the nice theatre bars in Soho.

KAREN, RADA

VICE: When you look back on Rada now, what are your happiest memories?
Karen: There was this one wonderful teacher who was really old and tiny and she just wore tie-dye. She was the sweetest kindest woman and she'd get us to be a baby crawling on the floor, or a tadpole, or an octopus. Those lessons were so delightful—she'd put on Debussy and we'd be octopuses for hours.

What's it like being with your friends when they're all being tadpoles too? It must be so embarrassing.
I'm really self-conscious so I found it really difficult to take it seriously, but you kind of have to, otherwise you're just wasting all this money. Rada are great at helping you financially, but then you feel indebted, so you know that you have to take it seriously. A lot of the time I found it unbearable but you kind of just have to do it. Especially with things like master and slave.

What's master and slave?
It's normally done about six months into your first year, when you still have loads of boundaries up, still mortified about the prospect of doing most things in front of most people, but have started to trust your peers more.

You go in thinking it's just a normal improvisation lesson, and then the teacher brings up this game: master and slave. You go into pairs and one person becomes the master, and the other is the slave and the slave has to do anything the master says.

It starts off incredibly easygoing, like go and sit on that chair or go and play the piano and then slowly but surely the asks get a bit more intense, like "suck my big toe." After a while, the masters start playing with each others' slaves. So they get slaves to make out or whatever, or start fighting each other.

Then at the end of it, they switch over, so the slave becomes the master. So they seek revenge and it gets really out of hand. I got asked to kiss the teacher on the mouth, which felt like crossing so many boundaries, but I just did it.

A couple of people really go for it; there's no leeway, they take the exercises very seriously. This guy got asked by his master to get his dick out and whack it in my face, which he did very obligingly. So I got a dick slapped in my face. I was absolutely appalled.

At some point the masters noticed their behavior was getting a bit overboard and stopped going so far—I think they began to realize it was a bit morally wrong, that these are their peers.

It's an interesting psychological experiment.
Absolutely. Same with the animal studies.

What are animal studies?
So animal studies is a huge part of drama school. When you first join they get you free entry to London Zoo for an entire year. You spend hours and hours researching the animal that's been chosen for you. Then in class you have to be that animal for a long time. Then you do a showing, where you all do your animal in front of all the teachers.

He was walking round the room on all fours. Then the teacher asked him to mount me.

During rehearsal of plays, later on in your training, they'll ask you what animal a character is. I remember one lesson I had to be a little deer and my partner was a stallion. He was walking round the room and the teacher asked him to mount me. Then there he is getting on top of me, mounting me from behind. It's difficult because you don't want to let your team partner down but you're completely aware of the obvious, and you are in front of all your classmates.

That all sounds quite intense. Was there any support if it all got a bit much?
Yeah so much. They had CBT on tap. So if it was causing you any damage, you're not going to go mad. But of course people drop out of drama school all the time. It is a really intense process and it's not for everyone. Have you seen the film 20 Days of Sodom? Actors had to make that film. They're preparing us, not necessarily for roles as intense as that, but in the real world of theatre and film, you're going to be asked to do some really crazy shit. So it's important to have the chance to do it with people you trust and respect.

So at the end of it all, do you feel like there's method to the madness?
It definitely changed me a lot. I used to have a lot of difficulties with people getting too close, and it's helped me in such a profound way. I think it has made me a better actor, and made me a better person.

STEVEN, LAMDA

VICE: Was drama school something you'd wanted to do for a long time?
Steven: No, not really. I went to university first before I went to Lamda. So I was a bit older than the other 18-year-olds that went, and potentially equipped with a tiny bit more maturity and the ability to say "fuck off" to things.

Were there things that you wanted to say "fuck off" to?
They really ease you into it. The first six months is basically just standing still. There is one class we had where would literally just stand with our arms by our side and swing them back and forward and we'd do that twice a week for 45 minutes. The idea behind that is it sorted of grounded you. When I describe it to people who aren't actors they're like: "What the fuck is that?"

Is that to make you feel confident on stage?
Yes but also, the whole course, while equipping you with technical abilities, is designed to make you fail every day, and embarrass you into losing your inhibitions. So you'll be an animal for two hours, or be either earth, wind, or fire for 90 minutes, with all your peers in the room.

Every day you have to get up in front of your peers and do something new: either an improvisation or a clowning thing or a Shakespeare speech. But they'd constantly push you and not give you enough prep time so that you fail or embarrass yourself or do shit work in front of everyone. Eventually you're able to say, "Fuck it, I can move on from that," as opposed to the crippling pain of feeling like a failure in front of your peers and teachers. They probably wouldn't explicitly say that's what they're teaching you, but that's certainly what a lot of people took it to be.

One girl smashed her nose, another girl broke her rib. They don't do that lesson any more.

Did being constantly embarrassed ever get too much?
We had certain teachers who would push you in ways some people would consider too far. Like we had this weird exercise that we did every single week, where half the class would be watching and the other half would be standing. They'd play some loud club music and we had to stare at someone sitting down as if we're seeing them across the room at a club and start flirting with them and try to pick them up, just through with our eyes and your dancing.

After a bit the teacher would be, like, "OK, that's only one out of ten, I need you to bring up to two... OK, now three." By the time it got to a "seven," people were like, fucking the floor and ripping off their clothes, just because it's not enough for the teacher. So the girls would just take off their tops and the boys would just start humping things. It was totally bizarre.

Some people were like, "Fuck this, I don't need to get naked to prove that I'm a good actor." Other people got into it and would just take it further and further each time. The positive of that is, people really did lose their inhibitions. You've got this group of 30 people that you see every day, and they've seen every bit of you, so you don't have any nerves in front of them. But at the same time, you have these existential moments where you're like, "What the fuck am I doing this for and why am I paying for this?"

Has that training come into use since you've become a professional actor?
Definitely. I've had jobs where I've got to show up at 6 AM to start filming and I only get the script that morning and in the first scene I've got to kiss a 50-year-old man. The loss of any embarrassment or inhibitions really has helped me to do that. You could be be sort of embarrassed but the drama school attitude is just: Who gives a fuck? Just do it.

