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Why ‘Driver: San Francisco' Is Gaming's Most Fabulous Joyride

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All screenshots via Steam

"Driver." Is there a more generic title? It's not just a plain word. In the spirit of bland, entertainment marketing, it tells you precisely what kind of game you're about to buy. Shooter. Platformer. Driver. This must be a game with a singular purpose—the car chases might be fun, but car chases, presumably, are all you'll get.

But then, there's the other half: "San Francisco." If writer Walt Williams chose Dubai to represent Spec Ops: The Line's grander themes—if the city's fullness and grandeur, violently eroded by a sandstorm, reflected the mental deterioration of Captain Martin Walker—I'd like to think San Francisco says something of Driver's variety and color, its heterogeneity. Throughout the 20th century, San Francisco became synonymous with cultural experimentation and alternative thinking. Recalling the city in its 1960s heyday, Hunter Thompson wrote "there was madness in any direction... you could strike sparks anywhere." If not for its famously bumpy roads, or its association with the film Bullit, San Francisco, a widely accepted center of creative freedom, is the perfect setting for 2011's Driver—despite flaunting an adherence to genre, this is an unorthodox game, replete with variety.

"Variety," to some game makers, can mean ugly and unfortunate things. Assassin's Creed's idea of "variety" is endless side missions and collectibles. In Saints Row and Just Cause, "variety" means idiocy: big weapons, slapstick physics engines, and myriad useless ways for players to "express themselves." It's a shame that today, when I'm told a game is "original", "madcap," or "varied," I'm immediately suspicious. Driver: San Francisco is all of these things, but certainly not in the bastardized, dragged-through-the-mud sense that I've come to associate with video games. There are lots of things to do and see in Driver, and all of them are interesting.

If you aren't familiar with the game's narrative set-up, it's one of the smartest in mainstream gaming. You, as the eponymous driver, Tanner, are stuck in a coma following a car crash. By hitting a single button, at any time, you can float out of your body and into other people—perhaps you see a kid struggling with his driving test, so you leap into him and suddenly wow his instructor with expert cornering and precision 180 spins. Sometimes, you're a college student trying to win street races to pay for tuition. Other times, you're a hapless beat cop thrust into a high-speed chase. Using his superpower, Tanner briefly enjoys life as hundreds of different San Franciscans. What could be a straight up driving game, fixated on the rote world of cops and robbers, becomes a soap opera, a melodrama, a comedy.

'Driver: San Francisco,' gameplay trailer

And it's lovingly written, too. It takes one, maybe two missions for Tanner to become accustomed to his ability, and the fact he's in a coma, and from thereon he's absolutely up for anything. Like Deadly Premonition's Francis York Morgan, one of my favorite video game characters, who when confronted my monsters and ghosts simply shrugs and gets on with it, Tanner doesn't fret or navel gaze—as much as I am, he's enjoying the ride. And that's what gives Driver its energy. Hopping between characters is one thing, but the way Driver's writers at Ubisoft Reflections (Ian Mayor, James Worrall, and David Midgley) never get bogged down in "what it all means"—the way they cleanly and crisply set up each vignette, and then let them roll with absolute willing—represents confidence of a kind game makers, all too often, seem to lack.

Openness to experimentation, and a creative attitude perhaps best surmised as "sure, why not?," are two things I respect hugely. Video games, beneath those two rubrics, regularly peddle the stupidest and basest entertainment. Driver: San Francisco is the rare example of a game boldly willing to different, to challenge the accepted standards both of its genre and the franchise that gives it its name, without degenerating into idiocy. Its body-swapping mechanic, which opens Driver up to many new characters and contexts for missions, is original and weird in the noblest sense. Strapping your character to a flying gas tank, or beating pedestrians to death with a gigantic flopping dildo, are not.

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Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'On Patrol with South Korea's Suicide Rescue Team'

And yet Driver: San Francisco, for all its intelligence and sophistication, is never pretentious. Its chases are fast, dangerous, and require a great deal of skill—it's still, at times, a prohibitively designed driving simulation. But Driver is saved by its only passing interest in cars. Where Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, and Driveclub fawn over the cold, aerodynamic details of their vehicles, Driver: San Francisco, by its body-swapping central conceit, belies fetishization.

From vehicle to vehicle, you are thrown. Rather than grow attached to a single car, pouring over its specifications and contours, the point of Driver: San Francisco, as its name absolutely implies, is to drive. And it allows the thrill of driving to speak for itself. Best exemplified by this sickly cutscene from Ride, racing games insist there is something more to driving, something edifying or ethereal—almost religious. Maybe it's badly worded enthusiasm, and appealing to a presumed audience of gearheads, but it slows driving games down, makes them stuffy, turgid.

Driving, in the raw, experiential sense, is about movement. Where racers today often feel like car commercials, masturbating over the grandiloquent details of machines, Driver: San Francisco is constantly in motion, thrusting the player—like the audience to a great Hollywood car chase—from vehicle to vehicle, corner to corner. Its body-swapping mechanic is the essence of driving. Like Tanner, hurtling across the streets of San Francisco, uncertain of what the next alley or the next hairpin might hold, the player, by moving between different cars and different bodies, is subject to a perpetual sense of motion and surprise. They are not just driving a car. They are driving the camera, the character and their own perspective—rather than locked, unerringly, on the rear of a McClaren as it eases around a course, in Driver: San Francisco, you "drive" out of your body, into the sky, along the highway, and through the bonnet of a new vehicle, before driving, literally, some more.

If the game's variety is true to the name "San Francisco," its framing of almost every single act during play as movement, as a race, as transportation, is true to the name "Driver."

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.


How the Amateur Action Masterpiece 'Miami Connection' Was Rescued from Oblivion

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There are "better" movies than Miami Connection, the 1987 amateur action masterpiece you can watch now on this very website, but I don't know of any film with a more perfect blend of violence, fun, and innocence. In some scenes, heads are chopped off and obviously fake blood spurts out of sword wounds. In other scenes, a synth-rock band sings songs about friendship for a packed Orlando club. There's one long, dialogue-free sequence that is just a biker party shot in the lazy style of an Altman film where someone forgot to record sound. Mostly, it's a movie that makes you feel good. And it almost disappeared forever.

The movie, which was made in the mid 80s by Korean director Richard Park and stars taekwondo master and martial arts entrepreneur Y. K. Kim, who also funded the project, was shown in only a few theaters and did not catch on. According to the Orlando Sentinel, it was gone within three weeks; one review called it the worst film on 1988. Admittedly, it's a little bit rough, as the cast and crew was made up almost entirely of Kim's students, who didn't have any film experience. The acting is often sub-porn level; the editing can be odd and almost avant-garde; and the fight scenes, while pretty good for non-pros, are inadvertently hilarious. Still, there's a sense of sincere joy running through the whole thing that went ignored back then. In any case, it faded from everyone's consciousness, and it would have stayed that way if not for Zack Carlson.

Carlson is the host of VICE's new documentary series, Outsider, which examines the world of films made far, far outside the normal movie-making system, the first episode of which is all about Miami Connection and Kim. He's also the guy who, while working at Alamo Drafthouse, rescued the film from the dustbin of history and brought it to theaters, where it caught on with audiences and became a legitimate cult classic. If you haven't seen the first episode of Outsider, take a look below, and scroll down to read my interview with Carlson about his discovery of the film and what it was like to visit Y. K. Kim's taekwando self-help empire in Orlando.

Watch VICE's documentary where we meet YK Kim, part of our new cult film series 'OUTSIDER'

VICE: You've probably told this story a few times by now, but how did you stumble across Miami Connection? It was on eBay, right?
Zack Carlson: Yeah. It was a five-reel, 35mm print. This guy was online selling a bunch of film prints. A typical amount for a feature film would be in the hundreds of dollars—if somebody's selling a print of Nightmare on Elm Street, they're gonna get $500, $800 for it. But nestled in his eBay listings was this 40-buck movie called Miami Connection that, at the time, there was no description of online. But I was able to look up the year of the release, and I was like, "Well, it's the 80s, it's an action film, it's 40 bucks... like, why not? Let's give it a shot."

So you knew nothing about it when you bought it.
No, I was just being stupid. But I was a film programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse when it was an independent, small company that was based in Austin. And we did weekly exploitation screenings of 35mm films, so I was always just trying to build up the collection.

Once we got it, it just kind of sat for a year, cause I was still looking for a VHS tape of it, so I could watch it. If it was a total piece of crap, I didn't want to force it onto the theater's audience and have them hate it. But then we started doing this thing called the "Reel One Party," where me and my fellow programmer Lars Nilsen would take a bunch of prints that we couldn't otherwise watch and show the first reel of each one to an audience of maybe like twenty fellow die-hard nerds.

The first reel of Miami Connection, which is about twenty minutes long, had this crazy impact on everybody. Like they really wanted the whole movie to just run.

"The difference between Miami Connection and a movie like The Room is that Miami Connection is a good movie."

What was your first impression of that first reel?
It's easy to say, "Oh, in that moment, it was a magical experience, " but it really was completely, relentlessly entertaining from the outset. In the first twenty minutes of the movie, you're getting massive violence, you're getting cocaine ninjas, you're getting a synth-rock taekwondo band, you're getting all of this stuff right out of the gate. It's just like, "Does the whole movie maintain this pace? Does it hold up?" And it does. But even if it didn't, even if it was just the first twenty minutes, it would be like the best first twenty minutes of a movie possible. And obviously it was made by people who weren't professional... but their enthusiasm, and their dedication to it, was just the most exciting thing possible.

Comparing it to some other non-professional movies, like The Room, it's striking how good-hearted it is.
The difference between Miami Connection and a movie like The Room is that Miami Connection is a good movie. It's entertaining, even if it has its faults. With The Room, typically people appreciate and approach that movie in a superior way, where they're mocking it. But with Miami Connection, even a snide viewer gets wrapped up in it. When the character Jim almost dies, if you watch it in a theater, everyone gasps. They gasp as if they're watching an award-winning dramatic moment in a Hollywood film. That's not gonna happen with something that people are watching ironically.

Watch the full-length film 'Miami Connection'

What was it like going to see Y. K. Kim in Orlando while you were making the episode of OUTSIDER?
I had dealt with Kim at screenings in Austin and Los Angeles, but I had never met him on his own turf, where he has his school and his students, basically his universe that he's made down there. He was super warm and accommodating, and he was excited about the project, but I didn't realize how much of an influence he had until we were there.

In the documentary, you're at one of his seminars where he's pumping people up like a self-help guru. What was that like?
Well, that was really unusual, because it was like a freezing Saturday morning, and we didn't know how many people there would be, and it was like a packed room of these people who, like, adore him. There was one man that was such a devoted follower that he was actually lip-synching all of the things that Y. K. Kim was saying, because the guy had memorized the tapes and all the stuff.

Wow.
We also didn't realize, outside of his students, how many people basically adore him—like, we talked to the chief of police for the whole county and other people and they're like, "Oh yeah, Y. K. Kim, he's like our favorite person in Orlando."

Why do people like him so much?
He does a ton of charity work. He does lots of stuff for homeless students and raises money through his schools to go to these organizations, and he's just very present in the community, always as a positive force. I've never interacted with somebody who's so respected by his colleagues and by his followers, to where it was on the verge of almost being a religious affection that they have for him. But it wasn't that way, and he didn't exercise any kind of power over them—he's just like this beacon. It was really unlike anything I've ever seen.

It seems like everyone you talked to who was involved in the production of Miami Connection seemed to be really psyched that they did it.
They do, but I think it's because they were excited to do something that supports their grandmaster. They're like: "Oh, we were there for him, and we helped him achieve this goal of making a movie." Angelo, the musician, was the only person we met that wasn't already a student of Y. K. Kim when they made the movie. But he became so enamored of Y. K. Kim that he was just like, "Oh yes, it was a great experience to work with him, to work with Grandmaster on this thing." Even though the movie was a failure, financially, when it was released initially, everybody still seems to take great pride in it.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

How to Stamp Out Trolls and Make the Internet a Safer Place

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Here are some souvenir trolls that you can buy when you visit Iceland, if you like. They're pretty grim. I wouldn't want them in my home. Just like nobody wants reams of sexist shit in their Twitter feed, thank you very much. Troll image via viking.is.

