As the liberalization of marijuana laws continues to spread in a blaze of THC-drenched glory across America, street corner dealers and black market drug operations could fade out as legit, taxable businesses that hawk a medley of products and services enter an increasingly lucrative marketplace.

Twenty-three states have approved some form of legal weed, and nearly two dozen more are reported to be considering changing their laws or regulation of the plant this year. While nationwide legalization is likely inevitable, it's uncertain how long it will be before all states embrace the green economy that seems to be thriving in places like California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.

New York offers a unique look at the changing marketplace. Medical marijuana was only recently legalized after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law that took effect on January 6, but the state's legislation is among the most restrictive in the country. "Only a handful of serious conditions qualify for a prescription," VICE News explained earlier this year. "The patients are only allowed to use tinctures and oils, which can be vaporized, inhaled, or consumed orally in capsules. Smoking or growing marijuana is still strictly forbidden." For the few patients who do qualify for medical marijuana cards in New York, insurance won't cover the inflated cost of the medicine, as weed is still classified by federal law as a Schedule I controlled substance.

At the same time, however, New York City has slowly embraced decriminalization. In 2014, it was announced that the NYPD would move away from marijuana-related arrests and instead give out court summons, a change that led to a notable decrease in such arrests in 2015. So long as New Yorkers carry less than an ounce on them—and no incriminating ephemera, such as a scale—then the punishment for being caught with possession should, in theory, be no worse than a traffic ticket that requires a court appearance. New York is by no means Amsterdam, but even smoking weed is close to legal in NYC now—well, it is at least if you're white.

All of this is great news for dealers. Smoking weed is acceptable enough that practically everyone is doing it, but a legal market doesn't exist to drive prices down. When I spoke to half a dozen pot merchants and low-level delivery operators, they told me that we're in "the golden age" of slanging. In other words, there's never been a better time to sell weed in New York City.

For more on weed, watch our doc 'How to Sell Drugs':

"People in the weed business here in New York are lucky right now, and I'd give it two to five years until we're all going to be fucked," says Benny*, a white dealer in his late twenties who's been selling pot for the past year.

Benny has struggled with substance abuse and never finished high school; through a mutual friend, he scored a gig doing deliveries for a small-scale weed operation, dropping eighths and quarters throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan on his bike. He now rides several days a week, and "easily makes over $300 a shift," through sales commissions. That's enough for him to live comfortably, and the flexible schedule means he can pursue personal passions, such as art classes. "With my past, I don't think I could find a better hustle right now," he tells me.

Juan* is a Hispanic dealer who's operated an independent, one-man delivery service for over five years. Juan keeps his overhead costs low and profit margins high by getting his product shipped from Colorado or Oregon. Despite working alone, he doesn't feel threatened by the other weed services in the city. "The demand is so large," he says. "It's not even a competition really because there are so many people who smoke weed that I never step on toes." He described the market as a "no man's land" that dealers can't be boxed out of, as long as they operate their business well. "The territory isn't officially claimed and the little guys can still stay afloat."

Juan makes "$4,000 or $5,000 a month, and I don't have to pay taxes," and he rarely feels anxious about getting caught. (His landlord lets him pay rent in cash, not an uncommon practice in New York.) He used to sell out of his place, but now bikes to clients because "looking like a Seamless guy" is less suspicious than strangers coming in and out of his apartment all day. When on bike, he makes sure he has less than an ounce on him (stored in a lockbox, in case he's ever stopped by police), and avoids neighborhoods with heavy police presences during busier hours of the day. "I can pick and choose who I sell to because I work for myself," he says. "Unlike a dispensary where they probably follow the 'customer is always right' model, dealers in New York still have some type of power over their clients. I can blacklist whoever, whenever."

"It's a unique and short-lived window of time that'll soon close like all others"

Elissa* is a self-described "college-educated white girl" who started selling weed very casually after she quit her job at an art gallery. She pays her rent through a restaurant gig, but is trying to save money so she can move cities. A friend hooked her up with a large, popular delivery service that allows messengers to sign up for shifts whenever they feel like it, which appeals to her because she could make extra cash without the job interfering with her schedule at the restaurant. "It's really that chill," Elissa says. "There are risks, sure, but I'm honestly more worried about getting hit by a taxi than getting in trouble with the police or a client trying to take advantage of me for being a woman."

Other dealers interviewed for this article agree that now is a great time to deal—the phrase "golden age" came up more than once. But some also say they feel the end of this era is just on the hazy horizon.

"It's a unique and short-lived window of time that'll soon close like all others," says Benny. "When real medical marijuana dispensaries eventually open up in New York, it's only a matter of time until independent delivery services are driven out. It won't be about loyalty to your guy and appreciation of whatever company culture they bring to the table. It will be about efficiency, business acumen, and brand dominance. The players with the most business experience will win. I say it all the time, but the only dealers who will last will be those who go to business school and then start consulting for Philip Morris, or whatever big corporation takes over the weed market here."

Juan agrees, and knows his five-plus years selling pot are coming to an end. "I don't want New York to legalize marijuana because then what am I going to do?" he half-jokes. "I've always envisioned that I'd get out of the game once weed is legalized here—it will be too hard to compete then. Consider this a peak with a swan song fast approaching."

*All names have been changed to protect the subjects' anonymity.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

For the second time in as many weeks, people flooded London's streets in protest against our Tory government. Last week, calls for David Cameron's resignation anchored the protest. On Saturday, April 15, protesters rallied together by the People's Assembly came forward with demands in four areas: housing, health, education, and jobs.

"No ifs, no buts, no public sector cuts," people chanted as they walked along in a march that started outside University College London on Gower Street and wound its way to Trafalgar Square. The pig masks were out in force again, as were people in Panama hats and tropical leis, in a nod to the revelations on Britain's role in the world's web of tax havens as exposed in the Panama Papers leak.

Labour's shadow chancellor John McConnell, Labour Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Diane Abbott, Unite trade union's general secretary Len McCluskey, and Green party leader Natalie Bennett all spoke. Our photographer was there on the day, and here's what he saw.

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Hey, I'm Abdullah. I wrote the "Weediquette" column for VICE, I host Bong Appetit for MUNCHIES, and I've been a cannabis reporter since 2012. Starting this weekend, I'll be hosting a monthly podcast called Tea Time with T. Kid, which you can listen to above.

Over the last four years, I've watched and experienced and reported as cannabis has moved from the shadows to the store shelves, witnessing the final moments of detractors prohibiting the plant's consumption. On that journey I've met some of the coolest, weirdest, most fascinating weed enthusiasts, each of whom carry a little piece of cannabis history with them.

Tea Time with T. Kid is my chance to share the thought-provoking conversations that I have with these people. They're journalists, business people, musicians, artists, chefs, farmers, and activists collectively bound by their love for a simple, useful plant that happens to be illegal, though will not remain so for long. Over a cup of tea, we'll discuss the green zeitgeist and review a new weed-related product—from futuristic vapes to next-level edibles.

For the first episode, I sat down with David Bienenstock, former West Coast editor of High Times, columnist for MUNCHIES, producer of Bong Appetit, and author of the new book How To Smoke Pot (Properly). On top of discussing legalization and the pros of writing about weed for a living, we tested out Shine Papers—24-karat gold blunt wraps—and pitched a really bad weed art exhibition idea over the phone to the Denver Art Museum. I hope you enjoy listening about my experiences with weed as much as I enjoy talking about them.

Just a short walk from Dubai's Deira Fish Market is a vacant, scrubby sandlot. In the hazy half-light just before sunset, expatriates from the emirate's Southeast Asian communities gather here each Friday before evening prayers. They come to watch a few rough-and-ready rounds of pehlwani, also known as kushti, a centuries-old style of wrestling originally developed in India that Dubai's expatriate communities embrace today.

Stripping down to a pair of Speedos and a kaupinam, or loincloth, wrestlers from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh compete in a series of grappling matches, moving and counter moving with the aim of pinning an opponent to the ground for two seconds. Organized by the longstanding elders of the community, the weekly event features large crowds comprised of hundreds of taxi drivers, construction workers, and other imported laborers who cheer on the athletes, as well as give money to those who are victorious. The pehlwan may not have the intricate, bodybuilder physiques that are revered on Dubai's beaches, but they are powerfully built and many have trained since childhood: The men's chests, backs, and shoulders bear impressive battle scars.

Despite expatriates vastly outnumbering the local Emirati population in Dubai, the quality of life for many foreigners, including a large majority from South Asian, is often overlooked or troublesome. One day a week, though, these men come together not just to blow off steam and make some petty cash, but to experience a fleeting moment of stardom while continuing a tradition tied to their home nations. Kushti is taken so seriously by some men in Dubai that wrestlers and spectators will even compete in 120-degree heat throughout the summer.

Save for an elderly ustad, who presides over the ceremony with a colorful staff and a bagpipe-playing sidekick, there is little pomp or ceremony: When the sun sets and the muezzin calls worshippers to maghrib, the fourth daily prayer of Islam, the Kushti crowd disperses as quickly as it gathered.

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

Photos via James Pitawanakwat

James "OJ" Pitawanakwat hasn't returned to the Anishinaabe community on Manitoulin Island where he grew up in nearly two decades. He can't, because in Canada there's an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

All illustrations by George Heaven

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Sex is great. Adding more partners into the mix should, on paper, make it even better. As someone already involved in the fetish world, I've watched the Tinder "dating apocalypse" and the "50 Shades of Grey effect" collide as people younger than your classic middle-ager move into kink and swingers groups. Now anyone who fancies it can download a fetish-based dating app and pose as "Dom4you" without actually knowing the difference between a cane and a riding crop.