Was there support if you ever found it too much?
Yeah, it was very very supportive. We had pastoral care, we had financial care, we had everything in place. A couple of teachers and classes were complained about, and the school reacted immediately.

What sort of things would get to a complaint level?
Well once there was an exercise where everyone had to be blindfolded, and you have to trust the room and learn the energy of the room, and it builds to like a running frenzy where no one can see anything. So inevitably one girl ran into a wall and smashed her nose, and another girl fell over and broke a rib. So that was a mental idea and people felt their trust had been abused. They don't do that anymore.

Another one they did was to try to rile you up by getting someone to hold you down and you've got to sort of struggle against them. And often the big boys will get quite angry and aggressive because the teacher is trying to bring that out of them and then suddenly they'll get uncontrollable and start punching things and other people in the room get really quite scared. So it's a bit like, "OK, you've literally just unlocked that guy's madness and I don't know if that's a good thing, because really you do need some degree of control in acting."

Do you think you have to push it too far to know what too far is?
Yeah, but my bottom line is, I had a great time and I wouldn't change it for the world. I couldn't have got where I am now without it.

PRATIK, RADA

VICE: Had you always wanted to go to Rada?
Pratik: No, actually I'm from India and I'd already studied abroad. Then I went back to India and joined a theatre group and was touring with them, but I wanted to train more in theatre and Rada was the one that was known to me most. It was the biggest name.

At that point did you know what drama school was going to be like?
Honestly, I was told that there would be amazingly attractive people from all over the world and we would all have these massive orgies all the time and create art and then everyone would go on to win BAFTAs and Oscars. That's really what I thought initially. That was not the case.

What do you remember about your first couple of months?
I realized I was one of the oldest people in the year. I was 24 when I started and most of them were 18 from small towns in England. These kids were very talented but they were very conservative as well, in their outlook about life and their thought process. They would make fun of alternative theatre: wank this, wank that, wank was their favorite word. It was like high school again and I was too old for it.

They must have really felt like children to you.
Yeah they did, and a lot of them had relationships from back where they were from. I was like come on, you are all going to break up with each other and have sex with each other and take lots of drugs. And they were all really flabbergasted: "How can you even say this, I love my boyfriend?" At the end of three years I was the one left behind. I didn't sleep with anyone in my year. I was a martyr, but I was fine with standing alone on the burning ship.

I'm sorry to hear that. What did you enjoy most about the lessons?
I loved being an animal. I was a dragon for an hour. I loved anything physical actually, because for me, theatre is very physical and even now when I do TV and film stuff I always approach a character through the body rather than through the mind.

There were some very weird things like 17th century dance, which I rebelled against at first, but I realize that they were all very good for me. They somehow connect up into proper acting. I loved singing. I can't sing at all, but I loved the singing part of it and I loved voice class. There was also sword-fighting, that was great fun, and stage combat.

Did you find you were more willing or enthusiastic than some of the British students?
So, I come from this Indian school of thought where in theatre, you basically get there and become naked. It's theory very influenced from the Polish and Germans, where your body is your thing and you have to strip yourself down and all that. In Kolkata I started a theatre group and we were quite experimental. We did devised plays, it was quite controversial. So I came from that and thought we were going to step it up a notch at Rada. But we didn't. I mean we did in some ways, in terms of acting, but not in terms of being controversial at all.

So when we were in an acting class, obviously we are going to act and cry and break down. I found it annoying when people were like, "Oh I can't do it!" I was like come on, then why are you here? I'm being mean, but it was annoying. Stop crying and act. Although Rada actually pushed people through that process which was great they are all really amazing actors now.

I guess if people think about Rada, they imagine a lot of posh English actors like Tom Hiddleston. Is that the case?
I think people always assume that drama school and especially Rada are places where only privileged kids go, but everyone was diverse. There were lots of kids from really small towns, who had barely enough money to scrape through and weren't exposed to the world that much.

I was also only used to the posh English accent, so when I came here, I could not believe what I was hearing. These accents are very hard for me. I'm good at English, I got into Rada, but these people, I just could not understand. I'd never even heard the word banter before I came. I had no clue what was going on. Eventually I became closer with people that are still my friends today.

Was there a lot of outrage about exercises like master and slave?
The craziest thing that happened with the master and slave thing was when one guy had to strip and stand on the piano and masturbate. But he was masturbating with his pants still on, through the material. I said, "Come on! Don't do half measures here." There was a lot of making out and stuff like that, but it was mostly tongue in cheek. If I'm honest, I really did think it wasn't that big a deal, but then I saw people crying in the corridor saying "Oh God I can't believe I've gone that far!" I thought, What do you mean? That doesn't make sense, you haven't done anything. Maybe this is a harsh judgment, but in Europe it's harder to be an actor, because we have a reserved way of social interaction, whereas in India, people are already letting their emotions out.

Are you glad you went?
I think the most important thing it gave me was discipline actually. In India, when you become an actor, you do loads of drugs and get drunk and explode on stage.

More like a rock star?
Yeah, but what I liked about England was that acting was a job. You go to work, that was really good for me. Now I am actually doing more TV and film than before. I have an English agent here now. So even though Rada never trained you for the TV specifically, without the training, I think you would feel a bit lost in front of the camera. I really do think it changed my life.

When presented with passages from these accounts, Rada told us they "use a variety of exercises within its classes, all of which are widely used within the industry and have a long heritage in acting training." They said they take "a zero-tolerance policy towards, and would never sanction training or exercises that compromise the safety or wellbeing of our students, both physically and psychologically," adding that "the organization takes every measure to ensure the safeguarding of its students and has strict guidelines over the behavior of its teaching staff."

Lamda chose not to comment.

Follow Sam on Twitter.

Still from Sophia Luvarà's documentary, 'Inside the Chinese Closet.'

In China, homosexuality has been legal since 1997, yet the social stigmatization of LGBT people pervades, with gay relationships largely frowned upon by the state. This week, the Chinese government banned portrayals of same-sex relationships from television, having previously removed videos that featured LGBT couples from the internet. No wonder many young gays and lesbians in the country are having to find innovative ways to conceal their sexuality and save their families the perceived shame of having an unmarried child.

