Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

My friend Ernesto Barbieri turned out better than I thought he would. Ernesto is the friend who, growing up, got me into shitty over-the-counter truck-driver speed from 7-Eleven (the kind that's no longer legal). He's the friend I hooked up with in his parents' bed when we were both unsure as to whether he still had a girlfriend. Then one day the girlfriend just reappeared, and I was like "uh, OK." Mostly, Ernesto is the friend I drove everywhere, because he was an entitled little shit who didn't think he needed a driver's license. But for some reason I enjoyed driving him.

Then one day, Ernesto told me he was in nursing school. I was like, "How is this self-centered, cynical writer bro going to be a nurse?" But he did become a nurse, an ICU nurse who deals with dying people all the time, and he's been doing it for three and a half years. This is something that I, with my death anxiety, could never do. Or could I?

I asked my friend Ernesto some questions about existential anxiety, fear of death, and how surrounding oneself with the dying can affect one's brain.

VICE: What's your official job title?
Ernesto Barbieri: I'm an ICU nurse. I work mainly in cardiovascular intensive care, but sometimes I float to the medical ICU or to Trauma/Burn.

I would say ninety percent of our patients have entered the dying process. Often the decision is made to discontinue care, which means I become a kind of de facto hospice nurse, making the patient comfortable in his final moments. But we also see our share of acute events—sudden cardiac arrests, patients bleeding out after surgery, or going into weird arrhythmias. When this happens, all hell breaks loose—you're running around for the next ten hours hanging blood products and helping to put in breathing tubes and central lines.

What drew you to this particular type of nursing?
A desire to understand death and the dying process. Really, I got into nursing for selfish reasons. I wanted to be spiritually useful. I needed to challenge myself in a way that went beyond sitting alone in a room and churning out little ghost stories.

After working this job, would you say you think about death more, less, or about the same amount?
Definitely more. You can't see death every day and not have it bust a leak in your head somewhere.

It's weird because on the one hand, you become inured to it. Death is just another pain in the ass thing you deal with at work. You bury it in your brain—but then it pops up at random in your daily life. I'll drop my cellphone and be like, Oh shit, I have multiple sclerosis, or ALS. Last night, I was writing a blog post, and for thirty solid seconds, I could not think of the name of the guy who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He's one of my favorite writers, and I just could not produce his name. And I thought, That's it, early-onset Alzheimer's, you're fucked. Better write a will. Pretty soon you'll be pissing and shitting yourself.

Hunter S. Thompson is one of your favorite writers? That's, like, so Bukowski. Anyway, so it seems like you are still scared of death. Has your relationship with this fear changed at all since you started working this job?
I'm terrified of death. This idea that one day it all just STOPS, and everything you felt and believed and experienced is rendered irrelevant. Such an absurdity. And the greatest absurdity of all is that everyone who has ever lived has gone through it. This should give us some comfort, but it doesn't.

I know. It's so weird that we all are gonna do it. I think I'm more scared of dying than death itself. Do patients talk to you about their lives? Do they ever talk about regrets or things they wished for?
They talk to me about their pets. They're worried about who will take care of their pets. How sad is that?

That's fucking sad as fuck. What are some of the hardest things about your job?
Just the physicality of it. All the little ways I fail my patients because my body is breaking down. The first time I worked a twelve-hour shift, on my feet the whole time, and I realized I wasn't going to get a lunch break... I was like ready to cry. I was like, I'm a human being, I have needs! Also the mental fatigue. A few weeks ago, I walked onto my unit with my coffee, and there were a bunch of nurses in a room doing CPR—it was going to be my patient—and I just kept my head down and walked right past the room, into the locker room. I was like, I'm not clocked in yet, I'm not dealing with this shit. How terrible is that? A person is dying, and you're just like, This is another pain in the ass thing I'm going to have to deal with today. But you learn to forgive yourself for those thoughts.

Yeah, I guess you have to compartmentalize. Like, the fact that you go on a lunch break is even weird. How do you pick a sandwich when someone has just died in front of you? How do you swallow it? At the same time, though, I get the compartmentalization. Sometimes I feel the most chill when extreme chaos is going on around me, because I feel like the world has risen to meet the level of panic I always feel. So now I'm just normal. What are some of the best things about your job?
Being able to comfort a grieving family member, or helping to walk people through the dying process. Or even just making it so patients aren't scared—letting them know you're right outside, and they're not alone. The first time a family member told me I made a difference, or a patient hugged me after a long shift, it was actually shocking. These people leaning on me for support, as if I'm a person of substance.

I'm proud of you. You seem nicer and more grounded—like a fucking adult—since you started this job. Really, since you've been in nursing school. Do you think your job has changed your worldview or the way you live your life?
I used to be consumed by what my therapist calls "arbitrary imperatives." I'd be standing in a long line at the grocery store, and I'd be like, This is ridiculous. Why is the world not bending to my writing itinerary? Does the universe not know I have a pretend novel to write? Now I'm more like, You are in a position to buy food and have food, and that is a goddamn miracle. Don't push your luck, don't piss off the universe.

I really do believe the universe gets personally offended when we fixate on silly crap like book deals and glamour and money and youth, how much money is in our bank accounts, the kind of car we're driving at the moment. The universe is like, "There are plants growing out of the ground that you can EAT. There is air in your lungs, your blood is pumping, the Grand Canyon exists, and you want to waste your time fantasizing about some dumbass, theoretical book contract? Fuck you, you're not getting that."

I don't know that much about the universe, other than that I feel like I'm being judged by it as a piece of shit all the time. But I totally sense that shift in your relationship to arbitrary imperatives! Your therapist did a really good job. Is there a way you might want to die instead? Do you want to have control over your death in a euthanasia-type way?
I think I would want painkillers—lots of painkillers. I'd spend time with family and friends, make sure they know what they've meant to me, that I felt their love. Under no circumstances would I want a funeral. Honestly—and this is going to sound so messed up—I would probably find some little shack on a beach, wash some pills down with vodka, sit in my car with Buckethead playing and the engine running, and fall asleep while breathing in carbon monoxide. That is my preferred method of expiration.

Would you describe yourself as an anxious or depressed human being? Has this changed in any way since you started your job?
Depressed, I don't know. Most people would probably say I'm a pessimist. A lot of times, I come off that way, which is unfortunate. But I consider myself an optimist.

As you know, I started having panic attacks in nursing school, and it almost ruined my life. I was sitting in chemistry class, and suddenly I felt really BIG, like a giant, like I was too big for my chair, too big for the room. I ran out of class like a fucking weirdo. I went into the bathroom, splashed some water on my face and was like, Whoa, that was weird, but I'm OK now. Then I went back into class, and BOOM, I was a giant again, this lumbering, mutant giant. I left all my shit in class, got in my car, and drove off.

And then, of course, once you have that first panic attack, it's all over, because now you're afraid of the NEXT panic attack. Every situation, no matter how trifling, is an opportunity to embarrass yourself in public. It's such an incredibly vicious cycle, your mind just starts to cannibalize itself. For a long time, I genuinely believed I would never be cured of this problem, that I was impossible to fix. Panic attacks have robbed me of so much.

And yet, I've never once had a panic attack in the ICU. It's the only place I'm not susceptible to a panic attack, and it's literally the most stressful environment imaginable! It's a hornet's nest of anxiety. In that sense, nursing has given me a kind of serenity. When I feel myself getting anxious, I'm like, If you can bring a flatlining patient back from the dead, you can certainly handle riding a bus.

Still, I look at what you do, with your poetry readings, and I'm like, How the fuck is she not running off the stage? How are you not seized with the sudden urge to "escape"? But I think your poetry is like your ICU. I'm sure it causes you stress, but it's what you do. It's how you're spiritually useful. And I think your poetry really does help people—particularly your So Sad Today stuff. But then you'll be driving in your car, listening to the Smiths or whatever, a perfectly nice day, and you'll have a panic attack because you don't know what song to play next. How fucked up is that?

Yes! Not having a panic attack in the ICU is totally what I mean, like when there is chaos you sort of feel more comfortable, because the outside world matches your insides. Have your views of other human beings changed in any way since you started your job?
I think my opinion of people has generally changed for the better. There's this really timeworn nursing platitude that goes: "You see people at their absolute best, and their absolute worst." And I would agree with that.

But then, when you see them at their worst... it can be brutal. You'd be surprised how many family members are willing to let their loved ones languish in horrible agony, simply because they're not prepared to have a funeral. Doctors who just keep treating and treating a terminal illness, long past the point when doing so is reasonable or humane. We are so afraid of death. All of us.

You know, my ex-girlfriend died this Christmas. She was an addict. Before I was an RN, I was her own personal detox nurse. I can't tell you how many times she went through withdrawals on my couch. I spoon fed her. I bathed her. I cleaned up her vomit. We finally broke up when I found out she was using my nursing school needles to shoot up with. I'd find them on my windowsill, caked in dried blood and drug residue.

Eventually she was able to string together something like a year and a half of sobriety—that was its own miracle—before she relapsed in a gas station bathroom. And she lost everything. She took a risk, got high one more time on some bad dope, and lost everything. I kept imagining what her cadaver must have looked like—I've seen hundreds of cadavers—and it haunted me for weeks. For a while, I didn't want to eat because she couldn't eat; I couldn't listen to music because she couldn't listen to music. I went through the same shit everyone else goes through: denial, anger, bargaining, etc. Right in sequence.

What I'm saying is, no amount of exposure to death can prepare you to absorb the shock of it. We see these family members and we're like, Why can't they let go? But then someone close to us is dying, and we do the exact same thing.

Buy So Sad Today: Personal Essays on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter.