This week, the sad story of a man being turned away from a sex party reminded us all what happens when newbies dive in headfirst without reading the fine print—seriously lads, don't just show up on your own without checking with someone first. I decided to speak to some other swingers in their twenties to find out how they got into it, which nights were the best, and why two, three, or four heads can be better than one.

"Every other time is like trying to find that first-try high again"

VICE: When did you first get into swinging?
Roisin, 22: I'd always been interested and wanted to try it. My last relationship kind of fell apart because I had all this kinky stuff that I wanted to try and he refused to do any of it. I saw a documentary on Channel 4 about sex parties and asked my boyfriend at the time if he wanted to go—and he refused. So when we broke up about two years ago I googled "London elite sex parties" and it was all uphill from there.

What was the first party like?
It was really different to how I'd expected. It was this really glamorous, private event, with all these 30-somethings in lacy masks and suits and stuff. I went with this man I'd met online and spent a lot of the evening just watching him with other people. But when I eventually joined in it was incredible. I was licking this girl out and this guy just entered me from behind and I had no idea who it was. It was really a space to be very experimental and unselfconscious.

What about the not-so-great times?
It can be quite touch-and-go. My first time was definitely the best; every other time is like trying to find that high again. I've been in situations where people feel like they can just touch you or do whatever, and you have to be really firm and say no. I'm young and don't look like the back-end of a horse, so often at these events I'm the prize. A lot of people take a lot of drugs at the more kinky events, and I'm not into that either.

And the best times?
The best experiences are normally with a few couples or friends at someone's house. The people I party with are all in their twenties and are students and people I want to hang out with outside of the sex stuff, so it's easier to feel relaxed.

Why do you like swinging?
It's just loads of fun. And I don't really take drugs or do anything that crazy outside of the sex stuff. I guess it's just my vice.

"The best was a private hotel party, where everyone was fit"

VICE: When did you first get into swinging—and how?
Jay, 24: I was dating an older woman who'd been interested in swinging but was unable to explore it in her previous relationship. She was bisexual and wanted to try more with girls and have encounters with very well-endowed men. My first experience was going to a swingers club with her.

What is it about swinging that appeals to you?
It allows you to act on your primal desires and instincts, but not in a reckless way. It allows couples to be honest with each other, accepting that they can be attracted to other people while maintaining the integrity of their relationship. And it creates a deeper bond, especially when you trust your partner to play with other people.

Tell me about the good and bad times.
The best was a privately-held hotel party with seven couples and a few single girls and guys chosen for their age and looks. I feel like that's essential to swinging: mutual attraction is the key factor in making a successful party. It was also very relaxed, and there were no expectations for everyone to join in—even though the majority of people did.

The worst was a party at a couple's house. Most of them already knew each other. Given how small the swinging community is, this happens a lot. But some guests had previously dated or been involved in a dominant/submissive relationship, which caused a lot of tension. It made the environment really uncomfortable and it wasn't long before I left.

How does a love of swinging affect your relationships?
The way I see it, everybody has different kinks, and for those not comfortable with doing group play it does have a lot to do with jealousy. If a partner is jealous then they would never be able to get into swinging or have a threesome.

"The worst? This guy going down on me without asking"

VICE: Hi ladies. You've said you often go to sex parties together. How did you meet?
Jenny, 25: A year ago I went to Torture Garden with this guy I was casually seeing, and I spotted Fatima. She just had a really good look, and I said to him, "She's out of my league," so he approached her.
Fatima, 25: He beckoned me over and it led to this three-way thing in one of the rooms. Afterwards all three of us met up again and had a threesome and me and Jen got put in an Uber with a slice of pizza and just started chatting. It's our thing—post-coital pizza.

What are your relationship statuses?
F: I'm in an open relationship. I'm more into the fetish scene, and he's been to Torture Gardens but as an outsider. The open relationship idea is new to me, and kink and being with someone like me is new to him. I approached him on OkCupid as a joke.
J: I'm in what you could classify as a dominant/submissive relationship, it's not necessarily romantic. It's Total Power Exchange but not completely, which is where you have an "owner" and they dictate how you live your life.

Tell me about your last sex party.
J: When me and Fatima went to Berlin last week we went to Insomnia. It was a bit tamer than expected.
F: I got fucked in a sex swing. We were wandering around, wanting to be caned, even though we were absolutely destroyed from the weekend before. Then we were bent over this bed and these guys were spanking us with their belt and Jen was like, "I'm bored." Everyone there was having group sex and the whole event was just basic, normal sex. There was a basket of toys you could use, like double-ended dildos and stuff like that, but it was pretty much just a generic swingers party.

Any bad experiences at swinging parties?
F: I think Jen's worst was actually the first night we met.
J: I was really upset about it and crying because this guy went down on me and didn't ask. But apart from that I can't think of any negative experiences. I really enjoyed Killing Kittens.
F: Yeah! Killing Kittens is just like a normal swingers party. A lot of couples fucking other couples. Orgies aren't particularly sexy things. Normally it's just a group of people, all a bit drunk anyway, playing with each other. Fanny farts happen, people drop things, alarms start going off, people start talking about generic shit while others have sex nearby, there's squirting—which makes a mess—and you're trying to clean it up so other people don't have to lie in your squirt.

Do you think it's getting more popular with young people, or is it just easier and more open than it used to be?
J: It's definitely more popular with young people recently. The internet has quite a lot to do with it—it used to be more underground. Now your average person can do whatever.
F: I think a lot of people have had threesomes and stuff. My housemate is totally vanilla but has done a male-male-female threesome and doesn't even think twice about it.

Follow Daisy and George on Twitter.

The Air Jordan 4 Retro is priced at $20,000 at Stadium Goods. Eminem and the Jordan brand collaborated on this release in honor of the 15th anniversary of the 'Marshall Mathers LP.'

In 2007, I moved out of my parents' house in Northern Virginia by selling my sneaker collection. I probably had about 80 or 90 pairs at the time, all of which I'd bought with money scraped from a part-time job at Urban Outfitters. Each pair was copped in DMV-area stores like Commonwealth and Major. I didn't consider myself a true "sneakerhead" back then, since a lot of my collection was general release stuff like Nike Dunks, Vans Sk8-His, and a few of adidas's early "Adi Color" collaborations. But I had a couple of legit gems, like the MF Doom Nike Dunk SB Highs and a few pairs of Vans done with cult Japanese label WTAPS and designer Marc Jacobs—probably one of the first high-profile fashion sneaker collabs.

I didn't really want to part with Jacobs's trompe l'oeil Slip-Ons that emulated the Old Skool, but the thought of living in my first "adult" apartment in the city outweighed my desire to flex. I knew absolutely nothing about the sneaker aftermarket, and most of them had been worn, so I sold them all in one big auction on eBay. I made about $4,000. It was enough to cover my first month's rent and security deposit. Once that was taken care of, I did what any sensible person would do—I spent the rest on new sneakers. Soulja Boy had just dropped "I Got Me Some Bapes," after all.

Four years later, I moved to New York and started working at Complex, which began my proper education in sneaker culture. One of the first people I met was Russ Bengtson, a Senior Editor who's been writing, wearing, and thinking critically about sneakers for the better part of 20 years. He doesn't remember the last time he counted how many pairs he owns, but he estimates it's in the thousands. He rotates around 100 pairs that are immediately accessible to him, with a bunch in a storage space in Long Island.

Bengtson began looking at sneakers like collectors' items instead of pragmatic footwear around 1994 or 1995, when he bought a pair of Jordan "retros." Retros are reissued versions of shoes that originally came out in the 80s and 90s, when Jordan was cementing his legacy on the court. It isn't just rarity that can drive up the demand for the kicks, it's also their cultural cache, and most importantly: being in "deadstock" condition.

Deadstock is a retail term that applies to merchandise that sat on the shelves, never sold, and was pretty much left forgotten in a warehouse or a back room. In the sneaker world, the term has come to mean a pair of shoes that's still in-the-box fresh, despite being years—even decades—old. It's a mint condition, wearable time capsule. A pair of deadstock kicks is more or less a holy grail.

The Air Jordan 11 Pantone/White is priced at $10,000 at Stadium Goods. This sneaker was released in 2010. It was only supposed to be made for display purposes. It was re-released as a set in 2014.

Early sneaker resellers scoured mom-and-pop sporting goods stores for unsold treasures, like a limited pair of Air Force 1s or Air Maxes, kicking off the demand for deadstock sneakers. Now, the search for deadstock sneakers has gotten so intense, there's even a Toronto sneaker store that's adopted the term as its name. And depending on a sneaker's rarity and consumer demand, a pair of genuine deadstock kicks can command up to $23,500, like a pair of ultra-limited Undefeated Air Jordan IVs for sale at Stadium Goods. Those shoes are notable not just for being the first time the Jordan Brand collaborated with a third-party company, but also the fact that only 79 pairs were made for public consumption.

"It stands as one of the few Jordans that have been limited like that," says Bengston. "Owning a shoe like that—given how few there are—is sort of a badge of honor for some people, where it becomes sort of a 'centerpiece' for your collection," he continues.

Sneaker culture often affixes nicknames to certain shoes owing to the moments that made them important. Case in point: The "Flu Game" Jordan 12s, a pair of black-and-red high-tops equally inspired by the Nisshoki Japanese flag and a pair of 19th-Century women's boots. The shoes were made famous in game five of the 1997 NBA Finals, when Jordan endured a case of food poisoning to help lead the Bulls to a two-point victory over the Utah Jazz. The sneaker was re-released in 2003 and 2009, and is currently valued around $650 on the aftermarket for the 2009 versions. In 2013, former NBA ball boy Preston Truman auctioned off the actual game-worn pair, netting $104,000.