One answer to this has been the rise of fake heterosexual weddings between gay men and lesbians. Inside the Chinese Closet, a new documentary from Italian filmmaker Sophia Luvarà, has all the hallmarks of a classic, sappy romcom: awkward matchmaking, failed attempts to find "the one," and potentially life-ruining in-laws. The only difference is, the film doesn't follow people looking for true love, but rather a fake partnership.

The film focuses on a hapless gay man named Andy and a lesbian named Cherry as they each search for a sham suitor in speed dating-style scenarios. They attend "wedding fairs," which match gay men and women who are looking for the same thing; someone who can convincingly pose a spouse, maybe have a kid via IVF, and live under the same roof. It's like a professional beard service, only the arrangement is meant to last a lifetime.

To find out more about why young Chinese LGBT people don't just abandon their disapproving parents, move to the UK, and spend the rest of their days in leather bars, we talked to Luvarà about her experiences making the documentary. What are these gay matchmaking fairs like? What happens after the wedding? And are they really that different from "real" marriages anyway?

VICE: You have such intimate access to the people in this film. How did you find them?
Sophia Luvarà: It took two years to research the whole thing, and the hardest part was finding characters that would be in the film. I started going out to gay clubs every night with my researcher—it was fun but tiring. We were desperate. Shanghai is a big city: There are 23 million people, and apparently, there are very few openly gay guys. We spoke to people and kept getting given the same names. Eventually, I met my protagonist, Andy, through friends of friends of friends. He was the perfect character I was looking for—he's so troubled, constantly battling with himself and his father figure. And then Cherry came along much later by chance. I wasn't looking for another character, but I met her, and she was so charismatic that she had to be in the film.

What's the social climate like for gay people in China, from what you saw making the film?
Well, since 2001, it's no longer been considered a mental disease to be homosexual, but you still find clinics where they say they can cure you—they give you pills or electric shock therapy. Although you can't go to prison for homosexuality, on a social level, it is problematic. Firstly, your family most likely wants you to have a child, especially because of the one child policy in China, which means that it's likely you're the only child and the only one who can continue the family name. The second problem is the workplace—there is still a lot of discrimination that might mean it is unlikely you get a promotion, for example, if you are openly gay.

In the film, Andy came out to his parents and then was kind of asked by them to retract it and find a wife. Was Cherry ever open with her family? Were they just in denial?
She never came out completely but she hinted. The mother probably understood, and the father too, because when she was at school, the principal found out she was having a relationship with another girl. But because they come from a small rural town, people just don't fully understand what gayness is. They think she's simply rebelling. People are very ignorant, which actually means that gay people don't seem to worry about the way they look or sound as a giveaway.

Why didn't they abandon the parents altogether?
It's a cultural thing. In Chinese society, the family is the most important thing. At the same time, I did choose people who struggled to please their parents, wanted to be accepted, and wanted their parents to be proud. I felt that the film would be stronger because, on a human level, this need connects everyone—we've all at some point in our lives tried to please our parents.

What was the atmosphere at the matchmaking fair like?
It's bizarre! Very controlled. You have to go and say openly what you're looking for—money, baby, marriage terms. It's very pragmatic. It's funny to listen to that as an outsider. It was like a market where you can sell vegetables or eggs; it's so unemotional. It makes perfect sense, though, because both parties need the same thing. Sometimes, it ends well in marriage; other times, it ends badly, especially for the woman who might, somewhere down the line, be pushed into having a baby by the husband's parents. It can be quite distressing for both parties.

Why did you decide to end the film before a sham marriage, before either of your protagonists had found their fake love?
I did find people already in marriages—some successful, others less so. But I didn't want to take the focus away from these two protagonists. I didn't want to wait for Andy to get married because it's not the focus of the film. It's much more about his personal quest. And also, who knows if he will get married, he still hasn't found anyone.

How was it working out for the people you met who were in sham marriages?
I had one particular case where four people lived together, a male couple and a female couple, and one of the boys was married to one of the girls. They are all having a baby together. It's like a commune. The big question is: What is love if you think about it? In the beginning, sure, people are sexually attracted to each other, but then it often does turn into a friendship. It's the same for these gay couples.

So, in making a film about this, were you hoping to change anything? Can you even show the film in China?
I talked to my characters, and they don't want the film to be shown in China. Also, if you want to show a film on TV, you have to have a green stamp from the state, which I obviously didn't get because the film is so controversial to the government. We will show it at LGBT festivals in China, though: They country has two, one in Beijing and one in Shanghai. I'll also use the LGBT networks of people we met there. We hope it can help. Especially in raising awareness about homosexuality in more rural areas. We definitely want it to reach other people who are going through this.

Inside the Chinese Closet is showing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London, March 9–18.

Photo via Flickr user GotCredit

Read: Meet the Americans Who Moved to Europe and Went AWOL on Their Student Loans

For years, millennials have been derided as lazy, narcissistic leaches whose spoiled upbringing has left them ungrateful for the world of technological wonders they've been born into. But a new Guardian investigation into data about incomes in Western countries has found that young people have reason to complain—in seven wealthy nations in particular, they're statistically destined to end up worse off financially than their parents. In the US, young people are now poorer than retirees.

The Guardian reported that even as the incomes of young people in countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and France have declined, the fortunes of older people have increased. "It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save for periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society," according to the Guardian.

The newspaper mentions debt, joblessness, and the rising cost of housing as among the problems causing the phenomenon. It's also worth noting that the in the seven countries, the growth in incomes for people in their 20s has been well below the national averages for three decades—meaning this can't simply be blamed on the financial crash of 2008.

Long story short: This is likely to be an economic disaster that is showing no signs of abating.

It's hard to tell how this will affect society as millennials age into the time of life when previous generations have bought houses and acquired wealth. But anecdotally, it's obvious that the kids aren't all right and they know it. If this Guardian report doesn't make you more sympathetic to kids who've fled to Berlin to dodge student debt, it at least explains why half of your Facebook news feed is made up of memes for Bernie Sanders.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Ted Eytan

Read: My Husband's Sperm and the Lesbians Who Want It

On Monday, the US Supreme Court unanimously reversed a decision by the highest court in Alabama denying a lesbian mother joint custody of her three children, as USA Today reports.