"I feel pretty lucky that the worst I've encountered has been, 'You're a fat, unfunny cunt and you have bad hair.' It stings, but I've been able to move on. However, I'm a white, cis woman so I've got a lot of privilege in these spaces in terms of how I'm viewed and how people choose to speak to me."

Christina McDermott is head of social for the BPP Group, and a freelance writer. She enjoys video games, and regularly uses social media, making her just like millions of women in the world, right now, in both respects. But almost exclusively because she is a woman, she has been on the receiving end of what she considers, incredibly, merely mild abuse.

"I always feel on edge whenever I have a piece published. It ties into a lot of my own anxiety issues. What if someone disagrees with this? What will they do or say to me? Will they find an old tweet of mine where I've said something stupid and use it to discredit my point?" she says. "I know that I'm not the only woman to feel like this, and I feel exceptionally lucky that I have a great support network on the social spaces I am on to help out if it all gets too much."

That McDermott feels she has the necessary support to get her through periods when "it all gets too much" is great. But surely, by now, so many years since the first email was sent (officially in 1971) and social media completely invaded our lives to the extent that people now buy mobile phones based on their compatibility with the most popular social networks over the basics of being able to make a call, we should have reached the situation where communication through technology isn't tarred by regular stories of discrimination, harassment, bullying, or worse.

You needn't Google far to find one: here's a recent report from local press in Hull confirming that the local police are struggling to deal with "cyber sex pests." And when IGN's Lucy O'Brien posted her review of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End on May 5, scoring the game 8.8/10 (a very reasonable result, and so very far from a negative mark), her mentions on Twitter, and those directed at IGN, immediately became batshit insane.

People pulled out the classic "feminazi" calls, and inundated her with what is basically a heaping load of sexist bull crap, because she gave a (marginally) higher score to Rise of the Tomb Raider, a video game featuring a female lead. The (over 10,000) comments on the piece itself have been heavily moderated—a good thing—but even now there's some that are entirely spiteful. Case in point: "Lucy O Brien is just an attention wh*re, this is not the first time she underscores excellent games for attention. She probably touches herself to all of this at the moment... and yes, she doesn't shave her armpits." Good one, "SausagePiano." Some incredibly boring dork even set up one of those online petitions to encourage IGN to not let her review a PlayStation game again. It's bombing, naturally, but what's the major malfunction of whoever even thinks that setting up such a thing is a good idea?

"Women are constantly having their lived experiences and traumas minimized on social media because hate speech is 'just a joke' or 'harmless trolling,'" McDermott says of the social media landscape today, one borne out by what's happening to O'Brien. "But imagine having to deal with that day after day," McDermott says.

With that in mind, I spoke to Dr. Ellen Helsper, of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She's long researched new media audiences, conducting studies into digital inclusivity and penning a 2007 thesis titled "Internet use amongst teenagers: Social inclusion, self-confidence, and group identity." I wanted to know how she feels we can improve this sorry state of affairs, where bullying would appear to be rampant across online communication and social media, and what the next moves are in order to make the internet a happier place for everyone.

"One thing that's clear, to begin with, is that we cannot see online and offline lives as two separate things—these things are now mashed," Helsper tells me. "Hurting someone online has the same physiological effects, like stress, as 'real-life' bullying. Sending a sext can be every bit as hurtful as seeing a partner flirt with someone else in a bar. It's not meaningless, because the separation between our online and offline lives is so hard to make, because it's just not there."

"Women tend to not act antisocially, whereas men do use online platforms in a more antisocial manner." —Dr. Ellen Helsper

Dr. Helsper proceeds to tell me that it's rare for internet users to adopt a wholly different persona online to how they act in a physical context, and also that "most of the bullying we see online is actually by people that the victims see in their offline lives." She adds, though, that this transparency of identity is platform dependent, and also that men and women generally act differently when afforded a degree of online anonymity. "Women tend to not act antisocially, whereas men do use online platforms in a more antisocial manner. And that's in the sense of bad behavior and bullying, trolling, things like that, but also in the sense of using those platforms to stand up for rights that they would otherwise be unable to stand up for. 'Going against the system,' is the way I'd put it."

Dr. Martin Graff, head of research in psychology at the University of South Wales, has conducted studies in the field of online interaction, including looking at how relationships both form and are dissolved in digital spaces. When I ask him about the base causes of the online toxicity we see reported on, the harassment and the misogyny, he replies that "it's suggested that people are less inhibited online," and in terms of abuse received through online gaming, adds: "Some computer based games can have the effect of desensitizing people in terms of what they see as aggressive. They might also create the impression that the world is a more aggressive place than it actually is." Interacting with strangers on the other side of the world through an online video game is just as fraught with the risk of receiving abuse as posting a could-be-controversial tweet; miss a chance in Rocket League and, my god, the reactions from teammates and opposition alike can be caustic, to be polite.

Dr. Graff calls Twitter et al, text-based communication, "lean media," and says that it's using these channels that people become less careful with the things that they say—which isn't the case when speaking to someone else in person, using "richer communication." To go back to Dr. Helsper's point about our online and offline lives being fully intertwined at this point, she sees the conveying of consequences as essential to reducing antisocial, antagonistic behavior on the internet.

"(Some computer games) might also create the impression that the world is a more aggressive place than it actually is." —Dr. Martin Graff

"Trolls, generally, are not hiding—they just somehow feel their actions are acceptable," he says. "Until someone really confronts them with the consequences, or brings what they're doing closer to their own experiences, or their own friends and family, they won't change."

"A good intervention program in bullying, at work or at school or any organization, is never just a case of going up to the bully and telling them to shut up. It's sitting together and explaining: this is what it does to the victim. In relation to the online environment, there's been a massive shift where when bullying occurs, because it's often people you know—or think you know—there needs to be this really clear identifying of who the intermediary should be, and how they can intervene."

Graff continues, "If it's a kid at school, bullying you through WhatsApp and not the playground, schools are now set up, in the UK at least, to pick up on that, as well as parents. WhatsApp can't do much about it themselves because they do not have the context. They can't look at a message and know: that is bullying, Because a lot of what we say to one another depends on the relationship you have, and without that context you can't interpret it. So Facebook has been trying to do something along those lines. If you report something as being harassment, or bullying, they give you the option of getting someone involved to mediate. What we know from traditional bullying and harassment, that's what works. If it's clearly illegal, then the platform has to jump in—like child pornography, grooming, human trafficking. That means there needs to be an outside intervention. But most of the harassment that people are worried about is not actually illegal, not something you can be jailed for. When words are hurtful, the best solution is to sit people together, and bring some context—although that's not always possible."

Watch our video 'Confessions of an Internet Troll'

But speaking out against abuse collectively is a sure-fire step in the right direction. Dr. Helsper has observed that the people most vulnerable offline are also those less equipped to handle abuse when online. "If you're more psychologically vulnerable than the average, and you get picked on, then that's going to have a bigger affect on you," she says. "You might not have the tools, the energy, the capacity to counter that. And then those things have quite heavy consequences," Helsper says.

"The people who are most vulnerable are also the least likely to have these support networks, to have an environment in which they can go to someone and say: 'This is happening to me, I don't like it, what can I do?'" she says. "If you take the example of a kid who's being bullied for some reason, it's usually by someone more popular, stronger, or who the victim would like to be like. And it's really hard for them to go to their parents, or to the school, because you don't want to be the kid who's not liked by the other kids. You want to be popular. And that's the same with adults. There are people who don't have a support network of friends, anyone who come and help them. When you see bullying and harassment in organizations, through social media, unless they're set up for that kind of behavior to be reported and dealt with, then those vulnerable people are going to continue suffering."

"If people feel that something inappropriate is happening, or something harmful is being said about someone, but they don't react, that is a silent endorsement." —Dr Ellen Helsper

The solution here is to avoid what Dr. Helsper calls "the spiral of silence," where "certain voices that don't comply to the general norm get silenced." She continues, "If people feel that something inappropriate is happening, or something harmful is being said about someone, but they don't react, that is a silent endorsement. And it might be that nobody reacts because they worry about receiving the same treatment that they're acknowledging as wrong, even though it might be that most people on that platform also feel the same way. And if people would speak up, then the trolls will get pushed off those platforms."

Day in, day out, I see this kind of collective, proactive dismantling of inappropriate interactions on Twitter—to go back to the Lucy O'Brien petition, I've seen several people with sizable Twitter followings post about how it's entirely ludicrous, and how the person who started it should, maybe, not have done so. But that has to happen more often, and not just on a platform like Twitter, but message boards both large and small, across the internet. Simply deleting comments is not effective in the long term, says Dr. Helsper, adding that it's better to "collectively create a different atmosphere," although that can be difficult when patterns of interactions are long established on particular platforms. "When people first come into a discussion forum, they try to figure out what the norms are, behavior and etiquette wise. If interactions begin with negative behavior, which is not countered by a moderator or the existing community, that gets taken as a kind of silent approval."

Online literacy therefore becomes incredibly important, in order to stamp out that negativity before it flourishes—and it's a kind of training that has to begin young. "We've focused a lot on teaching people the practical stuff—how to use these buttons, how to install drivers, how to make a spreadsheet," Dr. Helsper says. "And that includes safety settings, and privacy settings. But now the big shift in the area I work in, in a professional and educational context, is about incorporating what we call social and content creation literacy. And that's a form of 'netiquette,' essentially. How do we interact when we're using all these different platforms? What is appropriate?"

New on Motherboard: This Subreddit Dedicated to Trolling Makeup Bloggers Will Make You Blush

"Before, it was just: here is a keyboard, this is how it works, and this is how you scan for a virus. In social media, we know how to block people, but we need better social skills than that," Helsper says. "You can get carried away by the fact that technology changes so rapidly; but really, these skills are ones that we've always had to learn, in interacting with others. Now there's this added digital layer—but it's not like it was okay before to call someone something very nasty. Now with technology, somehow all of a sudden that's okay? So we need to make that link between the offline and online when training people, and explain this digital world. These things are not disconnected—what you do online has consequences offline."

It could be that, 20 years from now, when today's kids are grown up and running the show on the internet, and digital communication has progressed through what is still something of a teething stage, we'll all be able to enjoy a happier, friendlier social media landscape. But what's vital in achieving that is absolutely acknowledging that technology isn't this thing that happens beside everything else in our lives—it's completely absorbed by it, and correspondingly envelops so much of our time, money, attention and emotions. "If we leave the digital stuff as a separate space, then this generation will not grow up to properly conduct themselves online," says Helsper. "You need to know the meaning of things—so this needs to be explicitly talked about, and it shouldn't be assumed that things will change with the next generation, that we just have to wait until all these old people die, and then everything will be okay. I've heard that said a few times, and it's not as simple as that."

"I don't think that banning comments sections or prosecuting abusive tweeters is the answer to the issues that we're facing with social media and online spaces today," McDermotttells me, echoing both Dr. Helsper's thoughts and my own. "It's as though these platforms are entering adolescence, and we're trying to control them in ways which won't benefit these spaces or just make people more wary of using them. But this requires change from everyone involved—users and developers alike. Otherwise, we're just going to keep making the same mistakes."

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Photos of the Apartments of the World's Single Men

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Men are gross. They pee in alleys, scratch their crotch constantly, and cover every available surface in your life with tiny bits of beard hair, toenail clippings, wet towels, and tobacco. Basically, they behave with a lack of self-awareness that can only come from shitting over everyone else for millennia.

But that's just how men behave around women. We wondered if they can get any more disgusting when left to their own devices, so VICE's international editors visited our bachelor friends to document the living conditions of single males around the world.

UNITED KINGDOM

IKE, 25, ESSEX

VICE: How often do you clean your apartment?
Ike: Once a week, if you're lucky. Probably more like once every couple of weeks.

How often do you change your sheets?
Once a week. That's one thing I do keep on top of.

What's your justification for this mess?
I don't give a shit, to be honest. It's my space. If I don't want to tidy, I won't.

What do you think of clean and tidy people?
It's their choice. They're entitled to have their place the way they like it.