The Air Yeezy Net/Net is priced $3,000, the Air Yeezy Zen Grey/Light Charcoal is priced at $3,250, and the Air Yeezy Black/Black is priced at $3,500 at Stadium Goods. Each color way originally had a suggested retail price of $215 and sold out almost immediately.

It wasn't always this way. Bengtson remembers burgeoning sneaker culture had a very different mindset. Sneaker and hip-hop figurehead Bobbito Garcia wrote the tome on NYC sneaker culture's early days in 2003, Where'd You Get Those?, where he talks about how attitudes in the inner-city towards sneakers evolved from 1960-1987. Back in the day, flexing on your peers was more about finding a brand or model they'd never heard of and one-upping them with the diversity of your sneaker knowledge and corresponding collection.

"Somewhere along the line it changed from wearing things that people wouldn't know what they were, and now you wear things that people know exactly what they are, and you just want to make people jealous because they don't have them," says Bengtson.

Around the mid-2000s, sneakers went from a niche hobby to a cross-cultural obsession. Stüssy began releasing coveted collaborations of the Nike Dunk, and Nike began its foray into skateboarding, enlisting an eclectic Rolodex of artists like Futura, De La Soul, and Pushead to make limited-edition sneakers that sold out instantly. Sure, some people skated in them, but most didn't. A lot of people realized they could resell them for way over the retail price.

Flight Club opened its doors in 2005 as a new type of sneaker shop. It didn't order kicks wholesale and sell them at retail. Instead, it provided buyers and sellers alike with a platform to sell their shoes on consignment. The revolving stock was fueled by the principles of supply and demand. People were willing to pay a premium to get a pair of shoes that had sold out in their size.

As Bengtson puts it: "Where else can you buy something for $150-$200 and literally have it immediately be worth $2,000?"

The Air Foamposite One Paranorman is priced at $5,000 at Stadium Goods. They sneakers were released in late 2012 and pay tribute to the film 'Paranorman.'

But how are those prices determined? According to Yu-Ming Wu, founder of the website Sneaker News and partner at recently opened retail resale shop Stadium Goods, they consider the entire marketplace.

"We generally have an idea of what market prices are like at the moment," says Wu. "We like to be fairly competitive in terms of those prices. We look at the market as a whole. Not just direct competition, but what it's looking like on eBay, the smaller resale shops, apps, and third-party marketplaces."

Indeed, the Flight Clubs, Stadium Goods, and RIFs of the world aren't the only places to buy deadstock sneakers. While they offer a white glove experience and the instant gratification of being able to take your kicks home that day, often the prices add a premium to the existing premium. Sellers get 80 percent of a sale, the other 20 percent goes to the shop. Part of it goes to the convenience factor—you just drop off your shoes, and they take care of the rest. Another is the fact that any shop with a physical location has the bills that go with it.

Somewhere along the line, it changed from wearing things that people wouldn't know what they were. Now, you wear things that people know exactly what they are, and you just want to make people jealous because they don't have them. — Russ Bengtson

In order to avoid potentially losing some money, some resellers have flocked to other points of sale. There are smaller resale shops, resellers who operate on social media platforms like Instagram, sneaker-resale specific apps like Kixify—and of course, eBay. The sprawling online marketplace comprises about a third of the sneaker resale market, according to Josh Luber, who founded the sneaker resale data site Campless in 2012, where he aimed to quantify sneaker resale prices through data analysis.

He values the US sneaker resale market at about 1.2 billion dollars, about 400 million of which is eBay sales. What's important to note is that the resale market and the global footwear market, which is worth about $55 billion according to NPD Sports Industry Analyst Matt Powell, operate concurrently of each other. Most companies like Nike and adidas make plenty of money readily selling easily available offerings like the Roshe Run, Stan Smith, and Air Monarch. But the resale business trades in the currency of products with a different value proposition—street cred and perceived rarity.

LeBron 9 Low Arnold Palmer is priced at $7,500 and the LeBron 8 Retro South Beach is priced at $1,500 at Stadium Goods. The "LeBronold Palmers" were never actually released in stores, making them highly coveted. The South Beach sneakers represent LeBron's move from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat.

Because of that, often times a shoe is only worth as much as a customer is willing to pay for it.

"There's a high degree of variance in the prices in the resale value for sneakers," says Luber. That's one of the reasons why he recently transitioned Campless into StockX, a price guide and marketplace based on real-time data and market analysis. StockX uses data from eBay, consignment shops, and other resellers in order to give its historical pricing and market prices the broadest purview possible.

"We just feel like more information is better for a consumer or a sneakerhead," says Luber.

On peer-to-peer resale platforms like Grailed, coveted sneakers can go for much more or much lower than their supposed market value.

"When it's peer-to-peer and you take out a governing body, for lack of a better word, shit's kind of all over the place," says Grailed Brand Director Lawrence Schlossman. "It comes down to how fast you wanna move something—I think that affects case-by-case stuff. But you also have people who have no idea how much a sneaker's worth and are trying to sell Yeezy 750 Boosts for $7,000."

In other words, part of making a big profit reselling kicks involves patience. But if you're after liquidity, you're at the mercy of the market. StockX is fully aware of the outliers on sites like eBay, which is why it only takes into account sneakers that have sold, not active auctions where the asking price may be much more than how much a particular shoe is valued.

A shoe is only worth as much as a customer is willing to pay for it.

One of the biggest problems facing the sneaker aftermarket today is the rise of extremely high-quality fake sneakers. Some of which are actually purportedly made in the same factories as the "legit" versions, except maybe outside of the bounds of a contract, or with slightly different materials. StockX fights this by having any sneaker it sells sent to their Detroit headquarters to be authenticated by its team. Luber employs a person who's tasked with studying fake sneakers. The company has a hard-line approach to authentication—they'd rather err towards the likelihood that a sneaker is fake, rather than compromise their principles on the chance something may be legit.

"By doing that, both buyers and sellers have 100 percent confidence that what they're buying and selling is real," says Luber.

The Air Jordan 5 Retro T23 Tokyo is priced at $5,000 at Stadium Goods.

That same trust and confidence is the reason why stores like Flight Club and Stadium Goods continue to flourish. For kids whose parents are the ones paying, or wary consumers who don't want to get got, that top-of-the-market premium seems like a solid investment for a secure and painless transaction.

"You can walk into a Foot Locker and buy most of the general release stuff, but if you want something hot and if you want to look fresh, we're one of very few options for you to walk in and see that amount of variety," says Wu. "We opened up a very, very big store in SoHo to say, 'This is for real.' When we first opened, we had about 9,000 pairs of sneakers. Today, we have about 20,000 pairs in consignment, and still growing."

Sneaker value does indeed fluctuate over time, and Luber's team has figured out a formula that revealed an ironic pattern.

"All sneakers—barring restocks from the brand—have basically the same trajectory of resale value over time, and I swear to god, it looks exactly like a swoosh," he says.

StockX offers an "ISO," an "Initial Sneaker Offering" before a sneaker comes out, mirroring other pre-release practices in sneaker culture, where pairs that haven't come out yet are sold to people before they're even available—usually at a premium. That number usually comes down when the sneakers hit the market, but over time, since the amount of deadstock sneakers eventually diminishes (plenty of people just want to wear the damn things after all), pristine pairs become a rarity, and can demand a higher value.

Nike Air Mag "Back to the Future" are priced at $9,000 at Stadium Goods. Inspired by the popular film, these sneakers come with a charger and light up.

"If it's a super rare sneaker that hasn't been sold for years, it's up to what the customer wants," says Yu-Ming Wu. Stadium Goods will often work with a seller to come up with a price based on market value.

But what about worn sneakers, like the ones that got me out of my parents' basement? According to Luber, there's still a market for them—but deadstock pairs dominate about 75 percent of the market. At that point, the value proposition transforms from authentication to overall condition. And for Luber, that's harder to quantify, and even harder to scale. Each pair would have to have specific photos highlighting the condition, a work-intensive process he doesn't think is worth the investment.

Of course, the prices are much less than deadstock sneakers, but that makes them an affordable option for people who don't mind buying slightly scuffed kicks they can still wear. There are plenty of worn pairs on peer-to-peer resell sites and eBay. Brick-and-mortar consignment stores like Ina, Tokio 7, Beacon's Closet, and Buffalo Exchange in New York City are equally rife with gently-used (and not-so-gently-used) sneakers for decent prices.

You have the Nike Roshe Run and the Yeezy 350 Boost. To an outsider, they look pretty damn similar. But to insiders, one is on one level, and just fresher."

All photos by Elizabeth Renstrom. Follow her on Instagram.

All styling by Priscilla Jeong. Follow her on Instagram.

All words by Jian DeLeon. Follow him on Twitter.

All of the rare shoes photographed were provided by Stadium Goods. Check out their website.

About this time last year, shortly before Season 5 of Game of Thrones started, somebody dumped the first four episodes online, much to HBO's chagrin. To make sure that doesn't happen again, the network announced they wouldn't send out any screeners for Season 6. To make matters worse, George R. R. Martin is in no rush to release his next book. The future of the show is uncertain, with the recent news that there may be a mere 13 episodes left after this season, and for the first time, I have no inside knowledge (as a critic or a reader) of what's going to happen.

During the offseason, I've been busy combing through trailers, tracking Kit Harington hairstyles, wading through fan gossip, and otherwise searching the signs and portents for hints about how the next set of stories might unfold. I have some bad news. There are (at least) four things I'm going to hate about Season 6.