After one woman identified in court documents only as EL gave birth to three children via a donor in Georgia, she and her partner—VL—moved to Alabama, where they subsequently split. Georgia courts later granted VL custody and visitation. But in September, Alabama's Supreme Court decided to deny her those rights, suggesting Georgia had messed up by allowing the adoption to go through in the first place.

There are an estimated 65,000 adopted children nationwide living with a gay or lesbian parent, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA. Rather than making the case about social progress, though, VL's lawyers successfully argued Alabama was infringing the Constitution's "faith and credit" clause by declining to respect or accept the ruling of a judge in another state.

"I am overjoyed that the US Supreme Court reversed the Alabama court decision," VL said Monday, according to NBC News. "I have been my children's mother in every way for their whole lives. I thought that adopting them meant that we would be able to be together always. The Supreme Court has done what's right for my family."

The ruling comes a little over eight months after the Supreme Court decided same-sex marriage is a constitutionally-guaranteed right across America.

Adrian as a baby with his dad, Warren Fellows. All images courtesy of the author

I lost my father not once, but three times.

The first time was when I was just two years old. My dad, Warren Fellows, was arrested in Bangkok, attempting to bring 8.5 kilograms of heroin into Australia. Subsequently, he faced the death penalty, made international news, and destroyed the stability of my whole family. Most of all my father broke my heart. Choosing to be a drug dealer is like making a deal with the devil, and the devil always collects.

How do you tell your child that his dad is a bad man, locked away rotting in a Thai prison? Mom tried but I manufactured this image of a heroic alpha male in my mind while he was absent. Then one day I saw my father on TV and finally faced the truth, but couldn't process it. When my mom told he was never coming home I suffered a nervous breakdown. I was only nine years old.

This set forth a mental condition known as OTD: obsessive thought disorder. I was stuck in a tortuous loop of destructive thoughts. I wasn't expected to recover or at least grow to be healthy. Not only was my father lost, I was too.

The entrance of Bangkwang prison. Image via

The second time I lost my father was when he received a royal pardon, and was released to the notorious Bangkwang prison—or the Big Tiger, as the Thais call it, because it eats men alive. Warren returned a deeply affected man. In a sick irony, which he later called poetic justice, the drug he trafficked ended up trafficking his soul. During his 12-year incarceration he became a heavy heroin user.

When my father and I finally met face-to-face at the aptly named Judgement Bar in Sydney, I knew—though I didn't want to admit it—that he'd lost himself to addiction. There was 16 years of social, mental, physical, and family tribulations between us. The possibility of a so-called normal father-son relationship was hopeless.

As soon as I was old enough, I hit the road. It wasn't long though before I was walking on thin ice, experimenting and testing my limits. Call it youth, or call it covering up a damaged past, I was tasting the world's offerings.

At some point it became clear I needed to let my father go. I was living and working in the media in London I decided to kill him off, metaphorically speaking. He was dead to me. The problem was this was just another form of suppression. Shoving more baggage in an already cramped compartment in my emotional system.

Years later, I received a call out of the blue from a private number. Usually, I never answered private calls but this time, for some reason, I did. It was my father. It had been at least five years since I'd last heard that croaky voice. Bolts of anxiety shot through me.

Adrian and his dad Warren

There we were, father and son standing again face-to-face, only this time a role reversal. I felt like the father and he the son. He looked terrible, perhaps not long for this world. I knew we could never take back the lost time. I was apprehensive and skeptical as a result of his past behavior. I couldn't just turn my back and walk; he needed my help.

My father wrote a book called The Damage Done, read by millions of people around the world. I hoped it would be a way to glue us back together. Combine this best-selling story with my media skills to produce a movie to rebalance the family chi. Maybe this time we would walk off into the proverbial sunset together.

But some damages can't be undone. Drug addiction is too powerful and too all-consuming. My father slipped again, leading him down the dark path towards psychosis. In and out of psych wards for years, the mental strain on the family led us all to breaking point. Sadly the bond could never stick. Heroin poisoned any chance of a healthy and lasting relationship. The hardest and only choice to make had to be done. I lost my father for the third and last time. The cord was cut.

I recently wrote my own book, Milk-Blood, about growing up as the son of a convicted drug trafficker. Writing it was something I had to do. To conquer my demons, uncover the truth, and most importantly face up to reality. So I bled my feelings and experiences onto paper.

Warren eventually converted to Christianity. This is a still from a video produced by the Sydney Adventists. Image via

One thing I've learned through all this is the sad fact that the media and society see the issue of drugs through a narrow lens. The focus is always on the addicts, the dealers, the cartels, and the war on drugs. What about the mothers, fathers, siblings, and loved ones who are continually picking up the pieces? They too are suffering, in ways that are lifelong and immeasurable. There are many unheard voices from the other side.

I spent my entire life expecting to become a washed up junkie, or a hardened criminal like my old man. The shame of my father's actions motivated my every move. But fuck that, my genetic coding wasn't going to dictate my existence. Though fueled by an unnatural determination I pushed myself into near extinction on several occasions.

Heroin, at its core, is evil. Indomitable in its nature and completely unforgiving. I've heard many philosophical analogies used, but this one rings loud. My father, the drug dealer, holds the gun to an addict or user, but doesn't pull the trigger. Instead, they do. But what if my father had flushed the drugs? Who knows, I stopped dreaming about sliding doors a long time ago.

Adrian Simon is the author of Milk-Blood, read more about his story here.

Emad El-Sayed. Photo via the Free Emad El-Sayed Facebook group

On February 3, months after Donald Trump announced his intentions to prevent Muslims from entering the United States, 24-year-old Emad El-Sayed logged onto Facebook. He posted a photo of Trump, along with a comment suggesting he "wouldn't mind serving a life sentence for killing this guy," and that in doing so, he'd be "doing the world a favor."

