Offish oldest cat in the fucking world, guy

Cats aren't meant to live long because they're basically useless. I have two cats, and even though I really like them, I often look at them and think about how pointless they are. All they do is kind of walk around a little and then drop to the ground and lie there. They walk really close to the ground and sort of keel over and stare into nothing. It's like they're depressed. I guess you would be if all your food was encased in jelly and your tongue was made of Velcro and you were one of the only other animals in the world that can get Aids.

Tell all that to my boy Scooter, though, who turned 30 recently and is now the offish oldest cat in the fucking world, guy. The Texan Siamese was born in 1986, the birth year of Drake, Megan Fox and the year of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. It's also the year that the M25 was opened by Margaret Thatcher, and Pixar animation studios opened for business. Truly, this cat has seen it all.

Scooter takes the place of a cat called Corduroy, who is only 26. While Corduroy is still doing speedy coke in metal-themed pub toilets at 3AM because nowhere else is open, Scooter has retired to just getting really pissed and having life-changing hangovers once a week, and drinking more wine alone watching MasterChef. Though Scooter is currently the world's oldest cat, he's not quite the oldest cat ever, an accolade which goes to fellow Texan Crème Puff, who died in 2005 at the age of 38.

I rate Scooter. I like anything that refuses to die. I even had a begrudging admiration for the aforementioned Baroness Thatcher towards the end. She just wouldn't quit! It's not easy living outside of your life expectancy, especially when the risk of being crushed, run over and mauled to death is a daily concern. Scooter also came back from a tragedy, his mother dying at only four months old, and a broken leg in 2014, during his late 20s. Here's to another 30, mate. Hope you get on the catnip and have a suspiciously runny nose in the office for the rest of the week.

Illustrations by Ashley Goodall

This article originally appeared in VICE Australia.

I first started looking at the personal ads on Locanto for a laugh with my housemates. There was the usual: panty sniffers, sugar daddies. I had a part-time job, but I still fitted the "poor student" trope i.e. too many lattes, not enough money for new shoes.

I was also having a lot of mediocre Tinder dates with "beers, footy, mates, and gym" guys who I should have not been swiping right to. Basically, I thought: How bad could it be? I knew I was ok with having sex with people I wasn't attracted to, and afterwards I could blow $500 at Dymocks, on fancy clothes, hide it in my broke friends' sock drawers—whatever. I'd be loaded.

It usually went the same way: After messaging back and forth, I'll ask to meet them in a public space first because, you know, catfish. Sometimes it's a shopping centre car park, sometimes a dodgy coffee shop. It doesn't really matter where, the paranoia kicks in. I'm always certain people around me know what's going down, and are judging me big time for it. Basically, being a sex worker would be ok if it wasn't for the clients.

There are two kinds of guys I've encountered: those who know what they're doing, and the ones who post an ad but don't actually expect a response.

The "surprise butthole" was probably one of my worst clients. He just went straight in while I had my back turned. It was a really sudden pain, and I turned around and slapped him in the face yelling "That's not ok!" He was sympathetic about it afterwards, but it just shows how distorted people's ideas about sex and consent are. He seemed to be an emotionally intelligent guy, if a little lonely, but he also felt perfectly entitled to enter my anus without permission.

When I have told close friends about this they treat it as serious sexual assault, which I guess it is. But it never really bothered me, and I hope to keep it that way.

There was also this gross bald guy, who drove around in a black Chrysler (you know what they say about men with expensive cars). He wanted to pay a sugar babe $500 to meet up once a week. But in reality, there were daily texts sprung on me while I was in class, on the tram, or in the supermarket.

After meeting once, he picked me up and drove me out to his suburban house. His house was in one of those developments where all the facades and gardens look the same, but the inside was actually quite unique. It was filled with porcelain horses. There were literally dozens of them around his TV cabinet. To be honest, if it wasn't for that, I probably would have followed through. Instead, I got stuck with a scalding cup of tea and a burning desire to leave, immediately.

Nothing says sexy like a porcelain horse figurine.

When I said I wanted to go, he insisted on a cigarette in his empty garage, which was mildly terrifying. I gave his dog a pat, and he started complaining that I would pat his dog but not him. Even on the drive to the train station, he kept saying he wanted to lick me out, and that his years of experience meant he was better than anyone I'd ever been with.

Then there was the "natural sex" guy. His backstory was interesting, but I never know how much of it to believe. Apparently, he had a similar relationship with a sugar babe a few years ago but all while he has a wife and child in the Philippines who don't know he does this. That made me feel really uncomfortable, especially when I realised I was willing to ignore my morals for a few bucks.

When we met, I downloaded an app so a close friend could follow where I was. The hotel was real basic, located between second hand car dealerships and discount rug and tile stores. Who even goes to these hotels? I guess now I know.

When we were in the room alone, after desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the concierge, his tone suddenly changed as I pulled out condoms. "I thought we agreed on natural," he kept saying. He began arguing that he couldn't cum unless it was "natural." Yeah right. He also said he had never had "natural" before, and wanted to try it. But you just said? He also said his nurse friend told him you can't contract STIs the first time you have sex with a new partner. Sure.

I started getting dressed to leave, making it clear I wasn't going to take his shit, when he suddenly backflipped, and agreed to sex with a condom after all. Contrary to his earlier claims, he was done in less than 10 minutes.

He'd paid me $350 as a down payment at the start. But as we left and were standing in the carpark, he refused to go to the ATM to pay me the remaining $150, making out I had agreed to some kind of "condom discount." As we argued, I was filled with sudden shame at the stereotypical image of a screaming prostitute in a cheap motel carpark. I stormed off, blocked his number, and hoped that was the end of it.

After this guy, I quit. I didn't really regret anything—the right client at the right price gave me a lot of freedom. But in the end I decided it just wasn't worth the anxiety and uncertainty. It wasn't all doom and gloom though. One time I made $1000 off a one-time gig with a guy who worked for Gina Rinehart. There was another regular who I would blow in his car for 10 minutes, brush my teeth, and hit the club where I would blow—ahem, spend—the money on drinks for my friends. I'd yell in celebration: "10 minutes! Only 10 minutes!"

As told to Lewis Eyers-Stott.

When I first visited Mexicali, I'd heard rumors about "La Chinesca," a network of basement tunnels where the city's Chinese immigrants had created their own underground Chinatown. It was something of an urban legend—a buried city where Chinese immigrants had lived away from the rest of the community, creating their own hidden culture. I would later find out that not only does La Chinesca exist, but you could actually explore it.

Rubén Hernández Chen, the owner of a local shop and the chairman of the Committee for the Historic Center of Mexicali, sometimes takes visitors underground to see it firsthand. He's been recognized for his work in promoting Chinese traditions in Mexicali, which includes these tours of the basement tunnels. With Chen as my guide, I descended into the dank, malodorous underworld to review the subterranean life that once existed.

The doorway to one of the basements, which remains decorated as a smoking den

Chinese immigrants first came to Mexicali around 1900, most of them brought over from China by the Colorado River Company to work on railroad and irrigation construction—first in the United States, and then across the border in Mexico. When construction was over, many of the immigrants who'd relocated to Mexicali stayed, living in basement rooms. Temperatures in the area reach over 105 degrees most summer days, and can climb to 120 degrees on extra-hot days, so the underground system allowed the immigrants—unaccustomed to Mexico's heat—to move throughout the city without having to surface above ground.

Chen explained there are almost 40 basements that make up La Chinesca. At one point, they were each connected through a system of tunnels; today, each of the buildings has a different owner, and the passageways are mostly closed, so each basement must be accessed separately through trap doors from the stores above.

A basement staged with small beds and long stemmed pipes rested at arms length from the beds.

The underground Chinesca spans across the downtown center of Mexicali, an area of the city adjacent to the US-Mexico border. When prohibition in the US began in the 1920s, La Chinesca's proximity to the border became an advantage, and the underground tunnels became the center point for Mexicali's casinos, brothels, and bars. Bootleggers began to use the tunnel system to smuggle liquor and to provide access from the US to Mexicali's bordellos and the Chinese opium dens, according to Chen.

Esteban Leon, the president of the Chinese Association of Mexicali, explained that in the 1920s, Chinese immigrants outnumbered the Mexicans in the town—by about 10,000 to 700—and had begun to gain political and territorial power. By the late 1920s, he says the Chinese population had also gained a stronghold over organized crime in gambling and prostitution rings that spread to other parts of the nation and up through California.

One basement remains staged as casino with gambling tables and roulette wheels.

Everything changed in 1934, when general Lázaro Cárdenas became president of Mexico. His election campaign had planned an ambitious land reform based on Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, which stated that the land should be in the hands of the Mexican people, not foreigners. A wave of anti-immigrant sentiment spread across the nation, most fiercely throughout the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California. There was a strong resistance from the immigrants who fought for their land; much of it was taken from them by force, and many were tortured and massacred in the fields.

Remaining immigration documents and photos from various Chinese immigrant families

In Mexicali, however, the land was technically still owned by the Colorado River Company, so although the immigrants lost their turf, they were spared from what was happening in the neighboring states. La Chinesca became a hideout for the hundreds of Chinese immigrants who fled from Sinaloa and Sonora seeking refuge in the basements of their fellow countrymen. Esteban, whose father was one of these early Chinese immigrants in Mexicali, recalls that his father had a boat ready to leave from Ensenada to reach the United States in case the violence did arrive in Mexicali.