Donald Trump, who says he'll tackle extremism with military action. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

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

US News

Baltimore Cop Shoots Boy Holding a BB Gun
A Baltimore police officer shot a 13-year-old boy who was carrying an air-powered BB gun. The boy is in hospital, having suffered non-life-threatening injuries while running away from the officer. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the officer thought the boy had been carrying a semiautomatic pistol. —The Baltimore Sun

Trump Threatens 'Military Force' in Tackling Extremism
In a foreign policy speech light on substance, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said halting the spread of extremism "may require the use of military force." Trump pledged to work with allies in the Muslim world. "They must also be good to us and remember us and all we are doing for them." —CBS News

De Blasio Allies Subpoenaed Over Fundraising
Several of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's closest aides have been issued subpoenas over an investigation into the mayor's fundraising. Investigators are seeking documents related to fundraising the mayor undertook in 2014 to try to sway New York State Senate races in favor of Democrats. —The Wall Street Journal

New Law Says Therapists Can Refuse LGBT Clients in Tennessee
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has signed a bill into law allowing counselors and therapists to refuse clients based on their religious beliefs, including LGBT clients. "I should have the right to decide if my client's end goals don't match with my beliefs," said Haslam. —The Washington Post

International News

Air Strikes on Syrian Hospital Kills 16
At least 14 patients and three doctors have been killed in a Medecins sans Frontieres supported hospital in Aleppo. Local sources have blamed the Syrian government or Russian warplanes, but there has been no official comment. Violence has intensified in the area in the last few days, despite a partial truce. The upsurge is threatening to derail the UN-backed peace talks, which resumed last month. —BBC

Austria Passes Tough New Asylum Rules
Austria's parliament has passed tough new asylum laws, including a measure to turn migrants away directly at the border and declare a state of emergency at times of significant "irregular migration." The country has absorbed around 50,000 asylum seekers since September. —The Guardian

12 Detained Over Suicide Bomb Attack in Turkey
Turkish authorities have detained 12 people over a suicide bomb attack in the northwestern city of Bursa. Officials have yet to confirm who was behind the attack, in which eight people were wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up near Bursa's central mosque. —Reuters

North Korean Test Missile Crashes After Launch
North Korea test fired an intermediate range ballistic missile, but it crashed seconds after the launch, according to South Korea's defense ministry. The ministry believes it was a Musudan missile, the same type of rocket reported to have failed at a test launch earlier this month. —CNN

Beyoncé. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Beyoncé Honors Prince at Opening Show
Beyoncé kicked off her Formation world tour in Miami with a tribute to Prince. The stage turned violet as she sang "Purple Rain." She also dedicated "Halo" to him, saying, "God, thank you for speaking through this beautiful artist." —USA Today

Students Outraged at Racist Cartoons
Wesley College students have complained about racially offensive cartoons in student newspaper the Whetstone. One features a black woman in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt saying, "Would you look at the time... I'm late for my abortion." —The Huffington Post

Apple Employee Found Dead in Conference Room
A dead body was discovered in a conference room at Apple's HQ in Cupertino, California. Santa Clara County cops said there was no foul play involved, and it was up to the coroner to determine the cause of death. —VICE

Millennials Have Way Less Sex Than Their Parents
Recent studies show millennials are having less sex than Gen-Xers and even baby boomers did at their age. Higher levels of anxiety and depression have been blamed, along with the fact more young people today are still living with their parents.—VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'How American Men Are Redefining Masculinity'

Image via Flickr users Kevin Jarrett and Gage Skidmore

Read: Ted Cruz Once Fought to Keep Dildos Illegal in Texas

Ted Cruz may not have been the Zodiac killer, but it's no secret that he has a bad reputation for being a nasty guy who is an absolute nightmare to work with. Numerous work colleagues, as well as his college classmates, have talked about how the guy's an awful, terrible jerk.

Now, former Speaker of the House John Boehner has added to the long list of negative descriptors attached to Cruz, telling a group at Stanford University Wednesday that the Texas senator was "Lucifer in the flesh," according the Stanford Daily campus publication.

"I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone," Boehner began, "but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

The two politicians had a long tumultuous relationship. In the past, Boehner has called Cruz a "false prophet" and a "jackass." Cruz returned fire by calling Boehner a sell out for cutting deals with Nancy Pelosi. When Boehner resigned, Cruz did little to conceal the joy it brought him.

The former house speaker has far better opinions of the two other Republican presidential hopefuls, saying he and billionaire businessman Donald Trump are "texting buddies" who have golfed together for years, and that he "loves" Kasich.

Tina Fey is dazzlingly smart about certain tropes. After reading this sly excerpt from Bossypants, I don't think I can ever again confront the word "witch" without seeing a working woman who's just misunderstood. Or see "crazy" when applied by men to an older working woman and not read code for "keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore." These tropes urged her to lean in for the good of younger women in the industry even as she grappled with her own worries—the book her daughter brought home with a witch on the cover, called My Working Mommy; the fear that she'd missed her chance to have another kid. That choice to value invisible women made me feel seen.

If it were possible to bet on such things, I'd bet her strength is what's working against her now. Fey never reads about herself—or so she said in a talk I attended earlier this month at the Tribeca Film Festival. Having watched all of season two of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I wish she would repent, even just a little. This month's premiere fed a sad new part of Fey's mythology: how defiantly she clings to Hollywood's last acceptable forms of racism.

When last year critics saw problems with her handling of characters from groups low on the totem pole of Hollywood representation, she went on record as simply opting out of the need to respond. Then, this season, she produced a retaliation to her critics so petty, the consensus across the internet was that Fey betrays herself. For all her claims to ignore criticism, she seems to be in an unhealthy relationship with it, based on the weakest episode of an at-turns brilliant season: "Kimmy Goes to a Play!" a.k.a. the one where stupid critics stupidly protest stupid yellowface. (It's hard not to imagine Tina with her fingers in her ears shouting "LALALA" while you watch it.)

The episode features a one-man show, Kimono She Didn't, staged by Titus Andromedon, a black man convinced he was a geisha in his past life. The villains of the episode, a group of Asian bloggers, are humiliated over the course of the episode; in the end, they realize they're wrong to protest Titus's yellowface—so moving is he onstage. One girl, overwhelmed by the task of being forever outraged, actually offends herself, and a beam of light promptly whisks her away. (The group's name, seen by some critics as a joke taken too far, is Respectful Asian Portrayals in Entertainment, or RAPE.)

The episode has been widely acknowledged as an expression of the frustration Fey voiced last season over complaints about her portrayal of Asian and Native American characters. (Dong, Kimmy's love interest, fields penis jokes and loves math, while the most prominent Native character is played by a white actress). Essays arguing these points are often longer than ones concerning the show itself, extending a general narrative about the series. "Why Does Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Keep Choosing Race as a Hill to Die On?" asked a Vox headline last week. Writing on Medium last spring, one fan warned viewers of the first season to prepare for "a case of the cringes you haven't felt since you last watched Sixteen Candles." Meanwhile, Slate held up the show Selfie as a lesson on how to write Asian men—surely the only time the shelved ABC series has come ahead of a Tina Fey production.

"I 'George W. Bushed' it," quipped Fey. Such a clever joke; such an awful role model when it comes to dealing with criticism.

Then again, this is now standard terrain for the queen of smart comedy. Somewhere in the last few years, Fey has transformed into a reliable source of outrage. Her blind spot incites it in the Twitter era: She descends to lazy comedy of a sort people don't shrug off anymore. Moreover, she rejects thoughts on the matter, whether the culprit is UKS, or her recent Afghanistan-set movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which was taken to task for, among other missteps, whitewashing and brownface. When called out, Fey's response was a clever-by-a-half justification to do with Afghans being Caucasians.

But then, we know Tina is clever. It's precisely that she's so smart that this resistance of hers confuses the senses, keeps the internet humming. That vision that made me feel seen, so clear at times, makes her willful blindness to criticism worse somehow. How can someone so smart at evening the playing field for women be so dumb about other poorly represented people? She was expansive at Tribeca about the show's triumphs—the white-haired landlord played by Carol Kane, who subverts the witch trope so expertly; the joy she felt in realizing a particular scene's director, writer, stunt director, and characters were all women. Other underrepresented folks, not so much. "I 'George W. Bushed' it," she quipped, when the interviewer soft-balled her on her refusal to engage with detractors. Such a clever joke, such an awful role model when it comes to dealing with criticism.

The fangirl in me thinks she just needs time. She's above all a professional. And the episode everyone is reading into isn't ultimately very good TV. While the rest of the season merges dark and light ideas to tell a singular story—of the unassailable joy of a girl who suffered at the hands of a deranged man— this one transcends nothing. It feels petty and dishonest. It punishes critics of Fey's most insipid characters with vicarious retribution.

Zadie Smith has called writers physically unsuited for criticism because of how closely the act of creation ties up to the self. To publicly admit the flaws in a work is to imply the recognition of private flaws, buried deep. But if Fey ever relents and goes down an internet spiral, I hope she finds a glimmer of her own brilliance in the criticisms too. She said it herself as I watched her onstage, explaining why she decided to play Kimmy's therapist this season. "You have to love your characters." So real is her love for Kimmy, she told the interviewer, she just wanted to hang out with her.

I think that's all we're asking, we who thought she saw us too: that she love her characters—all of them.

Follow Mallika Rao on Twitter.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

Photo by Jake Lewis

What do millennials do, exactly? Apart from tweeting articles about millennial struggles and Netflix originals while texting their mom to say thanks for another grand transferred to their account? Maybe they're sitting around in coffee shops, thoughts swinging from frustration about the job market to their budding creative projects, until deciding to put off work until the following day. After all, they're less concerned about financial security and more interested in a fulfilling job, one their parents and teachers promised them would be waiting.

The stereotypical life of gen Y has been shaped through and by the media. It's often based on studies that focus on college-educated young people in high-flying industries. This narrative is maintained by both a sprinkling of young media voices who legitimize these ideas with personal experience and the comment sections of newspapers which are dominated, like the media, by older people. "The Me Me Me Generation" read one infamous front page of TIME magazine in 2013. We're millennial moochers if you believe the Daily Mail or whiny entitled youth who can't grow up, according to the New York Post. We spend money on vacations and clothes and want to work for start-ups and in cool jobs. We won't stand for anything less than brilliance from employers and will leave at the drop of a hat. Repeatedly, we're told we have disposable income and could be saving for our futures—if the Financial Times is to be believed, we could be putting a casual $1,000 towards our pensions a month—however, want nice stuff and we want it now.

But it's obvious to any young person living the millennial life that not all millennials are made equal. The problem isn't simply that in the media, millennials sound like assholes. It's that we are talked about in the same way we talk about a class, as if everyone has the same economic wealth. What's implied—and the idea we're being sold—is that millennials are middle class and that "millennial" is a catch-all term for young middle class (white) person.

