Vault 101 might be home for the Lone Wanderer of 'Fallout 3,' but to some it was a maddening maze

To what extent can we truly refer to modern video games as "escapism"? As developers continuously seek to create more authentically emulate realistic spaces, it seems that real-world anxieties are increasingly infiltrating our digital worlds.

A sense of moral quandary, of genuine cause-and-effect, is the most prominent example, with thoughtful developers making us ponder that maybe—just maybe—gunning down hundreds of human beings, or even just being a bit of a dick to someone, shouldn't be a decision taken lightly.

But for me, and others, the principal anxiety in modern games is something altogether simpler, and usually unintentional on the developer's part: getting lost.

When I first stated playing games, that wasn't an issue. You'd run from left to right, jump around a bit, and job's a good'un. But in more recent years, that navigational deficiency—which had previously only haunted me in town centers or in particularly labyrinthine buildings—began making games more difficult for me.

I got a PlayStation 2, and the comforting linearity of Crash Bandicoot was replaced with the comparably bustling hub world of Jak and Daxter. Suddenly, it was perfectly possible for me to get hopelessly lost from the comfort of my own sofa. Thanks, video games.

Of course, I always knew that not everyone struggled in the same way. So incredulous were my friends when I referred to Fallout 3's Vault 101 as "a maze," for instance, that it became something of an in-joke among our group. It was funny, and I played up to it, but I was still left wondering why I'd found it so challenging while others had seemingly breezed past without difficulty.

The idea of getting lost in virtual worlds may seem like an odd one to some, but video games have long been of interest to psychologists studying navigation.

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Take this study from Marchette, Bakker, and Shelton for example, which endeavors to explain differing approaches to navigational conundrums by exposing the "underlying neural mechanisms" in different participants. To analyze their subjects, these respected academics used—and I shit you not—a custom-made Duke Nukem 3D map.

Games, then—even those in which the player character is a meathead caricature with a Megadeth theme song—are evidently seen as a worthy substitute for the real world by experts in the psychology field, eliciting largely the same neural responses as if we were to attempt to tackle a maze in the physical realm.

Dr. Amy Shelton of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, expert in cognitive psychology and one of those who carried out the study, tells me that the only real variable is in "body-sense"—that elusive feeling of genuine movement and body position.

Knowing your way around the world of 'Grand Theft Auto V' could help your real-life navigational skills.

"Virtual environments are not identical to real environments," she says. "They do seem to share a lot of properties, and people perform similarly on most measures across the two types, but there have been some differences. In many cases, we cannot give people the same in virtual environments. Although this has not resulted in dramatically different behaviors, it is likely that reduced cues will have some impact."

In the study, 128 adults were each put into the Nukem-powered maze and tasked with finding certain target objects dotted around, aided only by a 62-second-long video tour that always followed the same route. Some would follow the video's route to a tee, while others took initiative in finding their own shortcuts.

One of the most significant findings came from a smaller group of 20 whose brain activity was scanned while they were given their video tours of the map. And while there's plenty of jargon most of us won't understand, the takeaway was that two parts of the brain were seemingly dictating the subjects' maze strategy: hippocampal activation predicting shortcuts, while those with higher caudate readings largely opted to follow instruction.

Isn't this all out of our hands, then? You can't control how your brain reacts to things, can you? Well, it's unconfirmed in terms of navigation right now, but Shelton reckons it's a distinct possibility.

"This is a question that many people are trying to ask in research," she tells me. "The short answer is that many spatial skills are trainable, and there is no reason to assume that one could not change with the right experiences. We assume that these abilities and biases stem from a combination of genetics (hard wiring) and experience."

Therefore, in theory, people like me could actually be improving our navigational skills by playing video games. But then we're always following directions, very rarely developing shortcuts. Maps, radars, and the all-important gaming staple that is Earpiece Man Who Tells You What to Do Next all prevent frustration, but they're not allowing us the satisfaction of having overcome something.

Shelton is keen to emphasize that there's no right or wrong method implicit in her study. Shortcuts are not inherently better if everyone's getting to their destination.

"I should point out that people all along the spectrum of performance—using shortcuts, using familiar paths, and so on—are successful," she says. "We don't assume that one solution is better than another—being good may be a matter of knowing your own strengths and weaknesses in navigation."

Imagery from 'Persona Q'

She can say this all she likes, however, but most of us know how we'd rather fulfill our objective in a gaming context. Gamers love the idea of having completed something more quickly and efficiently than everyone else, and the idea of a game in which you simply follow instructions is becoming increasingly insufficient for modern tastes. We want the potential to be better, and to get better—even if we're ill equipped to do so.

This is why an unlikely recent favorite of mine is Persona Q, a fusion of the Persona games and Etrian Odyssey that has you filling in grid-based maps across labyrinthine worlds using the Nintendo 3DS's touchscreen, your stylus acting as Theseus' thread.

Within these limits I understood—relished, even—that misty-eyed joy of "drawing your own maps" that people older than myself are always banging on about. I was forced to grapple with my directions and, temporarily at least, win.

I've always instinctively avoided anything that looks like it will tax my directional ability too much, simply because there's only one way that will end up: with me wasting my limited gaming time effectively running around in circles, before giving up and playing Geometry Wars. But, if science is to believed, maybe all that running around in circles is slowly but surely honing me into the human sat-nav I always had the potential to be. And who am I to argue with that?

Follow Matt Suckley on Twitter.

Charles Eugster posing with his World Rowing Masters trophy. All photos courtesy of Charles Eugster

Charles Eugster is the greatest British sprinter you've probably never heard of. He currently holds world records in the 200m (indoor) and 400m (outdoor) sprints, as well as British records in the 60m (indoor), 100m (outdoor), and 200m (outdoor). A couple of weeks ago, he narrowly missed out on the world record for the 60m sprint after pulling his hamstring halfway through. He still won the race to become European Champion. It's an impressive record, given that the man—by pretty well established standards—shouldn't be able to cross a road without help, let alone run. He is 96 years old.

The London-born ex-dentist, who now lives in Switzerland, is arguably the fittest senior citizen on the planet. He's also a body-builder, a public speaker, a writer, a rower, a wakeboarder, an entrepreneur, and a budding fashion designer, planning his own line in elderly couture. But more than anything, he is a professional death defier who hasn't just slowed the ravages of aging, but reversed them all together: where once white pubic hairs grew, he says, brown ones now flourish.

This was, of course, quite tricky to independently verify when I rang him up recently.

Charles wakeboarding

VICE: Hi Charles. Congratulations on the over-nineties 60m European title. Were you disappointed not to get the world record?
Charles Eugster: Oh, very. The thing was, I felt absolutely great before the race and was in my youthful dreams with hopes of attacking the world record of 14.28 seconds. I flew out of the blocks and, after the first 30m, I was out in front of the pack. That's when my hamstring tore. You see, I was against the most extraordinary people: a 90-year-old German and a 99-year-old Italian. I knew they were quick, but I'd left them miles behind. Then, as the leg pain set in, they started to catch me. I was scared stiff that they would beat me, but of course they didn't. I staggered over the line within over 18 seconds. Nowhere near the record. Now I must stop training for a month.

Sprinting—or body-building, for that matter—are not things one normally associates with old people. Why?
I was 87 and realized my body was deteriorating. I had a muffin-top waist and my muscles were getting weaker and weaker. I felt so old. But because I was so vain, I didn't like the idea of it at all. So I joined a body-building gym and employed a personal trainer who was a Mr. Universe to rebuild my body from scratch.

Nine years on, at 96, do you feel old now?
Not at all. I feel like a youngster of 60, tops. Being fit is a wonderful thing. Before I turned 90, I got severe colds every November, but now they've completely stopped—I've had two in six years. I'll tell you something else: strength training increases your libido.

And you know this from experience?
Well, you know the story about my pubic hair, don't you?

I feel like I'm about to.
When I was still training with Mr. Universe, he took me aside one day and asked, "Have you noticed an increase in your libido?" I was embarrassed. I said, "Look, this is not something I'd like to discuss. It's private." But he was very persistent, and in the end I relented. I said, "Look now, you mustn't tell anybody else, but what I'm about to tell you is very dramatic. Incredible. Since I started on this program, my pubic hairs, which were white, have turned brown." I mean, wow!

So you've literally reversed the process of aging.
Yes! You see, the stupid thing is that people don't realize that you can have a beach body at 90 and turn the heads of the sexy 70-year-old girls on the beach. I am living proof that, if you eat right and exercise properly, you can be that guy at any age.

What do you eat to stay in shape?
Variety is key. I start every day with a protein shake because, as you get older, your protein synthesis no longer functions as well. I avoid sugar and eat lots of meat, especially fat. I've been on a fat trip lately. Fat! Piles of fat. Yet, I was in a supermarket the other day and was perplexed to find yogurt with zero fat. What on earth is that? The idea of the nutrition pyramid where, at the top, is a little fat and meat, and at the bottom a lot of carbohydrates, is, excuse me, bullshit. Humans are so unbelievably stupid that we have begun to tinker with food. Our theories of nutrition have resulted in a pandemic of obesity. Can you imagine a hunter-gatherer enjoying a low-fat yogurt? Let me tell you this, too: I read a report recently which said that a fatty diet also increases your libido.