One of the basements decorated as it was used as a home, with furniture and family heirlooms

Immigrants continued living underground until the late 70s, until frequent flooding in the basements of La Chinesca finally pushed the last residents out. Evidence of these floods is still visible, the dimly lit walls in various basements are water-stained right up to exits.

When you visit La Chinesca today, there are only these faint reminders of what they once were. One basement has been staged as a den of iniquity, with roulette tables and cards; another has walls painted with twisting mythological creatures and a day bed with long-stemmed pipes resting on a nightstand within arms reach. Others have been left as simple abodes with family heirlooms decorating the walls and floors. All the basements are very musty, with ancient crumbling paint, and only several have been equipped with lighting.

There are roughly 5,000 Chinese immigrants who live above ground in Mexicali today, and the city remains a hub for Chinese culture in Mexico. But La Chinesca remains as a symbol of the former subterranean life that existed and a testament to the conflicts and persecution they experienced through fighting for acceptance.

See more of Erin Lee Holland's photography here.

These guys weren't the only ones scrambling to remove any trace of Ghomeshi after the scandal broke. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

I was working from home that Friday in October almost two years ago when a flurry of texts from colleagues at the CBC started blowing up my phone. The missives were mostly questions about how much information any of us had—could we fill in the blanks, did we know what was really going on. But the common thread in every message was the acknowledgement that the things we'd been whispering about, the public secrets we'd all been sort of keeping might actually be true. Because even though at that point we didn't know much, we knew.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Read: New 'Game of Thrones' Photos Reveal: People Gonna Die

The Winds of Winter is coming... at some point at least. Like the invading White Walkers—who still haven't made their way south of the Wall after five books—Martin's sixth A Song of Ice and Fire novel has been taking the long scenic route toward publication. While the much-delayed novel still isn't finished, Martin took to still-extant blog platform LiveJournal to tell fans about the release of a sample chapter to tide them over.

The new chapter is from the viewpoint of Princess Arianne of Dorne. If you are a Game of Thrones watcher trying to remember who the hell Arianne is, don't bother. Arianne was cut entirely from the HBO show. Indeed, the entire Dorne plot in the TV adaptation is the storyline with the biggest divergence from the books.

Unsurprisingly, the show's Dorne story has been the most widely hated by fans and critics. Did Martin release this chapter as a not-too-subtle dig at the TV show? Maybe he is telling fans, "See, here's some actually cool Dorne stuff. Maybe those TV writers need my books after all!"

On his blog, Martin introduced the chapter by saying, "You want to know what the Sand Snakes, Prince Doran, Areo Hotah, Ellaria Sand, Darkstar, and the rest will be up to in Winds of Winter? Quite a lot, actually."

Meanwhile, on the TV show, half of those characters were killed in a very quick and fairly silly couple of scenes and then haven't been heard from again. It has felt as if the Game of Thrones writers realized they ruined that entire storyline and just thought, Let's kill them off and use the space for more evil Ramsay scenes! I wouldn't be surprised if next episode the few remaining Dornish characters die on the way back to their homeland.

For those who love the multiple intricate plots and schemes of the Dornish book characters, the new sample chapter will be a huge relief. Does the new chapter mean the full book is almost done? If you think so, you know less than even Jon Snow. Martin has been releasing sample chapters of The Winds of Winter since 2013 and still no book in sight.

This chapter, in fact, is one he has read before at conventions, so it isn't even technically new. On his blog, Martin made sure to quash any fan dreams that this chapter release means the book is near publication: "And no, just to spike any bullshit rumors, changing the sample chapter does NOT mean I am done. See the icon up above?"—referring to a picture of Martin with a monkey on his shoulders—"Monkey is still on my back... but he's growing, he is, and one day..." For now, you'll have to enjoy this spring weather and hope Winter will arrive before the year is done.

Follow Lincoln Michel on Twitter.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with community members at Shoal Lake 40. Photo by Andy Wood for 'Daily VICE'

On Tuesday, the Liberal government announced it will "fully adopt" the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the most significant international agreement that specifically sketches out what it would look like to treat Indigenous peoples like, well, people.

Portrait of Love by Molly Crabapple

When Love (not her real name) walked in the door of the Times Square Dallas BBQ, I hardly recognized the woman I'd first seen seated in a Bronx prostitution court more than a year go. Then, she had been dressed in her judge-impressing best, gold curls pouring over her shoulders. "Twenty dollars for a blowjob," the prosecutor had smarmed in her direction. She stared at him, her mouth fixed, her eyes hard to keep back tears.

I met Love in November 2014, researching a story on New York's Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTIC). Launched in 2013, these courts purported to offer a kinder, gentler judicial response for people charged with prostitution. Instead of jail time, alleged sex workers would get six counseling sessions. However, these women (they were uniformly women, almost uniformly of color, with trans women greatly overrepresented) would still be arrested and treated as criminals by the NYPD. Counseling was only available to defendants who plea-bargained and formally admitted guilt; anyone who dared assert her innocence risked a misdemeanor charge and possible prison time.

Love's story shows how these courts fail the people they claim to help. She had once been a sex worker in the Bronx's Hunts Point neighborhood, but by the time she was arrested on the charge that brought her to the courtroom, she was out of the business and pursuing a degree as a surgical technician. The problem was, the cops still knew her face, and when they saw her on the street they likely figured she was still a sex worker and still an easy stat-padding arrest. They snatched her, threw her in a cell, then charged her with misdemeanor prostitution.

Faced with the time, expense, risk, and stress of a trial, almost anyone put in that situation would have pled guilty, taken the misdemeanor rap, and agreed to sessions of HTIC-mandated counseling, even if she were innocent. Love refused. Instead, she demanded a trial.

During the months of hearings, the prosecutor offered no hard proof any crime had been committed. Instead he had only her prostitution record and an undercover officer's word. Finally, one November morning in 2014, the judge declared her not guilty.

Love wasn't content just to prove her innocence. She wanted to make a point: That same month, she walked into the law offices of Michael Lamonsoff and hired an attorney to sue the city for false arrest. The case was settled out of court for $15,000, and, exactly a year after the initial trial, in November 2015, Love had the money in hand.

When I met Love again this February, 14 months later after that settlement agreement, she wearing blue surgical scrubs and a baseball cap adorned with ornamental rhinestones spelling her name. Though exhausted from her studies, Love walked with a deserved swagger. Too often, poor people in New York and elsewhere are grist for an inhumane machine of courts and prisons. Love refused to play her part. She not only fought her charges, she extracted money from the city that had tried to place her behind bars. Love won.

"Even if you are a sex worker, and you were not working that day, fight for it. Forget about your history. Nobody's gonna say enough is enough."

Hers was a rare achievement. "Hundreds of folks have had their cases heard in the Bronx County Human Trafficking Intervention courtroom since it opened in 2013," Zoe Root, a supervising attorney at the Bronx Defenders, the legal aid group that had represented Love, told me. "Of them, Love is the only one that I know of who has brought the case to trial, won, and then been awarded a monetary settlement for false arrest."

But Love wasn't just content to take her money. She wanted others who had been falsely arrested to fight back.

"Even if you are a sex worker, and you were not working that day, fight for it. Forget about your history. Nobody's gonna say enough is enough," Love told me, sipping her tea.

When Love was a sex worker in Hunts Point, she said, police knew where women like her lived, and snatched them whenever they ventured outside—whether they were doing sex work or not. Because many of these women were poor, and some had problems with pimps or addiction, they made deals with prosecutors rather than try to fight. One lawyer familiar with the courts told me that, even in the rare occasions when an undercover officer was caught making a false arrest, he suffered no professional consequences beyond embarrassment.

So confident were the police, said Love, that the recording devices they wore to catch sex workers soliciting often didn't work.

This is how things worked before the HTIC's foundation, and there's little sign any of it has changed. It's an efficient system: Police get easy arrests, courts get guilty pleas, service providers like like Restore NYC, an anti–sex trafficking charity that partners with the HTIC, get clients to "save." In late 2014, former New York City, judge Judy Harris Kluger, who works as the executive director of Sanctuary for Families, an anti–domestic violence nonprofit, told me that HTICs were effectively decriminalizing prostitution inside the courts by offering defendants treatment instead of jail time—but sex workers and alleged sex workers don't get a say in a process that cuffs them and sends them to cells or counseling. So mute are they that the police do not refer to the sex workers they arrest as people. According to Love, they call them simply "bodies."

Even for those who most needed help, Love said, the HTIC was "a band-aid to something that needs stitches," and the classes and counseling offered are grossly inadequate when stacked up against the poverty, homelessness, abuse ,and addiction faced by many people they were meant to serve.

"Classes do nothing for you," she told me. "After that class ends, where do I sleep, how do I eat, do I still have to hide from the pimp?" Though HTIC judges often claim sex workers are trafficked, they are not provided with housing, the most basic need of anyone fleeing a trafficker. When an abusive marriage left Love homeless, domestic violence detectives occasionally chipped in to buy her a single night in a hotel room, but otherwise, her only options were the ER, a psych word, or a filthy, dangerous shelter.