El-Sayed, who is Muslim and Egyptian, was in the United States on a student visa, and was studying at the Universal Air Academy in Los Angeles. When the flight academy saw the post, it reported him to federal officials and revoked his I-20, the document showing school support for a student visa. Without his I-20, his student visa was null, and he was in violation of his terms of admission to the United States.

While the post hardly seems like a legitimate threat, jokes in poor taste posted on social media have, in many cases, jeopardized immigrants' legal status in the United States.

"Immigration officers are absolutely looking at social media," said Danielle M. Claffey, an immigration attorney for Kuck Immigration Partners in Atlanta, Georgia. "We've come to realize that, when it comes to immigration issues, the government will definitely use social media to investigate an individual."

Claffey said that five years ago, social media wasn't on her radar in terms of immigration. But today, as the internet becomes increasingly interlaced with security threats and terrorism, it comes up in every part of immigration investigations.

Matthew Kolken, an immigration attorney in Buffalo, New York, told me immigration officers "routinely review social media in making assessments of eligibility for immigration status, or alternatively, if they are planning on charging someone with a violation of immigration law."

Mostly, they're looking for evidence of fraud, inconsistencies in someone's testimony, or illegal activity. According to Kolken, even something like a photo on Facebook showing someone doing illegal drugs can be grounds to deny someone's visa application. "I've seen that happen in the past, where the client had pictures of illegal activity" he told me. "The government brought print-outs from social media into court."

"If an American citizen made a similar comment—and I'm sure many have—those comments aren't a problem." — Danielle M. Claffey

As for immigrants who are already in the United States, El-Sayed isn't the first to have his immigration status challenged because of a threat made online. In December 2014, Keshav Mukund Bhide, a 24-year-old from India, was deported after he posted on Google+ about planning a campus shooting at the University of Washington. Earlier this month, Hanxiang Ni, a 22-year-old Chinese student at the University of Iowa, was deported because of a post on Weibo, which, according to the Daily Iowan, threatened to "let professors experience the fear of Lu Gang." (Lu Gang, a Chinese graduate student, was the shooter in a 1991 campus shooting at the University of Iowa.)

With cases of security, though, it's not always clear what constitutes a legitimate threat and what's just a joke. In 2012, a pair of Irish tourists were denied entry to the United States after one of them tweeted: "Free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?"

El-Sayed, for his part, told reporters that what he wrote on Facebook was just "a stupid post," without any real threat attached. But immigration attorneys say the line between a joke and a threat is razor thin.

"I've seen things like this rise to the level where aren't a problem."

On Vice News: What It's Like to Be Violently Deported from the UK

El-Sayed's case is complicated by the fact that he was enrolled in a flight academy, many of which have been on high alert since 9/11 hijackers learned to fly planes at American flight schools.

" were really under the microscope for several years after 9/11, because of who they admitted to their schools," said Gregory Suskind, an immigration attorney. "I can kind of understand why a flight school might be hypersensitive to those kinds of statements, but I think that it was probably an overreaction," said Suskind, who added that, to him, El-Sayed's post "just sounded like political commentary."

Suskind and other immigration attorneys I spoke to reiterated that anything their clients post on social media can be used against them. Kolken said immigrants and those seeking entry to the United States shouldn't do anything illegal that would jeopardize their immigration status, and "if they put something on the internet, it's forever and it can be potentially used against them."

In a hearing today, El-Sayed's legal team requested a voluntary departure, which would allow him to leave the United States without the black mark of deportation on his record. That requested was granted, and a representative from his attorney's office confirmed that he will soon board an Egypt Air flight back to Cairo.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Out of nowhere on Tuesday night, around 8 PM, Alex Arevalos, a student and graphic designer in Alhambra, California, ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, heard a single, loud thud.

He immediately asked his sister if she'd slapped his bedroom wall. "She said she didn't, so I automatically blamed the train," Arevalos, who lives near train tracks, told VICE.

Then on Thursday around midnight, two similar sounds woke up Arevalos's father, and when father and son spoke about it in the morning, the younger Arevalos became convinced it was something abnormal. "This time as soon as I heard it, and heard the walls shake a bit, I listened for the train, but didn't hear anything," adding, "I can tell the difference now living in Alhambra, every other night or so I hear a loud explosion-like noise," she wrote. Soon, other nextdoor.com users shared similar experiences with the booms, according to Alhambra Source.

Two nights later, Alhambra Police Department posted about the booms on Facebook. Just after 8 PM, officers received reports of "a loud explosion heard in the northern end of our city." The police wrote that they've received multiple similar reports in recent weeks, but that "unfortunately, we were unable to locate the origin."

"We are as puzzled as everyone," Jerry Johnson, the Alhambra police sergeant, told VICE. He said two on-duty officers heard the booms recently, and they rushed toward the source, arriving just 90 seconds after the sound dissipated.

"And then nothing," Johnson said.

In the comments of an Alhambra PD Facebook post, one Facebook user named Anthony Ruiz called the booms, "much too loud to be a firework." Another user named Christopher Keller described them as akin to a sonic boom, saying he felt a "pressure wave." But he added that they were too close to be sonic booms. An isolated series of sonic booms shook New Jersey in late January—but that was an isolated incident brought on by several fighter jets breaking the sound barrier around the same time above the area.

Chris Paulson, the administrative services director for the city of Alhambra, also called it a "sonic boom type of sound," made all the more strange by the fact that it's being reported across an unusually wide area. "We've investigated, and it's probably about a mile north to south," he told VICE.

According to Alhambra Source, there are construction projects going on in the area, but the local public works department "does not believe that the projects are the source of the noises." According to Paulson, that's because, "there's simply no construction going on when those noises are heard."

VICE contacted a municipal consulting company called Transtech, an engineering firm that contracts for Alhambra, inspecting safety concerns at city construction projects. Transtech's Alhambra city building official, Ayla Jefferson, told us she had heard of the booms, but has "no knowledge" of their origin.

Meanwhile, the booms continue unabated. For Arevalo, they've become part of life in Alhambra. He described the most recent explosions he heard as "just kind of there." Since he's been living near a train for 13 years, he says he's become accustomed to noise in general, adding that "the only thing affecting my sleep is school."

But not everyone is tuning out the booms. According to Sergeant Johnson, "We're getting calls on this two or three times a day."