Let's be clear: I love Game of Thrones. In many ways, I love the show more than the books. The high production values and generally flawless casting transform the sometimes laboring prose into searing imagery. The show has the ability to create new fables about power and violence the likes of which most modern audiences have never seen. The show can, however, flounder when Benioff and Weiss (the show creators) make poor choices when it comes to pacing or storytelling. Worse, under a loose guise of historical accuracy, the show too often replicates contemporary misogyny and racism, and does so in ways wholly unnecessary to the plot.

With just mere days before the Season 6 premiere, here are the four things that I—and possibly you—will hate, from least to most important.

Nobody likes an extended dream quest.

Remember Bran Stark? He's currently under a tree talking to the Three-Eyed Raven, an old man fused into the roots of the tree. In the books, cool things were happening to Bran, but internal self-actualization tends to be pretty drab onscreen. We've all seen shows in which the old mystic teaches the young hero how to do magic (note the new Doctor Strange trailer for the latest iteration of the genre). Flashbacks mostly serve as vehicles for exposition, telling rather than showing.

The Game of Theons.

I've never much liked Theon, the horny would-be Viking with daddy issues. He's superficial and mostly unsympathetic. There's a reason that Martin, who never saw a sub-plot in which he couldn't invest 100 pages, cut the entire story of Theon's transformation into Reek. His chief antagonist, shaggy-haired Ramsay Bolton, is likewise scarier off-screen, hinted at, rather than portrayed endlessly. Ramsay may be cruel, but he's still no Joffrey. All smiling villains pale before the late golden-haired, psychopathic boy-king.

Meereen: Where plot goes to sputter and die.

Both the show and the book stall in the city of Meereen. Its explicit function is to teach Daenerys how to be a ruler, so that when she takes Westeros, she doesn't muck it up. But, really, it's a messed-up display of our own racial politics and the long literary history of using brown people as a means by which to reveal white character development. When you have a white savior called mother, lifted up by a sea of brown hands, with the mission of teaching the colonized people how to be civilized, it's time to take some basic lessons in Orientalism.

Daenerys is back in Dothraki lands (more on that in a moment), but Tyrion, who in Season 6 will tell us his job is to "drink and know things," and eunuch spymaster Varys remain in the city, and I'm worried for them. Their road show rivaled only Bronn and Jaime for best odd couple of Season 5, but a road show needs to move in order to keep the song and dance humming. I don't want them stuck inside that pyramid.

Photo by Macall B. Polay. Courtesy of HBO

All that misogyny.

Yes, I know the argument—the historical past on which Game of Thrones draws featured a lot of sexual violence. It's true, though probably not more so than our modern world. We remain a society with great discomfort about women with power. We work out that discomfort across both reality and fiction on a regular basis. Hillary Clinton fills our news feeds, polarizing and powerful, at her most popular just when she seems vulnerable (during her husband's impeachment and public humiliation over his affair, when she took the Secretary of State job despite losing to Obama, again during the Benghazi hearings last fall). Fictional Clintons proliferate across our TV: Claire Underwood on House of Cards, Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife, not to mention Madame Secretary, or even Veep.

The fantasy element of Game of Thrones seems to grant the writers freedom play out humiliation fantasy after humiliation fantasy, in ways that would surely be avoided in a modern show. Both the novelist and the screenwriters seem to have no way to write about female character development other than through humiliation, rape, and violence.

And now Daenerys, whose rape by Khal Drogo in Season 1 was depicted as less consensual in the show than in the books, is back in the hands of the Dothraki. A clip in the latest trailer shows her clothes being torn from her body.

Note that despite male rape being frequent in both modern and premodern war, the writers have found ways for male characters to develop without such scenes (with the exception of Theon's mutilation).

Here's the good news: These things I hate about Season 6 are, I think, going to be just small fragments of the early episodes, then we'll move on. Sansa and Theon will likely meet up with the Ironborn. Drogon will soar over the Dothraki and the Mother of Dragons will climb on his back. We'll learn lots of interesting things about Jon Snow. The Boltons will fall. And then, as these plots that have so entwined us over the last few years start to converge, the dead and their Night King will approach the Wall. Winter is finally here.

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Detective Barbara J. Mattson of the Connecticut State Police holds up a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, the same make and model of gun used by Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook School shooting. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

In December 2014, nine families of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, along with that of one survivor, sued Bushmaster Firearms. The manufacturer is behind the XM15-E2S, the weapon Adam Lanza used to murder 20 first-graders and six others at the Connecticut school in December 2012. The plaintiffs argue Bushmaster was selling a military-grade weapon designed to kill, and that it was irresponsible to market such a gun to regular people.

When the suit dropped, it didn't seem to stand much of a chance. After all, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is designed to shield gunmakers from paying out damages every time someone gets shot. But Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis ruled Thursday that the suit can proceed, at least for now, suggesting the 2005 federal law doesn't inherently preclude the possibility that Bushmaster's marketing materials presented the XM15-E2S as a combat weapon best-suited for mass murder. The surprising decision has ramifications well beyond Connecticut: Rather than passing laws banning the sale of firearms, the future of gun control might look like something like this, where victims attempt—with varying degrees of success—to sue the shit out of the people who make them.

"This case is about how gun control advocates are looking for new ways to impose restrictions," said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA. "They're not winning in Congress, so the courts provide another possible avenue."

Winkler added that this was precisely the strategy advocates employed in the 90s, before the PLCAA was passed, and that now people who want to sue gunmakers simply have to come up with more creative strategies. Since its passage just over a decade ago, the law has precluded seven suits against gun manufacturers, including Bushmaster, which was sued for selling the gun used by the so-called Beltway Sniper in 2002.

Cases have managed to get past the PLCAA only with major evidence of wrongdoing. In 2007, a case skirted the federal law only because an undercover sting operation revealed a defendant knowingly sold guns to criminals. Last year, a jury found a Wisconsin dealer and its owner liable for the shooting of two police officers after testimony revealed how shoddy their screening practices were. But the Sandy Hook suit is the first ever to challenge the PLCAA by making this specific argument––that Bushmaster is selling guns that couldn't reasonably be used hunting or protecting and are instead designed to let people live out Call of Duty fantasies.

In the original civil complaint, attorney Joshua Koskoff told the history of the gun Lanza used in the massacre. He wrote that the weapon was developed after World War II specifically to mow down as many people as possible and that it was not "dependent on good aim or ideal combat conditions." In fact, it was apparently so effective that five men equipped with the weapon were as lethal as 11 with a less deadly one. Off the battlefield and in the hands of a mentally disturbed individual, it was used by Lanza to kill a score of people in less than five minutes.

Bushmaster did not return requests for comment or respond to a question about whether it plans to change marketing strategies in response to the suit. The company's website, however, is currently under construction, and the gun Lanza used is not listed in the 2016 catalog. Winkler suspects the company will file another motion to dismiss, and will likely succeed. "I think it's an extremely hard case to win for the plaintiffs, and yesterday's ruling does not suggest otherwise," he told me Friday.

Regardless of what happens in the Sandy Hook case, the mere fact that it's in court has brought gun control and the PLCAA to the forefront of the political conversation. After the ruling, 2016 Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton quickly said in a a statement that she would repeal the PLCAA as president, and called the ruling an "important step forward." Her lefty rival Bernie Sanders, who very recently suggested to the Daily News that he thought the case should be dismissed, appeared to retract that controversial opinion at Thursday night's presidential debate.

"I think that the federal law granting immunity to gunmakers has become a hot button political issue," Winkler, the law professor, told me. "However, the prospects for appeal are not very promising right now with the Republicans controlling the House. As long as they do so, laws that regulate guns or impose more liability on gun makers are going to be very difficult to get."

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Pennsylvania legalizes medical marijuana. Photo via Flickr user Brett Levin.

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

US News

Pennsylvania Legalizes Medical Marijuana
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has signed a bipartisan bill into law legalizing medical marijuana in his state. Patients will be allowed to cross state lines to access the drug until Pennsylvania's program is fully implemented, which is expected to be 18 to 24 months from now. —ABC News

Obama Takes Immigration Deportation Plan to Supreme Court
President Obama's legal team will appear in the Supreme Court today to defend a White House plan to protect 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. A challenge brought by Texas and 25 other states has so far halted Obama's plan by succeeding in the lower courts.—The Wall Street Journal

Republicans Rule Out Convention Changes
The Republican National Committee has ruled out any rule changes to party's 2016 convention. Despite repeated claims by frontrunner Donald Trump that the process is "rigged," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has halted efforts to reform the rules. Any changes now would be "too complicated," he said. —TIME

Ash Carter in Iraq to Talk Tougher Action on Islamic State
Defense Secretary Ash Carter has traveled to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi leaders on the best way to take Mosul back from Islamic State militants. A senior US official said assisting the Iraqis in Mosul could involve a "small number" of American forces, including troops on the ground. —The New York Times

International News

Ecuador Earthquake: Death Toll Rises to 272
At least 272 people are confirmed dead and more than 2,000 injured after Saturday's massive, magnitude 7.8 earthquake in northern Ecuador. Around 13,500 troops and police officers are being deployed as rescuers continue to pull survivors from the rubble. —Reuters

World's Biggest Oil Producers Fail to Agree Deal to Freeze Output
The world's biggest oil-producing nations have failed to reach a deal on freezing daily production to help sustain a price recovery. The meeting in Doha ran into problems after the world's largest exporter of oil, Saudi Arabia, demanded that Iran join an agreement to freeze output. Talks will continue until the next Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting in June. —Al Jazeera