Despite these problems, the HTIC model has gone national, with the newest branch opening up in Nashville this January. Linda Poust-Lopez recently took over as the judge at the Bronx HTIC, and according to a lawyer familiar with the court, under her tenure the court has begun offering far more lenient plea bargains. This helps defendants, but also makes refusing to plead guilty an even greater risk.

Love had a message to others falsely arrested for prostitution: "You can sue. Don't just be another body that they need."

A born performer and sometimes stand-up comic, Love had recently begun giving testimony in church. After taxes and fees to her lawyer, Love had $10,000 of settlement money left. She gave $2,000 to her daughter, who was marrying her girlfriend of eight years in Jamaica.On her phone, Love kept pictures of her mother of the bride dress, a beaded wonder colored mermaid green. The rest of her settlement went to setting her life back on track. Love planned to fix her credit, and to pay off the driving ticket her abusive ex-husband had saddled her with, so she could finally get a license."

I'm going to buy myself a car, drive the fuck out of here," she said. She plans to go to South Carolina or Atlanta, where her family was from, and put a down payment on a home. Her graduation is this summer. After that, she was done with New York.

"The next picture you get I'm going to be in my graduation gown," Love told me, grinning. "Guess what I'm going to be wearing under my graduation gown."

I asked.

"A garter belt."

A 2012 march through New York in demanding justice for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The gun that killed him is now up for sale. Photo via Wikimedia.

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

US News

Zimmerman Auctions Trayvon Martin Gun
George Zimmerman is selling the gun he used to shoot and kill 17-year-old Trayvon Martin almost four years ago. Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder in 2013, has listed the handgun for a single-day auction on GunBroker.com with a starting bid of $5,000.—The Washington Post

Trump Seeks House Speaker Support
Donald Trump meets House Speaker Paul Ryan this morning in a bid to gain his backing for the GOP presidential nomination. Ryan has said he does not want "to pretend we're unified as a party." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed Donald Trump on Wednesday night, saying he was "going to work very hard" for him. —The New York Times

US Activates Missile Station in Romania
The US will launch a land-based missile station in Romania today, as part of a defense shield protecting NATO nations in Europe. The US is believed to have spent $800 million on radar and missile interceptors. Senior US officials are expected at an opening ceremony in Deveselu, Romania. —CNN

Planned Parenthood Killer Unfit for Trial
Robert Lewis Dear, the man who admitted to killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, was found unfit to stand trial and has been indefinitely confined to a state mental hospital. The judge decided Dear suffers from "delusional disorder, persecutory type." —USA Today

International News

Brazilian President Will Face Impeachment Trial
Brazil's Senate has voted to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for breaking budget laws. Senators voted to suspend her by 55 votes to 22 after an all-night debate lasting more than 20 hours. Vice President Michel Temer will become acting president during Rousseff's trial, which could last up to 180 days. —BBC News

Syrian Government Take Ground Outside Aleppo
Pro-government forces have seized key positions from rebels just north of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Handarat area is important because it is very close to the last route into rebel-held areas of Aleppo. —Reuters

Italy Legalizes Same-Sex Unions
Italy's LGBT activists celebrated in the streets of Rome on Wednesday night after parliament approved a bill legalizing same-sex civil unions. Italy had been the last western European nation not to allow such unions. The Catholic Church opposed the change, with one archbishop calling it "a form of creeping fascism." —Al Jazeera

Debris from Flight MH370 Confirmed
The Malaysian government says two more pieces of debris found on beaches in South Africa and Rodrigues Island near Mauritius were "almost certainly" from missing jet flight MH370. Five separate pieces of debris have now been confirmed as being from the plane that vanished in March 2014. —AP

Azealia Banks. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Supersonic Transport System Completes First Public Test
The supersonic transport system proposed by tech billionaire Elon Musk's company has carried out a successful public test of its prototype propulsion system. The Hyperloop One sled reached 116 MPH in 1.1 seconds. —The Guardian

Apple Won't Be Phasing Out iTunes Downloads
Apple has denied a report claiming the company is planning to stop download offerings on iTunes in favor of a subscription-only service within three to four years. "This is not true," said a spokesman. —Buzzfeed News

Azealia Banks Dropped from Festival for Racist Rant
A London music festival removed New York rapper Azealia Banks from its lineup after she sent racist tweets to Zayn Malik. After accusing him of stealing her style ideas, Banks called him "curry scented" and a "dirty refugee." —Noisey

NASA Releases Patent for Moon Dust Fuel
NASA has released 56 of its patents into the public domain in an effort to democratize its technologies. One patent is a plan to use moon dust as a power source: a machine known as the "dusty plasma thruster." —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'How a Doomed 1980s Ninja Flick Became a Beloved Cult Classic'.

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Souad Faress as Dosh Khaleen Priestess. Photo by Helen Sloan/HBO

Warning: Spoilers ahead if you aren't caught up through season six, episode three.

HBO just released the latest batch of new photos for episode four, and everyone is either hanging out or looking like they want to hang. Which is good, because in the Westeros, "hanging out" basically means plotting to off the ones you hate.

So far, the first three episodes have been mostly scene-setting and throat-clearing, with the exception of Jon and Sansa (who I suspect will reunite soon, marking the first Stark unification in many moons). Rickon and Osha are in the loving hands of Ramsay Bolton. Tyrion and Varys are ready to take on the slave masters. The Lannisters are sulking in the Red Keep. According to the photos, some final pieces are coming together.

In the image above, Daenerys seemed at risk when she entered the mandatory retirement home for ex-Khaleesi, but now she's lounging next to the priestess, all friendly-like. Maybe she knows something they don't know?

Gemma Whelan as Yara Greyjoy and Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy. Photo by Helen Sloan/HBO

Here we have Theon and Yara, the last living children of the late king of the Ironborn. Last time we saw them, Theon refused to be rescued, believing it to be another trick of Bolton's. Now Balon Greyjoy is out of the picture, and Lord Theon is back home. Will he support his sister's claim to the throne, or will he again Reek out?

Michiel Huisman as Daario Naharis and Iain Glen as Jorah Mormont. Photo by Macall B. Polay/HBO

Next it's actual-lover (Daario) and would-be-lover (Jorah). They could be about to mount a rescue, but it's hard to imagine how Dany would know. Instead, I think she's just happy to be out of the frying pan and wishing for (Drogon) fire. The Mother of Dragons can rescue herself.

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. Photo by Macall B. Polay/HBO

Speaking of dragons, Shae-less Tyrion—along with Mehreenian tetrarchy Varys, Grey Worm, and Missandei—have decided that force is the only language the slave masters understand. Meanwhile, he's freed two dragons.

Aidan Gillen as Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. Photo by Helen Sloan/HBO

Lonely Littlefinger will make his first appearance this season. Remember, show creators Benioff and Weiss decided he'd marry Sansa off to the Boltons (a plan not in the books), a plan that never made any sense. Maybe this season he'll be handed some better writing?

Diana Rigg as Olenna Tyrell and Ian Gelder as Kevan Lannister. Photo by Helen Sloan/HBO

Finally, Queen of Thorns Olenna Tyrell and off-brand Lannister, Uncle Kevan, seem to be plotting together. Olenna needs a better class of ally, since we've been given no evidence that Kevan is anything but a placeholder for a real enemy. Perhaps Highgarden's OG doyenne of boy-kingslaying can teach him a thing or two?

Episode four is called the "Book of the Stranger," a reference to the incarnation of Death in the religion of the Seven Gods. We left episode three with Jon Snow revealing that his time in the Stranger's embrace was filled with... nothing. His watch is ended, so how does he go on? Meanwhile, Arya, sight restored, has convinced Death's acolyte that she is no one, and is ready to complete her training.

Finally, as others have noted, the Hound's horse was called Stranger, and Ian McShane dropped hints earlier this year about his "bring back a much loved character who everyone thinks is dead" (not Jon Snow). Could this be the first (of admittedly many) steps to brotherly über-bout Cleganebowl? Only the airhorns know.

Follow David Perry on Twitter.

When will it end. Via

If you want to know how obsessed you've become with your phone, just ask your mom. Your poor mom that only gets to see you once every two months because you've always got a more important brunch planned. Your poor mom, who, when you finally do show you face for 45 minutes on a Thursday afternoon, has to spend the entire time watching you stare at a screen, replying to Instagram comments, and posting Snapchats of her gross home decor.

Things have become so dire that a new study of 221 young people found "ADHD-like symptoms" present in their smartphone habits. The experiment measured "inattentiveness" and "hyperactivity" by asking participants how often they experienced one or more of 18 symptoms linked to ADHD in adults.

Students from the University of British Columbia took part in a two-week experiment. They were divided into two groups. In the first week, one group was instructed to activate "do not disturb" and the other was told to keep notification alerts on. In the second week, in the name of equality, participant swapped roles. The study concluded:

"The results were clear: more frequent phone interruptions made people less attentive and more hyperactive."

But what about people who actually have ADHD? How does the constant buzz of smartphone notifications affect their condition? We asked a man and a woman with ADHD (in the UK there are six boys diagnosed with ADHD for every one girl) how it affects their relationship with technology.

