Photo via Flickr user Ken Mayer

You can't choose your family, but you can choose how much of your money they get after you die. In an ultimate dick move, one BC dad split his entire estate between two kids, and left his lesbian daughter with nothing.

Back in the dial-up days of the neolithic internet, staring at choppy, blurry webcam footage of people living their average, boring lives was an exciting and transgressive facet of online life. App developer Rob Banagale was a fan. "In the 1990s the earliest webcams were some of the coolest things about the internet," he says.

His new app, Perch Live is definitely another app for people who love staring at 24/7 webcams. But Banagale says Perch Live comes with a "twist": It's meant to place those sorts of all-day-every-day webcams pretty much everywhere on Earth.

This pursuit of greater surveillance is a kind of personal crusade for Banagale, who says his sister was the victim of a sexual assault while walking on a college campus. Unfortunately it appears that no one will ever be prosecuted because surveillance cameras operated by the college itself were obstructed by a construction sign. Ubiquitous Perch Live cameras, Banagle hopes, will document many such crimes in the future. "I think everybody, except for the person who did that wishes that there was video of this," he says.

Currently, Banagale says this kind of surveillance isn't everywhere because, "it's kind of a pain to set up a webcam." Sure, places with cuteness appeal like cat shelters and world famous locales like Times Square have webcams. But the average person generally won't go to the trouble of buying an external webcam and figuring out how to configure it, just so they can aim it at, say, the nearest suburban street corner.

Perch Live, he explains, turns smartphones and tablets into "security cameras" that will be publicly accessible. Not the devices most Americans carry in their pockets, but "any old phones they may have lying around." He envisions the owners of old forgotten gadgets—in other words, wasteful hyper-consumers like you and me—streaming hi-definition video of whatever we want, 24 hours a day.

Perhaps most importantly, Banagale adds, "users—anyone, really—can create clips from the historical video, and share them on social media, or anywhere else."

It really is easy. Maybe too easy. I downloaded the app while I was in the bathroom, and the process of setting up my own Perch Live "lens" took me about a minute. It came as a surprise that I was already broadcasting the corner of a toilet stall, and I quickly shut my lens down.

If such live feeds manage to attract viewers with the ability to quickly extract and share clips, what should they be looking for? Banagale says as creator of the platform, he has no prescription for its use. "It's really kind of up to the person who's putting the lens up. Perch Live doesn't have an agenda per se," he says.

During the Perch Live beta phase, much of what users found interesting was footage of apparent drug use. Two of the featured clips at the moment are of a gas station parking lot in Oakland, California. In one clip, a woman sits in the passenger seat of a car with a plate, and appears to make tidy lines of something before snorting them. In another video taken in that same spot, a guy appears to inject himself in the crotch with a syringe.

Periscope, an app designed for momentary snippets of live video, can give viewers a similar thrill. Exhibitionistic periscopers sometimes snort cocaine on camera to the delight of drug voyeurs, but there's a clear difference: Periscopers generally want—nay, demand—to be watched. People on Perch Live most likely do not.

But they're in public. "This service only works if it complies with privacy laws that exist already," says Banagale. Anything pointed into spaces that invade privacy, he says are "against terms of service." Instead, his intent is for users to aim their old smartphones at "public spaces where there is no expectation of privacy."

According to Matt Cagle, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, Perch Live raises some "important questions," but, the law seems to be on the side of the Oakland user who posted the gas station footage. "Taking video in public spaces is generally protected by the First Amendment," Cagle told VICE in an email.

Outside of California's laws on surveillance camera's there's significant legal variation. New York's is similar, although it adds a definition of a place where one can reasonably expect privacy: whenever and wherever it seems safe to "fully disrobe." Meanwhile, all hidden cameras are effectively illegal in New Hampshire, Delaware, Georgia, Utah, Alabama, Michigan and South Dakota according to the legal textbookElectronic Media Law and Regulation by Kenneth C. Creech.

But camera positioning aside, the existence of the footage presents potential problems according to Cagle of the ACLU. "We're concerned that police may take advantage of apps like this one to expand their surveillance capabilities without community oversight," he told me. In 2010, Google Street View photos helped law enforcement arrest a group of men in Brooklyn for drug dealing, according to The New York Post.

"People have a right to control whether and how surveillance is used in their communities. Unchecked surveillance risks creating more problems than it solves, and invites high-tech racial profiling," Cagle added.

Banagale is more sanguine about potential applications for race relations. " can catch really important moments in our society—things that we really want to kind of reflect on," he claims.

In addition to the footage of apparent drug use on his site, he points to situations in which "video tells a story that's either in conflict with, or provides greater context around, some kind of law enforcement procedure." Perch Live hasn't yet been the center of any police brutality controversies, but Banagale hopes it can be a tool when "video is the only proof that people can rely on."

But fighting crime isn't Banagle's only stated aim. He says he wants life on Earth to be recorded, creating what he calls, "an interesting documentary of who we are as a species."

He also points out that the single most heavily viewed feed during Perch Live's beta phase was his own mother's wildly popular puppy cam. But he's cool with that. "People like what they like," Banagle says.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

In this Tuesday, May 19, 2015 aerial photo, the Opa-Locka City Hall is shown in Opa-Locka, Florida. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Early last Wednesday evening, Timothy Holmes, a raspy-voiced city commissioner for Opa-Locka, Florida, was assuring about two-dozen residents gathered in a village community center that their small municipal government was not under siege from all manner of bandits, crooks, and thieves.

"Don't believe everything that you read in the paper," Holmes implored. "You got people out there who want to see Opa-Locka come down. Even in the city departments, we got people working against us to make Opa-Locka look bad. I am always here to do the right thing and the best thing for this community."

Earlier that day, local, state and federal law enforcement officials raided a local flea market to gather evidence and arrest a bevy of suspects charged in a $13 million food stamp scam. It was the second time in two months that law enforcement descended on a prominent Opa-Locka locale. Back in March, FBI agents raided city hall proper as part of a separate, ongoing criminal investigation, although no one has actually been arrested in that probe—at least not yet.

The food stamp bust dealt another gut punch to a city already reeling from an onslaught of negative press involving allegations of unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats shaking down business owners and city contractors, illegally pillaging city coffers for personal gain, and driving the city to the precipice of insolvency. The cascade of woes suggest that for all the rage seething across America in recent decades about the evils of big government in Washington, all it takes is a few local grifters to unleash chaos on a community.

In fact, some ethics experts suspect Opa-Locka is one the most corrupt cities in Florida history. In a state where the current governor pleaded the Fifth 75 times about his alleged role in one of the biggest healthcare fraud schemes ever, that's really saying something.

"It's a small poor city that has never had good government," Robert Jarvis, a legal ethics professor at Nova Southeastern University, told me. "Opa-Locka was formed in the 1920s, a time when there was a lot of swindling and phony land deals going on in Florida. When you add on top of it poverty, crime and real urban ills, the chances of having a clean government are basically non-existent."

Think New Jack City meets Casablanca.

A 4.2-square-mile city located just north of Miami, Opa-Locka was founded in 1926 by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss, who incorporated Middle Eastern designs into the city's early buildings and named streets after characters from Arabian Nights. In fact, the city boasts the largest collection of Moorish revival architecture in the western hemisphere, including the original city hall on Ali Baba Avenue. Developers initially marketed Opa-Locka as an exclusively white middle-class enclave, according to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel. But after desegregation, mirroring a nationwide trend, whites seemed to flee the place as African Americans moved in.

Today, Opa-Locka is a low income working class community where about 65 percent of the 16,000 residents are black and roughly 45 percent earn an annual income below the poverty level.

The city's notoriety as a hotbed of corruption and intrigue be traced to a 1977 grand jury report decrying "a widespread pattern of blatant mismanagement of the city government and public funds entrusted to it, corruption and venal politics." The investigation led to the arrests and convictions of Opa-Locka's then-Mayor Candido Giardino and then-Commissioner Al Tresvant for bribery, conspiracy and unauthorized compensation of official behavior. According to the report, Giardino and Candido received a $28,000 kickback in exchange for awarding the construction of the city's public works building to a politically-connected company.

The grand jury also discovered a free-for-all inside the Opa-Locka Police Department, where three narcotics cops known as the "unholy trio" had "systematically engaged in illegal narcotics trafficking as a means of paying informants," including supplying "heroin to known addicts for the purpose of eliciting their cooperation," according to the report.

Cops formed cliques with city commissioners, who brazenly interfered with open investigations involving their cronies, the grand jury found. In addition, "new officers were deliberately trained and ordered to enforce the law against black citizens in a discriminatory fashion."

Nine years later, another public corruption probe nabbed Opa-Locka's planning council chairman Stephen Cuiffo accepting $4,000 in bribes from Joseph Lazar, the flea market's owner at the time. Cuiffo pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful compensation, though prosecutors dropped bribery charges against Lazar.

Back then, investigators also trained their sights on John Riley, then the mayor and accused—among other misdeeds—of pocketing a $5,000 bribe from Alberto San Pedro, a local businessman whom Miami media outlets dubbed "The Great Corrupter" after secret tape recordings of him name-dropping the politicians he allegedly paid off went public. San Pedro was convicted and sentenced to ten years on seven counts of drug trafficking and offering bribes, but Riley was never prosecuted. (He did lose his re-election bid, at least.)

South Florida cities like Opa-Locka end up enduring decades of unethical leadership due to a very transient and disengaged public, according to Jarvis. "You really don't have people watching what the politicians are doing," he said. "In the case of Opa-Locka, you have a very low-income demographic, and low-income people tend not to have good government or civic engagement at the top of their agendas."

Jarvis also added that scandals are genetically embedded in the local culture. "It's part of the DNA," he said. "Opa-Locka has problems endemic to all of south Florida."

Check out our documentary about gun culture in Florida.

Nearly forty years after the 1977 grand jury report, the faces at city hall have changed, but accusations of malfeasance remain. Consider Mayor Myra Taylor, the wife of a local pastor and mother of eight children who won her first seat on the Opa-Locka City Commission in 1996.

Eight years later, after she'd won the mayoralty, a federal grand jury indicted Taylor, her husband John Taylor, and her sister Elvira Smith for conspiracy to defraud the IRS, as well as making false statements to federal investigators. In 2005, the government dropped the conspiracy charges against the Taylors and Smith when they pleaded guilty to the lesser crime of filing a false income tax return. Taylor, who was removed from office by then-Governor Jeb Bush, served one year's probation along with her sibling, while her spouse got three-years probation. In 2008, though, she was re-elected to the city commission, and two years after that got her old job back when she was re-elected mayor.

The Taylors ran into trouble again in 2012 when Miami-Dade Police arrested the mayor's husband, sister, and son on fraud and fabricating evidence charges over an alleged scheme to cover up illegal contributions to her 2010 campaign. (The sister completed a pre-trial intervention program and the son got slapped with two-years probation.)