"It is a mystery," said Paulson.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Read: Some Jamoke Is Trying to Rickroll People with Fake Parking Tickets

Sharon Turman, a woman wanted for parole violation, led police in Redding, California, on a wild chase Sunday as she sped away in a 1994 Chrysler minivan painted to look like the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, according to a local ABC affiliate.

Turman's plans to lie low and give her probation officer the slip didn't go so well, seeing as how she was reportedly speeding around Redding in a hand-painted version of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Scooby, and Shaggy's van—complete with lime green rims.

When a police officer attempted to pull Turman over, she apparently took off, leading cops to pursue her on the I-5 highway, with Turman reaching speeds over 100 mph—which is actually somewhat impressive for such a clunky old van.

Eventually, a California Highway Patrol helicopter spotted Turman abandoning her vehicle on Highway 36. That's when she took off on foot.

At the time of publication, Turman's whereabouts remained a mystery.

Thumbnail photo of a different Mystery Machine via Flickr user Loren Javier

Read: How Rikers Island Became the Most Notorious Jail in America

Twenty-year-old Sean Chung was arrested last month after prosecutors said he recorded a rap video threatening to kill Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, as the New York Daily News reports. One week after he was moved into the notorious jail complex on Rikers Island, two inmates stabbed Chung multiple times in the head.

He was later treated at a nearby hospital.

Now Chung's lawyer is arguing the kid nearly lost his life over lyrics recorded years ago—long before he was charged with conspiring to kill rival gang members.

"The song predates his arrest. He's been rapping since he was 15, he was arrested at 18," attorney Audrey Thomas told the paper. "Whatever happened to the First Amendment?"

Rikers has long been plagued by violence and scandal, so news of a stabbing incident on the island is not surprising in and of itself. But it does show the high stakes of getting remanded to jail over music lyrics. "He wouldn't have been stabbed if he wasn't in jail," Thomas told the DailyNews.

At the time of his initial arrest in April 2014, prosecutors said Chung belonged to Queens' SNOW Gang, and that, along with 30 fellow gang members, he plotted to kill two enemies. He was released on bail, but in November 2015, the 20-year-old apparently posted a YouTube video where, taking on the persona "JP Smoov," he raps, "Tell the judge to get off my cock, put the DA in a box."

That was enough for Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert Kohm to lock him up.

Thomas insists her client is now on the righteous path—back in school and even on the religious tip (he had a Protestant baptism scheduled for February 28). And she's not the only NYC criminal defense lawyer opposed to casting such a broad net on troubled youth.

"Gang membership is a shibboleth they trot out when they have a horseshit case," says hard-charging Brooklyn defense attorney Howard Greenberg, who briefly represented the rapper Bobby Shmurda, another (much more prominent) MC recently confined to Rikers. "Rap lyrics are another shibboleth prosecutors trot out when they have a horseshit case."

Chung faces 25 years to life if convicted of the original murder conspiracy charge.

Maps via Pornhub

After a request from VICE Canada, a Pornhub insights map was released today revealing what search terms are most often helping Canadians get off. Much like the United States Pornhub analytics that were released last month, "lesbian" dominated the charts for much of Canada. However, some choice terms that are inherently Canadian made their way into our country's top searched porn terms.

"Why the fuck did you think using me to conduct toxicity tests was a good idea in the first place?" —this beagle (photo via Flickr user Timothy Fenn)

Hug your pet: Health Canada is ending its requirement to test pesticides on animals.

Quebec Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée, pictured above, abstained from aligning herself with the feminist label last week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Throughout the past week, the current and former ministers of women in Quebec made headlines after publicly eschewing the feminist label.

Michael Bloomberg. Photo via MTA on Flickr.

US News

Bloomberg Not Running
Michael Bloomberg has decided not to enter the presidential race as a third party candidate, saying an independent bid could backfire and help put Republicans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House. "That is not a risk I can take in good conscience," he said. —The Washington Post

US Air Strike Kills 150 in Somali
A US air strike on a training camp in Somali has killed around 150 al-Shabab fighters, according to the Pentagon. Spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the Islamist fighters, part of an al Qaeda affiliate, "posted an imminent threat to US and (African Union) forces." —The New York Times

Reporter Wins $55 Million Over Stalker Hotel Video
Sportscaster Erin Andrews has been awarded $55 million from a hotel operator after the secret recording and release of a video showing her naked while staying at a Tennessee hotel. Her stalker Michael David Barrett, who recorded the video after sawing a peephole into her room, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. —ABC News

San Francisco Train Derailed
A Bay Area commuter train went off its tracks in Niles Canyon, east of San Francisco, causing the front car of the train to hit a tree and fall into the creek. Police said 14 of the 214 train passengers were injured, with four sustaining serious injuries. —USA Today

International News

Tunisia Kills Militants at Libya Border
Tunisian security forces have killed 28 militants who launched a cross-border raid from Libya. Seven civilians and nine security officers were also killed in clashes. The fighting follows an attack by Islamists on an army base and police station at the Tunisian border. —BBC News

China Sets Up Base in Djibouti
China has hinted at plans for more global bases following the set-up of "support facilities" in Djibouti, something the African country calls a military facility. China plans to use it to launch anti-piracy operations, and China's foreign minister said there could be more facilities in future.—Reuters

EU and Turkey Agree Refugee Deal
Turkey and the EU have reached an outline agreement to tackle the refugee crisis into Europe. The EU is expected give Turkey $3.3 billion and grant Turkish citizens the right to enter the Schengen zone without a visa in exchange for help ending the flow of refugees to Greece. —Al Jazeera

Indian Teen Raped And Set on Fire
Police say a 15-year-old girl is fighting for her life in a New Delhi hospital after being raped and set on fire on the rooftop of her family home. A 20-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly raping and trying to burn the girl, after her parents found her with severe burns. —AP

Maria Sharapova. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Nike Suspends Sharapova Ties
The sportswear giant has announced it is suspending its relationship with Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova after she admitted to have failed a drug test. "We are saddened and surprised," the Nike statement read. —Sky News