What's the longest you've left the washing up?
I've literally created extraterrestrial life in my kitchen when I haven't done the dishes in so long. They start talking to me.

What do girls seem to think about your apartment?
I don't really care; it's not their flat.

More photos of Ike's apartment:



ITALY

ANONYMOUS, 30, ROME

How long have you lived in this place, and how often do you clean it?
I've lived here since the 1980s—it's my family's place. And I clean it every other day.

Where do all these objects come from?
From trips I've made. I've traveled everywhere. That vase, for instance—I got it in Istanbul. The vase in the bedroom is from Anchorage, Alaska. The furniture is also from adventures I've had around the world. I like vintage. The vintage of various cultures, in particular 1950s and 1960s styles.

What about the mosaic in the bathroom?
White and blue are the colors of Lazio F.C. obviously!

What does your girlfriend think of your space?
She thinks it's really messy.

Is that your dog?
Yeah, Lafo is a very demanding dog like a Christian. He's 11 and like a son to me. His full name is "General Lafayette."

More photos of that guy's apartment:

THE NETHERLANDS

TWAN, 24, AMSTERDAM

VICE: Why do you sleep on the floor instead of in your bunk bed?
Twan: Bunk beds are the worst—to sleep in and to do other stuff in. I use my bunk bed mainly to hang my hammock on. I did clean up a little bit before you came—all the tissues that were lying around. No way those were going to make it in the picture.

What was your childhood bedroom like?
Basically the same as it is now, but instead of ashtrays everywhere, I had empty bottles of Fanta or Cola lying around. I used to drink two a day.

Do you have any pets?
Slugs, mostly. When I leave the window open, at some point, I'll hear some rustling, and I'll find a slug next to my bed with a slime trail behind him.

More photos of Twan's apartment:

GERMANY

THORBEN, 27, DORTMUND

VICE: Is this the first house you've lived in on your own?
Thorben: Nope, it's the fifth.

Are there are any items that you take with you from house to house?
It's all mine, except the kitchen and the bowl I shit in.

Speaking of the kitchen, I noticed you don't have a fridge?
Yeah, my windows aren't great at keeping the cold out, but at least that meant I could use the area around the kitchen window as a fridge in the winter.

Do your parents ever visit?
Not really. My current girlfriend has no desire to visit, either. A few months ago, the place almost cost me a one-night stand too: We got here around three in the morning, and a short while later, we had to leave and go to hers. We were making out, and just before it got heavy, she said, "I can't—I keep thinking about your apartment."

More photos of Thorben's apartment:

MEXICO

GERARDO, 26, MEXICO CITY

VICE: I noticed that you don't have a dining room or a dining table. Where do you eat?
Gerardo:
On the street; I'm never at home, so I always get takeaway. In my fridge, there is only water, juice, and yogurt.

Who would be the perfect roommate?
A puppy.

Why are there so many bikes in here?
I live here for free because the building belongs to my family. My aunt lives below me, while my grandmother sews in the cellar.

No idea what that has to do with anything, but cool. Do you like living alone?
I do. I can do whatever I want, and nobody sees me doing it.

More photos of Gerardo's apartment:



ROMANIA

MACANACHE, 26, BUCHAREST

VICE: How often do you stay in this apartment?
Macanache: It depends—two or three times per week. I live with my dad the rest of the week, but now that he's alone, I've been staying here more often.

How often do you clean your apartment?
I am obsessed—I am always cleaning, and it's still a mess. My father doesn't give a shit, and he spends all day doing nothing. He will often drop a bottle of beer somewhere and make a mess. He is not used to taking his shoes off when he comes in the house, so I have to constantly scrub the floor.

How do guests react to this mess?
Honestly, I don't really care.

More photos of Macanache's apartment:

GREECE

KOSTIS, 27, ATHENS

VICE: What's it like to live alone in Athens?
Kostis: Pretty sexy. I dance naked while washing the dishes a lot.

What is never missing from your apartment?
Ice cubes and coffee.

How often do you clean your apartment?
I tidy up every couple of days. I do a deep clean every two weeks.

Your place, hers, or someplace else?
My place, her place, on terraces, in bars, in motels, in cars, on sidewalks... Where there's a will, there's a way.

More photos of Kostis' apartment:

SWITZERLAND

SHLOMO, 23, ZURICH

VICE: What's the longest period you've gone without cleaning your apartment?
Shlomo: A month or so. My roommate was on holiday, and I didn't feel like doing the work on my own.

What's the worst thing you've had to do for this place?
I once had to dispose of the compost bin, which had not been emptied for a month. I threw up.

Do your parents visit?
Yes, they often come over—and sometimes they come unannounced. It's pretty annoying.

Who would you never open the door to?
My neighbors. Everyone else is welcome.

More photos of Shlomo's apartment:

SWEDEN

CARL, 27, STOCKHOLM

VICE: Why did you decide to get cats?
Carl: Well, I like cats, and I've had them since I was a boy. Cookie needed a home, so I took care of him. After a while, when I moved to a smaller flat without balcony, it became obvious that he needed a brother, so I decided to get another one.

How do visitors react to cat fur?
It depends, really. Some are more used to it than others. Also, it obviously depends on how much of the fur I've vacuumed at the given time.

Who's the lady on your fridge?
It's my wife. Nah, it's an abandoned portrait my father found at a construction site and left on my fridge as a practical joke, when I was on vacation. I don't see a reason to take it down.

More photos of Carl's apartment:


SERBIA


PETAR, 31, BELGRADE

VICE: How much time do you spend in your apartment?
Petar: It depends. I'm often only here to take a shower, change clothes, and sleep. At the end of the month, when money runs out, I spend a lot of time at my folks'.

What's your most hated chore?
Washing the dishes. You don't have the option of multitasking, and it takes too long.

Do you ever let your parents visit?
Yes, they even have keys to the apartment, but they rarely come.

More photos of Petar's apartment:



SPAIN

ALVARO, 33, MADRID

VICE: How many people live in your apartment?
Alvaro:
There is five of us at the moment. The house is very large—it spreads across three floors, and it also has a garden.

How do you deal with cleaning such a big space?
We have a lady who comes to clean every now and then. A few months ago, we tried to share the chores, but that created really bad vibes between us. It was a total disaster, even though we are lifelong friends—we kept arguing over whose turn it was to do the washing.

More photos of Alvaro's apartment:





This Filmmaker Was Forced to Cast an Actress in Her Documentary After Legal Ruling

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All stills via 'The Opposition'

Filmmaker Holly Fifer spent four years of her life documenting a fierce battle between a group of settlers in Papua New Guinea and a new holiday resort development threatening to evict them from their land in her new film playing at Hot Docs, The Opposition.

For the people of Mount Paga in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, the plan for a massive resort and gated community called Paga Hill means total displacement from a community they not only call home, but have spent generations building. Fighting alongside them for years has been Carol Kidu, a former politician. Kidu spent much of her political career as an MP in PNG fighting for the rights of the country's disenfranchised women and children. Fifer's film captures Kidu smack in the middle of the battle over Mount Paga, including in a dramatic showdown between heavily armed police officers and the squatters. As Kidu calls the cops' tactics heavy-handed and tries to negotiate calm, it's clear she's invested in the future of the Mount Paga residents.


Or she was, until she was hired by the development firm behind Paga Hill. Fifer claims that despite signing a release form and seeing several rough cuts of the film, after switching sides, Kidu had a sudden change of heart about how she was represented in The Opposition. I mean maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe Kidu was just really taken with the developer's architectural model. But she's also consulted in the past for mining giant Barrick Gold, so her newfound interest in seeing a giant marina monstrosity seems confusing for someone who had campaigned so fiercely for the other side.


Filmmaker Holly Fifer (screenshot via 'Daily VICE')

"It was quite a baffling thing to hear that she'd become a consultant for the Paga Hill community. I considered her supportive of the documentary and the message and after that she became really antagonistic towards it," Fifer says of the moment she learned Kidu was no longer representing the people of Paga Hill.

In fact, Kidu didn't just change her tune on the film, she sought legal action to block her entire appearance and dialogue in the documentary. On April 22, just a few weeks before the film was set to make its world premiere at Hot Docs, Kidu won an injunction preventing Fifer from airing the documentary with any of Kidu's perspective.

Determined not to lose the project she's spent so many years invested in, Fifer scrambled at the last minute to create a redacted version of The Opposition that has an Australian actress recreate Kidu's missing moments. "We found out about a week before we had to get on a plane, we were tearing our hair out for bit going, I don't know how to remaster this film in time," she recalls. "But there's a really important message in the film, we had to get it out."

Despite being able to bring a version of her censored feature to the Hot Docs festival, Fifer is still devastated that the original version remains locked up.

"It's heartbreaking... it's definitely not what we consider the real film."

Creative heartbreak aside, the injunction also sets a dangerous precedent for all filmmakers. The ruling on April 22 is temporary, as both sides prepare for a final ruling in June, but if characters with shifting political interests are able to hijack a documentary regardless of the content of the film we're headed for incredibly murky waters. Ironically, The Opposition had its premiere at Hot Docs on World Press Freedom Day.

Follow Amil Niazi on Twitter.

Men Explain What They Find Attractive

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Lovely pair of melons. Photo via Wikimedia

Previously on VICE, Women Tell Us What They Find Attractive

Guys. Blokes. Fellas. Chaps. Lads. Geezers. Dudes. A simple bunch to please, some might say, especially when it comes to dating. If you believe the teachings of Two Pints of Lager and 90s stand-up routines, you probably think that all men need is someone who is "hot" and "up for a laugh." Or at least one of the two.

But are we actually that two-dimensional as a gender? Or can we be more discerning about who we want to sleep with than we let on?

I spoke to a bunch of different guys to get their opinions on what they find attractive in women and men: the shallow stuff and the deep feels.

SCOTT, 25, ADVERTISING SALES

VICE: Hi Scott. What kind of lady do you go for?
Scott: To be honest, I've met them all at the Cave Club .

So, like, indie girls?
Well, the type of girls who are into old music. Girls that look like extras from an Austin Powers film.

OK. What about personality-wise?
Personality-wise, pretty chilled and definitely into taking drugs. We'd also have to have the same interests and music taste.

Like what?
Well, my principal interests are taking drugs and listening to David Bowie—if you're not into that, then it's gonna be difficult. Those who say opposites attract are crazy.

Anything else?
They have to be independent and not prescribe to any of this gendered bullshit, i.e: "You're the man, so you have to buy me flowers." Clothes-wise, just loads of paisley. Shitloads of paisley. And a bit of velvet.

OK, what about body type? What kind of bod do you want in that paisley?
No preference at all.

What have girls you've got with looked like in the past?
When people ask me whether I'm a "tits or ass man," I usually say "eyes." I like big eyes, like them people from the Pokémon cartoons.

What about accent?
Yeah. My girlfriend is Italian, and even when she splits up with me, I'll think it's sexy. I think everything is more sexy than the BBC newsreader accent.

Why? What's wrong with the Queen's English?
It's just like salted chips, innit? There's nothing wrong with salted chips either, but there are more exciting flavors.

What about actual sex and stuff? What's good and bad there?
Foreplay, yes, definitely. Dirty talk puts me off.

Why?
It's something you have to force. If I'm forced to, I have about three stock phrases, like some kind of shit-talking toy.

What about the actual sex?
It's better when you actually like each other and get on. Then just loads of it. Yesterday I did it five times.

Wow. Any other major turn offs?
No, just dirty talk. I don't even mind fanny hair.

KENZO, 29, VISUAL DESIGNER

So what's your type of woman, Kenzo?
Kenzo: Straight in there, I see. I somehow manage to find the difficult ones, the ones with a lot of drama. I guess that might say something more about me in the long run.

What kind of drama are we talking?
My girlfriends have been arty. I guess the arty part fed into the drama.

What kind of personality do you usually go for?
An easygoing personality. Laid back, with a good understanding of my jokes, is a must. I've also found I've never been into English girls. I've definitely always had a thing for accents.

What do you think it is about female English personalities that has put you off?
I like different cultures for their different approaches to things—could be from their cooking to their opinion.