Japan Earthquake: 250,000 Told to Leave Homes
Almost 250,000 people have been told to leave their homes amid fears of further small quakes in Japan. At least 110,000 people have been displaced by last week's magnitude-7.3 earthquake, and the country's meteorological agency has warned more tremors are likely in the days ahead.—BBC News

Brazil's President Loses Impeachment Vote
Brazil's lower house has voted to begin impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, who is accused of manipulating government accounts. The process now moves to the upper house. Rousseff is expected to be suspended next month while an impeachment trial is carried out. —CNN

George Clooney, who says big money in politics is 'obscene'. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp Appear in Court Video Over Dog Smuggling
Actress Amber Heard has been fined $770 for illegally smuggling her dogs into Australia. A bizarre video in which Heard and her husband, Johnny Depp, apologize and advise travelers to respect Australian laws was shown in court. —The Guardian

Clooney Admits Clinton Money Is 'Obscene'
George Clooney has said the amount of money raised at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser he hosted was "obscene." The actor said: "It's ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics." Tickets for the event cost $33,400. —The Huffington Post

Drone Hits British Airways Plane
A British Airways flight approaching Heathrow Airport on Sunday struck an object believed to be a drone. The Airbus A320 landed safely and was not damaged. It is believed to be the first clash of its kind in the UK.—Sky News

Finnish Far Right Group Forms Canadian Branches
A notorious far-right anti-immigration group from Finland called Soldiers of Odin has formed cells in Canada. According to the charter of the Ontario group, it wants to "take back our streets, provinces, and country." —VICE

Done with reading today? Watch out new video 'Filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier Talks Punks, Neo-Nazis, and His Thriller 'Green Room''

Some damn dirty disease via Wikimedia

Read: This Georgia Bro Was Detained After Spraying a Woman in the Face with 'Liquid Ass'

Bad news, rubber-less shaggers: There's a new strain of super gonorrhea afoot in Britain, and it's heading your way.

As it's evolved, this strain of the sexually transmitted disease informally known as "the clap" has become resistant to the drugs previously used to combat it. Following an outbreak of this super gonorrhea in the north of England at the end of last year, there are now fears it's spreading across the country, with cases popping up in the West Midlands and the South East, according to Public Health England (PHE).

While the term "super gonorrhea" might, at surface level, sound quite funny, there's a much darker side to this story. The drug-resistant STD is indicative of other bacterias becoming resistant to treatment—a problem that Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies says is as bad as the threat of terrorism. George Osborne also warns that antibiotic-resistant diseases could be the biggest killer in the world in 30 years. Gonorrhea can also damage the womb to the point of infertility, which is obviously very worrying when it comes to these increasingly untreatable strains.

The drugs used to treat the disease, a jab of ceftriaxone and a pill of azithromycin, are losing ground to the STD, with the former now the only one that still works.

Away from the whole super-strain news, the number of people in the UK diagnosed with gonorrhea has more than doubled in the past few years, making it second only to chlamydia as the top sex disease of choice. And it's not only the clap that's on the rise; reported cases of syphilis rose by 63 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to PHE.

This spike is supposedly down to the number of unprotected sexual encounters between heathens. So, moral of the story: If you don't want diseased genitalia—and you presumably don't—then wrap it up before you use it.

Kezia Dugdale, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, who recently revealed she has a female partner. Photo by David Chaskin / PA Wire / Press Association Images

When Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, revealed this month that she was in a relationship with a woman, a nation shrugged its shoulders.

Where once a politician's sexuality would have been considered by some to be fair game for speculation and ridicule, Scotland in 2016 has grown up and moved on. These days, Scots largely support equality for LGBT people, and they're more concerned with the big issues of tax, social services, and the prospect of a post-Brexit independence referendum than with the private lives of elected officials.

But while Dugdale's coming out might not have sparked much of a reaction among voters, it marks a symbolic moment for Scotland. With the Scottish Conservatives headed by lesbian Ruth Davidson, the Greens by bisexual co-convenor Patrick Harvie, and the UK Independence Party by gay MEP David Coburn, the majority of the country's mainstream political parties now have openly LGBT leaders.

With attitudes toward same-sex relationships becoming more liberal in much of the world, it's easy to underestimate just how much of a seismic shift this represents. Scotland has traditionally lagged behind the rest of the UK when it comes to LGBT rights, a hangover from centuries of religiously sanctioned intolerance and from a narrow definition of gender that had no place for anything outside accepted, straight norms. Same-sex sexual activity was only officially legalized in the country in 1980, more than a decade after limited legal protections were introduced in England and Wales.

Nowadays, Scotland boasts same-sex marriage, passed by an overwhelming majority in the Scottish parliament in 2014. It's worked alongside the rest of the UK to combat discrimination. The opening ceremony of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games even saw Captain Jack from Torchwood kissing a dude in front of an estimated worldwide television audience of a billion. In 2015, a study by human rights organization ILGA named Scotland as the best country in Europe to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

But changing laws and attitudes hasn't been easy. As recently as the year 2000, Scotland was gripped in a venomous debate over Clause 2A—the Scottish equivalent of the infamous Section 28, which forbade positive portrayals of same-sex relationships in schools. The newly established devolved Scottish parliament mounted an effort to overturn the law, and while it succeeded, it sparked a bitter reaction from opponents, who claimed that exposure to "gay propaganda" would endanger the nation's children.

The "Keep the Clause" campaign saw Scotland plastered with billboards warning of the grievous harm that could come from presenting LGBT people as normal human beings. The Daily Record—then the country's best-selling newspaper—backed their stance, running blaring front page headlines warning of "gay sex lessons" in schools. Businessman Brian Souter, the tycoon behind the Stagecoach transport empire, contributed a reported $1.4 million to the cause.

"Keep the Clause" campaigners insisted they weren't homophobic, arguing that they were defending family values and religious beliefs in the face of a godless, politically correct assault. But their effect on Scotland's LGBT population was immense. The campaign may have avoided openly bigoted language, but its underlying message was clear: Same-sex relationships were morally inferior to straight ones. Gay, bi, and lesbian couples didn't deserve a family life. Queerness was something to be kept firmly behind closed doors.

As a 15-year-old bisexual, I heard all of this loud and clear. Every morning on my way to school, I'd pass one of the seemingly omnipresent billboards, and at a time when I was just starting to understand my sexuality, it filled me with shame, fear, and self-revulsion. I lived in terror of having my orientation exposed. I broke off relationships for fear of discovery. Shamefully, when my classmates cracked jokes about dykes and poofters, I joined in out of fear of arousing suspicion.

I wasn't alone in being affected by this toxic atmosphere. LGBT support groups reported a rise in calls from distressed or even suicidal people as the rhetoric about "protecting children" served as the worst kind of dog whistle to Scotland's homophobes.

Looking back now, it's hard to believe how much progress the country has made in just over 15 years. How did we come from such division and hostility to a point where Scotland is recognized as one of the safest and most accepting places on the planet? Where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon herself helped one gay man pop the question to his boyfriend?

Related: Watch 'Rise of the Right'

Part of it is undoubtedly down to political changes. From the repeal of Clause 2A to the establishment of same-sex marriage and plans to ensure that transgender people have their identities legally recognized, a majority of MSPs from across the political spectrum have made it clear that they favor equality and are willing to take some flak to achieve it (with the notable exception of UKIP's David Coburn, who despite being gay himself, opposed same-sex marriage and dismissed campaigners for it as "equality Nazis".)

There's also the declining influence of religion in Scottish society; 52 percent of Scots now say they aren't religious, according to the most recent Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, and two thirds of those who are say they never or almost never attend services. While it would be wrong to suggest that all religious people are hostile towards LGBT rights, churches have been among the most outspoken voices in the debate, and those that preach the immorality of same-sex relationships are doing it to ever-dwindling congregations.

But if you ask me, the real heroes in the story are Scotland's LGBT people themselves. Not just the activists and firebrands who organized campaigns, marches and petitions, but the ordinary folks who've had the courage and the confidence to live openly and show that their relationships are no different from straight ones. It's because of them that when one of the country's highest-profile women came out, no one particularly gave a shit.

And that's a quietly beautiful thing.

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Photo via Flickr user Andrea

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps.

At this point, most liberally minded people believe that sexual orientation isn't a choice—from Lady Gaga to the US Supreme Court, the dominant belief is that you are born with your sexuality. But there are still some people on both sides of LGBT issues who believe that homosexuality is a choice. Feminist writer Julie Bindel has argued that some people choose to be gay, while many Republican presidential candidates in the US, as well as some Tory politicians in the UK, argue the same, as a way to deny gay people rights.

So let's just imagine for a moment that this unlikely grouping of radical feminists and homophobes were right. Would anyone choose to be gay? To live a life subject to discrimination and bullying and, in some countries, even violence? Would anyone choose to risk being rejected by his or her own family? Gay and lesbian teens are four times more likely to commit suicide than straight kids. Eating disorders, loneliness, substance abuse, and depression are still pervasive among LGBT youth worldwide. Who would want that kind of life?

And aside from issues of discrimination, being gay is just more difficult. Even for young, gay people—myself included—who were lucky enough to grow up in a liberal environment, we still live in a world that's been tailored to heterosexuals. Outside of explicitly gay events and the usual apps, it's much harder to meet people. Often people assume you're straight, or pigeonhole you as the gay one in a group of friends.

For me, the hypothetical choice to become straight would be logical. I'm not saying that because I secretly hate myself—I'm really happy to be gay (these days). However, being straight would make things much easier. If it was up to me, I'd prefer to lead a life that includes the option of marrying my partner.

I asked some other gay men if they would rather be gay or straight.