CLAUDIA, 24, BERMUDA

VICE: Do you experience "inattentiveness" or "hyperactivity" when you use your smartphone?
Claudia: When I look at my phone, everything around me is blocked out. Someone could be talking to me, but I would have no idea. Similarly, if I'm studying and my phone is on loud or facing up, I get really distracted. A quick check of Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat turns into hours. I get lost in the web of social media. I can be way too hasty to comment. It's dependent on my mood. If I'm in one of my hyperactive states, I can go on a comment spree that leaves me on Instagram for hours.

What makes you snap out of the trance?
It's either when I've noticed I've been looking at the same thing over and over again, or when I am at work and a client comes in. That's normally what makes me click out of it.

Are there ways in which your smartphone helps your ADHD?
My smartphone is like a diary. I use calendar apps to remind myself to do some things others find natural, like taking a daily vitamin or attending an appointment. So in a way, it helps my ADHD. But when it comes to messaging services, and social media, it is very detrimental to my focus. It's definitely half and half. But if I had to call it, I would say smartphones are more detrimental to ADHD than not.

If you have more severe ADHD, I can understand why you would not have a smartphone at all.

So would you ever consider going without a phone at all?
A lot of people use their smartphone as a portable computer, because you can basically do all of your work from a phone nowadays. But I can't do that. Setting reminders on my phone doesn't always work for me. I actually carry around a notebook to write down a daily to-do list. ADHD is a wide spectrum. If you have more severe ADHD, I can understand why you would not have a smartphone at all.

You talk about the wide spectrum. Where would you say you fall?
Yes, ADHD is broad. There are those who focus on too many things at once, and those who can't focus on anything. I'm someone that focuses on too many things at once. And when it gets too much, I can't focus on anything. I can't multitask, I can't check Instagram and talk to someone at the same time, although that's rude anyway.

Can you take medication for that?
When I took medication for my ADHD, they helped me to focus on one thing at a time. It stopped me trying to do 100 things at once. But I don't take ADHD medication anymore. The side effects would really subdue my mood, making me a bit upset and depressed.

So you can see why the scientists described the way we interact with smartphones as "ADHD-like"?
Definitely, I have noticed people who do not have ADHD experience similar effects. Everyone seems to get so engrossed in their phones, that they have no idea what's going on around them.

Just one more refresh. Via

AXEL, 22, LUXURY CAR DETAILER

VICE: When were you first diagnosed with ADHD?
Axel: It was always kinda obvious I had it, but I was probably diagnosed when I was about eight.

Have you tried lots of different stuff to deal with it?
I've been on Ritalin and had behavior therapy. I'm quite happy with where I am now though. It's been a while to find my place but I have a job that's good for me now I think—I'm a car detailer.

So how does having ADHD affect how you interact with your phone?
Well I'm always on my phone when I shouldn't be, and I'm constantly checking it. But at the same time my mates and family always have a go at me for never replying to their texts or picking up calls. I think I'm more likely to be the one who ends up getting distracted from their phone not the other way around.

As someone who has ADHD, do you notice other people showing a lack of attention when they're glued to their phones?
When I've had dinner with my family, I notice that everyone keeps checking their phones. It's kind of funny though so we make a joke of it. I'll admit though when I get bored of a sit-down chat with people I tend to just start browsing stuff on my phone. I try and be subtle but it's probably obvious.

What things do you do on your phone that people without ADHD might not?
I'm always posting stuff on Facebook without thinking about it. I just see something cool and repost it, then find out it's all fake or whatever. But people put so much crap on sites like that, so either they all have ADHD too, or it doesn't really matter.

Do you think that constantly having notifications enabled is a bad thing?
It can be but at the same time, I struggle with keeping myself organized, which is common with this disorder, so my phone is good for reminding me of things.

Does ADHD affect your relationship with technology in other ways?
Well I like to game a bit. I like shooting games like Call Of Duty and stuff. I find that kind of thing really relaxing, anything that's fast-paced, so I can just sit there and keep busy. I do find train and bus journeys hard though, so I have a lot of mobile games on my phone for those kind of things.

Do you consider yourself different in any of these things to people without ADHD?
I think I do. When I first saw the Lord Of the Rings films I went out and bought all the Warhammer figures I could, and got a bit obsessed with building them, and painting them. If I get into something I find it a big distraction, which a lot of people find weird because they assume you can't focus on anything for long with ADHD. But I do get really into things, and start spending my time thinking about that instead of what I should be doing. That's why I got into car detailing, because I get really into it, and it's one of a few things I can really concentrate on for hours at a time.

Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

Mish Way is a writer whose work can be found in the Guardian, i-D, the Los Angeles Times, and right here on VICE. She is also the frontwoman for the band White Lung, whose fourth album, Paradise, came out last Friday.

Paradise is hot shit—all uptempo restlessness and witchy swagger—full of renewed raw power at every transition. It feels like rock isn't dead, or maybe just other bands' rock is dead. But whereas Mish used to sing with a shredding shriek, here she is a taunting goth domme in total command of herself—still pissed off, but calculated in her lashings.

The first time I saw Mish was backstage at Basilica music festival, where she was performing with White Lung. I envied her for being what appeared to be an impenetrable rock god force: the leader of a pack, skirt to the floor, black lace-y, platinum blonde, raspy voice and red lipstick, the bride of Stevie Nicks gone punk. I felt like a loser, because I was just a poet. I was reading poems, and she was screaming her face off, dominating her audience completely.

Shortly thereafter, I met Mish at a gathering at someone's home, and we hung out and laughed with each other for a while, woman to woman, mostly about sex stuff. I was like, "Whoa, you're a human being." Having penetrated the rocker veil that once seemed so intimidating, I was curious about the dichotomy between her persona and her humanity, so I asked her a few questions.

VICE: Are there differences between the way you feel about yourself when you're onstage/backstage versus at home on an afternoon full of nothingness?
Mish Way: Who I am on stage is the person I wish I was strong enough to be in every hard situation I've ever been in, but if I was, I would be a friendless, loveless mess. My whole thing onstage is being ultra powerful and commanding, like I'm the lead in the school play about Stalin. I'm the charismatic, uncompromising dictator, and the audience is a sea of Russian peasants. Fear me, you fucking peasants! It's fantasy. It's classic "rock star" bullshit (and by no means am I a rock star). I'm playing up a tiny piece of me.

I befriended this woman named Lydia who works at the Bunny Ranch in Las Vegas. She is a pro-dom, so all her clients are lawyers, judges, cops... plenty of cops who just want to be pissed on. Hot piss all over them and then forced to clean it up. If we have to divide the world into alpha and betas, then I am probably considered an alpha by the public, when in truth, I am quite submissive. I just want to be smothered during sex, squished like I'm a crab under a rock. Aren't we all just so predictable?

Look, I was a very timid little kid when it came to physical challenges. I had no interest in the playground or playing with the boys or making a mess. There's a photo of me on one of those dumb kid's rides at a carnival. I'm about five years old with my best friend, Kate Murphy. She is having the time of her life, smiling, her hands all up in the air. I am beside her screaming, bawling my eyes out, tears streaming down my cheeks like I'm being tortured to death by a chimp. I remember being on that ride. I fucking hated it. I just couldn't understand why I was supposed to like feeling as though I was about to be slingshot into oblivion. As a child, I just wanted to do my coloring, read my books, and design bedrooms for my Barbies. I cried when my parents forced me to learn to ride a bike. I also had this showboat side. I liked to sing. I liked to play dress up. I liked to pretend to be a mermaid. I liked to play housewife.

Hot piss sounds really nice, actually. But being smothered during sex is my personal nightmare. As a hypochondriac Jew, I feel like I'm being suffocated every day, so I don't want anyone choking me. Do you have a range of self-esteem, or would you say that your self image is fairly static?
Of course I have a range of self-esteem, and it is based on my surroundings. Some people's greatest fear is standing in front of an audience and singing. This is where I feel confident and happy. I don't know why, but I do. My brain is just wired that way. My greatest fear just happens to be most of the nation's favorite summer pastime. So onstage I take on all those big, bad wolf parts of me I can't exercise anywhere else. And when I'm at home, making my husband his lunch to take to work, I'm fucking Little Red Riding Hood.

Do you ever feel like you're going to lose it—like the ability to channel whatever it is you channel when you get onstage that turns you into a rock god? Or lose the ability to write songs? Or do you feel confident in the flow of your creativity all the time, even when you aren't creating or performing?
Of course. Everyone fears that. I don't expect to be relevant forever. That's the cycle. I'm getting older. I don't know what the kids are doing, nor do I care. The only thing that I can worry about is keeping myself challenged by my work, having money in the bank, and enjoying my life.

I guess I mean beyond public relevance and more about that inner taproot or well of creativity. But for a writer that's perhaps different than for a musician/performer, because the live audience isn't in play. What was the most insecure time of your life?
My insecurities always surround my body, which is why I think I write about this so often in lyrics and my written work. I want to quantify my body dysmorphia. I don't know if I actually have body dysmorphia. I have never been "diagnosed." Quite frankly, I don't need some quack to make up an excuse for me. Some days I wake up and like my body, then I turn to the side, catch a glimpse in the mirror, and want to cut the fat out of my skin with a carving knife. So what? Who doesn't feel this way? No one. Everyone. This is not something to be medicated for.