Now the local powerbroker is under federal scrutiny once more after she and her husband allegedly received a $150,000 kickback from a city contractor in exchange for supporting a sewer project, according to local media reports. At the commission meeting last Wednesday, an indignant Taylor accused journalists working for the Miami Herald and local television stations of spreading false rumors and innuendo.

"We have been vilified, fried and dyed in the media," she told the assembly. "Even our own citizens are criticizing us and talking about us... that we are doing this and that, firing people, and stealing money with no real facts whatsoever."

When the meeting concluded, Taylor declined to speak with me about her past federal indictment and the current investigation. The mayor also did not return two subsequent phone messages seeking comment. But Opa-Locka residents in the audience that day were fed up with all the local drama.

"It's embarrassing to know that you have these elected officials that you voted for being investigated for corruption, racketeering charges and kickback schemes," said Dwayne Manuel, 26-year-old law student who grew up in Opa-Locka but currently lives in neighboring Miami Gardens.

"When you take an elected position, you are not supposed to be in it to make money," he added. "Unfortunately, in their minds, this was a good way to make some extra cash. They should have resigned after the first FBI raid."

Natasha Ervin, a local caterer whose family moved to Opa-Locka in 1976, said she decided to buy her first home in the city 24 years later out of a profound sense of civic pride.

"It's sad to see being torn down like this," she told me. "But I love my city. The only way to change things is for people to stand up."

Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter.

Link as he appears in 'Ocarina of Time'

Here's an uncontroversial gauntlet to throw down: Ocarina of Time is definitively the greatest video game ever created. Beyond mechanics, beyond design, beyond entertainment, Ocarina is one of the best storytelling experiences you can have. It's a fractal of greatness; the deeper down you go into the game's details, the more it expands into brighter and bigger brilliance. Case in point: let's look at Lon Lon Milk.

Most (but not all) of the games in the Zelda franchise are pretty straightforward Hero's Journeys, or monomyths, but Ocarina of Time stands apart from its predecessors. The power of the N64 enabled it to be broader and more ambitious in the scope of its plot and character development, giving co-director Shigeru Miyamoto et al the opportunity to flesh out both the famous protagonist Link and the game's non-player characters.

The story goes: Link's mother fled from Hyrule proper into the Lost Woods during the Hylian Civil War, gravely injured, and entrusted her baby to the Great Deku Tree. Link, now in his youngest-ever iteration, is tasked at the age of nine with coming to grips with the fact that not only is he not a Kokiri, as he had been led to believe, but that he's the Child of Destiny. He then watches his arboreal adoptive father die, being sent out into the world with nothing but a wood sword, a Deku shield, and a fairy to vanquish some unnamed evil. In the process, he's frozen in time for seven years, making him essentially a nine year old in a 16 year old's body and robbing him of whatever's left of his childhood.

It's a tremendously lonely game. Link has no family: his place isn't with the Kokiri, the children of the forest, and most of the friends he makes become sages and leave the earthly realm. We know what happens after the Ocarina of Time story ends, because the opening credits to the subsequent Majora's Mask tell us that nine-year-old Link goes off alone into the Forbidden Forest to search for Navi, his fairy friend who had accompanied him through his time travels, but who had flown off into the ether during the credits of Ocarina. As far as we know, he never finds her. The game invites questions about the nature of the Hero's Journey: if you are a truly unique individual, preternaturally heroic and destined to save the world, where and with whom do you find a sense of belonging?

If you're of the opinion right now that it's just a game and that maybe I'm over-thinking it, I invite you to consider the game's preoccupation with milk. Lon Lon Milk is the first food item Link ever consumes in the franchise, if you make the (I think fair) assumption that potions are alchemical or medicinal rather than culinary. Its introduction coincides, again, with the youngest-ever version of Link, a child who has never had a mother.

In terms of the game mechanics, Lon Lon Milk was a clever addition to the Zelda story. The visual design of milk as an item was only a little bit different from the design of a bottle of potion, and consuming both uses the same animation, making it a pretty easy item to introduce. Unlike red and blue potions, which heal Link completely, milk only heals five hearts, meaning it's useful mainly at the beginning of the game, when the player is still getting their grounding. Milk collection requires that you play "Epona's Song" on your ocarina to a cow, who then speaks to you (which, by the way, is a delightful sequence) and gifts you the milk, similar to the way that other songs prompt actions in the game.

"What a nice song... Have some of my refreshing and nutritious milk!"

But milk also lends the texture of real life to Ocarina of Time. Remember the first time you saw the animations of Link yawning or shuffling his feet, and how cute and novel it seemed that your protagonist could get tired, sore, or bored? The action of actually eating food is novel in the same way. Calls for realism in games so often revolve around complaints about visual design, movement, the boundaries of maps, and so on; but Ocarina of Time doesn't receive enough credit for being one of the first games to acknowledge the fact that, realistically, a hero couldn't go without eating.

But the realism that milk lends doesn't stop there. Elements of the game reflect real-life dairy industry practices. Take, for instance, the fact that you play a song for the cows in order to extract milk from them: in dairy farms, this has been proven to help cows produce more milk. Malon, the little Hylian girl at Lon Lon Ranch, is in charge of taking care of the animals, while her father (and eventually Ingo, the stable boy) runs the business side. Likewise, dairying in Medieval-through-Enlightenment-Era Europe (on which the game is modeled) was handled almost exclusively by women as a part of their household duties. It is, or at least was, quintessentially "women's work," and Malon becomes the centerpiece of Link's interactions with milk.

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Watch episode one of Open Worlds, made possible by Nvidia, featuring Gotham City and freerunner James Kingston

And those realistic references to dairying become a conduit through which real mythological and religious associations with milk are added to Ocarina of Time. There is no other food in the world that is more laden with meaning. It's the first food of all mammals, intimately connected to childhood, motherhood, and nursing. And because of that connection, every milk-drinking culture has milk symbology of some kind.

Isis, the heavy-breasted Egyptian goddess, is the ideal mother, the "giver of life," frequently depicted nursing Horus—and there's also her counterpart Hathor, depicted with a headdress of bullhorns. We see the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus in the Lactatio, borrowing from Roman Isaic imagery. There's the Fountain of Diana at Villa d'Este, spouting liquid from several breasts. The legendary origins of the Milky Way's formation tell of Jupiter setting an infant Hercules to nurse at Juno's breast while she was sleeping; when she awoke, startled, she pulled her breast away from the baby, and her breast milk sprayed into the heavens.

In the Hindu samudra manthan, the gods churned sap and ocean water to form milk, from which Surabhi, the Cow of Plenty, emerged. In the Norse creation story, Ymir nurses from the cow Auðumbla, is killed by Odin, and his corpse is used to construct the universe. In Fulani theology, the world is formed from a single drop of milk. Saint Brigid was nursed on a magical cow's milk, produced an endless supply of butter, gave butter to the poor, and traded an offer of cattle for her mother's freedom. All down the line, milk is associated with abundance, nurturing, the creation of life, and most of all, motherhood.

These are the associations with milk that have been hard-wired into our brains and cultures over the course of millennia, and they're the associations that we bring with us when we play Ocarina of Time. Were it not for milk and the Lon Lon Ranch storyline that surrounds it, the story of Hero of Time-era Link would be a tragedy. Instead, he goes to Lon Lon Ranch and finds Malon, another Hylian child whose mother died, whose father is mostly absent, and who's had to figure out how to be responsible at a young age.

Malon gives Link arguably the two most important and beloved gifts he receives in the game: his horse Epona and "Epona's Song," which her mother composed, and which Link uses to befriend Epona and to get milk from cows, allowing him to eat, to gain nourishment, for the first time in the franchise. Malon acts as peer, surrogate, and helpmeet, and it's at Lon Lon Ranch that this boy finds belonging. And so, Ocarina of Time raises, explores and resolves the question of whether or not a Hero is destined to be alone.

It's worth noting that Link is not an inherently magical character. He's not in a divine bloodline, like Zelda herself; he hasn't harnessed demonic power, like Ganon. He's not a sage, he's not a Kokiri, he's just a kid. After the story ends, he has to reintegrate himself into normal, day-to-day Hylian life. It's the life that real-world players share with Link, our entree into our ability to empathize with him and the reason that Ocarina of Time is so engaging and beloved. It's a life that by fantasy genre standards doesn't include a whole lot of magic. Except, that is, for the magic of meaning that's transmitted through symbols, stories, and art; magic that rests in legends, songs, or food or drink.

An outreach worker in Ontario opens a naloxone kit. Photo by the author

Following behind British Columbia and Alberta, Ontario has become the latest province to make the opiate overdose antidote naloxone available without a prescription.

A dispensary that is not under a crackdown. Photo via AP.

A Toronto bylaw officer visited one the city's medical marijuana dispensaries Wednesday, just days after Mayor John Tory called for a municipal crackdown.

Tania Cyalume, owner of Queens of Cannabis, located near Bloor Street and Ossington Avenue, told VICE the officer wanted to speak to the landlord about a zoning infraction.

"We are under no obligation to give that info," Cyalume told VICE.

After visiting a Kensington Market dispensary, Tory last week wrote a letter to the city's licensing committee asking for suggestions as to how Toronto might go about regulating the 140 or so dispensaries that have cropped up.

"In the meantime, I would ask that you employ, in conjunction with the Toronto Police Service, whatever enforcement mechanisms are currently available to you to address the health and safety concerns of neighbours and businesses in the communities where these marijuana dispensaries are currently operating unlawfully." he said.

Mark Sraga, the city's director of investigation services, told the Globe and Mail convictions for violating zoning bylaws could be as much as $50,000.

Kind Supply, the Kensington Market dispensary Tory visited, has since shut its doors.

"We support socially responsible and ethical business practices, we look forward to participating in a regulated industry where patients needs come first," the shop's management said in a note posted online.

The federal government has promised to roll out plans for marijuana legalization next spring, but in the meantime, dispensaries are operating in a grey market and are still technically illegal. Vancouver is currently in the process of regulating its pot shops, and issued its first ever business licence to one of them yesterday. Bylaw officers there are issuing $250 fines to dispensaries who are operating illegally.

Other cities like Victoria are looking to follow suit with respect to regulation.

Meantime, licensed producers in the cannabis industry have officially launched a lobby group called Cannabis Canada.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

I've always been obsessed with the "all you can eat" buffet. Growing up as the youngest of six, teatime was a race through dinner to see if you could beat your siblings to seconds while there was enough left. This has given me anxiety around food and the instinct to eat quickly, abruptly and at volume. So from the moment I first gazed upon one of those buffets, I was inspired. This was an environment where I could eat without pressure, where the food was never going to run out. It didn't take me long to realise, however, that they're an absolute sham, mainly because most of the food available in buffets is so starchy and filling that you can hand in your dignity and try to eat like Gary Barlow in '94, and still only swallow 50p's worth of stodge.

At 13 I used to try my best to maximise the experience: eating until I was too full to move, schlepping my way to the toilet, making myself sick and going back for more like a hedonistic Roman nobleman. It wasn't the best con, really, and it just made me feel like shit. So I stopped going to all you can eats. The love affair ended.