I know you sadly lost your second wife, Elsie, 15 years ago. But with all this talk of libido, are you looking for love?
Yes. But the only problem is that I seem to be so busy with so many other things I don't have an enormous amount of time. I'm registered with a dating agency, but all they can produce are young things of about 70! Above 70 there's nothing.

Why is that, do you think?
Because people of 70 to 100 years old are absolutely the lost population. We are ignored by society, by medicine, by research. And we can't get a job. Nobody cares about us. I'll give you one silly example: there are no training plans, or gyms, for anybody over 70, as there are in Japan. The way we treat the elderly today is disgraceful. And don't even get me onto retirement.

What about retirement?
Retirement is the biggest killer of old people, full stop. I prefer to call it involuntary unemployment. What I'm nearly bursting a blood vessel about is the fact that humans are blissfully ignoring the aging process. We recycle everything nowadays, except human beings. Our expiry date is 65, after which we're thrown on the rubbish heap and chemically treated. We are pouring the experience, creativity, and talent of people over 65 down the toilet. They should be able to found companies, be creative. They have nothing to do except sit about and get sick. This is a world problem and it needs to change.

What's your answer?
PUT. OLD. PEOPLE. TO. WORK! One of the things I want to do is set up a retraining program for older people. I'd like to see companies set up in old people's homes that offer, say, computer services. For example, if I want to find out something, the computer is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it takes a while to find . Now, if I could call up an old people's home and say, "I want this information by that time," if they have 50 old people working on computers, one of them is bound to come up with something.

Like a sort of elderly IT sweatshop?
Well, we'd pay them properly, obviously. It could be transcriptions, or research, anything.

Hidekichi Miyazaki, the 105-year-old runner Charles wants to challenge

You've seen a world war, a Cold War, the Great Depression, and god knows how many financial crises, not to mention all the good things that have happened since you were born in 1919. What's the one piece of advice you'd give to young people today?
Explore your talents and never stop learning. In your lifetime you will not have one job, but you will have a huge number of different jobs in different areas. We are at the very beginning of the digital age, of which nobody really knows the consequences. Oh, and don't get too wrapped up in the culture of youth. Youth is so fantastic, but we should be impressing on people how wonderful, stupendous, exciting, and amazing old age can be, too. Oh, exercise and eat lots of fat. You know why!

What else is on your bucket list?
I want to change the world. I'm writing a book called 97 and Loving It, which I hope to publish this year. Then I want to establish fitness centers for those over 70 and start a job creation company to retrain older people. Then, of course, I want to have some connection with nutrition for the old. And the other thing in the back of my mind is that I would like to create a fashion label for older people. Because the way that older people dress is absolutely disgusting. I don't just want a label, I want a whole conglomerate.

And what about your sprinting?
Well, once this hamstring heals, I think we'll see what can be done about the 100m outdoors. There's a 105-year-old Japanese sprinter called Hidekichi Miyazaki who I would like to run against over 100m. They call him "The Golden Bolt," and with our combined ages of over 200 years, I think that would be some spectacle!

Follow Matt Blake on Twitter.

Bernie Sanders and a couple of dudes, who we're not calling "Bernie Bros." Photo from 2014, via Bernie Sanders's official website

By now, every pundit has found some way to blame the internet, particularly the toxic forum culture that spawned the alt-right, for the rise of Donald Trump. And that's fine; there's certainly an element of truth to that.

But what about the "Bernie Bro," that overly assertive supporter of senator Bernie Sanders? Whence this new breed, similar to but far more voluble than the progressive-leaning "Obama Boys" of 2008? Is social media savvy the only explanation for Sanders's surprising success?

"There has to be a correlation between support for Sanders and competitive gaming culture," says Kyle Pinkos, a graphic designer at the University of Texas at Arlington. "I've played tens thousands of hours of games, thousands of hours just devoted to Warcraft, and there are so many things a regular player of video games begins to take for granted."

Pinkos, who urged me to consider this claim, is right on the money: gamers have certain expectations of the games that they play. Understanding these expectations, then, may also shed light on some aspects of thinking shared by the so-called "Bernie Bros." Players, for example, expect these games to have a certain degree of balance, with even a difficult game like Dark Souls III being difficult in a clear and comprehensible way.

They demand sensible, functional game mechanics—which is why a hopelessly broken game like Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is no game at all. And in games where the players must choose among many possible characters, such as DOTA 2 or Super Smash Bros., each character, when played by someone of average ability, must stand some halfway decent chance of beating the other characters. In other words, most players demand a certain degree of fairness and a "level playing field" from their games.

This is all well and good. These characteristics have always been applicable to competitive gameplay, and to competitive sports generally (hence the assertions of many athletes in the US that the "need to win" helped overcome segregation in pro and college athletics). The major difference today, and possibly one of the main reasons that Sanders is drawing considerable support from the under-35 set, is that far more people play video games than ever played soccer, baseball, football, and the like.

Of course, for those of us who play these games, that's not up for debate. But every few months, some glossy magazine runs a thinkpiece about how "gamer culture" is going mainstream. Well, sure, absolutely: hundreds of millions of people play video games, and a certain degree of overlap with phenomena like the "Bernie Bros" makes perfect sense.

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"One of the effects of a lifetime spent playing video games—and I certainly count myself among the ranks of the people who have—is that you begin to see yourself as the level 1 hero in your own game." So says Ben Labe, a PhD candidate in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "And when you begin to perceive the world in this way, it's far easier to see when other people are playing the very same game, only they're using 'cheat codes,' 'God mode,' or some such thing. The tendency, as when playing poorly-designed games, is to get justifiably angry because circumstances are not fair, and to begin to support policies to remedy this."

Anger is indeed a hallmark of the "Bernie Bros," who troll disfavored commentators and other political opponents with precisely the same ferocity that they display during video games gone awry, such as when a "broken" character, usually newly introduced to the game, enables a less skilled opponent to register a decisive victory.

"Yes, absolutely, I'll get mad under those circumstances," says Nathan Zimmerman, a software designer and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. "I would get angry the same way I would if I were playing chess, and have settled on an undeniable path to victory, only to learn that the mechanics of the games have suddenly changed. In a situation where victory is dependent on my own efforts, or the efforts of my team, what can I do but experience anger when I realize that conditions have been altered to ensure I can't win? Anger in such a situation isn't necessarily problematic; righteous indignation has always been a part of progressive struggles."

This anger, justifiable or not, has been used against the "Bernie Bros." Their most vociferous spokesmen have been highlighted as examples of how the new harder left, like gaming culture itself, can strike outsiders as misogynistic and exclusionist. All of us are familiar with holier-than-thou gamers who speak ex cathedra about how their defeats, sometimes at our hands, were accidents of game design—evidence of flaws that, once fixed, will set everything aright. You know what I'm talking about: they dig deep in the "well, actually" and say things such as, "Well, actually, if Earth Spirits weren't totally OP, you guys never would have won."

And this is both the great opportunity and looming tragedy of a world weaned on video games: quite often, the sorest losers among us are correct. They have played long enough, and often enough, to see the cracks in the system. Even if they were merely above average in the grand scheme of things—talented "scrubs," in gaming parlance—they recognize what they are up against and where their designers have let them down. But in their haste to speak truth to power, in the same way that they might shout their opprobrium on Steam forums, they risk coming across as boorish to types who prefer their games and their politics a good deal more casual.

"Yes, I've played League of Legends," says Morgan Stout, an undergraduate nursing major at Abilene Christian University. "I usually play support, but at times the chat gets so toxic that I ask myself why would I want to be subjected to more of that. It's not nice, and it's definitely not welcoming, even if the game itself can be fun."

Dunkey, the YouTube gaming celebrity who shot to stardom on the strength of his comical League videos, offers a cautionary tale. Although he occasionally succeeded at demonstrating problems with that MOBA, he was eventually banned from it in dramatic fashion. In a final video about the game, far from sticking around to improve League from within, he merely outlined its many problems and bid adieu to it.

The fate of the "Bernie Bros," who have offered a far more penetrating and important critique, remains to be determined.

Follow Oliver Lee Bateman on Twitter.

Clinton Pryor steadies the flag marking the entrance to Matagarup as a storm blows in. All photos by Jeff Tan

The Matagarup First Nations Refugee Camp occupies an oblong-shaped island on a bend of the Swan River. Here children swim off the riverbanks and adults fish for dinner and everyone leads the most traditional lives they can, only a few kilometers from Perth's Central Business District.

The camp is clean, carefully organized, and alcohol free, but according to the city council it's an eyesore. On Tuesday, April 4, police converged on the island to forcefully remove tents and belongings. This was one of several efforts by police to remove the camp, but it was the most concerted. Many of the island's occupants—including almost 150 homeless people—worked through Tuesday night to reinstall tents, only to see them dismantled again the next morning. On Wednesday, a few dozen remained at the site as elders considered the next step.

