Ben Carson. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore.

US News

Carson to Endorse Trump
Ben Carson is expected to formally endorse Republican frontrunner Donald Trump this morning at a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump boasted about winning the former GOP candidate's backing during an unusually mild-mannered CNN debate in Miami. —The Washington Post

84 Indicted in New England Drug Bust
New York City police claim to have disrupted a massive drug and gun-dealing ring involving four gangs operating along the New England coast. Prosecutors indicted 84 people in all. Bronx District Attorney said the gangs had formed "an alliance of evil" to push cocaine and heroin. —The Boston Globe

Gas Company to Pay $4.2 Million for Water Poisoning
A federal jury has awarded $4.2 million to two Pennsylvania families after determining that a nearby natural gas well contaminated their water. The company responsible, Texas-based Cabot Oil and Gas, was found to have negligently allowed contamination to occur. —VICE News

Veterans Charity Fires Top Execs
Veterans charity the Wounded Warrior Project has fired its CEO Steven Nardizzi and COO Al Giordano after lavish spending was exposed. They are alleged to have wasted millions on staff retreats, spending 40 to 50 percent on overheads rather than on services for vets. —CBS News

International News

Key Powers Consider Division of Syria
Major powers involved in the Syria peace talks are discussing the possibility of a division of the war-torn country that would give broad autonomy to regional authorities. Russia and "some western powers" are thought to be keen on a federal structure. —Reuters

New Refugee Camps Appear Around Calais
New makeshift refugee settlements are popping up in the Calais countryside after the French authorities destroyed part of the original "jungle" camp. Aid workers said as many as six new smaller camps had sprung up in the past week. —Al Jazeera

Typo Stops $1 Billion Bangladesh Bank Heist
Cyberhackers were only prevented from stealing $1 billion from Bangladesh central bank and the New York Federal Reserve by a crucial spelling mistake. The transfer of money was stopped when bank staff noticed the word "foundation" had been spelled "fandation." —The Guardian

Ex-Putin Aide Died of Blunt Force
Mikhail Lesin, a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin who was found dead in a US hotel last year, died of blunt force trauma to the head. Lesin also had injuries to the neck, torso, arms and legs, according to Washington DC's chief medical examiner. —BBC News

JK Rowling. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Silverman as Hitler Denounces Trump
Comedian Sarah Silverman came on Conan O'Brien's show dressed up as Adolf Hitler last night, rejecting comparisons with Donald Trump on behalf of the Nazi leader. "I agree with a lot of what he says... But it's just, I don't like the way he says it. It's crass, you know?"—The Daily Beast

Oliver Stone Denies El Chapo Film
Director Oliver Stones has denied reports he planned a blockbuster film starring Sean Penn as the Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Stone said the claims in a new TV documentary are "unfounded." —The Hollywood Reporter

Rowling Accused of Rewriting History
J.K. Rowling's new online story History of Magic in North America has been criticized for lumping all Native Americans into one group. Cherokee scholar Adrienne Keene accused the Harry Potter author of "rewriting traditions." —CNN

Fred Trump's Alleged KKK History
Newspaper clips obtained by VICE suggest Donald Trump's father Fred may have worn the robe and hood of a Klansman in 1927. An old New York Times article had been unearthed suggesting that he was arrested at a May 1927 KKK rally in Queens, but three more newspaper reports now echo that account.—VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our video 'Inside the Tense Conflict Between Germany's Coal Miners and Climate Activists'

Hungary is still perceived by many as a pretty gloomy place. Not too long ago it was branded the most depressed nation in the world for six years running, and its harrowing history undoubtedly hangs heavy on its reputation.

For photographer Eva Szombat, this is outmoded bullshit. She rejects her country's disposition for misery with work that focuses on the pursuit of happiness, in all its forms. In 2013, for instance, she published Happiness Book—a kitsch visual guide to being happy. Now, she's releasing its follow-up, Practitioners, which documents people putting happiness into practice, doing all the weird things they enjoy the most, from balloon-twisting to frog collecting.

I caught up with Eva to talk about the pursuit of happiness, love, and how a perfect life can actually make you miserable.

VICE: Why are you so obsessed with photographing happiness?
Eva Szombat: Hungarians really like to complain about nothing. I don't know why, but it's a kind of tradition—maybe it's in our genes. But I just think everything's not so bad, you know? One of my friends once said to me, "Happiness is like math, you have to learn it," and I thought that was great. So that's where it came from. The title Happiness Book is ironic; it suggests ways to learn and practice happiness.

Your latest project, Practitioners, is way more documentary-orientated than your previous work. Why is that?
I wanted Practitioners to be about real people. Through them, I realized that the most important way to achieve happiness is through relationships. It's the love, the people, and the quality of relationships that are most important.

Do you know the people in the photographs?
Some of them are my friends, yes. The guy with the crocodile is my boyfriend. We were on holiday with friends and he jumped in a lake with lots of water lilies. I also photographed Zoli, a friend of mine. He works at a hotel and he lives in a modest, one-bedroom council flat in the suburbs. He's also a DJ—he goes by the name "Galactic Jackson" and collects rare synthesizers and LPs. He actually has one of the largest collections of synths in Hungary. As a hobby, he also likes to remake album covers with images of his own face. He did it once with Freddie Mercury, replacing his face with his own. He's a great guy and he's so happy. I think his life is perfect, really.

How did you find the rest of your subjects?
Mostly through word of mouth. A friend of mine told me about an elderly lady called Maria who likes collecting toy frogs, so I called her and asked if I could photograph her. Later on I found out that she started collecting them when she got cancer. Her friends and family would buy them for her as gifts because they knew she liked them. Eventually, she had so many that she decided to collect them. It gave her so much joy. She really believes having that hobby helped her to survive cancer.

Erika, the balloon twister, I met at an event where she was making balloons. She looked so happy, so I asked if she wanted to be a part of my happiness project. She agreed but said she was very shocked that I had perceived her as happy. Two years before, she had lost her son to cancer. She was very depressed, but she also had a husband and another child, a little girl, to care for. Her daughter liked balloons, so Erika bought a little balloon twister set for kids and started making balloons to cheer her up. It was the first thing she'd found that could switch her mind off losing her son. It gave her so much pleasure, and now she does it professionally. I photographed a helium angel she'd made of her son.

Are these sad stories from people's past intrinsic to the project?
I think that people who've had everything aren't actually so happy. They always want more. Making this project made me realize that people who've had problems tend to appreciate life a lot more. I wanted to show that you don't have to think, What should I have? or I want more of this. The people in Practitioners have something in common in that they think differently about happiness. They know it's about appreciating the little things. I really appreciate these people; they give me a lot of inspiration, and I want them to inspire others too.

See more of Eva's work at evaszombat.com. Word by Francesca Cronan. Scroll down to see additional photos.

VICE's Hannah Ewens meets Ben Wheatley, the cult British director and champion of DIY filmmaking, to discuss the dark humor that pervades his films. Wheatley has a skill for combining disparate genres—from horror to slapstick comedy to murderous gangster drama—while gesturing toward critical political undertones.

He applies his unique style and unpredictable effect to an intelligent adaptation of J. G. Ballard's dystopian novel High Rise. Set in a brutalist 70s apartment block that becomes a twisted microcosm of society, class segregation quickly collapses and the building becomes a fight-or-die prison of choice. In this episode of VICE Talks Film, Wheatley talks about his early days making viral videos with his friends and his unique partnership with his wife and co-writer Amy Jump.

With the UK housing crisis and another potential economic crash looming, there couldn't be a more relevant moment for Wheatley's unflinching take on High Rise.

The author, as a 'cunt'

I'm a little suspicious of the near-constant reverence given to youth cultures. Perhaps it's because I'm not too far away from being in the catchment age for that sort of thing, but when I was a teen, I couldn't be fucked with it all. I certainly didn't think I was part of anything special, or important. Yet here I am, about to write a lengthy diatribe on why emo music, being "scene," and all the rest of it—though perhaps not particularly influential to who I am now, to the degree that punk or whatever is to old, crust punk guys who hold signs outside Camden Station and look a bit like if Central St. Martins students were responsible for dressing corpses—is still the thing I know the most about.

It's my Mastermind subject, my piece of the Trivial Pursuit pie. I have a nigh-on encyclopedic knowledge of terrible screamo scene metal music, underground, and mainstream. I want to share a little bit of that with you. Come with me on a journey of guyliner, hair over one eye, clip-on fringes, studded belts, Bebo, self-harm, and the hammed-up homoeroticism present in any scene that involves a lot of pretty young men.

As many purists of the genre will tell you, emo isn't, or wasn't, what the stereotype typically represented. A hundred thousand guys in thick-rimmed glasses and plaid shirts, who would look more at home as extras in an episode of Portlandia than the MySpace top six, will bemoan its reputation as idiot teen fodder, and point you in the direction of the OGs: Sunny Day Real Estate, Dashboard Confessional, Jawbreaker, and the like. This was before the turn of the millennium, a time when the romanticism of dusty Midwestern boredom was heavily used to turn tricks in alternative rock. Its unglamorous origins soon gave way to much camper fare. The emotional content of the music blended with the popular noughties pop-punk sound of Blink 182, Sum 41, et al, and birthed a whole generation of crunchy sadness.

My interest came as a result of heavy internet usage. At 13, I got my first email address, a Hotmail, my ticket to the world's fair of nonsense that would soon become, and still is to some extent, the only thing I really engage with every day. I got MSN Messenger and started adding random people from internet forums like IMDb on it, just for shits and giggles. As this was during the calming-down stage of ultra-internet-pedophile-grooming-murder scandals, I'm sure my parents would have been horrified to find out about it. I got a drum kit for my birthday that same year. Between that, my growing teenage disinterest in any and all things that weren't banter, and my newfound obsession with the never-ending wonders of the online world, the path to looking like a cunt and listening to shit music was muddied but clear enough to walk down.