Then a couple of years ago I moved to London. Broke and in the city of greed, I got obsessed again. How can I maximise their value? How do I beat the system? The house can't always win. After many sleepless nights, jotting into my notepad, by jove, I had it. Four different cons crafted carefully with one purpose: to take down the man and to finally get our fair fill of an all you can eat buffet.

CHEEKY NANDO'S

I start my con in Brixton, where it is far, far too hot. With this A4 paper complexion of mine, I desperately need a drink to curb my headache and sandpaper tongue. But that's not an option because I have no cash and I've managed to lose my debit card for the third time in four months. All I have in my pockets is a set of keys, a pen lid and a receipt from last night's Nando's. I ordered: one extra hot wrap, corn on the cob and a bottomless drink. I drank: one glass of Diet Coke. One glass! That's not bottomless, that's no refills. They're making a killing off of hapless optimists like me. In a moment of madness, possessed by desperation and dehydration, I stand up like I'm ready for a tank on Tiananmen Square. I take an empty bottle into the Nando's on Stockwell Road and walk straight up to the machine to get my fill.

I stop nervously to take a sip of out of my two litre bottle. No cold hand on the shoulder, no rushing manager, not even a glance: nobody gives a shit. So I carry on for a few minutes, sipping and filling until eventually leaving absolutely gobsmacked (literally, my teeth are aching). It is one of the most liberating experiences of my life. Could I come back in a week, a few months, or a year and sip on a Fanta? Who knows, but I am chalking this one down as a win. I'll never go thirsty again.

THREE MEALS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

The next day, I show up in Camberwell with a new plan: to spend the whole day eating all of my meals at a Chinese all-you-can-eat, working on my laptop in between. I've never actually been in the place and whenever I look through its windows it seems to have that sordid, saddened air of a bookies. But inside it's actually buzzing. Regulars are giggling and fist-bumping the guy behind the counter. It's like Cheers but everybody is Norman. I plan to eat sensibly but with the locals queuing up, piling their plates high, I guess I succumb to peer pressure. Breakfast is an arid mountain of noodles, rice, chips, seaweed. I go back for seconds and then thirds. After half an hour I'm as good as done. If you ever want to see the look of someone who hates themselves, just watch the door of an all you can eat.

It's a chore, trying to function when you feel like several bladders of vegetable oil. The place empties and fills again, hours pass, Years & Years play on the sound system and still none of the staff say a word to me. There's not too much more I can stomach by lunchtime. Looking at more spring rolls and Singapore noodles, I feel a bit sick. I'm not sure for exactly how long, but I fall asleep at the table after lunch. It's 5:30pm by the time I can face dinner, and it turns out I learned nothing from the breakfast fiasco. With that, it's over. It's pretty fucking incredible that – in the city where a pint costs you £5 – you can eat an unlimited amount of food for as long as you want for £6.99. On the way out, I ask the guy if it's okay or normal for people to stay for as long as I have today. He shrugs, looks up at the clock and says "Sure, you only stayed for six hours and 50 minutes, it's cool brother."

STRICTLY BUSINESS

I head to an extraordinary establishment situated upstairs at Victoria train station. Twelve different types of pizza on the buffet and 20-odd pasta dishes, being refilled every 20 minutes – it's an artisan beauty in the buffet universe. So it made sense for me to slip into a work outfit, sweep my hair back, and blend in with the commuter clientele. And it works: they sit me in a prime window seat; maybe they think I'm Steve Parish? In 30 minutes I eat what I want, and a little bit more. Wiping my mouth with tissue as I get the bill, and ask if it's okay for me to take a slice or two home for the foxes in my garden. They say "It's against policy, sorry." Fine. Sometimes you just have to play by the rules and accept something for what it is. Let me just take my briefcase and I'll be on my merry way. I must not forget my briefcase, you see, because I'm a businessman and it's filled with important documents, meeting minutes and...

Pizza! Endless pizza - stacks of it. The MacGuffin of my story. I won't take one or two slices, I'll go for 26, thank you. Like an Andy Dufresne captivated by greed instead of freedom, with every plate I took from the buffet, I'd eat one and covertly slip three or four into my foil-lined case. They didn't see it coming. That's dinner for three or four days taken care of for £7.49. Boom!

SEEING DOUBLE

See that photo? No, that isn't an illusion. Your monitor is not broken and you do not have a duplication virus. That's my friend Gavin Sparks and I, and we're gearing up to pull off the finest ruse Wimbledon has seen since the invention of Greg Rusedski's hairline. We're going to Jimmy's.

For the uninitiated, Jimmy's Restaurants run the tightest ship on the buffet scene - they'll throw you out for looking at one of their chefs funny. The Nando's, Chinese and pizza places were benevolent but smalltime. This, my friends, is the big time and it's going to take more than a poxy briefcase or Evian bottle to pull the wool over their eyes. That's why I got my main man Mr Sparks in. So the heist goes like this: Sparks strolls into Jimmy's at 5:55pm, he orders a buffet and a Cobra beer.

After enjoying their worldwide scope of world class cuisine until his appetite is quenched and drinking exactly half of the beer, he will send a text to me. I will then ring him. When he feels that vibration in his pocket, Gavin will answer and lackadaisically stroll outside to take the call. Chatting, he'll dawdle out of the window's vision to the right of the restaurant. He will carry on walking until he passes me, who will have been walking down the street on the phone to Gavin. I enter Jimmy's on my phone and end the call. Taking his seat at the same table on the left-hand side of the restaurant, I will take a sip of Cobra and fill my boots. At precisely 6:56pm, I will ask for the bill and pay for exactly one buffet and one beer. Genius, right? I know, it's one of best.

So, did the whole thing come off without a hitch? Did we each come away from the glittering heist with a bellyful of diamonds and a smile? For legal reasons, I'll let you figure that one out.

In many ways, I spent the past four days tasting complex carbohydrates, syrup-based sauces and different types of oil, but what I really tasted was freedom. The essence of freedom, on tap. In turns out that you can literally do whatever you like at a buffet for stock market crash prices – there is no limit. All You Can Eat is liberty, love; it may well be the most open-minded, independent and emancipating culture that exists in 21st century Britain.

@Oobahs

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  Chinese military aircraft intercepted a US military spy plane over the South China Sea, according to the Pentagon. It happened on Tuesday when the spy plane was spotted by two Chinese fighter jets during a "routine" patrol, and the US pilot was forced to descend about 60 meters to avoid a collision.—NBC News
• Trump Ahead of Clinton in National Poll
  A new national poll by Fox News has Donald Trump edging ahead of Hillary Clinton by 45 to 42 percent. It shows Trump has a 14-point deficit among women, and Clinton has a 22-point deficit among men. The poll also shows Bernie Sanders has a 46 to 42 percent advantage over Trump in a hypothetical matchup.—Fox News
• Biggest US Cities Getting Bigger
  The latest US Census Bureau data shows that 19 of the country's 20 largest cities saw their population grow again last year. Only Chicago saw a population loss. Although New York City saw the biggest increase in numbers, the other cities that experienced the most significant growth were in the south or west.—Chicago Tribune
• Gun That Killed Trayvon Martin Sold
  George Zimmerman said the online auction for the gun he used to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin has ended and he is notifying the buyer. Although the price has not been established, the bidding began at $100,000. In a blog post, Zimmerman claimed the "successful" auction "has raised funds for several worthy causes."—USA Today

International News

• EgyptAir Plane Missing, 66 On Board
  EgyptAir flight MS804, which left Paris for Cairo early Thursday morning with 66 people on board, has disappeared from radar and is feared to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. The Airbus A320 went missing at 02:30 Cairo time, soon after leaving Greek airspace. A search and rescue operation is now under way involving both Greek and Egyptian armed forces.—BBC News
• Rescue Efforts in Sri Lanka Halted by Rain
  Rescue efforts have been temporarily halted by heavy rains in the central Sri Lankan region where villages have been hit landslides. Hopes are fading for the 150 people trapped under the mud and rubble of the two major landslides. "I don't think there will be any survivors," said Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe.—Reuters
• Rescued Schoolgirl Reunited with Mother in Nigeria
  The first of the 219 missing Nigerian schoolgirls to be rescued from militant group Boko Haram has been reunited with her mother. Amina Ali Nkeki, 19, who was held in captivity for two years, was rescued by an army-backed vigilante group on Tuesday in the Sambisa Forest, close to the border with Cameroon.—Al Jazeera
• Tear Gas Fired at Anti-Government Protests in Venezuela
  Venezuelan police fired tear gas at anti-government protesters in Caracas as thousands marched on the National Electoral Council (CNE) building, demanding a referendum to recall President Nicolas Maduro. The president has announced a 60-day state of emergency, giving soldiers and police wider powers.—The Guardian

Mark Zuckerberg (Photo: Brian Solis, via)

Everything Else

• Zuckerberg Wants to Build Trust with Conservatives
  A group of conservative commentators said the meeting with Mark Zuckerberg over the trending topics controversy had been "very productive." In a post afterwards, Zuckerberg said the meeting had been about "how we can build trust."—ABC News
• Superbugs as Big a Threat as Terrorism
  Superbugs will kill someone every three seconds by 2050 unless billions of dollars are invested, according to a scientific report. The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance said infections becoming resistant to drugs was "as big a risk as terrorism."—BBC News
• 117 Million LinkedIn Emails and Passwords Stolen
  A hacker is trying to sell the account information, including emails and passwords, of 117 million LinkedIn users. The hacker, who goes by the name "Peace", told Motherboard that the data was stolen in 2012.—Motherboard
• Trudeau Apologizes for Pushing Female Politician
  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized to opposition MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau after accidentally pushing her into a desk while grabbing another member of parliament. "I take responsibility for my actions," said Trudeau.—VICE News

Done with reading for today? That's fine—instead, watch this short film VICE UK made about drug-free "positivity raves".

All photos by Alana Celii

This article appeared in the May issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

I
KITTENS

Daddy was driving us home. Three of us in the backseat and Lula, who was his favorite, in the passenger's seat.

Lula cried, Oh Daddy!—look.

At the side of the road, in broken grasses, was something small and furry-white, which appeared to be alive.

Oh Daddy, please.

Daddy laughed. Daddy braked the car to a stop. Lula jumped out of the car. We ran back with her, to discover in the broken grasses three small kittens—white, with black and russet markings.

We picked up the kittens! They were so tiny, fitting in the palms of our hands, weighing only a few ounces! Each was mewing, its eyes scarcely open. Oh, oh!—we'd never seen anything so wonderful in our lives! We ran back to the car where Daddy was waiting, to beg Daddy to take them home with us.

At first, Daddy said no. Daddy said the kittens would make messes in the car.

Lula said, Oh Daddy, please. We all promised to clean up any messes the kittens made.

So Daddy gave in. Daddy loved Lula best, but we were happy to be Daddy's children, too.

In the backseat, we had two of the little kittens. In the front, Lula was holding the whitest kitten.

We were so excited! So happy with the kittens! Lula said she would call the whitest kitten Snowflake, and we said we would call our little kittens Pumpkin and Cinder because Pumpkin had orange splotches in his white fur, and Cinder had black splotches in his white fur.