Aunty Bella Bropho, founder of the Matagarup Refugee Camp

In many ways this latest turn of events could be a fitting end for the Matagarup First Nations Camp, which was born out of government evictions. In November 2014 Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett announced a plan to forcibly close up to 150 of the state's 274 remote Aboriginal communities. Barnett said his government was forced to act after federal funding for basic services in the areas had dried up. The following March, a Nyungah elder named Aunty Bella Bropho responded by founding Matagarup.

Leaders at Matagarup label the place a "refugee camp," but a diverse range of people of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous background live there, including homeless families and backpackers." Matagarup has become a place of refuge, a place where we can make a stand and raise awareness for the forced closures," Bella told VICE.

Herbert Bropho stands at the causeway outside the Heirisson Island camp. He withstands strong racial abuse from some cars as they drive by, laughing and yelling back, "I love you."

The impending threat of dispossession resonates strongly with both Ms. Bropho and her brother Herbert (who oversees camp security) after the closure of their own community, the Swan Valley Nyungah Community in 2003. In that year, Premier Geoff Gallop passed legislation that has since underpinned many of Western Australia's community closures.

Four years earlier, in 1999, a 15-year-old girl named Susan Taylor hanged herself at Swan Valley. After a lengthy inquiry, the state government concluded family violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities was "shocking and difficult to comprehend." In the final report, titled Putting the Picture Together, the government made almost 200 findings and recommendations. Although it had good intentions, the report also recommended removing the management powers of the Aboriginal corporation in charge of the east Perth community, effectively allowing for the forced removal of its residents.

"It's things they always paint Aboriginal communities with: sexual abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse," Bella said. "It wasn't the fault of our community. Premier Geoff Gallop failed to save our community, he condemned it."

Greg Martin pauses while putting up a tent. "The use of sexual abuse in a report to remove Indigenous people from their community is a model they perfected here and then used in the intervention in the Northern Territory," he told us.

Sadly the community's closure may have also occurred on a false pretext. A parliamentary committee was later formed to investigate the bill and ruled the camp was no worse, and "in many ways better" than other urban Aboriginal communities. The majority of school children were found to have comparably good attendance records and access to medical care and other services. Even magistrate Sue Gordon, who was an author of the original report, testified "it was an adequate and reasonably well maintained facility."

The memory of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community closure permeates Matagarup, which currently accommodates a few dozen permanent residents but offers a lifeline to many more. Up until Tuesday's raid it accommodated about nine permanent protesters but offered refuge to many more.

A kid chasing gulls. One of many children at the camp

Clinton Pryor, a Nyangar and Yamatji man and a central figure at the camp told us that their population of homeless people has steadily risen to 140 as of this month, in addition to protesters. Newcomers are offered tents and encouraged to set up camp, either as an escape from unsafe dwellings, or from the challenges of living on the street.

Pryor told VICE that assisting these individuals homeless people at the camp is a "huge responsibility," but the activists based there and the locals who have donated tents, food, and other goods feel compelled to help. He told us that homelessness across the city is getting worse and worse. ( A report tabled last September revealed more than 20,000 Western Australians were on a support waiting list, with an average waiting time in 2014–15 of more than three years, up 12 weeks from the previous year.)

Keeping the camp clean is a priority for residents who are only too aware of criticism from outside

Meanwhile, the long-term homeless youth and families at the camp agree that with around-the-clock security and a strong sense of community, Matagarup feels like home. "I like it here, it's safe, there's always someone walking around on security taking care of the place," said Danny, who moved to the camp in December after 14 years on the street. "I find here I stay out of trouble. If you're having a bad day, there's always someone to have a chat and lift you back up, lift up your spirits."

Over the last year, a range of individuals and organizations, including the First Nations Homelessness Project, have galvanized the support offered by camp elders by finding housing for its occupants or providing work. But leaders remain wary of attempts to stymie this progress and dismantle the camp, particularly after taking the City of Perth to court in January over goods confiscated or damaged in last year's raids. After an ongoing struggle for their property, fears of further confrontations on the island were realized this week.

Swimming

In a statement released Wednesday, City of Perth said it acted on the grounds of a local law that forbids camping or erecting tents and similar structures on government property. The council works with the Department of Housing and various agencies to assist the genuinely homeless, and only three to four family groups on the island met the relevant criteria. It said more than 80 percent of tents removed from the island on Tuesday were vacant.

For elders like Bella Bropho, the members of Matagarup camp—including its many homeless occupants—have a right to stay on Heirisson Island, a registered site under the Aboriginal Heritage Act and a symbol of her people's history. "We've made a stand on this site, because it's a sacred site, a birthing site," she said. "People get frightened, they take off, but they come back. There's nowhere else to go."

Follow Kristen on Twitter.

See more of Jeff's photography here.

Meditating inside a beautiful stock-photo room filled with plants is just one health benefit not available to poor people. Photo via Getty

Reports on the income inequality gap and the separate lives of the wealthy and the poor have become depressingly rote. The rich are not like you or me: They can buy their way into exclusive clubs, special social networks, even elitist sex parties. The poorest people in America are now on average not making enough to meet their basic needs—that sounds pretty bad, but can I interest you in a $700 juicer?

In that context, the publication, in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), of a new study that looks at income and life expectancy after age 40 contains no bombshells. The report, covered widely by the New York Times and pretty much every other outlet on Monday, drills down into how income and longevity correlate. The richest 1 percent of men lives, on average, 15 years longer than the poorest 1 percent; for women that gap is ten years. But the ability of money and the things it buys—access to better medical care, leisure time, healthier food—to stave off death is well known. The big finding from Stanford economist Raj Chetty and his seven co-authors is not that rich people live longer, it's that the life expectancies of Americans in poverty varies wildly depending on where they live.

Here's how the Times summarizes it: "The poor in some cities—big ones like New York and Los Angeles, and also quite a few smaller ones like Birmingham, Ala.—live nearly as long as their middle-class neighbors or have seen rising life expectancy in the 21st century. But in some other parts of the country, adults with the lowest incomes die on average as young as people in much poorer nations like Rwanda, and their life spans are getting shorter."

For the wealthy, it doesn't matter where they live—they seem to have the access to the same sorts of advantages wherever they go. "It is as if the top income percentiles belong to one world of elite, wealthy US adults," wrote Nobel Prize–winning economist Angus Deaton in an article that accompanied the study in JAMA, "whereas the bottom income percentiles each belong to separate worlds of poverty, each unhappy and unhealthy in its own way."

The obvious question, then, is what makes those individual islands of scarcity more or less healthy than other communities? That's beyond the scope of the paper, but it's clear that the answer isn't simply that some places have fewer or worse doctors. "The JAMA paper found that several measures of access to medical care had no clear relationship with longevity among the poor," noted the Times. "But there were correlations with smoking, exercise, and obesity."

The places where the poor lived the longest include New York and San Francisco—rich cities that can afford to provide a lot of services and have proactive public health departments. San Francisco was a pioneer in smoking bans; New York abolished trans fats. Poor people in and around Birmingham had a surprisingly high life expectancy, but there too there has been an investment in health services, according to the Times, and banned smoking in restaurants and other places in 2012.

Any study like this comes with some caveats. One reason poor people in major metropolises have longer life expectancies could be that they have higher proportions of immigrants, who tend to live longer than native-born Americans. Some people have lower incomes because their poor health damaged their earnings power, not the other way round. And the authors adjusted the statistics for race and ethnicity in order to correct for racial differences in life expectancy (for instance, black people generally live less long than whites), something they've been criticized for. "Social marginalization is not reducible to single variables," wrote Steven Woolf and Jason Purnell in a JAMA editorial. "Race/ethnicity is inseparable from the economic consequences and stress associated with segregation, past and present marginalization in the distribution of resources, structural racism, persistent poverty, and violence."

But if we accept the broader findings here, there seems to be almost a trickle-down affect when it comes to long life and health. In poverty-pocked areas in the Midwest and the South, poor people die sooner; in other words, in places that lack the services and infrastructure that wealthy big cities usually provide, people are less healthy.

"Health is about more than healthcare," Woolf and Purnell wrote. Good schools, crime-free neighborhoods, childhoods spared the trauma of family dysfunction, and other factors all contribute to whether someone is happy and healthy as an adult, or whether they're trapped in that old cycle of poverty begetting stress begetting illness begetting more poverty.

Seen from this angle, inequality looks like not just a matter of unfair numbers but a public health problem. New York's example suggests at least the bones of a solution: higher taxes to fund a local government that develops policies to discourage people from eating crappy food and smoking. In many ways, this is a punishingly unfair city, but when it comes to having a healthy populace, it seems like other places could benefit from some New York values.

Ivanka Trump supporting her father at a campaign event. Photo via Flickr user Marc Nozell

Read: Most of America Thinks Donald Trump Sucks, Says Poll

Maybe Donald Trump's kids didn't anticipate their dad doing so well in the 2016 presidential race, or maybe they were just too busy living that reality TV life to register as Republicans. But the Republican frontrunner told Fox & Friends on Monday that Eric and Ivanka Trump won't be voting in New York's primary next week.

Still, as you'd expect from a guy whose whole campaign has been one prolonged deluge of braggadocio, Dad isn't really sweating it.