Michael, 23

I talked about this once with a friend, who said he would get the injection that made you straight if it existed. I think if I had the choice, I wouldn't really want to be straight. It would definitely be exciting to try it out for a week, but I think I would get bored quite fast. I think there is a reason for everything, and if I'd been straight from the beginning, I may have had an easier childhood but also no sense of humor—or wouldn't be able to take criticism as well today. But who can even say that!

Aside from all that, as mundane as it sounds, I enjoy a lot of aspects of "gay" culture—movies like Priscilla and Queen of the Desert or trashy pop. And I think I would lose all of that if I were straight.

Thomas, 21

There was a time when I would have answered this question with a definitive "yes"—especially when I was going through puberty. But now it's not like that. I'm happy to live in the 21st century and to contribute a little to making the world a better place by showing that there is a variety of ways to express love. Even if we're only at the beginning of this revolution.

Alan, 50

That's an exciting question—because it cuts both ways. It's not a really fair question either. Everyone wants to be accepted the way he or she is—accepted, desired, loved. Most people interpret this question as "Would you rather be normal?" I like who I am and wouldn't want to change that. At the same time, I would like it if the world just accepted me the way I am.

Benjamin, 25

If I were younger, I'd be saying "yes." Back then, I was a little worried about how my life would turn out. When you grow up in the countryside, you aren't presented with many alternative lifestyles. But that all changed pretty quickly, especially after I spent some time in London, where it isn't a problem at all. I've now realized there is a bunch of positive things that come with being gay. Gay networking, for instance, is a thing. So I'm pretty satisfied with the way things are. And who knows what the future will bring—maybe I'll get pregnant.

Robert, 26

Being straight would be a downgrade for me. But life is probably hard for everyone, no matter sexual preferences. Feelings have to do with chemistry, and they all come from the same elements on the periodic table.

Lukas, 25

I would only rather be straight in situations where being gay just complicates things. I haven't been in that kind of situation yet. But if you're like me and want to have a conservative, tranquil life and want to start a family, then being gay can make that pretty hard.

Steve, 21

The X-Men question! No, I wouldn't want the "cure." I'm happy that I'm gay. And yeah, I'm sure it makes my life harder sometimes but whose life isn't? Even if everyone were straight, we would still find ways to discriminate against one another. You can't always be trying to fit into the mainstream. Where would it end? I think I'd rather stick to my otherness. In the end, it made me who I am.

The fact that most of the people I asked would still choose to be gay obviously makes me glad. It also makes me feel guilty for thinking I'd personally prefer to be straight just so I could have a more stereotypical life. Feeling this way is not something I'm proud of. If I really could decide for myself, if it were actually a choice, then I would like to live in a world where I wouldn't even have to consider if I wanted to be myself or not.

Image by author

"I feel my selfhood to be discrete from this body. It's not inherently me, it's just a vehicle I'm operating. Plus, what does it mean to be human, anyway?"

Riviera identifies as a dragon. He decided this 15 years ago after having what he describes as prophetic dreams of a past life. As an otherkin he is one of the hundreds of Australians that identify as another species—whether from earth or myth.

Sitting on the grass outside the University of Melbourne, Riviera shows me a large handmade magpie head. "I feel like there is a mix up between otherkins and furries in the media," he says. "For many otherkin, it's a quiet spiritual background to their lives, and not something that they can ever switch off." He puts on an elaborate headdress, explaining that making and wearing costumes is a central part of acting out of his identity. Meditation, ritual dance, lucid dreaming, and trance work also factor in.

Riviera makes costumes to express his identity

"My pagan beliefs and worldview is definitely tied up in my otherkin identity," he explains. "I believe our reality can be described using Plato's allegory of the cave: we're prisoners of our own flesh, our ability to perceive reality is flawed and incomplete because it has to be filtered through our meat."

Eric, who identifies as a werewolf, tells me that most otherkin represented in the media are extreme compared to the rest of the community. "They use it as a way of acting out or gaining attention," he says. "I mean most of them I wouldn't even consider to be otherkin, they don't really understand the definitions."

He believes around half of otherkins identify because of spiritual reasons, while for the others it's neurological. "By neurological reasons, I mean that it is an identity that is hard-wired into the brain from birth."

"I was never a normal child, per se. I used to insist I was a dog to my parents when I was younger," Eric explains. This went on until he was around ten, and realized his friends didn't feel the same way about their bodies as he did. "I was having a casual conversation with a friend about feeling body parts that weren't there," he tells me. "I had no idea that most people didn't feel them. I looked into what could cause things like that and eventually stumbled across the term: otherkin."

One of the first questions people outside the community have when they learn about otherkins is whether they have sex with animals. Eric says this is an insulting presumption made against the trans species community, "it is disgusting and illegal." Riviera, who moderates an otherkin Facebook group, says that for him and many other otherkins the animal, sexual, and gender identity are three separate things. "Bestiality and zoophilia are treated with the same seriousness and abhorrence as wider society," he explains.

But something that is common within the otherkin community are struggles with mental health. "A lot of otherkin who don't struggle with mental illness are older and usually have well established identities by this point. They're aware of who they are and don't necessarily have to talk about it online anymore."

Seventeen-year-old Miranda uses art to work through her identity. Image supplied

This is true for 17-year-old Miranda, who is a member of Riviera's Facebook group and identifies as a dog. "I'm constantly thinking about . Most animals share common features, making it harder for me to see who I really am," she says. "As I learn and experience more, I am hoping I will find clarity to my true self."

The debate between transgenderism and otherkin is one area Miranda would like to see evolve. "It seems that many people of the transgender community think that otherkin is a mock version of transgenderism and are very hateful of it," she says. "This is not the case for us of course, as many of us are in the LGBT+ community."

Riviera, who is both otherkin and transgender, says the "raging debate where people think that otherkin are appropriating transgenderism is something that I find a little bit frustrating being trans myself.

"When much of the world is actively hostile, if not outright murderous towards you, it stops mattering if someone is suicide baiting you for being trans or for being otherkin—the result is the same."

Riviera in a different outfit, showing us his magpie head

Riviera says the biggest misconception about the trans species community is that they aren't oppressed. But bullying and harassment are all too common. "The constant barrage of hate mail from the internet, all the time, gets very wearying," Riveria says. After 15 years in the community, he hopes the world will become more open minded about how people want to identify themselves.

"The other big misconception is that it is a cult, delusion, or something that is really harmful," Riviera says. "It's not a choice. I don't know how people can claim it's some sort of fantasy.

"For most people it's just a part of their personal exploration of their identity."

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It's been a busy day for Greenpeace's climbing wing. This morning, activists scaled some of London's most iconic statues and attached "air pollution masks" to their faces. Recipients included Nelson, of Nelson's Column fame, as well as Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill, and Boadicea.

The aim was to bring visibility to what tends to be an invisible problem: air pollution. And it did. But, of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions. What was the view like up there? Is someone going to take the masks down, or will London's monuments be defaced forever? Where do you buy a mask that fits Oliver Cromwell's giant bronze face?

Inevitably, many of the climbers involved are now in police custody. But the man who masked Eros on London's Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain ran free and into my arms. His name is Paul Morozzo, and this is what he had to say.

VICE: Why did you put a pollution mask on Eros today?
Paul Morozzo: We wanted to put pollution masks on a whole range of statues around London, and Eros is one of the better-known statues in London. What we're trying to do is make what is an invisible problem visible in interesting ways. We thought it would be nice to put masks on these iconic statues as way of drawing attention to the huge problem that is air pollution in London.

What's going on with the air?
We have a huge problem with NOx (nitrogen oxide) emissions in particular. Roughly 9,500 people a year are dying early because of air pollution. It's affecting lung development in thousands of children. Mainly, the problem is diesel and petrol cars and vans. Mainly diesel. But there's also a problem with buses and taxis. It's one of these problems that is extra tragic because the solutions are to hand. You'd have to be brave, but it wouldn't be massively difficult to solve these problems. We're calling for a clean air zone for London. At the moment, Boris Johnson has put forward a proposal for an ultra-low emission zone, but that only covers the area of the congestion zone, which is a very small area in central London. So we're calling for a clean air zone to cover a much larger area of London to be brought in sooner than 2020. We're saying at least by 2019, and we need it to be stricter, to protect the lungs of most Londoners—not just a few of them.

How many activists were involved in the protest?
Something like 30.

And it got some press attention.
Yeah, it's definitely had a bit of media coverage, which is great. But the next thing is that we want the next mayor to consult on a much expanded, cleaner air zone within the first 100 days of their office. We just think, 9,500 people a year—that's a lot of people. Although it's a problem countrywide, air pollution in London is the worst in the country. And of the 30,000 annual deaths, nearly a third of them are in London, despite the fact that only a sixth of the population is in London—so it's a very serious problem. It's a kind of health emergency. So it's incumbent on the new mayor to do something about it.

Some people are pissed off because the emergency services had to stand on "please don't fall and die" duty while Greenpeace activists scaled Nelson's Column. They could have been attending some real emergencies. What do you have to say to those people?
Well, we make it absolutely clear that we are self-sufficient and we don't need the ambulance services to be around. And that, if we needed to, we'd call them. But there's absolutely no need for them to be there. I think the way the ambulance service works is if they get a call for something serious, they go and deal with it. They don't just stand around when they're needed somewhere else. So I don't think that's really the issue. As for the police, again, if something serious comes up, they're gonna deal with it. There's no suggestion that somehow they're being diverted from other things because, if they get the call, they go and deal with those other things. You know, if it was really serious, we would just come down so they could go and do it—like if something terrible happened.

So how would you come down from Nelson's Column? Were there ways to communicate with climbers?
Yeah, we had radio contact and phone contact with them.