For some minutes, Daddy drove in silence. We did all the chattering! You could hear tiny mews, if you listened hard.

Then, Daddy said, Do I smell a mess?

We cried, No, no!

I think I smell a mess.

No, Daddy!

Three messes. I smell them.

No, Daddy!

(And this was so: None of the kittens had made messes.)

But Daddy braked the car to a stop. At the bridge over the river where there is a steep ramp, outside our town and about two miles from our house, Daddy parked the car and said to Lula, Give me Snowflake, and Daddy squinted at us in the rearview mirror and said, Give me Pumpkin, and give me Cinder.

We began to cry. Lula cried loudest. But Daddy grabbed the little kitten from her and reached into the backseat red-faced and frowning to grab Pumpkin and Cinder from us. We were not strong enough, and we were not brave enough to keep Daddy from taking the kittens from us, in Daddy's big hand. The kittens were mewing loudly by this time and quivering in terror.

Daddy left the car and with big Daddy-strides climbed the ramp to the bridge and threw the kittens over the railing. Three tiny things rising at first against the misty sky, then quickly falling, and gone.

When Daddy returned to the car, Lula cried, Daddy, why?

Daddy said, Because I am Daddy, who decides how things end.

II
FERAL KISS

In secret, by foot, he traveled to the Mainland. He lived on an island of approximately eight square miles, boot-shaped like Italy. Between the Island and the Mainland was a two-mile floating bridge. His parents had forbidden him to journey to the Mainland; the Mainland was the "easy, slack life"; the Island was the life of discipline, severity, God's will. His parents had broken off ties with their relatives who lived on the Mainland, who in turn pitied the Islanders as uneducated, superstitious, and impoverished.

On the Island, there were colonies of feral cats, much inbred, ferocious if cornered or trapped, but surpassingly beautiful—one of the colonies was composed predominantly of flamey-orange tiger cats with six toes, another was predominantly midnight-black cats with tawny eyes, another was predominantly white, long-haired cats with glaring green eyes, and another, the largest colony, predominantly tortoiseshell cats with intricate stone-colored, silver, and black markings, and golden eyes, seemed to thrive in a rough, rock-strewn area near the floating bridge. It was generally forbidden for Island children to approach the feral cats, or to feed them; it was dangerous for anyone to approach the cats in the hope of petting them, still less capturing one of them and bringing it home; even small kittens were known to scratch and bite furiously. Yet, on his way to the Mainland, as he approached the floating bridge, he couldn't resist tossing bits of food to the tortoiseshell cats who regarded him from a little distance with flat, hostile eyes—Kitty? Kitty? Such beautiful creatures! One day, brashly, he managed to seize hold of a young tortoiseshell cat scarcely more than a kitten, very thin, with prominent ribs and high, alert ears, and for a moment, he held its quivering life in his fingers like his own heart seized out of his chest—then the cat squirmed frantically, hissed, scratched, and sank its small sharp teeth into the flesh at the base of his thumb, and he released it with a little cry Damn! and wiped the blood on his pant leg and continued on his journey across the floating bridge.

On the Mainland, he saw her: a girl he imagined to be his own age, or a little younger, walking with other children. The coastal wind was shrouded with mist, damply cold, relentless. Droplets of moisture had formed on his eyelashes like tears. Her long hair whipped in the wind. Her perfect face was turned from him in shyness, or in coyness. He'd grown daring, brash; his experience with the tortoiseshell cat hadn't discouraged but seemed to have encouraged him. He was a boy pretending to be a man here on the Mainland, where he felt to himself older, more confident. And here, no one knew his name, or the name of his family. He walked with the girl, drawing her away from the other children. He asked to know her name—Mariana. He held her small hand, which resisted his initially, as he clutched at it. He kissed her on the lips, lightly yet with much excitement. When she didn't draw away, he kissed her again, with more force. She turned aside as if to run from him. But he clutched her hand and her arm; he gripped her tight, and kissed her so hard, he felt the imprint of her teeth against his. It seemed that she was kissing him in return, though less forcefully. She pulled away. She snatched his hand and, laughing, bit him on the inside of the thumb, the soft flesh at the base of the thumb. In astonishment, he stared at the quick-flowing blood. The wound was so small and yet—so much blood! His pant legs were stained. His boots were splattered. He retreated, and the girl ran to catch up with the other children—all of them running together, he saw now, along the wide, rough beach littered with storm debris, their laughter high-pitched and taunting and not one of them glanced back.

Gripped suddenly by a fear that the bridge had floated away, he returned to the floating bridge. But there it remained, buffeted by coastal winds, and looking smaller, and more weathered. It was late autumn. He could not recall the season in which he'd started out—had it been summer? Spring? The sea lifted in angry churning waves. The Island was near invisible behind a shroud of mist. In the waves, he saw the faces of his older, Island kin. Gray-bearded men, frowning women. He was breathless returning to the Island across the rocking, floating bridge. At shore, he paid no heed to the colony of tortoiseshell cats that seemed to be awaiting him with small taunting mews and sly cat faces, amid the rocks. The wound at the base of his thumb hurt; he was ashamed of his injury, the perceptible marks of small sharp teeth in his flesh. Within a few days, the wound became livid, and with a fishing knife cauterized in flame, he reopened the wound, to let the blood flow hotly again. He wrapped the base of his thumb in a bandage. He explained that he'd injured himself carelessly on a rusted nail or hook. He returned to his life that soon swept over him like waves rising onto the beach, streaming through the rocks. There would be a day when he removed the bandage and saw the tiny serrated scar in the flesh, all but healed. In secret, he would kiss the scar in a swoon of emotion, but in time, he would cease to remember why.

III
HOPE

Daddy was driving us home. Just two of us in the backseat and Esther, who was Daddy's favorite, in the passenger's seat.

Esther cried, Oh Daddy!—look out!

A dark-furry creature was crossing the road in front of Daddy's car, legs moving rapidly. It might have been a large cat, or a young fox. Daddy did not slacken his speed for an instant—he did not turn the wheel or brake the car to avoid hitting the creature, but he did not appear to press down on the gas pedal to strike it deliberately.

The right front wheel struck it with a small thud.

There was a sharp little cry, then silence.

Oh Daddy, please. Please stop.

Esther's voice was thin and plaintive, and though it was a begging sort of voice, it was a voice without hope.

Daddy laughed. Daddy did not brake the car to a stop.

In the back, we knelt on the seat to peer out the rear window—seeing, in the broken grasses at the side of the road, the furry creature writhing in agony.

Daddy—stop! Daddy, please stop, the animal is hurt.

But our voices were thin and plaintive and without hope, and Daddy paid little heed to us but continued driving and humming to himself, and in the front seat, Esther was crying in her soft helpless way, and in the backseat, we were very quiet.

One of us whispered to the other, That was a kitty!

The other whispered, That was a fox!

At the bridge over the river where there's a steep ramp, Daddy braked the car to a stop. Daddy was frowning and irritable, and Daddy said to Esther, Get out of the car. And Daddy turned grunting to us in the backseat, and Daddy's eyes were glaring angry as he told us to get out of the car.

We were very frightened. Yet there was no place to hide in the back of Daddy's car.

Outside, Esther was shivering. A chill wind blew from the mist-shrouded river. We huddled with Esther as Daddy approached.

In Daddy's face, there was regret and remorse. But it was remorse for something that had not yet happened, and could not be avoided. Calmly Daddy struck Esther a blow to the back with his fist, that knocked her down like a shot, so breathless she couldn't scream or cry at first but lay on the ground quivering. We wanted to run away but dared not for Daddy's long legs would catch up with us, we knew.

Daddy struck us, one and then the other. One on the back, as Esther had been struck, and the other a glancing careless blow on the side of the head as if in this case (my case) the child was so hopeless, he was beyond disciplining. Oh, oh, oh!—we had learned to stifle our cries.

In long Daddy-strides, Daddy returned to the car to smoke a cigarette. This had happened before but not quite in this way, and so when a thing happens in a way resembling a prior way, it is more upsetting than if it had not happened before, ever in any way. On the lumpy ground in broken and desiccated grasses, we lay sobbing, trying to catch our breaths. Esther, who was the oldest, recovered first, crawled to Kevin and me and helped us sit up and stand on our shaky stick legs. We were dazed with pain and also with the sick sensation that comes to you when you have not expected something to happen as it did, but, as it begins to happen, you remember that you have in fact experienced it before, and this fact determines, in the way of a sequence of bolts locking a sequence of doors, the certitude that it will recur.

In the car, Daddy sat smoking. The driver's door was open partway, but still the car was filling with bluish smoke like mist.

Between Esther and Daddy, there was a situation unique to Esther and Daddy, as it had once been unique to Lula and Daddy: If Esther had disappointed Daddy, and had been punished for disappointing Daddy, Esther was allowed, perhaps even expected, to refer to this punishment provided Esther did not challenge Daddy, or disappoint Daddy further. A clear, simple question posted by Esther to Daddy often seemed, to our surprise, to be welcomed.

Esther said, a catch in her throat, Oh Daddy, why?

Daddy said, Because I am Daddy, whose children must never give up hope.

This article appeared in the May issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

© 2016 by the Ontario Review Inc.

Photo by Petr Kratochvil via

It can be hard to imagine this, but parents are people too. They were people before you existed. They were people when you existed, but weren't an actual person yet. When you arrived, they had hopes and dreams for what you might be. They gazed at the fleshy shit generator you were at the time, and wondered what kind of person you would become—what your talents would be, whether you'd be smart, funny, happy, and sweet. What you'd mean to the people around you. They saw a clean slate, a chance to right what they had wronged in their lives, a promise for a brighter future.

Your parents are people, but to be fair: they used to be deeply naive people. They know better now. Of course you're making the same mistakes they've made, and of course you didn't become a heart surgeon with a flourishing and fulfilling family life. It's likely that you have no idea what to do with your life and your Media Studies degree. You drink too much most nights—much like your mom. Well, as long as you're happy, they're happy. But are you, really? Happy? Are they?

We asked some friends all over Europe to talk to their parents about whether their lives are turning out like their parents hoped they would.

Benn, 23, United Kingdom

Benn works in a call center

Benn: So is working in a call center what you had in mind for me?
Benn's dad: To be honest, as you know, you weren't really planned. I never felt ready for you, so I'm just happy you're 23 and haven't been on Jeremy Kyle yet. It's a bit of a piss-take that you dropped out of your O levels or whatever it was.

They were A levels.
Yeah, same shit. You're 23 and cleverer than me—plus you make about the same amount of money I do, so good on you.

What did you expect me to be doing by this age?
I always wanted you to grow up to do something where you can get rich quick—like working in finance or something. Because if you're doing something where you've only "made it" by the time you're 50, I'll be too old to give a shit. I never really had a plan for what you should be doing. You got into grammar school by yourself, and I was always proud of that. Most of what you've done since has been a gift to see, really.

What would you want for me in the future?
I doubt you even care what I want. Just to be happy, have enough money, stay out of debt, and maybe make me an ugly grandchild one day.

Isa, 38, Spain

Isa plays bass and sings in Triángulo de Amor Bizarro

Isa: What did you imagine I would be like when I grew up?
Isa's mom: Well, I raised you in all the freedom to make your own decisions. I always said that you can be whatever you want, but you have to work and take care of yourself. We don't have any connections in the government and you're not an heiress. Our family has always been dedicated to photography, so I probably thought photography would be something you'd be interested in.

What do you think of what I do now?
I never could have imagined that you'd live off of playing music. Maybe as a hobby, yes, but nothing more. I always thought that was only for people who are very lucky and can afford it. I think you're very lucky. And the music you play isn't very commercial but I think the songs on your last album are beautiful. And it shows how much you've grown and how hard you have been working on it—you were so nervous and unbearable for a while that I was afraid to ask you about it.

Are you disappointed? Surprised?
Look, you keep asking me the same questions. I have to run, I have to take the cake to grandma's and bring the dog over. Don't forget that Sunday is Mother's Day. We eat at half past two.

Andrada, 27, Romania

Andrada is getting a PHD in Visual Arts and works at an art gallery.

Andrada: When I was born, what did you think I'd grow up like?
Andrada's mom: There's a Romanian custom called "tăierea moțului"—which means cutting the baby's hair for the first time. This happens when the baby turns one. The custom says that you present the baby with a tray with different objects on it, and the baby chooses three objects from the tray that will reveal what he or she will be doing in his or her life. I decided to follow this custom when you turned one. First you chose money, then a calculator, and, lastly, a pen. So I've always thought money, computers, and writing would play an important role in your career and in defining your personality.

Did you want me to do anything in particular?
I wanted you to become someone cultured—to read, learn, and pass what you've leaned on to others.

Does that mean you're happy with what I've become?
I think that you are on a path that suits your ambitions, your personality, and your dreams. I'm happy with what you've achieved, but that's less important. What really matters is that you are happy and satisfied with what you are doing and the person you are.

Micha, 31, Germany

Photo by Katja Bartolec

Micha is a managing partner with an IT and marketing startup, and a musician.

Micha: What were your hopes for my life and my career when I was little?
Micha's mom: My first wish, like any mother's, was that you'd have a healthy and happy life. I was not thinking about your professional future at the time. I think that may have started when you were about 12. I always knew music would be a part of you for the rest of your life. Of course I hoped you might be able to make a living with your music, but I also wanted you to have a backup plan. That's why I was really happy you wanted to study sound engineering.

Have I ever disappointed you with my life choices?
Well, there have been times when I wasn't exactly proud. When you started smoking pot at 15 or when I had to pick you up at the train station because you were blackout drunk, for example. But those were luckily just temporary lapses. You've never really disappointed me.

So no disappointment. Any other concerns?

When you lost your right arm and almost died in that accident, I thought I would die from worry. Of course I calmed down when it became clear that you'd make it but I was still horribly concerned about how you would cope with the fact that they couldn't save your arm. Music and playing guitar were your life—you played every single day. One or two days after you woke up from your coma, you said to me: "Where's the point in sitting in a corner and feeling sorry for myself?" Shortly after, when you were still in the hospital, you asked for your guitar and started playing again—with one hand. In that moment, I was so incredibly happy and so very proud of you.

Sonia, 25, Italy

Sonia studies Urban Planning and contributes to Noisey Italy.

Sonia: What were your expectations of me when I was a baby?

Sonia's mom: Your father and I did our best to have you grow up as a strong, independent woman who'd get a good job. As for your love life—I didn't think about it too much when you were a child. I just hoped you weren't going to suffer, although on a rational level I knew that's impossible. I hoped love wouldn't traumatize you, anyway.

What did you think I would become, then?
I wanted you to study medicine—let's say that was my dream for myself. I have to admit I did my best to make it happen, but it didn't. Anyway, I've learned to appreciate different things. For example, bringing you up in Italy while we grew up in Peru made me discover so many new aspects about this country. Your father and I became parents, but we also found a new, strong tie to the country and culture we moved and lived in. We didn't think it was possible to integrate fully, but now—thanks to you—we know it is.

Did you ever think the fact that I was born from immigrant parents would make growing up harder for me?
No, on the contrary—it strengthened your personality. Maybe you've felt a bit uneasy about it at times, but I think it gave you a more critical view on society and I'm happy with that. You've never used your background to justify any problem or fear, and I've never heard you complain about being discriminated against. I sincerely hope you've never been mistreated because your parents came from a different country.

Nils, 25, The Netherlands

Nils is a junior editor at VICE's Netherlands office

Nils: When I was younger, what were your expectations for me as a grown-up?
Nils' mom: You were always writing things as a kid and you learned to read and write at a very young age. So I guessed you were going to be a writer of some kind pretty early on. Just last week I found this story you wrote when you were about eight years old, and it was very well written.

Thanks! So you could say I lived up to your expectations?
Well, I did expect you to do a lot better in school. You did very well when you were younger, but your father and I were quite concerned about it when you were in secondary school and at university. I still think it's a shame you never finished uni, but now that you work in an actual office I guess I can't really complain.

You're not disappointed in me?
As a mom you just hope your baby won't end up in the gutter, hooked on alcohol and drugs. Well, at least you're not in the gutter, are you? So that's nice.

Alexandra, 27, Greece

Alexandra is trained as an actress but works in the private sector.

Alexandra: What did you want my life to be like, when I was a kid?
Alexandra's mom: I wished that you'd be happy and achieve whatever you wanted to achieve.
Alexandra's dad: I certainly wished better things for you than what your life is like now.

How do you feel about what I've accomplished so far?
Alexandra's mom: I feel fine about it, because I see you're happy with your life and your choices.
Alexandra's dad: I'd say it's okay—at best.

Are you disappointed with me or proud of me?
Alexandra's mom: I'm proud of you but I'm also disappointed. I'm proud because everyone keeps telling me lovely things about you. But I'm disappointed because you wanted something different from life, but then your plans and your circumstances changed. I don't agree with the choices you're making now.
Alexandra's dad: Somewhere in the middle. You have a good personality—I think if the conditions in this country were better, I could even be proud of you.

Pierre, 28, France

Pierre is customer advisor at a bank.

Pierre: What do you think of the person I am today?
Pierre's mom: You've learnt to assert yourself in your life choices and in front of other people—at least it looks like you have. You look like you are in full bloom—in your work and in your personal life, and that's what matters most to us.

When I was younger, did you ever picture me working at a bank?
Pierre's dad: Well, to be honest, we always thought you would end up in some kind of artistic job. You were rather good at playing the drums and drawing. Boy, were we wrong.

Are you ever worried about my future?
Pierre's mom: We often think that we really wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Everything looks so complicated and unsure these days. When we were young, we just had to ask for a job to get an interview. Now it seems impossible.

Matthew de Grood is on trial for first-degree murder. Canadian Press photo

Matthew de Grood heard the devil's voice saying "kill them before they get you" prior to stabbing to death five peers at a Calgary house party, a psychiatrist testified in court Wednesday.

Alberto Choy, director of forensic psychiatry at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, interviewed de Grood after the killings. De Grood, 24, told Choy that a couple weeks before they took place, he started to believe he was a sun god and that a war between the Illuminati, werewolves, and vampires was going to take place. In part, he said he was inspired by the Twilight movie and Cirque du Freak, a manga series about a kid who turns into a half vampire.

"He heard a male voice, who he thought was the devil, telling him to 'kill them before they get you'... He could not converse with the voice but it was directing him and warning him about others," Choy testified.

While de Grood has admitted to killing the five victims, Lawrence Hong, 27, Joshua Hunter, 23, Jordan Segura, 22, Kaitlin Perras, 23, and Zackariah Rathwell, 21, in April 2014, he's pleaded not guilty; his legal team is arguing he was not criminally responsible for the crimes.

In court Wednesday, two psychiatrists who took the witness stand seemed to bolster that theory.

While Choy said he did not make a specific diagnosis on de Grood, "he was suffering from a mental disorder and from our perspective he was clearly psychotic."

Lenka Zedkova, another psychiatrist who works at Alberta Hospital, spent 14 hours speaking with de Grood after the stabbings. She told the court she diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

"He was not in touch with reality," she said.

Both doctors testified de Grood knew what he was doing when he killed the five students, but Choy said he didn't understand that it morally wrong. Because he believed the world was ending, Zedkova said he thought he was acting in self-defence.

The not criminally responsible defence, previously known as an "insanity defence," has been used in some of the most notorious cases in Canadian history. Vince Li, the man who beheaded his seatmate on a Greyhound bus outside of Winnipeg, used it successfully in 2009, while Luka Magnotta's legal team was unable to convince a jury that he was too mentally ill to know what he was doing when he dismembered Concordia University student Jun Lin in 2012.

Calgary defence lawyer Balfour Der told VICE at least one of two criteria must be met in order to prove someone is not criminally responsible for their actions. The defendant must either show that their mental illness made them incapable of understanding what they were doing (e.g. you think you're peeling an orange but really you're strangling somebody) or "because of the mental disorder, you don't know that what you're doing is wrong." De Grood falls into the latter category, according to the testimony.

Der said prosecution's brevity in rolling out their case suggests they concede de Grood was not criminally responsible. While being questioned, both psychiatrists said it was unlikely de Grood was faking a mental disorder in order to get out of doing jail time.

De Grood's lawyer Allan Fay addressed that theory outside court Wednesday.

"This isn't some hired gun that I've paid a lot of money to come in to give this kind of testimony to give my client an easy out," he said after Choy testified.

Read more: Alberta Man Who Stabbed Five Students to Death at a House Party Thought He Was Killing Werewolves

Der told VICE it would be "insane" to think a young person would actually plan out these killings in front of a bunch of witnesses with the intention of faking a not criminally responsible defence. He added being found not criminally responsible isn't exactly a get out of jail free card.

"It's 'Get out of jail once trained professionals believe that your mental disorder is no longer a risk,'" he said. "Some people can stay in longer on NCR than they otherwise would if they were simply sentenced in the normal court."

He said there's no standards for how long a person who is found not criminally responsible for their crimes to stay locked up. In the case of Li, after seven years spent in a mental health institution and later a group home, he was approved in February to eventually live by himself.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

If trust issues weren't bad enough, this study probably makes it sting a bit more. Photo via Flickr user Tuncay Coskun

Spend a semester in college and you'll appreciate just how much students juggle. For 12 weeks a semester there's a barrage of assignments, homework, tests, and group study sessions—with work and life somehow squeezed in between.

As VICE has previously detailed, it's this stress that turns many to Nootropics: a new wave of grey market cognitive enhancers. Armed with these, students feel they no longer need to choose between their social lives and study. At the cost of sleep, they can do both.

With exams looming for students around Australia, we asked students what study drugs they plan on using.

Duncan, 20

VICE: Hey Duncan, what's your favorite study drug?
Duncan: I've tried Adderall and Modafinil. I'd definitely say Modafinil.

Why Modafinil?
It provides a really natural sense of focus. It gives you a drive. You want to study. It really stops me procrastinating.

How do you get your hands on it?
If you know someone who has it you can buy it, which is what I have done in the past. Recently, I just ordered it online. There's online pharmacies that specialize in selling Modafinil. It delivers to Australia in about ten days, like ordering something from eBay.

Each time you stock up, how much would you be spending?
If I buy in bulk—about 100 at a time—the price comes to about $1.50 USD per pill.

Can you describe what a typical Modafinil study session looks like?
I normally do it with mates. Everyone's on the same level, no one is really talking. Normally we get up at around 6 AM, have a big breakfast, take a dosage, then study for a solid 12 hours with food breaks here and there.

Do you ever worry about whether it's fair on other students if you're using study drugs?
If I'm paying all that money, and spending three or more years of my life studying so that I can build the career I want... Is it unfair to your co-workers to stay late at the office, log extra hours, take on a higher workload, and sacrifice more to get that promotion? I don't think so. All I'm doing by taking Modafinil is optimizing my efficiency.

If it's unfair then so is drinking coffee to study, paying for a tutor to help with work, or working in a group to study. It has zero impact on anyone else, and for that reason I don't believe it's unfair or unethical.

Anna, 18

Hey Anna, what's your favorite study drug?
Marijuana.

Okay, I haven't heard that one before. Why is it your favorite?
I love marijuana, regardless of whether I'm studying or not. It helps me when I study because I'm a perfectionist, so coursework can cause a lot of stress. When I'm high, I feel relaxed and more confident in my ability to do the work.

What do your friends use to help themselves study—anyone else find weed helpful?
A lot of them don't use stuff, but I do know people who have used Ritalin and Adderall. I'd be keen to try both one day.

Why did you start smoking weed to help you study?
Usually I would wait until after studying to treat myself. But I was blazed as fuck one night and realized I had school work that needed to be done by the next day, so I did it when I was high and found it surprisingly easy.

How do you get your hands on it?
I buy off friends, and friends of friends. I've been buying for a long time so I've made a lot of connections.

Do you ever make dumb mistakes when you're doing assignments high?
Only little things like getting distracted and forgetting the question, or forgetting what I'm writing about mid-paragraph.

Krystal, 22

Hey Krystal, which study drugs have you tried?
A few forms of Modafinil and some No Doz. There are a few different dosages: Waklert, Artvigil, Modvigil, Modalert.

Modafinil definitely seems to be the most popular. What's your favorite type?
Waklert. It's a slightly different drug. Similar to Modafinil but it's a bit more intense and lasts longer.

How do you normally get Waklert?
The internet. It's shipped from India.

Have you looked into whether that's legal or not?
I haven't looked up how legal modafinilcat is. I was referred to it so I trusted it on that basis.

Why did you start using Waklert?
A friend of a friend was dealing it from Sydney. She'd buy a few hundred pills at a time and sell them to her friends. That friend passed a few onto me.

When do you normally take it?
Generally only for all-nighters. The night before something is due to punch it out. The other day I got up at 8 AM then took some around 8 PM. I rolled through until 9 AM the next day. I probably could have kept going but I was like, nah I should have a nap.

Does Waklert help you to feel less stressed when you're studying?
It puts you in the shit when it wears off, and it messes with your sleeping pattern. I wouldn't say it alleviates stress. It probably causes more later down the track.

If it messes with you, why do you keep using it?
It really assists with study emergencies, it means I don't have to freak out about staying awake or not. I'm pretty set in the way I study so all-nighters are normal for me anyway, it just helps me stay awake.

Robbie, 22

Robbie, what's your favorite study drug?
Modafinil.

Why is it your favorite?
It lasts for the entire day and it's really cheap. It doesn't have too much of a crash either.

How do you usually get your hands on it?
Online, I found some website that sells it real cheap.

Online seems to be the go. How did you get started using it?
Some friends were talking about how they could get their hands on Ritalin, then Dexys. We tried those and they were pretty good but they didn't last long and I'd feel pretty shit afterwards. We got our hands on Modafinil and just went from there.

Are you ever worried that you'll become reliant on it? Do you think you'll still use it after you graduate and start working?
Not really, I try as often as I can to take time off it and I can go to work easily without it. I don't think I could work 9 AM to 5 PM, five days a week, and be popping Mods all the time.

I've heard it can really mess with your sleeping patterns. How often do you take it?
I take it in the morning or around lunch time so for me, it doesn't really mess with my sleeping pattern. I would take it once or twice a week during semester and a lot more during the exam period. Maybe up to four days per week.

Why do you think students increasingly turn to drugs like Modafinil to help them study?
I think it's just the lifestyle that students live. They have to go to uni and work as well. They're gonna go out a fair bit, too. You're constantly in a state of needing some kind of stimulation.

*Some names changed for privacy.

Follow Scott Renton on Twitter.

Photo via the Christie's auction page

Read: Cleaning Out Sheds with the Merry Pranksters' Ken Babbs

You could make a pretty strong case that Neal Cassady was the single most influential force on 20th century counter-culture. The guy was a muse for Kerouac and Ginsburg and made the Beats what they were. Then, when that was all said and done he popped up on Ken Kesey's lawn in the mid-60s to drive Kesey's legendary school bus across the country and help ignite the Hippie movement.

But for a man who was such an important muse to so many writers, he never wrote much. His only real published work, The First Third, is fine, but it doesn't really live up to Kerouac's famous quote that Cassady was responsible for "the greatest piece of writing Wolfe ... spin in their graves," don't worry—Cassady's surviving family is planning to publish the whole thing sometime in the near future.

Painstakingly crafted to defy easy classification, The Lobster is the superbly original English-language debut by Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos ( Dogtooth, Alps). Smuggling in elements of science-fiction, chase thriller, and ultra-deadpan comedy, the 2015 Cannes jury favorite is a disquieting riff on the absurdities of romantic relationships.

The first hint of its off-kilter style arrives in the form of Colin Farrell, who eschews his familiar brand of muscled, glint-eyed swagger to melt into the role of protagonist David, a paunchy sadsack freshly ditched by his wife for another man.

In the twisted dystopia conjured by Lanthimos, there's no time for David to indulge in traditional reactions to such trauma—a period of soul-searching, say, or bouts of rebound sex. Rather, in accordance with the strictly enforced rules of the mysterious City, David is immediately transferred to a coastal hotel populated by fellow singletons, all of whom are afforded 45 days from arrival to partner up.

Those who fail are then transformed, by some magical, never-quite-revealed process, into an animal of their choice, and left to fend for themselves in the ominous nearby Forest. David, who arrives at the hotel with his brother—now a loyal dog—in tow, opts to transmogrify into the titular crustacean.

The method by which new guests arrive at the hotel is deliberately reminiscent of countless prison flicks: New inmates are stripped, brusquely interrogated, and processed. Here, however, as captured by the brilliant cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, these sad flesh bags have the bleak aura of subjects in a Francis Bacon painting. Yet, whether shooting in jaundiced interiors or verdant, autumnal exteriors, Bakatakis ensures that The Lobster is never less than beautiful to behold as he employs a series of painterly tableaux intensified by patient, barely perceptible zoom-ins. The film's visual splendor functions in jarring contrast to the ugliness of the situations faced by its characters.

Hotel guests are constantly monitored, treated like lab rats, and prohibited from masturbating, presumably to increase their desperation to mate. As one poor sap (a lisping John C. Reilly) discovers, the punishment for such transgression involves the offending hand being plunged into a red-hot toaster. Activities include mandatory attendance at baroquely conceived yet joyless song-and-dance sessions led by the hotel's matronly manager (Olivia Colman) and her rotund husband (Garry Mountaine); or, more disturbingly, group outings to the Forest to hunt down Loners, a secret society of hotel escapees that fetishizes singledom—"No sex, or flirting," admonishes their severe leader (Léa Seydoux)—as much as the City endorses traditional domestic pairings.

If this all sounds terribly depressing, it's worth noting that The Lobster is also screamingly funny. Farrell gives a master class in deadpan comedy, while the inherent absurdity of the set-up provides constant fodder for amusement. There's hope, too, in the form of the mysterious, Forest-based Short-Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz).

Earlier this week, I spoke to Weisz over the phone to discuss her attraction to the project, her philosophical take on the film, and the difficulty of keeping a straight face around Colin Farrell.

VICE: Had you seen Yorgos's other films before working on The Lobster? Were you a fan of his work?
Rachel Weisz: I was. I actively sought him out a year before The Lobster. I'd watched Dogtooth, and I thought it was one of the most remarkable films I'd ever seen. I was attached to an independent script that didn't have a director, and I asked to meet Yorgos. He agreed to do it, but the producer at the time thought he'd make it too dark, so it didn't work out. I said to him, "I long to work with you." In that meeting he said, "I'm writing something at the moment, so I'll send it to you when it's done," and that was The Lobster.

The performers in Lanthimos's films all have a similar, idiosyncratic style, including a slightly stilted manner of speech. Did it take a while to key into that, and have all the actors on the same page?
He would disagree with you. He would say it's not stilted, and that most people's acting choices are too "big." I think he'd call it minimalist. But everyone sees the acting style differently. I've never heard "stilted" before. I've heard "deadpan," "monotone," but you're right: He did get everyone in the film to act in that unified tone, which is just not as expressive as people normally are when they act. How he did that, I have no idea! That's the magic of an auteur. He hypnotizes you.

For the first half of the film, you're offscreen, but before you appear, you have a key role narrating the voiceover, describing David's plight...
When we went to record it, I said, "How do you want me to do it? Like anti-Terrence Malick?," and Yorgos said, "Exactly." I love Terrence Malick, but he's known for exceptionally lyrical voiceovers. We deliberately went for something completely de-poeticized.

Even so, I found the voiceover urgent and passionate, and I was moved by that. I felt your character brought a lot of heart to the film, which, as you say, is extremely deadpan.
She is the one person who has some genuine desire and heart. She falls in love with David.

Was it difficult to keep a straight face around Colin Farrell? He's absolutely hilarious here. He didn't have to do anything except be onscreen to get me to laugh.
Yes, sometimes it was very hard. He was much better at being straight-faced than I was. Sometimes I would just completely crack up, and they'd wait for me to finish, and then we'd carry on.

The film is dystopian and fanciful in its own way—turning people into animals, for example—but to what extent did you see it as a comment on how real-life dating has gone into territories that would have seemed surreal, say, 15 years ago? I'm thinking of stuff like Tinder and Grindr.
I saw it more as a comment on the way we're all supposed to fit in boxes, and the normalization of everything: of dating, of matters of the heart, these notions of "a perfect couple." The heart and soul are eccentric and problematic—they're not as simple as Agony Aunts [the UK term for advice columnists] or dating sites lead you to believe.

It was interesting to me that the film seemed not to be just a one-way satire of how "traditional" heterosexual coupledom is lionized, but also how, in the form of Léa Seydoux's tyrannical Loner Leader, singledom can be fixated on to a similar degree.
There's heteronormative culture, and there's radical, queer culture, and counterculture—but that can become very normative as well, right? Everyone can become normative. The Loner Leader's world is radical and revolutionary, rebelling against the normative world, but it ultimately becomes just as regimented. That could be a comment on a lot of things in our culture. I think it's something that frightens people who are part of queer culture; they're worried that their culture is being "normalized."

I found the film had a strange tone that I couldn't put my finger on, but I wouldn't say it left me feeling uplifted. Do you see the film as downbeat or depressing?
No, I see it as a love story—two people who find love against all odds. It's a very intricate, rule-bound world, and these are two people trying to slip through the rules, and find a human existence outside the constraints of "normal" life. The first half of the movie sets up this world—it's very funny and satirical—and then in the second half mine and Colin's characters are trying to peek through, to find a way out. It's incredibly romantic. Our characters are earnest, and quite innocent.

I think it's a film that questions anything original. How can you even make an original film? We're all set within bound patterns by our culture and our conditioning, and it's very hard to break free. We're cloned and brainwashed within our little world. Even films are brainwashed: There's lots of genre pictures. How do you break free of genre in your life? It asks those questions. It's about how you can be original, and I think it succeeds in being an original film.

There are obviously elements of sci-fi in The Lobster. Are you a fan of the genre?
What I like about the film is that it's science fiction without any spaceships—it's just planet earth with different rules. It's low-tech, but high, high-concept, which I like because it doesn't cost any money! I respect that. The elegance of it just comes from the organization of Yorgos's imagination, not from building vast sets.

And it was all shot on location in Ireland?
Yes, we were all staying in that beautiful hotel. The area where we shot the Forest had a tropical micro-climate, and it looked like it had been art-directed by The Hobbit's art director, but it was just Mother Nature at work.

In the second half of the film there's lots of exterior scenes , that feel pretty grueling. Were these scenes intense to film, physically and emotionally?
I loved it, I loved it, I loved it! I loved wearing no makeup and being in a windbreaker, and having mud in my hair. That basically was the makeup: mud in your hair. I felt like a forest creature, which is what I was playing, I guess. I found it really liberating sploshing around in the mud. I was happy as a pig in shit.

Follow Ashley Clark on Twitter.

The Lobster is playing in theaters nationwide.

Chris Carroll (left) and his victim, Darren Kelly

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Bringing pedophiles to justice might seem like a pretty black-and-white moral issue. But when you have neo-Nazis and drug barons on one side and innocent or psychologically vulnerable men on the other, the waters become a little murkier.

Yesterday, a vigilante pedophile hunter was jailed for life for stabbing an innocent man to death. In a seemingly typical ploy, 42-year-old Darren Kelly was lured to a property in Pitsea, Essex by a 15-year-old girl. But two things went wrong. Firstly, as a spokesperson for Essex Police makes clear: "Mr. Kelly thought he had been speaking to a woman . There was no evidence he was interested in underage girls."

Secondly, rather than a dressing-down on camera, Kelly received a beating at the hands of Chris Carroll and three teenagers, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Carroll, 20, then stabbed him with a hunting knife and fled the scene, but forensic detectives pinned him to the crime. Carroll will serve 21 years for murder, but his co-defendants were released without charge.

Anti-pedophile activism has been associated with illegality and violence in the past, and has been practiced by some of society's more unsavory characters. In the 1970s, for instance, the National Front picketed meetings of the Paedophile Information Exchange, and it was the NF, the British National Party, and the English Defence League that led protests in 2014 against the sexual abuse of 1,400 children in Rotherham—the fact the perpetrators were British-Pakistani Muslim men no doubt being a contributing factor.

In 2003, 60-year-old Scottish crime boss Maggie "Big Mags" Haney was sentenced to 12 years for running a drug-dealing ring which sold four-figure sums of heroin daily out of a base known as "Haney's Hotel." Before that arrest, the grandmother attracted headlines as a militant campaigner against child grooming on her Stirling council estate.

Other vigilante campaigns are less carefully-orchestrated. In 2000, an innocent man, Iain Armstrong, was targeted because he was wearing a similar neck-brace to a convicted sex offender. The same year, pediatrician Yvette Cloete was hounded from her home by impassioned but somewhat confused protesters. Bijan Ebrahimi, 44, was registered as disabled and unable to work when he arrived in Britain as a refugee in 2013. But when he photographed children vandalizing his hanging baskets, Bristol police took him into custody, carting him away in front of a crowd chanting: "Pedo, pedo."

Mr. Ebrahimi was soon released without charge. The night of his release, he was beaten, dragged from his home, and set on fire by his neighbor Lee James. James is serving life for his murder, and two police officers were imprisoned for deliberately ignoring a string of panicked phone-calls from the victim.

A more recent wave of anti-pedophile activists have been taking the fight from the streets to the internet. These vigilantes set up an online honey-trap, posing as underage children and arranging to meet adult men, before bursting out to confront them with a video camera. Many of those involved say they are themselves survivors of abuse.

The trend was popularized by 34-year-old vigilante Stinson Hunter, who started confronting alleged pedophiles in 2012 "to make waves and get parents, the government, and people who can change things talking." He feels the Carroll murder was an inevitable tragedy, as multiple copy-cat vigilantes have sought to emulate his work for less honorable reasons.

"It's getting out of hand," Hunter says over the phone, his voice rising with emotion. "It's heartbreaking. This guy got murdered, and for what? Because a bunch of muppets wanted a fast track to fame and to look cool in front of their mates."

Hunter says he "always talks to like they're my best friend." While this might be stretching the point a little—friends don't often hit other friends with cars, which is what happened to Hunter when he went to confront a target in Warwickshire—he has certainly never laid hands on any of his subjects.

Other YouTube warriors are less pacifistic. Last year, a member of a group called "NWI Nonce Busters" was jailed for head-butting a man who thought he was arranging to meet a 14-year-old girl. His target lost his front teeth and 12 months of freedom, after a judge found him guilty of grooming. ("NWI" indicates a link to the "North West Infidels," one of the dominant neo-Nazi groups currently active in England, whose members have been imprisoned for moving cocaine across the north of the country.)

Nor are head-butts the worst of it. Michael Duff killed himself after being confronted by a group known as True Justice, and Gary Cleary committed suicide following an altercation with Leicestershire vigilantes Letzgo Hunting.

In a well-publicized case, Michael Parkes hanged himself while out on bail after being entrapped by Stinson Hunter. At the time, Hunter "accepted no responsibility" for Parkes' death, and he remains remorseless: "Yeah, a guy killed himself after talking to me, but he made his own choices."

But there is more than one way to catch a predator. Groups such as Dark Justice, Online Predator Investigation Team (OPIT), and Public Justice PHL (PJ-PHL, formerly known as Paedophile Hunters London) position themselves as the Co-ops of the crowded pedophile-hunting market, claiming to adopt a more ethical approach to extra-judicial crime-fighting.

"Shouting, 'Give me your fucking phone, you fucking nonce,' doesn't get you anywhere," says Jay, a member of PJ-PHL's two-man team. "The minute you attack these people it becomes a different kind of crime. You turn them into a victim."

Stinson Hunter. Photo by Carl Wilson

Stinson Hunter pours scorn on groups who work with the police, and says he releases his videos before trial because his goal is raising awareness, not custodial sentences. (This contradicts his position in a 2013 Channel 4 documentary, where he wept with joy after securing his first conviction.) But all of these second-generation vigilante organizations withhold their video footage until the relevant court cases are closed, saying they prefer securing convictions to hogging the limelight.

"Everyone, including child abusers, has the right to a fair trial," says Callum, a member of Dark Justice. His team are advised by practicing solicitors and barristers, as well as human rights experts, and he claims to have secured 48 arrests and 22 convictions. (Stinson Hunter has racked up over 50 convictions.)

"Often, we don't release videos at all," says Brendan Collis of OPIT. "We get the evidence, get them prosecuted, and then release their details." His teenage daughter Leah was groomed by a 40-year-old man, who then abused her in a hotel room. Since that scarring attack, he and his daughter (who's now of age) have used old photos of Leah to entrap sexual offenders.

All of these groups rightly point to the failure of courts and police to adequately tackle sexual crime. "They need more funding, and they need more training," says PJ-PHL's Jay. He thinks a targets-driven culture forces police to focus on crimes that are easier to convict. Fewer than ten percent of child sex offenses in the UK result in a conviction.

But though all three organizations vehemently condemn Carroll's attack, no one seems sure how to stop a repeat of the Kelly murder. "That's like asking if the Loch Ness monster is real," shrugs Callum of Dark Justice. "No one knows." Brendan of OPIT doesn't think people will ever stop taking the law into their own hands: "Even the most placid of people will react. might not have killed anyone, had they not been blinded by anger."

A house that was firebombed and graffitied after it was revealed a convicted child abuser lived inside. Photo courtesy of Online Predator Investigation Team

A spokesperson for the National Crime Agency's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command argues that amateurish vigilante action could have a number of other "serious consequences," including "the compromise of ongoing investigations into pedophile networks, abusers harming a child if they feel threatened, and individuals being mistaken for offenders."

American statistics also suggest that around 90 percent of child sexual abuse victims know their attacker beforehand, rather than meeting them online. Even acknowledging the failings of the police and setting aside the issue of knife-wielding watchmen, it feels hard to be sure that vigilantes like Stinson Hunter and his successors are doing more good than harm.

Charities such as Circles, which provide sex offenders with small support networks, exemplify a more positive model for reducing rates of child sexual abuse. Speaking in 2013, Circles UK CEO Stephen Hanvey said: "Demonizing such serious offenders, even given the awful things they have done, renders them less safe, and less inclined even to attempt to lead offense-free lives. It has to be more about supportive vigilance than mere vigilantism." (A spokesperson for Circles told VICE they could not comment specifically on the issue of vigilantism.)

Online Predator Investigation Team have provided photos (above) of a firebombed car and a house daubed with graffiti. The property was targeted after the vigilante group revealed the identity of its inhabitant, a man convicted of sexually abusing a child. "There was a child in that house," says Brendan. "Who's to blame? The pedophile? Us? Or both?"

The names of vigilantes have been changed at their request.

Follow Matt Broomfield on Twitter.

Read: A Brief History of Donald Trump and the Mafia

On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump was on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to chat about the general election, potential Supreme Court justices, and how former president Bill Clinton was once accused of rape, as Politico reports.

The pair were discussing the New York Times article published over the weekend citing women who said Trump made inappropriate sexual comments and advances over the past few decades. (The article also cited women who said he was a good guy who advanced their careers.)

"I looked at the New York Times," Hannity said. "Are they going to interview Juanita Broaddrick? Are they going to interview Paula Jones? Are they going to interview Kathleen Willey?" He was referring to three women who have accused the former president of unwanted sexual advances and/or assault.

"In one case," Hannity continued, "it's about exposure. In another case, it's about groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will."

"And rape," Trump said, matter-of-factly.

"And rape," Hannity repeated.

Hillary Clinton's campaign responded quickly to Trump's comment, saying the presumptive GOP nominee "is doing what he does best, attacking when he feels wounded, and dragging the American people through the mud for his own gain... If that's the kind of campaign he wants to run that's his choice. Hillary Clinton is running a campaign to be president for all of America."

Thumbnail image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Check out Akvile's website, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram.

Read: NSFW Photos from the Four Years I Spent on a Porn Set

While other porn sites have been taking political stands and specializing in swallow fetish videos, Pornhub has been mostly focused on finding new and inventive ways for people to get off.

These novel new forays into erotica usually involve fancy technology, like the VR porn the site released earlier this year. Now, in keeping with that trend, Pornhub has launched an exercise routine that will help you and your partner (or partners) get swole as you bang—with a little help from your iPhone, which acts as a kind of weird, sex-focused FitBit.

Pornhub laid out the whole plan in a video announcing the sexercise regime, which they're calling "BangFit."

The basic idea—acted out by a nubile cartoon couple in the video—turns fucking into a kind of muscle-targeting version of Guitar Hero. There's even a competitive aspect, so you can try to out-fuck your friends on social media, if that's something you feel inspired to do.

Give the video a watch above, and then head over to the BangFit site to start getting ripped.

All photos by Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto unless otherwise noted

Edward Burtynsky is one of the better-known contemporary Canadian photographers. People in and outside the industry have marveled at his still and moving images that show the devastating impacts humans have had on nature. His work is at once stunning and revolting. "Manufactured Landscapes," his photo and documentary project on the consequences of industrialization produced in the first half of the aughts, was, for many, an awakening: our footprint was, is, colossal. Three years ago, he released "Watermark", which explores our relationship with water, reminding us of its importance, to us and to the whole fauna and flora, and that it should not be taken for granted.

Now, he's working on a new project "Anthropocene." To make the case that humans have ushered the planet into a new geological era, he's embraced new technologies, from 3D printing to virtual reality. As he recounted his experience filming the largest burning of illegal ivory tusks in Kenya, from which he had just returned and enthusiastically explained the mandate of his new studio Think2Thing, I was reminded of the enduring role storytellers, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, artists, and the likes have in raising awareness and provoking discomfort, so that we do not resign ourselves to the status quo.

VICE: At the end of April, Kenya's President set ablaze 105 tons of illegal elephant ivory and more than one ton of poached rhino horns. What compelled you to capture this historical moment?
Edward Burtynsky: I'm currently working on a multimedia project that involves a feature documentary film, a book, an exhibition, which on top of having prints on the walls offers new experiences such as virtual reality and 3D. It explores the idea of the "Anthropocene." Humanity spent the last 11,000 years in a stable period called the Holocene. But geologists are now saying that we should think of the present as a time of change for the state of the planet. We're entering the "Anthropocene." The whole project tries to define what are the characteristics of this event, what we are doing that is bringing this event forward and how is this event revealing itself from the sediments to the atmosphere. One of the ways to go about it is to look at extinction. The last time we had such a big extinction was over 60 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. A meteor impact hit the planet and created a dark decade. Now, rather than a meteor impact, extinction is brought about by humans. We are the event. The elephants, for instance, have been dropping at a rate of approximately 12 percent per year because they're being hunted by and large for their tusks. The Kenyan burning of ivory stockpile is a response to that, a way to take ivory off the market.

Yet, many critics have said that destroying the seized tusks won't actually stop the poaching of elephants.
I don't think it will; but it does bring awareness. By making people realize that this is a terrible problem that is happening right now, you can bring that story to the buyers of ivory, to the people who have some control over borders and who can stop the flow of ivory. You have to bring attention to the problem because if you don't, then nothing happens. It's a desperate measure in desperate times. Everybody that was there hopes that we'll never have to have another one like this.

Authorities estimated that about 12,000 tusks were being burned, about 6,000 elephants. Since it is believed that 25,000 elephants are killed annually, this represents only a quarter of the yearly destruction of herds by humans. So, the people present were by and large saddened by the fact that humans can't keep their hands off these magnificent animals because it's worth so much money. The piles of burnt ivory were valued at over 150 million dollars.

What was that moment like?
It was very tense. It was pouring the whole morning and the evening before. We wanted to shoot something that would be memorable but, by morning, we still hadn't had permission at that time to fly the drone we brought equipped with a 5K EPIC camera. In Kenya, drones are illegal. Since the President was going to be present, there was no way that we could do a sneak drone flight through it. We didn't get permission until about an hour after the leader, Uhuru Kenyatta, had left the site. We had about an hour and a half before sunset. It took us about forty minutes to get it up in the air and we got 3 successful flights over the site while it was burning.

Why bring new capture technologies to cover an event such as the burning of illegal ivory?
Thanks to high-resolution cameras we were able to shoot simultaneously around the piles and capture over 2,000 images. Then, we used software to put all of these together and render each tusk fully, including the text that identified each one, the texture and the colours. The resulting file can be printed as a 3D object, experienced online or in virtual reality. At some point, you'll be able to experience the pile at scale and walk around it.

I see it as an extension of capturing and experiencing our world through the photographic process. For a long time, we had the X and the Y, the two dimensions; but now, we can add the third dimension, the Z. I've been calling it "Photography 3.0". I like exploring new tools and bringing them to artists. It's what I did 30 years ago with colour printing at Toronto Image Works. Now we're bringing artists in here to be able to use these new tools to start to think differently, to make things that were impossible up until now.

Photo by Jim Panou / Edward Burtynsky Studio

Throughout your career, you've been documenting devastating impacts that humans have had on the environment, what changes have you noticed in our relationship to nature over that period of time?
I've been interested in the scale and speed at which humans have been affecting the natural world. Whether it's sea life, wetlands or forests, we've been involved in the transformation of many landscapes. All living creatures go to nature to find the source of what they need to survive. What I've seen working on my projects for the past 35, 40 years, is the speed and scale of change brought about by technology, that has allowed us to move from, when I was born, 2.5 billion humans to now 7.5. That acceleration has a lot of repercussions for the environment: oceans are being depleted of fish, getting warmer and more acidic; coral life is nearly lost; forests are constantly being pressured. We're creating wasteland from what once was a natural landscape. It is daunting to think of what the solutions are. Having seen those wastelands has given me the sense that time is of the essence. Time for talking is over and it's time for action. The burning of the tusks, whether people agree with it or not, is something that brings world attention and says: "we need to do something now, not tomorrow."

What impacts are Canadians having on the environment?
As Canadians, we are the custodians of one of the most important forest in the world, the Boreal forest. Biologists and scientists like to say that it's the second lung of the world, the first being the Amazon. It's under threat because of global warming, the pine beetle epidemic, drought, and so on. We also have the Great Lakes, which represent 22 percent of the world's known available freshwater. Add to that the two million lakes north of the 49th parallel and we have 32 percent of the world's known freshwater. In comparison, China with 1.5 billion people only has eight percent. We are the stewards of an incredible and important piece of property. Thus, we have a big responsibility.

I'm encouraged by the current government because the discussion is now on the table and an action plan is being put together. We still have things to resolve such as how to deal with the oil sands and the additional CO2 emissions that results from that type of extraction and how can we become an example for the world. The biggest thing that the Western world has to do is help to prevent an increase in the number of coal plants going into India, Indonesia, Africa and China. If all the coal plants that are currently in the books are constructed, then, I believe it's game over. So we need to figure out how do we leapfrog over coal power.

One can make the argument that the forest fires happening in Fort McMurray remind Canadians of the impacts of our behaviours.
We're seeing these enormous events occurring now, from the loss of the coral reef, to Hurricane Katrina or the forest fires in Fort McMurray, that can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuel, the reduction of forest canopies or of planktons in the ocean, and so on. We're losing the natural mechanisms for dealing with C02 while adding more of it to the system. Our hands are all over the problems.

Photo by Jim Panou / Edward Burtynsky Studio

In that context what impact can visual storytellers such as yourself, still hope to make?
As photographers, we capture these worlds that most of us no longer engage with, such as the wastelands, or the mines, the logging areas or the fisheries. There are no reasons for us to go there anymore. We go to the shopping mall instead. Showing these places on films or on camera allow us to own up to the fact that there is another world that is experiencing change. As our cities grow, other areas are diminishing. There's a yin to the yang. I believe in the power of images to be able to open up consciousness and raise awareness to a world that's happening around us and that we have no opportunity to see on our own.

What does 3D bring to the table?
3D is allowing artist to have access to tools that give them new ways to tell stories. Artists are a consciousness. They are often the researchers in the R&D lab of human experience, understanding where we're going, where our psyches are going and where desires are going. Artists are always at the cutting edge of fooling around with the expanding human consciousness. 3D, whether as a computer or VR experience, or as a physical object, will have impacts deep into the future. I'm interested in getting them in the hands of creators to build better worlds.

For instance, we're trying to replicate the shell of a turtle that's being threatened by ravens who have taken to killing them for fun. With the help of scientists we're hoping to create a realistic copy that as soon as the raven pokes it with his beak sends a smell or a response that deters him from trying again. We're intervening in nature to create a moment that helps these turtles survive. To succeed it needs to be as realistic as it can be.

You're also working with virtual reality, why take on two new technologies at once?
There a natural fit. If I'm working with capturing something full colour in three dimensions that I can print, than it already exists as a file on the computer and can be easily experienced in the virtual reality headsets. Once you go in the third dimension, all these tools start to make sense. They're just extension of ways of experiencing the world.

A lot of people believe VR creates more empathy; do you share those views?
It can create more empathy in the viewer if used properly. Right now, it's still pretty blunt instrument. People are not using it so effectively. I'm really curious as to how one begins taking someone through a 360 experience and actually guides their viewing, keeping their attention in the right space. When done well, you can feel as if you're actually in another space experiencing that moment and it's kind of uncanny.

Hearing you talk, I feel that calling you a photographer would be reductive or is it that being a photographer is more than taking pictures?
I've never been just a photographer because my curiosity runs 30 deep. Now, it'd a team effort. I'm more of a director now, whether it's running my businesses, making films or photography. I'm using teams to achieve what it is that I want to achieve. I couldn't be doing this without great people around me.

What have been some of the most memorable moments that you have experienced?
One of the first places where I was totally blown away, were the shipwrecks in Bangladesh in the 2000s. It was like being Dickens and going back to see the beginning of the industrial era when the conditions were so dangerous people were dying. It was jaw-dropping and hard to believe that it was happening today. Around the same time, I also went to India. Coming from Canada, I had never seen such poverty, people being born and dying on the streets, the whole cycle of life right in front of you. It was an awakening in understanding the scale of humanity and its impacts.

How have those experiences shape the way you lead your life?
I try to live as sustainably as one can. I have this property up North where I planted over 2,000 trees. When I travel, I offset on the best standard I can find. I've had a hybrid car for years and only use it when absolutely needed. I prefer to bike. I try to eat sensibly. And in my work, I always advocate for a more sustainable world. I've become a strong advocate for sustainability.

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