I see. What kind of look do you typically go for?
I won't go for the stereotypical blond girl who looks like all of her friends. I like a quirky look: girls who don't have to wear makeup and that don't take too long getting ready to leave the house. But they have to be intelligent, too.

What are we talking? Book smarts?
Other languages are always great, but having just simple logical common sense gets me going. What's the phrase? "Beauty fades, intelligence doesn't."

I think it's actually "Charm is deceitful, and beauty fades, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised"—but close enough. You mentioned accents. Which accents specifically do you find attractive?
French is a classic, but a lot of the European ones. I'm not into the Asian accents, I guess.

But you're Japanese, right?
Half Japanese, half Australian. My parents are a perfect example of liking difference. My mom is a blond, loud Australian, and my dad is a small Japanese man.

You mentioned you go for arty girls—are shared hobbies and interests a thing?
Dancing is a massive one. I like to dance. When I can, I'll dance. So we have to be on the same wavelength, dance-wise. I like salsa, but I like all sorts. I get quite creative—the darker the room, the more you let loose.

What about social media? If they're idiots on social media, is that a turn off? Or don't you care?
I'm not into the selfie chicks—the ones who do it incessantly or tag their coffees and shit.

What about major turn offs? Anything that you just can't deal with?
Girls without confidence. Negativity is a downer. No one likes a party pooper.

ROBBIE, 27, SOMMELIER

What do you look for in a guy?
Robbie: I can't really say that I have a type. As a general rule, I think guys who are confident and secure in themselves are attractive. Having said that, there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I find overconfidence to be a huge turn off, especially when someone lacks the goods to back it up. Intelligence is quite important—there's only so much sex you can have with someone who is barely capable of holding a conversation about anything other than Kim Kardashian. Men who are unobtainable in some way are always especially attractive—for example, straight guys.

What about looks?
I don't tend to go for typically good-looking men. I like guys who have something a little bit weird about them. I have a weak spot for big arms. When a guy has nice arms, you can picture them wrapped around you. Hands are also important; I like big hands. There's something not to be trusted about a guy with dainty, soft, feminine hands. Which reminds me: Men in grey tracksuits are like God's gift to gay men. A good bulge is always a turn on.

Do you like older or younger guys?
I've generally always gone for guys a bit older than me. I suppose it comes back to the confidence thing. Guys younger than me always seem a bit insecure or inexperienced. I like men to be sure of themselves and challenging.

What about a guy's career—can that be a deal-breaker?
I find it attractive when a guy takes an interest or is passionate about the work he's doing. It's not attractive when a guy does a mundane admin job and hates it but can't be bothered to even attempt to change something he vaguely cares about. Money is a bonus, but not a necessity.

What about the actual sex?
I hate role play, dirty talk... anything that feels forced or unnatural during sex makes me feel awkward and embarrassed. Otherwise, I'm quite open-minded. I like guys who are experimental and spontaneous.

Do you have any major turn offs?
Boring men who don't know how to have a good time. Also, when someone makes it obvious he likes you and tries too hard. I like to have a bit of a chase.

LUKE, 19, STUDENT

So what's your type?

Luke: Laid back, but also got a bit of cheek. Good fashion sense, healthy, and eats good food.

Eating food is important. So what about body type? Do you care about that stuff?
They have to have a bit of meat on their bones. I like a two-tone hair color in a girl, so like blond and gray or brunette and blonde. I also think pure redhead girls are fire. Nose rings and tongue piercings are always a bonus.

Wow, you're picky. Do you have a preference for accents or the way a girl talks?
They have to be brought up properly. It drives me insane if a girl can't pronounce words properly or doesn't use the correct words in sentences.

OK, Katie Hopkins. What about social media? Is it a turn off when girls are idiots on Facebook and Twitter, or don't you really care?
Social media is massive—if the girl is vain or anything like that, it puts me off. I like a girl who takes pride in her appearance but doesn't care what other people think.

What about a career? Do you care if they have money at all?
No, it's not about money. They have to have ambitions in life, though. I don't want a lazy, same-shit-different-day sorta girl. They need to have goals.

Do they have to share your interests and hobbies? Or do you not care what they do?
I'd like them to be able to enjoy the same music as me and be able to go out to the nights and events that I like.

What kind of music?
Deep house and techno. All about the techno!

Oh, mate. What do you find attractive in actual sex, like dirty talk, foreplay, stuff like that?
Yeah, dirty talk, roughness, different places—all things like that, to be honest.

Any stone-cold turn offs?
Yeah, if the girl goes on about her past, like ex-boyfriends and shit that she's done. Hate it when girls ask how many girls you been with and shit like that.

JACK, 27, MUSIC SUPERVISOR

Hi Jack. Could you vibe with someone who didn't share your interests?
Jack: Well, I like people who are interested, full stop.

Like how?
Well, I saw a girl recently who was really nice, and we got on really well, but it was almost too well. There was no friction. We didn't have anything to teach each other—everything I thought or said, she agreed with, and vice versa, and that became a problem. So I think I'm looking for someone who I can learn from. Obviously principles are important—like I know I'd find it hard to be with someone who disagreed strongly with my worldview or political stance. But apart from that, I think some difference in interests can be a good thing.

What about sex stuff? What are your preferences?
What I will say is that foreplay is very important. Sex is mad important. I can't be with someone who stimulates me in every way except the bedroom. If there's no sexual chemistry, you're fucked, in my opinion.

So do you have any turn offs?
The way a girl dresses is very important to me. I know that sounds terrible. I care about style and clothes, so that extends to what I find attractive. I mean, it's not a deal-breaker, and to be honest, if a girl just has this next style all to her own, then that's a vibe. But she has to have style.

What about in the bedroom?
Sexually, being squeamish about anything—that's a turn off. Not being comfortable with her own body. Physically, I like women who are in shape, but also I'm turned off by women who are too skinny, I gotta be honest.

Honesty is the best policy, Jack.
Massively. I'm a curves guy, bodacious with the accurate back off. I'm not down with these wispy waif chicks. Beth Gibbons, bony and whimsical—bun that.

Now read what the girls said.

Follow Tom Usher on Twitter.


Alberta Woman Who Had Her Family Killed When She Was 12 Is Now Free

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Pallbearers carry the casket of the father who was killed in the infamous 2006 Medicine Hat, Alberta murder. CP PHOTO/Gino Donato

The Medicine Hat, Alberta woman known only as "J.R." who helped kill her family when she was 12 years old is now fully free. In 2006, she was convicted of first-degree murder along with her then-23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, for stabbing her parents and eight-year-old brother to death. At the time, according to CBC, J.R. became the youngest person ever convicted in a multiple murder and was given the maximum sentence—ten years.

The murder of her family was apparently provoked by the girl's parents disallowing her to date Steinke, who was over ten years older than her. Though she is now 22 years old, due to the Youth Justice Act, the woman's name still cannot be revealed as part of a long-standing publication ban.

READ MORE: The Alberta Girl Who Had Her Family Murdered a Decade Ago Is About to Be Free

Following J.R.'s implication in her family's murder, she was placed in a psychiatric hospital for four years, then spent the rest of her sentence under community supervision, including time in a group home.

For the past five and a half years, the woman has been living and studying in Calgary. Steinke, who confessed to the killings, is currently serving life in prison.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

I Watched Cuba's Socialist Experiment Play Out on May Day in Havana

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All photos by the author

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Worker's rights are turning into a bit of a hard sell. The May bank holiday has become more about people hashtagging their "first BBQ of the summer" than pumping fists in the air in solidarity with the proletariat or pulling on a balaclava and gleefully launching bricks through a building. But in Cuba, May Day takes on a celebratory air, with vuvuzelas blaring and salsa bands limbering up in Havana's streets by 7 AM.

I was there this year, watching thousands congregate for the lefty occasion that's taken place worldwide in some form since the late 19th century. Today, delegations from Cuba's uniformed forces and its many state corporations are here: agricultural workers, military cadets, a troop from Parque Zoológico Nacional.

Miguel, a bar worker in his 40s, is telling me he comes down each year to not just show support for his country but because it's a chance to bump into old friends—when the laughter around us stops and I realize I'm the only person speaking. The Cuban national anthem rings out of loudspeakers flanking the route, automatically shushing the crowd. Caught unaware, I remove my baseball cap in a clumsy gesture of respect. "La Bayamesa" finishes, and ahead of us a quick march begins.

Making my way between the two columns of demonstrators stretching down Paseo boulevard in the Vedado neighborhood, it becomes clear that if you were to imagine how a proud, socialist island in the tropical Caribbean would celebrate itself, it'd look like this. There's no North Korean display of feigned emotion and servitude—it's, at the risk of cliche, a fiesta. A police officer in his 50s next to me smokes a cigar as he breaks into a little two-step to a salsa beat. A troop of young recruits whip around two-meter flagpoles like rodeo lassos.

Naturally, all countries like to make themselves presentable and gloss over uncomfortable truths. A man like Miguel working a basic job in Cuba can expect to bring home about $30 a month. Sure, healthcare, education and housing are basically free and many entertainment activities are heavily subsidized, but that's little help when a pair of shoes can cost half your wage packet. Indeed, poverty seeps into some corners of the country, unimpeded by a free press to criticize it.

For more than a year, observers have decided that the thawing relations between Cuba, the US, and the rest of the world will sound the death knell for the island's radical experiment. Fidel Castro doesn't seem to agree. He, his President brother Raul, and the other political grandees of the country have made it clear that what changes do occur will be cautious and will not alter the fabric of society.

This country of 11 million still has more Sunday church-goers than private sector employees (400,000). Reforms have given enterprise more breathing space but for Fidel and friends the revolution is as real as ever. Of course, to see the future of any country, you have to look to what it's young people want. Here, today, it seems like the youth of Cuba aren't desperately bothered by the slow growth of internet access and unaffordable prices of imported foreign goods.

I leave the Plaza de la Revolución after a few hundred teenagers framed by Che Guevara's face finish their display, leading chants of "Viva Fidel, viva la revolución, vive el socialismo." It's 10 AM and the sun is starting to beat out a fierce heat. Along the street, I ask 16-year-old cadet Augustine if I can take his picture of him in his khakis, beret and Aviators. What did he think of the day? "It was fantastic; it makes you feel strong."

More on VICE:

Photographing Cuba Before Its 'Imminent Americanisation'

Hanging Out with the Godmother of the Cuban Punk Rock Scene

London's Anarchists Celebrated May Day 2015 By Holding a Riot-Party


Photos from Some of Africa's Most Exciting Contemporary Photographers

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This weekend, Red Hook Labs and Nataal are debuting a group photography show in Brooklyn featuring six exciting contemporary photographers from Africa and its diaspora. Among them are Atong Atem, a Melbourne-based South Sudanense artist who focuses on African migrants in Australia; Egyptian street photographer Owise Abuzaid; and Lakin Ogunbanwo, a Nigerian who has a flair for colorful, meticulously composed images.

The photos range from fashion to documentary to art, from portraits to landscapes, all showcasing the diversity of work coming out of Africa. There are a few samples below, but if you're in New York, you should come by Red Hooks Labs, at 133–135 Imlay Street in Brooklyn, to see the rest. The opening reception is May 7 from 6 PM to 10 PM, and the show will be on display until May 15.

How 'The State' Made Comedy Weirder and Better

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Photo by Seth Olenick

Last month, Netflix announced another season of its reboot of the 2001 cult classic Wet Hot American Summer, and although most would consider it a TV reunion of the creative duo behind the movie, in reality it's merely the latest chapter in an incredibly successful comedic partnership.

Writers/directors/actors David Wain and Michael Showalter first met each other at NYU in 1987, where they, along with nine other friends, formed a comedy troupe called the New Group (later renamed The State), that would lay the groundwork for the next thirty years of creative success. The troupe was eventually given their own eponymous show that aired on MTV from 1993 to 1995 and arguably redefined the rules of TV comedy by refusing to conform to SNL's sketch comedy template, instead existing as a platform for 11 distinct voices, and nearly as many styles of humour.