In the very act of using the millennial struggle to talk about how we're being fucked over, those who aren't class-privileged are being fucked over a second time

Jason Dorsey, a researcher and expert on gen Y and Z, told VICE that this is in part because as a birth cohort, we exhibit behaviors that are largely consistent, regardless of our wealth and geographical location—and many of these behaviors are financial ones. "Millennials are frequently reaching for what we call small luxuries and experiences, such as breaks away and concerts, they are having kids and getting married later," he said. "But really all we're saying—or should be saying—when we're talking about millennials is, here's a generation of people who are coming of age at the same time." Obviously if this were really the case, we'd be talking about the third of millennials living in poverty in the UK.

Of course, it's important that we are talked about as a cohort a lot of the time—particularly when talking about how we've been fucked over by previous generations. We're Generation Debt. Global youth unemployment figures have reached an all time high. All of us are earning less while older generations are doing far better. The Guardian called it the "30-year betrayal," one that's causing us to be cut off from the wealth generated in western societies. We're less likely to be able to independently afford items like cars or houses in our 20s, through no fault of our own. Only recently has this been this talked about in terms of a wider economic problem rather than millennials' failure to stop spending money or integrate into adult life better.

We need to keep talking about this and we need to keep being angry. But as Fiona Devine, the Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester behind the Great British Class Survey said, there's no reason class shouldn't be highlighted when speaking about millennials. "Class is kind of hidden when people start talking about millennials and their common difficulties as a group," she explained. "The UK is very much class-stratified. By focusing on the similarities of millennials, it doesn't bring out the different experiences depending on their class background." In the very act of using the millennial struggle to talk about how we're being fucked over, those who aren't class-privileged are being fucked over a second time through being ignored.

The author, paying respects. All photos by Jake Lewis

The closest I get to thinking about retirement is browsing the homes I'm going to put my parents in, which I do every lunch break. I suppose in the modern era, where people are not so company-oriented and constantly move from job to job, it becomes less of a pressing milestone in our heads. There are some older people who have been working at the same place since they were 18, and are now approaching that sweeter spot. They start planning cruises, moving to boring places, and preparing to really deal that final blow to their livers.

It used to be 65 was the age we could just call it a day. No more sitting around people eating reheated fish in an office. No more getting erections on the subway and having to awkwardly hold your bag at waist height when you disembark. No more being told how much "vacation" you're allowed to have. Fuck you, my life is a vacation now. I'll do whatever I want. But from 2020, this will go up to 66, then 67 between 2026 and 2028. Then after that it's just based on your life expectancy. Judging by the number of trendy Neapolitan sourdough pizzas I consume on a weekly basis (two to three), it's likely that I will die of an exploding heart before then. I won't get to book my Sandals holiday and think about killing my wife in Spain. I don't get that luxury. So I decided that, for one day only, I would delve deep into the pathos of the pensioner. I got the stereotype section of my brain whizzing and whirring, and set about living a day in the life of a retiree.

The first thing I knew I had to do was wake up unreasonably early. As a weak millennial with a brain that is still developing, sleeping long and unreasonable hours is part of my swag, and I work at a mimsy milksop media company, so I can get away with it. But old people always wake up at like 6 AM, seemingly through some sort of horrible insomniac arcane witchcraft. It's not even by choice. They just sort of arise, like Dracula bolting upright as soon as the sun sets, smashing through the lid of the coffin. I only get up at 6 AM if I have to get on a plane, and even then, I strongly resent it. But it was time to get into the routine of the quiet life, so I got up, had a shower, had a shave, drank a tea, and went for a walk. It was a pleasant start to my life as a rapidly deteriorating sentience.

I thought to myself, What shit do old people do to fill out their days? and like I'm sure most of you did, I concluded that "feeding the ducks" was the top of that list. I went to Clapham Common, where I knew there was a really big pond teeming with waterfowl. I sat on a bench and doled out little snippets of shitty manufactured bread. More ducks came, and them some pigeons, and then some quite leery geese. The geese got very close to me and started hissing at me, and I became quite scared. Then geese started hissing at one another and the ducks. I'd created some kind of pond-life race war. I can't imagine why an old person would want to elicit this kind of stress in their life. Having said that, looking into the beady, needy eyes of these birds made me feel wanted. Much like children, they would bleed me dry of resources and hang me out to dry. It was kind of sweet.

Next stop was a garden center, which was hilariously named "Battersea Flower Station." Old people like tending to their gardens. It's one of the only things they can take pride in, and it also never leaves you and starts renting apartments in east London and taking cokey pills every weekend. You can trust your garden. But when I was there, all I could think about was how much I'd like to work in the garden center. How much I'd like to be potting flowers all day, helping people pick out olive trees and what have you. I shouldn't be thinking about work now, I'm retired! This was all too much, and I was hungry.

In terms of food, I think my gluttony and hedonism would really go into a league of its own once I retired. I pretty much eat whatever I want at the moment, to the great detriment of my egregious figure, but without the petty concern of not wanting to be seen roaming the streets as an amorphous blob, my eating would go into overdrive. But what would be my unhealthy meal of choice? It would have to be easy to eat with weakened or no teeth. It would have to contain a sense of nostalgia, a hark back to an ashen childhood lost. Most importantly, it would have to be thrifty, as I'm already picking out plots for my paupers grave. Step forward: pie and mash.

Goopy, sloppy, old school, delicious: The pie and mash has it all. If I retired properly, I would eat this shit all day every day. It fills you up and keeps you warm, so if your electric blanket is on the fritz, you wont catch pneumonia and die in your sleep. This is the good life, I think, getting parsley sauce all over my chin and dick. I've done my activities, my errands, but now I need to really relax.

One thing old geezers excel at is not drinking very quickly and making a meal out of everything. With that in mind, I headed to my local boozer to spend three hours drinking one pint. I bought a couple of newspapers to keep me company. I quickly became depressed reading their contents. It was the same as the internet, just as horrible and anxious and weird, except someone had taken the time and effort to print it and sell it in Sainsbury's. I tried to do the crosswords in the middle, but very quickly discovered I am just too thick for it. I don't know what a three-letter synonym for bribe" is. I'm not even totally sure one exists, I only have the word of some freak at the Daily Mail's Boring Fucking Games department. Even the answers I wrote down I was unsure of. Is this it? Is the end of one's life just a series of obtuse puzzles designed to simultaneously bewitch, degrade, and upset the mind?

It was time to return home, away from the scary, fast-moving outside world, back behind my curtains, so I could get my twitch on. Firstly, though, a stop at the local supermarket to stock up on some essential late-in-life provisions.

Sufficiently lubricated, and without anything else to entertain me, I began to think about all the things that make me annoyed and how I can respond to them. I drunkenly started drafting a strongly worded letter to Southern Rail, the incompetent oafs in charge of getting me to work every day. I thought that now, in my retirement, when I'm increasingly less likely to use the service, was the perfect time to let those guys know how I feel. I called them Dickensian, mocked their poor service, questioned their spurious excuses for tardiness—I gave them the sort of verbal seeing-to that only myself and a disgruntled racist colonel in an inner city youth center could muster. I shoved it in the post box with all my might. I may be retired, but I'm not dead.

But I was dead soon after. I filled my stomach with wine and Revels and fell asleep in front of an episode of Eggheads, which I fucking hate. My old bones had tuckered themselves out with sheer inanity, with grumpy nothingness, onset alcoholism, meaningless meandering, and pies consumption.

§

I don't really like working. I find it tedious in the extreme, but I'm not sure I'd like not working that much either. You see 75-year-olds who are still at it, still building things, still working, still about, and they're sharp, and they look good. Then you see 75-year-olds who just sit in chairs all day and wait for all their senses to go, to the point where they have to read the Radio Times with a magnifying glass and get someone to clean their tits for them. The problem is the crushing monotony and abject depression that work brings to your life makes you yearn for that freedom of nothing, to do whatever you want, the big summer vacation of life where no one tells you what time to go to bed or when to come home. Maybe if we worked a bit less, retirement wouldn't seem like such a necessity.

I enjoyed my day as a retiree. I see the point, I get it, and I will miss it dearly when I'm waiting for some weapon to tap his or her contactless card on the card reader in Pret a Manger tomorrow lunchtime. But I'm not quite ready for its placidity yet, and I may never be.

Follow Joe Bish on Twitter.

Picture by Matt Sayles / AP/Press Association Images

Eva Green has played a lot of witches. "Different kinds of witches," says the French actor, sipping a dark red juice that looks, naturally, like a cup of blood. Tim Burton made her a blonde witch in his 2014 film Dark Shadows, and liked her so much that he cast her as the lead in his next film, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. She's done indie films, arthouse films, and blockbusters, was a Bond girl in the best Daniel Craig Bond Casino Royale and put in some serious action hero green-screen time with 300: Rise of an Empire and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. If there's a role for a complicated woman who may have a murderous side, or a supernatural side, or both, then Green is at top of the list.

She's suitably goth-like today, dressed entirely in black and speaking in such a whisper that it's sometimes hard to hear her. She says "I don't know" before she gives an answer, almost every time; sometimes to deflect, if she doesn't necessarily want to get into something, and sometimes because she often seems unsure of herself. She says she was desperately reserved as a kid. Actors do that 'Don't look at me, I'm shy' false modesty thing all the time, but with her, you can believe it.

Right now she's putting her dark side through its paces in the third season of Penny Dreadful, in which she plays Vanessa Ives, a demon-hunting medium who was possessed by the devil and fell in love with a werewolf. This time she looks set to romance a suspiciously mysterious stranger, as well as go through some early form of proto-psychotherapy. We talked about how it feels to be Hollywood's go-to goth and why everyone expects her to take her clothes off on screen.

Eva with Patti Lupone in season three of 'Penny Dreadful' Photo courtesy of Showtime

VICE: I just saw the first episode of Penny Dreadful season three.
Eva Green: Oh god. I haven't seen it. I am not good at watching myself.