I get the most insecure packing for tour. But it's like that line from Seinfeld where Elaine says to Jerry, "You know, I really hate all my clothes. I open up my closet, and it's just nothing. I hate everything I have, I really hate it. At this point, it's like I wear something three or four times, and that's it." And this line is hilarious because it's so bourgeois and selfish and stupid, particularly because they are at a funeral service when she says it, but I GET IT. In the grossest way. This is the most I will pity my own ass. I hate my clothes when I hate my body. Any decoration looks stupid when the Christmas tree is all Charlie Brown. THIS IS A BULLSHIT WESTERN PROBLEM. Don't even print this. I mean print it, I'm drunk at the airport, but this is a bullshit complaint. Ooooooh I think I'm fat? Some guy looked at me like he wanted to fuck me? Please. Women in Iraq get stoned to death for THINKING FOR THEMSELVES. Us WASPY ass pseudo-punk white chicks, we don't know "sexual harassment." We don't know torture. We don't know pain. We don't know what it is like to have no freedom. We have it made here! My GOD. And we say "fuck society"? Without society, women would be raped like rabid dogs. Get real. Society saved us. Society gave us place. I am in massive debt to the generations of women before me who fought for the luxury of freedom I have now. Anyone who fought for free speech and human rights. We need to stop complaining about now and start studying the past.

Do you compare the way you feel inside to the way other people appear outside or on the internet?
I suck at social media. I'm bad at click bait. My opinions are unpopular. You get it? Social media is not my game. You are good at it. I told you I thought you were like the female version of Sean from Texas, where it's like, you are just being YOU, but your anxiety is "cool." Your nihilism is "cool" because self-deprivation and anxiety is acceptable now, trendy even. I saw an ad with a boring blond girl proudly wearing an ironic T-shirt that said, "I've got more issues than Vogue." It was an ad on Instagram. My brain shit itself.

You would have to be a complete moron to think that the self one puts forth on social media is an accurate depiction of their complete life. To answer your question, I cannot compare the way I feel inside to the way others appear on the internet. Everything public is curated because humans need privacy. Even as I type this, I am choosing what to admit to you knowing this article will be published. Maybe I would give you a different answer if it was 3 AM, we were on the phone, and I was feeling weak and vulnerable. Even Megyn Kelly cries.

Do you want people from high school to know where you are now and how you turned out?
No, but because of Facebook, now they all can. I don't think it's a secret or a surprise, how I turned out.

Why do you stay alive?
Because what else is there to do? Death seems boring.

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

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

In the Greek village of Rizana—about an hour from the northern city of Thessaloniki—the living and the dead have lunch every year on the Sunday of St. Thomas. On that first Sunday after Easter, people gather at the cemetery in the village, fold out some tables and chairs, and have a feast on top of the graves of their loved ones, among marble inscriptions and fresh flowers.

The tradition itself goes back to the Homeric epics but was kept alive by Pontic Greeks—a group of ethnic Greeks originally from the shores of the Black Sea, who over the centuries migrated to Turkey, Georgia, and Russia. The Pontics at the cemetery in Rizana repatriated to Greece, where they've now brought their tradition of picnicking near the remains of their ancestors. It's not a day of mourning, but of sharing smiles, kisses, traditional piroshki, meatballs, tsoureki buns, and hot Russian vodka.

Rizana is a very quiet village—you can't even get to the center by car—but today, things start getting busy early in the morning. By 10 AM, cars are stacked near where the footpath into the village starts, right next to flower vendors who have set up for the occasion. The village used to have just one small cemetery, but the Pontic Greeks made sure that a second one opened in 1997, and that's where the visitors gather today.

Stefanos Oflidis, the president of the Association of Repatriated Pontics, explains how this new cemetery came to be: "Thousands of Greeks left Pontos and the former Soviet countries in the early 1090s," he says. "We settled in western Thessaloniki, and in the following years, our dead were buried either in Evosmo or in neighboring municipal cemeteries. Due to a lack of space, three years later their bodies had to be exhumed. That's not our idea of honoring the dead, so to avoid that, we started looking for a space where our dead could be permanently buried."

His father, Alexandros, initiated the quest to find new cemetery space, which became the first mission of the then newly established Association of Repatriated Pontics. Finally, Rizana local Lefteris Tepetidis—whose family came from Kazakhstan to Greece in the 1960s—agreed to donate 15 acres to build the cemetery in memory of his son, who was killed at a young age.

In the years that followed, relatives of the buried brought relics from Thessaloniki, built a church, and tended to the cemetery.

The graves were cleaned days ago, so now it's time for the tablecloths, plates, pots, and pans come out. It might sound a little grim to have a picnic on top of the graves of your loved ones—but it doesn't feel grim at all. Having entire families there and small children running around makes for a picture of celebration instead of mourning.

Meanwhile, no one is allowed to cry—people just cordially greet each other by saying "Christ is risen," and offer vodka and traditional dishes around.

The cemetery in Rizana is made up almost exclusively of family tombs of four to six meters wide. Most are fitted with black slabs of granite and have a picture of the deceased etched in them—sometimes as a blooming teenager, sometimes later in life. Often, the gravestone also depicts something the deceased loved in life: a motorcycle, a car, a camera, or a picture of the province where the buried was born—Sukhumi or Batumi in Georgia, Trabzon or Ordu in Turkey.

There are two or three statues, but not all are graves belong to wealthy people. Many are paved with ordinary tiles and plastic carpet, fine gravel, or simply a wooden cross and a candle—but all of them are carefully groomed.

"Most of us are ordinary people, but honoring our ancestors is very important to us. There aren't as many relatives coming on a day like this as there used to. Many Pontics have gone to work in Germany, or they can't afford the trip from Thessaloniki. Still, the Association does arrange for a bus on that day," says Stefanos Oflidis.

Oflidis is a dental technician, who now lives in Thessaloniki. He got there in 1991, after leaving the Georgian province of Sukhumi—shortly before the civil war between Abkhazia and Georgia broke out. "We always wanted to come back to Greece—we'd hear about it in the stories of our grandparents, whose hearts never really left the country. My grandfather was among the Greeks who were deported by the Soviets in 1949—he was brought from the Black Sea to the steps of Kazakhstan. When they put him on the train, he thought they were sending him back to Greece. After a few days, he watched the sun rise and realized that the train was traveling east."

In the early hours of a cold spring morning last month, residents at Eastchester Gardens, a public housing project in the Bronx, were awakened to a sight out of an action movie. NYPD officers and federal agents, some adorned with helmets and bulletproof vests, entered the buildings with battering rams—and a list of names.

For a few hours at least, swathes of northern New York City seemed to be on a sort of war footing.

Billed as the largest "gang crackdown" in NYC history, the raid swept up over 120 people, mostly young men of color, who authorities suggested were behind a surge of violence in the north Bronx. At a press conference immediately after the raids, which involved nearly 700 police officers and federal agents, US Attorney Preet Bharara said the suspects terrorized the area with "open-air drug dealing and senseless violence" and used Facebook and YouTube to "to promote, protect, and grow their ranks."

Almost immediately, community members and a few local politicians began expressing skepticism at the massive scope of the raid. Stop and frisk may be on the outs in New York, but some fear the notorious tactic is simply being replaced by the occasional show of spectacular force.

For Bronx City Councilman Ritchie Torres, though, what stuck out most about last month's raid was the centrality of social media use in the criminal charges.

"These raids make for great public relations, but the impact of these raids depends on who you're actually taking off the streets," he said in an interview. "Are these extremely violent members or minor actors? It's not clear when you're treating the gang as one monolith. Not every member of the gang is equally violent."

Sprawling gang raids represent the tactic of choice for the NYPD these days, as officials pursue ever-lower crime rates. Known as "Operation Crew Cut," the focus on gangs began around the same time city cops found out in 2013 that they can no longer use "stop and frisk" to disproportionately question and arrest people of color. Once Commissioner Bill Bratton took office a year later, he expanded the operation, and under his watch, the NYPD and local prosecutors have been very high on using inflammatory social media posts as evidence for conspiracy murder charges. But CUNY Law School Professor Babe Howell, who has studied the raids intensively, says that in almost every case, the charges are simply used as leverage against a defendant in an attempt to get them to take plea deals—or act as a witness against another alleged gang member.

"You can charge a member of a group with conspiring to commit a crime when they weren't present for the crime, or didn't take part in the crime, in any way," Howell said. "The recent indictments from the Bronx, you have about fifty people charged with conspiracy to commit murder, and they each have the potential of receiving twenty-five to life if they fight the charges."

In 2014, Operation Crew Cut made its first major appearance in the city when 103 young men were indicted, many of them rounded up at housing projects in Harlem. Cops used the same military-style raid they did last month in the Bronx. As in the more recent indictment, social media played a key role in pressing charges. And a Village Voice investigation has since revealed that of the 103 charged, 94 took a plea deal rather than stand trial. So even though cases were sometimes being built on "likes," "shares," and social media posts, thanks to the pressure put on defendants to take plea deals, prosecutors rarely have to present more substantial evidence in a courtroom.