"They were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn't register in time," Trump said in the interview, adding that they feel "very, very guilty." (New York's closed primary rules require people to switch party registration by the October before the April primary.)

The real estate mogul joked with co-host Steve Doocy that he was going to cut Eric and Ivanka's allowance off.

It's unclear who Trump's four adult children will be voting for in November, if at all. While Donald Jr. is a registered Republican, some of the Trump kids have donated money to Democrats in the past. Which, you know, makes sense given Trump's own bizarre political evolution from pro-choice New Yorker to right-wing firebrand, but whatever.

Pizza Rat will not be forgotten. Screenshot via YouTube

Still of Madleyn 'Madzilla' Lance courtesy 'Weediquette'

Throughout our culture's long and dark history of cannabis prohibition, the cultivation and distribution of marijuana has been overwhelmingly male dominated. But it wasn't always this way. In fact, in some of the earliest foraging societies women typically took the lead as both herb gatherers and healers.

As we moved from small, polytheistic, matriarchal societies to large, monotheistic, patriarchal societies, female plant medicine providers became frequent targets of witch hunts and other coordinated campaigns of eradication, as they represented a serious threat to both "religion" and "medicine," both male-dominated fields.

The good news is that weed's increasing cultural and legal acceptance has begun to close the ganja gender gap at last. And while the media only got excited once they discovered stiletto stoners, cannabis culture has actually long benefited from the amazing courage and conviction of its true OG females, who come from all walks of life and serve the herb as growers, dealers, healers, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and political leaders.

In Tuesday night's episode of Weediquette on VICELAND, host Krishna Andavolu explores exactly how and why this new pot paradigm is encouraging more and more women to loudly and proudly proclaim their love of cannabis, as he spends some quality time with those at the forefront of a new, female-led marijuana movement. So to provide some historical perspective, VICE spoke with Ellen Komp, the author of Tokin' Women: A 4,000 Year Herstory. A longtime pot activist and deputy director of California NORML, Komp's blog (Tokin' Woman) has celebrated "famous female cannabis connoisseurs" since 2008.

VICE: Let's start with how you personally formed a connection to the cannabis plant and how that led you to become an activist and an advocate.
Ellen Komp: I was turned on to cannabis by a sorority sister in college who made it her mission to get me high. It took quite a few tries. Finally, when I realized I was high, I was like, "Oh! This is all it is?" I'd expected to feel drunk or stupid or something, but cannabis was much more interesting than that. It in turn opened me up to a lot of other interests and experiences, but I never really connected with the injustice of the drug war until I encountered The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer. After staying up all night verifying things in that book with dictionaries and encyclopedias (because there wasn't any internet at that time), I became an activist overnight and have never stopped. That was going on 25 years ago now.

Did you find marijuana activism to be male-dominated at that time?
There were very few women involved. I was always perplexed by that, and always tried to get more to speak up. One reason may be that many women have had their parental rights interfered with because of marijuana, and so they're afraid their kids could be taken away by Child Protective Services. It never occurred to me at the time that they would want to organize into their own groups, like the NORML Women's Alliance and Women Grow, but of course those organizations have now taken off like a rocket. It's great to see.

Are there benefits of cannabis use that are unique to women or more pronounced for women?
Menstrual cramps, baby! A remedy which goes back to Queen Victoria.

Also, personally, I know cannabis really helped open me up socially. Men often tend to socialize around alcohol and violent sporting events, and women sometimes feel threatened in environments like that. So starting with interpersonal relations and extrapolating out from there, I believe women are typically safer and more comfortable in a situation where pot smoking is going on than heavy drinking.

You've intensely investigated the role women have played historically in the cultivation and medicinal use of cannabis. Take me all the way back and tell me what you've learned through your research.
In Tokin' Women, I start in the 3rd millennium BC—a time when both goddesses and plants were revered as healers. Back then, a predominant Sumerian goddess named Ishtar was associated with cannabis, and up until the Semitic invasion in 2600 BC, women practiced the healing arts without restriction. But by 1000 BC, women didn't have that freedom to be healers anymore. And the goddess religions were subverted, with the goddesses themselves turned into sex idols. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 18th Century BC, which is the oldest surviving written story of mankind, basically turns Ishtar into a Harlot, and is thus thought to be a turning point in the patriarchal takeover of human culture. Then, in the Bible, prophet after prophet keeps telling the Hebrews "My God is going to be really really pissed if you do not stop burning incense to Ashtoreth ."

And that was possibly the first crack down on cannabis, by the way, which was likely a key component of all that "incense" they were burning.

Of course, until very recently, women couldn't even go to medical school, and female plant healers were persecuted as witches. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake partly for using "witching herbs" like mandrake, for Christ's sake. That was in the 1400s, so we know the middle ages and the dark ages were indeed dark times for herbal medicines and the predominantly female-led traditions that gathered and administered them.

In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen, a German composer, philosopher and Christian mystic grew hemp in her garden and wrote two volumes on herbal medicine. She was an incredibly respected woman who corresponded with the Pope and all of the great leaders of her day, but from there I can't find much marijuana herstory until 1800, when Napoleon invaded Egypt and his troops discovered hashish. Soon European artists and intellectuals were trying hashish, including a lot of women. One was Harriet Martineau, who was the great great great grandmother of Princess Kate Middleton. She was also a social reformer, a novelist, and the first female sociologist. Martineau once wrote of her travels in the desert that ale provided "the greatest possible refreshment, except the chibouque"—a pipe used to smoke hashish. She also related how since Jewish women were not allowed to smoke cannabis on the Sabbath, Arab women would blow smoke at them. Which I believe is the first shot gunning in recorded in history.

Is there a particular female cannabis enthusiast of the past whose story speaks to you?
The author Isak Dinesen (a.k.a. Karen Blixen) really inspires me. She was played by Meryl Streep in Out of Africa, which was based on her own bestselling memoir of running a coffee plantation in Kenya. She was a great fan of the works of Baudelaire, and enthusiastically followed his example in experimenting with hashish. Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, and Orson Welles all courted her attention. She was a giant.

For more on women's role in the weed movement, watch Weediquette Tuesday night at 11:00 PM EST on VICELAND.

David Bienenstock is the author of How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High. Follow him on Twitter.

Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair during a speech at the 2016 NDP Federal Convention in Edmonton. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Unlike Justin Trudeau last fall, the NDP couldn't get their escalator to work.

Actual footage of millennials in their natural habitat. Photo via Flickr user Timothy Tolle

Photo via Flickr user Ian Stannard

I fidget in the darkness of a tiny room above Toronto's Black Swan Pub. It's September 22, 2015. The space boasts 35 seats, half of which are empty. In the seven years since my first stand-up set I have performed on countless stages just like this one. And yet, I am terrified. Tonight is my debut as a one-liner comic.

Read: George R. R. Martin Spent $3.5 Million to Make This Sci-Fi Art Utopia a Reality

Gym showers, funerals, border customs: These are some of the places where members of the cast of Game of Thrones have been grilled for plot points from the new season, according to interviews conducted prior to the red carpet premiere at Hollywood's Chinese Theater last night. Now, ignoring Lena Headey's in-character-warning that gatecrashers would be "boiled alive in their children's blood," HBO has released an insane new trailer for Season 6, which premieres on April 24 (coincidentally—or uncoincidentally—the date on which Troy fell in 1184 BC). With glimpses of all our principle heroes and villains, hordes of extras, spilled blood, impalement, burning flayed bodies, and parapets, the trailer is far from the usual pre-season teaser fodder.

So what did we just see? As if you didn't know. The trailer begins where we left off last season, at Castle Black and a prone, temporarily dead Jon Snow with a nasty scar being watched over by his last allies, Davos Seaworth and Tormund Giantsbane (boy, this show would really sound silly if you'd never seen it, huh?). Then we flash across the Narrow Sea to Tyrion in Mereen, where he is being asked if he likes to play games by somebody who honestly seems like he's setting The Imp up to say the name of the show. Jaime threatens the High Sparrow with a knife that looks like something you can buy at the Alamo's gift shop. Following clips give us Melisandre, a defiant Khaleesi, poor Jorah in dire need of a house call from Dr. Zizmor, Davos being fucking awesome, and Ja'quen Hagar stiffly tells a humbled Arya that, "A girl has been given a second chance—there will not be a third."

Then we get to the good stuff: A supremely pissed-off Sansa assures us she remembers all who wronged her and we flash to Ramsey Bolton, Walder Frey, and Littlefinger, all of whom are marked for death this season (that last one may be hard to manage though, given that Littlefinger is the only person on the show who appears to have read the books). Following clips shows us Lord Varys opposite Israeli actress Ania Bukstein, who appears to be playing another red priestess, Cersei imploring her son Tommen (ably played, as always, by Butters from South Park) to, "Show them what Lannisters are, what we do to our enemies." By the end of the trailer we are reaching full-nerdo-throttle with a shot of the "real war between the living and the dead" with Night's King reenacting an Iron Maiden LP sleeve, Brienne arriving at a Tully stronghold, Pod seemingly getting chloroformed from behind, and copious shots of Jon and Ramsey's big day in the country, before Tyrion sends us off with the reminder, "That's what I do. I drink and know things." And to think, in two weeks, we will have the same amount of knowledge. Get hype!