So what do you do when you have premieres and things like that? Do you just leave?
Yeah, actually it's funny, I was thinking about it this morning on the train. Most of the time it's OK but then one director, I won't mention his name, took it really, really badly that I couldn't stay. I stayed for the first ten minutes then I had to leave. I just can't... I don't know, it's weird.

Because you're scrutinizing yourself?
Yeah. It's too subjective. It's negative narcissism. It's not good. I wish I could. Some actors can improve. I can't.

Do you think Vanessa is a bit of a feminist hero? There's a scene in this new season where she's having what looks to be a sort of early psychotherapy session, with Patti Lupone playing her therapist. She's talking about how Vanessa is drawn to damaged men, because ultimately she'd rather be alone... It struck me as very modern.
Yes! I loved that speech. I remember taking a picture of the script and sending it to some of my friends, like, oh my god. It's very interesting. I think lots of women are drawn to broken, damaged men.

Was that a wry laugh there?
Yeah. Yep. were very repressed. She's a woman who's hungry to live now.

Did you do lots of research into that kind of woman?
On the Victorians? Ummm. Not as much as I should have. I'm a terrible student.

Why is that whole gothic Victorian era so fascinating to us now?
It's funny, because I don't put this show into the gothic box. A lot of people would of course. It is very dark, you know, but it's not just scary, it's far beyond that. I don't think I would have chosen to be part of this scary adventure if it was just about possession... It's terribly human. It's difficult to get away from this character because it becomes part of you. There is something, you carry it.

Is that not worrying? It must be quite draining—I'm thinking of that scene in season one where she's possessed by different people at the seance.
Oh yes. It was a very difficult scene because it could have been ridiculous—to play all these different people, and to find the transitions between the different people. It was very hard. And we did it for two days, more, and more and more. It was quite scary but at the same time quite jubilating.

How did you make it not ridiculous? The line between whether it became that or not must have been so delicate.
It was very scary, yeah. I don't know, but you have to really believe with all your heart what's going on. It was so weird. I rehearsed with Logan in his flat in London, I remember.

Does he have neighbors?
There was no shouting! We were like, OK, should I take off my... no, that's too much. It was fun. It was like theater.

The dialogue is pretty theatrical throughout Penny Dreadful, I think.
I love theater and I've done it, and I'm too scared to go back on stage. I love it but I prefer—I think we are theatrical in a good way, but if we fuck up, we do it again.

Why are you too scared to go back on stage?
I don't know. I get terrible stage fright. At three, four o'clock it's like , oh my God, I have to go in three hours... And when you're on stage then it goes away, but it's just torture.

Did you just think, in the end, it's not worth the anxiety?
I wish I could get over this. I don't know.

Don't they have people who can talk you down from stage fright?
I get more and more anxious through the years, so I don't know. But I wish I could because I'm a control freak, so to know every night know what you're doing, if it's Shakespeare or something... If I was brave enough.

Many people relax as they get older, but as you said, you're finding it harder as you get older.
That's what I'd heard, and then since I was a child I'm like, it's OK... When I was six, I thought, when you hit twenty, it will be OK. Then thirty, this is where you come to... I'm becoming more and more vulnerable, made of glass. In other situations I'm stronger, but yeah, I feel like I'm a sponge at this age. I don't know.

Do you know where it's coming from?
No. I have to tame my own demons. I don't know. At the same time, it makes me who I am.

Let's go back to your first film. The Dreamers came out in 2003, and it's one of those films that has had a long, enduring life.
It's interesting because when it came out, it was not very successful. In France, it died very quickly at the box office. It's really through the years that people have liked it. I mean, I love it. It was my first movie, I was such a fan of Bertolucci, and it's such a free movie. Very pure fun. I mean I never watch my movies so this is only what I experienced. I mean sometimes, like if it was a guy, he'd go, .

But as a result of that film , you've been asked about nudity for pretty much the last 13 years.
I think people are completely fascinated by nudity. I don't like doing nude scenes. I find them very uncomfortable. But like in America, they will really...sometimes you take it badly as an actor, you go, actually, I'm more than just naked, I am something else.

Do you think it's because you're French? Is it that cliché of European freedom?
They think it's very easy for me to get naked. Yeah, it's fun!

You've spoken a lot in the past about feeling like a nerd, feeling uncomfortable, feeling awkward in your skin, and yet, you're an actor...
It is paradoxical. My mother used to say, there are two people inside you. I don't know myself. But at the same time it's my salvation, or something. I feel alive when I'm working on a character. I could not do something else. I'm very lucky that I'm able to earn money and that it's my job. I think my shyness would have killed me in other jobs.

You said once that people think you're a weirdo. Do they still?
It depends. When they don't know me, at the beginning... I think I was sort of joking.

Well, the roles that you play do tend towards the dark and the mysterious.
When they put me in the 'mysterious' box, sometimes I'm like, whatever. It's because I have dark hair. It's true that I don't belong... I've always felt like this as a child, I feel like I'm floating, a tiny bit. I wish I could be more grounded. I don't know how to put it. It's shyness. At school, I was never in groups, I always had one best friend. If I had to speak in front of anybody I would almost pass out. Anyway. So, now I'm doing this, you see.

And now you're talking to strangers all the time.
Press conferences and things like that freak me out. You're getting in front of people. It's funny. I have to go and see a Patti Lupone in this century .

The third season of Penny Dreadful airs Sunday, May 1 on Showtime at 10 PM

Reproductive freedom is one of the most hotly contested issues in the United States, with ever more restrictive bills being floated by Congress as abortion clinics shutter their doors at a record pace. Since 2011, at least 162 providers have closed. Nearly one fifth of these closings occurred in Texas, which passed sweeping, possibly unconstitutional restrictions in 2013. Even in blue states like California, which lost 12 clinics, access is declining.

Enter Tracy Droz Tragos's timely documentary, Abortion: Stories Women Tell, which premiered this month at the Tribeca Film Festival and will air on HBO later this year. The intimate, emotionally affecting film forgoes the usual hot-button rhetoric. Instead, Tragos chooses to spotlight the experiences of the passionate, thoughtful, and occasionally desperate women on the front lines—abortion seekers, clinic workers, and pro-life activists, some of whom have had abortions themselves.

Jettisoning political jargon, Stories Women Tell examines the personal effect of HB 1307, the 2014 Missouri bill that instituted a 72-hour waiting period between a patient's initial consultation and her chosen abortion service. Although Missouri isn't the first to pass such a bill—Utah has that honor, followed by South Dakota—Missouri doesn't allow exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The increased restrictions are an alarming harbinger of what the future might have in store. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 28 states have instituted waiting periods, and 14 of those require the first appointment to be in person, an undue burden for many prospective patients who already have to drive hundreds of miles or even out of state for services.

One provider helping women who live in hostile territory is Hope Clinic, located just over the Missouri-Illinois border in Granite City, Illinois. It's where women like Amie, a 30-year-old single mother of two in Missouri, go when faced with an unplanned or otherwise unwanted pregnancy. Amie estimates she works "about seventy to ninety hours a week." "There's no way I can physically carry a baby and work," she says in the doc, and it's impossible for her to work fewer hours and still support the children she does have. She's one of many women Droz Tragos interviews on camera about their choice to have an abortion, whether it's motivated by timing (such as a heartbreakingly shy teen with a mouth full of braces), fetal anomalies, or a brutally abusive partner.

I recently met with Droz Tragos at the Smyth Hotel in Manhattan, where we joked about Fitbits and manicures before settling down to talk about the nitty-gritty business of what it's like to attend a pro-life meeting in a church basement and to interview women on one of the most stressful days of their lives. It's clear from her demeanor why the women who participated in the documentary would trust her with their experiences.

VICE: How did you find people to interview?
Tracy Droz Tragos: When the seventy-two-hour law , was passed, many Missouri women were going to Granite City because there's one clinic in Missouri, and that one clinic is in St. Louis, so women were already having to drive hundreds of miles, depending on where they lived obviously, to access abortion care. Then when the seventy-two-hour waiting period came down, many Missouri women would go in, across the border, to Illinois, to Granite City, to access care, and so focusing there made a lot of sense.

How did you actually find people who would talk to you? I noticed that one of the women chose not to have her face on camera, but the rest were very open.
There were many women that obviously weren't on camera and weren't a part of the film, and women who believed in why I was making the film and were grateful that I was making the film, but couldn't be on camera because they feared the repercussions. It was a big ask to say, especially on the day of your procedure, "Would you like to share your story?" You know, a lot is going on. It's not necessarily the best day, and something that people want to sign on for, especially in Missouri, when there is such a culture of stigma and shame, and the sex education is abstinence-based, and there's very little access to birth control. And so the presumption is that you shouldn't be having sex to begin with. So, to be in that position and to be making the choice that these women are making, in Missouri, is extra controversial.

I didn't realize that some of the interviews were actually on the day of the procedure itself. We go through the different steps with Amie and her arc, but I didn't realize that so many of them were actually that day.
When we were at Hope , it's the day of their procedures, so yeah... I had to be very patient. There were days that no patients wanted to speak with me, and that was OK. That had to be OK. You know, you can't force this kind of thing. It's a bit of being in the right place at the right time. But for women who did want to share their stories, they were often very intentional in wanting to do that. They felt disenfranchised. They felt, you know, why is there this seventy-two-hour waiting period? They were unaware that that law had recently been passed, and now they were facing this additional hurdle. Or they had just passed through this gauntlet of protestors who were telling them they were going to hell and they felt like, You know, listen, I'm not a bad person. This is who I am. Why am I being damned to hell ?

Many of them wanted to share their stories for themselves, but then they also—and I would say this was universal among the women in the film—they wanted to share their stories for other women, so that other women would benefit from knowing that they were not alone, they were not bad people, and encourage this kind of sharing of stories.

I really appreciated that very few men were present in the film [ laughs]. In fact, I think my favorite moment is when the security guard is like, "Ugh, I wish I could abort him" , you know? Because it's such gallows humor, but what else are you going to do?
Those guys out in front of that clinic and who were always there, we didn't want this film to be about them. We actually talked about it at one point. "Should we go interview that guy?" It was like, No, no— He really doesn't get a say in this ! But we couldn't cut him out because he was always there. And Debra and spending time with her as an escort—he was following her to her car, and he was there, and that's the context for women who are working in abortion care or supporting women who are accessing this, or the patients themselves. That context is there, so that became a part of the story. But, again, that wasn't our focus, so we weren't going to sit down and interview them... The men that did appear, also with women, did so at the invitation of those women. It wasn't our instigating, but it was the woman saying, "Well, I want you to hear from my boyfriend" or "my husband."

"Even pro-lifers have abortions. Lots of women have abortions."

Watching the documentary, I also felt a great deal of anxiety. I was preparing myself for—is someone going to be harmed? Is everyone OK? And I don't mean from the procedure—I mean from the protesters. Did you feel that same anxiety?
I did, at times. Not in the clinic so much, because they were very much taking precautions and had bulletproof glass, and unfortunately, it's a reality that they have to live with, but I wasn't comfortable being in that church basement [ laughs] with Kathy and Susan. I knew when I was in their homes or when I was with them privately that these were not violent people, and so I wasn't worried for myself then, but certainly when there were large groups, it's uncomfortable.

But I wanted to listen very deeply to them too, and even though I have an opinion, and don't necessarily agree with their opinion, I wanted to listen deeply to what they had to say and where they were coming from and how they had come to the place where they are. I felt like there was value in doing that, and not isolating them.... In making this film, the thing that became really clear was that it's hard to break things down in that black and white—all kinds of women have abortions, and that was really something that would not have necessarily occurred to me until I got on the ground and started talking to women. Normally, I'd think, well, if you're pro-life, you don't have an abortion. But no, in fact even pro-lifers have abortions. Lots of women have abortions.

I know it's not necessarily part of some greater arc with Rich Hill and your first documentary, but I did find it striking that so much of what it comes down to is money and class. When Amie says, an IUD is $800, it was like, This is what it comes down to. There's always going to be people who can't afford it, legal or not.
Yeah. Women who can afford it can also have private care and go to a hospital and not have to see the protestors and not have to be told that they're bad people and face that, and not everybody has the constitution to face that, you know? Not everybody can do that. It really is like breaking a strike. It takes certain fortitude to withstand that.

And of course, the restrictions and the fact that many women then have to miss work to drive hundreds of miles and come back if there's a waiting period, so you've got your first thing and then your second appointment—I know the Supreme Court is considering all of this right now, but it is an undue hardship for women. This is something that is legal that is not accessible for many women in this country, especially in Missouri.

And it's sadistic, in my opinion.
It's not medically indicated. When you look at the hearing footage and these state legislators talking about why there should be a seventy-two-hour waiting period, they compare it to buying a car or picking carpet samples. It's so out of the realm of anything that makes sense. But then there's also this layer of, women should be in the house, or women shouldn't be having sex unless they're married. There's a lot of this other stuff that's going on when they pass these restrictive laws. And yet, for some reason in Missouri, they keep passing them.

How did you select which women to feature in the documentary? Sometimes to make a story more palatable or more empathetic you choose "a perfect victim" or what have you. Was that on your mind when you were asking people to talk?
I think we knew at a certain point that there was a cumulative effect, that we needed to have a story many, many women, and different women, and all circumstances. Because it's not like one size fits all, and it's not like there's one abortion story. It was sort of like, "Let's get a lot of stories here that are different." Some are this way, and some are this way. Women are grateful, but they have feelings about it. Women are relieved. Women are sad. Just get the whole thing out there. And as many stories as possible.

Follow Jenni Miller on Twitter.

Abortion: Stories Women Tell will air on HBO later this year.

Indigenous youth sit by a fire as they take part in youth bush camp taught by Rangers which teaches them survival skills in the northern Ontario First Nations reserve in Attawapiskat. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Eleven people attempted suicide in one night and the isolated Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario became Canada's most talked about story. A week later five children tried to take their owns lives too. In total there's been more than 100 suicide attempts in the last seven months.

This is exactly who you'd want to have pull you out of the snow. Photo via Flickr User USFWS Mountain-Prairie

There are many things I imagine wolverines would be pretty good at if given the opportunity: clawing through steel fence, fighting crime, or maybe convincing Paul Ryan to seek the Republican nomination, as one pundit recently suggested.

Photo by Chris Bethell

In 2015, the Welsh government released a report that stated 12 percent of people sleeping on the streets were on the autistic spectrum. Consider that the National Health Service estimates suggest around one in 100 people in the UK have an autistic spectrum disorder, and you can see that the number of autistic rough sleepers clearly isn't proportional.

According to homeless charity Crisis, unemployment is the biggest cause of homelessness. The National Autistic Society (NAS) says that unemployment is a bigger problem for people with autism than it is for those with other disabilities. In fact, according to the NAS, 26 percent of graduates on the spectrum are unemployed, by far the largest rate of any disability group—which may go some way to explaining the link the Welsh government found between autism and homelessness.

Recently, a discussion has started between the charity Homeless Link and the north London charity Resources for Autism about the possibility that a significant number of autistic men and women are homeless, whose specific needs are going undetected by the authorities and support services.

Liza Dresner, manager of Resources for Autism, argues that there are a number of reasons why having an autistic spectrum disorder could lead people to become homeless in the first place, and then be a barrier to them accessing support. She explains that for someone with autism who is struggling to live by traditional social rules, sleeping on the streets can be a way for them to take charge of his or her life.

"People with autism want to be in control—it makes them feel safe," says Dresner. "For somebody with autism, weird as it sounds, being on the street may feel much more like they're in control than in a hostel, where they're having to engage with other people, where the environment is really alien."

Of the 3,500 people sleeping rough in England each night, some will be entrenched rough sleepers—people who have a long history of sleeping on the streets and are more difficult to reach. Dresner says that from the stories she has heard from charities and outreach workers, she is "convinced that there is a connection" between autism and entrenched rough sleeping.

In 2010, a project in Devon that aimed to encourage rough sleepers to move into accommodation found that nine of the 14 entrenched rough sleepers they spoke to were autistic. If these figures were found to be replicated on a larger scale, it would show a huge number of people living on the streets whose needs aren't even recognized, let alone being dealt with.

Under Dresner, Resources for Autism has started running training sessions to help outreach workers identify signs of autism in entrenched rough sleepers. Usually outreach workers focus on offering people as much choice as possible, but for people with autism, this can be overwhelming and alienating.

Dresner says, "All I'm doing is getting people to think differently. The big difference is saying: Stop talking so much, and stop trying to get people to make lots of choices. Instead, say, 'This is the rule.' You have to be honest and say, 'There is no choice—you're going indoors.' That's been the big difference, but people are very uncomfortable with that because we're all about allowing people to make choices. It's totally alien to what everybody's been told, but I don't care—I'm telling people anyway, and it's working."

A few weeks after receiving the training, Ian Bagley, an outreach worker for Homeless Link, met a man he had been trying to bring off the street for several months. It was the middle of winter, and the team was concerned that the man might get pneumonia. They kept trying to offer him a big coat, but each time, he would get angry and draw away.

Dresner suggested that the coat might be making the man uncomfortable, and that his aversion to it could be a sign of the heightened sensory awareness sometimes associated with autism. By offering him a lighter waterproof instead, the team managed to reach out to him and bring him in.

In training outreach workers to identify signs of autism in homeless people, Dresner and her team believe they are making the first steps towards tackling what could be a widespread problem—one that could be leaving hundreds of people without access to support, shelter, and stability.

"It has been incredibly successful," she says. "We've got people indoors who have been outdoors for years."

Donald Trump with magazine editor Edward Kosner, center, and Roy Cohn, a Trump mentor and lawyer whose clients included bosses of two major New York crime families. SONIA MOSKOWITZ/GETTY IMAGES

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

Donald Trump's views on criminal justice remain one of those mysteries he will presumably carry with him if elected into the Oval Office, where he'll sort it all out with the help of the nation's best minds. We do know that he's a "huge fan" of the police, and that he'd like to see them get more power. But he hasn't suggested what kind of power, or how he'd do that. More jobs would solve the problem of mass incarceration, he told the Washington Post editorial board last month. And he's been crystal clear on the death penalty, which he would make harsher by eliminating lethal injections, since they're "too comfortable."

But one helpful lens for determining Trump's views on crime and law enforcement is via his past encounters with those alleged to be on the wrong side of the law. That's his history with the mob. And for all of his tough law-and-order rhetoric, the record shows the GOP frontrunner has been remarkably tolerant. In the course of his 40 years of business deals, Trump has encountered a steady stream of mob-tainted offers that he apparently couldn't refuse.

On the campaign trail, Trump has been coy about his past dealings with unsavory characters. But he couldn't resist a Trump-style boast: "I've known some tough cookies over the years," he told Chris Matthews in February. "I've known the people that make the politicians you and I deal with every day look like little babies."

...Trump had chosen a notorious demolition company secretly owned in part, according to the FBI, by a top Philadelphia mobster who doubled as crime lord of Atlantic City.

Actually, there's an old FBI memo that puts a different spin on Trump's attitude about the mob. It is a classic example of a young but already shrewd Trump hard at work. It was written in 1981 by a veteran FBI agent, reflecting meetings that he and a fellow FBI official were having with the 35-year-old developer from Queens, then a rising star in New York's business firmament. The topic of the meetings was Trump's pending plunge into the Atlantic City casino industry. And while the memo was written in the stilted language of FBI-bureaucratese, Trump's wide-eyed comments were recorded with what seems like barely suppressed amusement. "Trump advised agents that he had read in the press and media and had heard from various acquaintances that Organized Crime elements were known to operate in Atlantic City," the memo states.

"Organized Crime elements were known to operate in Atlantic City."(p. 1)

Part of a memo detailing Trump's meeting with FBI agents

This was a little like saying he had heard that there had once been a man named Al Capone who failed to pay all of his taxes. But Trump, presumably shaping an argument he might need somewhere down the road, pressed on: "Trump advised that he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, but he did not wish to tarnish his family's name inadvertently."

There were a few reasons why the FBI agents may have found this claim slightly disingenuous.

For starters, at the time Trump's mentor on issues of politics and business was Roy Cohn, a lawyer whose other clients included a passel of mobsters, among them the bosses of the Genovese and Gambino crime families. Cohn, who served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief witch hunter before going into private practice, operated out of a townhouse on East 68th Street where clients Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul "Big Paul" Castellano were regular visitors. Besides getting advice on their legal problems, as a former secretary later recalled to Wayne Barrett in his 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, the visits by the mob titans to their lawyer's office allowed them to talk shop without having to worry about FBI bugs. Cohn told a reporter that Trump called him "fifteen to twenty times a day, asking what's the status of this, what's the status of that," according to Barrett's book.

Another reason the FBI might not have taken Trump's professed ignorance at face value was that Trump had already brushed up against his share of wise guys in New York's gritty construction business, without apparent concern. To help build his first big Manhattan project, the Grand Hyatt New York on East 42nd Street, Trump had chosen a notorious demolition company secretly owned in part, according to the FBI, by a top Philadelphia mobster who doubled as crime lord of Atlantic City. To pour concrete for the new hotel, Trump picked a firm run by a man named Biff Halloran, who was convicted a few years later for his role in what prosecutors dubbed a mob-run cartel that jacked up construction prices throughout the city. For the carpentry contract, Trump settled on a Genovese family–controlled enterprise that was central to another mob price-fixing racket, as found by a subsequent federal probe.

And then there was the person who had introduced Trump to the FBI agents in the first place. This was a six-foot-five bear of a man named Daniel Sullivan, a former Teamsters leader who was serving as what Trump called his "labor consultant" at the time. Sullivan wore other hats as well: He was partners with a reputed Atlantic City mobster named Kenneth Shapiro, who controlled the local scrap market and who was in the process of selling Trump a large plot of land at top dollar on which to build his casino.

Sullivan, who had once been close to Jimmy Hoffa, was also secretly operating as an FBI informant, filling in the FBI on the various mobsters who crossed his path. I know this because Sullivan, who died of a heart attack in 1993, told me all about it, proudly providing copies of the FBI memos as proof. And Sullivan wasn't just bragging. The FBI agents confirmed to me both the authenticity of the documents and the meetings Sullivan had arranged for them with the budding casino kingpin.

In Trump's defense, as a developer of major projects in New York, it was hard back then to avoid the mob.

I met the burly ex-Teamster in the late 1980s when I was working on a story for the New York Daily News about Trump's use of yet another dubious contractor to demolish the old Bonwit Teller building to make way for the edifice that would serve as emblem of his empire. That was Trump Tower, the brassy condominium high rise on Fifth Avenue where he resides and from whose lobby he announced his presidential bid in June.

On paper, the demolition contractor was a union company, as were all of Trump's vendors at the time. But Local 95 of the demolition workers was essentially a subsidiary of the Genovese crime family, and few union rules were enforced. Most of the workers were undocumented immigrants from Poland, and they were paid so little and so sporadically that many were forced to sleep on the job site. A rank and file union dissident later sued Trump for failing to pay pension and medical benefits required under the union contract. Trump denied knowing about conditions at the work site. Sullivan, who by now had his own gripes with Trump, said otherwise. He testified in the civil suit that he had repeatedly warned the developer about the problems. Trump, in a rush to clear the site, had dismissed his concerns, he said.

Despite Trump's insistence that he never settles lawsuits, he wound up settling that one for an undisclosed sum. Whatever the amount, it seemed to make the union dissident and his attorneys quite satisfied.

In Trump's defense, as a developer of major projects in New York, it was hard back then to avoid the mob. From the 1970s through the 90s, the Five Families had a chokehold on both major construction firms and most of the unions that represented workers on job sites. And no one has ever labeled Trump a mob associate, the FBI's term of art for those under the sway of organized crime.

But for someone who expressed such concern about possible entrapment by the Cosa Nostra in his Atlantic City casino ventures, Trump has willingly teamed up with a succession of mob-tied figures who had nothing to do with the construction industry.

Take the time Trump decided to lend his name to a line of luxury stretch limousines. The entrepreneur who came up with this wonderfully Trumpian idea was a wealthy and successful auto dealer from Long Island named John Staluppi. According to the FBI and its informants, Staluppi was also a made member of the Colombo crime family. As William Bastone detailed recently in the Smoking Gun, Trump proudly unveiled the lavish cars, complete with Italian leather upholstery, liquor dispensers, TVs, and paper shredders, at a trade show in Atlantic City in 1988. Staluppi, whose record included convictions for theft of auto parts, wisely kept out of camera range at the trade show. He had been under steady investigation by federal and state law enforcement for over a decade, and detectives had followed him to meetings with Colombo family boss Carmine the "Snake" Persico. Trump insisted he knew nothing about those problems and ordered 20 of the limos for his casinos.

Check out our interview with the pre-teen girls supporting Donald Trump with song.

The builder had few reservations as well about his dealings with another allegedly mob-tied businessman with a problematic background who ran a helicopter service ferrying high rollers to Trump's casinos. The businessman, Joseph Weichselbaum, was living in an apartment in Trump Plaza, another of the tycoon's East Side high-rises, when he pleaded guilty to federal charges of cocaine smuggling in 1986. The men were close enough that Trump agreed to accept part of the rent as helicopter service in barter. Weichselbaum also maintained Trump's own private helicopter. And when Weichselbaum faced sentencing, Trump provided a letter to the court endorsing his friend as "conscientious, forthright, and diligent." Weichselbaum received a three-year sentence and came home to reside in an even posher pad at Trump Tower, where his girlfriend had managed to buy two combined apartments. When Trump was asked in 1990 by casino officials about his letter to the judge on Weichselbaum's behalf, the casino mogul could not recall having written it.

Casino regulators raised another problem with Trump that year as well. They charged that his casinos had given free rein at the gambling tables to a wealthy horse breeder named Robert LiButti, who had insisted that no blacks or women serve as dealers while he was playing the craps tables. Trump's casino executives complied. They had good reason to want to humor LiButti who lost more than $20 million in gambling wagers at the casinos between 1984 and 1990. To keep LiButti as a loyal customer, the regulars charged, Trump's casinos had comped the gambler with gifts of luxury cars, including Rolls Royces and Ferraris, as well as trips to Europe and the Super Bowl.

Trump's casinos were fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for the violations. But there was yet another issue: In 1991, casino regulators barred LiButti altogether from Atlantic City gambling, not for his bad manners but because they ruled he was an associate of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. Part of the evidence against LiButti included wiretapped conversations in which he talked about flying with Trump in his copter and offering advice on running the casinos. But when a reporter asked Trump about his biggest high-stakes gambler, the casino mogul answered, "If he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn't know what he looked like."

Tom Robbins was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on brutality in New York prisons, a collaboration between the Marshall Project and the New York Times. He reported on politics, labor, and organized crime for the Daily News and the Village Voice from 1985 to 2011. Follow him on Twitter.

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

A Klingon hitchhiker in 2007 near Vulcan, Canada, where this sort of thing is apparently normal. (MICHEL COMTE/AFP/Getty Images)

The problem is, people love Star Trek. People loved the utopian-minded original series so much they resurrected it after it was cancelled, rewatching it in in syndication, gathering at conventions, and eventually inspiring the movies, spin-offs, and novels that turned the show into a universe. These same people went on loving Star Trek even after the TV series based in that universe stopped being good or popular, even after the J.J. Abrams-led reboot movies turned into action flicks that lacked the peace, love, and understanding of the original. Some of them made their own versions of Star Trek, fan films that were mostly pretty amateurish but made with love. Some people didn't go that far but kept on going to conventions and passing down their devotion to their children. As fandoms go, Trekkers can be pretty high-minded: When a woman made headlines in 1996 for wearing a Star Trek uniform while serving on a jury, CNN reported that she liked the show "because it promotes inclusion, tolerance, peace and faith in humankind.

It's hard to love something fully when it belongs to someone else, however, and that's really where the problems begin. The conflict between love and property, or between art and capitalism, has resulted in a lawsuit brought by CBS and Paramount (the companies that own the Star Trek franchise's intellectual property) against a well-funded group of fans who planned to make a Star Trek feature film. The suit may have been intended merely to protect Trek IP and shut down an unauthorized production, but it has now sparked a fairly esoteric debate over whether its possible to own a fictional language and highlighted a fundamental conflict between Trekkers and the corporations that control Star Trek.

The group of fans, Axanar Productions, raised over $1 million through crowdfunding last year; executive producer Alec Peters told the Wrap last year that "Although we fall under the fan movie, we've tried to make the product as good as coming out of the studio." A 20-minute short the group created, Prelude to Axanar, came out in 2014 and has over 2 million views on YouTube. It does indeed look pretty good, even if the computer animation is cheesy, and features uniforms, logos, characters, and even actors that appeared in various official Star Trek franchises. CBS/Paramount has detailed a list of alleged copyright violations in response to a request from Axanar's lawyer, but the strangest and most far-reaching claim is that the Klingon language itself—known as tlhIngan Hol—is a copyrighted work.

This is a pretty serious question for Trekkers. Fan-made Trek films use obviously copyrighted materials all the time, a practice which CBS seems to be cracking down on as of late. (One thing Axanar has asked CBS to do is issue guidelines for fan films that spell out what is and is not infringement when it comes to Star Trek.) But Klingon has spilled far, far beyond the bounds of the on-screen Trek universe.

The language was created in the 80s by linguist Marc Okrand, who was hired for the job by Paramount; when the Klingon dictionary came out, it was therefore owned by the movie company. Since then, the language has spread, and though a lawyer for Paramount/CBS claimed that a language is "only useful if it can be used to communicate with people" and that "there are no Klingons with whom to communicate," there are actually quite a few humans who can communicate in Klingon. There's both a Klingon Language Institute and a Klingon translation of Hamlet; you can translate words into Klingon using Bing; a linguist once tried to raise a child who was a native Klingon speaker; one British couple exchanged Klingon wedding vows. Klingon may have been invented for a movie, but it is an actual language now, and the question becomes abstract: Can you own a language?

In a brief filed on behalf of the Language Creation Society, a nonprofit devoted to promoting the creation of new languages*, lawyer Marc Randazza says the answer is no. "No court has squarely addressed the issue of whether a constructed spoken language is entitled to copyright protection," he notes, but argues that "To claim copyright in a language is to claim ownership over all possible thoughts and artistic expression that might employ that language... a breathtakingly vast legal assertion that encompasses particular expression that the claimed copyright owner, by definition, cannot even conceive of." Paramount may own the original Klingon dictionary and the lines of dialogue spoken by actors playing Klingons, but it can't—or at least shouldn't—own anything anyone could say in Klingon. Randazza cites one US Supreme Court decision ruling that a system of bookkeeping was not subject to copyright, but when it comes to copyrighting a system of grammar and vocabulary, a ruling either way will be going boldly where no court has gone before.

Even Orkrand, Klingon's originator, isn't sure who has claim to the language. "This is not the first time that the who owns Klingon issue came up," Okrand told a podcast recently. "To the best of my knowledge, it has never been officially settled by anybody."

The Klingon language question is just one aspect of the Axanar lawsuit—there are over a dozen other copyright claims that are much more clear-cut. But few people will care whether Garth of Izar or the planet Archanis IV are ruled to be the intellectual property of Paramount/CBS. If Klingon itself is ruled to be a copyrighted work, it will have big implications for people who want to study it or other constructed languages—geeky pursuits, sure, but also pursuits born out of love.

"There are significant works of literary value regularly created in the Klingon language today, authored by people who have no affiliation whatsoever with Plaintiffs," Randazza writes. "Allowing this Sword of Kahless to hang over anyone who wishes to speak or write in Klingon does not serve the purpose of the Copyright and Patent Clause, and instead robs the world of valuable expressive works."

*Correction 4/28: An earlier version of this article misstated the mission of the Language Creation Society—it promotes language creation but does not study constructed languages.

The Channel Tunnel

Mini-Europe is a tourist attraction in which Europe's landmarks and historical events are reproduced in a miniature, Legoland-style diorama. Partly funded by the European Union and located outside Brussels, it's a shoddy imitation of a place that doesn't exist: Europe as imagined by the EU's fantasists—harmonious, prosperous, free from ideology. For the photographer Lewis Bush, it was the perfect location for a set of satirical postcards, A Model Continent, which puts Mini-Europe—and the real one—in an appropriately grim light.

The miniature park's pretensions to utopia are undercut by how it looks: like a wilting, crumbling non-place. Choosing a bleak December day to take his photos, and eschewing all contextual information in the postcards, Bush depicts a Europe trying to repress its contradictions and failing miserably. For example, the Channel Tunnel is recently more famous for refugees dying in it while trying to escape war than it is for nipping over to Paris for a weekend away. This symbol of racist hypocrisy toward the free movement of people appears as a rotting plastic box of water blooming with algae, a toy train running underneath.

Generally speaking, creating a miniature world filled with tiny people is the sign of a megalomaniac who's lost the plot, a power trying to legitimize itself and flesh out its mythologies. (No surprise the trend was started by Britain, with its creepy "model villages" that became popular as the empire waned.) As Mini-Europe's corporate sponsors and beleaguered aesthetic show, it reveals everything about Europe it's designed to conceal. Basically, A Model Continent is one of the funniest interventions in the EU debate so far. Even though, as I found out, that wasn't its creator's intention.

VICE: How did you find this place?
Lewis Bush: I was traveling around Europe in 2012, working on a project about similar issues—about the way the past hadn't been dealt with adequately by European states; how there was this unresolved historical tension between countries like Germany and Greece during the Eurozone crisis.

I was in Brussels for a few days and basically wanted some light relief from going out and shooting every day, and a friend I was staying with said, "Why don't you go check this place out? It's kind of hilarious." So I went, and I found it completely fascinating. It was a perfect metaphor for what I was seeing in parts of Europe like Greece and Spain: this awkward inability to face up to the past.

A couple enjoying a gondola ride

Why did you produce it as a series of postcards?
When I was designing it, I had to make a decision between making it like a proper photography book or a book of postcards you could pull apart. In the end, I quite liked the idea that it would potentially fall apart. I liked the idea of, if you have any very pro-Europe friends, taking a postcard and sending it to them to annoy them.

What were the other tourists there like?
It was pretty deserted when I was there. Probably partly because it was a miserable December day.

And the people who worked there?
There were quite a few people working there. The first thing that happens when you walk in, whether you want it or not, you get rugby tackled by a guy in a giant tortoise outfit, which is the park's mascot. It's this kind of giant orange tortoise—a brilliant image for the EU: What do tortoises do when they encounter danger? They pull their heads inside their shell and don't really react.

Then there's a man waiting with a camera who pops out and takes your picture. So I've got a picture of me at home being hugged by this giant tortoise with a big EU logo on it.

The miniature park is the subject of a lot of inquiry. They tend to say a lot about national anxieties. Did you have these kinds of theoretical insights in mind?
I guess you can separate model parks and theme parks. The model park is, as the name suggests, an ideal. If you've been to places like Beaconsfield , it's like an idealized image of an English town. It's not like reality. So I think somewhere like Mini-Europe is revealing in that sense. It gives you an insight into what someone imagines Europe could or should be like. Who? I don't know. I would love to meet whose brainchild this was. In that sense, it's an interesting simulation of this vision of a perfect Europe, where the White Cliffs of Dover and the Eiffel Tower sit side by side in perfect harmony.

During your travels in Europe, did you notice the EU's idealist myth—nations coming together and cooperation out of good will—disintegrating?
I went to ten countries, and there was a palpable sense of a different level of commitment to the EU in different countries. The country where people seemed most pro-EU was Bulgaria—a relatively new member. There were EU flags everywhere; everyone I talked to said it was fantastic; they had just finished a new subway line in Sofia that had been partly funded by the EU. They had very much bought into the idea at the time.

But then in Greece, it goes without saying, most people when I asked about their feelings toward the EU could barely respond. It was so vitriolic.

It's funny that the historical scenes depicted in the park are all these "end of history" moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lech Walesa's Solidarity rallies in Poland—when people thought liberal democracy and capitalism were going to reign eternal.
That's what my original project around Europe was about: Francis Fukuyama's "end of ideology." In some ways, this park speaks to the same ideas; you can see it as a realization of that world where politics is no longer an issue, and everyone believes the same thing. All these national differences leveled down by neoliberal capitalism.

One of the bizarre things in the park is the corporate sponsorship. Quite a few of the models have sponsors inserted into them in strange ways. So you'll have a little truck with a company logo parked next to an ancient monument.

A Coca-Cola van is parked next to the anti-Soviet "Freedom Monument" in Latvia. I guess it represents, accidentally, a different kind of freedom.
You can't tell from the image, but that truck basically perpetually circles the monument. So it's like this hugely significant monument has been reduced to a giant roundabout for corporate advertising. It also talks about the way history is turned into a commodity, not just for tourists but citizens too.

The White Cliffs of Dover

What was your favorite exhibit?
Being British, I suppose I should go for the White Cliffs of Dover, with that red bin and the arrow. I was there at the height of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, and the growing atmosphere in the UK was "keep everyone out." There were people freaking out about a handful of refugees creeping through the Channel Tunnel like it was some kind of invasion. So seeing the White Cliffs with this arrow around it—i.e. keep going, nothing to see here... I quite liked that.

Did you think of A Model Continent as an intervention in the EU referendum debate?
Well actually, no. It was kind of inopportune timing. I shot the project, and then about two months later, as I sent it to print, it came out that we were going to have a referendum. Mentally, I thought, Oh crap. Because I'm not a Euroskeptic. I think the EU is essentially a good idea. But like a lot of good ideas, it has issues that need to be taken out and discussed. I did worry that by putting this out people would be like, "Oh God, you're a right-wing nut job!"

The "Freedom Monument" in Latvia, circled by a Coca-Cola van

But you don't have to be a frothing Ukipper to want to leave the EU.
Well, it's true. But in some ways the referendum was unwelcome news. Especially since a lot of people feel strongly either way. And because it comes down to this clear binary in the vote, there isn't much space for ambiguous discussions like, "Yes, we should stay, but the European Union has to change." A lot of people don't want to hear that.

I did think about not releasing it until after the referendum. But then I thought, What if we leave?! So, in the end, I thought I'd bite the bullet. Then I realized, Hey, at least UKIP will buy loads of copies. Why not cash-in on the political angst?

Miniature worlds don't seem like a healthy thing to occupy yourself with. Is Europe loosing the plot? Your project seems like an existential criticism—like Europe doesn't even exist.
I think it does exist. There's a real will, still, among a lot of people to make Europe work, which in some ways is impressive considering all the problems, like this huge crisis over the Euro. Problems like this will either tear the European Union apart or make it stronger in the long run. My hope is that what comes out of the referendum is that Europe comes together and improves as a result. Hopefully, if nothing else, people in Brussels will go, "Oh my God, we've come this close to disintegrating. We do need to make serious changes and listen to the things people aren't comfortable with."

Follow Yohann Koshy on Twitter.

Buy A Model Continent here.

The bastard red ring of death via

Normally, when a console's death is announced via hammy eulogy from an aging CEO, the news kind of washes over you. It's expected. You feel a tinge of melancholy, but you're ultimately nonplussed. That's probably because by the time most consoles receive their corporate marching orders, the only titles available are a spectacular mix of lackluster football ports, mode-stripped Call of Duties, or knock-off Disney shovelware like The Dalmatians or Legend of Hercules. Still, despite the fact that the games have long stopped coming, the well has since dried up, and the machine's bigger, brasher, show-off younger brother is doing such a solid job of building on its legacy of seminal innovations, there was something especially sad about the freshly confirmed discontinuation of the Xbox 360.

The console launched in late 2005, when I was studying in an unremittingly bleak, booze-drenched Welsh seaside town. Looking back on it now, and maybe even then, there was nothing that particularly grabbed me about the machine's launch lineup, the drab point of sale in the town's branch of GAME staring back at me like a needy pug. Titles like Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero had both received middling reviews, and I wasn't ready to take like a $730 punt on SEGA's new IP Condemned: Criminal Origins just yet. And I definitely wasn't prepared to sell a kidney just to play fucking Project Gotham 3, let's be honest.

It had also been a divisive first quarter for the console. Many people, myself included, felt that it was too soon to be releasing a successor to the Xbox. Units were impossible to track down in the first Christmas after launch, leading to the usual accusations of deliberate stock withholding on Microsoft's part, the initial lineup of games was utterly mediocre, and it was seriously fucking expensive.

So I waited for the first real system sellers to arrive, and when they did, I applied for a job in the rickety sports shop over the road, and I spent an utterly miserable summer working behind the cash register, dealing with teardrop-tattooed shoplifters, passive-aggressive jobsworths, horrendous bosses, and the constant blood-boiling braying of Vernon Kay's cheerful Radio 1 slot. It was a job only preferable to sieving raw sewage by hand, and all for an Xbox 360 with Oblivion and Dead Rising.

I got that bulky machine home one balmy late summer night in 2006, and I set it up with that unique sense of new-console wonder, dexterity, and urgency, poking my nose into every nook and cranny of my overly packaged purchase. It was a tank of a system, tacky and futuristic at the same, all cumbersome cream with its neon green circle winking ominously like something out of Minority Report. Squinting at Dead Rising's tiny in-game text, it was clear that this was a machine with its sights firmly set on the future, and my tired old analogue boot of a television was obviously too old to keep up with such a forward-facing system, having traveled with me through the doors of two broken homes, and three impossibly squalid university residences.

The Xbox 360's original dashboard via YouTube user MrMario2011

Where Microsoft had previously struggled to bring online gaming to the masses with its original console's experimental rollout of Xbox Live, the world of online multiplayer was about to explode with the Xbox 360. Undoubtedly, it changed the shape of the gaming landscape forever. We were all astronauts, faces toward the sky, about to embark on one of the most inclusive, innovative, exciting, and important generations of our sad little gaming lives. The 360 brought with it a new language to the way we played games, and how we understood and remembered them. Suddenly, we were swapping gamertags with randoms, kneeling at the feet of the new kings and queens in the hierarchical kingdom of gamerscore, watching our every achievement recognized with a gentle pop, and playing in ways we'd never done before.

I jumped off the peak of the giddying Agency Tower in Crackdown with an old, dear friend, shortly before he died. I'd jump on and play Minecraft with my younger brother after he got home from school, watching in wonder as he took me through his latest tricks and creations. I stayed up all night chainsawing Locust in half on Gears of War, remembered Symphony of the Night and its miserable little pile of secrets, nursed an extensive and scary addiction to Geometry Wars, and played Pac-Man Championship Edition until the early hours in a salvia den in Elephant and Castle. The arcades of Xbox Live on 360 brought us all of these things and more, setting up the console as a provider of memories, an instigator of friendship, and linesman in the world of healthy, good old fashioned competition.

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Related: Watch 'Street Fighter V: KO Dreams', co-created with Capcom

Then there were the games themselves. The 360 played host to some of the greatest Halo titles in the franchise's history, gave a birth to a new hero in the shape of thick-necked bandana-wearing meathead Marcus Fenix, and, perhaps more curiously, gave shelter to a surprisingly decent range of JRPGs—Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon amongst them.

Among my other favorites were the exhilaratingly bonkers Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, one of Rare's overlooked gems, dragging bear and bird into a bizarre platformer/racing/sandbox hybrid and drenching them in a delightfully tropical Starburst aesthetic. Elsewhere, Crackdown provided some jumpy relief for those gagging to get stuck into a next-gen Grand Theft Auto, and Condemned: Criminal Origins is still one of the most harrowing video games I've ever played. Alongside these, the aforementioned Xbox Live Arcade continued to pump out gem after gem after gem, from nostalgic arcade classics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to games I never thought I'd be able to play again, like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga.

A shelf full of 360 joy via

The indie scene on 360 was a whole other treasure trove, and it brought heady masterpieces like Braid and Limbo together with future cult classics like Shadow Complex and Castle Crashers. There was plenty to really love, especially if you were looking in the right places.

However, the machine wasn't without its problems. There is an extensive Wikipedia page dedicated to the legacy of misery the console's technical issues inflicted on gamers—scratching discs, overheating, and of course, the now infamous red rings of death—the fear of which would constantly linger in the back of my mind, festering like a dishcloth.

All in all, I think I went through three consoles in the machine's decade long lifespan, pretty staggering when you consider I've only ever had one Wii and one PlayStation 3. Sending them back was a pain in the ass, took forever, and as a result, I never really felt confident in the console's ability to last. The power brick was a constant irritant, a nightmare to manage, and to this day, I've never found an appropriately comfortable place for it to rest behind my telly. What's more, it made a hell of a fucking racket, coming off like some knackered 18-30 hotel ceiling fan. All of this flimsiness meant that the 360 often felt more like a toy than its more sophisticated nemesis, all quiet and sleek in its piano-black casing and divisive Spider-Man font.

A decade on, and millions upon millions of red rings and achievement pops later, here we are, solemnly digesting the news that our once beloved console is on the way to the scrap heap, heading to the great big CEX in the sky. There will never be another Xbox 360 game. Mine's in the corner of the lounge with the wires all wrapped round it and has been for ages. The games I played, the friends I made, and their visions of themselves are all still on there; Mii-aping avatars with skinny limbs, anime haircuts, weird dancey poses, baseball caps, sneakers, and Limbo T-shirts, some now on Xbox One, some still playing, some having passed away, a final image of them left unfinished for all eternity.

What is it that makes the death of the Xbox 360 so sad? That breezeblock of a console made us communicate with one another. It pitted us against one anoother. It made us love one another, and it made us hate one another. It put us side by side for the first time as we explored other worlds, and it brought back classic games from our memories, making new ones in the process. It kept us in touch with one another. It made us smarter and more skillful. It did all of this with such an effortless charm. And for this, it deserves only the warmest of places in our hearts.

Follow Jonathan Beach on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Evan Guest

Read: 'I'm Really Rich': Donald Trump and the Art of Having No Shame

Donald Trump nabbed the votes of the wealthy and well-educated in the East Coast primaries this week, securing wins in some of the richest places in America, Reuters reports.

Trump won over people from the fanciest-schmansiest and best-educated counties in the US, including Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Newport County, Rhode Island—meaning people with a few degrees and six-figure salaries have actually started to consider the orange menace a viable option for president.

Randall Miller, professor of American politics at Pennsylvania's Saint Joseph's University, told Reuters that it's bizarre that the super knowledgeable have blanked on some of Trump's most dreadful behaviors—like the heinous shit he's spewed about women and Latinos—but the phenomenon does make sense.

Trump is, after all, Ivy-league educated—he attended University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business—as well as crazy rich, so he and his new voters have that much in common. Also, any Republican with an education is surely scared shitless by Ted Cruz's union of church and state, and CBS News reported in late March that under Trump's tax plan, the One Percenters would save about $275,000 a year on tax cuts, so there's that.

Miller adds that familiarity with Trump's name in the Northeast probably didn't hurt and thinks people "may have gotten used to Trump," saying, "He's not as outrageous as he used to be." Ultimately, Republicans are pretty much stuck with him at this point, so this could just be the acceptance phase of the Kübler-Ross model.

Read: This Video of a Gator Eating Another Gator Is Metal as Hell

Sometimes even the most serene among us just snap—just check out the video above, which shows several Buddhist monks throwing down in an all-out brawl outside Ningguo Temple in China's Jiangsu Province.

First reported by CCTV News, the cellphone video shows three monks throwing wild haymakers at one another while a woman screams out. Tourists and a few other monks break up the fight—but not before one monk boxes another's ear from behind.

The whole scene reminds us of a famous, often misattributed Buddhist quote: "You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger." These monks, indeed, faced swift punishment. The three have all been let go from the temple, reports CCTV, where they served as middle managers.

UPDATE 4/28/16: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the above quote to Buddha.

We've all been here unless you're a trust fund baby, in which case, fuck you. Photo via Flickr user Kathryn Decker

You need experience to get experience. That's the catch-22 many people face when they first attempt to enter the workforce—it's like needing a pair of scissors to open a package of scissors. A study from CareerBuilder last year found that 56 percent of hiring managers caught job applicants lying about something on their résumés.

Wondering what kinds of lies those might be, VICE reached out to young people to find out what they're bullshitting about on their résumés and how it worked out for them professionally.

Kayla, 28

Lie: I lied about past experience, taking computer program courses, graduating high school, and my references.

Can you tell me a bit more detail about what exactly lied about?
Depending on the job I'm applying for, I will absolutely tailor my past experience in places that I have worked to make it seem like I've done exactly what the same job description is that I'm applying for. I've lied about places I've worked at in the past. Usually it wasn't far-fetched—it's not like I lied about being a pilot or something and applied to Air Canada.

I would totally fudge up my references and ask people who were friends or family members to pretend to be people who worked for those companies. Any kind of computer program I really had no experience in, I would say I had taken courses and I was at the intermediate level, like Microsoft Access, but really I didn't even know what the freaking program looked like if I was asked to find it on a computer. Educational stuff I've definitely lied about (I didn't graduate high school).

But here's how I justified it in my mind: Technically speaking, I think every year of your life past high school age, you gain like three credits, and it's just considered life experience. I figured I gained whatever credits I hadn't earned in high school through actual life.

Would you do it again at this point in your career?
I probably wouldn't do it again at this point simply because I lied on my résumé for entry-level positions, but now that I actually achieved those jobs and have the actual experience, I no longer need to do so. I work in post-secondary education at a college doing student services and administration.

Did anyone find out about any of the lies on your résumé?
No. I've been working in this industry for about five years.

Do you have any tips for people who are thinking about lying on their résumé being someone who's done it successfully?
Basically when you're going to lie on your résumé, you need to make sure that you can immediately make it seem like you do actually have all of that experience. So if I lied on my résumé about a particular computer program, if I actually receive the position, I would be enrolled in courses the day of the offer of employment. You kind of have to live up to what the lie on your résumé is. You can't just lie and expect to get away with it forever because eventually your cover is going to be totally blown.

Eight-year-old Shakira Koostachin plays on a swing in the northern Ontario First Nations reserve in Attawapiskat, Ontario. The community of 2,000 is under a state of emergency due to a spike in youth suicide attempts. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

On April 9, Attawapiskat First Nation—a Cree community located near Kenora, Ontario—declared a state of emergency.