But some experts maintain this kind of enforcement is the least harmful way to target violent people in American cities. David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has been studying anti-gang initiatives for decades. He much prefers the occasional action flick-style gang raid to consistent use of tactics like stop and frisk and the philosophy of broken windows policing, which focuses on quality of life offenses.

"In a lot of places, including New York City, the focus has shifted away from high levels of stop and frisk directed at young men in entire communities to identifying and focusing on this very high-risk population," Kennedy said. "Even within this high-risk population, both offending and victimization is not evenly distributed. It's really concentrated. You find very small parts of even this group that exhibit violent offending at exceptionally high rates. That opens the door to the kind of investigative focus that we're talking about."

The week after the raid last month, the Bronx district attorney, along with other law enforcement officials and local politicians, met with community members to explain why a not insignificant number of the young men in their area had disappeared. In the immediate aftermath of the raids, several residents expressed relief that the NYPD was trying to target drug dealers, but in heated exchanges at the community meeting, others questioned how an arrest could be made on the basis of a social media post, or the wearing of a certain color of fitted hat, and nothing more.

"Nobody is going to get convicted or indicted based on a fitted hat. This is way too serious for that," shouted Bronx DA Darcel Clark. "There's an indictment that has been filed that explains the charges and the conduct. A judge will review that and that's the process that we have."

The problem is that for many defendants, their case never gets to a point where a judge can review the charges before they cop a plea. And the city's public defender system is stretched to the limit when it comes to conspiracy cases like this one.

"All the institutional defenders, who have great expertise and are familiar with criminal defense work, get conflicted off the cases, because you can't represent fifty people in one indictment—you can only do one," said Professor Howell. "You need fifty separate lawyers to be appointed, who even if they have great experience, don't have the same knowledge that institutional defenders bring to the case."

(In a statement, an NYPD spokesperson said these busts "are not 'gang raids' but enforcement actions against criminal groups based on long-term investigations of various crimes, including homicides, shootings, narcotics offenses, financial fraud, and criminal conspiracies.")

Thirty-one-year-old Joshua Whitlock was one of the people who spoke out at the meeting about the raids. Raised in Eastchester but now a Brooklyn resident, the erstwhile Bronx denizen wonders if the NYPD and federal officials could get away with simultaneously arresting 100 people if they weren't in his old hood.

"If this was any other context, people would see how steep it's going to be for these people to get a fair trial," he told me. "It's only in the minority community that people don't see this as a big deal. They don't feel like this could ever happen to themselves."

Follow Max Rivlin-Nadler on Twitter.

We've heard multiple warnings about the havoc being caused in British prisons by the widespread use of synthetic cannabinoids (SCs): violence, debt, overdoses, and offenders out on parole deliberately committing crime so they can go back to jail with Kinder Egg capsules full of the stuff hidden up their asses.

But it's about to get worse. New research adds further weight to building evidence that brand names such as Vertex, Black Mamba, and Clockwork Orange have similar addictive properties to heroin.

A study carried out by researchers at the School of Health Sciences at Waterford Institute of Technology is "the first of its kind to describe the development of dependence and withdrawal syndrome" in users of SCs. In-depth interviews with a group of dependent users in a council estate in Ireland revealed "the rapid development of tolerance, regular dependent use within short timeframes, and acute withdrawal on cessation of use."

The study, "User Experiences of Development of Dependence on the Synthetic Cannabinoids, 5f-AKB48 and 5F-PB-22, and Subsequent Withdrawal Syndromes," described "compulsive all-consuming drug seeking and using behaviors... intense cravings... inability to cease use, with fear of the psychiatric harms caused when in withdrawal.

"Over time, all participants described general decrease in function, characterized by loss of appetite, breathlessness, cardiac conditions requiring medication, skin ablations, tooth decay, tremors, and insomnia, which were all exacerbated when attempting to reduce use," said the study.

It found acute physical withdrawal symptoms including chest pains, chest pressure, tachycardia and palpitations, lower extremity pain and spasms, nausea, sweating, and vomiting—all similar to what heroin users experience when going cold turkey.

Some more brands of synthetic cannabis

One interviewee told the researchers: "If I haven't got it, I get the sickness in my stomach, the sweating starts, the weakness starts... a cold shiver through you, but as soon as you get a smoke of the herbal, you are back to normal." Another said: "It's a curse on everybody in this town to be honest."

The psychological withdrawal symptoms identified included anxiety, agitation, paranoia, and suicidal tendencies. One SC user told the researchers: "I don't want to hurt myself, but it's going to come that far. I just hate it... so hard to get off it, so hard to do anything. There's only one way of getting off herbal, and that's taking yourself out of this life."

The findings led the authors to call for detoxification, addiction counseling, crisis intervention, and family support for dependent users to be set up to deal with the problem.

A currently unpublished research study into heavy SC users in Lancashire paints an equally graphic picture. One of the authors of the study is drug expert Michael Linnell, who, despite spending his career helping heroin and crack users, is unafraid to a draw a comparison between heroin and SC.

"We spoke to fifty or so people who described an addiction and withdrawal similar to heroin," says Linnell. "Even experienced heroin users who had stopped heroin and become addicted to synthetic cannabinoids described withdrawal as being similar or worse than heroin."

Like the old school heroin and crack users, some SC users are committing crime to feed their addiction. Linnell says synthetic weed users he spoke to had robbed a jeweler's shop and mugged people in the street to pay for their next packet.

"There are vulnerable young people who were walking around like zombies all day, who couldn't sleep, queuing up outside shops in the morning, or getting up at 4 AM to go to score because they were withdrawing," he says. "If that kind of dependence behavior is not like a heroin-type addiction, I don't know what is."

Yet Linnell says that unlike the heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, the rise in synthetic weed addiction has been allowed to fester because many drug users do not regard it as a "real drug," and services set up to deal with heroin addiction are unable to attract people addicted to the new, highly unpredictable drug in their midst.

"Most adult drug services around the UK are not geared up for this addiction," says Linnell. "Some of the drug users themselves do not take synthetic cannabinoids seriously. They are off heroin, but using Mamba, Spice, 'green crack'—whatever they call it—and they think, 'I'm drug-free now.' But they are discovering it can be just as addictive and just as hard to get off."

Adam Winstock, founder of the Global Drug Survey, which provides insight into a more mainstream drug-using population because it is conducted online, says respondents admitted that withdrawal from SC was "far more problematic" than skunk.

But it is among the street homeless and in Britain's hostels and halfway houses where the synthetic weed problem is most acute. As with heroin and crack use, official drug use statistics undoubtedly underestimate the true prevalence of SC use. The most vociferous users of this drug—young offenders, inmates, people living in hostels and on the streets—are too far off the radar to be reached by the government's door-knocking survey.

At Lifeshare, a project in Manchester, England, set up to help 16- to 25-year-olds who are homeless or at risk of being homeless, 95 percent of the 300 young people on their books smoke it. Two-thirds of them are addicted to it. The other third, says support worker Julie Boyle, are on their way to being addicted to it.

Related: Watch 'Spice Boys', our documentary about a group of young men addicted to synthetic weed.

They typically use between five- to ten-gram bags a day, says Boyle, who sees withdrawal—or the "rattle," as she calls it—on a daily basis. Ambulances come around five times a week to pick up those who've keeled over from too much Annihilation or Vertex, the two brands currently most common in Manchester.

"But when the paramedics get here they don't know what to do—they can't counteract it," she says. She's right: Treatment for synthetic weed overdose and addiction is in its infancy. No one really knows what to do. "Synthetic cannabis is the worst thing to hit Manchester since heroin," she says. "But at least we knew then what to do. We have no idea what the long-term dangers are of synthetic cannabis, and you never know what's in the packet."

One of Lifeshare's service users, Deebo, 24, has been smoking up to ten 1g bags a day for around a year. He's homeless, but can buy seven 1g bags for $50 from a nearby head shop after a morning begging. Two weeks ago, with the help of Lifeshare, he decided that he would reduce his intake to two grams a day because he had virtually stopped eating and cleaning himself. "The withdrawal was bad—my mental health deteriorated, I had terrible belly cramps, I was sweating and itchy all over," he says.

Deebo is not alone. Everyone he knows in Manchester is using synthetic weed: "Yesterday I saw two little kids, about thirteen years old, crumbling some Annihilation into a spliff in a doorway. It was depressing."

When I ask him where he'll buy his SC when the head shops stop selling it after the Psychoactive Substances Act kicks in on May 26, he says he's wary of street dealers because he's "worried about what they'll put in it." What's for certain is that street dealers will be in control of a drug that can only get more volatile, and which is slowly frying the most vulnerable people in society.

Meanwhile, the real "green crack" time bomb is ticking away behind barbed wire fences, within the prison system. It is now virtually the only drug inmates are using.

Andy, a prisoner recently released from Strangeways Prison, explained: "You can tell everyone's smoking it because of the way they look. I call it the 'melting fish face.' It's stupidly addictive. It's out of hand—they're all looking for little dimps on the floor to stick in a roll up. They're desperate for their next fix because they've got fuck all else to do." Andy says there's an endless supply: "There's so many people coming into jail from the courts with Spice; two newcomers a day come in with their asses packed. Everyone's standing around to wait until they shit it out."

The rise of SC addiction has been a disaster of the government's own making, and it threatens to trash what efforts there have been to rehabilitate Britain's homeless and prison populations.