J. W. McCormack is a writer whose work has appeared in Bookforum, the Brooklyn Rail,Tin House, the New Inquiry, n+1, Publisher's Weekly, and Conjunctions.

Game of Thrones premieres on April 24 on HBO.

Check out Alabaster's website.

My interview with Israeli filmmaker Ada Ushpiz was pushed back an hour so that she could finish watching Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speak on television. "I'm sorry," said Ushpiz, calling from her home in Tel Aviv. "I had to watch. Abbas spoke to the Israelis and said things we're told all the time he doesn't say, which is, 'I want to make peace.' The discourse is always presented as if Abbas doesn't want to talk and he's not interested in a partnership with the Israelis and there is no possibility for peace. But Abbas said, 'Let's sit and talk.' It was great, you know? I don't see Netanyahu coming back and saying, 'OK, let's talk.'" Ushpiz let out a weary breath. "No, that will not happen."

Ada Ushpiz's new documentary, Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, is as much about present-day Islamophobia in Israel and abroad as it is about Arendt. The documentary—showing at New York's Film Forum through April 19—reminds viewers of Arendt's urgent relevancy for us today; and it does so without making any explicit political statements. Instead, the film allows Arendt's decades-old arguments, presented through carefully curated quotes, to linger on the screen, asking the viewer to read, reflect, and perhaps reread before moving on. The restraint is intentional. "I didn't want to preach," explained Ushpiz. "But I didn't stop thinking about our world while I was making the film. I was always thinking about my responsibility in this world."

"Once evil is normalized, you don't see it anymore," said Ushpiz. "This is the basis of all racism."

Thinking and responsibility form the conceptual core of Hannah Arendt's political and philosophical writing, and Ushpiz faithfully chooses Arendt's ideas over her biography for the film's narrative drive. Born into a Jewish-German family in 1906, Hannah Arendt fled Germany for Paris at the age of 27. With Nazism continuing its rise, Arendt was forced to leave Europe for New York City, where she lived until her death in 1975. Much of her writing engaged the question, "How does large scale evil happen?"; her answer, if distilled to its simplest form, is that evil is a result of a failure on our part to think.

The most commonly known (if infamous) articulation of this thesis is found in her report on the trial of the high-ranking Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Originally published as a series of articles for the New Yorker and later, in 1963, as a book, Eichmann in Jerusalem coins the overused and oft-misunderstood phrase "the banality of evil," an idea that sparked a tremendous backlash against Arendt, with many accusing her of using the concept to humanize and to some degree exonerate Eichmann and others like him.

Still, Arendt refused to portray Eichmann as an anti-Semitic mastermind, instead, describing him as a dull and ordinary man who went through the trial and to his death speaking in thoughtless clichés. Eichmann, in Arendt's assessment, had perpetrated great crimes against humanity not out of a monstrous internal evil, nor out of a singular hatred of Jews, but because he was incapable of thought from the perspective of another, and therefore susceptible to the fascist ideology that demonized the Jewish people, making extinguishing them a matter of moral necessity.

"A main idea with 'the banality of evil' is how easy it is to make evil seem normal," Ushpiz told me. "And once evil is normalized, you don't see it anymore. A leader or a government draws a circle around a group of people and generalizes them and demonizes them, making it a matter of necessity to hate them as a whole. This is the basis of all racism. If you demonize a group of people and distance yourself from their humanity, you can even feel very good about perpetrating evil against them. In these situations the evil is always 'the other' and never yourself."

"Even in Israel we laugh at Trump," said Ushpiz. "We can laugh at your fascist because he's not our fascist."

Ushpiz's film does not dwell on the debate nor the vitriol with which Arendt's theories were met but instead gently leads the viewer to understand how uncomfortable and confrontational Arendt's thinking could be. It is more comforting to believe that evil, especially on mass scales, is committed by people who stand outside of everyday life, people who are monsters possessing some unknowable evil entity. We want to believe this, because then we, ourselves, are not implicated in evil acts and can't possibly be capable of such horrors. But if Arendt is correct, we are all capable of perpetrating evil against an "other," since we are all capable of living unreflectively. "We all sometimes live inside the clichés of our society, of our class, or our gender," said Ushpiz. "We enact and accept the clichés. We are not always critical; we often do not voice challenges; we sometimes just live the clichés. Because it's very convenient."

It's impossible not to see the racist rhetorical techniques of generalization and demonization applied to the world's Muslim population. While I watched the documentary, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was calling for New York City police officers to profile Muslim neighborhoods and assign additional patrol to such "dangerous" parts of the city. This, in the wake of the Belgium terrorist attacks, was the latest in a string of Islamophobic statements issued by American politicians, the most incendiary being Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the United States until the government can "figure out what is going on."

"We must not disappear into the conveniences of everyday life—the physical conveniences, the emotional conveniences, the intellectual conveniences—until we are fat with clichés or ideologies or whatever is fed to you," said Ushpiz.

When I mentioned this to Ushpiz, she scoffed. "Don't forget that I am coming from a country where that is a habit for us. What Trump suggests is already done. It is sometimes really encouraging to see at least the Democrats in America saying not to fall into this racist trap. In Israel," she elaborated, "racism against Muslims is presented as a no-choice situation. The occupation is presented as a necessity. It is a politics of justifying the world as it is and even enhancing violence so that you can say, 'Yes, see, there is no other choice.' That's how it is. That's the nature of it."

By marking cliché, generalization, and demonization as tools used by fascists, Arendt helps us see precisely how to avoid being taken in by their influence. The only defense is clear and critical thought, where "thought" must be, in part, defined by the ability to think from the other's perspective. Arendt asks us to reject ideology that serves to reduce populations of people to stereotypes and embrace plurality and subtlety in thought. This may be easy for some of us when Donald Trump is speaking—"Even in Israel we laugh at Trump," remarked Ushpiz. "We can laugh at your fascist because he's not our fascist"—but the most powerful aspect of Ushpiz's film is that it reminds us that we are all unavoidably implicated in unthinking evil on some level.

"Arendt tells us that we must live beyond the horizon of everyday life," said Ushpiz. "We must not disappear into the conveniences of everyday life—the physical conveniences, the emotional conveniences, the intellectual conveniences—until we are fat with clichés or ideologies or whatever is fed to you. Thinking is always about undermining the convention, what is current, what is expected. You always have to invite all the devil's advocates into discussion; you have to include the world, include the other. You have to think. Yes, all roads lead back to thought."

Chloé Cooper Jones is a writer and philosopher who studies and teaches in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt is playing through April 19 at Film Forum in New York, and then touring nationally.

On March 5, 2013, an 18-year-old high school student from New Orleans named Henry Campbell was arrested and booked into the local jail on a first-degree rape charge. Unable to afford a lawyer, Campbell was assigned a public defender, who his family hoped would put assemble a robust defense and convince a jury of the teen's innocence.

Now 21, Campbell finds himself at the center of a spiraling criminal justice nightmare: The suspect is among a group of seven pretrial inmates a judge ordered released on Friday due to a massive failure to provide attorneys for poor suspects. (The seven men are still being held, as prosecutors have ten days to appeal.) The charges Campbell faces are severe, of course, and if convicted, he could face a mandatory life sentence behind bars, according to his new lawyer. But New Orleans's notoriously overburdened public defender's office struggled for many months to provide Campbell anything resembling an adequate defense, says his mother, Lynell Jones. As those months stretched into years, Campbell waited in jail, his fate hanging in limbo. He was repeatedly shifted between different prosecutors and public defenders, causing the attorneys to have to start over, his mother adds, and sometimes officials didn't even show up to his pretrial hearings, prolonging things still further.

"Every time we tried to get any information, they would say, 'Oh I'm not on the case anymore,'" Jones says, "or, 'Sorry you need to talk to someone else.' It was always a runaround."

As of today—well over 1000 days after his arrest—Campbell has been convicted of no crime but is still locked in jail, unable to afford his nearly $800,000 bond. And his case is no closer to trial than it was three years ago; in fact, it might be further than ever. Last month, due to an intense budget squeeze, the public defender's office withdrew from Campbell's case altogether, according to his new attorney, Gregory Carter. Although a judge quickly appointed Carter, a private lawyer who was willing to offer his time for free, the state had exactly zero dollars for the man to hire an investigator, conduct forensic testing or pay for transcripts.

The attorney adds that, without funds to for these essential tools, he has no way of mounting a real case. "It would be unethical to proceed without any funds to mount a defense," Carter says, describing himself as Campbell's lawyer in name only. "This is impossible to do without an investigator."

Henry Campbell isn't alone, either.

In January, the New Orleans public defender's office made headlines when it announced that, due to a crippling budget shortfall, it would have to begin refusing to represent defendants facing serious felony charges. That's why Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter took the extraordinary step on Friday of ordering the release of Campbell, along with six other men awaiting trial for serious felonies.

"The defendants' constitutional rights are not contingent on budget demands, waiting lists and the failure of the Legislature to adequately fund indigent defense," wrote Hunter, who asserted that the seven inmates had been denied both their Sixth Amendment right to adequate counsel and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. "Merely appointing private attorneys is not the solution. As a matter of fact, the appointment of private attorneys without adequate resources to represent their clients makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel."

Judge Hunter's decision represents the latest breaking point in a rolling crisis of indigent defense in Louisiana, where meager funding has forced court-appointed attorneys across the state into triage mode. "New Orleans is the tip of the iceberg," says Pamela Metzger, a Tulane Law professor, who filed the motion to free Campbell and the six other pretrial inmates. "This is happening all across the state."

According to Metzger, a small and informal coalition of criminal justice advocates in Louisiana often drive hours across the state to other jurisdictions that, like New Orleans, have left some low-income defendants unrepresented as they languish in jail awaiting trial. She adds that, in recent years, she and other lawyers have filed numerous so-called habeas petitions, which can assert that an inmate is being held wrongfully and should be released. Metzger says that, just last Tuesday, she was in Jena, Louisiana, where some pretrial inmates had been held essentially without defense counsel since September due to a conflict of interest among lawyers.

Although Louisiana's indigent defense crisis is among the country's most dire, advocates say the state legislature has eyed another potentially massive round of budget cuts that could lead to the wholesale collapse of indigent defense. Still, on Friday, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office briskly condemned Judge Hunter's order to release the seven inmates, arguing he "believes that releasing defendants charged with serious acts of violence poses a clear and present danger to public safety, and he intends to appeal the ruling," according to the New Orleans Advocate.

All of the seven New Orleans inmates are awaiting trial for violent crimes, including armed robbery, aggravated assault and second-degree murder. (Campbell also faces obscenity and battery charges, the latter stemming from an alleged encounter with a corrections officer.) Siding with prosecutors, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu called Judge Hunter's order a "miscarriage of justice on all sides."

Unsurprisingly, the release order also upset victims' families.

"It's just hard to hear this guy's going to be walking the streets because of a technicality," Myra Gary, whose brother was allegedly murdered by one of the seven men, told the Advocate. "How are we violating their constitutional rights when they took someone's life? They violated their own rights by breaking the law."

For his part, Carter says he will not stop if the higher court delivers an unfavorable ruling. "If this goes to the appellate court, we will take our argument there as well," he tells me. "These men are sitting in cages with no one on their side."

Metzger anticipates that the effort to free the men could make its way to federal court, potentially carrying national implications. "We're arguing that the legislature's funding failures cannot hold the Sixth Amendment hostage," she says. "That means that you either provide the money for a defense or let people go. It's actually very simple."

Follow Spencer Woodman on Twitter.

Howard Marks in 2015. Photo by James Cummings

And so, another great name from British pop culture slips into the great federal correction complex in the sky. Farewell, Howard Marks. You were the subject of Jeremy from Peep Show's favorite book of all time. You were the patron saint of British blazing. A nation turned its reddened eyes to you at festival side-tent after festival side-tent. And like Tricky, you always managed to strike up a spliff on stage and no one told you to knock it off. How does that even work?

For a guy so complicit in his own myth-making, it's hard to separate the man from all the anecdotes about hanging out on Filipino drug islands with exiled aristocrats, or losing wads of hundred dollar bills down airplane toilets—and it would be foolish to try. The myths are his contribution to our culture. Living large, and then telling it larger, is what Marks did. He was a kind of proxy for male fantasy, an unrivaled Boy's Own tale for the late teens, James Bond if his shaken-not-stirred had been a Camberwell Carrot.

Here, then, is a little bit of humanizing fact about Howard Marks, combined with the larger-than-life stuff and some unusual or off-radar facts about him, to create a portrait of the man known as Mr. Nice.

HE ACTUALLY *WAS* NICE

He was, basically, a decent bloke, by all accounts. "He was one of the cleverest, nicest, and most charming old rogues I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with," said actor Keith Allen.

"Whenever he saw you, he'd always asked after your family," one acquaintance noted.

CONTRARY TO MOST PEOPLE'S EXPERIENCE, HE ALWAYS MAINTAINED THAT MARIJUANA WAS A GREAT STUDY AID

At Oxford, Marks fell in with a set called "The Establishment" that included a future Financial Times editor, Rick Lambert, and the last governor of Hong Kong, Tory grandee and BBC chair Chris Patten. Even among the very best, he excelled. His only lecture, on the differences in space-time perceptions between Newton and Leibniz, apparently went down very well, and he toyed with the idea of dipping further into academia.

Of course, marijuana had to take some of the credit. "A common difficulty encountered by those beginning to study philosophy is that whatever is read appears totally convincing at the time of reading," he later pondered. "Smoking marijuana forced me to stop, examine, scrutinize, and criticize each step before proceeding. It assisted me not only in pinpointing weaknesses of certain philosophical theories, but also in articulating alternative philosophical viewpoints."

HE NEVER TOUCHED HARDER TACK

His image as a prophet of spliff-and-spliff-alone came in part from particularly nasty experiences with harder drugs during his student days. He impaled his foot on a spike after a bit too much acid, which is good enough reason to not be all that keen on acid.

However, it was the overdose of his friend Joshua—the grandson of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan—that closed the gateway to anything but the gateway drug. "My memory is really just of Joshua Macmillan's body being carried down the stairs," said Marks. "It is a very shocking experience and I'd always been frightened of heroin before that, and that kind of sealed the issue as far as I was concerned."

Some of Marks's smuggling disguises

HE MADE YOU NOSTALGIC FOR THE GLORY DAYS OF MONEY LAUNDERING

There's something exhilarating about the physical quantities of cash Marks describes. "When I was growing up, I wondered what it would be like to win the pools," he once remarked. "The prize money was something like £75,000 . Later, I had much more than that, with cardboard boxes of cash under my bed. There would be boxes of cash that I wouldn't know what to do with."

The largest sum he every dealt in was a £70 million smuggle job from Thailand to Canada. Of course, as he admitted, like the golden age of air travel, money laundering was also a lot easier back then: "You could literally fly into Switzerland or Hong Kong, which is what I did mostly, with a suitcase full of money. They'd say, 'What's in the case?' I'd say, 'Money.' Then they'd have a quick look, close the case and ask you to proceed."

LIKE ALL SENSIBLE PEOPLE, HE WAS ANTI-SKUNK

While he reckoned he spent £50,000 on smoking weed across his lifetime, later developments in growing technologies left Marks cold. "There appears to be correlation between some kids smoking skunk and psychosis," he told the Sun last year. "I've had worried parents writing to me about their concerns about their children smoking skunk, and then noticing a massive change in them."

Marks recalled having to hang out with fans after his live shows, and, being too polite to refuse any joint he was handed, almost whitey-ing when "I really would have been happier in bed with a cup of Horlicks." For the record, of all the Chateau Lafites and Dom Perignons of marijuana he had sampled, natural Nepalese was the most appealing.

Whereas in Pakistan or Morocco, he'd explain, the sap was bled, in Nepal, they waited until the pollen was plucked off naturally. "And I suppose the soil comes into it, as with wine."

HE APPLIED TO BE TONY BLAIR'S DRUGS TSAR

Whatever happened to the golden age of tsars? Somehow, the idea of equating the Faberge eggs and serf-slaves of the Russian monarchy with mid-ranking Whitehall bureaucrats seems to have discreetly fallen out of the political playbook. Why?

HE ALSO STOOD FOR PARLIAMENT ON FREEING THE 'ERB

Four times. He certainly welcomed the prescriptions to take away the nausea of his chemo, but, he observed, "Personally, I never wanted to have to wait until I had cancer before I could legally smoke."

NOT LONG AFTER BEING REJECTED AS DRUGS TSAR, HE HAD THE 'ONE LAST BLAG' OF HEIST FILM LORE

After emerging from US prison in 1995, Marks mainly calmed down, until, by the late-90s, the thrill of the chase caught up with him again. Unfortunately for him, the game had changed utterly in a decade. No one was interested in his high-end Afghani hash any more—the scene had moved towards hydroponics. So Marks decided to get with the times and flog ecstasy instead—which he found terrifying: the big narco-gangs were rapacious businesses, not cheery, rubber-faced hippies. He eventually ended up with a contaminated batch of MDMA and burnt it, retiring once and for all, ten days before the new millennium.

HE WAS POSSIBLY A DIRECT DESCENDANT OF CAPTAIN MORGAN

The pirate and leading rum salesman.

CAVIAR OMELETTES AND TAKING THE CONCORDE TO CANNES WAS FAR REMOVED FROM OWNING A TAPAS BAR IN LEEDS

But that was where he ultimately ended up. In good times and bad, he'd always overspent. He gave up the rights to the 2006 film of his book Mr. Nice "pretty much for free." The royalties from the book were, he confessed, useful, but highly erratic. Besides odd-jobbing journalism and his stage show, by 2009, Marks had relocated to Leeds, where he lived in a one-bed flat by a canal. He was there in part because of his girlfriend, Caroline Brown, a local teacher. But a key source of going-straight income was his tapas bar Azucar. "As soon as I walked through the door I was greeted by Andy the manager, he made me instantly relaxed and recommended some amazing dishes," said Laura-Ellen from Birmingham, on Tripadvisor.

THE STRESS OF HIS CANCER TREATMENT LED TO A BREAKDOWN

According to the Sunday Times interviewer Lynn Barber, who was also his first girlfriend at Oxford, Marks had a manic episode earlier this year, where he'd "taken every folk remedy including three weeks' supply of cannabis oil." There were rumors he thought he was a chicken, that he'd launched into a group of policemen. He ended up being briefly sectioned.

YET THE ICING ON HIS LIFE WAS LEARNING TO CRY

There's some tragedy in the revelation that, for all the bravado, it seems that Marks's charm was strong enough to override his more profound emotional needs. He claimed not to have cried throughout his adult life—a deeper seam of sadness he only hinted at. "In prison I cried deep in myself, but I had to be the tough guy, I couldn't let any vulnerability show... It's impossible to regret any part of my life when I feel happy and I am happy now, so I don't have any regrets and have not had any for a long time."

Follow Gavin Haynes on Twitter.

Democracy Spring protesters in Washington march to protest big money in politics. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

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A committee in Brazil's National Congress has voted to recommend the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff over claims she manipulated government accounts. It means a full vote on her impeachment will now take place in the lower house on 17 or 18 April. —Reuters

Suicide Attacker Kills Four in Yemen
A suicide bomber has set off an explosives belt near a football stadium in the Yemini city of Aden, killing at least four people. Eight others were wounded. The attack comes little more than a day after a ceasefire began, and a day before peace talks aimed at ending a year of war. —Al Jazeera

Ukraine in Limbo After PM Resigns
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk will present his resignation to Ukraine's parliament today, having announced on Sunday he wanted to step down. Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Groysman was nominated as his replacement, but the latest reports suggest he does not want the job. —BBC News

EU Wants Tax Transparency
The European Union will today unveil its plan to force big companies to be more transparent about their tax arrangements, following the revelations in the Panama Papers. New EU rules are expected to affect all multinational firms with more than $850 million in sales. —The Guardian

With eyes-closed, much more of the brain contributes to the visual experience under LSD (right) than under placebo (left). Image: Carhart-Harris et al

Everything Else

Porn Site Bans North Carolina Users
Porn site XHamster.com has blocked all computer users with an IP address in North Carolina in protest at the state's new anti-LGBT law. "We feel this punishment is a severe one," said a spokesman for the website. —The Huffington Post

Led Zeppelin Face Trial Over Stairway Copyright
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page will face a US jury trial over whether they stole the opening chords for "Stairway to Heaven." The lawsuit was brought by a trustee for Spirit, the band who may have inspired Plant and Page with the song "Taurus" —TIME

Scientists Look at the Brain on LSD
Researchers at Imperial College London have produced images of what the brain looks like while tripping on LSD. The pictures reveal "dislocation" in the part of the brain that governs your ego.—Motherboard



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During one of my first Christmases in America, I remember watching intently as my sister-in-law pulled out a cylinder from the fridge, cracked it open, and scooped sections of white goop onto a baking tray. A few minutes later, steaming rolls emerged.

"Is that canned bread?" I asked her. The Americans laughed—what I called canned bread, Americans called Pillsbury dough.

I grew up in Australia—a country not unlike the United States—but I was completely floored the first time I visited an American grocery store. In Australia, there are only a few brands of milk, butter, and bread. Milk generally has one ingredient (you know, milk), the cheese isn't fluorescent orange, and bread does not come in a can. In America, options for a single product type barely fit into one aisle. It was my first major experience of culture shock—which can feel like a hurtful reminder that you're not "home" anymore.

I asked other immigrants about their first moments of culture shock in the United States. Here's what they told me.

"I had not seen or even heard of braces before chalk board. It is the students' responsibility to clean the classroom. In China, teachers are very high ranking. You are very respected. Here, I don't think so. The income is not really above middle class here." — Niki Xu, 26, math teacher, Chinese

"Food-wise, I noticed us all getting these round faces from the bad food we ate. We did not realize it, because it was the standard and you think because it's advertised and readily available it can't be bad for you. We were so ignorant coming from South Africa, eating home cooked food every night over there. Then, once we got here, we ate those corn dogs almost every day for lunch, little pizzas for snacks, and sugary cereals for breakfast." — Ben van den Heever, 32, founder of Brooklyn Biltong, South African

"The whole paper towel thing struck me very strongly as soon as I came to the US. In Korea, paper towels were used for very few selective kitchen tasks, mostly to wipe off oil from frying pan. So I enter a US host family's house and they use paper towels for everything. They don't bother to even keep a rag. It's the same thing with schools—just big rolls of paper towels for when you spill something. But honestly, when I went to Korea last year, I noticed that things have changed. They now have paper towel disposals in a lot of bathrooms." — Chandra Edwards, 27, financial analyst, South Korean

"I was hugely shocked by all the street harassment. And as a queer woman, I didn't realize that I had to police myself in certain areas here. I thought NYC was supposed to be such a gay city, and it is if you're in Manhattan or Chelsea. When I first moved here I remember my girlfriend and I were kissing on the street outside of our apartment in Bushwick and a group of teenagers started yelling and jeering at us. It was kind of scary and very confusing. I've learned not to hold hands or display affection in certain neighborhoods because of it. I don't really travel around the US, but I can tell you I definitely wouldn't hold hands in the south especially with all the crazy anti-LGBT legislation popping up." — Sarah Barnett, 28, radio reporter, Canadian

", I feel uncomfortable, like I am not communicating in the right way. I can't conduct a conversation in three minutes. Maybe I take ten minutes. I don't think in English. This is how an immigrant brain works. I talk in my head in Urdu, but then I have to speak in English. I am unable to change myself, because when I came here I was 40. It was in 2010. So do you think that a 40-year-old mature person who spent their adult life doing things one way, and you think he can change within three years, five years, six years—not possible." — Shahid Khan, 45, community organizer, Pakistani

"I've found Americans to be basically over friendly, which is weird because I'm Canadian and that's our stereotype. I've had cashiers ask how I am—that's normal. But they then ask things like what am I doing that day or something I find way more personal. And I don't know if it's the Canadian in me, but I always give a full answer, so maybe I am engaging too much. I need to learn how to make polite conversation that doesn't make others feel obligated to keep asking questions." — Allyson Power, 28, student, Canadian

"I am a gay man who come from Guatemala and it is very dangerous to be gay there. When you start to realize you're gay, the authorities, the religious organization and the gangs, they are against gay people. I came here and after a year and a half I applied for asylum. It took me a while, honesty, to realize gay people could live a normal peaceful life here. My whole life I believed I was wrong and I would go to hell and I deserved the treatment I got. It was 2011, the first time I enrolled myself to march in the Gay Pride Parade. That made me feel proud, just proud to be who I am. Now, I feel that this is home." — Edy Meda, 29, server and fitness instructor, Guatemalan

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In the column "How Scared Should I Be?" VICE staff writer and generalized anxiety disorder sufferer Mike Pearl seeks to quantify the scariness of the world he lives in. We hope it helps you to more wisely allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

When I was a kid, hearing grown-ups freak out every April about having to do their taxes was just another intrusive droning sound from the adult world that I hated. Then I became an adult and realized that now I make that particular droning sound just as much as, if not more, than the horrible adults from my past.

But like most people of the millennial generation, I don't have any major investments, and I haven't had any huge financial windfalls, so I'm going to get a refund, and my taxes aren't even very complicated. In short, I'm not freaking out about having to pay my taxes—I've been paying them all year. What I'm actually losing my mind over is having to get all my forms in one place, and then put the right numbers in the right boxes, and add it all up correctly or else!

The question is, or else what? I vaguely know that if I get my calculations wrong, some shadowy figure in a suit might show up and make my life hell via a nightmarish process called an audit, and that some people wind up in jail for this sort of thing. But how likely is that for someone like me? And more importantly, is it really that bad?

According to Michael Graetz, a professor of tax law at Columbia University, it really is that bad. He pointed me to a 2009 poll in which Americans said they'd rather have root canal surgery than an IRS audit. "I've had both," Graetz told me, "and I agree with the people who answer the polls that way."

To be clear, a root canal is the process in which a dentist uses a drill to dig out the infected meat of your tooth all the way down to the very bottom, and it looks like this:

So why is a process in which an IRS agent shows up and just looks through your paperwork worse than the horrifying physical torture pictured above?

According to Graetz, part of the problem is "over-aggressive" auditors trying to make people give the government money it truly doesn't deserve. One agent who audited Graetz was "overreaching," Graetz claimed, and his recollection of an exchange of words from that audit paints a vivid, painful picture of bloated bureaucracy at its worst.

Graetz had dutifully proffered receipts and documentation, but the agent was demanding something called contemporaneous substantiation. "He padded the internal revenue code and said 'It's in the book. You need to follow this book,'" Graetz said. He demanded to see such a requirement in writing, but when the agent flipped open his IRS tome and showed him a section on "contemporaneous substantiation," it only applied in cases of travel and entertainment. Graetz told the agent no travel or entertainment had been involved, so everything should be all clear. But incredibly, Graetz says the agent replied, "'well it says travel and entertainment, but it means everything.'"