I say shit music—I loved it. I maintain to this day that the best three consecutive singles ever released by a band in chronological order are "I'm Not OK," "Helena," and "Ghost of You" from My Chemical Romance's second album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, released in 2004. I'll still bang a couple of the big'uns out on a day of nostalgia. But, for the most part, the stuff was trash. The lyrics especially were untenable. The most popular example of this overegged malaise was Hawthorne Heights's 2004 smash hit "Ohio Is For Lovers," which features the famous chorus refrain of "So cut my wrists and black my eyes/ So I can fall asleep tonight" among other things that a schoolboy would mouth while grimacing, looking out of a train window on the way to school.

Suicide and self-harm played a large part of the style. Funeral for a Friend's video for 2006's "Roses for the Dead" featured a bullied teen eventually jumping from what looked like a high-rise parking lot. Our teen years are pretty far from what you'd describe as enlightened times, and among my peers, a lot of the self-harm stuff was met with cold mockery. It was attention-seeking, as is everything anyone does at that age. But when you're young, you're oblivious to the crush of life's many penetrating horrors. A more experienced person would see parallel scratches on a girl's arm and be concerned. Mean-spirited teenagers see the same thing and wonder how they can make more of them.

Perhaps that's a little dramatic, but this is a scene steeped in drama. It is obsessed with tragedy, obsessed with forbidden love. A big moment for emo girls all over the world discovering their sexuality was the two contemporary kings of unconventional sexiness, Bert McCracken of the Used and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, sharing an on-stage kiss. It had parallels with indie in many ways: the faux homosexuality, the use of Camden as a base, and the lame, overcooked poeticism. But while the gods of the indie scene dressed like redcoats had bad teeth, worse skin, and an addiction to all kinds of life-threatening barbiturates, emo godfathers had expensive-looking haircuts, fresh, youthful skin, make-up, and plugs.

It could be argued that emos and scenesters were the first to adopt the fabled MySpace angle, a way of taking photos that used science to erase your ugliness. The less you can see of your face (while still having it in shot), the better. This is all part of the identity, of the look. Covering your face with straightened, colored hair, distracting the eye with the glint of a snakebite piercing, and holding your digital camera aloft, the wrong way round, so more of your scalp is on display than your face. It's the unconfident narcissism of young people that stretches way beyond this extremely narcissistic scene.

Moving on from emo, we find ourselves in the company of its jock cousin, "scene." If emo was the contemplative, moody sunset of Midwestern angst, scene is the brash, catty, sexualized bastard son of hair metal. A very Californian affair, it birthed the career of Sonny Moore, a.k.a. Skrillex, in his band From First to Last and the metalcore outfit Bring Me the Horizon. This is where it starts to get cutesier but also more mature. It's more of a party scene. It's more about drinking and having sexual encounters. It's more raw and rugged. Artists like Alexisonfire, Silverstein, Underoath, and more used this to great effect in screamo, the inevitable blend of being sad and being angry. But this still didn't have the filth. Well, it had filth, but it was more of a "hardcore" filth, like dirt and mud and sweat, as opposed to a gyrating Jagger-esque grot that you'd get with most heavily made-up Kerrang! bands. That was left to your So-Cal types, your sons of Motley Crü, and it lives on today in groups like Escape the Fate, blessthefall, Pierce the Veil, and Black Veil Brides, as well as all other veil-related acts.

Image via

In the UK, this was always the salve of the provinces. It was for kids who hung out in graveyards on the outskirts, drinking cans, being weird, and talking about weird shit. It wasn't something you felt a sense of pride in. It wasn't a movement that changed the world. It was a cosmetic excuse, an exercise in vanity for people who rejected the "lamestream" music of the time.

There's a time to grow up and look elsewhere. Moshing is something you shouldn't do past the age of 20. You can't take ecstasy and watch As I Lay Dying. You have to branch out. But it was as good a place as any to spend a few mopey years, listening to some scraggly guitars, with a man who weighs less than my leg belting out a scream about his heart being turned into an urn.

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Take one chunky teenage troublemaker and an old bushman and send them off into the soggy New Zealand bush on the run from child welfare. That's the story of Taika Waititi's new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which stars Sam Neill, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, and Rhys Darby. Julian Dennison plays a 13-year-old wannabe gangster who loves hip-hop so much he names his dog Tupac. Sam Neill is his reluctant foster uncle who has just as much emotional growing up to do as his young charge.

The film is based on Wild Pork and Watercress—a novel by late Kiwi legendary bushman, hunter, and author Barry Crump. It's a project that's been around since way before Waititi's 2010 hit Boy. Last year, he chucked out the dark, depressing version of the script he wrote a decade ago and smashed out a family comedy loaded with references to Sleeping Dogs, Crash Palace, Thelma and Louise, Lord of the Rings, and everything Wes Anderson.

VICE called up Waititi, who is currently in Los Angeles working on Marvel's massive Thor franchise, to chat about his ten-year process to get Hunt for the Wilderpeople made.

Julian Dennison and Sam Neill in 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople'

VICE: You've been working on this project since 2005. Why did you stick with it so long?
Taika Waititi: When I first wrote this, it wasn't my project. I was writing it for other producers. I was making Eagle vs Shark, and I'd writtenBoy, which got financed. I was getting more and more swamped with my own projects. After What We Do in the Shadows, I had a little break. I decided I wanted to do something really fast. A friend of mine reminded me of this project. I had a look at the script, and it was terrible, so I rewrote it all.

Was it always crammed with references to New Zealand films and commercials?
When I was writing, I realized the film had a chance to celebrate New Zealand's heritage of great adventurous filmmaking. Those guys who went before us who didn't go to film school. They didn't know what the equipment was called. They just made it up as they went. There's something really cool about that. Like throwing out a lot of the rules and trying to make the best, most enjoyable, most uplifting, and adventurous film possible and not be bogged down in the trends.

What is it about Hunt for the Wilderpeople that ignores trends, in your mind?
It takes a lot of Australasian cinema from the 70s and 80s. There are a lot of zoom shots, dissolves, cross fades, the character types. Even to have a manhunt is such an old school Kiwi thing. All those things we used to love so much when we were young. It's a little love letter to that style.

There's a reference in the film to the famous Kiwi Flake ad. How does that do overseas?
The ads with the beautiful woman in them were also in the UK. I think Americans still get it. When I used to see those Flake ads as a kid, I used to think they weren't for kids. They were naughty ads. It's like an adults-only chocolate commercial. There's allure and something that's so romantic.

Were there any references you had to take out?
We had a Tupac song at the end of the film in our edit that we knew we would never be able to get because a lot of the music back then is in dispute because of the samples. But I just thought it would be cool.

Tell me about working with Sam Neill. What does he do before a take?
He doesn't do anything. He's the most casual guy. He's so funny. I think a lot of the time you think of actors, especially really established ones, there'll be this arduous big thing when they need five minutes between each take to ground themselves and connect to the ether. I was very surprised by him. He just knows how to turn it on and off. He's probably the most relaxed person on set.

Was Julian Dennison the only kid you wanted to cast?
Yes. I worked with him on a commercial a couple of years earlier. I wasn't thinking about this film then, but when I made the commercial, I thought that I was going to have to find a film role for this kid because he's so unique. Not only in his talent but his energy, his presence, the way the camera just falls in love with him.

Taika Waititi on location. Image supplied

How tough was it shooting in the bush?
Very tough. We had five weeks to shoot this film, and we were probably outside for four and a half of them. It was the New Zealand winter. We were cold. It was usually raining. It was treacherous damp muddy conditions. It was great because there was a feeling of camaraderie—these people with one mission who worked their asses off to get the film made.

What about the car chase scene?
We've got no right having a car chase that epic in this film given the time we had. It was a celebration of how determined our people are. When people over here in the States find out how much time we had, and that we didn't have ten times the money that it would take to do that stuff we did in the film, they're so amazed.

You've made a couple of very funny films where the kids have shitty family situations. Is the way people raise kids in New Zealand an issue that concerns you?
I'm concerned with a lot of the poverty that our children grow up in, especially in the Far North and the area where I grew up . I definitely feel passionate about that, but I never like saying that is the message of my film. I feel I can subvert the idea that there are some things that need to be worked on within the social welfare system and how we all raise our kids.

Some people told me they thought Boy was a sad view of the Maori community. I wholeheartedly disagree with them. I think it's a celebration of how a people can thrive and survive and make the best of what has been forced upon them. I never see those things as a subliminal message of my film. For me, it's more realistic and more human to have humorous and uplifting things happen against a slightly darker backdrop.

What flag are you voting for in the change the flag referendum?
I'm not voting for any flag. I hate the whole thing. I have my own flag designs I'm trying to peddle on Facebook, but nobody's interested. Everyone should shut up about the flag. We should fix the problems in our country, and when we've fixed racism and poverty, we can celebrate by designing a new flag.

You're getting a lot of tweets about not fucking up Thor. How are you handling the pressure?
I love those tweets. I feed off that stuff. I have to hold myself back and stop myself from engaging too much. I'm a sucker for trolling people on Twitter. I'm one of the few people who realize that Twitter is Twitter, and that Twitter is not real life. Nothing on Twitter is real.

Have you not ever met someone on Twitter and formed a meaningful relationship?
God knows I've tried. Also, whenever people want to talk about Thor, it's so ridiculous because it's so early. We haven't even started. They're upset over something that hasn't happened.

You did get a good tweet from Guillermo del Toro. He called you "a great NZ director. Ingenious, funny, and a nimble storyteller triumphs again."
That's real life. He's real life. But the people who hate me aren't real life. Once you turn 40, you don't care about anything other than your family and people being good to one another.

Follow Frances on Twitter.

These photographs are a record of my eight visits to Fukushima since the summer of 2011. It's only an hour and a half train ride from busy Tokyo to the quiet town of Fukushima. The recovery slogan on the side of the train reminded me of what happened, the nuclear disaster and the long recovery effort. On my first visit to Fukushima, the city was frighteningly empty. Later on, more people returned, and the city has regained some of its vigor as time has passed.

The town of Soma, in Fukushima prefecture, is located 14 miles north of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Soma used to be a prosperous fishing town. Now you can see the scars from the tsunami everywhere, with blank white signs standing in empty commercial lots.

The village of Iitate is 25 miles away from the power plant, but it was still hit by a wave of radiation due to the wind pattern on the day of the disaster. Most of the village's former inhabitants still live in government-supplied temporary housing, and the place sits empty and eerily silent.

Many of the people of Iitate used to enjoy the slow pace life in big farmhouses, but they are now forced to live in 325-square-foot prefabricated houses or tiny apartments.

One woman I spoke to, Mrs. Kanno (below), laughed as she recalled the days when she chased a wild boar from her farm. But her eyes turned blank as she pictured the landscape that she could never forget.

From Kaz Senju's book Fukushima: Forgotten Landscape. Follow him on Instagram

Completely normal-sized hands. Photo courtesy of Netflix

When Netflix's House of Cards debuted a few months after the 2012 election, its cold cynicism was perfect for the time. The optimism of Obama's 2008 election had been buried under years of Republican obstructionism, and the 2012 election pitted a sitting president with approval ratings under 50 percent against Mitt Romney, who was basically a bundle of conservative talking points stuffed into a tailored suit. People felt cynical about American politics, and House of Cards's dark vision of ruthless Machiavellian power players forming elaborate schemes between joyless sexual affairs comforted us by saying, "Hey, at least things aren't this crazy."

Four years and one Trump later, House of Cards feels positively optimistic. Laws actually get passed? Diplomacy works? Politicians respect the seriousness of office instead of bragging onstage about how big their respective dicks are? This really is fiction.

It's not that House of Cards has changed. The Netflix flagship's fourth season—which was released all at once last Friday—still offers up its pretty-but-humorless world of ruthless realpolitik, scheming politicians, and intermittent dalliances. It's more of the same, and it even features the welcome return of several characters from seasons past. (What's a guy got to do to get a Freddy Hayes spin-off?) But while House of Cards tells us that politics is run by corrupt yet effective politicians—whose policy disagreements are settled by a measure of wits—our own political system makes dumpster fires look put together.

The contrast between House of Cards's America and actual America is especially prominent this season as the main storyline is the 2016 Democratic primary and the general election. The first two seasons saw Frank Underwood worm his way to the vice presidency, then engineer the resignation of the sitting president. Because he was never elected, he faces a primary challenge by one of his own former pawns, ex-attorney general Heather Dunbar. After securing the nomination, he moves on to face his Republican rival, Will Conway, in the general. It's a clever way to get people interested in the new season, but for a TV show that has an appeal driven by escalating absurdity and increasing shock, it seems awfully tame compared to the actual election unfolding right now.

In the 2016 of House of Cards, President Underwood's primary campaign almost implodes when a photo is leaked of his father standing with a KKK member. In the 2016 of the real world, the leading GOP candidate, whose own father may or may not have been involved with the KKK, has a regular habit of retweeting white supremacists, and he can't be bothered to unequivocally disown an endorsement by infamous racist David Duke on CNN (he later backtracked, saying he hadn't understood the question due to a problem with his earpiece). In House of Cards, national outcry over gun violence—and some clever Underwood scheming—gets a bipartisan gun control bill moving through Congress. In the real world, despite a never-ending series of mass shootings, Jeb Bush resorts to tweeting a picture of an engraved gun with the caption "America" to get attention. In House of Cards, the Republican candidate campaigns on tough yet smart foreign policy. In real America, Ted Cruz vows to "carpet-bomb" ISIS and see if "sand can glow in the dark," and Donald Trump calls for inventing new super-torture techniques while promising he'll force the US military to commit war crimes (another statement that he later took back).

Could you imagine such a fictional creature on stage next to the current frontrunners, a reality TV star who talks about how he'd date his own daughter and a possible Zodiac killer whose own colleagues hate him so much they fantasize publicly about killing him?

In a show that's featured the Underwoods having a threesome with their Secret Service guard and Frank shoving a reporter/lover in front of a train, season 4 ratchets up the absurdity with the introduction of Will Conway, a moderate, handsome GOP candidate who brags about his humble home and works with his Democratic rival to thwart a terrorist situation. Could you imagine such a fictional creature on stage next to the current frontrunners, a reality TV star who jokes about dating his own daughter and a possible Zodiac killer whose colleagues hate him so much they fantasize publicly about killing him? You might as well put a unicorn on stage, so Trump can say he's "weak on goblins" and Rubio can chime in with "you know what they say about unicorns with small horns!"

"Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing," Marco Rubio sputtered, again and again and again, during his infamous Mr. Roboto meltdown. Rubio's line was meant to imply that Obama is not actually a bumbling fool who can't speak without a teleprompter—as conservatives have often portrayed him—but rather a Lex Luthor–level supervillain quickly destroying the country with his 20th-dimensional chess skills. (By contrast, Rubio, a politician so devoid of accomplishment that his own surrogates can't name a reason to vote for him, is apparently the Superman who can reverse his evil schemes.) Rubio's talking point is essentially how House of Cards views its own president and first lady. The Underwoods are cutthroat masterminds who form plans of Doctor Doom–like complexity. Their rivals are likewise intelligent and rational players who can only be beaten by moving quicker and thinking smarter.

This politics as battle of will and brains seems a far cry from 2016 America, where the Establishments of both parties seem to have no clue what their own bases want. The Democratic Party is still functional for now. But the GOP, which for years has promoted the likes of Sarah Palin, Tea Party buffoons, and the complete breakdown of government norms, seems shocked to the point of paralysis to learn that their voters actually took their messages to heart.

In the world of House of Cards, politics is nasty, Machiavellian, and corrupt, sure. But at the end of the day, it's still serious. The various players will wheel and deal behind each other's backs, but in public, they always put on their somber faces and address the American public with gravitas and poise. This seriousness is conveyed by the dark color palate, sweeping shots, and the gloomy orchestral music. While our own political process devolves into a mix of racist demagoguery and open-mic comedy routines, no one can be blamed for finding a little comfort in this fantasy.

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House of Cards season 4 is available now on Netflix.

Drugs seized by the National Crime Agency from a gang posing as a flower wholesale business. Photo by NCA

Pay attention to what's going on in the world of drug seizures, and you'd think most traffickers these days had worked out how to transport narcotics in pretty inventive ways. Dissolving ketamine in Listerine bottles, molding cocaine into the shape of individual Pringles and packaging them up in tubes, hiding MDMA crystals inside live clams—that kind of thing.

So the news that a gang has just been sentenced to a total of 125 years in prison for trying to hide drugs in flower boxes almost evokes a sense of nostalgia for the days of Howard Marks and George Jung, back when traffickers all had funny mustaches and regularly did coke off big knives. Back when smugglers brazenly took suitcases full of powder onto commercial flights and celebrated by having pool parties and doing more coke off of big knives.

The trafficking gang, from Holland and the northwest of England, posed as a flower wholesale business to smuggle drugs and large quantities of heroin, cocaine, MDMA, amphetamine, ecstasy, and cannabis from Europe into the UK. The contraband was smuggled over the Channel in semi-trucks, before being dropped off and distributed from the gang's bogus flower company in Lancashire.

Everything appeared to be going well for the gang, until March of 2014, when Border Force officials discovered a pistol, a submachine gun with a laser sight, 28 rounds of ammunition, more than 1,000 pounds of cannabis resin and skunk, 13 gallons of liquid amphetamine, 13 pounds of coke, two pounds of ecstasy, and 132 pounds of amphetamine in a semi-truck driven by Dutch national Pieter Martens, who was sentenced to 24 years in jail for the part he played in the foiled importation plan.

Less than two weeks later, officials made another seizure at the Channel Tunnel. This time, the truck they opened up contained almost one ton of heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, and cannabis, hidden in flower boxes.

A couple of months later—on July 1, 2014—52-year-old Nigel Watson from Telford was arrested in Coquelles, near Calais, after officials found 66 pounds of heroin and 99 pounds of MDMA in the truck he was driving.

Flower boxes found at the gang's Accrington premises. Photo via NCA

The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), working with a team in the Netherlands, was able to link all of those seizures to 40-year-old Dutch national Mohammed Imran Bhegani and his deputy, 44-year-old Sajid Osman. Bhegani, the investigators discovered, had planned everything, getting another 13 shipments delivered to a location in Albion Mill, Accrington—the fake wholesale flower business—rented and run by Osman and 56-year-old Nizami Esshak, of Accrington, Lancashire.

NCA officers raided the premises on August 26, 2014, and found more than 440 pounds of cannabis inside, as well as a further 176 pounds in a van outside. There, they arrested Osman and Esshak, as well as 28-year-old Taimur Zahid, from nearby Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and 27-year-old Hussain Farooq, from Stockport, both of whom were there to buy drugs. Benny Planken, a 30-year-old Dutch lorry driver, was found to have imported the weed found at Albion Mill and arrested.

Bhegani was arrested later at Esshak's home in Accrington, before Dutch investigators raided properties linked to him in the Netherlands and found a load of evidence against him, including price lists for drugs and SIM cards and phones that had been used to contact drivers and the gang's customers.

Top row, left to right: Mohammed Imran Bhegani, Sajid Osman, Nigel Watson, Benny Planken. Bottom row, left to right: Nizami Esshak, Taimur Zihad, Hussain Farooq

"In terms of organized crime, Mohammed Imran Bhegani was right at the top of the tree. He was an international drug dealer with high-level contacts in mainland Europe. Bhegani had the ability to transport vast quantities of illegal drugs and weapons from the continent and into the UK," said NCA regional head of investigations, Greg McKenna.

"Osman and Esshak were his trusted associates, charged with overseeing the UK end of the operation, taking delivery of the consignments and arranging the onward distribution. To operate on such a commercial scale the group needed the professional skills of haulers like Watson and Planken, among others, to bring in their illicit cargo. As one was arrested, another would be brought in to take their place," McKenna said.

Yesterday, Bhegani was sentenced to 36 years in prison at Preston Crown Court. Osman was jailed for 26 years, Esshak got seven years, Farooq was given two years, and Zahid was sentenced to two years and three months.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I met Sarah at a party, where she told me she works as a taxidermist for Gunther von Hagens. The name "Gunther von Hagens" may sound a bit like the name of some genius German doctor who skins and prepares human bodies for a living, but there's reason for that: He is.

Von Hagens invented plastination—a technique that works to preserve bodies or body parts. Von Hagens is also the brain behind Bodyworlds, a controversial exhibition that puts skinned, plastinated bodies on display—including those of pregnant women, deformed fetuses, and people having sex. In 2002, he performed a public autopsy in a London theater—the first in over 170 years. These achievements, among other things, have earned him the title of "Dr. Death."

Von Hagens owns the Plastinarium—a plastination production facility in Guben, a German town near the Polish border. This is where Sarah works. Von Hagen is now 71 and suffering from Parkinson's, so he has largely stepped back from the business. But donated bodies arrive in the facility every day, and they are still preserved for educational purposes here.

Plastination—a technique developed by von Hagens in 1977 at Heidelberg University—involves replacing the fluid inside cells with plastic. His plastic models are legitimate educational materials from a research perspective, but preparing a body so that it's holding up its own skin or riding a dead horse doesn't necessarily function as an introduction to anatomy. But does that mean the doctor doesn't respect death and the integrity of the human body? Yes, according to the city of Berlin. In 2014, the city banned his ongoing exhibition, because it was in conflict with the city's burial laws. The human museum opened anyway, but the exhibition's future is still unclear. In December, a higher administrative court ruled against it. But as the court proceedings continue, the exhibition remains open.

Thinking this might be my only chance, I decided to visit Bodyworlds. On my way to Guben, I felt queasy. It's a two-hour train ride from Berlin, and I arrived at a train station in no-man's land. "If you want to see something, walk over to Poland," the taxi driver tells me. When I ask him if he's been to the Plastinarium, he shakes his head.

After entering the former hat factory, my first encounter with death is a winged giraffe climbing a palm tree. It's in good company. It's joined in the menagerie by another giraffe cut into sections and the skull of another giraffe that has been exploded into three parts. I have to take a few deep breaths as I wait for Sarah in the lobby. There's a strange smell in the air.

When Sarah shows up, we walk past human plastinates, transparent slices of anatomy, and wet specimens in glasses, as well as individual body parts and organs. We come to a glass room, flooded with light, where autopsy tables await the anatomical learning material, which will be processed there. The bodies that serve as the basis of von Hagens's work have, since 1982, all come from the same donation program.

The bodies that Sarah and her colleagues will eventually work on with forceps and a scalpel have to initially spend a year in a formaldehyde bath. The chemical stops the body's decay, while preserving the tissue. From start to finish, the procedure takes about 1,500 working hours—from the acetone bath to the plastic impregnation. In the end, the specimens are made up of about 70 percent plastic. I spoke to Sarah about working on the dead.

VICE: Sarah, you work as a taxidermist. How did this become your job?
Sarah: I met an artist who wanted to become a taxidermist for animals. I was fascinated when he told me about it. I had no idea it was a profession. It was exactly the right thing for me, both technically and artistically. So I called all the taxidermists in Berlin until I found an apprenticeship, and I learned on the job for a year.

Is it hard to get into this profession when there are hardly any apprenticeships?
In Germany, there's only one school for animal taxidermy. It's in Bochum. There are more in Norway. I assisted an artist there. When I found out that there was a taxidermy lab near Berlin, I applied and was invited to join.

How did your work in taxidermy move from animals to humans?
During my test phase, I was working on a snake. But I don't have any reservations, even about working on humans. I don't have any special inclinations, either.

What's the most unpleasant thing about this job?
Spending the whole day with the smell of formaldehyde. Mint extract helps with it though.

What are you doing right now?
Right now, I'm working on a specimen's feet. I'm getting rid of the fatty tissue with a scalpel. Then I'll be able to carve out the structures—namely the muscles, nerves, and vessels.

Do you get to decide what it will look like in the end?
We follow a plan when working. It tells us what the model should look like. These are educational specimens for schools in Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.

Do you know anything about the people who donate their bodies to your service?
I can tell how old they were at the time of death from their skin. You can't tell how old they were from the inside—and that also always depends on how athletic they were. Sometimes, we discover traces of disease like cancerous tumors. I don't know their names or anything like that. It's all anonymous.

How do you deal with death when it's in your face every day?
I know that I have to die at some point. To me, that's normal. I live my life with a relaxed nihilism.

Do the bodies ever seem abstract to you?
In a way, this is like surgery—you always work on one little, separate piece. You're pretty concentrated on the anatomy, and you forget that what you're working on was once a person.

What fascinates you about working on the human body?
The human mind can hardly grasp its complexity. You notice that when seeing visitors' reactions. A few weeks ago, someone told me he would rather be filled with marshmallows than imagine that this is what his insides look like. Realizing that what you see is real and that it's just some flesh and a few organs that keep you going, can be overwhelming. I think it's exciting how the body works automatically for years on end. I see it, but I also can't really grasp it.

Does your work have an ongoing influence on your life?
It's made me more conscious of my body, and I've taken steps to change my life because of that. For example, I don't get how my colleagues can walk past exhibited specimens of a smoker's lungs on their way to smoke a cigarette.

Scroll down if you can stomach more pictures.

Dickheads. They're everywhere these days, aren't they? Is it just me?

People who pick their nose and eat it. People who identify as "foodies." People who barge into elevators at the last minute. People who wear those fluffy little pom-pom bobble hats. Everyone involved with "brand banter." The guy who sits opposite you. James Corden. Clean Bandit. Donald Trump. Your dad.

Video games are a well-worn escape route from the braying morons who infest modern existence. But, crushingly, the medium has its fair share of dickheads too. So let's talk shit about them, shall we? It's always good to get things off your chest.

Here's the VICE Gaming guide to video gaming's biggest dickheads. You know, just terrible people.

You might be a spider now, Patches, but you're still a dick.

PATCHES (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne)

Patches makes an appearance in every Souls game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, including Bloodborne, and he's an insufferable, snidey, backstabbing prick in every single one of them. Optimistically described by the Dark Souls Wiki as being an "opportunistic trickster," he's really just a duplicitous twat. He takes advantage of well-meaning treasure hunters and kicks them off high, rocky ledges into pits of slithering bloodthirsty monsters, or he leaves them to starve to death. He's basically that guy who goads you into approaching someone who's out of your league on a night out, and then stands with his mates snickering when it all goes to shit. Fuck you, Patches.

You do play those drums excellently, Ivan, but you're still a dick.

IVAN (Devil's Third)

Devil's Third's Ivan is a stratospheric dickhead. He's a hulking, topless, monotonous, drivel-spouting meathead who's absolutely gagging to join the crew of lesser known and underappreciated cult gaming icons—a Dante, a Gene, a Travis Touchdown—but with absolutely none of the wit, style, charm, or charisma to warrant it.

He plays his drum kit, smokes cigarettes, and drinks whisky in his prison cell. He bumbles around cluttered environments with his dreadful tattoos on show, and every sentence he utters is a smug, self-satisfied, snarky comeback.

Essentially a disturbing manifestation of designer Tomonobu Itagaki's infantile boyhood fantasies, Ivan's existence is utterly inexcusable.

No one wants to be Ivan, and nobody even remotely cares about him.

ENVY (The Binding of Isaac)

Envy is, by his own creator's admission, the most annoying enemy in the Binding of Isaac games. In a game teeming with deliberately irritating and challenging opponents, this pretty much makes him one of the most irritating in indie games, full stop. Or in other words: dickhead.

Fighting Envy is a battle of attrition. Every time you deplete his health bar, he splits into two, then four, then eight, then tens of little Envy bits, all with their own health bars, colliding around the room. Fighting him with vanilla damage is a serious risk to your long-term health.

With his smug 4chan trollface, he's the video game equivalent of those dickheads in the comments who haven't read the article and just. Won't. Go. Away.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch 'Confessions of an Internet Troll'

Look, Lisa, we know a whole bunch of bad stuff happened to you, but there's no need to be such a dick about it.

LISA (P.T.)

As the chief antagonist in the Scariest Video Game Experience Ever Made, Lisa is an appalling dickhead, and she is responsible for one of the most alarming jump scares in the medium's history.

Lisa, this is the last time I'm going to tell you: Get away from my newly doubled glazed windows; stop pissing on me; stop writing haunting, hellish messages on my newly painted walls (the landlord will go berserk); wipe the vomit off your mouth; get a new nightie; go to the opticians; get out of my video games; get out of my mind; and get out of my nightmares. They're horrific enough already.

Hey, Nate, mate, it's cool that you're all shooting from the hip and that, but tone down the dickishness, would you?

NATHAN DRAKE (several Uncharted games)

When you were getting picked last for football in front of that obnoxious girl you used to be into, insufferable wisecracking jock Nathan Drake had been standing around joking with his friends in the "picked" area for over ten minutes.

Nate. Nate. Even his nickname makes my blood boil. He's the irritating boyfriend of one of your girlfriend's friends, the reason you make up shit to avoid the Friday night double date. He's not the playground bully per se, but worse, he's the guy who stands behind the bully's back, laughing as you get poison ivy shoved down the back of your pants.

Nate. The sort of guy who opens the Monday morning meeting with a misguided, greasy lipped sexual innuendo, who props up the bar in a blazer/T-shirt combo, who gets VIP tickets for big Hyde Park concerts in the summer, who's all over your Facebook feed with his smug wife and unbearable jokes and endless LAD Bible links. Nate.

He must be hiding a personality somewhere. Maybe it'll come out in Uncharted 4.

Chris, your arms, yeah, sorry, but they pretty much make you a dickhead

CHRIS REDFIELD (several Resident Evil games)

He's not as outwardly offensive or irritating as old Natey boy, but God, Chris Redfield is hard work. Easily one of the blandest video game characters ever to have made it through a Capcom brainstorm, Redfield's the guy who eats eight square meals a day, prepares his chicken breasts and broccoli at home and brings his food into work in little Tupperware boxes. His meals are in the fridge with little Post-Its on them: "Chris R.—do not eat!!!" He takes two-hour lunches to hit up Gymbox, and he has one of those little fold-up bikes. He also probably moves his lips when he reads. Say what you want about Leon Kennedy, but at least he had the balls to wear that sheepskin coat.

Anyway, my ex-girlfriend once told me she wished I had arms as big as Chris's. So he makes the list by default.

Look Xur, you might move around a lot, but you're not enigmatic, you're a dickhead.

XUR (Destiny)

Xur shows his vile mug once a week in Destiny's howling narrative wasteland, and he almost always disappoints. He charges exuberant amounts of in-game currency for items everyone already has, and you never know where he's going to be, so you have to trawl the open sewage pipes of Destiny Twitter trying to find out.

When you find him tucked away in the corner of the Tower, it's exceptionally common to wonder what the hell you're doing with your life. Xur is there to rip you off and disappoint you. He's Destiny's own landlord, train company executive, ticket tout. To hell with him and his gormless squid face. Dickhead.

YOU (playing any video game, ever)

You. You're also a dickhead. You're the guy who's waiting by the helicopter in The Division, going rogue, waiting to steal people's hard-earned loot. You're the guy who blew up Megaton, who let Kenny survive. You're the guy who can't make it past the jumping bits in Destiny raids, who picks Ken and then rage quits after getting perfected in Street Fighter V. You're the guy bossing around strangers and tutting in casual games of Rainbow Six Siege, who fires that red shell right at the last minute, the guy who takes Halo 5 arena games really seriously. You're the guy who chugs Estus on the Iron Keep bridge during PVP. You're the guy trash talking in the lobby, the camper, the guy with shit ping. You.

You probably pick your nose and eat it as well, don't you?

Follow Jonathan on Twitter.

When the PlayStation 4 launched in late 2013, only one high-profile exclusive franchise was really represented: Killzone. No Uncharted, no God of War, no Resistance, no Gran Turismo. Any one of those would have met the requirements of the first-impressions-count launch window: graphically awesome, sonically powerful, and spectacularly realistic. They would have sold units. But one genre that didn't feel necessary straight away, mainly due to its prevalence in previous console generations, was the 3D platform adventure. Knack tried to be that game anyway, and Knack failed. But Sony always knew what it had up its sleeve. It had Ratchet & Clank.

The work of California studio Insomniac Games, also the creators of the original Spyro titles, the Ratchet & Clank series earned critical praise aplenty and a spaceship load of cash during the PlayStation 2 era. A cartoony sci-fi action-platformer where gunplay frequently comes into the equation, starring a "Lombax" mechanic called Ratchet—he's an anthropomorphized alien cat, I suppose—and a teeny robot called Clank, the series ran on through the PS3 period, with releases like the coop-orientated All 4 One and A Crack in Time. Into the Nexus came out in 2013—around the time of the PS4's commercial debut, but strictly for Sony's past-gen system. That was the last anyone heard of this unlikely duo and its colorful array of allies and enemies—until now, and a new Ratchet & Clank that, in the time-honored tradition of reboots across all media, is simply titled Ratchet & Clank.

This reimagining of the first Ratchet & Clank might lean on the past for its inspiration—its story, narrated by an incarcerated Captain Qwark, is a retelling of what unfolded back in 2002, where grease monkey Ratchet and his pal become Galactic Rangers, and, you know, save the universe. But after a couple of hours in the company of a preview version, it's perfectly at home on today's hardware. Critics often lean on the tired cliché of how blockbuster video games are like "playing a movie," due to the linearity and astounding aesthetic qualities of so many triple-A releases—but Ratchet & Clank really is like that, and with good reason.

The first Ratchet and Clank film is out at the end of April, mere days after this game, and follows a very similar plot: The Blarg, led by Chairman Drek, have fucked up their world, so now they're going after other ones with only Ratchet and company to stop them. With Paul Giamatti, Sylvester Stallone, and John Goodman among the voice cast, the picture is no cheap tie-in—rather, these two products are designed to perfectly compliment each other, which is why the game has to be as beautiful as possible. And it certainly is.

It plays like its predecessors, but improved, tightened, and tuned. Ratchet can arm himself with a dazzlingly creative selection of weaponry, from distracting disco balls to a blaster that transforms enemies into pixels; the leaping and swinging, climbing, and thumping is as slickly executed as you'd expect from such an experienced studio; and the variety of enemies is both amusing and impressive. The backpack-carried Clank becomes modified a number of ways—a helicopter attachment to allow for longer leaps comes as standard, and when the pair find themselves submerged, he produces a pair of engines for rapid underwater movement. At times, it gets incredibly hectic, with laser fire scorching the scenery; at others, it allows you to drink in the view and just be wowed by its sense of scale.

There's a more than healthy dose of fourth-wall breaking humor at play, too, with supporting characters expressing déjà vu at meeting Ratchet for a "first" time. That said, there's no reason why some of the more cringe-worthy elements of the lore couldn't have been retconned into less-wincingly woeful forms. I mean, do we really need an air-headed bro-dude extreme sports character called Skidd McMarx in 2016? Nope, but then again, this is a series that's featured games subtitled Quest for Booty and Up Your Arsenal. And it's still more PG-rated Viz in tone than Pixar rib tickling, which is a shame.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on the secret history of Cabbage Patch Kids

How it looks, however, is nothing like any series entry before it. This is truly sumptuous in motion, with backgrounds stretching miles into the distance, every inch of Ratchet's fur looking good enough to pet, and Clank's flapping jaw and steely body making him seem like a toy you could just pick up, right out of the screen. The plot might be mostly recycled, but Ratchet & Clank isn't popping into existence simply to turn a few nostalgia dollars—there's palpable love and care here, enough to make newcomers to the franchise turn their heads. Each and every character is decently introduced, so while prior knowledge helps, it's not essential; and the difficulty level on regular mode is challenging enough that experienced gamers will get a real test. Hands up: I knocked it down to casual during a train ride into fiery obliteration.

I haven't seen all that Ratchet & Clank has to offer, by a long shot—just a handful of early planets. But each is uniquely styled and adds to the cinematic (uh, but you know what I mean here) presentation of the game. There's the gloriously green world, the dark- and rain-lashed one, and another that's overrun with sandsharks and crisscrossed by deadly swamps. The environment artists at Insomniac must have had a ball. There are some problems with plants and blocks, signs and the like getting in the way of the camera and obscuring frenzied combat situations—which isn't ideal when your enemy's a massive tank. But that's nothing major in the grand scheme and might be remedied come the final, retail version.

There are distractions from the main story: golden screws to collect in order to unlock cheats, hoverboard races to enter, and a card-collection system that I don't fully understand at this stage, but I do know that certain special cards will unlock snazzy new weapons, which is always nice. So long as it's nothing like Gwent, we're fine. There are tons of potential for weapon upgrades, with mystery perks unlocked beside your usual increases in damage and fire rate. Depth, then, is what I'm saying.

And what else I'm saying, based on what I've seen so far, is that Ratchet & Clank might well be the best current-gen reboot so far. We haven't had many, admittedly—Need for Speed, Star Wars: Battlefront (if we're counting it), Thief, and Killer Instinct come to mind. But all the same: Unlike those revivals, this one feels like it matters now. The time is right for this brand of (just about) all-ages experience. The game hasn't changed, and yet it has. At launch, it might have drowned under expectations for something much grander, but having been given a little breathing room, Ratchet & Clank has blossomed. I'm really excited to play more, which is something I never expected to be writing about a game of this genre, in 2016.

Ratchet & Clank will be released for the PlayStation 4 on April 12. Find more information at the game's official website.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Ben Husmann

You know that feeling when you walk into your office and discover that there's a robot sitting at your desk doing your job? No? Neither do most Americans, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center released on Thursday. Two-thirds of the those surveyed believe that robots will "probably" or "definitely" do most of the work that humans currently do, but 80 percent of respondents somehow think their job won't be affected by automation. In other words, a lot of people are wrong.

The survey responses, said Andrea Kuszewski, a behavioral therapist who specializes in the intersection of humans and machines "is the good old-fashioned optimism bias—a tendency to think that we are less at risk of having a negative event affect us than other people are. In other words, the 'it won't happen to me' effect."

Obviously, people want to think of themselves as a special snowflake at work, not merely the sum of a few simple functions that create more value on a company's balance sheet. But as machines get better at performing all sorts of tasks, it stands to reason that they may start to take over tasks that humans are paid to do—including the stuff you're doing right now.

Doctors, lawyers, stand-up comedians, CEOs, models, journalists, personal assistants, architects, clergymen—there's evidence that all of these gigs, and many more, could be automated in form or fashion in the coming decades. Even people like Kuszewski could one day be forced out by intelligent machines if we continue to develop robopsychologists. (If you really want to squirm, consider that a rudimentary form of a robot therapist has existed since 1966.)

"During the 21st century, I think it will become technically possible to automate essentially all human jobs," said Stuart Elliott, an analyst at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the author of research on how new technology will transform the workplace.

Elliott is mainly concerned with the development of artificial intelligence as it relates to four human skills: language, reasoning, vision, and movement. Language use is the most far-off at this point, so jobs that require negotiations or interpersonal communication are the least likely to be displaced by robots right now.

Data from a 2013 Oxford University study on the future of employment came to a similar conclusion: The more social intelligence a job required, the less likely it was to be automated—so therapists and social workers were pretty safe; bookkeepers and bill collectors, not so much. (If you're curious about where your job fits in, NPR made this handy tool to calculate your risk of being replaced by a robot based on the Oxford data.)

But even if your job isn't at immediate risk of disappearing, it doesn't mean that machines won't change it in significant ways. Daniel Susskind, an economics lecturer at Balliol College at Oxford University, makes this point in his recent book, The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts.The effect of automation, he argues, will be in replacing various tasks rather than replacing entire occupations.

In fact, it's already happening: Just look at ATM machines, which have automated the work of bank tellers, or the 27 million Americans who use software like TurboTax instead of hiring a human accountant to file their taxes. If you look at automation this way, the good news is that not every job will be replaced outright. (Unless you're a factory worker, or one of those people who waves signs on street corners. Sorry.) The bad news is that, unlike studies that predict automation will affect about half of jobs in the United States, Susskind's view suggests that close to 100 percent of jobs could be at least partially automated.

On Motherboard: Robots Won't Steal Our Jobs, They'll Be Our Minions

According to research published last year, a CEO could outsource at least one fifth of her tasks to a robot—things like data analysis or reviewing status reports—using currently available technology. And while jobs that involve emotion, creativity, or abstract thinking are the hardest to automate right now, it doesn't mean machines won't be able to do some form of that sort of thinking in the future.

"An architect might say because the job requires creativity, and creativity is something that can't be done by anything other than a human being. That's a mistake," Susskind told me. "If you look at the job of an architect and decompose it, many of those tasks don't require creativity at all"—and those ones, he said, are ripe for automation.

Take an example from religion, which seems least likely of all to succumb to robot intervention. In 2011, the Catholic Church endorsed an app called Confession, which included tools for tracking sins users commit, a step-by-step guide to the sacrament, and seven options for contrition. According to Susskind, some Catholics took this as a sign that they didn't have to go into that box anymore and stopped going to confession altogether. "It caused such a scare that the Vatican itself had to step in and say, 'You're allowed to use this technology to help you prepare for confession, but it's not the substitute for the real thing,'" Susskind told me.

Some jobs require flesh and blood—like pardoning sins, apparently. And as automation becomes more common, there may be jobs that we choose not to automate even though it's technically possible to do so. "I think such exceptions will involve jobs where we particularly care that a human is doing the job and where people are willing to do the work for free," Elliot told me. "Acting might be a good example, and probably also being president."

Related: Can Machines Write Musicals?

So if virtually every job will change because of new technologies, and humans will give up increasingly bigger chunks of their work to robots, what will be left for humans to do?

One option is that we let robots do all the drudgery that produces needed goods and services, spread the resulting prosperity around, and spend our days creating art, thinking profound thoughts, and just kind of lounging around eating grapes or whatever. (This vision of the future was popular in sci-fi back in the first half of the 20th century.) The other option is that corporations profit off robot labor at the expense of humans, who can't find work and consequently starve to death. I guess only time will tell?

If you ask Elliot, though, there's no reason not to be optimistic. "As work is increasingly automated, we'll be forced to implement some sort of universal basic income so that it will become possible for people who don't work to be able to live comfortably," he told me. Cue the grape eating.

Kuszewski is hopeful too. "Automation allows us to spend our cognitive resources in higher-level activities, which ultimately moves society forward even more," she told me. "The most successful industries will be the ones embracing what technology makes possible, rather than what it takes away."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Photo by Thos Robinson via Getty

Donald Trump's lame-ass university is under fire again for claims made by former students and teachers that the school used some seriously manipulative tactics to coerce pupils into giving their instructors perfect scores on graduation surveys, the New York Times reports.

Former students of the now-shuttered Trump University told the Times that instructors would harass them over the phone in an effort to convince students to give a 5/5 score. Anything less than perfect was too low for Donald Trump, apparently.

Students also claimed teachers would refuse to leave the room or insist the survey be filled out in front of them—even withholding graduation documents until the surveys were done. The former students who spoke to the Times said they also felt pressured to write their names on the form, as the survey seemed to demand a name.

Trump U has claimed to have a 98 percent approval rating, at least according to one exceedingly poorly-built website, but those numbers don't mean a whole lot if there was an instructor haranguing students into giving him top marks.

But it's not just students who had problems at Trump University—instructors did too. Former teachers claim their jobs would have been put in jeopardy if they didn't receive perfect evaluations, and some of them say they were never paid for their work. One instructor insists, "If Trump wins the presidency, I've got a president who owes me $50,000."

All screenshots from the 'Destiny' website

Originating from the Tibetan word that literally translates as "Eastern people," the Western conception of the term "Sherpa" is that of a mountain guide, someone who applies his or her acute knowledge of a vast and hazardous environment to escort any wide-eyed adventurers seeking to explore the terrain.

This expression has also been incorporated into the language of video game culture, a language that has previously given us gems like "Pubstomper" and "Grognard" (seriously, look them up). In particular, the Destiny community has adopted the word as a way of identifying high-level players who are willing to assist fledgling Guardians through raids, strikes, and missions throughout the galaxy. A good Sherpa doesn't "boost" players, but instead acts as a more effective and personable form of the in-game Ghost character, gently guiding the player via friendly conversation and only offering direct combat support when necessary.

There is even a reddit page, r/DestinySherpa, devoted to connecting Sherpas with potential protégés. This kind of a service is somewhat an act of charity and selflessness on the part of the Sherpa, and thus begs the question as to what exactly is in it for them. Are these people bored by the lack of high-level content for Destiny veterans and just looking for any excuse to play? Or are they a small reflection of a community that has thrived and flourished out of the continuing popularity of Bungie's epic shooter?

As a relatively new Destiny player myself, I have frequently been on the receiving end of a Sherpa's gracious assistance. As such, I decided to conduct some field research and directly ask these players just what it was that motivated them to provide aid to people they had never met in real life, and probably never will.

It's easy to assume that the role of the Sherpa is typically filled by massively experienced players with nothing else to do. But while it is undoubtedly true that the lack of end-game content has been depressingly bleak since The Taken King, Destiny fans still love to play the game, and Sherpas are doing more than just killing time.

A player known as ShipIT9, who frequently offers aid as a Sherpa, admits to me, "Some do it because there's no content." He says the real takeaway for his is "the satisfaction one receives from hearing people complete something they though they'd never complete." He adds, "The more people there are who love something as much as you do only makes for a more prosperous game and community, moving forward."

Being a Sherpa is an opportunity to nostalgically reacquaint yourself with missions and raids you might not have played for a while, with the added joy that can be found in conversing with new players and witnessing their reactions to everything that unfolds before them for the first time. It's the same reason I enjoy introducing people to a viewing of The Raid, even though I must have now seen that movie about a hundred times already. The expressions that crawl across my friends' faces as the unadulterated carnage unfolds before them makes the experience worth it every time.

For other Sherpas, such as player PS_Petrucci, the joy of teaching and upholding the mechanics to beating a raid in "the right way" is what inspires them to lead. According to PS_Petrucci, encouraging players to appreciate the developer's craft by educating them in the true ways of authentic raiding "has been the best part of Destiny for the last few months."

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Related: Watch our film, 'LARPing Saved My Life'

It's important to remember that Sherpas were once the same unprepared low-level Guardians that they now help out, which factors into their motivations. "I remember when I first started out, I had Sherpas helping me all the time," says Squirrt, a regular in my fireteam. "I don't think I would have got into Destiny without them getting me through those harder challenges. What I do now is my way of giving back to that community." The Destiny economy is full of various trinkets and coinages, but it's apparent that one of the unspoken currencies is a pay-it-forward system that acts as a welfare net for the uninitiated.

It's also worth saying that Destiny has one of the most successful modern gaming communities, in terms of pure activism and sociability. Bungie's vision of a shared-world shooter has been a way for complete strangers to become good friends, to join loyal fireteams and bond with spirited competitors. Millions are sharing a zealous passion for a game built specifically to be enjoyed with others.

Sherpas are just one of many positive symptoms of the healthiness of the Destiny community, made up of players who find genuine joy and value in helping one another out. ShipIT9's final remark to me sums this up best: "Destiny came to me in probably the hardest point in my life, and if it wasn't for the friends I've made and times we've shared together, I don't know where I'd be today. I feel indebted to the community because it's done so much for me."

At a time when many other video game communities can often be overflowing with vitriol and abuse—though I'm certainly not saying that the Destiny player base is completely free of such negativity—it's refreshing to jump into a world with an established network of gamers who are more than willing to lend anyone a hand. Whether you loved or hated the game when it first came out, you cannot deny that Bungie has created something special with the Destiny community.

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On Monday, seven families filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and a dozen more city and state officials over the ongoing water crisis in Flint. The plaintiffs say their children have suffered "devastating and irreversible health problems," including learning disabilities and weight loss.

Melissa Lightfoot, one of the parents, said all three of her children were diagnosed with ADD after doctors found an abnormally high level of lead in their blood. She also cited hair loss and rashes.

"Lead poisoning is an insidious disease," Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer for one of the families, told NBC News. "We know the brain is permanently and irreversibly damaged, but it doesn't manifest itself immediately. These children have been pushed so far down now they cannot ever achieve what was expected of them."

At first glance, the families would seem have a solid case: The lead poisoning of Flint's water is directly linked to the city's decision to switch its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014. But it's not that simple. Sovereign immunity, a concept that generally makes the government immune to civil and legal prosecution, complicates the lawsuit in a way that favors the powers that be. And there are at least three other previously filed lawsuits related to the water crisis still pending.

To break down what these families are up against in a sensitive case, we spoke to Cornell Law School Professor Jeffrey Rachlinski, an expert on environmental law.

VICE: How many cases have there been where there's a class-action suit against government officials over an environmental disaster?
Jeffrey Rachlinsk: The most recent salient lawsuit of this type was against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arising from the first responders at the 9/11 World Trade Center site. Typically, suits are not against the government and are against private parties, because most governments—including those in the state of Michigan—maintain a degree of sovereign immunity for providing things like water. It's pretty hard to sue them unless you can prove that they intentionally poisoned the water. You can't sue for the kind of negligence that is most common in environmental suits.

That doesn't sound very encouraging for the families in Flint. Do you expect their case to go forward?
That's actually hard to predict because this is a somewhat unusual claim. Environmental torts are typically brought as private torts. It's the same type of lawsuit as if you got into a car accident with someone who's at fault. This isn't being brought that way; it's being brought as a constitutional tort. You have to convince the court that there's been a deprivation of due process.

This is a bit of an end-run around sovereign immunity, and the courts are likely to treat it that way. So I don't think it's very likely to succeed. It's a highly sympathetic case in many ways because the actions of the public officials are so outrageous in so many ways. I'm a little surprised the plaintiff didn't try to prove alleged recklessness. It's hard to prove intentional conduct, but recklessness—maybe it's something would be more sympathetic to.

Wait, sorry—what exactly, is a constitutional tort?
It's an allegation of the violation of the 14th Amendment's due process clause. So no deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Fifth Amendment has that clause in it as well, but the Fifth Amendment is for the federal government. The 14th Amendment protects individuals from violation of their due process rights . It's not really the case that the state didn't provide due process—it's that the state provided a substantive outcome.

With sovereign immunity likely in the way, how can the government be held accountable for this crisis?
The city of Flint almost certainly violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, which does, in fact, provide significant civil penalties against the city for doing so. At the federal level, we regulate drinking water and provide fines when that water doesn't comply with federal standards. those fines are not paid to the citizens of Flint—they're paid to the EPA. They're paid to the federal government. There are all sorts of potential quasi-criminal misconduct that the officials may have engaged in, but none of that gives any recovery to the plaintiffs.

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Me looking at baby posts. Photo via Flickr user futurestreet

I was lying in bed scrolling through my Instagram feed last week when I noticed not one, but two birth announcements.

The first was a classic baby bump, posted alongside a caption that said "part of me wants to stay pregnant forever!" The other was of a (very cute) baby boy I've never met, yet, due to his mother's incessant updates, I'm aware he's currently having potty training issues and is going through a weird biting phase—his mom, a former classmate of mine whose Insta bio reads "wifey and proud mommy," says he likes clamping down on her thigh the most.

The baby was wearing a little shirt that said, "I am going to be a big brother September 2016," and splayed across his lap was a series of sonograms.

Instinctively, I rolled my eyes.

Honestly, how could you want to be pregnant forever? You get sick, gain weight, your hormones are out of control, and drinking is VERY frowned upon. And then after the baby is born (through an excruciating process), you just literally never sleep properly, and have to worry about another human being for like... ever.

The darker side of parenting—though documented—seems to be lost amongst a sea of threads about the best types of strollers, teething strategies, and "MommyMemes."

(Is it really necessary to take a photo of your bump every other week? We get it—you are still knocked up!) While I am happy for people who are stoked about having kids, I also wonder if, once it happens, something switches in their brain where all of a sudden moments that are objectively boring as hell—look, a tiny human just splattered a bunch of mushy fruit everywhere—become truly life-affirming entertainment. And I don't know if I want to be the kind of person that looks at a tiny human with mushy fruit on their face and it's the highlight of my day, reinforced online by 100 likes (and loves and wows, now) from obliging/enabling friends.

At first I thought maybe the Facebook algorithm was fucking with me, but it seems for a lot of people my age, this is real life.

I'm 28, single, and obsessed with my job, so I admit having babies is low on my list of priorities. I still have to Google how to brown ground beef every time I cook pasta sauce and only just started making my bed. I have a crew of similarly career-minded girlfriends who are also single, and when we're together, I never feel the need to defend my life choices. We've agreed to kill each other if any of us ever updates our public profiles to include the words "wifey" or "mommy."

But a growing number of people from back home are getting married, moving to the suburbs, and not using birth control—on purpose. And while I know they know I'm happy, I definitely feel like the odd one when I go back there, guaranteed to field at least a few questions about why I don't have a boyfriend, and occasionally, how I feel about having a family. These questions bring on a sort of hidden anxiety that my day-to-day life never forces me to confront.

Just last week, I had dinner with a former colleague, who turned the conversation to who does and doesn't have children. She lamented the fact that a couple we know in their 40s wasn't able to get pregnant—"that's so sad"—even though that couple seems to be one of the happiest I know. Then, of course, she asked if I ever planned on having kids. "When you hit 35, your fertility goes down like this," she said, using her forearm to make a downward slant. I answered honestly, saying that I didn't know.

I'm not particularly maternal. I've never even had to babysit, so I speak to kids like they're adults because I don't know what else to do.

Growing up, my mom, who had an arranged marriage with my dad, would tell me, "Don't have kids unless you really feel like you're missing out." I know she loves me—we are super close. But she missed out on a lot of good shit. Travelling, getting ahead in her career faster (she is still a boss, but it took a lot longer), having a real romance. Also, I don't think raising my brother and I was a particularly good time. He was constantly in trouble and I was attention-starved and oscillated between throwing tantrums and, as I got older, not really giving a shit about anything other than getting fucked up with my friends. My dad was checked out for much of that time period, so he wasn't much help, save for the fact that he would inadvertently fund my booze and pot.

So yeah, I guess when I see couples on Facebook happily eating placenta or whatever, I'm pretty skeptical. I wonder if they ever have sex anymore, or about how exhausted they are, or if they're jealous of their single friends who can still spend an entire day in bed when they're hungover without having to tend to a wailing infant. I don't really envy them, but sometimes I do wonder what it'd be like to have a greater purpose in life—something that might motivate me to not be immobilized, binge watching Netflix every Sunday.

Then my delivery pizza arrives and I'm like, "nah."

When one my my best friends came to me for advice as she debated having an abortion, I told her, "Nobody ever says they regret having kids but some people probably do." Maybe not in a big-picture sense, but there must be moments where they wonder how much easier/happier/richer their lives could have been if they weren't spending them chasing a couple little shits around the house.

If only people were a bit more honest, like Snapchatted their screaming kids with the words "I WISH MURDER WAS LEGAL" once in a while, perhaps we'd all make decisions more based in reality.

Then again, I haven't had sex since December, so maybe this will never be an issue for me.

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As he languished in prison for 25 years, Andre Hatchett insisted that he did not murder Neda Mae Carter. On Thursday afternoon, Brooklyn prosecutors finally agreed with what he and his defense team have been saying all along: There's no evidence tying him to the crime. As the New York Times reports, an audience applauded when Hatchett's conviction was vacated by a judge, and the 49-year-old walked out of the courtroom with his sisters en route to a steak dinner at Dallas BBQ.

When Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson took office in 2014, he put an emphasis on reviewing suspicious cases, and Hatchett is the 19th person person to be exonerated on his watch. The plan is to review about 100 cases, about 70 of which are tied to infamous former NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella. That cop had no connection to this case, but Hatchett's story is especially glaring in that it shows how the criminal justice system can fail on every single level.

On February, 18, 1991, Hatchett gave money to Carter so that she could buy crack. Later that evening, at around 11 PM, police responded to a call that there was a woman unconscious in a Bed-Stuy park. When they arrived at the scene, they found Carter's naked, brutalized corpse, her limbs apparently having been arranged so as to resemble the aftermath of a crucifixion.

Hatchett, who at the time of the murder was a new father and an ice delivery man, had an IQ of 63 and read at a first-grade level. He was also using crutches after getting caught up in an unrelated shooting. The only person to testify against him at trial was Gerard Williams, a criminal who originally identified another person.

When that first alleged perp ended up having an alibi, Williams picked Hatchett out of a lineup.

Andre Hatchett enjoying his freedom. Photo by Sameer Abdel-Khalek

The first attorney assigned to Hatchett's defense was so incompetent that the case resulted in a mistrial. The second lawyer failed to disclose to the jury that his client had such a low IQ and was physically incapacitated at the time of the murder. That second attorney was also never told by the prosecutor Nicholas Fengos or his team that the sole eyewitness originally tried to finger another suspect.

While Hatchett was in prison, he lost his son. The judge and trial defense lawyer also died. Meanwhile, Fengos—who subsequently took a gig at the International Rescue Committee—is no longer a prosecutor.

Last year, a bill passed the New York State Senate that would have required police to record interrogations, but the measure never made it into law. The idea was to prevent coerced confessions, which frequently play into wrongful convictions. A similar proposal has gained support this year from Governor Andrew Cuomo, the New York State Bar Association, and the District Attorneys Association. According to the Innocence Project, which helped secure Hatchett's release, about half the states in the country have similar procedures already in place.

"It's frightening how easy it is to convict an innocent person in this country," Seema Saifee, a staff attorney for the organization, told the Times."And it's overwhelmingly difficult to release an innocent person."

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As protesters chanted outside a federal courthouse in Nevada on Thursday in support of scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy, the 69-year-old entered the courtroom and was asked for his plea on charges stemming from his role in a massive standoff between militia and federal enforcement over his cattle in 2014.

"I make no plea before this court," Bundy said. His reason, of course, is that he doesn't believe that the federal government has the authority to even charge him with a crime.

The moment was a high-water mark in a federal crackdown on those involved in the 2014 standoff. Since March 3, the US Department of Justice has handed down 19 indictments—including the charges against Bundy and four of his sons—pertaining to the standoff, which was set off by the rancher's refusal to acknowledge laws preventing him from letting his cattle graze on federal land.

Two of those sons—Ammon and Ryan—are also named in an even larger indictment related to the 40-day armed siege that took place at the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge, just outside of Burns, Oregon, earlier this year, during which a group of politically active ranchers calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom moved themselves into the visitor's center to protest the federal Bureau of Land Management's ownership of land in the West.

Together, the two federal cases represent a vast federal crackdown on the activities of "patriot" protest groups in at least four states.

The Oregon indictment was made even more expansive this week, with the addition of a new and unnamed defendant, and a slew of new charges including damage to native American sites and illegal possession of weapons. The total number of defendants is now 26, although the 26th defendant's name was redacted from the court document released Wednesday for unknown reasons, possibly because the new defendant isn't in custody yet.

"I think any people looking at this room would have to concede the case is complex by the sheer volume of the persons accused," Portland District Court Judge Anna J. Brown said Wednesday. According to The Oregonian, 3,500 pages of evidence have so far been submitted to the court, and a long trial is expected. In addition to the charge of damaging protected property, all 26 defendants are being charged with federal conspiracy, 20 with illegal weapons possession at the federal refuge, nine with related weapons charges, and three with theft of government property.

The case represents the latest chapter in the Oregon militia saga. On January 26, Ammon Bundy and five other alleged occupiers were arrested, and one occupier, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, was killed in a standoff with the Oregon State Police. The siege on the Malheur Refuge subsequently fizzled out, and the final occupier was arrested on February 11.

Earlier this week, Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris announced that an investigation into Finicum's death found that the shooting by state police officers was justified, and "in fact, necessary." On Thursday, the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office released released hundreds of pages related to the investigation, including police and forensic reports. The doc dump doesn't include information related to federal and state investigations into the incident.

On Tuesday, the DOJ announced it is conducting its own independent inquiry into allegations that FBI agents failed to properly report firing two gunshots, neither of which hit Finicum. "The question of who fired these shots has not been resolved," Greg Bretzing, an FBI investigator. Five FBI agents whose names are currently being kept secret are under investigation for failing to properly report them.

A video released by the Deschutes County Sheriff's office provides some context for law enforcement's conclusion that the shooting was justified, and it seems to debunk myths circulating among patriots' groups that Finicum was shot while trying to surrender.

The video, which syncs phone footage taken by an occupier named Shawna Cox with extant aerial footage of the shooting, shows Finicum talking about getting shot by the police long before exiting the SUV. The remarks include, "you back down, or you kill me now—go ahead, put the bullet through me. I don't care," and "put the laser right there, and put the bullet through the head." The audio from the car catches Finicum continuing to talk about being shot after he exits the truck and runs out into the snow.

Aerial video—parts of which had been released prior to Tuesday—show the Oregon State Police approaching and eventually shooting Finicum three times in the back. Analysis of the footage by The Oregonian focuses on the two stray shots, one of which can be seen penetrating the interior of the truck right as Finicum exits.

Finicum's supporters remain unconvinced. On Tuesday, his wife Jeanette posted a statement to Facebook, claiming again that her late husband was shot while attempting to peacefully surrender. "He was walking with his hands in the air, a symbol of surrender. When he reached down to his left, he was reaching to the pain of having been shot," she posted to the group "LaVoy Finicum's Stand for Freedom #LibertyRising."

Nothing in the video and reports suggests that her reading of events is correct. In interview transcripts, the deputies who fired at Finicum consistently report that he appeared to be reaching for a gun. In the video, his hands come down well before he's shot.

The ongoing federal cases in Oregon and Nevada are complicated further by the involvement of federal judges in Idaho, where Orville Drexler and Eric Parker are being held for their alleged involvement in the Nevada standoff, and in Utah, where Cliven Bundy's son Dave has been arrested.

In an interview from jail on Tuesday, Ammon Bundy told a Portland news station that he feels fully vindicated by the Justice Department investigation into the stray shots just before Finicum's shooting. "They continued to escalate force upon us, until finally they ended up killing somebody," he told reporters. "And then they tried to make their story, and now it's starting to unravel, and that's what happens when your story isn't solid."

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Not sure what this guy is protesting, exactly. Photo courtesy of Instagram user Apostalides

A Friday afternoon Donald Trump rally at St. Louis's Peabody Opera House turned violent and confrontational as local activists interrupted the GOP frontrunner's speech inside the venue, while outside, Trump fans and foes engaged in arguments that sometimes turned violent. At least 12 protesters were detained at the venue after, according to the Riverfront Times:

"The protesters stood in the aisles and linked arms before being pried apart by multiple police officers. The protesters went limp or were yanked to the ground as police used zip ties and handcuffs to detain them in the aisles. "

The candidate, whose rallies have frequently been the site of both protests and violence against protesters (and occasionally violence against journalists), took the opportunity to speak out against the protesters, saying, via Politico, that "part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."

"There used to be consequences. There are none anymore," he added. "These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea folks, you have no idea."

Outside the event, Trump supporters who couldn't get into the at capacity opera house argued loudly with protesters and got into shouting matches, with police taking some people into custody. One man who was being taken to an ambulance by police, who said his name was Anthony Cage, had a bloody face, though it was not immediately clear how he was injured. Plenty of videos posted to social media captured the mood:

Over the past seven days, America witnessed nine mass shootings that left 14 dead and 39 injured. These attacks bring the national toll of mass shootings in 2016 up to 66 deaths and 176 injuries. That means more Americans have died from mass shootings already this year than named characters have been killed on the HBO show Game of Thrones over the past five years. (The bloody epic, which is notoriously cavalier with its personae, has killed off 61 fictional people, not counting faceless hordes, according to a review of series deaths by TIME.)

Europe, meanwhile, suffered zero mass shootings over the past seven days. Relevant tallies on that continent for the year 2016 have held steady for two weeks now: six deaths and 27 injuries.

The past week seemed especially bloody given the intense media coverage of mass shootings in Kansas City, Kansas, and Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. In the first, on Monday, authorities suspect that a man named Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino gunned his neighbor and three of the neighbor's friends to death in that man's house with a high-powered rifle before absconding deep into Missouri. In the second mass shooting, on Wednesday, two gunmen attacked a backyard cookout, killing six (including an eight-month-old fetus) and wounding three. The shooters appeared to use a pistol to herd victims into the line of fire of a high-powered rifle in a coordinated ambush.

The grim reality is that this week wasn't especially bloody by recent standards. The seven-day stretch between February 20 and 26, for instance, saw 12 mass shootings that left 20 dead and 41 wounded. And most of the mass shootings over the past seven days adhere to a traditional framework: Two were drive-bys, and another was a possible reverse drive-by in San Antonio, Texas, where someone waited for and then fired on a passing car (whose passengers may have just performed a drive-by of their own). There were also four escalated altercations at or near bars or parties, which account for a significant portion of America's mass shooting incidents in general.

Still, Serrano-Vitorino's apparent targeting of a neighbor with no clear motive for doing so, the high bodycount, and a subsequent minor spree in Missouri—in which he allegedly killed a fifth man and threatened at least one more—lend the Kansas City shooting an aura of the indiscriminate and abnormal. And in the Wilkinsburg shooting near Pittsburgh, the killers' apparent tactical thinking—which likely elevated the body count—contrasted with the wild shots that often characterize shootings at parties and other public events.

These incidents contributed to a larger oddity in this week's mass shootings: Most of the attacks (and deaths) occurred on weekdays, rather than the weekend, which is often when we see elevated violence. Four shootings occurred on Saturday or Sunday, while five occurred between Monday and Friday. The last time America saw more weekday than weekend shootings was back in January; the last time the nation saw more weekday than weekend deaths was that brutal stretch between February 20 and 26, which included the Hesston, Kansas, massacre during the week as well as the Kalamazoo, Michigan, shooting spree on the weekend.

In a sense, the fact that the Kansas City and Wilkinsburg shootings accounted for so many of this past week's casualties is a hopeful one. Random attacks, as experts have expressed in our previous mass shooting coverage, are unlikely to fit into any long-term trends. But having two such shootings so close on the heels of the similarly aberrant tragedies in Hesston and Kalamazoo is still viscerally unsettling, as is the fact that atypical events can so drastically boost the toll of any given week in American life. It would be nice to say that we're unlikely to experience any attacks like these again anytime soon, but that's not the way probability works. We could face yet another week of eerily strategic or terrifyingly mysterious shootings with high death tolls at any moment—a fact that the nation needs to reckon with in considering the future of gun policy.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.