Google Hires 4chan Founder
Christopher Poole, the founder of notorious forum 4chan, has been hired by Google. Poole said he found himself "drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm." —Gizmodo

Egyptian Student to Leave US After Trump Joke
A student pilot from Egypt has agreed to leave the US voluntarily after posting on Facebook the world would thank him if he killed Donald Trump. Emadeldin Elsayed, 23, was not charged but immigration authorities wanted to deport him. —Slate

American Muslim Ads Go Up in NYC
Ads created for a comedy documentary called The Muslims Are Coming! were banned last year by New York City's transit authority for being "political." But a First Amendment–based lawsuit means the ads will now go up across the subway system. —VICE News


Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'How the Philippines's Strict Laws Have Driven Women to Seek Backstreet Abortions'

Photo by US Fish and Wildlife Service, via Wikimedia Commons

In 2006, Becky Blanton decided to make a radical life change. She wanted adventure, and set out to be a full-time camper, moving into her van and parking mostly on forest roads. But then she lost her job, and she had no choice but to continue living in her van. She parked on public lands throughout Colorado, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia for a year before she found a stable housing situation.

If she had to be homeless, Blanton said she actually felt safer in the woods than in the city. "The streets are dangerous," she told me. "In the woods you might have bears, but there are enough places to find shelter that you won't have to worry."

Each year, hundreds of people like Blanton spend time living on America's vast federal lands. Some wilderness dwellers consider themselves nomads and choose to live without a fixed address. Some are anti-government separatists of the Oregon militia's ilk. Others fit the more traditional definition of homelessness: They are without a place to live due to personal or economic hardship, and the woods provide them shelter. And while the wide-open land provides space for these people to settle, the presence of long-term campers presents challenges to public land management agencies: Their purpose is land conservation, not housing, and they're not equipped to keep up with the demands of human inhabitancy.

Most of the federal land in the US is managed by the United States Forest Service (USFS) or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversee over 400 million acres in total. Both agencies allow for dispersed camping, meaning visitors can camp anywhere they want for free (unlike the National Park system, where camping is only allowed in designated areas and usually costs money).

None of these federal land management agencies know just how many people are using public lands residentially, partly because it would be impossible to find and count them all, and partly because numbers fluctuate seasonally due to weather conditions. But according to a recent USFS survey, non-recreational camping is on the rise.

Related: A Growing Movement Is Fighting the Criminalization of Homelessness

"Our officers know the places to look, but some people are really good at hiding," said Chris Boehm, the USFS assistant director of law enforcement. "Just about every place has some story of a guy living out in the woods that we can never find."

The woods can be an attractive option to people who want to live off the grid, or a last resort for those with nowhere else to go. In the past, public lands have specifically been used to house the homeless—like the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon, which established a campground exclusively for homeless individuals and families in 1992. The site, named Blodgett, screened residents and arranged limited services, like portable toilets and school bus service.

At the time, an optimistic Forest Service spokeswoman told the New York Times, "If it works, we may try it elsewhere." That never came to pass. Blodgett closed after a year in operation, having served about 100 people. Cheryl Caplan, Umpqua's Public Information Officer, said the organization had to put up a deposit of $1 million just to get started, in case campers caused a forest fire.

"When visitors come out to the forest we want them to see the trees, the wildlife, the pristine water—not somebody's trash." — Chris Boehm

Fire risk is one thing: Ninety percent of wildfires in the US are caused by humans, and of those, unattended campfires are the most common trigger. In 2014, the USFS spent $320 million fighting its ten biggest fires alone, and fire fighting and prevention programs now make up over half of the USFS budget. Campfire bans are imposed at times of extremely high fire danger, but according to Boehm, these are difficult to enforce when a forest is full of dispersed, long-term campers.

Human waste and trash are another concern. Feces can cause illness or contaminate water if disposed of improperly; trash, which is supposed to be "packed out" of the forest, can build up when a site is occupied long-term. Some campers abandon broken-down vehicles in the forest, or go so far as to build illegal dwellings. "We've had several situations where people have occupied a site for years. That requires overwhelming cleanup," said Boehm.

Plus, he added, "when people don't move frequently enough, that leaves little opportunity for the land to heal and regrow. When visitors come out to the forest we want them to see the trees, the wildlife, the pristine water—not somebody's trash."

Watch: VICE News investigates the growing numbers of homeless people camping in the woods to escape police harassment.

Currently, non-recreational camping is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Because the types of campers and their reasons for living in forests vary from district to district, local land managers are responsible for making their own plans to address the issue. A common enforcement strategy is to reduce the standard 14-day stay limit where long-term camping becomes an acute problem, which often happens as a result of local housing shortages.

Matt Derrick, founder of Squat the Planet, stayed on BLM land in Montana for several months in 2010. He lived in a converted school bus, which he moved every 14 days to comply with camping rules. "I think 14 days is pretty generous," he said. "In a world where most laws seem to only exist to tax us, protect the rich, or protect us from ourselves, the 14 day rule feels pretty sane and I feel like it's built to protect these wild lands so they're there for everyone to enjoy."

Others—like Taylor Werner, who slept outside in national forests from 2005 to 2007—disagree. The 14-day limit, Werner said, "doesn't stop anyone from living indefinitely in national forests. In my experience, it is used as a rationale for unethical behavior while profiling certain types of forest dwellers."

Werner is wary of law enforcement efforts after a string of negative encounters. "I think it's sad if there's nowhere you can go in this country and just be—not be regulated or monitored by some governmental force," she said. "Forest dwellers are thoughtful, introspective people. I understood their motives, even if some of them were a little out there."

Follow Garnet Henderson on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

A Home for Human Rights is an initiative run by Greek immigrants' rights organization METAdrasi that aims to provide temporary homes to unaccompanied child refugees. Until they find another warm, safe place to stay, these children are placed in various METAdrasi centers around Greece and spend a lot of their time drawing their stories. The organization has provided us with some of these drawings, which you can view below.

If you are interested in the programme or can offer an unaccompanied minor a safe space, click here.