The State was ultimately short-lived, as the group left MTV to pursue a big network TV deal that didn't work out, but it was just the beginning, as its cast members (which included Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio, Michael Ian Black, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Thomas Lennon, to name a few) forged collaborative bonds that persevered through creative differences and lasted decades. Tellingly, the show's Wikipedia page now requires a chart that plots the cast's ongoing collective exploits in a manner that's usually reserved for superheroes that appear in Marvel crossovers. Reno 911!, Stella, Childrens Hospital, Party Down, They Came Together—all of these are the brainchildren of State alum, and all star at least four additional cast members.

Writer Corey Stulce religiously recorded The State episodes on VHS in his freshman year of college, and one of his first interviews for his college paper was with three cast members who were then starring in Comedy Central's Viva Variety, the first of the crew's post-MTV exploits. A lifelong fan of the troupe, Stulce released The Union of The State, an exhaustive, 600-page oral history of the group's career together, last week.

The book takes us from the creators' college days to their current exploits, chronologically weaving together interviews with not only the entire cast, but also some 30+ other important players along the way, from their college roommates and MTV producers to Wet Hot co-star Paul Rudd. After collecting over 100 hours of raw interview footage, Stulce edited everything down into an effortless flow where cast members finish each other's sentences more than once. Their closeness and similar senses of humour is just as palpable on the page as it is onscreen—as Stulce put it when speaking over the phone with VICE, "11 different personalities, but one big, giant brain."


VICE: Can you tell me about your personal history with The State
?
Corey Stulce: The State, the TV show, started when I was a freshman in college , and I immediately loved it. There was just something about it that was so surreal, bizarre, and slice-of-life that really spoke to me. I really liked that they didn't go the semi-traditional route of sketch with a lot of pop culture references. A lot of the stuff they were doing was very evergreen, which I thought was really cool and innovative.

Once I started writing for the college newspaper a couple of years later, Viva Variety had started, so I did a big spread on that and was able to interview Tom . So that was my first time interacting with any of them, and they were cool and really nice. As I went on as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor, I just kept up with all of their careers because I really liked writing about comedy, and just thought that it was interesting that this group of people kept finding each other, kept working together on different projects over the years.

What was the interview process for the book like?
I wanted to do some group interviews to see what kind of dynamic that created, but it just never lined up that we could all get together at the same time, other than when they put together a 45 minute set from scratch in three days before Festival Supreme in 2014. I was more like a fly on the wall then—they were rehearsing as much as they possibly could. The State is rarely in the same place at the same time.

But once everything got transcribed and I tried to whittle down what was good, it was just really magical that some of the stuff flowed together, even though I didn't have the same conversation with every member. I think that's because they worked so closely together in those early years, that even when they're just talking about The State, they get into that mode—11 different personalities, but one big, giant brain.

Was it always your intention to do such an exhaustive oral history?
I didn't envision this thing being 600 pages when I started, but the idea for the oral history was there before I even approached The State because I love that style of journalism. I love hearing the different voices and seeing the different perspectives, so I thought that was important because I didn't want the book to be about me at all. I don't think it would be nearly as interesting if I tried to meld my voice with their voices, especially with 11 main people in the group.

Illustration by Glen Hanson

What do you think kept most of them professionally close over the years? Is a collaborative circle that big and long-lasting as rare as I think it is?
I think so. There are certainly other examples of comedy troupes that continue to come together for new projects, like Christopher Guest's troupe and the Judd Apatow folks, but I really think this is definitely one of the most unique stories in the history of comedy. Where else can you find examples of 18-year-old kids meeting, forming a comedy club, having that kind of dedication to stay with it throughout the entire university process, thinking, Yeah, this could be good, we could do this, and then getting their own TV show, essentially right after graduation?

Then a couple years later, after being just chewed up and spit out of show business, essentially—I would think that 99% of the time—that would be it. You wouldn't hear from those folks collectively again. But the fact that they kept coming together for Viva Variety, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, and all of the other movies and TV shows and webseries... I think there's a magnetism that keeps drawing them together. I don't know if I believe in destiny, but these folks were destined to be together and create comedy.

I'm astounded at how long they've stayed close, even more so after reading about all of the competitiveness and rivalries that constantly shook the group.
I think that's going to happen if you get a group of people together who are super creative and have big personalities. Of course there's going to be tension, and I think it only helps to make them stronger. They were all pushing themselves to be funnier than the person they were standing next to, and that's so important to them that I don't think they would've made it if they didn't have that. But of course, that's going to lead to tensions and fights and a breakup. I think it's sort of inevitable. If everyone just got along and made concessions then it wasn't going to be as strong of a group.

Back to the legacy of The State, the TV show. What do you think it had that other sketch shows at the time didn't?
With 11 people in the group, even if it was just a character piece with a couple of speaking roles and a handful of people in the background, they were fantastic at making those minor roles fully-formed characters. It wasn't just someone sitting there pretending to talk at a coffee shop. They took it very, very, very seriously. This was not playtime for them at all, they were hardcore and did tons of rehearsal.

Because of their background at NYU and not having any money, it was that whole DIY aesthetic where a lot of them knew how to do everything—they were writing, directing, editing, bringing props from home. I think that really showed. It was not slick, there was not a big budget, so the writing had to be really strong. I don't know where these ideas came from, or how they ended up on the page, but they just run the gamut of comedy styles... It just seems like they're constantly ahead of their time. It takes people a little while to catch onto the stuff they're doing.

Tom Lennon remarks at one point in the book that if the show debuted today, it'd be a much bigger hit. Do you agree?
I think there's definitely a larger audience for that kind of wide-ranging comedy that they do, and more opportunities to be turned onto that. If you didn't happen to be watching MTV in 93, 94, you weren't gonna see it. Now, all it takes is somebody telling you about it, getting out your phone, and seeing it in thirty seconds.

I think if they were the same group of 21, 22-year-old college kids who had that kind of dedication and had the opportunity to do a show, yeah, I think it would be huge. They were making YouTube videos 20 years before there was a YouTube. "Porcupine Racetrack" and stuff like that would have gone viral so quickly. But who knows, if they were 22 today, maybe they'd be doing something completely different. They wouldn't be thinking about YouTube, they'd be thinking about whatever the hell the next thing is gonna be.

'The Union of The State' is out now. Order it here.

Patrick Lyons is on Twitter.

First-Person Shooter: Photos from Life Off the Grid in a Sustainable Commune

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In this week's edition of First-Person Shooter we gave two cameras to Eve, a member of an Oregon-based sustainable community whose dozen or so residents exist off-the-grid and survive using only materials readily available to them on their 40-acre land trust.

An architect who used to live in the city, Eve designs fully-sustainable structures, repurposes microwaves for protecting food against raccoons, and makes "humanure"—fertilizer made from human waste. On top of shooting a weekend on the commune, she talked to VICE about what it's like to live life without electricity, and gave us some hot tips on how to keep vermin from sneaking into your cabin.

VICE: What happened during your day? What'd you get up to?
Eve: The day started atop a plywood pallet bed within my little cabin. I had some coffee and tea on the back porch with a lovely view of various composting toilet options. At 9 AM, we had a meet up and group check in with current students and our instructor where we learned about natural plasters and paints.

Then, we ate lunch, a re-vamp of the previous night's lentils with this afternoon's eggs. I fed the chickens and collected the eggs. I cut a tree down for some raw materials, and then headed to a nearby river springing from national forest land for the first dip of the summer. Finally, I concluded the day with a neighborhood bonfire.

What brought you to the commune?
I came here as a way to further my education and to evolve my skills and knowledge in the realm of designing and building. Construction is one of the industries with the largest embedded energy and ecological footprints. I want to explore how this field can be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. I can do that out here.

What kind of stuff do you design?
I'm working on an independent project out on the far north side of the property, down near the seasonal creek. It's a structure created from fir poles, site-milled wood, and reused metal fasteners. It's supposed to serve as a place to retreat to in the woods and recharge. I designed the structure using the materials I had available to me. You have to be resourceful and we have a glorious boneyard/junkyard out here so it works out well and little is wasted.

What type of people live and work with you?
At the moment about fifteen folks live here: residents, students, and work-traders. Some people stay for a week and some stay longer depending on their intended purpose—be it a course, a workshop, or to stay as a work-trader . Many seem to be at some sort of crossroads in life. There is the 50-year old tech dude from some undisclosed city who desired to be a student again and understand projects beyond screens.

There is also somewhat of a satellite community of people. The area is scattered with people and families affiliated with the learning center who are engaging with the land and community. You can walk down the road and see the neighbors using the masonry cabin stove we built to cook food and warm their house, folks experimenting with innovative garden and buildings systems, as well as witness the solar array students set up that the commune director uses to jumpstart his vegetable oil-powered truck.

Is it hard to go to the bathroom out there?
Not really. As intuitive as it is anywhere else. There are options and variations of composting in a bucket. The compost is carefully watched and tended, and eventually the luscious "humanure" is used on bamboo and other non-edible plants. Side note, it doesn't smell like Porta-Potties do. Also, as waste and energy consumption goes, using composting toilets is such an easy way to conserve energy and not waste potable water while also putting nutrients back into the soil.

What do you eat?
We eat all sorts of bulk grains and whatever local vegetables we can harvest or purchase locally. With each new wave of work-traders and students, we are assigned a small morning and evening cook group. It's a good opportunity to learn from others' eating, cooking, and communication styles in the kitchen.

You're cutting down a tree in one of your photos, this doesn't seem sustainable. Why are you doing it?
Heh, this is the reaction I would have had before moving and engaging here. A major component of the education that happens here revolves around self-sufficiency and empowerment while still being connected to the land. Tree felling is about proper tree management, and understanding the systems and demands of the campus and forest. Less dominant trees are selected for harvesting to encourage forest diversity.

What do you miss most about living in a more regular setting?
Life here is pretty good. I mainly have what I need. Well, okay, I miss and appreciate not having mouse poop on my plywood pallet bed.

Do you intend to move?
Yes. Generally, time here is pretty limited. You are only here if you are doing something—filling a need, purpose, function, etc. I don't intend to move yet, but who knows. I moved here with the intention of only staying a few months, but soon it'll be one year since I arrived.

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

How Virtual Reality Porn Helped Me Come to Terms with Monogamy

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Photo via Flickr user We Are Social

No matter how good a relationship is, I start to get bored after the one-year mark. It happens like clockwork. The desire starts to wane, I start looking for an out, and then immediately try to find validation from someone new. This, I'm told, is serial monogamy—described by the Cambridge Dictionary as "the fact or custom of having a number of sexual relationships one after another, but never more than one at a time." I get into relationships for the feeling of security, but I can't keep it up in the long-term because I need constant validation. I'm too jealous for polyamory, too insecure to be single. I would hesitate to call my problem "sex addiction"—it's more like an addiction to chasing new relationships, and the validation that comes from being with someone new.

The problem with serial monogamy, of course, is that it isn't sustainable. It's not conducive to having a life or a future with anyone. And while I'm currently in a relationship with someone I really love, it's tough to come to terms with the idea that I won't be able to continue this routine of seeking validation through the various relationships that I knew and loved. I cant help but have the nagging feeling that I need to get out there and experience something new. It's especially tough when I know that leaving the person I have would ruin my life.

Eventually, the desire to cheat became almost unbearable. It's not that I don't love my girlfriend—I do, and she's the first person I've imagined spending the rest of my life with—but the need to be validated outweighed all that. I'd find myself staring at my phone at four in the morning, looking at people that Facebook suggested I should add. I considered downloading Tinder just get the rush of having matches. I already had an OkCupid profile, which I kept open just to read the messages.

It was around the same time that I got my first virtual reality headset. I'd been enjoying the panoramic view of WWE fights, going on virtual safaris, and exploring the streets of New Orleans—all from the comfort of my room—when I started to wonder what kind of porn was available. I've never been overwhelmingly excited by porn, but I figured it couldn't hurt to look. I worked my way into Pornhub's VR section and downloaded a few of the files to my phone, then popped on the headset.

Related: Pornhub Brings Bad Virtual Reality Porn to the Masses

The video I'd selected seemed like your standard one-on-one porn with a nice, normal looking girl. As the scene began, I looked down at my virtual legs, which had some black pants on. The room was carefully decorated, with nice artwork on the walls. These details made the VR experience seem silly at first. Who cares what the room looks like? I thought. But when the woman in the scene turned to notice me, lounging in the recliner, those details made everything seem more real. She walked over to me, sat on my lap, and stared into my eyes. For seconds at a time, I forgot I was staring into the headset and thought I was with a real person.

It's hard to explain what it's like to suspend disbelief with the VR headset on. You know you're being tricked, but you're allowing yourself to remain in that state. There's a constant cognitive dissonance between the part of your brain that knows it's a screen and the part of your brain that just wants to enjoy it. I fought to stay focused as the actress began taking off her clothes and helped me to remove mine. For a moment, I started to feel motion sick as the male actor moved into a position wildly different off from my real-life posture, but soon after his pants came off, he laid back again, and I began to relax into the scene.

The details of the scene aren't important. What is important is that several times throughout this scene, I felt a real life connection to the virtual woman before me. She seemed completely real: I could see her makeup as a texture on her cheeks. I could see the little hairs around and in her ears, and I could see every nuanced expression on her face. Several times, when her head moved closer to mine, I could even see the individual hair follicles on her scalp. And because she looked so real, the lust of the moment felt shockingly real too. For several moments, I could swear that it was all happening until something snapped me back to reality, like a frame-jitter, or me lifting my arm in real life and not seeing it reciprocated from within the headset.

Related: Is an Affair in Virtual Reality Still Cheating?

When the scene ended and the production company's logo reappeared, I actually felt relieved. It felt like I'd cheated on my girlfriend, but when I took off the headset, I realized that I had been sitting alone in the dark up against the wall in my bed for half an hour. Even still, I felt great. I fell asleep without worry and woke up guilt-free.

The next day, I felt a new confidence with my girlfriend. And as I used the headset more and more, my desire to stray melted away. I explored new scenarios in virtual reality that I could never imagine ever doing in real life; at one point, I downloaded a group scene, where I could look to my right side and see a "friend" being pleasured by an actress while someone went to work on me. I was in a mansion, getting a blowjob from a total stranger, and it fulfilled every ridiculous fantasy I never knew I had.

I've continued using the headset for porn as needed. It's an amazing feeling to know that at any time, I can open a door to another universe, away from this one. Some people may want to visit Morocco, or do a walk-through tour of Disneyland, experiencing new places. For me, just put me in a well-decorated room with a stranger who's interested in hooking up, so I can experience a new person every now and then.

The Panama Papers Leaker Says the Media, Politicians, and Lawyers Are All Corrupt

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Last month, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists unveiled the biggest data leak in history. The so-called Panama Papers revealed the clients of a shady Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca that set up offshore bank accounts and shell companies for the rich, worldwide. The leak was troubling because such fancy arrangements can sometimes cross over from legit tax planning to criminal tax evasion. From a moral perspective, the leak showed that the people with the most money to contribute to the well-being of society instead sometimes choose to secretly hoard their wealth.

Put even more simply, the Panama Papers laid bare the sad fact that there's very different rules out there for rich people and poor people.

But until now, we haven't heard a peep from the person(s) who leaked the 11.5 million documents implicating politicians and world leaders in fraud and hypocrisy. That changed on Friday, when an 1,800-word manifesto appeared on the ICIJ website, attributed only to a John Doe. "The Revolution Will Be Digitized" lays out a moral argument for whistleblowing and asks governments to provide absolute protections for people like Doe or Edward Snowden, who is currently stuck in Russia because he's afraid to step foot in the United States or anywhere else that his home country has extradition powers. (Interestingly, the Panama Papers leaker reveals that, unlike Snowden, he has never worked for any government or intelligence agency.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Doe uses the manifesto to justify his action, calling income inequality "one of the most defining issues of our time." For that, he blames shady bureaucrats, lawyers, and politicians. More specifically, he points to the revolving door between government and big banks, the corruption of the legal profession, and the relentless fundraising that's required of US politicians.

"Tax evasion cannot possibly be fixed while elected officials are pleading for money from the very elites who have the strongest incentives to avoid taxes relative to any other segment of the population," Doe writes. "These unsavory political practices have come full circle, and they are irreconcilable. Reform of America's broken campaign finance system cannot wait."

Finally, Doe blames the media, claiming that several prominent news outlets chose not to publish his leak––despite their claims to the contrary. It's unclear which institutions he's calling out, but there were some glaring omissions on the day the news dropped. For instance, the New York Times, perhaps the most revered newspaper on the planet, did not have a story prepared when the Panama Papers dropped, inspiring enough incredulous feedback that the paper's public editor was forced to respond. Margaret Sullivan reported the paper of record's editors had been unaware of the massive story, despite the fact that much less prominent outlets apparently had the documents far enough in advance that they were able to prepare spiffy features about Mossack Fonseca.

"The sad truth is that among the most prominent and capable media organizations in the world there was not a single one interested in reporting on the story," Doe writes. "Even Wikileaks didn't answer its tip line repeatedly."

Finally, although the ICIJ has said it won't cooperate with law enforcement, Doe seems to be trying to open up the lines of communication. If the feds do go after Mossack Fonseca (which has denied wrongdoing), it could shut down, or at least seriously derail, the banking system in Panama. Doe uses his manifesto to remind people that at least some crimes were committed––not just moral outrages––and seems to want the people behind the firm prosecuted.

While all that gets sorted out, the leaker asks us to not forget what happened a month ago, and to keep a leery eye trained toward the global behemoth that is modern capitalism.

"In this system—our system—the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese," Doe writes. "The horrific magnitude of detriment to the world should shock us all awake."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Australia and Canada Should Keep an Eye on Wildfire Season Overlap, Says Report

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So far, Alberta hasn't called for international backup in Fort Mac. Photo via Twitter

As Canada's oil and gas capital continues to burn, at least one Canadian-owned firefighting helicopter is still on its way back from Australia, where it presumably helped battle late-season bush blazes.

A small Port Alberni-based aircraft operator announced the pending arrival on Facebook Wednesday. "Our second firefighting aircraft will arrive back from Australia next week, and we will be offering it to Alberta as well," wrote Wayne Coulson of Coulson Flying Tankers.

Though it's just one chopper—no great loss to ongoing firefighting efforts in Fort Mac—Australian climate campaigners say hold ups like these are going to become more and more frequent as wildfire seasons on both sides of the Pacific burn longer, hotter and in more unpredictable ways. A report released by the Climate Council of Australia predicts increasing pressure on global firefighting resources, with serious consequences for BC, Alberta and Australia.

Both British Columbia and Alberta have formal firefighting agreements with Australian governments that have been in place for a decade or more. This includes sharing personnel, aircraft and other equipment when a crisis arises. Meanwhile, global fire seasons have extended by 19 percent over three decades—more than a month in some parts of North America.

Fort Mac from the sky. Photo via Twitter

This year, fires in Australia have extended into April, while Alberta's early season fires have already damaged more hectares than in all of 2013 and 2014 put together. The Fort McMurray fire alone could grow as big as 2,000 square kilometres by the end of today, according to fire officials.

"We had fires in August all the way through to April," Australian Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie told VICE. "That's almost every season except winter. If your fire season has started in April—that's early for Canada to have spring fires—that does challenge these relationships."

In both Australia and Canada, those tensions are compounded by the fact many local provinces and states are also having what McKenzie calls "catastrophic" conditions and fires at the same time. The report found this extra competing demand requires the number of global firefighters to double by 2030. If not, says the report, international help in times of crisis won't be guaranteed. So far, says McKenzie, governments in both hemispheres have yet to invest enough in emergency preparedness to make that happen. Instead, Alberta actually cut its fire budget by $15 million earlier this year.

Exactly how much firefighting resources do Australia and Canada share? During the peak of last summer's wildfires across western Canada, Australia sent over 104 firefighters and logistics specialists. Alberta alone brought in 47 Aussie firefighters last season, though a spokesperson for the Alberta wildfire service said none were sent in return this winter.

"We do have mutual aid agreements in place to ensure that they have the same training we require," said Alberta wildfire information officer Travis Fairweather. "That way, if we need well-trained firefighters quickly, we don't have to spend the time training them." All told, the province brought in 1,112 firefighters from other provinces and around the world in 2015, and lent out 232 in the province's off-season.

Aussie firefighters were called in 2014 and 2015 to give local guys a rest. Photo via Twitter

According to the Climate Council report, Australia leased more than 120 aircraft from North American sources in the 2015-16 season, including some Canadian planes and helicopters.

It's tough to know exactly how many Canadian planes and helicopters are leased out to Australia, or for how long, because most are privately owned and operated. Kevin Skrepnek, chief fire information officer for BC's wildfire service, told VICE all firefighting aircraft are privately contracted in BC. "We do not own any of them," he said. "Other provinces have different approaches."

Alberta owns some water bombers, but also contracts out many from private operators. That leaves seasonal decisions in the hands of companies like Coulson Flying Tankers and Conair Canada. VICE reached out to Conair, operator of 65 firefighting aircraft, as well as Coulson, but did not receive a response Friday.

"That's the way it is here in Australia as well... different companies hiring out equipment to different jurisdictions," said McKenzie. In a climate of increasing uncertainty, how will these companies know where to send resources? "It's an interesting question to ask."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

What Would Actually Happen If All the Banks Went on Strike?

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Photo by Chris Bethell

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Imagine an economy run by barmen where homemade cheques, sometimes scrawled onto cigarette packets, pass for currency. That was the Republic of Ireland in the summer of 1966. On May 7, the first of three long nationwide banking strikes threatened to collapse the whole economy as bankers protested industrial regulation.

Over 80 percent of the country's money supply was inaccessible, held up as a result of the bank closure—so the Irish improvised. At first people wrote each other cheques, then, when those ran out, people crafted up their own currency and IOUs, sometimes just bashing a postage stamp onto a handwritten cheque to make it seem legit.

As each strike came to an end and the banks opened again, thousands of these outstanding DIY cheques hit the system. It took months to clear them all, but remarkably very few bounced and, despite everything, the economy continued to grow—albeit a little slower. This decentralized economy illustrated two things: the phenomenal ability of Irish barmen to judge the trustworthiness of patrons, and that a society could survive without the banks.

To find out more on the 50th anniversary of the strikes, I talked to Umair Haque, a radical economist and the author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business. We spoke about how this all kicked off in Ireland the first time and what would happen if banks were to effectively shut down again on a bigger scale.

VICE: Hi Umair. Theoretically speaking, what should have happened to a country without banks?
Umair Haque: Orthodox economics would have predicted a collapse in the money supply, a credit crunch, a trade implosion, mass unemployment, an atomized GDP , and the gears of industry and commerce grinding to a crashing halt. I like to describe it as all the veins in your body suddenly shrinking and collapsing. That's how economists conceive of banking shutdowns.

In some ways that was the threat of the strike, to disrupt the functioning economy, but that didn't go to plan. The Irish people survived for months at a time without the banks. How did people innovate their way through the crisis?
Even though the money supply did contract sharply, neither trade, commerce, nor industry came to a grinding halt. People created their own currencies, to substitute for the collapsing money supply. They kept using cheques to pay one another, but then, people's cheques began trading within communities.

A radically decentralized, peer-to-peer financial system spontaneously arose. Instead of letting the bankers' strike collapse their prosperity, people decided, simply, that they could get on with the day-to-day stuff of banking themselves.

Antoin Murphy, one of the few scholars to have studied these strikes closely, describes it as "a highly personalized credit system without any definite time horizon for the eventual clearance of debits." The Irish were able to trade notes with one another, in lieu of credit issued by banks. It's amazing really.

What made this possible?
The Irish economy then was characterized by intense, frequent, conversational personal contact: tight, dense, solid local knowledge circulating at high velocity within and across communities. The result? Borrowers and lenders could build solid micro-foundations of trust.

In other words, when you've been chatting with Bill every night at the local pub for 20 years, you probably know whether his note is a good bet or not (and further, just how much to discount it to earn a sustainable and fair return that neither fleeces Bill, nor robs you). And if you're the publican, and you've been chatting with me and with Bill, then you're even better positioned to become a de facto arbitrator of notes—a bank. And that's exactly the role that pubs began to play.

If the banks were to disappear tomorrow, do you think we'd see a similar thing happen in the UK?
Well, it's a fun hypothetical but the banks aren't going to disappear tomorrow. The role of banks and the city have changed. Today they are deeply embedded in our societal structure, as evidenced in the increased financialization of our whole economy. We are intrinsically connected to banking in ways much more complicated than in the 70s.

Take our response to the crisis in 2008. We nationalized the debt of the banks, which has now resulted in austerity. The failure is a deeply-rooted macro-institutional one that sustains the same behaviour.

If we zoom out, advanced economies like the US, UK, and Japan are seeing massive stagnation. Today's young people face an insecure future, with no pensions, prospects, jobs, healthcare, savings, or mobility. As stagnation increases so does inequality. It's not the absence of banks that makes innovation necessary but as a response.

WATCH: The Real 'Wolf of Wall Street'?

What about the internet and the emergence of cryptocurrencies? Does it look like technology might support the same kind of decentralized alternative like the one in strike-ridden Ireland?
Well yes, when we think of the facilitating role that the pubs played in that case, technologies like Bitcoin and blockchain are an obvious substitute framework. However, only five percent of us use those technologies. If they are to be part of the answer then what we need is their adoption into the whole system—and that requires institutional change. The real question is whether these technologies will remain on the periphery or can be legitimized and regulated within the economic institution as a whole.

So we could find ourselves at a real turning point?
The difficulty is that there is a disparity of experience as inequality increases. Leaders don't fully understand how young people feel. More than ever young people need to implement change. People need to be vocal.

The rise of demagogues, such as Trump and the like, are an illustration of the dangerous political vacuum caused by economic stagnation. As the centre crumbles it gives rise to extremism and fascism, which is always the product of inopportunity.

We are at such a stage that the decisions we make today about our financial system are going to affect people for decades to come. We cannot afford to wait for the banks to collapse before we begin to reimagine the economy.

Thanks for speaking to me, Umair.

Follow David on Twitter.


‘Captain America: Civil War’ Is Boring, Frustrating, Perfect, Wonderful Garbage

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All illustrations by Nick Gazin

What's So Civil About 'Captain America: Civil War,' Anyway?

By Nick Gazin, Art Editor

There are some spoilers below but not too many, and you probably want to read about this movie if you clicked on this, right? Don't be a baby.

Wednesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, so my assistant Helen and I honored the holiday as we do every year, by seeing Captain America: Civil War on its opening night.

Although I grew up reading and loving superheroes, my male power fantasies became more complicated as I reached something resembling adulthood. Now that punching someone I hate in the face is as easily accomplished as punching someone I hate in the face, my empowerment fantasies are along the lines of "learning to drive someday" and "stop hoarding."

All kidding aside, I hate the majority of modern superhero movies and not in a "they're just not for me" kind of way. I think they're a symptom of how broken and infantile our culture is. I don't see these movies as the cause of our problems, just a sad reminder of how our culture has become kidified. We're moving at an alarming rate toward a society that's just like the one Mike Judge portrayed in Idiocracy, a movie that is resembling the dystopian present we're mutating quickly into.

For the most part, the modern superhero movies are a cultural response to 9/11, which is why they all have scenes of buildings blowing up and cities being attacked. It's like the destruction is the real star, and the superheroes are just there to make sure that it happens. I think that's partially why they stay out of costume so much in these films, to not pull focus from the destruction. I recognize that genre fantasy movies have always dealt with real-world issues, but it's typically been through horror films, not colorful action films based on characters that were created to entertain preliterate children.

That said, I thought the first two Captain America movies were extremely watchable with clear plots, good acting, character development, solid relationships, and great visual design.

I showed up to the new Captain America with neither high nor low expectations. I was just glad to be out of the house in the company of a human woman that the other movie-goers might mistake for my wife or girlfriend. In my mind, I imagined the other movie-goers seeing me and thinking I was socially capable and charming. This is another one of my personal male power fantasies, to be likable.

The first half of the movie is the most boring, frustrating garbage I have ever seen in a superhero movie. The second half is the most perfect, wonderful garbage I have ever seen in a superhero movie.

The 3D in this movie was incredible, but most of the first half of the movie was scenes of buildings blowing up intercut with footage of seated, uncostumed people having meetings. It was bleak, dismal, and uninteresting. I found my mind wandering to chores I had waiting for me at my apartment.

The first half of the movie scrapes rock bottom when Captain America and the Falcon are wearing baseball hats and sunglasses in a coffee place, and they just look like how movie stars dress when they don't want to be recognized in public. I started rocking in my seat and sighing loudly like a resentful child on a long car trip at this point.

The government wants the Avengers to only avenge when the US government and the UN ask them too. Iron Man is fine with it, but Captain America wants total freedom. So then they are at odds for the rest of the movie.

The Black Panther/T'Challa is introduced. T'Challa is principled and handsome but joyless and lacks the humanity that makes Iron Man, War Machine, the Falcon, and the other likable characters fun to watch. There are so many goddamn characters in this movie, and so few really have a chance to shine or get enough screen time to have stories or even personalities. The Marvel movies keep on setting up stuff that gets paid off in later movies, so none of them can actually be a whole, complete good movie. They're just a swarm of half-stories, and you have to watch all of them in order or you're totally lost.

It was at the moment where I thought all was lost and the movie was total shit that someone flipped the "good" switch on, and it became like a whole different movie.

Robert Downey, Jr./Tony Stark/Iron Man goes to Queens to recruit Spider-Man in the best, funniest, most human scene in the movie. After flirting with the insanely hot Marisa Tomei in the role of Aunt May, Iron Man reveals that he knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and they have a fun back and forth that shows the joy and fun of superheroes that was lacking from the bleak, tedious first half. The new actor, 19-year-old Tom Holland, is the best Spider-Man yet by miles. His personality, dialogue, reverence for the other superheroes, the way the character moves is beyond perfect. I smiled and laughed every time he came on screen. I had that thing where I reverted to a state of childlike glee that I can't usually get from these movies.

A lot of people on Twitter found casting the insanely hot Marisa Tomei as the withered and annoyingly burdensome Aunt May as Hollywood chauvinism. The characters react to this a little in their dialogue, but it's clear in her scenes that this isn't the case. Instead of saying that Marisa Tomei is old, they're giving Peter Parker a cool aunt that he can relate to, one who won't be the deluded-but-sweet nuisance that Aunt May has always been in the past. I really wanted to see her fuck Tony Stark.


I know I said that superhero movies are the harbinger of the end of civilization, but I will be first in line to see the new Spider-Man movie.

Captain America brings his team of superheroes including Paul Rudd, who is hilarious as Ant-Man, to an airport where they change in a parking garage, and they meet up and have tense chats with Tony Stark and his superheroes, and then they have the best onscreen superhero battle I've ever seen.

The two teams run at each other like on the covers of so many comic book covers, and nothing about it looks fake or boring. It's fun and non-threatening, and everyone's finally wearing his or her beautiful costumes. I got chills and wept from the feelings I thought had long ago died within me.

At one point during the fight, Captain America asks where Spider-Man is from and Spidey says "Queens," which elicited some applause, to which Captain America replies "Brooklyn," and the whole audience roared like when Cyrus in the Warriors yelled, "Can you dig it?" I got chills again. It was a beautiful moment of unified excitement and recognition.

When we exited the theater, we witnessed an enthusiastic pack of tween boys who were horseplaying over whether Captain America or Iron Man was morally correct. It did my heart good to see kids get that energized in a movie.

I give the first half of this movie an F– and I give the second half an A+. I also wish that the movie had ended with Guns N' Roses song "Civil War" playing over the credits. That seemed like a real missed opportunity.

'Captain America: Civil War' Should've Been Called 'Captain America: Messy Bitches Who Live for Drama'

By Helen Donahue, Social Engagement Editor

War, what is it good for? After two hours and 27 minutes of Captain America: Civil War plus extra scenes in between and following credits, I have no fucking idea. This movie should have been titled Captain America: Messy Bitches Who Live for Drama because there was more violence in War of the Roses, and I'm talking about the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York and the Michael Douglas movie.

There are too many characters in this movie to keep track of unless you've been reading them your entire life, so here's how they were introduced to me: A group of Soviets are literally torturing some greaseball with a metal arm by saying words like "homecoming" and "nine" in Russian. Then the failed Olsen sister is on the phone with the dude who made himself into a human banana split on Not Another Teen Movie, and they're also on the phone with some dude flying a drone, and Scarlett Johansson. I'm probably forgetting someone, but before I can process anything, they're at the Institution for Infectious Diseases, and I hear Chris Evans say Rob Lowe has a biological weapon. They all start fighting, and I'm puzzled how they're able to butcher Rob Lowe and his squad of terrorists while bragging about how many people they've taken out so far. At this point, I wouldn't fuck any of these characters.

Robert Downey Jr. is in the movie now, but he's wearing a ton of makeup that makes him look more like present-day Alan Cumming than like he did in Weird Science. Smartass Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark gives a TED Talk, and everyone's applauding his ass, but he looks sad, and broken-down.

Then every character in the movie sits down and argues around a table for about an hour. They could be controlled by the United Nations, but only if they sign the Whatever Accords. Captain America won't do it, because Avengers don't sign documents, which reminds me I have to sign one for HR.

Anyway, the Avengers keep fucking killing people, so maybe Mr. America should just suck it up and sign with one of FDR's pens that Robert Downey Jr. tried to give him for some reason? The movie could have ended here—I took a bathroom break and almost left Nick in the theater I was so bored.

Finally, something decent happens in the movie—Robert Downey Jr. goes to Peter Parker's house to recruit him to help beat up all his old best friends. Then Jeremy Renner shows up looking like he's about to perform in Much Ado About Nothing. Instead he beats up an emotive robot to kidnap the Olsen sister. Paul Rudd is also involved, which would have been cool if his character had the personality of Andy from Wet Hot American Summer, but he was just a shrinking man with the wit of every Judd Apatow character he's been playing since 2005.

Everyone has chosen a side now, and they meet up at the airport to fight, which, in their defense, is a fantastic place to air grievances. Spider-Man and Captain America have a kind of cool fight, but all of these assholes obviously love each other, so it kind of just seems like if the dorky-ass cast of The New Girl decided to fistfight for an entire episode before hugging and making one another a cold brew.

Then a bunch of stuff happens, and they go to Siberia—originally I wrote a bunch more about this movie, but my editors were like, "Those are spoilers, Helen," and I guess fully grown adults get upset when you describe the plot of a movie online. Anyway this movie is super long, and at the end of it, I hadn't eaten the birthday cake Oreos I smuggled into the theater, and now I have to deal with that whole situation. This is what is known in the business as a "cliffhanger." Bye.

Follow Nick Gazin on Instagram and Helen Donahue on Twitter.

New Orleans's Charter School Experiment Is a Preview of the Coming Battle Over Education

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A New Orleans student jumps off a bus to enter McDonogh #35 Senior High School before the start of the school day on March 19, 2008. Photo credit: Mario Tama / Getty

In the fall of 2005, Louisiana's then-governor Kathleen Blanco passed a bill that created a radical education experiment in New Orleans. At the time, the city had been virtually emptied by Hurricane Katrina, and Blanco, in a speech in Baton Rouge, said that this situation was a "historic opportunity to start anew, to create an environment for a new birth of excellence and opportunity for the children and families of New Orleans."

What this meant was that New Orleans's struggling public school system was disassembled. Virtually overnight, all of New Orleans's public school teachers were fired, the city's school board lost control of all but 17 schools (they once operated close to 125), and more than 100 facilities were handed over to the Recovery School District, which was run by state-level bureaucrats with few ties to New Orleans. Since then, more than 90 percent of New Orleans schools have been operated by charters—a mixture of private nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies that operate independently from each other and are not beholden to a democratically elected board as public schools are.

Supporters of charters say they are more effective than traditional public schools because they can operate without the oversight of a centralized authority, letting them experiment more when it comes to their hiring practices, teaching methods, and curriculum. But anti-charter advocates dislike the schools for the same reason: Without a centralized coordinating body, parents and teachers' unions have less power to control how students are educated.

New Orleans schools essentially hit the reset button. Teachers (many of them black) had to reapply for their jobs in new, non-unionized schools, and hundreds of new teachers (many of them white, young, from outside of New Orleans, and working for nonprofits like Teach for America) replaced them. A system of school choice was implemented: Instead of going to their local neighborhoods schools, students had to apply for schools across the city. The idea was that this would allow parents and their kids to vote with their feet, forcing less successful schools to improve to compete for students.

The New Orleans experiment resulted in some successes, at least on paper: Test scores rose, dropout rates decreased, and so the strategy was copied by struggling school districts around the country. But now, after years of protests from parents and activists who want to see the schools returned to local control, the experiment may all be coming undone.

Last week, the Louisiana House Education Committee advanced legislation that would return every school taken over by the state back to local control. The bill unanimously passed the state Senate, and experts believe it will pass the House with ease. That means by 2018 or 2019, every school in New Orleans will once again be under the purview of the school board, not a state-appointed bureaucracy. It's unclear how many of the schools will remain charter schools, but according to local experts, including Deirdre Johnson Burel, the director of the New Orleans Public Education Network, it seems likely that many could return to being traditional public schools eventually.

"We have a generation of students that were used as an experiment," says Karran Harper Royal, an education advocate and parent of two sons who were educated in both the pre- and post-Katrina school systems. "And what do we have to show for it? A few rising test scores, but tens of thousands of kids out of school, and no community control of our school system."

A lot of the details of the bill's effect on schools are uncertain. Some activists, like Harper Royal, don't think it goes far enough in ensuring local residents have a say in whether schools stay charters or become traditional public schools again. That could explain why some charter operators are in favor of the bill, supporting it over other, less popular measures that would remove some of the independence charter schools currently operate under in Louisiana.

"The community is full of distrust—nobody trusts anybody right now," said Ken Ducote, the executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, which represents about a dozen charter schools in the city. "But this bill will make things simpler and allow us to focus on the needs of our students, on poverty, and trauma and coping, not on governance structure."

But even with the schools likely turning back to local control, New Orleans's post-Katrina educational experiment may be soon replicated around the country, as more and more cities attempt to use state takeovers and charter schools to turn around school districts and more parents, teachers, and kids protest the loss of local control.

For more on education, watch our documentary 'Last Chance High'

There's some evidence much of the improvements New Orleans schools saw came from simply getting rid of students who were academically underperforming. In 2010, the Recovery School District was found to be using expulsions ten times as much as the national average; these schools also disciplined African American and poor students at much higher rates than white students. As noted in a New York Times op-ed from 2015, it's not clear how many kids have dropped out of these schools, but 26,000 16- to 24-year-olds in the New Orleans area were considered "disconnected" at the time, meaning they aren't working or in school.

Students with special needs or disabilities also have a harder time in New Orleans charter schools because there is little in the way of coordinated special needs policy between charter operators. Some schools had better special needs classes than others, but parents found it hard to figure out where exactly to enroll their kids with special needs; some schools have seemed actively hostile to parents who try to push for better special education, according to a 2014 NPR story.

The school choice system also meant that parents were sometimes forced to send their kids to schools a long ways away, a particular disadvantage for parents without cars, as well as students who take extracurriculars and aren't offered after-school bussing. And because there is no centralized system to create and implement policy at the independent charters, there is no clear way for parents to change or complain about the system, according to several sources interviewed for this story.

"It used to be if I had an issue with the school I could go to the school board representative and complain, I could organize other parents," says Ashana Bigard, a parent of two children currently going through New Orleans school system. "Post-Katrina you were on your own. Parents' voices just did not matter."

"We have a generation of students that were used as an experiment. And what do we have to show for it?"
—Karran Harper Royal

Despite the controversies surrounding charters, other states have mimicked New Orleans's path, seeking low-cost solutions and higher test scores. Michigan and Tennessee both have created separate districts for their low-performing schools that began operating in 2012, and eight other states are currently considering similar legislation that allow governors and legislatures to take over failing city schools. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and several other states have also taken over failing school districts. State takeovers most often happen in predominantly black, predominantly poor districts, according to a report released by the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive think tank and policy organization.

"State officials who may not have any experience in education look at the test scores of some of these districts, and they see their district failing and think, 'What's the alternative?'" says Kyle Serrette, the education policy director at the Center for Popular Democracy, a group that has been critical of charter schools, told VICE. "What they don't hear about is the failures in New Orleans and elsewhere."

As in New Orleans, these policies are often met with criticism: In Newark, students have been protesting the takeover of their schools for years. And in Michigan, a growing movement is challenging the emergency management law that allowed Detroit's schools to be taken over by the state (the same law allowed an emergency manager to make decisions in Flint that contributed to the city's water crisis).

Even though school takeovers are becoming more common nationally, what's happening in New Orleans may be a sign of things to come. The city's schools were taken over by state governments years before such policies became popular, and in a sense they provide a preview of the pros and cons: State control and charter schools can boost test scores, but can also create controversy and leave some students behind.

"For sure you're seeing a backlash," against the state takeover of schools said Tom Pedroni, a policy teacher at Wayne State University in Detroit. "And I'm optimistic things will change here too because of what's happening in New Orleans."

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: Fort McMurray Wildfire Relief Includes Free Lap Dances for Escapees

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Photo via Flickr user Anthony Easton

As an out-of-control wildfire continues to ravage Fort McMurray, attention has turned to all the ways Albertans are helping each other out. They're offering their homes, their food, and their hard earned cash to make sure neighbours get back on their feet. Needless to say, it's heartwarming as hell.

Along with all that, one Edmonton strip club is extending another kind of distinctly Albertan welcome. (No, not this one). For those who narrowly escaped flames and feel like celebrating, Eden nightclub has invited Fort Mac evacuees down for free cover and a lap dance on the house.

Chris Round, general manager for a couple Alberta strip clubs including Eden and Showgirls in Fort McMurray, told VICE that's just a small fraction of the relief efforts his team of dancers, doormen and bartenders have planned.

After escaping their sister club in Fort Mac and regrouping in Edmonton, Round says his staff hatched a plan to host a strip-a-thon he hopes will raise tens of thousands for wildfire relief. Round says the May 15 event will feature Fort Mac performers and will donate all club proceeds as well as funds from a live auction to the Red Cross.

"As far as relief goes, the girls themselves have really stepped up," Round told VICE. "A lot of them are donating their stage tips, they're donating the money they made from private dances for the night."

READ MORE: Climate Change Was a Factor in the Fort McMurray Wildfire but You Don't Have to Be an Asshole About It

Round says they've also been taking donations at the door, offering free cover to anyone who shows proof of a Red Cross donation on their phone. "We're accepting honestly any donations," said Round, "water, toiletries, diapers and stuff, clothes and food, you name it, we'll be taking it to the emergency relief places."

How's that for Alberta hospitality.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

Nick Gazin's Frozen Food Reviews: Enter the Indian Food Party Inside My Mouth

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Image by Alex Reyes

Greetings, you goddamned gourmands.

I'm VICE's art editor, but I don't only appreciate visual beauty, I appreciate the beauty of the culinary arts too. That's why I started reviewing frozen food for VICE each week—you can't really know how beautiful something is until you put it in your mouth anyway.

This week I'm reviewing frozen Indian food products by Amy's Kitchen. I make no apologies for my love of Amy's food. I'm not a vegetarian, but I acknowledge that meat has a higher potential for being disgusting.

Some people might read VICE or these reviews and assume I'm only here to be cruel and snarky as I make fun of low hanging frozen-fruit. That's not the case at all. I loved every one of the items in my column this week. I earnestly endorse readers to keep at least a couple of each in your freezers for when you get home and want to eat something fast and simple that won't make you feel lethargic or leave a gross taste in your mouth. Here are reviews of what I consider to be the pinnacle of frozen food perfection.

Amy's Indian Palak Paneer

The actual food is a lot less pretty than the box makes it out to be, but it's still good. Hard to screw up spinach, rice, and beans. I was very high when I ate this. I remember photographing it and then I remember looking at an empty cardboard dish with a fork lying in it. What happened in between those two events is absent from my memory. I am pretty sure that I really liked this.

Often, I come home really late after DJing. I typically smoke a joint and then microwave one of Amy's Indian dishes. As I eat it I think to myself, It's all worthwhile just to come home to you, Amy's Palak Paneer. And then I pass out watching Dragonball, surrounded by empties of Coors Light and an ashtray overflowing with roaches.

GRADE: A+

Amy's Indian Mattar Paneer

Is something the matter, my dear? Just eat some mattar paneer. Eat one and your troubles will disappear.

You have to eat one for each trouble in your life. I ate five which caused me to feel self-conscious about being an eataholic, so I ate a sixth dinner to assuage that.

Problem eaten! Self-consciousness beaten!

GRADE: A

Amy's Indian Vegetable Korma

This was good and un-gross like all of Amy's frozen food. It's my least favorite of the Amy's Indian dishes I've tried so far, but I still loved it. The Palak Paneer is still the best. The Matar Paneer is a close second. This one is a close third. Did I mention they're all good? Three-way tie for first place, basically.

The only problem is that one Amy's thing is not enough for an adult man. One is enough for a child. I ate this, smoked a joint, and then followed it up with an Amy's Cheese Enchilada.

The other week, Amy's staff told me they'd send me free food (and set me up on a date). If they come through, it'll hopefully help me cut down on the cost of my double Amy's meals, as well as the chronic loneliness I feel on the inside.

GRADE: A-

Amy's Indian Samosa Wrap

This looks like a burrito but it's not. It's a samosa, which is like a prank burrito. You bite into it, alone in your apartment with your cat and massive knife and porno-comic collection, and taste potato mixed with the sturdy blank flavor of the not-tortilla. During a few bites, I could feel the gratifying snap of a pea being bitten through. I didn't consciously notice any other flavors or textures. It was all soft potato, mild space, the bready containment shield, and warmth.

It's almost exactly like eating a knish, which has led me to wonder: Where are Amy's Jewish foods? They make Italian, Thai, Mexican, and Indian foods. This could be labeled a knish and marketed to a whole new demographic. Amy's Kitchen, email me if this concept intrigues you.

Overall the samosa doesn't blow me away, but it's pleasant. I have yet to be wowed by any frozen burrito or wrap besides Amy's Especial Burrito.

GRADE: B

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We Asked Our Moms How We Were Conceived

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Illustration by Heather Benjamin

The last thing anyone wants to think about on Mother's Day is the mechanics of how our mothers became mothers. "Too much Pinot," "the waterbed broke," "I knew from the second your father finished"—these are not sentences anyone wants to hear.

At the same time, as we get older we start to think of our parents as fellow humans with desires and needs, humans who occasionally get too drunk at a Stones show or forget to take the pill. Why not ask your mom about how you were conceived? You're both adults. Maybe it's a funny story.

I was recently telling my mom about an article I edited on the difficulties of getting pregnant through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her response was that she could relate: My mom had to go through five years of infertility treatment in the early 90s, including four rounds of IVF. My parents were actually one IVF cycle away from giving up and considering adoption before my mom got pregnant with me and my twin brother. Before we talked, I had no idea about any of that.

"You had to be injected with hormones at specific times during the day," mom told me. "Me and your dad would be out partying, and we'd literally go into the bathroom or the back of a car so he could stick a needle in my stomach or ass. We probably looked like junkies."

Apparently, during their last IVF cycle, my parents had to rush to the fertility treatment while my dad cradled a cup of his dad-juice between his legs because they had to keep it warm or else the sperm would die. Not the most miraculous or romantic conception story, but I'll take it over not existing.

To celebrate our moms, their wombs, and the life they gave to us on Mother's Day, I asked a bunch of my coworkers to text their parents and ask to hear their own conception story (texting seemed less painful than a phone call). Here's what everyone's moms sent them in response. Love you, ma!

River Donaghey, Associate Editor at VICE.com


Lauren Messman, Editorial Assistant at VICE.com


Brian McManus, Special Projects Editor at VICE.com




Matt Taylor, Crime Editor at VICE.com


Kate Lowenstein, Health Editor at VICE.com




Dan Ozzi, Editor at Noisey

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