Our SC problem, which began in young offenders institutions and spread to create more addicts in the streets and adult jails, was not created solely in a lab. It was formed as a result of a succession of governments that have failed to deal with two issues: the dearth of meaningful activity in our prisons and a short-sighted drug policy mantra that has turned a humble cannabis plant into an ultra toxic bag of shit. If David Cameron truly does not care about his country's underclass, then cheap, illegal synthetic drugs are his perfect solution.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

Not your average sundae. Photo by Rachel Rath

People were less than encouraging when I announced my plan to eat a massive weed sundae on a Facebook Live Stream. Some even felt it would be disastrous for VICE's pro-ice cream agenda.

A billboard in Flint, Michigan: "Boiling water does not remove lead." All photos by the author

In a neatly decorated home on Flint's east side, Arendira Solis sat at a large kitchen table across from her son. The 50-year-old was explaining what many people living in the city can recall perfectly: the moment she found out there was lead in the water.

"In the morning, I watch television news in English," she told me in Spanish. "I don't understand exactly everything, but I do remember hearing that there was something happening with the water."

Because of her limited understanding, Solis started doing what seemed logical to her—boiling the water.

"I was born on a ranch in Zacatecas, Mexico. Usually when there were babies in the house, mothers boiled the water, so I came with that experience," she explained. "It never occurred to me that if you boiled the water the lead wouldn't go away." Solis only stopped after she saw television ads showing an X over a pot of boiling water, and later, a series of billboards in Spanish with similar information.

That was in January, and by now, everyone knows that boiling water won't remove the lead contamination in the municipal water supply. But as Flint enters its fourth month in a federal state of emergency as a result of contamination in the city's water system, there's still a big problem: Basic information about the water still isn't reaching the city's Hispanic community.

Related: The Inside Story of How the State of Michigan Poisoned Flint

There are nearly 4,000 Hispanic residents among Flint's population of 99,000, according to recent data collected by Michigan's Department of Technology, Data, and Budget. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been trying to warn all of Flint's residents, including Hispanics, about the consequences of drinking the water—lead poisoning can cause kidney problems in adults; in children, it can cause learning disabilities, stunted growth, and impaired hearing. The EPA's website presents this information in both English and Spanish, but it's still not reaching everyone.

"One of the challenges is getting the right information accurately translated," said Juani Olivares, president of the Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative, an advocacy group in Flint. "Sometimes the information is too technical, or it seems like whoever is doing the translation is using Google Translate, so it doesn't make much sense."

There aren't any Spanish-language media outlets in the city, unless you count the two radio stations that play Spanish and Tejano music, so people who primarily speak Spanish end up getting information later than others.

A couple of months ago, Ralph Arellano, the director at the Hispanic Technology and Community Center, had the idea of putting the bilingual EPA pamphlets inside boxes of food distributed at a pantry he works with.

It's a step in the right direction, but Arellano said it's still not reaching everyone who needs access to this information. He pointed out that there are people in the city who speak Spanish, but can't read. "That's a difficulty," he said.

Other community centers, like churches, are trying other methods. At Our Lady of Guadalupe, a predominantly Hispanic congregation north of Flint, staff are constantly trying to get the word out. "We do social media, we also do bulletins and plenty of announcements at mass and at breakfasts after mass," said Deacon Omar Odette.

Eduardo Calzada, the pastor at La Familia Multicultural Community Church, a bilingual Baptist church, said the EPA has reached out to his congregation to communicate important information about the water crisis. "Not only that, but we've scheduled them to come to our church to talk a little more about it."

And while that's gone a long way to keep residents safer, there's still miscommunication—specifically among Flint's undocumented immigrants, many of whom fear their immigration status will be questioned if they ask for help or resources from the city. Until recently, water distribution centers required residents to show a valid ID to prove they lived in Flint, which prevented many undocumented residents from accessing filters and bottled water. Agustin Arbulu, executive director at the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, said his organization plans to hold a public hearing to determine whether the lag in communication constitutes discrimination against the undocumented residents.

Advocates like Arbulu say undocumented people need to know they won't be targeted by immigration officials for using the city's health services and free drinking water, "so this group can feel comfortable about asking for medical services without fear that ICE is going to pick them up and separate them from their kids," he explained.

Related: Flint's Water Crisis Is Leaving Undocumented Immigrants at Risk

Solis, who has been a US citizen since 2009, doesn't live with that fear. But the language barrier means she has to rely on her three bilingual sons for water-related updates.

"It's hard to comprehend the information, even in English—all the scientific information," said Emmanuel, Solis's 19-year-old son, who was born in the United States and is a native English speaker. "It's even more difficult trying to interpret the information and then helping my parents understand."

Follow Natalie Zarowny on Twitter.

All screenshots via Steam

Even if you never played Postal in the late 90s, if you had half an interest in video games, you were aware of it. Running with Scissors' isometric murder romp of 1997—in which you played a gun-toting man, the "Postal Dude," who sets about slaughtering his fellow townsfolk after being evicted from his home—was targeted by US Senator Joe Lieberman as being excessively violent, and he tried to have the game banned. He failed, but even as a very open-minded supporter of video games myself, I can sort of see why he tried to shut the game down entirely.

Violent video games are fine. More often than not, they're a lot of fun. What I have a small issue with is when there's no meaning or message whatsoever, to the continual killing of human enemies. The Uncharted games, likewise Tomb Raider and any number of warzone-set shooters, get away with this somewhat because of their cinema-style, PG-13 levels of not-exactly graphic violence. You know, more Hollywood than horror show. And it's violence set within the framework of something much bigger—a noble quest, a gallant retaliation, some brotherly love. The story is clear, and so too is the messaging as to why you must kill these people. The enemy forces you encounter are there to get you, to kill you, and you act in self-defense as much as you do lead a charge against their positions.

In Postal, the "dude" was in the middle of a mental breakdown and murdering indiscriminately. Sure, I've read all about the "madness plague" that's said to have infected the town, but look at the men and women you have to execute: They're not trying to take down one another, only you. Each stage ends with the player character declaring, "I regret nothing," and introducing a shotgun shell to his skull from instant-death range. At the climax of the game, he attempts to lay siege to an elementary school, soundtracked by the screams of its pupils. You don't actually kill any of them—pretty sure that would have overstepped every last line—but it's one of the most fucked-up conclusions to a video game you'll ever see.

After two sequels and a bunch of DLC expansions to the second game, the original Postal is now back to sort of mark its 20th anniversary—Running with Scissors presumably figured people really wanted the Redux update of the game that made its name now, and not next year. Postal Redux is available via Steam from May 20, with a PlayStation 4 port expected in late 2016. But why? Gaming changed a lot since 1997. The reaction to the shameless Postal homage Hatred, released in the summer of 2015, was almost universally negative. We've moved on, haven't we?

Apparently not.

"It's the twentieth anniversary next year, so remaking the game that started it all—while also giving it a new gaming mode, that makes the game actually play like it was intended, Robotron: 2084–style—was only appropriate," Running with Scissors producer Mike Jaret-Schachter tells me. "The original game had serious control issues, but always looked very good with its nice hand-painted backgrounds. Plus it has a design style not often seen: 2D hand-painted backgrounds with 3D models."

Postal is now a twin-stick shooter, then—which is an improvement, for sure. The 1997 game was notoriously an absolute pig to control. And people love their old favorites redesigned into glossier playthings—save for a few Monkey Island fans, in my experience. It's also worth adding that while this is, as Jaret-Schachter tells me, "a level-by-level, character-for-character remake," there's one significant difference to its barely there, pray that there's not a healthy gust of wind anytime soon plot. "We've changed the ending," Jaret-Schachter says. "But otherwise, the tone is identical."

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on Britain's most notorious reformed criminal, 'Walking Heavy'

Hands up: I laughed at the trailer for Redux, when "Postal Dude" takes a flamethrower to a marching band. I mean, you would, right? Given the opportunity. In all seriousness, the only thing that I think can prevent this from being just the worst train wreck of revivalist bullshit, resurrected for no other reason than to mark the anniversary of an unfortunate event, is if it's played primarily for laughs. That's what Hatred got wrong—it was so grimly bleak that it was completely boring, its shock value receding to meaninglessness eight kills deep. As I said earlier: Violent video games can be fun. They should be, if the point they're making isn't titanium tipped in clarity. I appreciate that some people despise Bulletstorm because of who helped make it, but I had an absolute ball with its deliriously creative ways of dismembering foes. I'm truly not down on games for simply spilling a little blood.

"I think the Postal brand is synonymous with our fans as being extremely slapstick and hilarious," Jaret-Schachter says. "Although, that is more to do with the overwhelming success of Postal 2, over the years. The original Postal was never meant to become what it was."

The CEO of the Arizona studio, Vince Desi, adds: "It was the perfect storm . Postal was different to anything that had come before it. I never thought of it as controversial, and it was never a conscious decision. But once Senator Lieberman denounced it, the party began."

And regarding the action that Redux will offer, Desi says: "Of course we're going to let our fans flambé away." Tiny (virtual) trumpeters, consider that a warning. "Personally, it's all about the stupid humor for me," he continues. "Watching people laugh while they play Postal has always been an elixir for me."

Jaret-Schachter tells me that a fourth Postal will emerge, at some point in the future, and that a proper 20th anniversary release will be coming out in 2017. He sees Redux's new Rampage mode as brining it closer in spirit to a game like Hotline Miami, which, while also criticized for its excessive violence, was undeniably an incredibly compelling experience. "The mode makes the game much more fun, and gives it a replay value that the classic campaign doesn't offer." As for Desi, all the criticism in the world from people in my position—I'm far from the most outspoken journalist on the internet when it comes to this sort of entertainment—won't stop him rewarding Postal's fans for their continued loyalty.

"This is truly in our bloodlines. We've flirted in the past with other original concepts, and we have recently green-lighted a new, non-Postal game. But the fact remains that Postal is like the mob: Once you become a fan, you're always a fan. And as long as I keep hearing from fans, telling me how much fun they're having, we'll keep doing our best to deliver new content. And to our fans, I say: Thank you, and remember to play, have fun, and leave violence where it belongs, in games and not on the streets."

I'm sure we're long past the point of readily associating real-world violence with digital displays of bloody combat, so I don't expect Redux to trigger a series of shootings across the world. But I do still have a hang-up on the need for it to exist today, with the gaming landscape so very evolved from where it was in the late 90s. If it looks like a relic, despite a new coat of paint, and moves like one too—Robotron: 2084 is a great gameplay touchstone, but it's from 1982—then it might well be that it's something better left in the past. The ultimate proof will be in the commercial results and the fans' response, one of which is certain to be more publicized than the other.

Find more information about Postal Redux at the Running With Scissors website. The game will be released on May 20.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Better than most dorm rooms. Photo via Google Earth

A Google search of the word "Vancouver" these days reveals article after article about the city's absurdly hot rental market—one that young Canadians supposedly have no chance of breaking into.

But maybe we're just not doing it right.

After all, the land title on a recently sold $31.1-million mansion in the city's affluent Point Grey neighbourhood lists a "student" as the home's primary owner.

Tian Yu Zhou, whose occupation is simply "student," owns 99 percent of the 14,600 square-foot property, one of the most expensive in the province. While many young Vancouverites are eating raw food out of their vans to get by, young scholar Zhou is apparently chilling in his five-bedroom, eight-bathroom crib, complete with a landscaped swimming pool, "bocce court," and views of the ocean and mountains, all sitting on 1.7 acres of land.

Understandably, people are wondering how the fuck this is even possible.

"It's incredibly strange that a student would be able to afford such a luxurious and multi-million-dollar property," NDP housing critic David Eby told The Province, noting that a student's income is typically "close to zero."

To be fair, Zhou reportedly shares the home with a "businesswoman" who owns one percent of the property.

According to a 2015 study, cited in The Province, homemakers/housewives are commonly listed as occupations in purchases of single family homes in the city's west side, followed by businessperson. The trend could link back to the practice of foreign real estate investors naming local relatives as home owners to avoid paying certain taxes.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson recently called the affordable housing situation in the city a "crisis" while BC Premier Christy Clark has pledged to start collecting more data about foreign investment into Vancouver's real estate market. Meanwhile, a recent studyfound that over 10,000 homes in Vancouver are sitting empty and the city is conducting a somewhat mind-blowing survey on what to do with the abandoned real estate.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

George Zimmerman in 2013. (Photo by Joe Burbank-Pool/Getty Images)

Read: How to Cash in on Trayvon Martin

In what is best described as an elaborate and nasty troll job, notorious Floridian George Zimmerman on Thursday tried to auction the gun he used to kill black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. As part of his sales pitch, the 32-year-old—who was acquitted of murder in a local trial and never charged by the feds—apparently wrote, "I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon."

But within hours of posting the listing Thursday morning, Atlanta-based gun e-commerce site GunBroker.com had removed it, and the site's social media channels went dark. (VICE has reached out to the broker for comment and will update this post if we hear back.)

Bidding on the gun was set to start at $5,000, and there was a "reserve price" for the highest bidder. "Now is your opportunity to own a piece of American History," the post read, with the author—presumably Zimmerman—adding, "Many have expressed interest in owning and displaying the firearm including The Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, however, the offers were to use the gun in a fashion I did not feel comfortable with."

The Smithsonian has since denied ever offering Zimmerman a price for the bizarre murderbilia. What remains to be seen is how badly this guy wants to sell the thing.

"I'm a free American. I can do what I'd like with my possessions," Zimmerman, who's had frequent run-ins with the cops since the killing, said Wednesday in an interview with an Orlando-based radio station.

German police at the scene of a knife attack earlier this week in the town of Grafing. Andreas Gebert/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Early Tuesday morning, a 27-year-old stabbed another man to death and injured three others at the train station in Grafing, Germany, a small town 20 miles east of Munich. The attack was probably the result of serious drug and mental health issues on part of the assailant, but thanks to early accounts that the attacker was screaming "Allahu Akbar," many major news outlets speculated this was a jihadi strike—a vague specter that's been looming heavy in the global zeitgeist of late.

So far, Germany has avoided mass Islamic State–inspired terrorist attacks like those that recently hit France and Belgium. But a survey late last year showed two-thirds of Germans expect to see one before the end of 2016. These fears are only amplified by recent reports that some 260 of 800 German jihadis who traveled to Islamic State territories have returned home, and that there are believed to be more than 1,000 jihadi backers in the country.

For all the focus this much-feared fifth column has received, many observers remain unsure of where these faceless German jihads are, how they're organized, and, of course, exactly what they have planned. But a new report out this week from the US-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) called "From Europe to Syria, and Back: The Jihadists' Underground Autobahn," sheds some light on these mysterious networks and what we can expect from them in the future.

Authored in response to mentions of Germany in a wave of post-Brussels Islamic State propaganda, the report compiles bits of intelligence gleaned from three years of jihadi chatter and propaganda, official documents, and regional news. It contains a primer on Islamic State rhetoric about the country, as well as on 191 individuals from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with alleged jihadi ties or sympathies—over half of whom have traveled to (or have tried to travel to) Iraq or Syria.

To be sure, the report and its authors acknowledge it's not a comprehensive account of jihadi or even pro–Islamic State sentiment in Germany. But by mapping out trends in its limited pool of jihadis and their sympathizers, it offers insight into a few big players, as well as some of the broader dynamics at play in the epicenter of the European project.

Many components of the report mirror findings by TRAC and other observers on the dynamics of jihadi networks in general, and especially those being uncovered in France. Rather than being recruited at random or via exposure to internet propaganda, many German jihadis seem to emerge from hotspot mosques or communities hosting imams espousing radical ideas. Some are also apparently swayed to the cause by close relatives or trusted community members, yielding clusters and cliques of varied size and intensity across the nation.

While there appears to be communication between many Germanic jihadi nodes, the report only notes one potential connection to Islamic State–linked networks in France: Hüseyn D, a man with ties to alleged Paris attacks orchestrator Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Veryan Khan, one of the TRAC report's co-authors, credits this divide to segregation within the Islamic State. "When you get over , you're separated by language," she tells VICE, limiting potential Franco-German coordination.

And while many jihadis in Germany today might have some sympathy for the Islamic State, the report highlights numerous factions that predate the notorious caliphate, some by decades. But some long-established groups, like those associated with a Chechen jihadi diaspora, have turned their skills to helping move people into Islamic State territory. Others seem to be communicating with pro-ISIS cliques, but focusing their attention outside of Iraq and Syria, pointing to both longevity and diversity in the German jihadi space.

"I always thought were more entrenched in Germany than they were in France," Khan tells me. But she suspects France has faced greater terror because "the French had more of a bone to pick with how they were treated in society than the Germans."

Germany's numerous jihadi cells have also likely wrought less local damage at least in part because the nation's police force appears to be more vigilant and effective than, say, their Belgian counterparts. "They can crack down pretty easily, rounding up the usual suspects readily," Khan says.

But the report's authors fear the country's relative calm may not hold given the escalating focus on Germany in Islamic State propaganda. Khan, for one, worries about the number of returnees from Iraq and Syria who are out on bail and awaiting justice in what she describes as backlogged German courts. And the rising tide of right-wing sentiment in the country may also be increasing the attractiveness of an attack for ISIS and local affiliates.

"The Islamic State is very aware that the right wing hates the Islamic population and most of all hates the refugees," Khan says. "It would behoove them to have even a small attack in Germany just to spark extreme overreaction," polarizing society, as they love to do.

Jeffrey Bale, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and an expert on jihadi cells in Europe, cautions against making bold assessments without reliable insider informants and intensive surveillance records. But he acknowledges there are "definitely organized jihadists operating within Germany, including some who have inserted themselves within the stream of refugees and a number who have returned from fighting in Syria or in other jihadi battle fronts."

And Bale believes fears of an impending attack in Germany are valid.

"It is only a question of time before Germany experiences a successful mass casualty jihadist attack, in addition to more smaller scale acts," he tells me.

So the TRAC report might not offer a perfect window into the inner workings of German jihadis. But it is one more piece of evidence that tacitly legitimizes renewed dread of the Islamic State in the country. The hope is that the competence of domestic police and intelligence forces will allow the place to continue to stand out as a relative bastion of security on a troubled continent.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.