A STEN machine gun allegedly offered for sale at a Florida poker game last year. Photo via handout

Last fall, Antonio Rossello joined a round of poker being held at an eggshell-colored house with a generously grassy front yard in Miami Gardens, Florida. At one point during the card game, the 41-year-old welder befriended another player and pitched his side-business selling guns, according to a criminal complaint filed in Miami federal court.

Rossello pulled out a fully automatic STEN machine gun and offered to sell the weapon to the man, the complaint says. Over half a century ago, British-made STENs were used to mow down Nazis and communist soldiers during World War II and the Korean War, respectively. Rossello showed the player a photo on his cell phone of a pistol with a silencer and said he had other guns in his inventory, along with hand grenades and C-4 explosives, the criminal complaint alleges.

The prospective customer turned out to be a confidential informant who helped special agents from the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) set up four undercover purchases from Rossello. Between October 29 of last year and this past January 8, Rossello sold the snitch three STENs, one "untraceable" pistol, and more than a hundred rounds of ammunition, including bullets that could pierce protective vests, the complaint states.

The transactions netted Rossello just $7,300.

On January 28, Rossello was charged with four felony counts: unlicensed firearms dealing, possession of a machine gun, possession of an unregistered firearm, unlawful transfer of a firearm, and unlawful making of a firearm. His bust was the result of an initiative launched by the the US Attorney's Office in southern Florida way back in 2011. But the case against Rossello provides a rare look into the murky world of private gun sales in Florida, a state with a storied history of passing laws that protect firearm owners and prop up gun manufacturers amid a growing national conversation about mass shootings and gun violence.

"This case is representative of why Obama issued his executive action" in January, says Lindsay Nichols, senior attorney for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "Because the definition of a person engaging the business of selling firearms is not that clear, prosecutors are often reluctant to pursue such cases."

Obama's action clarifies that anyone in the gun selling business, whether from a store, a gun show, or on the Internet, must conduct background checks. In addition, the president made it clear that a person can be considered an unlicensed firearms dealer even if they just sell one or two guns, according to Andrew Patrick, a spokesman for Washington, DC's Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

'Let's say there is a farmer's market where they sell guns," Patrick explains. "If they take credit cards and have business cards, then it is obviously more than just a hobby. Before the executive action, the definition of a private seller was kind of vague."

Prosecutors have historically had a tough time convicting illegal gun dealers because federal law allows a person who occasionally sells, exchanges and purchases firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby to do so without a federal license, according to Nichols. "Law enforcement officers have to pose as buyers or use confidential informants to gauge if a person is really selling guns as a business and not a hobby," she says. "One sale is rarely enough to bring a case against a person."

Mark Kleiman, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, says clarifying the definition of a private seller engaged in the gun business is important because a third of all gun sales in the US are not conducted by licensed dealers. But Kleiman believes prosecutors already have a strong case against Rossello—even if Obama had not passed his executive order.

"There is no need to change the law to deal with him," Kleiman tells me after reviewing the criminal complaint. "This guy was straight up gun trafficking."

According to the complaint, Rossello sold the confidential informant the four guns at three locations: the poker house, a service plaza on the Florida Turnpike, and the welder's own home in Lake Worth. When ATF agents and police officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant at Rossello's place on January 28, they confiscated another fully automatic machine gun.

In a video-recorded interview with investigators the same day, Rossello admitted to selling the firearms to the snitch and that the STEN machine guns had been manufactured by his boss' son, Todd Vanlinda. Rossello added that he and Vanlinda test-fired a STEN in a back area of the Lake Worth headquarters of Vanlinda Iron Works, where he was employed, according to the complaint. He also told investigators he'd seen kits for building firearms inside a concrete shed at Vanlinda's house.

Vanlinda was arrested later that same day and charged with possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm. During a search of his house, agents confiscated a MP-40 fully automatic machine gun that was in a safe on the property's patio.

During a recent visit to the Lake Worth headquarters of Vanlinda Iron Works, a snowy-haired man with a southern accent who would not identify himself declined comment. " doesn't work here," the man said. "Now you have to leave." Attempts to speak to the welder's family were also unsuccessful: A woman who answered the door at Rossello's home declined comment.

Both men are in federal custody pending trial.

In Rossello's case, the feds may have an especially easy road to conviction because he was selling machine guns, which has been prohibited under federal law since 1934. (Last month, the feds slapped Rossello with 13 additional firearms felony violations.) Nichols also notes that private sellers like Rossello take advantage of Florida being one of 18 states that have not closed the so-called "gun-show loophole" allowing private gun sales to take place just about anywhere—without a required background check. (Obama's January executive order encourages private sellers to come out from the shadows, but is unlikely to change the game, experts say.)

Check out our documentary on gun culture in Florida.

Some Florida counties, like Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Hernando, have passed local laws requiring background checks for private sales at gun shows and exhibitions—but not for transactions conducted online, at someone's home or in a parking lot. The loophole allows convicted felons and mentally unstable individuals to purchase guns illegally, advocates like Nichols believe. "It enables dangerous people to get guns," she tells me. "States that have closed the loophole have experienced lower rates of homicides and suicides."

Of course, Florida's second amendment defenders emphatically disagree. Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry—a nonprofit that "works tirelessly toward repealing and striking down ill-conceived gun control laws"—says there's no ambiguity that Rossello was an illegal arms dealer after he read the complaint. "If the allegations are true, then this is a bad guy who was doing bad things," Caranna says in an interview. "But does that mean every private seller should be registering their sales and conducting background checks? Absolutely not."

Caranna notes Florida lawmakers passed legislation in 2011 making it a felony for anyone, including law enforcement officials, to maintain a registry of firearms when guns change hands. "These lists can be used by unscrupulous people to target gun owners and steal their firearms," Caranna says. "And it's also meant to stop law enforcement officials from abusing their power by going around collecting firearms from gun owners."

Gun control advocates counter that holding private sellers to the same standards as licensed gun dealers will do more to prevent people who would cause harm from buying firearms.

"Private sales make it incredibly easy for those are ineligible to buy guns–whether a convicted felon or a person on a terrorist watch list–to get them," says Patrick of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "Gun trafficking 101 is to buy a bunch a guns through private sales in a state with weak gun laws."

Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter.