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Did Kanye Really Offer an Australian Artist £27,000 to Paint Over That Mural?

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The mural on the side of a shop in the Sydney suburb of Chippendale. Image via.

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia/New Zealand

Sydney street artist Scott Marsh experienced unexpected viral fame earlier this month when his mural of Kanye West making out with himself hit Reddit. The delicate and sensual portrait is painted on the wall of a wine and cheese shop in the quiet northwest suburb of Chippendale, and takes inspiration from a beloved 2015 meme.

It's difficult to picture anyone responding to such a well-executed piece of Kanye West fan art in a negative way, but Marsh has been inundated with hate mail since. "It's pretty funny," he told VICE. "People saying how dare you try and extort Kanye. You know, not very intelligent people, who maybe can't see that it's meant to be a lighthearted joke."

Some of the hate mail claimed to come from the management of Mr West himself.

"I got an email the day after a picture of the mural went up on Reddit, from someone claiming to be his management offering me money to paint over it," he said.

"I'm not exactly sure if it was them or if it was a stitch up because they never got back to me, and the email address wasn't kanye@kanyewest.com or anything. They offered me five figures to paint over it."

Marsh responded as anyone would—he tried to up the price, and get some free shoes. "I just took the piss out of it because I thought it was a bit of a gee up. So I asked for six figures and a lifetime supply of Yeezys."

Perhaps taken aback by Marsh's request, whoever sent the initial email hasn't responded.

Marsh is now selling a limited edition print of the Kanye Loves Kanye artwork, where the two canoodling Wests have been painted over in white. The asking price is $100,000, and if Kanye or his management purchase it within a two week deadline, Marsh will paint over the original mural.

"Painting over my work is not something I'd usually do," he says, "but it was kind of a fun idea to go with the print release, and $100,000 is a lot of money to me."

"If Kanye called me up and was angry about it, I'd just have a chat to him. I've been a huge fan and think he's a super talented dude. If he doesn't like it, well—I'd hope that he does, and I'd hope he could at least see the funny side."

"If he truly loves himself the way everyone says he does, he'd have to like it, wouldn't he?"

Follow Kat on Twitter

More on VICE:

We Asked an Expert If Kanye West Could Possibly Be as Broke as He Says He Is

A Painfully In-Depth Analysis of the Worst Bit of Graffiti I've Ever Seen

Meet This Montreal Wheatpaste Street Artist's Naked Army of Masked Women


Does Living with a Step- or Half-Sibling Make Children More Aggressive?

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Image via Flickr user Tiffany Terry

A lot of people in America get divorced, so it's no surprise that there are a lot of "complex families" in this country. According to a new study, roughly one in six children live with a step- or half-sibling before kindergarten. While pop culture likes to portray or even stigmatize step-kids as bullies (see Sixteen Candles, Cruel Intentions, etc.), recent research may suggest that the silver screen isn't just perpetuating stereotypes.

In an article published in the February edition of journal Demography, sociologists found that children who live with step- or half-siblings are more likely to behave aggressively than kids who don't. Led by sociologist Paula Fomby from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the study utilized data from a large project called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, including observational research conducted on approximately 6,500 kids at multiple stages before entering primary school. Fomby and her team took the information with the aim of analyzing whether living with complex siblings at age four could predict behavior at age five. And they found that, on average, they are more aggressive, with step- or half-siblings scoring ten percent higher than their counterparts in personality tests measuring aggressive behavior.

Whereas past studies on complex families have focused on children in relation to their biological or step parents, this research shifted the lens to focus on sibling relationships. But while Fomby and the other sociologist noticed a clear correlation, the reasons as to why young kids with complex siblings behave more aggressively remained elusive. We spoke with the sociologist to discuss her findings and ask if living with step-siblings at a pivotal age can actually predict how kids will act in the future.

For more on families, watch our doc on America's lucrative divorce industry:

VICE: What was your original intention with this study?
Paula Fomby: My colleagues and I have spent a lot of time looking at how family structure is associated with children's behavior, and particularly changes in family structure. We spent many years looking at how parents' divorce or remarriage affects children. We weren't able to explain a lot about the effects we observed, so I thought, Let's look at this from another angle. I want to think about other kids in a child's family and how the composition changes in terms of siblings as children go through family structure shifts. It's bringing the lens of thinking about sibling relationships to this persistent question about why family structure change is associated with children's behavior.

So what were you looking for by studying sibling relations instead of the parent-child relations?
We wanted to get a sense of whether there was an independent effect of living with half- and step-siblings, apart from the effect of your parents' relationship status. That was the really striking thing that came out of this paper: there was this very independent effect, sort of consistent in its magnitude, regardless of whether they lived with their own two delinquent behavior in adolescents. There is evidence that at different life stages there is a consistent association with this kind of family complexity, as well as risk taking behavior and aggressive behavior.

Follow Sophie on Twitter


The New Face of Anti-Abortion Protest in Canada

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Blaise Alleyne, fresh faced anti-abortion campaigner at U of T. Photos by Hannah Griffin

"Have you ever seen a photo like this before?"

The question comes from Kianna Owen, an approachable 19-year-old with blonde hair standing on the sidewalk outside Iroquois Ridge High School in Oakville, Ontario. She is holding a large sign that asks, "Choice?" above a photo of a bloody fetus with a small coil of beige, stringy intestines spilling out of it. Owen works for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR), a pro-life organization that describes its focus as "making the killing of pre-born human beings unthinkable."

Owen stands with three other young women from the CCBR holding similar signs just off the school property at 11:30 AM, placing themselves in the path of teenagers streaming to a plaza across the street to buy slices of pizza on this bright March day. Another staff member, Pieter Bos, waits across the street with brochures.

"No," responds a young female student to Owen's question while staring at the photo.

"This happens 300 times everyday in Canada," Owen tells her.

Some students call them religious nutjobs, others crowd around and give precious minutes of their lunch hours to debate. None were yet born when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled abortion is legal in Canada in 1988.

In many ways anti-abortion activism looks the same as it did in the years leading up to the R v. Morgentaler decision. The gory signs are familiar, but observers say the activists leading the movement today aren't as vocally religious or aggressive as those who came before.

Kelly Gordon, University of Ottawa PhD student and co-author of a book on the changing voice of the anti-abortion movement, found that pro-lifers in Canada are increasingly diverse and don't fit the traditional portrait of an angry religious protester outside abortion clinics. They're young, well-educated, and using more inclusive arguments to get their message across.

In her research, Gordon observed the growing use of language that focuses on the medical and psychological reasons abortion is harmful to women. She also found some of the most visible spokespeople are now female, and that in TV and radio interviews to the Canadian public, religious justification is rarely used.

Clarissa Canaria, 27, studied human biology, psychology and bioethics before taking a job with Canada's National Campus Life Network.

A strong part of this movement exists in the Toronto area. As part of campus groups and different organizations, they cling to the hope that they can change public opinion.

Jonathon Van Maren, 27, is communications director for the CCBR, the pro-life organization known for graphic images and controversial campaigns. The organization and its more than 50 staff members—all under the age of 30—are funded by private donations.

Van Maren thinks the abortion debate in Canada is far from finished and views today's landscape as an opportunity for the pro-life movement to make gains, even as Canada's last hold-out province announced this week it will provide abortions on Prince Edward Island. He says the pro-choice movement has decreased significantly in strength and size since the Morgentaler decision. Van Maren also points to the fast growth of the CCBR team in the last five years, and says many of their young employees are giving up careers in the fields they studied at university to work full-time trying to change public opinion on abortion.

Van Maren grew up in a Christian family where being pro-life was a given, but never really discussed in depth. While an 18-year-old student at British Columbia's University of the Fraser Valley, he watched an online video of an abortion after the topic came up in some of his first-year classes. He became involved with the campus pro-life club, and after graduation shelved plans to pursue a master's degree in favour of a job with the CCBR. Now Van Maren travels in the US and Canada speaking, recruiting, fundraising and spreading its views.

"I'll warn you, but this is the first-trimester image that we use mainly," Van Maren says before sliding over a small business-size card with an aborted fetus on the front. This kind of image is part of CCBR's attempt to make Canadians confront abortion. One campaign includes large trucks with photos of aborted fetuses on the sides being driven around Canadian cities at peak traffic times.

In advance of the 2015 federal election, flyers from the organization showing an aborted fetus beside an image of now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau landed in Canadian mailboxes. "This year we're hoping to distribute over a million pieces of literature in various homes," says Van Maren.

"Nobody ever changed anyone's mind being a jerk," says pro-life organizer Jonathon Van Maren.

Abortion rights activists maintain these graphic, in-your-face tactics are actually counterproductive. "The good side from our perspective is that we think it hurts the anti-choice movement as a whole. I think it just pushes them more to the fringes," says Joyce Arthur, executive director for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. "It makes it more likely the public will just dismiss them as fanatics and won't listen to them."

Despite the jarring images, Van Maren says his staff and volunteers steer away from confrontational techniques of the past. "Nobody is allowed to actually talk like that," he says of the way protesters screamed at Dr. Henry Morgentaler. "Because at the end of the day, nobody ever changed anyone's mind by being a jerk."

In a small sunlit room at the University of Toronto, six students gather at 4 PM on a Wednesday to listen to Blaise Alleyne introduce a discussion paper called "Abortion: A Failure to Communicate." It's a meeting of the University of Toronto Students for Life, the campus pro-life club.

Alleyne, 28, has a relaxed persona and black hair shaved at the sides of his head and dyed in a shock of bright green at the front. While not representative of the group as a whole, the turnout at today's meeting is mostly male.

A father of three, Alleyne says he and others try to practice active listening, and he enjoys when people stop and have a conversation with him. He became involved with the movement during his undergrad degree at U of T, where he's now a part-time masters student in theological studies.

Alleyne thinks a big misconception is that pro-lifers don't care about women or are motivated by misogyny and malice. On both sides of the issue he sees lots of people with good will and concern for human rights. "The difference is not in terms of good intentions, the difference is in terms of what, how, people conceive the pre-born child."

Alleyne joined the board of Toronto Right to Life filling in for a long-serving board member. He says over time he has seen a lot more vacancies filled by young people, with the bulk of those working with the organization under 35. He thinks those active in the pro-life movement have grown up under the Morgentaler decision and what he calls "a radical legal situation" in Canada and view abortion as a human rights and social justice issue.

Oakville high school students pass anti-abortion protesters.

Back on the sidewalk outside Iroquois Ridge High School, more students have gathered around the CCBR members and a trio of female students speak with Owen. They are strongly pro-choice, but they listen and explain their views. The young woman in the middle, in a black headscarf and Ugg boots, tells Owen what she thinks it boils down to: "You can argue about who is right and who is wrong all you want, but in the end, who is going to have to deal with this? The mother."

Bos stands beside the growing lunch-hour crowd and explains that despite some negative reactions from students and sometimes being asked to leave, they remain steadfast that this is an effective way to engage young people. "Our goal is to show people what abortion is."

What do those involved in the pro-life movement see for the future? Many believe that the way the Canadian public views abortion needs to change first before even minor legislative action can take place. Van Maren is under no sort of illusion that a backbench motion or bill would pass into law, but hopes abortion will be discussed more under a Trudeau government.

The University of Ottawa's Kelly Gordon is curious to see how the pro-life movement fares with the current government. "They didn't have success with a Conservative majority, and this is probably the most pro-choice federal government that we've ever had. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in terms of access on the ground." She says changing public opinion and legislation in Canada is a serious uphill battle. "They have their work cut out for them."

Swapping Meth for Weed: What We Know So Far About the UK's Real-Life Walter White

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Policemen dealing with another cannabis bust. Photo: West Midlands Police via.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

About two years ago, a middle-aged woman from a quiet village became a short-lived tabloid sensation. To outsiders, Susan McKay had been living a bog-standard life as a teacher, mother and co-owner of a local bed and breakfast. The unexpected and somewhat confusing layers to her lifestyle fell away in April 2014 when police seized up to £$137,000 worth of cannabis growing and drying in four rooms around her family's seven-bedroom B&B country house. Susan was pinpointed at the center of the whole operation.

The story reads like a cross between Weeds and Breaking Bad—if it were also a primetime TV show and not the real-life tale of a chemistry teacher living in a posh-looking place in north Wales. It's in the news again because on Friday, April 1, a judge ordered 58-year-old comprehensive school teacher Susan to pay back $48,000 in estimated profits that she would have earned from her drug stock.

Susan and her son Michael, who didn't live in the B&B at the time, both pleaded guilty to conspiring to supply cannabis last year. Michael has to pay $2,850 in "criminal benefit" for his involvement—but more on that in a bit. Finally, Susan's husband Owen McKay—who later pleaded guilty to the same charge, on account of his "turning a blind eye" to the grow house—was ordered to pay $31,000.

Let's rewind for a minute here. Like Walter White, Susan's story—as she and her barrister posited it—started off with the best intentions. She'd been grieving and going through an awful time, the court heard, after her son Daniel had killed himself. Another of her sons was living with cystic fibrosis. She'd run into some financial trouble, and then found out her 73-year-old husband was 10 years into an affair with another woman, after fathering a child outside of his marriage from that relationship.

"None of these she uses as excuses for her behaviour but perhaps it provides some explanation why a person like her behaves in this bizarre and frankly ridiculous way," her barrister Duncan Bould told the court back in 2015. "We are dealing with an intelligent, dignified, and mature woman who has been in responsible employment all her adult life and is still in a job."

Well, she was at the time. While Susan's case was going through hearings in 2015, she kept teaching at Wrexham's Clywedog School. It was basically like season one of Breaking Bad, when Walter's still tucking in those button-up shirts every morning before lurching around in the classroom as his hacking cough takes over his body. But in December 2015, Susan was banned indefinitely from teaching in Wales overall, and apologized "unreservedly for the embarrassment caused the school," in a letter read out at a hearing called by Wales' independent regulator for teachers.

Revisit our doc, 'The Real Walter White?':

So yes, there were parallels between both how she and Walter started out in the drugs world—a lack of money—and their ability to hold down their day jobs while they started to navigate their side hustles. But one of the weirdest aspects of this case centres on the fact that none of the cannabis grown in the McKay's B&B was ever sold.

This is where Susan's story veers away from life imitating art, whether you've cast her as Weeds' Nancy Botwin or Walter White in your mind. The cannabis was just sitting there: in the black grow room tents positioned in three of the B&B's bedrooms and drying in one of the bathrooms. There's almost no information out yet on how exactly a teacher who said she'd "never been in trouble before" landed the equipment and know-how to fill parts of her house with more than 100 cannabis plants. This feels like as good a time as any to reintroduce her 27-year-old son, Michael.

One small mistake he made catalyzed the whole grow operation's breakdown, when police pulled him over for driving without lights in Denbighshire in April 2014. After the cops smelled cannabis coming from inside the car, a quick search uncovered about $1,400 worth of the drug. Michael, a heavyweight boxer who actually lived in Chester, was on his way to his parents' house that night, and police discovered the whole stash when they then searched the B&B. He said later in court that his mom had approached him with the idea and, against his better judgment, he'd agreed to help.

"I must have had a breakdown because of what has been happening in my personal life," Susan said last year, after being handed a suspended jail time sentence. "I am not a bad person."

As it stands, she and her husband have 20-month jail sentences, suspended for 18 months at their original sentencing, while Michael was given a five-month sentence, suspended for a year. If they don't pay up those criminal benefit estimates, jail awaits. Hey, even Nancy Botwin had to suck it up and serve a bit of prison time.

First-Person Shooter: An Aspiring Stand-Up Comic Shoots Empty Open Mics Across NYC

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Welcome back to First-Person Shooter, a photo series that offers a brief vantage into the world of compelling and strange individuals. Each Friday, we give two disposable cameras to one person to document a night of his or her life.

There are a lot of aspiring comics in New York City and it's a hustle that pretty much has to be a full-on lifestyle if you wanna make it. And by "make it," we mean be one of the stand-ups who briefly appears on Louis in the periphery of the Comedy Cellar. Being a "famous" stand-up comedian in the city is about as likely as .

Gina Ginsberg has been doing comedy for about five years and is well aware she's got a ways to go until comedy becomes her full-time career. That being said, she's grinding hard, doing open mics three to five times a week, as well as performing multiple booked shows in the Village and taking voice-over lessons to expand her skill set.

In this week's installment of First-Person Shooter, Gina photographed two open mics (including one in a comic book store) and a show she was booked on, all on the same Friday. She also snapped pics of her comic friends in between the lolz. We asked her some questions about what went down.

VICE: How was the Friday you shot these photos?
Gina Ginsberg: First I walked my neighbors dog in Brooklyn. Then I went into Manhattan for a voice-over lesson in Hell's Kitchen. After that, I went to two comedy open mics in the Village before doing a booked show called Comedy as a Second Language in the Lower East Side at The Delancey. When the show was over, I headed over to the bar Welcome to the Johnsons with some of the other comedians. At the end of the night, I got a veggie burger at 2 AM with my friend Anders at Sugar Cafe and then fell asleep on the M train on my way home to Brooklyn.

Do you always do this many open mics in one night?
I often try to do open mics before a show to warm up. I know a lot of comics do three or even four in a night.

There is a photo of an empty comedy club—is that a regular occurrence?
I'm pretty sure this particular comedy club gets larger crowds at night. This mic was in the afternoon, so the only people there were other comics. I do full shows, but empty rooms are also a part of comedy.

The second open mic is at a comic book store. What's up with that?
Yeah that's a comic book store in the West Village called Carmine Comics. You have to buy a comic book to perform. I bought one for $1 called Birthright.It is a tiny store so it gets filled up with comedians who are obviously there for comedy, but also a few patrons who are good audience members.

What the strangest place you've performed?
I've performed at a few other bookstores in New York and a lot of dive bars. The weirdest venues I've done were out in Oregon before I moved to New York. I was the first woman to perform on a show in Salem at a Denny's. In college, I did stand-up in a lecture hall before Econ 201. I also did on a bus in Israel once.

How do you make it as a comic?
Write a lot. Produce other funny content. Don't be an asshole. I'd like to think that eventually the right people recognize your talent, but to "make it" in a mainstream sense is incredibly competitive. It is extremely hard to be successful in any art form in New York. It's not sustainable. After a few years, it gets old being poor. Obscure, ancillary day jobs (I'm a tour guide during the day) become less glamorous as you get older. I'm not famous, but still wouldn't want to do anything else.

Who's the most famous person you've ever seen show up at an open mic?
Famous people don't seem to go to mics. I'll be on shows with well-known comedians sometimes. They treat my level of shows as their open mic for practice.

Where can I see you do comedy?
In Manhattan, I run a variety show at Cornelia Street Cafe called Thanks for Sharing. In Brooklyn, I run a show called You're Welcome to Come at The Well. I also host trivia at The Well on Tuesdays. Follow me on Twitter to see more dates.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website for more of his photo work.

Breaking Up with Your Bestie Is Brutal

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Illustrations by Mai Ly Degnan

Breakups suck, and they're not something only people in sexual relationships experience. Remember that one season of Entourage where E went rogue and tried managing clients other than his BFF Vinny Chase? That type of stuff happens to everyone at some point, though the average friendship rift typically doesn't involve famous people (or flagrant use of the word "bro"), even if the fall-out is equally melodramatic or mundane.

Shit happens, people get older, and friendship bracelets eventually tear. Even if the specs are petty, the way we feel after these platonic breakups go down is legitimately painful and can haunt us for years. Sometimes we learn stuff from the experiences and move on, other times we don't. Below are a series of anecdotes that detail the messy entrails left after particularly brutal best friend breakups.

She Fucked Our Friend's Dad

I had a best friend from age four to 15, and we stopped being friends because I found out that she had been fucking our friend's dad for about two years. He was over 50 and they started fucking when she was 12 or 13. And the guy was gross! He worked in a pen factory and smoked about 40 cigarettes a day—plus he had rotting teeth, dressed like it was 1982, and I'm pretty sure he had a mullet. He was a creep. My best friend would sneak off to meet this guy all the time, but she told me she'd met someone on the internet and would brag about how much butt sex they would have in the back of his car.

The way I found out that the real guy she was fucking was our friend's dad and not some random AOL chat dude was that she told our friend who happened to be dating the guy's son. All very Jerry Springer. At the time, I was working at a shitty hotel. I left work and the dad-pedo was waiting outside for me and asked to give me a lift home. He then proceeded to tell me that they weren't having sex—they were just friends. Obviously, that was a crock of shit.

Next thing I knew, the guy's wife found out and threatened to kill him. Most of the town found out and I think he lost his job. His wife eventually divorced him. Everyone sort of turned on me because, as her best friend, they all thought I knew. It was pretty horrible.

Our relationship officially ended with her writing me a note saying that she didn't want to be friends anymore. I was devastated. She was like my sister. When I received her note, I went to her house and ripped the letter up in front of her and called her a slag! She said nothing. After that, I saw her a few times in the street, but she wouldn't even look at me. In retrospect, I should have called the police on that creep she was seeing. Fucking pedo. — L

White Privilege and the Tony's

The friendship ended the night of the Tony Awards a few years ago when Audra McDonald received her record-breaking sixth award. We'd known each other for a few years and were very close. He had a boyfriend who was super nice, and just the three of us watched the show. They demanded silence during the actual show, but we could talk during the commercials. They were theater gays.

The one I was closer with was an optimist about everything—each performance was "amazing," there were lots of fake-ass tears of joy, etc. I would make comments throughout the awards shows that were less "omg what beauty" and more "all these people are white."

After Audra had her big win, we got into an argument. My friend and his boyfriend said I was too critical, especially about calling out racial differences during the award show. They were mad that I had made comments about the racial stereotypes in the event's musical performances, the lack of people of color overall, and how even though McDonald was winning such a big award, it didn't lessen the fact that there was still a giant lack of people of color and all these fucked-up stereotypes. They just wanted to sit there and escape in a world of theater. I think they've had tough lives being gay, so me being there and talking shit about racialized performances during their escape time didn't go over so well.

What really killed me was when the boyfriend said to me, "You speak about race like my parents." They are from the south and were so uncomfortable talking about racism that when I was speaking against it, they actually compared me to their fucking racist parents. They wanted to be racially unaware or "post-racial." Two fucking white homonormative theater gays were calling me racist for calling out shit about the Tonys. I was so mad I started going off. We'd had a whole punch bowl of drink. It wasn't cute. We argued about my comments, but then it got much bigger.

I ran out of their apartment about 20 minutes later, but forgot my bag, so I had to go back inside. The whole thing was so awkward. I grabbed my bag, and I remember standing outside their door. I was like, 'So see you soon?' And they replied, 'Sure...' We've never spoken since. — S

The Friend Who Lived a Double Life

I had this really eccentric friend who was one of the most personable, smartest people I have ever met. We became close when we were studying abroad in Paris. I thought I knew him super well and even went to this dude's house for Christmas one year.

Slowly and slowly, it became clear that he lived multiple lives. We had a core group of friends, and apparently he'd act differently around each of us. For example, he had a girlfriend and he didn't tell our friend group about her, and he didn't tell her about us.

Based on what my other friends or acquaintances said about him, it often sounded like they'd be describing a different person from the one I knew. He'd be an intellectual around one person, but a bro around others. He'd play into people's desires to project the type of identity he thought they were looking for. The only way to describe it would be to compare him to a con artist, though he conned us without necessarily taking anything. I'm not sure how he benefitted from creating these various personas he'd embody around different people.

When we got back from studying abroad, he sent an email breaking up with our friend group, myself included, basically saying that everything we knew about him and our three-year friendship was a lie and that he never wanted us to contact him again. Here's an excerpt from an email he sent our five-person crew. The subject line was "Please don't respond."

There is something you all need to know. When we were together in Paris, you got to know a fake version of me. It's not like there was something underneath it all, though. Really, I have just lived most of my life as a liar. I stopped talking to you because I wanted to distance myself from that. Nobody should live like this. It's not right. Read the email, be disgusted by its verbosity, and forget me. You never knew me anyway.

I never really saw him again, but I did some research and found out he lives with his foreign girlfriend in the Midwest. I know this because he got arrested protesting with the Black Lives Matter movement last year and I saw his mug shot. — K

The Atheist vs. the Evangelical Christian

In college I became best friends really quickly with my roommate, but she was an Evangelical Christian and I was an atheist. We tried to find similarities anyway and were inseparable for a while.

One day, I was really depressed and she came home and hugged me. I started crying and she said she'd pray for me. I couldn't handle it and I blew up at her, saying she was too smart to believe "this shit" (my exact words).

She turned me into our dorm's RA the next week for a bottle of wine I had at our place. I didn't see her again until her wedding, and even then it was beyond repair. We both cried a lot when we saw each other, but the damage was done. — R

The Roommate from Hell

He was my best friend and we lived together in a dorm. When he decided we were not friends anymore, he made my life a living hell because he couldn't move out. He forbid me from putting my shampoos and stuff in his shower rack, and he moved all of his kitchen things into his own section so we had to have two sets. I started storing my shampoos on the floor of the bathroom to agitate him.

Then he started doing stuff like putting ear plugs in at night and setting his alarm for like 3:30 AM, then letting it ring until I had to get up and shut it off. He also went into my storage bin and threw out all of my condoms. He deleted me and all of my family members from his phone and on Facebook. He'd post Tumblr quotes about me like a melodramatic bitch.

And since he could not communicate with me, he would just blast songs to tell me how he felt, often Mumford & Sons or Avett Brothers. Brutal. He made our living arrangement (which was a studio—no bedroom separation) as excruciating as possible to ensure the point was clear: our friendship was over. — B

I didn't see her again until her wedding, and even then it was beyond repair.


The Disappearing Act

It started with the classic friend-zoning moves: She stopped liking everything I posted on Facebook. She took weeks to respond to my calls. Birthday cards turned into birthday texts. Then there was that business trip to my city where she "could probably make time for coffee." But I knew something was up when she had to crash on my couch for a few days because the "hotels were too expensive" and left me $20 in a thank you card from CVS. Either she thought that four-days on my couch really should only cost $20 (fair), or it was some kind of very bad tip. To this day I don't know.

Our break up after that was an unspoken one. She disappeared without explanation, only to re-appear again half-a-year later on my Facebook feed, clad in a white-lace dress, bouquet in hand, brand new husband at her side, and with whatever-her-fucking-name-was from her soccer team as her bridesmaid. — M

The Homewrecker

When I was 20, I experienced my first serious breakup with my first serious girlfriend. I was kind of a mess, and got really tight with a dude I met in a college class around the time. He had also just had his first big-boy relationship fall apart, and we bonded over broken hearts, marijuana, a desire to write professionally, and probably some simmering homoerotic tension (just kidding).

He told me everything about his breakup, and I told him everything about my ex. I ended up bringing him for homie support when I went to hang with her for the first time after we ended things. When we left, I remember him describing her as "enchanting" and that he now understood why I was so hung up on the relationship.

Flash-forward a bit, and he and I got into our first fight since becoming best mates. I was writing my first professional freelance article and he offered some sound advice when I bounced an idea off him. I told him I liked his tip, but he then asked if he could split the by-line with me. When I said no, he laughed and said in front of a group of friends, "It's not like VICE would ever hire you anyway."

I decided to get some space by essentially ghosting on him, and we drifted. A few months later, I found out he was dating my ex—the one I told him everything about and introduced him to—through Facebook. What happened between us after that is pretty sophomoric, but our friendship was kaput. From what I'm told, he's currently living with my first love in Spain. I'm not quit sure—I haven't spoken to either in 976 days, but who's counting? And here I am, typing this article by myself in VICE's new, empty office. I'm still not sure who came out on top. — Q

All names have been changed to maintain anonymity.

Follow Zach on Twitter.

Lucy DeCoutere Quits Trailer Park Boys as Bubbles Actor Charged with Battery

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Lucy DeCoutere photo via Instagram

The actor who plays Bubbles on Trailer Park Boys was arrested Friday night in LA for domestic battery, and today co-star Lucy DeCoutere announced she quit the show.

DeCoutere has become a high-profile voice for assault victims in the wake of the sexual assault case against former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, where she testified as one of three complainants. Ghomeshi was acquitted of all charges.

"If I find out that somebody is abusive, I cut them out of my life. It's very easy," she tweeted Saturday. "I have resigned from Trailer Park Boys."

Bubbles actor Mike Smith was released on $20,000 bail early Saturday, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department told CBC. Media reports say Smith allegedly choked friend Georgia Ling during an argument in a hotel bathroom. He now faces one domestic battery charge.

Both Smith and Ling disputed the charge in a joint statement. "Georgia is a friend of mine and we had a loud and heated dispute. That is all," said Smith. "At no time did I assault her. I am not guilty of the misdemeanour charged against me."

"At no point did I feel I was in danger, otherwise I would've called the police myself, which I did not," reads Ling's comment. "Police were called by others not present in the room who mistakenly perceived the argument to be something other than what it was. When the officers arrived I tried to assure them there was no real issue, but they proceeded to arrest Mike."

The statement said other members of the Trailer Park Boys and staff stand behind Mike, though that no longer includes DeCoutere.

Trailer Park Boys kicked off its 10th season on Monday, March 28.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

I Infiltrated a Hippie Commune as an Undercover Cop in the UK's Biggest LSD Bust

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Stephen Bentley, in his hairy hippie disguise

In the mid-1970s, officers from 11 different forces were chosen for an ambitious undercover operation aimed at smashing two of the world's most prolific LSD manufacture and distribution networks. Codenamed Operation Julie, it lasted two and a half years, and involved policemen posing as hippies to infiltrate communes in rural Wales where acid was being made and sold as part of a wide-eyed bid to broaden people's minds.

The undercover op resulted in the seizure of $14 million worth of acid ($12 million in LSD crystals and $2 million in tabs) and 120 arrests, and has since been heralded as the event that kick-started the war on drugs in the UK. We got in touch with Stephen Bentley, one of the undercover officers involved in the case, to find out how he got ready for the operation, how he gained the trust of his targets, and more on the psychological effects of having to deceive his targets.

STEP 1: GEARING UP FOR THE CASE

My partner Eric and I discussed our cover story in depth, to make sure we'd be convincing. We decided that we'd say Eric's brother had got into a bit of trouble with the police and disappeared whilst on bail, and that we thought that he was probably hiding out in a mid-Wales hippie commune. This was intended to make it easier for us to infiltrate the residents of these communes. We also bought a battered old transit van, which we planned to use to move things around for the hippies to help gain their trust.

I'm only human, so I was naturally a little bit worried about the risk involved in the operation. I was 28 at the time though, and at that age, you do things that you wouldn't necessarily do in later life. More than anything else, I felt excited to be included.

STEP 2: TAKING COKE WITH THE TARGETS

Our main target was a guy called Alston Frederick Hughes, also known as "Smiles." It took us a full six months to fully get in with him, during which time we developed a genuine friendship. I thoroughly enjoyed his company. He was funny, charming, and so charismatic that if he'd have chosen to pursue a career on TV rather than in the drug trade, he would've probably ended up being famous.

We knew that we'd managed to gain Smiles' complete trust when he asked Eric to babysit his kids one night. Smiles was a very smart and cautious character, so we saw that as a major accomplishment. Some of the other targets weren't as difficult to get in with, and accepted us almost straight away.

Our main target was so charismatic that if he'd have chosen a career in TV rather than in the drug trade, he would have probably ended up being famous

I was never put in a position where I had to take LSD to keep my cover, but the hippies all smoked hash, and I would have stood out like a sore thumb if I hadn't followed suit. Some of them also took cocaine. It actually came out partway through the operation that Smiles was being watched by customs because he was trying to score huge quantities of coke from an American living in west London. I ended up taking both cocaine and hash. It would have taken a very strange individual to mix with Smiles and the rest of the guys without taking any drugs, and could have aroused suspicion.

Before Operation Julie, I'd never taken any drugs apart from prescription medicine. The targets could tolerate huge amounts of cannabis, but it was all new to me, so I was forced to adapt quite quickly. The cocaine that was around then was high-grade stuff, so I had to rapidly get used to that as well.

My cover only ever came close to being blown once. Smiles' phone was tapped as part of the operation, and at one point, it became clear that a dealer from Hampshire was on his way to pick up a consignment of LSD tabs from him. I had previously busted this dealer, who I'll refer to as "Robert." We were living in a rented cottage a couple of hundred yards away from Smiles' house, and if it wasn't for the phone tap, we could have walked past and been seen—and recognized—by Robert. He was actually one of the most obnoxious characters I've ever met in my life, so I was tempted to make a phone call to get him busted on the way back to Hampshire. He would have probably had at least 1,000 acid tabs with him, which would have landed him with two or three years in prison. Fortunately for him, I was able to resist the temptation.

STEP 3: BASICALLY REGRETTING IT

When I saw Smiles in the cells after he'd been arrested, he gave me a hug and said, "No hard feelings." His words did little to ease my guilt, and I was so upset that I was almost in tears. I ended up going through a period of severe depression as a result.

I often wonder what Smiles is up to nowadays, and think about him a lot. I know that deceit is necessary in an undercover role, but it's still not nice knowing that you've deceived someone you genuinely liked. It's now something that I've got to live with.

What Stephen looks like now

Upon reflection, Operation Julie was a unique, exhilarating experience. It's since been described as representing the death throes of 1960s counterculture, which I agree with to an extent. After the arrest of Smiles and co., more criminal gangs began to see drugs as easy money rather than being motivated by idealism. Saying that, I think many of the main players in the two networks that we infiltrated had also been driven by money, and it would be naïve to think people selling drugs during the hippie era were acting for other reasons other than that, prior to that point. Some genuinely believed that LSD was going to change the world, but even they became more drawn towards the material rewards later on.

You can read more about Operation Julie in Stephen's forthcoming book Undercover: Operation Julie – The Inside Story.

@Nickchesterv

More on VICE:

Inside the Secret World of a British Undercover Drugs Cop

Being a Customs Officer with a Drug Habit Is Stressful

How Governments Have Used the War on Drugs to Oppress Their Enemies


Comics: 'Sheeple,' a Comic by Nilas Røpke Driessen

‘Miitomo’ Might Not Be the Mobile Debut Nintendo Needed

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All pictures are courtesy of Mike, and he's not the slightest bit embarrassed about sharing them here.

Miitomo may be the least social social-networking app, ever.

The "game"—Nintendo's first foray into the mobile space and the first title released as part of their partnership with Japanese mobile giant DeNA—came out in Japan on March 16th, and hit both the US and Europe on March 31st.

After spending the past few weeks with the Japanese version—which can be fully used in English, so the gap between territories is a bit odd—it seems pretty clear that Miitomo is not the killer app that fans of Nintendo, not to mention the company itself, was hoping for.

Miitomo, more than anything else, is lacking. Sure, it raced to the top of the charts in Japan and the States, helped by Nintendo's reputation and visibility, and the hype around the veteran gaming company finally bringing something to mobile platforms. It's also free to play (or "free to start" as Nintendo says), which is helping people try it out, even if it is sitting low on the charts in terms of actual revenue generated. (In the UK, on April 2nd, Miitomo was sixth on the Top Apps Android chart, but not yet inside the top 500 Top Grossing apps.)

But instead of delivering classic Nintendo innovation to the mobile space, Miitomo represents inside-the-box thinking—and the bare minimum at that—that's just as small as the sad and mostly empty room that your Mii occupies in-game. Its weird and quirky pre-scripted (and forced) conservation has its moments, but doesn't have the staying power or impact Nintendo needed from their first mobile app.

This is backwards thinking applied to social networking. Do you want to be able to directly message your friends? Well, you can't. Want to be able to pick which friends come to visit your Mii, and when they do that? Nope, you can't do that either. Want to talk about things other than what the Big N is giving you as topics? Sorry, no dice.

So, what exactly can you do? Miitomo starts with letting you customise your Mii character—the same customization we've seen for years now, originally on the Wii and later brought to the 3DS and Wii U. There seem to be no new options, and while it's fair that the Miis have a very basic style, it's weird to be seeing the same creation tool still in use a couple of hardware generation cycles later, without at least some new options somewhere.

At the core of Miitomo is questions, answers, and conversations. The game will ask you questions, and you respond to them. Stimulating, golden pieces of topic-building, such as:

What did you do last weekend?
If someone packed you lunch, what would you hope to find inside?
What's your favourite cartoon?
How much time do you spend getting ready in the morning?

Yeah, hard-hitting shit.

Your friends can then see these responses, and "heart" or comment on them, and their Miis will present you with other (again, pre-scripted) questions, which you can answer. Where would you like us to take a vacation together? Whoa there, I just met you.

The whole approach is anti-social. Sure, you might learn something new, like how your best friend is secretly a vampire and hates garlic; but is that something you really wanted to waste time to talk about anyway? It's the worst types of conservation, forced, and the guts of Miitomo is simply responding to canned conservation prompts. It's the least social way to go about communicating with your friends, and presents more barriers than it does actual avenues for being social with other people.

Article continues after the video below

Watch VICE's new film, Rise of the Right

Predetermined topics can, and sometimes do, lead to interesting discoveries about your friends, and that's what Nintendo is banking on. But Miitomo limits the scale of the interaction available. Nintendo is trying to prompt interactions and stipulate their limits, but that runs against the open nature that lies at the core of social media platforms to begin with.

Nobody would be using Facebook if, instead of open-slate status updates, they could only post in prompts that Mark Zuckerberg had created. That feeling of being able to post anything, any time, is crucial to fostering discussion and makes social apps, well, feel social.

It's like your mother sitting you and your brother down to talk about why you're fighting all the time, but you can only respond with your favourite colour and what activities you've been doing recently. Or one of those weird friendship-building activities where you pick random cue cards and talk about whatever is written on it. That's Miitomo, in a nutshell. It doesn't foster a feeling of spontaneous social interaction, and its meagre benefits can't outweigh its dominant constrictions.

Friends—found via linking the app to Twitter or Facebook, mostly—arrive at random, leading to a vapid Q&A session that, if you stick them out long enough, rewards you with coins to spend in the app's shop, on new scarves and hats and the like. The Miis act like social intermediaries, messengers that send your secrets back and forth to your friends at a whim. You can tap the speech bubble above your Mii's head to see a random bunch of answers from your friends if nobody is visiting, but it's just not a streamlined or intuitive way of communication. The Big Nintendo Man Behind the Curtain is pulling the strings, severely limiting your control.

That is, unless you want to bypass all this and just check what questions your friends have answered "directly," but that costs candy. You can visit and check in anyone in your friends list, for a few questions. But after a couple of freebies, you have to cough up to learn anything more. Candy can be earned in-app, or as a reward for playing the pachinko-like Miitomo Drop, turns on which use either coins or game tokens. Of course, you can also spend Real Money to buy either coins or game tokens. Congratulations, Nintendo, you've figured out the worst aspect of mobile gaming: the incorporation of microtransactions.

On top of the problems explained so far, even basic navigation in Miitomo, and trying to work through your feed (which ends up being a random mix of things, because they are sorted when people comment on them, not when they're posted) is a messy experience with hard-to-get-through piles of information.

The only area that Miitomo shows some promise is dressing up your Miis in silly little costumes. I'm a sucker for stuff like that, but even that has its limits, and it isn't enough on its own to keep people coming back to check the app day in and day out—something that's crucial for a mobile app, especially a free-to-use one. But I do think that aspect of the game could really hit it off with the silly-decorating-pictures-of-yourself crowd.

But that's not enough to have a hit app. There are a lot of questions, still. Will I ever be able to decorate the sad, empty walls of my room? Will other games aside from Miitomo Drop make it into the app? Will I ever find a costume that's cooler than the pirate outfit I already own? (Probably not.) Right now, Miitomo is a missed and mismanaged opportunity.

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The technical problems alone are enough to probably turn most casual mobile users off. There's a decent amount of loading needed to start the app—not just the first time, but each and every time. It makes multitasking with the app almost impossible, even using iOS's built-in support. Notifications have never worked correctly for me, and there have been been plenty of complaints about the massive battery drain Miitomo puts on devices, too. (Though it does have a power saver mode, but that should tell you something in itself.)

Nintendo needed Miitomo to be different from everything else out there, but for me it fails as an attractive social app that's going to keep people using it for long periods of time. A social networking app can't be successful if it isn't social at its core, and Miitomo just isn't. I'll dip in and out of in the coming weeks, but I simply don't see it being something people are going to be using, and talking about, months from now. Willie Clark / @_willieclark

A Second Opinion

I'll keep this really brief, as I wasn't intending on following Willie's words with my own thoughts on Miitomo. But having been totally sucked into the app I feel it's necessary to say that, perhaps obviously, one man's passion can easily be another's week-old fish supper.

I'm getting along (mostly) splendidly with the app, laughing at ridiculous comments from friends and sharing plenty of my own, while almost wetting myself at some of the inspired Miifotos being shared (check out this Kotaku piece to see what I'm on about). I've dressed my idiot Mii up in a pink bow tie, a kittie skirt and monster feet and revealed to the world (well, my currently small circle of Miitomo friends) that this is how my wife makes me dress in the bedroom. It's not, obviously—like I'd really tell you—but the fact that there's such silliness at play already, at least within my social circle, shows to me that people are embracing Miitomo, and enjoying it.

It does have a slight feeling of flash-in-the-pan right now, though—the longevity of Miitomo will depend on what other features Nintendo bring to it, as playing dress-up and making your little Mii (or those of your pals) say "fuck" and "cunt" is only funny for so long (on a Nintendo product, though; who'd have ever thought it) and the Miitomo Drop mini-game gets tiresome, fast. The battery drain is massive—dropping in and out of the app on a fully charged Sony Xperia killed 80 percent of its power inside five or six hours. And the slowdown of coin acquisition outside of spending actual money on them is a small frustration. You'll start off rolling in it, but a few stupid hats later and you're skint.

And yet, none of this is stopping me coming back, for the moment at least. I'm having fun with it, like I have most Nintendo products in my lifetime. Just because it's not as socially flexible as Twitter or Facebook doesn't bother me, just as I'm not concerned that the Wii U isn't as powerful as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4. Nintendo doesn't have to "compete" with its so-called peers in the console sector, and has long since gone its own way in both hardware and games development terms. Miitomo shows that same singular thinking in the mobile space, and perhaps it's not a case of waiting for it to catch up to the accessibility of Twitter et al, but accepting the app on its terms and coming around to its way of thinking.

Or, maybe, I'm just blinded by having a new plaything on my otherwise-pretty-barren Android phone. Could be that, could be. Come ask me for my thoughts again, in a week or so. Mike Diver / @MikeDiver

Miitomo is available now on iOS and Android.

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This Drug Smuggler and 'Hippie Mafia' Leader Is an OG in the Weed Legalization Movement

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As marijuana goes mainstream, so do the stories about the legends of pot's cultural history. 'Smuggler's Blues,' a memoir by Richard Stratton out April 5 through Arcade Publishing, tells the story of how a "clean-cut Wellesley boy" joined the cultural revolution of the 1960s, immersing himself in the marijuana underground and becoming a drug kingpin in the process.

Moving thousands and thousands of pounds of weed and hashish by boat and plane over international waters from the mid-60s to the early-80s, Stratton quickly became known as a leader in the "Hippie Mafia" as one of the country's largest importers of top-notch hash and bud. At one point, he began providing samples to High Times for its monthly taste test column, which resulted in his writing for the magazine and eventually serving as its editor for a stint.

"I always had these two lives I was leading," he explained to VICE over the phone. "I used to tell people I smuggled pot to support my writing habit," a claim that's not hard to believe: Stratton typically would make $3-5 million per smuggle, often repeating the process several times a year. Meeting figures as diverse as the acclaimed novelist Norman Mailer (who the kingpin co-owned a horse farm with at one point) and the infamous mobster Whitey Bulger, Stratton often found himself simultaneously straddling both the criminal and literary worlds.

While serving a 25-year term in the feds for a 1982 hashish and marijuana bust, Stratton used his time on the inside to write a novel titled Smack Goddess. He also became a jailhouse lawyer, had his sentence reduced, and was released after serving eight years. He parlayed that success into writing for Esquire, Playboy, and GQ, as well as writing and consulting on HBO's Oz and founding the short-lived but influential magazine Prison Life in the mid-90s. Smuggler's Blues recounts his story in all its dank glory for the first time. VICE spoke with Stratton on the phone to talk pot and pens.

VICE: When did you first get into the drug game and how long were you smuggling marijuana and hashish?
Richard Stratton: I was at Arizona State University in the 60s, and I started smuggling pot from Mexico into the States by hiding it behind the door panel of my roommate's truck. My entire outlaw run lasted a good 15 years, from the mid-60s up to the beginning of the 80s when I got arrested. We offloaded a huge cache of Colombian pot from a mothership off the coast of Maine. We also had a DC6 plane that crash-landed, and we managed to get 10,000 pounds of pot off the plane before the cops got there.

I was arrested a few days after all that reefer was shipped out of the state to distributors—a total of over 40 tons. The DEA was basically a day late and a dollar short; they got there too late. I spent the night in jail, went to court the next day, and posted bail of $250,000. When it became apparent to me that one of the guys operation knew way too much and was going to flip and testify against me, I became a fugitive.

How long were you on the run and what were you doing at that time?
I was on the lam for not quite two years. During that time I went to Lebanon and managed a massive smuggle of hashish—15,000 pounds brought into the port of New Jersey.

All the while, a DEA agent named Bernard Wolfshein was tracking me. They had organized a CENTAC unit, which is a group of agencies the FBI, DEA, and IRS put together as a task force focused on our family called the "Hippie Mafia"—a loose-knit organization of marijuana and hashish smugglers, as well as groups who manufactured and dealt psychedelics.

The book starts with the plane crash in Maine, then follows my fugitive experiences in Lebanon, and ends in the lobby of a Sheraton Senator Hotel near LAX with the DEA agent Wolfshein orchestrating my arrest by a small army of DEA agents, US marshals, and LA cops.

Can you tell me about Wolfshein, the DEA agent who ultimately nabbed you?
When I got arrested, there was a particular DEA agent involved in my case who becomes a major character in the book. It was like the Catch Me If You Can story where you've got these two people, an agent and an outlaw, and you see how their relationship evolves.

When I was first arrested after the Maine bust, I took a ride with the agent from way up in the northwestern part of the state down to Portland to be booked. During the drive, the agent and I had an interesting discussion about the drug war, in particular the war on pot.

What was your involvement in the literary world like when you were hustling?
I always had these two lives I was leading. I used to tell people I smuggled pot to support my writing habit. I met Norman Mailer while I was a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown. Once I got out of prison, I went to work for the Fortune Society, which is an organization in New York City that helps people coming out of prison. They had a publication called Fortune News that I edited.

I was also involved in the start of Prison Life magazine and became the editor and publisher. The magazine's content was entirely written and illustrated by people who either were in prison or had been in prison, so it was all first-hand. We ran an Art Behind Bars contest for visual artists, poets, essayists, and fiction writers that was a yearly event, and we would publish work by the winners .

How were you involved in the formation of High Times?
High Times was founded by Tom Forcade, a guy I worked with who was also a pot smuggler. He and I had done some business together. Tom was a brilliant guy who was involved in the underground press movement. The marijuana movement and the underground press were closely related. Tom was a pivotal figure in that.

My involvement in the early days of the magazine mostly consisted of bringing products to be photographed for the centerfold of the mag or to appear in contributing articles. I was a full-time smuggler in those days, so my involvement in the editorial process was limited. Later, though, I would serve as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.

The early years of High Times magazine were transformative: Mick Jagger was on the cover, as was Truman Capote. I did an interview with Mailer. The idea was to examine how marijuana use was influencing the larger cultural and political movements taking place throughout the world.

Did you always justify that what you were doing was a means to an end with marijuana on the road to legality?
I always believed that ultimately marijuana would be legalized. We knew that reefer madness was bullshit, that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Harry Anslinger (and then the DEA) was promoting this insanity about pot being a weed with roots in hell. That propaganda was complete and utter lies. With the war in Vietnam, a lot of veterans, who might not ordinarily have been exposed to marijuana, got high in Vietnam, and so they joined the movement as well. That really began to change things. People who were involved in the anti-war movement, a lot of them were also smoking pot, and they went on to spearhead the anti-War on Drugs movement.

So the smuggling wasn't about profit?
If marijuana had not been illegal, I never would have become a criminal. So my primary motivation was political and cultural—not criminal or solely for profit. I wasn't a bank robber, I wasn't into extortion, I wasn't even into smuggling or distributing hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine, even though I had ample opportunity to smuggle and distribute those drugs with a chance of much higher returns. I was an outlaw who broke a very specific set of laws that many people believed were wrong, hypocritical, and far more destructive than the plant itself.

The primary motivation for me was to keep America high and thereby defy the government's drug laws and prove them as wrong and dishonest. We were activists; we realized the government was lying about pot, and that led us to disbelieve so much of what they told us about race, about the war in Vietnam, about political assassination, and about the war on drugs. And, ultimately, as has been proven, we were right and they were lying to the American people about pot, about the war in Vietnam, about race—it's all connected.

For more on marijuana watch 'The War on Weed' from WEEDIQUETTE:

What does marijuana mean to you in the context of going to prison for it, writing about it, and now seeing it become legalized across certain states?
I believe marijuana liberates the thought processes—it opens the mind. People get high and their preconceived ideas of what life is all about are suddenly changed. Some people get paranoid, some people get creative, but they all come away with a different attitude. Cannabis is a mysterious plant that has a complex and important relationship with mankind.

For me, the marijuana legalization movement is a great metaphor for American democracy at work. It's a metaphor for our understanding of what it means to live in a participatory democracy—that as Americans we have an obligation to question authority; that we must not simply accept what the government tells us is good for us as people, as a country, or bad for us, or how we should live our lives.

The marijuana movement in this country became a massive example of civil and criminal disobedience where you had millions of people using this plant that was declared illegal by the government. And that has forced the government in many states to change the laws. To me, that says a lot about how American democracy works.

What is the cultural relevancy and legacy of the early large-scale marijuana smugglers like yourself?
There're a lot of young people who have grown up in this country since the 80s who aren't aware of how radical this change is in the way we view marijuana, and how we get our herb today, took place. This book, and my experiences in the outlaw marijuana movement, tells the story of the early years of what has become a cultural revolution.

This is to help readers understand how we got to where we are now. I think that makes it valuable to the young people who don't know that history, who don't know what it was like to live during those insane and intense outlaw years in marijuana's story. They don't know how marijuana became as popular as it is in this country or that it became popular because there were outlaws who were willing to risk their lives, willing to risk their freedom to keep America high.

Are young people responsive to your work today?
Whenever I do readings from the book, or speaking engagements about the war on plants as I call it, it's always the kids in their 20s and early 30s who hang around and are full of questions, and eager to know more about that time. It's a kind of nostalgia for a different time in America.

They want to know what it was like to have lived during a time when boats full of pot and airplanes full of pot were coming in on a regular basis, and before the homegrown cultivation of pot changed the dynamic of how people get their herb. Now marijuana is cultivated in all 50 states. The book is about a time and a mindset when drugs, sex, and rock and roll changed the country.

'Smuggler's Blues' is out through Arcade Publish on April 5. Order a copy here.

Follow Seth on Twitter.

Portraits of New Yorkers Who the Rest of the City Ignores

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All photos courtesy of Chase Hall

Chase Hall's aura is essential to his photo work. The photographer has an undeniable charisma that puts others at ease, bringing out their character and allowing them to be vulnerable without even knowing it. This is a skill that can't be faked or bought, which helps explain how the young artist can take such intimate photos without having a formal arts education.

His latest photo book, 'Milk and Honey,' features 62 self-published pages of portraits focused on New York City's "underdogs." The book's a testament to the way Hall interacts with his surroundings and his ability to connect with others. Each day, he wakes up and goes for a ten-mile walk by himself with his camera in tow, without a destination in mind. Often, he ends up shooting the shit with strangers and engaging with New Yorkers most people wouldn't make eye contact with before snapping a pic.

"People always ask me, 'Chase, why do you only shoot crazy old black dudes?'" the 22-year-old, mixed-race photographer told me. "But I don't see it like that. First off, I shoot all types of people. I'm attracted to all sorts of humans, but particularly those whom society turns a blind eye to, or places a stigma upon because they're 'flawed' by normative standards... We're quick to grant fame, but quicker to defame."

For example, there's a portrait he took on his very first day in New York in 2014 that's included in the monograph. He was in Red Hook with some friends when he "came across this incredible human with a glistening mouth of gold—I couldn't not go up to her," Hall remembers of Bridgette and her gold teeth. She ended up giving him a tour of the neighborhood and introducing him to her friends who were playing the song "Ghetto Superstar" from some speakers.

"They must have known this was her jam because she broke out in dance and sang every lyric of the song. One of the dudes laughing with us exclaimed, 'Damn, Bridgette, you really is a ghetto superstar,' and she smiled ear to ear." Hall took a photo of her and "knew from that point on that I wanted to share that happiness, that realness, that positivity for all my years to come."

Milk and Honey is the culmination of the countless blocks the artist has walked and the characters he's shared a moment with since moving to New York City. But the moments aren't always positive. Sometimes Hall photographs ugliness, violence, and human depravity. There are images of forehead boils ready to pop, glass eyes, missing eyes, cloudy eyes, blood-shot eyes, and dudes who look like they're about to punch Hall's Mamiya 6 medium-format camera. But Hall is actively interested in documenting "the soul and the grit" of the city.

When asked if he ever worried about fetishizing or romanticizing his subjects, Hall replied that the photo collection is "the most real and most vulnerable thing I have ever created... I have always looked up to the underdog, someone who perseveres regardless of their odds. My mom was like that, and she's forever kept it real. I find that struggle and wisdom usually fall hand in hand. My goal is to showcase those hands."

'Milk and Honey' is available to order through Chase Hall's website. 40 percent of the proceeds will go to the charity the Big Smiles Program. Follow Chase on Instagram.

Follow Zach on Twitter.

Foot Fetishes and Chocolate-Covered Lesbians: When Couples Watch Porn Together

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Illustration by Dan Evans

It feels like every few weeks some article comes out asking whether porn makes us bad lovers, asking whether it's making teen boys into cumshot-obsessed mouth-breathers, or teen girls coerced puppets who think anal is standard second-date fare. According to PornHub, everyone around the world watched about 4.3 billion hours of people groaning and slamming their genitals into each other on their site last year, which has no doubt contributed towards the moral panic.

This concern about skewed expectations in the bedroom as a result of pornography contrasts with the advocacy for the benefits of couples watching it together. So we decided to just cut out the middle man and ask two couples and one newly single woman about how they navigate watching porn while in relationships: browsing history stealth, cringing and all.

"We used to watch bondage shit for ideas, but it's all so Hollywood and fake"

Hannah and Jake
Ages: 26 and 24

VICE: How many nights a week do you two spend together?
Jack: In theory every night: we rent a basement flat together in southeast London, though about three nights a week we will do our own thing.

What are your porn-watching habits like, now that you live together?
Hannah: Well, we've been together for nearly four and a half years so it was never really a shock that we'd both watch it separately sometimes. That's how we do it now I think – well that's what I do! I'm assuming Jack's the same.

Jack: I watch it alone, but a lot less than I used to. Maybe it's an age thing or a time thing, but we don't really try it together anymore.

Why's that?
Jack: We tried it and it just wasn't right. It was weird at first, but we got into it. We used to watch bondage shit and got some ideas from it, but it's all so Hollywood and fake, so it detracted from the experience. When we're together it's about us, and we both seem to feel that that's how we should keep things.

Hannah: We've always been pretty open about what turns us on, so there's never been any embarrassment or secrets. But I think we both like to keep our deepest fantasies as fantasies, if you get me. There are things we like the idea of or like to see, but wouldn't like to do with each other. I personally think that watching stuff and playing along alone is a completely different thing to being with the person you love. I think lust is natural and porn is a way to get it out without cheating or stuff like that.

How open are you about what you like to watch alone?
Jack: We don't really talk about it, and I don't think we need to. I don't ask her what she had for lunch every day, and I don't ask her what she got off to either.

Hannah: As long as it is just fantasy then I think it's healthy that we keep it as our own business.

So how does it affect your sex life?
Jack: When we first started it was more out of a desire to mix things up, and it helped at the time. But it didn't last, and started being more of a negative. We were both into different things and it caused more issues than it solved, so we just stopped, and now have our own times alone. Not that we announce it, but it's just an understood thing I think. Even though we don't mind each other getting off to porn alone, it does seem a bit like betrayal even if it shouldn't, so we keep it to ourselves. At least that's the conclusion I've come to.

"I checked his browsing history and he'd been watching some videos about strange shit"

Megan
Age: 25

I recently broke up with my boyfriend, after three years together. I sort of watched porn behind his back at first while working freelance from our flat – alone time wasn't much of an issue. He only ever caught me in the act once: I managed to close the browser at the last minute and play it off casual, but it was kind of obvious.

After a while I felt like it might help if we tried watching some porn together, so I awkwardly put the idea forward over dinner as we watched Ant & Dec on telly. By that point I'd been psyching myself up for about a week, and decided that no scenario could be worse than carrying on with the token sex life that we'd slumped into.

I just blurted it out. There was some presenter on TV, so I said something like: "Oh she's pretty, I wonder if she's ever been in any porn?" He was like, "Erm, I dunno, probably not if she's on evening TV." So that didn't really work. I left it for a couple of minutes then just came out and said we should try watching porn together. He didn't really react, but just carried on looking at the TV and said something like: "Yeah, why not?"

To move things along, a few days later I left my laptop in plain view with an X-rated page open. He saw it and was like: "What's this all about?" So I said I'd been finding something for us to watch. I thought he looked kind of embarrassed, but he said OK and we tried it that night. It was weird, because it was so... normal. He was really into the actual sex, but didn't seem to care much about the porn – he didn't look at it or talk about it at all. He just seemed so disinterested, so I knew something was up.

I let it slide and we went back to normal. But one weekend I went to grab some stuff for lunch, and when I came back he was in the shower. His work laptop was open and unlocked so I had a sneaky look at his files, which were boring, and then at his browsing history. Literally a couple of minutes before his shower he'd been watching some videos about, like, strange shit.

Nothing illegal or anything, but just very fetish-y. There were searches based around bondage at first, then there was one about feet. But the one that sticks in my memory that I've not been able to find since involved three women getting off while covered in gunk – like the brightly coloured gloop they used to dunk celebrities under on children's TV. Then out came the baked beans. It was basically a threesome with tinned foods and neon gunge. Admittedly there's a lot weirder stuff out there but it was a shock.

Illustration by Dan Evans

We broke up for other reasons not that long after that. Basically it turned out he was into some really odd shit, and all that time I'd been looking at soft missionary stuff.

"We tried using food, like chocolate sauce, and it was just a bit gross"

Amy and Duncan
Ages: 20 and 22

VICE: So, you've told me you and your girlfriend watch porn together. What brought it about?
Duncan: She just asked me if I watched it, and I was like: "well... yeah'. Then we discussed how it would be quite good to watch it together, so that's how it started. She may find some of the stuff I like a bit weird but we can always talk about that. Overall, it's definitely been a positive thing. We've done it for about two years – half our relationship.

Let's talk logistics. How often do you watch it together? And do you still get some alone time?
Amy: We might watch it once or twice a week, sometimes as more of a precursor and sometimes with more focus on it. But it really depends on how busy we are or if we don't like each other that night for some reason. We both haven't actually talked about if either of us still watches it alone... Maybe it's better to keep that secret?

How much do you find that it enhances or detracts from your sex lives?
Duncan: Well we're still theoretically living apart, but I'm renting a place that's quite big, and Amy stays over more nights than not in a typical week. We cook together most nights and it feels like we're living together really.

How open are you about the kinds of things you like to watch?
Duncan: After two years of doing it I think we're fairly open about what makes us tick. I'd say most of what we watch involves things like couples "sharing" their partner, or the guy watching as his girlfriend gets with something else. Also stuff like the babysitter or the housewife and gardener. It's weird because I'm not into the idea of sharing, but it's different when it's porn.

Tell me about the first time you watched X-rated stuff together.
Amy: I think I just asked him point blank. I read an article on Cosmopolitan or something (don't judge) about watching porn as a couple. I'd done it solo for a while every so often, and wanted to know if he did too. I'm pretty sure we'd just been out for drinks so chatted about it openly.

When we tried it first I think we'd been drinking again, which made it less awkward than you might have thought. I remember we half-watched something quite tame to get the mood going, then it moved from being on in the background to taking a more central role in sex. Like copying what we were seeing: positions and places – the kitchen, car etc – and some tying up and teasing. I've always liked that sort of thing, and I think it's a lot more common since 50 Shades of Grey.

So how does it affect your sex life?
Duncan: We don't watch it every single time, but use it to keep things more varied. It's also definitely allowed us to open up about our kinks, and given us some ideas – though not all of them work in real life. We tried using food, like chocolate sauce and it was just a bit gross, and shower- or bath-related stuff isn't practical. Also I don't think we'll ever experiment with candle wax again.

Amy: It can also make it more of an event rather than a quick token thing. We can pace ourselves and take our time, plus there's so much stuff on the internet it can take a while just browsing.

@TimTimNobles / @dan_draws

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The Crippling Cost of College for America's Undocumented Students

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Photo via Nazareth College's Flickr page

Renata Teodoro began her freshman year at the University of Massachusetts Boston like most 18 year olds—eager, excited, nervous—but she'd worked harder than most to get there. Her parents hadn't gone to college, so she had to navigate the system on her own, and though she'd grown up in Massachusetts, she had to pay pricey out-of-state tuition because she was undocumented. She'd worked part-time jobs through high school to pay for her first semester.

Then, one day during winter break, Teodoro got a call from her sister. Immigration officials had entered her family's house, detained her brother, and then deported her family back to Brazil. Teodoro, who was afforded deportation relief through President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2013, remained in the US alone.

Since then, Teodoro, now 28 years old, has been trying to finish her degree while working to pay tuition and live on her own. "I've been working and paying taxes, but can't access the same things that would help me stay in school," said Teodoro, referring to federal loans and grants that help US citizens pay for school. "Last semester I had to work 35 to 40 hours a week, and I was taking five classes."

Teodoro's battle to get through college is typical for undocumented students, even those with DACA status. State and federal laws make it nearly difficult for both undocumented students to afford college by denying them financial aid or loans, and a few states—Alabama and South Carolina—even ban undocumented individuals from attending their public universities.

students have a hard time getting support on campus, and it leads to a lot of issues connected to depression, mental health, and anxiety. —Laura Bohórquez

The US requires all states to provide children free K through 12 education (regardless of legal residency), per the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe. But its stance on college is quite the opposite, explained Philip Wolgin, managing director of the immigration policy team with the Center for American Progress.

"The big issue is that most states do not offer in-state tuition ," Wolgin said. As of this year, 18 states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, but the other 32 states require undocumented students pay pricier out-of-state fees. The federal government prohibits both undocumented and DACA students from receiving federal grants, loans, or work-study funding, and only six states (California, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington) offer any form of financial aid to undocumented students. Even private student loans typically reject undocumented students unless they have a legal resident co-sign on the loans, according to the advocacy group Educators for Fair Consideration.

The price of college can be a deterrent for many students, but without financial aid, it can be outright prohibitive for undocumented students, 61 percent of whom have an annual household income below $30,000, according to a study last year by UCLA's Institute on Immigration, Globalization, and Education. In other words, while over 70 percent of college students with legal residency receive financial aid to help with tuition, most undocumented students have to pay the full sticker price.

Laura Bohórquez, director of the educational empowerment program for the immigrant youth organization United We DREAM, told me that 65,000 undocumented individuals graduate high school each year, but only 10 percent end up going to college. Of those students, between 1 and 3 percent graduate within six years, she said—and the main roadblock is the cost.

"Most students don't end up going to college because they can't afford it," Bohorquez told me. "Our students are trying to work two or three jobs to be able to go to school, so they're so tired when in school. They have a hard time getting support on campus, and it leads to a lot of issues connected to depression, mental health, and anxiety."

DACA has eased some of the hardship for students like Teodoro, who became eligible to receive in-state tuition in 2013 when several states, including Massachusetts, opened up state financial aid to DACA recipients. DACA students nationwide are also eligible for scholarships to private universities through a new fund, The Dream.US. The fund's program director Gaby Pacheco, told me the organization had raised $91 million and funded 900 students in the past two years, in a total of ten different states.

"We select colleges that are based in areas where there are high populations of DREAMers, and we try to create a sense of community, sending cohorts of DREAMers to schools," Pacheco said, adding that it was easier to raise money and support for DACA recipients than undocumented youth without deferred action.

But even with scholarships and deferred action, the financial burden for undocumented students can still be greater than the average college student.

"Though our students' retention rates are really high and their GPA's are high, and we require students to attend school full time, a lot of student ask for exceptions to do part time," Pacheco said. "Many times they call in distress because, with their parents undocumented, they're not just working to help pay the bills but also chauffeuring their families around. The responsibility these young people have is tremendous." She said that many students also feared their family's deportation and worried that DACA—an executive order by President Obama, which could be revoked by the next president—could be in jeopardy.

For those who don't have DACA status, paying for college can be an impossibility. (In order to receive DACA, an individual must have entered the country before age 16 and have lived in the US continually since 2007.) Francisco Salcido, a 22-year-old DACA student at Arizona's Pima Community College, is eligible for in-state tuition at the school—but his brother Hector, who doesn't meet DACA's requirements, had to leave school because he couldn't afford the out-of-state fees.

"My older brother didn't qualify for DACA because he left to visit my grandmother when DACA was passed," Salcido explained. "He went to Pima for a semester with in-state tuition and then got a letter that he had to show his application for DACA or residency, so he dropped out. He could have kept going to Pima with out-of-state tuition, but it was too much money."

Salcido said his brother had hoped to become a doctor, after serving in the Mexican Red Cross.

"I saw him getting excited when he found out new opportunities," Salcido recalled of his brother, who attended Pima in the fall semester of 2015. "Seeing him sad that he can't do them is heartbreaking. He'll find a way eventually."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.


The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Vladimir Putin, whose associates have been implicated in the Panama papers (Photo: Kremlin.ru via)

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

US News

  • Trump Wants to Sell Off Government Assets
    As Republican voters head to the polls in Wisconsin, Donald Trump's advisor said he would sell off $16 trillion worth of government assets in order to eliminate the national debt. Barry Bennett said a Trump presidency would see the sale of public land and buildings: "The US government owns more real estate than anybody else." —NBC News
  • Fight for $15 Campaign Spreads
    Californian Gov. Jerry Brown will today sign a bill to raise the state's minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 an hour by 2022. With New York also set to raise the minimum wage, activists now have their sights on states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan as the "Fight for $15" campaign spreads. —USA Today
  • Amtrak Crash Kills Two, Injures 35
    An Amtrak train carrying 330 passengers derailed on Sunday just south of Philadelphia, killing two people and injuring 35 others. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has now recovered the data recorder and are investigating how fast the train was traveling and possible signaling failures. —ABC News
  • Statin Intolerance Is Real, Study Finds
    A new study has revealed some people taking statins to lower their cholesterol are suffering from muscle spasms and other significant side effects. It is hoped PCSK9 inhibitors could provide a better option for some people at risk of developing heart problems. —CBS News

International News

  • Panama Papers Expose Tax Affairs of Global Elite
    A huge trove of more than 11.5 million leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has revealed how the rich and powerful hide their wealth. The papers show associates of Vladimir Putin shuffled away as much as $2 billion through shadow companies, while Iceland's Prime Minister is facing calls for snap elections after documents revealed he and his wife had $4 million tied up in an offshore shell company. —The Guardian
  • Refugees Deported from Greece to Turkey
    The first boats carrying migrants deported from Greece have arrived in Turkey as part of an EU plan to ease migration to Europe. Frontex, the EU's border agency, said 136 people arrived in western Turkey early this morning, with another boat set to leave later today. —Al Jazeera
  • Pakistan Floods Kill at Least 53
    Flash floods caused by torrential rain have killed 53 people in northwest Pakistan, according to officials. Pre-monsoon rain brought serious flooding across three provinces Sunday. People in the flood plain have been warned to leave villages for safer places. —BBC News
  • Syrian Nusra Front Leader Killed in Air Strike
    The spokesman for the militant group Nusra Front in northern Syria was among 20 or so jihadist fighters killed in air strikes. Abu Firas died in the raids in Idlib province. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the air strikes were carried out by Syrian or Russian forces. —Reuters

Some macaque monkeys, the type transmitting a form of malaria to humans (Photo by Karyn Sig via)

Everything Else

  • Medicine Crows Dies at 102
    Joe Medicine Crow, the last surviving Plains Indian war chief, has died at the age of 102. He wore war paint beneath his World War II uniform and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009. —The Washington Post
  • Kesha Offered Freedom for Apology
    Kesha said she was offered a release from her contract with Sony Music and Dr. Luke's company if she publicly apologized for accusing her former producer of rape. "So, I got offered my freedom if I were to lie," she wrote on Instagram. —Rolling Stone
  • 50-Foot Inflatable Joint Blocked Near White House
    Hundreds of demonstrators advocating marijuana legalization tried to carry a 50-foot inflatable spliff to the White House. The Secret Service blocked the giant joint from entering Lafayette Park in front of the White House. —VICE News
  • Monkey Malaria Becomes More Deadly
    A malaria-causing parasite that is increasingly being transmitted from macaque monkeys to humans in South Asia has the potential to become more more deadly and transmittable, according to a Harvard medical journal. Deforestation is being blamed. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? That's alright—instead, watch the latest episode of American Obsessions, "How 'Sailor Moon' Fandom Became a Refuge for 90s Queer Kids."

Gamers Are Creating Art Inside the Open World of ‘Grand Theft Auto V’

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A shark, just minding its own business for now, in 8 Bit Bastard's 'Sharks' documentary

From its gun-slung backwater towns in the north, to its neon-bleached cityscape in the south, the Los Santos skyline cuts an impressive figure against the seemingly endless ocean that hugs its shores. Like every Grand Theft Auto game before it, Rockstar's fifth main series entry presents players with an open-world sandbox filled with people, wildlife, cities, and vast countryside. The latest setting fills an area larger than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Read Dead Redemption combined.

At its core, crime and unscrupulous activity are once again the order of the day. Yet, Los Santos has since become more than just a playground to engage in unlawful enterprise, following GTA V's release in late 2013 on PS3, November 2014 on Xbox One and PS4, and last April on PC. Nowadays, the sprawling metropolis also plays host to a thriving performance culture, where thousands of people create art in various forms that millions of people keenly watch.

"I remember this as clear as day," Alec Chaney tells me. "When I did the second heist mission in GTA V's single-player campaign—where you go into the submarine and go underwater—I went under and noticed how incredible everything looked. I was like: oooh shit, there's some potential here."

A still from 'Onto the Land'

Alongside production partner Sonny Evans, Chaney makes up one half of YouTube outfit 8-Bit Bastard, a team who cut their teeth in the ever-popular Grand Theft Auto V machinima scene two years ago creating skits, guides, and virtual re-enactments of scenes from famous movies and television shows. The pair's channel now boasts hundreds of videos, the majority of which befall the streets of Los Santos, and has accrued over 44,000 subscribers.

Driven by a lifelong admiration of esteemed naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, 8-Bit Bastard's most successful video to date, Into the Deep, examines the world and wildlife that exists just off the shore of the bustling city, and has been viewed close to one million times. It's really quite impressive.

'Into the Deep', by 8-Bit Bastard

"The Blue Planet is probably my favourite David Attenborough documentary (series), and all of that just came rushing into my head," says Chaney. "I started ignoring the mission and just going around in the submarine and just having a look at what was there. I had no idea that Rockstar were going to introduce animals into the water so I was so impressed when I saw dolphins and orca and humpback whales.

"I basically recorded what I saw and just based a story on that. None of it was choreographed, I just went out and recorded—which is how I imagine it might work in real life. You just film what the wildlife is doing and pull it together afterwards. It was just a huge source of inspiration, seeing the animals and how amazing it all looked."

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that Into the Deep was created prior to the introduction of Grand Theft Auto V's Rockstar Editor—a feature that allows players to record, edit, and share footage in the game's Story Mode and GTA Onlin—meaning Chaney had only first and third-person control over the shots that comprised the end product.

Article continues after the video below

From VICE's archives, watch the TOXIC episode 'Garbage Island'

All told, the ocean overview (or underview, perhaps) took just three days to make, although Chaney admits to pulling some ridiculous hours, with minimal sleep, to make it so. Conversely, its overground follow-up, Onto the Land, was made via the editor and took several months to complete.

"When Rockstar introduced the Rockstar Editor, things just became enormous," explains Chaney. "Suddenly, you had to think about camera angles, camera motions, depths of field, almost as though you were a videographer. It's intense, but it's also made GTA machinima that bit harder to make because you've got all this stuff at your grasp and it's like, oh, how do I do this? While making Onto the Land, I'd be editing and would set the camera angle before deciding it wasn't really good enough, and then it was just continuous filming and re-angling, sometimes for hours at a time, simply tinkering on one little clip.

"That said, I'd definitely say the Rockstar Editor is the way to go because the results you get at the end are just vastly superior to what they would be if we were just stuck with the traditional views of first and third-person. Being able to have free use of the camera has made everything so much better."

'Onto the Land', by 8-Bit Bastard

While YouTube and social media did exist when Grand Theft Auto IV was released in 2008, both platforms have since risen to considerable cultural prominence in the interim, thus features such as the Rockstar Editor have introduced an element of celebrity-ism to the world of GTA. Prolific directors have sprung from various online communities—filmmakers, stunt performers, and comedians, for example—and viewers now keenly await, and often impatiently demand, the Next Big Thing from these auteurs in their droves.

To this end, The Stunt Lads is a comedy series from Hat Films created entirely in the Rockstar Editor. An extension of trio Alex Smith, Chris Trott and Ross Hornby's weekly GTA V output as part of the YOGSCAST network, the idea came from a collective interest in light-hearted, slapstick fare and an inability to perform stunts to the same standard as some of the online scene's dedicated crews.

"We like to think we're a Jackass meets Top Gear-type team," says Smith. Trott agrees. "Yeah, we knew that we definitely couldn't do any of that stuff ourselves. It's very impressive and takes a ton of time to find those tiny little kinks in the game where the engine allows your bike to fly over skyscrapers. We wanted more to tell a story and we thought our form of content on YouTube is quite blundering and humorous, and we thought having three guys trying to do stunts and just getting injured and hurt all the time would be funny as a premise."

By scouring the vast digital archipelago for the best locations, Hat Films use the GTA V Map Editor tool to position ramps and jumps and platforms in the most unlikely of places. This process, coupled with recording and editing, can take anywhere between two and four weeks of full time work; while the onscreen avatars don full body jumpsuits and masks or helmets so as to sidestep potential issues with voiceovers and lip syncing.

'The Stunt Lads', pilot show

As we chat, Smith, Trott, and Hornby make regular mention of promoting their "brand" and delivering the best "content," such is the commonly understood vernacular shared by popular people who make a living from a prominent medium made so by popular culture. They've also worked their own brands into The Stunt Lads itself, such as the made-up caffeine supplement Crazy Pills, which is emblazoned onto their merchandise in a similar fashion to Rockstar's real-life approach to branding.

"It's just a way for the viewer to be part of the joke, really," says Smith. "There's a Crazy Pills sticker on the back of all of our Stunt Lads snapbacks, for example. You were saying about how people associating with a brand that's virtual within a virtual environment might be considered strange, but I think that's just a reflection of the online community as it evolves. People don't care if it's virtual because they see it everyday and talk to real people who understand what they're talking about. In that respect, it's as real as any other brand, really."

On Motherboard: Shoot Dildos at Donald Trump's Face in 'Drumpulous'

This typifies where the Grand Theft Auto community is today—V is a video game that's transcended itself, almost, becoming as much a playground for people to hang out, do cool things, and promote their interests, as it is a game about murdering, robbing banks, and stealing cars. This concept, and the associated pseudo-celebrity streaming culture that's now steadfastly attached, is by no means exclusive to GTA V. But its level of realism arguably makes it more relatable than, say, Minecraft or similar games with huge online communities.

Hat Films has placed The Stunt Lads on temporary hiatus at the moment in order to gauge demand. Rockstar, however, have showed continued interest in the series and even invited the threesome to the developer's London studios for exclusive access to new updates as a direct result of the show.

Chaney, on the other hand, followed Onto the Land with another ocean faring expedition, named Sharks, that focuses on the cartilaginous monsters of the deep, and is now hard at work on another foray into the world of wildlife documentary making in Los Santos. And he's not planning on stopping there.

"I know it's not gonna be around for years," he says. "But as soon as GTA 6 comes out, I'm going right into that water, mate. Hell yeah, right in there, to see what I can find!"

Follow Joe on Twitter.

The Creator of 'You're the Worst' Talks About Writing, Clichés, and Love

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'You're The Worst's' dysfunctional lead couple after a quiet night in. FXX

Mulder and Scully, Niles and Daphne, Dappy and Luisa Zissman—there are so many TV relationships that teetered on a will-they-won't-they dynamic that it's gone beyond a cliché to become the blueprint of a television relationship. Every time a new show starts with two of the lead characters sharing cruel-but-flirty back-and-forths and longing stares, we know we're going to be strung along for four seasons until they eventually make out in the rain.

You're The Worst, a romcom sitcom takes the will-they-won't-they question and gives it a blow job in the alley halfway through its first date. The show's two leads, Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy (Chris Geere), aren't the worst, but they are pretty bad. She's a music PR representing an off-brand Odd Future while he's a writer struggling to follow up his successful debut novel. They meet at his ex's wedding and bond over bitchy comments about whether the marriage will last. Jimmy is thrown out for being rude to the bride, then Gretchen follows him and takes one of the wedding presents with her. He takes her home and she steals his car. Over the course of the first series they get closer, but remain fully aware of each other's flaws. As Gretchen says, "If you both know that it can't work, then there's no harm, right?"

This cynical sense that everything is doomed any way, so it doesn't really matter if they stay together or not, is what gives You're The Worst its edge. Nobody is walking on eggshells, terrified the other might leave and ruin their dreams. They're already miserable. They get wasted together, have sex in public, and wake up hungover. Even the show's moral heart, Jimmy's flatmate Edgar, an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD and gullible naivety, is mercilessly belittled by the show's leads. Unsurprisingly, by season two, things for these so-called "poison people" get a lot darker.

You're The Worst fits into a TV landscape where shows such as Master of None, Love, and Broad City have shown us that you can portray sex and relationships in a way that, unlike the romcoms of the last fifteen years, feels modern and reflective of what dating is like in the real world. You just know that Gretchen and Jimmy would fucking hate Ross and Rachel. The show is created and written by Stephen Falk, who also executive-produced Orange Is the New Black and Weeds. He talked about how a TV romcom stays fresh in 2016, as well as looking at the ways in which You're The Worst tackles other issues that get in the way of finding someone who will cuddle up next to you and watch shows like his.

VICE: Gretchen and Jimmy spend most of their time either drunk or in bed together. How did you approach this without it being clichéd?
Stehen Falk: Sex and drinking is fundamental to 20- and 30-somethings, at least the ones that I know. My goal, rather than portray something which was palatable or "romantic" to audiences, was to portray the way people meet and hook up in the real world. That often involves drinking and then, hopefully, sex. That's why the characters dispatch with the "will they, won't they?" question in the first four minutes. They meet at a wedding and have sex within three minutes of the pilot. That allows us to get into the nitty gritty of relationships much earlier. I'm much more interested in what people actually go through rather than, "Are we going to have sex?" Too often that is the fundamental conflict of romantic comedies, so if you dispatch with that, you can get to the meatier stuff.

The thing about relationships that interests me is the way people get in the way of their own happiness. I find that with complex relationships, the problems come from yourself and not the other person. I wanted to try and examine in the ways we shoot ourselves in the head and muck it up. The inspiration for the show comes from British sitcoms like Pulling and Spaced plus older things such as Fawlty Towers, which was always on if we could find it. British comedy has always allowed its characters to be flawed but Americans don't have that freedom, which I have always found very limiting.

Those flaws your characters have makes it hard for any of them to express their true feelings for each other. How important is romance?
The weird thing with You're the Worst is that as cynical as it is, it's also deeply romantic. I'm a sucker and a sap, even though I've been through the ringer romantically. It's quite a noble place to be, to hit the canvas and still want to keep trying. That to me is the whole challenge. If you can emerge from tragedy with belief then you've won. Jimmy and Gretchen are fundamentally broken and they celebrate that in a way. They certainly don't hide any of their damage. The aspirational element of their relationship is that they don't hide that from each other. They confront it and say: 'don't go home with me. I'm incredibly broken and flawed and I'm not a good person to hang out with.' Once you've done that, there's all the freedom in the world. The fear in relationships can come from waking up one day and finding out our partner has found out something about us that they find deeply unlovable. If from the very beginning you present everything that is unlovable about yourself and they still want to go home with you then there's nothing to be afraid of.

The characters still lie though, in particular about their mental health. Jimmy's flatmate Edgar is an Iraq vet suffering from PTSD, for example, and later in the show Gretchen's mental health deteriorates. How do you write comedy around something as sensitive as depression?
Talking about mental health is seen as "fearless" but it shouldn't be, it's simply an acknowledgment of what is true. It's about how complicated we are. There's a very American desire to spackle over the cracks. The word "likability" is used a lot and its about characters being perfect. To me, the characters I like are the ones who are three-dimensional and like us. Show me characters who are completely fucked up and able to say, "I'm still lovable." Tackling mental health and PTSD is dangerous and it's not something we do lightly. We don't try to represent everyone, just these characters. We do the research but ultimately our goal is to present characters with these flaws and say they are still deserving of love.

Gretchen's friend Lindsay (Kether Donohue) is hilarious, and has love from her husband, which she ignores and then cheats on him constantly. What does she bring to the show?
Lindsay is an attempt to show what happens when you choose a life or a partner based on what you've been told you should do. The struggle she has is to try and find happiness within a terrible choice. It's the detrimental effects of loyalty. She's made a commitment to this man and this lifestyle, he has money and represents security. We're not cagey about it; she does not love him and she is not the right person for him. However, she thinks that she should love him so she continues to try and make it work. She's symbolic of a universal desire to force ourselves to be happy, even if we're not.

Jimmy is from England and is played by a English actor (Chris Geere). Are you worried about what British audiences are going to think about him?
The lead actor wasn't supposed to be British but when Chris Geere auditioned it immediately clicked and felt right. Jimmy is a disaffected Brit living in Los Angeles and soaking up the shallow vibe of the city. British actors are way too over-confident with their American accents. Some can do it very well but the majority are rubbish. The fact that some can do a good job makes American casting directors wrongly confident in thinking they all can. Chris Geere has a terrible American accent. In fact, we often make him say things using it and he gets very upset when we laugh at him.

The reason Chris made so much sense in the role, I think, is that You're the Worst is very inspired by British humor, even as far back as the John Osborne play Look Back In Anger, which is seminal to the angry young men movement. It really affected me a lot. That's where the character's name, Jimmy, comes from.

Is this a changing of the guard regarding romance on TV? Are we throwing out the old sitcom cliches? How do you feel about your show being compared to things like Master of None and Love?
The humor in our show can be very broad, in ways. It's something of a pendulum swing away from these slice-of-life, mumblecore shows that present themselves as comedy but don't have any laughs. It's important to me for a comedy to be funny.

While I'm happy that there is a wave of programming that is reaping the benefits of streaming services and TV being forced to try new things and be risky, whenever you're lumped in with a list of shows, like Catastrophe as well, one can get a sense of devaluation. It's a watering down of a state that when I entered into it, was very empty. When we came out there were four other romantic comedies that came shortly after us that you could argue tried to do the same as us and failed. They all felt like pale imitations of what we were doing at the time. So I sort of feel like the guy who was into a band when they had ten fans and now they're playing stadiums. It feels crowded, but I'm proud to be playing the stadium.

A Former Cop Describes Racist Police Quotas in New York

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A New York City cop in Times Square, Manhattan. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In the 122nd Precinct on Staten Island, New York City, the cops were said to play a game.

A misdemeanor counted as one point; a felony, 1.5. If you fell below your set goals, or quotas, for any given month, you lost points. The winner needed three each month to get overtime and vacation. If they didn't, they reportedly risked time up on "Sky Watch," a mounted street tower for patrol units.

Around this time last year, photos of the apparent scoreboard leaked to local outlets, along with a memo from a commanding officer encouraging cops to go beyond minor traffic infractions. "People who write headlight summonses walk footposts in the rain and snow," it read, before adding, "(or will do so soon.)"

It was probably the most visual demonstration ever that police quotas are a fact of life in New York City—a practice, that, although the city vehemently denies it, is taken for granted by many cops, policymakers, journalists, and residents. Now, in a landmark class-action federal lawsuit—which includes the Staten Island precinct and others across the city—12 minority officers are suing the New York City Police Department over what they say is a rampant quota system.

According to the plaintiffs, pre-set "performance goals" can be used to deny officers vacation and overtime—just like the board game. And the policy is said to be fundamentally discriminatory towards blacks and Hispanics, who make up the broad majority of arrests and summonses in New York. By turning them into forceful mandates, the federal suit argues, commanders are technically using quotas, which are illegal under a 2010 state law.

Quotas have mostly taken a back seat to other, more visceral controversies, like those involving excessive use of force and the always-controversial "stop and frisk" policy. But a recent profile of the suit's lead plaintiff, Officer Edwin Raymond, in the New York Times Magazine brought a response from Police Commissioner William J. Bratton ("Bullshit," he actually said). With their lawyers spooked, the plaintiffs—active-duty cops—have clammed up. It's fair to wonder if a few rogue officers can actually change things.

Enter Anthony Miranda.

The 20-year veteran of the NYPD is serving as a spokesperson and advisor for the plaintiffs. Which makes sense: his career showed how courts can challenge policing. Now the chairman of the National Latino Officers Association, in 1999, then-Sergeant Miranda was one of 14 minority officers who sued the department over bias, eventually winning a significant payout. On a recent afternoon, we sat down with the former cop to discuss the alleged quota system, the pending lawsuit, and what it could mean for policing in New York and America.

VICE: Hearing anecdotes from officers across NYC makes it easy to believe each precinct has a system like this. That it's not just limited to Staten Island, with this board game, where they get points for arrests and summonses. But couldn't that have just been an egregious example? How common is this, really?

Former NYPD Officer Anthony Miranda: Staten Island wasn't weird—it was more blatant. It's something that's happening across the city. But these guys were just ignorant enough to create a board about it. The reality is, every plainclothes unit has a quota that they have to maintain if they want to stay in that unit. So they have to get a felony; they can't just get misdemeanors or violations, even if that's the only thing they see. So they're on the hunt for those felonies, so they can maintain their position in these details. This affects their days off, the hours they want to work, that sort of thing.

There's this competition between terminology—we call it a quota system, and the PD calls them "performance goals." That would be somewhat true if they could get away with it, but they discipline you on achieving them, so therefore, it becomes a quota system—it's an absolute thing. It's something that's verifiable across boroughs. It doesn't matter what shift you take. And we testified about this to the City Council, and the oversight agencies. They know what's going on, but taking on a PD is like crossing that line. Oh, I don't want to make enemies with the cops. They make those safe public statements; they hit the safety zone of what they can say, and then they don't go beyond that.

Call it what it is: an illegal quota system.

Why did these police officers come forward about it—why now?
It's not a problem that's new to the PD. Quota systems were in existence before I came onto the job, in 1982. They've been in existence the entire time. But the intensity has increased, and that's where you're getting the cops saying that they've had enough.

What's better than saying, "Your activity is low,"? Wow, that's a term: My activity is low, in this one area. It gives you the reason to start writing me up, harassing me, disciplining me. Also, it targets people by destroying their career long-term, because once you get hit with certain types of discipline, even when you're up for promotions and up for transfers, you're a problem child. We don't want you getting that next assignment. Just stay where you're at. So it limits your career. It stifles it. And I think that's why officers say they have enough.

So race is engrained in how all cops do their jobs, and it's not just minority officers talking about it.
When you look at where the majority of summonses are given, you'd be amazed to see that all of those summonses will start narrowing down just to an area that happens to be black and Hispanic, or poor. Those are your three targeted areas. Black and Hispanic because they don't have lawyers; the chances of fighting back, or recording it, is very little. They pay the fine. They can't take off from work or do certain things to prevent it.

It's also something that they ask you when you're up for promotion.How's your activity? Not just arrests."Oh, I got 50 arrests!" Which is outstanding! Well, how many summonses did you get? "I didn't get many." Well, that's a problem. You must be non-compliant. You must be a fighter of the system.

Former NYPD Officer Anthony Miranda at his office in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Photo by the author

Did you see that firsthand when you were a police officer?
Absolutely. I saw it every day. When I was supervisor in East New York, because I was so active, they tried to give me all the problem officers of the command. These guys were getting zeroes—absolutely no activity. So I had a meeting with all of them. I said, "I'll make you a deal. I'm not asking you to become the top of the precinct, I'm asking you to give me something. You see something, you give me something. If you give me one or two, that's fine. Just give me something, so I can defend you."

When the PD targets you, and they say. "Tag you're it!" Once you're deemed it—the person to go after—you get it from every supervisor, from every rank. You're literally on such a high alert, that it's so stressful, it creates a problem to begin with. So these officers ask me, "If we do this for you, are you gonna get them to stop messing with us?" And I'd say: "Sure, you're in my squad now. Not one other boss will write you up. Not one other sergeant, without having a confrontation with me." I even said, "If you're drunk the night before, or you have an emergency, you got the day off."

These guys had legit emergencies at home, and they'd be denied a day off. It was that kind of abuse. That wasn't gonna happen with me.

But William J. Bratton is a still a (relatively) new commissioner, and stop and frisk is way down. Can't new leadership reform this system you say is so bad?
It doesn't matter who's at the top. The message from the top has to be that you won't be disciplined for not hitting these numbers. That you give summonses and take action according to what you see. That's what it is. We're not a revenue-generating agency. It should've never been that. And that's what it is right now.

Statistically, it's impossible that an entire precinct of officers every month, the miracle that they come out with the same numbers. They all end up with 1 arrest per quarter, 25 summonses. And that's even more amazing—not only did you get 25 summonses, but you got 25 in the exact order they required: three of these, five of those, 15 of these. It's always the same spread. It's the miracle of performance. It's not a quota system, it's performance goals.

No, it's called bullshit.

So where is the lawsuit at now?
They haven't even gotten to court yet. The city's position is always to delay, delay, delay, because they have resources. By the time you get to trial, you'll have reached your 20 years and you can retire. Or you'll get so fed up that you'll quit. The strain you go through, going home every day, you finally give up. You say, Damn, I've had enough of this shit. What do you want me to do? What is it that I have to do so you guys can just leave me alone?

You can talk to any one of those officers, and if you gave me the opportunity to say, "They guarantee that they'll just leave you alone," they'd all be quiet. They'd be like, "You guarantee?" They'd be happy with that. They're not in it for money.

But a lawsuit only brings money if you don't settle. So you know what—get your kids' Christmas or college money, because you reach a point where you just say, Fuck it. Sometimes you need to take their money to get their attention. $26.8 million in our lawsuit got their attention.

What's the end goal for this lawsuit? What would you like to see accomplished?
Just so you understand—and I had this conversation with the attorneys and plaintiffs—most lawsuits are about money. So they pay out billions of dollars and try to clean up the people's records; that's what you end up with in a lawsuit that just goes to trial. But if, before trial, you come to terms with it, and you agree to it, you can create more systemic change in an agency than a lawsuit can. A lawsuit can give you compensation, but it can't change the rules.

A settlement changes the rules, the processes, it creates protections. Our lawsuit that we filed—$26.8 million that it settled for—we were the first, and we were naive. We had federal oversight for five years. And on the anniversary of the fifth year, when there was no more oversight and we couldn't get back in the court, they dismantled all the protections we put into place. We didn't know. Class-action lawyers are concerned with getting their paycheck. So when you settle and they have private meetings, you say, "No more private meetings. Fuck you. I'm gonna be a part of every meeting you have, and when we settle for systemic changes, that can't be temporary—they have to be permanent changes." So it exists past the new commissioner, or chief.

We've never had an investigative body that has oversight over the PD. We have plenty of people who have oversight—the new Inspector General, the City Council, all kinds of groups. Bt nobody cares enough to take the necessary work the next step. Get into the nitty gritty: Give me, randomly, five activity reports from every officer from every shift citywide.

They just don't want to fight the PD. Oversight has to have independence, ability, and competency. You gotta want to have change; if not, it's ineffective. You give people nice jobs, nice salaries, and they generate nice, hundred-page reports. But nothing changes. You didn't fix nothing, you didn't change nothing, you didn't do nothing. And everything is that way for the next guy who comes in and wants better results for the future.

But the future never comes for police officers.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

'I Eat 250 Ice Creams a Day'—Professional Food Tasters Tell Us About Their Jobs

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Photo by Flickr user Lyza, via

If you define yourself as an "average human," you'll eat around 35 tons of food in your lifetime. However, before much of it reaches your mouth, somebody somewhere will have had to test it first. In the kitchens of the country's biggest supermarkets and mega chains, a food tester will be eating huge amounts of the same product again and again, in an attempt to provide the perfect bite for your flimsy, fickle tastes.

I spoke to a few of those testers—experts in ice cream, pies, noodles, and pizza—to see what it's like to eat exactly the same food over and over again, every working day, for years on end.

THE ICE CREAM TESTER

Louise Bamber, 40, has been a Product Manager for ASDA for nine years. She is responsible for their 270 different types of ice cream.

VICE: How much ice cream do you eat in one day?
Louise Bamber: In a testing week, I can be tasting up to 250 ice creams from 8 AM to 8 PM at night. As summer starts, I buy every single product from Walls, Unilever, and other supermarkets and try them all to measure them up against ASDA. That can be a long day, though we do have breaks because, eating all that sugar, you get cravings for crisps or a nice piece of fruit.

How do you keep all of that down?
I'm known for being hardcore. I make all my traders taste all of the brands. Vanilla alone can be dozens of flavors, from value range to decadent styles. As unsavory as it sounds, I spit most of them out, like a wine taster would. It would be awful to consume all that sugar. It's a sign of a good ice cream if I swallow, put it that way.

Do you ever get brain freeze?
Ice pops are actually the worst, as your teeth become hyper sensitive to the cold. Therefore, you break a chunk off and suck it rather than repeatedly biting into the tops of different ones.

What foods do you eat outside of work?
After big tasting sessions I always crave cheese and crackers or a big bowl of buttery mashed potato. I do a lot of walking to stave off the ice cream pounds, and I go to the dentist at least four times a year to check my teeth. But look, I'm not eating like that all the time.

What's the key to great ice cream?
Regardless of how much you pay for an ice cream the fundamentals are the same. If you can freeze it very quickly you have tiny crystals which aren't felt on the tongue, leaving a lovely smooth, melty finish. If you re-freeze ice cream or freeze it slowly there are larger crystals, which taste jagged and sharp.

Why does fresh soft serve taste so good compared to tub ice cream?
If you have a Mr. Whippy from the van, that ice cream isn't ever 100 percent frozen, and that's why it feels so creamy and rich—it's actually only about 70 percent frozen at any point. As a supermarket we can't create that because we have to freeze it to transport it.

What's the future of ice cream?
Retro childhood dessert flavors, so jam roly-poly or Battenberg flavor ice cream. We did try a chicken korma ice cream; the coconut worked really well, but the rest would be way too much for our customers.

THE PIE TESTER

Peter Nickson, 33, is chief pie taster at Morrison's HQ in Bradford. He road-tests the quality of some 500,000 pies and 1 million sausage rolls every week.

Peter, what have you eaten today?
Peter Nickson: At 8 AM I have around five different cooked meats. Then, at 8:30 AM, I have a taste of 15 different quiches. Then 9:30 AM is the "pie hour," where I taste ten different pies—all of our chicken and steak varieties, plus all the fruits. That's my day every day. Then, at 10 AM on the dot, I have a bacon butty, and I also have a proper lunch at 1 PM and dinner when I get home.

Do you not worry about putting on weight?
As yet, in nine years, I don't seem to have piled it on. I definitely don't go home and do 50 sit-ups.

Is it just a tiny taste of each one?
No, it's about being thorough. You aren't eating a whole pie, but you've got to take in the lid, pastry, filling, and the meat content of each one.

How do you stomach doing this every day?
You're always looking to revolutionize. We've just added malt extract to our steak pies to make the gravy thicker and darker. I've also developed a fish and chip pie and a "full English" pie with a fried breakfast and everything else in it. We put through 7,500 pies every hour and use ten tons of pastry a day.

Serious question, does a shepherd's pie really count as a pie?
For me, you should be able to eat a pie with your hands, on the go. Unless you hold it in a tray, you can't do that with a shepherd's pie.

NOODLE TASTER

Crispin Busk, 41, is the founder of Kabuto Noodles. He can taste up to 600 noodle broths in a month.

Is your product basically an upmarket Cup Noodles?
Crispin Busk: It's basically "Posh Noodle," or Wagamama in a pot. Pot Noodle is awesome, but there isn't a smarter one out there, so I created one. Selling a luxury food is always more fun. No one likes saying: "My noodles taste crap, but at least they're the cheapest."

How many noodles did you eat to launch the product?
We tasted every instant noodle on the market, from supermarkets to obscure Asian food stores. That's possibly 200 noodle types. Then, in our own testing, you often need to eat the whole pot, as a few mouthfuls can be really enjoyable, but you only really know what it's like if you eat all of it? Then, if we got a mixed response on a flavor, we taste them all again the next day. You do find they taste completely different if you've had a boozy night out.

What was the most disgusting noodle you ever ate?
Crushed fish head flavor? Fish intestine flavor rice porridge?

How do you consume that much noodle?
We have a lot of rules. We try to do the spitting thing and then drink lime cordial, which neutralizes your taste buds. We also only do tastings first thing in the morning, as your taste buds are much more receptive, and ban smoking and coffee, as that wrecks your taste buds.

How serious can it get tasting noodles all day?
Your taste buds get saturated and you can't taste anything. I have burned through several kettles—I was probably boiling the kettle for noodles 50 times per week. We spent months creating a product that rehydrated with boiled water within a five minute period. Then you look at how densely they sit inside the cup and where the water fill line needs to be. We had charts. Taking a pinch of the powder out, then putting it back in. I thought it was fun at the time, but really my friends and family must have hated it.

Do you ever eat a noodle for pleasure?
I still eat noodles at home. We make food we'd happily eat ourselves and would happily give to our kids. Noodles get unfair press—if you made a curry from scratch at home using dried herbs and spices with rice from a packet, that wouldn't be a lot different.

THE PIZZA TASTER

Lawrence Agar, 30, is Chef Technician for Pizza Hut. He has to eat every item on the menu before you ever see it.

So, eating all that pizza, do you spit or swallow?
I swallow, definitely! Spitting is down to whoever is tasting it. I eat pizza every day. I'm not being really gluttonous, eating whole pizzas, but you are endlessly tasting. I still have my lunch, I still have my porridge when I come into work.

What's the hardest pizza you've had to create?
Probably our gluten free range. To be able to to make a base out of those ingredients that tastes like a pizza and not sawdust is really hard. Then there's the 500 calorie pizza, which is super healthy. So you're up against bread that's quite calorific, then cheeses, and everything else. Thankfully our own mozzarella is pretty healthy and tasty.

What pizza is still on the drawing board?
We did a pizza with a caramelized onion base with no tomato, then we topped it with roasted butternut squash, smoked garlic, and no cheese, just a feta crumb and a wild rocket pesto. It tasted incredible, but we didn't think it was right for us—it needs to sell well across hundreds of stores.

How off-road can you get? Are your weird hot dog crust pizzas as wild as you can go?
We're always adding new stuff. Frickles—fried pickles—are a big American thing we were the first to adopt here. That's a deep fried pickle with crispy edges. I will make up hundreds each batch. That's fry, fry, fry, test, test, test. How big are the pickles? How fried are they? That's a lot of pickle-eating.

How much exercise do you do so you don't keel over?
I do go to the gym, but that's a lifestyle choice; I go because I like it, not because I feel I have to.

What's the best part about eating pizza for a job?
The best day is when a new menu launches. I get anxious, excited, nervous. To be able to sit in a restaurant and anonymously watch people eat what you've spent months working on is the biggest win for me. Honestly, I go and sit in any restaurant and watch people eat their pizza, see what they enjoy and how they react. I can't go past a Pizza Hut without going in it and seeing the customers. I need my finger on the pulse on what people like.

Is pizza better hot, or cold the next day?
Our pizza is always the best the next day. They're as good cold as hot. It's not a good pizza if it isn't, and any chef will tell you the same.

Follow Andy on Twitter.

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