"And that was when I was on the verge of mayhem," Graetz said.

In addition to the four audits Graetz has endured, he's also experienced the audits of others as a tax lawyer, and in his estimation, this kind of overreach or over-aggression is pretty common. "A third to a half are in the category of people you'd like to avoid," Graetz said, although he hastened to add that he'd only met a small sample of the IRS auditors.

As for my chances of actually triggering an audit, they're reasonably low. According to the IRS Data Book from 2014, the most recent year with complete numbers, only 0.86 percent of tax filings resulted in an audit. Even better, for people like me, with annual incomes between $25,000 and $99,999, the percentage is closer to 0.5 percent, or one in every 200 taxpayers.

But I probably shouldn't get too comfortable. To put that in perspective, those were also my odds of being born a redhead—which is pretty common. And having red hair lasts a lifetime, while I have to roll the 200-sided die of a tax audit over again every single year.

According to Graetz, if I make a math mistake on a form, I'll have to deal with it, but I probably won't have an auditor show up at my door. "They pick up 100 percent of those and just send you a letter," he said. If the error caused me to pay less than I should have, he added, "there are some penalties, depending on how big the understatement of tax is," and I'll also have to pay interest.

But what if the error is truly outrageous, like the time I was rushing to get through Turbo Tax and I accidentally reported a $30,000 cell phone bill? I caught it before I filed, but I still had this gut-wrenching feeling that I'd narrowly avoided getting dragged off to jail for cooking the books to score a massive undeserved refund.

Graetz claimed that a mistake as idiotic as that could never land me in jail. "If you just make mistakes, or don't quite understand the form, or have difficulty knowing what the rules are, that's not criminal," he said, explaining that only willful lies could be construed as criminal.

But the thought of my mistake being misconstrued as fraud still leaves my stomach in knots. I can't help but think of former Pittsburgh Steelers wide-receiver Plaxico Burress and his conviction for tax fraud earlier this year. Burress reportedly tried to file his returns, but the payment didn't go through. Then the IRS sent him a letter, and they never heard from him, so they arrested him. In Burress' case, it definitely seems conceivable that he was just being an idiot, not deliberately breaking the law. Even the judge who sentenced him praised his otherwise "law-abiding life."

After all, this is a guy who managed to accidentally shoot himself in the leg. If they thought he was an arch criminal, how can I possibly be safe?

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of the IRS?

4/5: Pissing Myself

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Looking back on the string of strange and ugly news bytes that augured Donald Trump's downward spiral in Wisconsin—the Heidi Cruz retweet, the inexplicable attacks on Scott Walker, the endless contradictions on abortion—there were two moments that, in hindsight, seem particularly instructive to understanding what went what the hell is going on in the Republican Party in 2016.

The first was during a campaign rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, when Trump mentioned the city's most famous resident, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. It wasn't clear what Trump planned to say about the Wisconsin congressman—whose district includes Janesville—but it didn't really matter: The crowd erupted in boos and hisses anyway. Even Trump seemed taken aback. "Wow. I was told be nice to Paul Ryan," he said. "I'm very surprised by this statement. Are you all Republicans?"

Outside, Beth Schmidt, chairwoman of the Rock County Republican Party, was wondering the same thing. "I don't know anybody here," she told me, looking over the impromptu overflow crowd that had gathered in the parking lot. After two heated gubernatorial elections and a recall, not to mention dozens of heated state legislative and judicial nominations, in the last five years, Schmidt, like most local party officials in Wisconsin, is pretty familiar with the area's Republican voters. But amongst the tailgating Trump fans in Janesville, she looked distinctly out of place.

"Clearly he is bringing in people," she said. "I just don't know who they are. They've never been involved in politics before." When I asked about the crowd's response to Ryan, Schmidt seemed bewildered: "That was very strange," she admitted. "I honestly can't tell you what that was about."

The circumstances were reversed a few days later, at Milwaukee's American Serb Hall, where Sarah Palin tagged in for Trump at a county GOP dinner featuring the three remaining candidates. Palin was characteristically crazy, rambling about gift baskets for illegal immigrants and the crimes of #Benghazi—but the lines that once ignited Republican crowds fell flat among Wisconsin's party activists. As she spoke, the audience was visibly restless, checking phones, and pushed coleslaw around on paper plates. A group of young volunteers seated near me snickered quietly. When Palin declared that "Trump is the only one who talks rationally" about foreign policy, a couple of people in the hall burst out laughing.

Watch Desperate in Dairyland: Bun B's report from the campaign trail in Wisconsin:

The reactions to both Palin and Ryan were startling. These are, after all, the GOP's two most recent vice-presidential candidates, each selected for a perceived ability to unite disparate wings of the conservative base. Together, the two incidents hinted at a hostile new polarization in the GOP primary, between the angry, "undocumented Republicans" supporting Donald Trump, and mainstream party activists turned off by the frontrunner and his fans.

Results from Wisconsin's primary last week confirmed this rift, revealing a Republican electorate deeply divided over the two candidates most likely to become the party's nominee. While Texas Senator Ted Cruz easily won Tuesday's vote, taking in nearly half of the Republican vote and all but six of Wisconsin's 42 delegates, exit polls showed that the victory wasn't so much the result of support for his own campaign, but a widespread fear of Trump among the state's conservative voters.

According to a CNN exit poll, a full 72 percent of Cruz voters in Wisconsin—and 55 percent of all Republican primary voters—said they would be scared or concerned if Trump was elected president. In contrast, 57 percent of Trump supporters said the same about President Cruz, which is still a More striking is the poll's finding that Wisconsin voters for both Trump and Cruz in Wisconsin would defect from the party if the other candidate won the nomination: In a race between Hillary Clinton and Trump, for instance, 66 percent of Cruz voters said they would pick a third-party candidate. Among Trump supporters, disinterest in the other Republican was even stronger, with 70 percent choosing a third-party candidate in a race between Clinton and Cruz.

All this suggests a pretty deep disconnect, and distrust, between supporters of the two leading Republican candidates. While it's difficult to draw big conclusions from Wisconsin's exit data alone, the numbers do offer a glimpse into just how acrimonious—and potentially irreconcilable—the party's split might be by the time it picks its nominee at the convention this summer.

With Cruz's win in Wisconsin, the race is now virtually guaranteed to drag on until the final primary, in June, and it's significantly less likely—though possible—that Trump will get the delegates he needs to lock up the nomination outright. The Cruz campaign is now systematically trying to fill the convention with his supporters, getting them elected as state delegates so they can vote for him on a second ballot.

So far, his campaign has been pretty effective at this, following up its Wisconsin victory by picking up 28 pledged delegates in Colorado and installing loyalists among the delegates in Iowa, South Carolina, and Michigan this past weekend. If the sentiments these delegates have about Trump is even close to the feelings seen in the Wisconsin polls, it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which Trump-fearing Cruz supporters throw up hurdles for the frontrunner at the convention, even if Trump manages to win the nomination outright.

By the same token, Trump and his supporters are equally committed to making sure that the Cruz campaign isn't able to out-strategize their campaign on the floor of the convention. And what Trump and his troops lack in organization, they seem to make up for in enthusiasm, at least according to the Wisconsin exit polls. The same CNN exit poll found that almost all of Trump's supporters—90 percent, if you're counting—feel "excited" about the idea of their candidate as president. By comparison, the number of Cruz supporters who said the same about their guy wasn't even high enough to register in CNN's exit results.

Moreover, according to an ABC News exit poll, an overwhelming 83 percent of Trump voters—and 56 percent of Wisconsin's Republican voters overall—think that in the event of a contested convention, the nomination should go to the candidate who won the most votes in the primaries, while just 14 percent said that it should go to the best candidate in the race. Combined, the results suggest that Trump's supporters will be ready for a fight for their guy on the floor of the convention, should the events call for that.

Trump's campaign seems to be preparing, and even galvanizing its supporters, for this outcome, promising "riots" in Cleveland if the Republican Party tries to nominate someone not named Donald Trump. In the week since the Wisconsin primary, reports suggest that Trump has retooled his campaign operation to focus on the more arcane elements of delegate selection, bringing on seasoned GOP operatives to handle convention strategy. As the campaign continues to bleed delegates, though, Trump's flaks have accused the campaign of using "Gestapo tactics" to win the nomination.

The Trump campaign's own statement on Cruz's win in the Badger State hints at the kind of batshit lunacy we can expect should the establishment mount a challenge to his coronation this summer. "Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet—he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump," his campaign said in a statement to reporters last week. "Mr. Trump is the only candidate who can secure the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton, or whomever is the Democratic nominee, in order to Make America Great Again."

Of course, it's too early to tell how the convention will go down when the primary races are said and done. The Trump campaign seems to have recovered, at least in some Trumpian sense of the word, from last week's disastrous defeat, and seems poised to lock up a sizable win in New York's primary next week. But last Tuesday's polls do hint at a more inflexible break between the frontrunner's supporters and the rest of the GOP. Considering that those two groups will be crammed together for hours on the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena, at this point it seems safe to expect chaos in some form when the race finally ends in Cleveland this July.

Follow Grace Wyler on Twitter.