Are you a trained climber?
Yeah. Obviously anyone who works at heights for Greenpeace has to be trained, because obviously we've got a very strong safety protocol. We're not gonna put anyone in danger, so everyone's who works at height is trained, yeah.

Did you have to get the air pollution mask custom made for Eros?
We commissioned an artist called Chris Kelly to make each mask individually. And each mask spoke to the character of the statue. So, for example, the Eros mask had two hearts daubed into it. The Nelson mask had Nelson's medal, as well as one of the filters. The Churchill mask had a kind of radio speaker and a bobble hat as part of the mask. So if you look at the photos, you'll see that each mask is slightly different. We wanted it, one: to speak to the character of the statues, and two: to be a little bit more interesting. You know the more thoughtful you are, the more you can speak to the issue in a kind of profound way.

Some of your colleagues are in police custody at the moment—do you have any idea what's happening to them?
Well, they'll be released later in the day. And then they'll either be charged or set free completely. And if they get charged, they'll have to return to court in a few weeks.

The idea of potentially getting charged doesn't put you off campaigning?
Yeah, that's right. You know when an issue's as serious as air pollution, when the solutions are as to hand as they are, we want to create change, and sometimes you just have to face a few consequences if you wanna choose that.

Have Greenpeace activists got any more actions lined up?
Yep, we definitely have, but as you can imagine, I probably wouldn't go into that. We have got a lot more stuff planned for sure.

What would you say to kids who are thinking about climbing Nelson's Column?
Come and get involved with the Greenpeace climb team. But I would say it's definitely not something to do on spec. I think if people are concerned abut air pollution, they should put pressure on the mayor to implement a clean air zone and they should get involved in the debate. Under EU law, you're allowed to have a certain amount of air pollution each year. You have a kind of annual allowance. But London broke its annual allowance, I think, in the first two weeks of January. Not the whole of London, but just parts of London. So you can tell how serious it is. That's an important statistic.

Judges eyeing off the contestants. All images by author

Ten minutes after turning up to the local qualifier for the Miss World competition in South Australia, I'm bored.

The event marks the first time South Australia has held a Miss World beauty pageant: a competition that bills itself as one of the classier pageants in that its contestants compete based on intelligence and personality, as well as their looks. Its tagline is "beauty with a purpose."

Me in an intimate selfie

So, for that reason, there was a chance the whole thing could be vaguely interesting. Sure it wouldn't be on the same scale as the international final that was once upon a time capable of sparking riots in Nigeria. That was protested by feminists rightfully angry at the idea of women being paraded like cattle. But, at the very least, South Australia's attempt may have been a way to learn more about gender relations.

Gathered inside on a Friday afternoon are the local beautiful people. The vibe is the same light and fluffy hometown feel you get from any regional charity event, only a bit more up-market. Outside, the guys serving the wine that sponsored the event make small talk about how gorgeous the venue is. And it is, especially compared to rival pageants like Miss Universe, which run their qualifiers out in suburban shopping centers.

The models introduced themselves and took on some hard questions

The show begins as the host takes the stage. Sixteen women dressed in evening wear appear on the catwalk one-by-one, introducing a fact about themselves. "Big smile," the emcee says as another woman steps onto the catwalk, "Everyone's happy to be here."

Ever since Miss World founder Eric Morley died in 2000 and his wife Julia took charge, she's done her best to strip the overt sexism out of the competition and adapt it to the new millennium. Today, the pageant is supposed to be all about "beauty with a purpose." It sends its hopefuls down a catwalk wearing evening dresses, not bikinis.

The judges. Interestingly the fashion industry is probably the last to move away from Thinkpads

It doesn't matter whether it's the international final, or the lowest regional qualifier, the idea is the audience is supposed to get to know these women. But it can be a little hard in such a highly scripted, hour-long event. Each woman takes ten steps down a catwalk to share no more than her 50 word bio. Later she'll answer a single question to find out what she thinks of the world.

And it doesn't take long before the famed Q&A section of the competition, where the questions are drawn at random. Some are soft, others are hard. One woman is asked where she would like to travel in the world. She answers Brazil. That's it. Another woman is asked it should be compulsory to vaccinate children. She hedges her bets with a definite maybe, or maybe not. Some people have allergies, she says.

The most interesting answer comes from a woman who is asked what challenges modern women are faced with. "Having to live up to the visions men have of us," she says. She goes on to say that those ideas need to be thrown off. It's the closest the audience of well-dressed, thoroughly attractive people get to hearing the word "feminism" that afternoon.

The girls get thanked at the end

There was a time when Miss World was controversial. Two decades before the first wet t-shirt contest was held, Eric Morley organized a swimsuit competition back in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain and a Swedish woman named Kirsten Håkansson won. She was crowned Miss World in a bikini and the whole scene was enough to freak out religious people the world over, up to and including the Pope.

The idea of judging a woman based on her beauty naturally pissed off a lot of other women. Their protests of the international final peaked in 1970, the same year a black woman won for the first time. Feminists disrupted the show and its host Bob Hope as he asked women to spin around during the bikini round, so the judges could get a full, 360-degree view.

Everyone spent the day smiling at cameras

Although the occasional protest still gets held, like at the international final in 2011 which marked the competition's 60^th anniversary, anyone who talks about objectification or sexism these days gets to hear how the whole thing is done for charity. Miss World raised an impressive $600 million internationally for children's charities since it started, according to the press release. South Australia's show was raising money for children's charity Variety.

But no matter how much Miss World says it is adapting and stripping out the overt sexism, it cannot escape the fact that a beauty pageant is, in essence, an elaborate public fuckability contest. It's a point hard that's hard to ignore when the day's two finalists do nothing to challenge the traditional sense of what is good looking.

As I leave, I'm left wondering how Miss World and other beauty pageants like it continue to exist at all. Why bother? In a world where instant access to Tinder, YouPorn, and even Google Images at least feels honest, turning up for a Miss World contest is like being in the live audience of The Bachelor: inherently creepy, and mild to the point of banality.

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Siu Hun Li (fake Mao), Stephen Hoo (Fake Mao), and Rebecca Boey (Fake Moa) in 'The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie'. Photo by Nobby Clark

Mao Zedong has become a symbol of revolutionary culture, but his legacy is tainted by the deaths of tens of millions of people that occurred during his 27-year leadership. He's been described as both the "Founding Father of modern China" and "one of the greatest tyrants of the 20th century." It's a big topic for a historian—let alone a playwright.

But if anyone can bring the Chinese Revolution to life it's Anders Lustgarten, an activist playwright with a background in Chinese politics, recently hailed by the Guardian as Britain's "most internationally minded dramatist." His epic new play, 'The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie', spans more than half a century and sets out to ask what will happen when the hope for capitalism dies the way it did for Maoism.

I caught up with Anders to find out why he thinks it's important to put the story of modern China on a British stage.

VICE: Why did you decide to write a play about the Chinese Revolution?
Anders Lustgarten: Basically, I'd always planned to write this play but I didn't know how to write plays until about six or seven years ago. My PhD was on the Chinese transition from communism to capitalism. So if I'd finished the PhD—which I sort of didn't—then this play would be my PhD in dramatic form. When I started writing it, China was seen as this unstoppable conquering force and now we see it experiencing a significant economic slowdown. The effect that's having is that there's a huge political crackdown.

The play is fundamentally about the nature of revolution and the nature of social change. The Maoist revolution is interesting because it was—unlike, say, the Russian Revolution—an entirely grassroots-up mass movement. It's something that the people very much did themselves. And what makes it very powerful, and therefore quite tragic when it goes wrong, is that people really believed in it.

There have been several plays about China produced in the last few years. What sets yours apart?
I think this is probably the first play about China that's written with such an understanding of China. There have been a series of, in my opinion, quasi-racist plays about China, which have basically used the country as a backdrop for white people's self-discovery. I don't blame the writers for that—I think it's a reflection of the position which China occupies in our culture and understanding of the world.

And then you have plays about China that have an overwhelmingly white cast, where predominantly the main stories that are being told are about white people. That's exploitation. If you want to tell a story about China then you should make damn sure you know about the subject. Still, it's telling that the kinds of plays that have been successful about China are fundamentally not about China.

Anders Lustgarten. Photo courtesy of Anders Lustgarten

How do you make sure British audiences can still relate?
China is interesting because it bears so many parallels to the UK. That sort of transition into an extreme communist Maoist society—and a society unlike a lot of communist societies where the people really believe it and it came up from the grassroots—into a society in which people are highly consumerist and capitalist. The closest parallel to that in the west is certainly Britain. If you look at us in the 1970s, we were essentially a state socialist society. And now the country is run by a tiny elite of parasitic thieves who steal our money and hide it in Panama.

So is the play also trying to hold up mirror up to British society?
Absolutely. I think you always end up referring back to yourself, just in a sense of your common frames of reference.

The reason I think this is quite a radical play is that there are all these pieces of propaganda about how Mao was a murderer, and that put Mao in the same category as Stalin and people like that. Now, I'm not here to redeem the reputation of Mao, but I do care about large numbers of people having agency and being respected. And the reason I think this propaganda is pumped out is because elites around the world are terrified of the prospect of grassroots action. They're terrified of it in China, and they're terrified of it here. They want to believe that any grassroots bottom-up mass movement has to end in violence and that the guy in charge—and it's always a guy in charge—is a sociopath. And that is just fundamentally incorrect.

What's deficient in modern politics is the ability to tell a good story about who we are and who we can be that isn't fundamentally passive, depressing, and worthless.

You're an activist as well as a playwright. What do you think theater can do that activism can't?
It's storytelling, isn't it. If you look at what's deficient in modern politics—although Corbyn is bringing it back in—it's the ability to tell a good story about who we are and who we can be that isn't fundamentally passive, depressing, and worthless. The basic story of neoliberalism is, "You are scum, you are worthless, you will take the crumbs from our table and you will beg for them, and there's nothing else you can do." That's the basic story of what every cunt who's been in power since 1979 has tried to ram down our throats. And every one of those cunts is getting their comeuppance now. And that is the story we have to fight back from.

There are very few stories about what we can do for ourselves. But if you go into a theater, there's a strange microcosm of a good society in there. Everybody participates at some level or other; everybody engages; you are part of it. So there's something in the immediacy of theater and in the natural empathy with living human beings in front of you onstage that I think is really important. And the skill is in telling a story that doesn't just become Maoist propaganda or whatever.

When you write, do you always have a political agenda you want to push?
I try not to do that. Basically, as a playwright, I'm a headhunter. What I do is find something that needs to be said and I just fucking go at it. There are ways and means of doing that, but the skill and technique is how you go at it without allowing the audience to defend themselves. And people tend to have a much more effective array of defenses intellectually than they do emotionally.

I think, if you're doing political plays, you need to have something in the play that interrogates or blocks your own political view. The characters in my plays often find themselves revolving around intermediaries—they're not necessarily the people who are completely fucked over, and not the people doing the fucking, but they're kind of the people who clear up the shit of the rich. I think it's quite fruitful to get a lens into the world you want to depict through the natural antagonism between that person and the story you're telling.

The cast of 'The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie'. Photo by Nobby Clark

You've spent a lot of time in China. Did any of the people you meet inspire some of the stories in the play?
Yes, the play is close to home because I know the place. I've spent a lot of time around these people. There's predominantly female characters in the play. People have this nauseating belief that Chinese women are just sort of quiet and shy and all that fucking nonsense. Chinese women are feisty, man. And Chinese peasants—they don't take any shit at all. So it's quite a feminist play.

Why should we come and see The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie?
Because it's not like anything else out there. It's a proper story about a proper country you probably don't know a whole lot about. And it's hilarious. It's got fake Maos in it. Who doesn't want to see a Mao impersonator competition?

'The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie' runs at the Arcola Theatre until April 30 and transfers to the High Tide Festival in September.

Anders Lustgarten will appear in a post-show Q&A with Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism on the April 19.

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An activist clutching a suitcase stuffed with fake money demands greater transparency in new legislation following the ongoing Panama Papers affair on April 13 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

When I first caught wind of the Panama Papers a couple weeks back, I immediately recalled a conversation I had about six years ago with Bernard Madoff, ponzi schemer extraordinaire. We were walking the track at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) 1 in Butner, North Carolina, and he told me, "Anyone who is anyone has a good accountant who sets him up a shell corporation and stashes his money in an offshore account. And why shouldn't they? It's perfectly legal."

The leaked documents known as the Panama Papers came to light after internal records at Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, were hacked and disclosed to the world. In a nutshell, the unprecedented release—one fugitive Edward Snowden called "the biggest document leak in the history of data journalism"—exposes how the firm helped establish secret shell companies and offshore accounts for global power players, including alleged associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, politicians from dozens of countries, and hundreds of wealthy Americans, some of whom have been accused or even convicted by US authorities of financial crimes.

One wealthy American named in the Panama Papers is Benjamin Wey, a Wall Street financier who was charged in September with securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

"I met Ben," federal inmate Russell Wasendorf told me the other day. "We met in New York and discussed corporate restructuring of my company's operation in China, but that's as far as our conversation went." Because Wey is under federal indictment, Wasendorf feels it would be inappropriate to further comment.

The former CEO of Peregrine Financial Group, Wasendorf pleaded guilty in 2012 to a host of federal crimes involving white-collar offenses and received a 50-year sentence. We're both housed at the medium-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and spoke about the Panama Papers on a recent Sunday morning inside the prison's leisure library.

According to Wasendorf, what's most noteworthy about the Panama Papers—at least so far—is how much of this stuff is legal. "While there may be some unseemly characters involved, and certainly more high-profile names are to come, the practice of setting up shell corporations to conceal peoples' identities is not, per se, illegal."

He explained how every country has its own unique corporate laws and regulations, as does each state in the US. "The vast majority of people who incorporate in this country do so in Delaware, Nevada, and Wyoming," he said. "If, for example. you are hoping to start a Fortune 500 company, then Delaware is your place. You obviously aren't worried about revealing your identity, the tax rate is fairly low, and corporate laws are favorable and well established."

If, of the other hand, you're looking to incorporate on the low, he continued, "Nevada and Wyoming are where people generally turn."

Art Schlichter also knows a thing or two about offshore corporations, but for another reason entirely. A former pro NFL quarterback, the man had a promising future until a gambling addiction turned him into a habitual white-collar criminal. Now serving a 127-month federal prison sentence for wire fraud, bank fraud, and filing false income tax returns, Schlichter said the ideal corporate structure for illegal gambling is to set up a shell corporation in Ireland, where you can register as a "consultant" for your corporation.

"That way if you win, you can turn your winnings into legitimate income by receiving a 'consultant fee' from your corporation that you can pay taxes on. I'll bet you'll see plenty of Irish corporations and 'consultants' listed in the Panama Papers," he added.

Indeed, several Irish "consulting" firms have been listed in the documents.

Wasendorf isn't surprised gamblers might use Ireland to clean money, as they have a low corporate tax rate, and the laws are very relaxed there. "But there's a much better place to form corporations for all of these reasons, and it's even better than Panama," he said.

In Cyprus, Wasendorf explained, you can set up a corporation where the shareholders are simply nominees of the real beneficiaries of the account. So any individual or group of people can incorporate in Cyprus, put whoever they want in their place, and instruct them according to their (the beneficiary's) best interest.

"When it comes down to it," he said, "the practice of forming tax-reduction or tax-avoidance corporations are far more pervasive in Europe than in the US because of the idiosyncrasies of the VAT taxes across Europe.

"Socialism may sound great politically," he added, "but often the wealthiest guys who advocate the loudest for it are the first ones who find loopholes to hide their money. They set up tax shelters in places like Panama."

"Maliki" Harris is another white-collar convict serving time at Terre Haute. Educated in finance and serving as a student-teacher in the prison, he told me that the Panama Papers will ultimately change nothing because countries around the world would have to unite and establish regulations across the board, and that simply won't happen.

"What I find most interesting is how the media is focusing on a law firm in Panama rather than accounting firms right here in the US," he told me. "Most tax evasion or avoidance schemes begin in accounting firms right here at home, and if the media was truly interested in informing citizens rather than cozying up with corruption to make their lives more comfortable, they'd start digging into US accounting firms."

Suddenly Bernie Madoff's comment about offshoring six years ago is starting to make a lot of sense.

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Stars, they're just like us: When they bring dogs into Australia without filling out the proper paperwork, they have to appear on camera to apologize to the country and remind everyone of the importance of biosecurity.

That's the strange position actress Amber Heard and her husband Johnny Depp found themselves in after a controversy that stemmed from Heard bringing a pair of dogs via a private jet to Australia last year without declaring them to authorities or putting them under quarantine—a big no-no as the country is serious about making sure foreign pests and pathogens stay outside their borders.

As the New York Times reported, this led to Australian officials telling the couple they'd have to get the dogs out of the country or they'd be killed (the dogs, not the actors). They got them out, but then publicly shit-talked Australia, kicking off a minor media circus that got dubbed the "War on Terrier" and involved Russell Brand at one point. But finally, in a conclusion that strongly resembles a plot point in that episode of The Simpsons where they go to Australia, Heard and Depp were pretty much let off scot-free, as long as they apologized.

That is the why of that above video, but the what is more difficult to explain. It kicks off with Heard calling Australia a "wonderful island"—kind of a backhanded compliment, no? and Depp refers to Australians as "warm and direct." He also says that "if you disrespect Australian law they will tell you firmly."

"Protecting Australia is important," Heard adds.

The words are all there, but something is strangely off about the whole thing, like the forced apology of a middle school kid who is mostly sorry that he got caught. For trained actors the couple doesn't seem to really be interested in emoting, reciting their lines in monotone. Depp tosses his head around, mumbles like a late-period Brando, and seems unable to sit still for longer than a few seconds. You get the sense that Heard, however muted, is giving it her best shot—when she says, "I am truly sorry that Pistol and Boo were not declared," it seems like she means it—but Depp seems impatient, bored of the hotel room or wherever they are, eager to get out of there so he can start production on Pirates of the Caribbean 8: People Still Like These Films, Right?

The video clip is weirdly mesmerizing in a way, maybe because it's that rare example of famous people stripped of all pretense—they're not performing on-screen roles, not even performing as their own public personas, they're just two people who fucked up and now have to deal with the consequences of it. The lighting is bad, the location (a hotel room?) is grubby, Depp's makeup is smeared—it's just a crappy vlog, basically, and the stars are no more interesting than your average suburban couple.

Depp has made millions from surreal roles as impossibly alluring outsiders, but here he's just a 52-year-old man who has to do something he doesn't want to because his wife didn't fill out a form. The couple never faced jail time or a major fine (though smuggling animals into Australia can be a serious crime), but they were forced to appear in a video that's an instant schadenfreude classic, a terrific example of the rich and beautiful being reduced to a pair of jerks who can't even fake contrition for 40 seconds.

If you are thinking about bringing your pets on an international vacation, even if you don't have a private jet you are probably a smart and fancy enough person to google laws about bringing animals across oceans and make sure you don't break them. Australia is a wonderful island.