Port Tablot steel works

Driving along the A48 from Cardiff, the coastal views suddenly give way to the enormous industrial sprawl that makes up the Port Talbot steelworks. Part Blade Runner, part Call of Duty multiplayer map, it's a dystopian, brutalist and compellingly beautiful aesthetic.

I'm driving to meet with Jason Balston, a 47-year-old heavy plant operator and union rep who has worked at Tata Steel since 2001. One study says Tata is "the most economically important private sector company in Wales", but it has come under increasing pressure in recent months. In the 1960s, Port Talbot's steelworks employed 20,000 people. That has dwindled to 4,000, and in January it was announced that 750 of those jobs would be cut.

Jason invites me into his living room. A reality show called Ice Road Truckers is on the TV. Jason pauses it on an image of an eight-wheeled vehicle struggling not to slide down a vertical slab of ice into a lake. Tata Steel made the news again last week when a spectacular fire broke out early on Thursday morning. The initial theory, not yet discounted, was that a lightning strike was to blame – a stroke of bad luck that would fit with Tata's current predicament.

I ask Jason what he made of the fire. He laughs and tells me that initially he shit himself – the security system immediately shut all power down across the entire site, sending his office into darkness. But he says it was no big deal, really, and in truth, it's difficult to imagine Jason scared. Before working for Harsco (a long term partner of Tata) he spent years at sea as a commercial fisherman – a job he says he'll go back to if the worst comes to the worst. Jason looks briefly again at the paused TV screen and I decide he could probably handle himself as an ice road trucker if fishing goes the same way as steel.

Jason

On Monday in Brussels, steel workers from 15 EU countries are marching to demand that the European Commission stop cheap Chinese steel being "dumped" in Europe. Jason explains that, in the last year, China produced more steel than the UK has in the last 12 years. He goes on to say that the Chinese steel is known to be difficult to mill and is generally regarded as being "fucking useless to work with". But it's cheap, while the Port Talbot plant struggles with high energy prices and a strong pound. Among other large-scale projects in Wales and the UK to utilise Chinese steel, the wind turbines that have sprung up over much of the south Wales coastline are mostly made out of it. "Absolute madness," says Jason.

In addition to Jason's partner, Tiff, his stepson also works at Tata, having previously been employed washing pots in a hotel kitchen. Jason also has relatives and life-long friends who either work at the steelworks, work for companies that provide services to the site or have small businesses like cafes and pubs whose financial viability relies entirely on decent levels of local employment.

It's almost impossible to overstate how important Tata is to the local community. With pay starting at around £30,000, the steel works puts about £200 million a year into the economy in salaries alone. Port Talbot can't afford to lose steel, but the plant is losing £1 million every day.

Jason has overseen job losses before, and as a union representative has had to deliver the bad news to childhood friends, watching as grown men break down in tears across the table from him. He says it's difficult, particularly as many of the employees have worked there since the age of 16 and often have few, if any, transferable skills. "Going fishing with your butty on Sunday, knowing you're firing him on the Monday... well, you just get on with it don't you?" says Jason.

South Wales has seen this before, with the demise of the coal industry in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher. But while Jason doesn't have much love for the Tories, past or present, his anger is mainly reserved for the Labour Party.

"They're just not interested in us, never have been," he says. Aberavon's incumbent MP is Stephen Kinnock, son of former Labour leader Neil and husband of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015. He is as close to European political aristocracy as you could get.

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Kinnock won a majority of over 10,000 at the last election. That election saw something of a surge for UKIP, which gained nearly 5,000 votes compared to just short of 500 in 2010. I ask Jason about UKIP and he nods, saying that the party is gaining support among his colleagues.

As I leave, I ask Jason to sum up how he sees Tata's long-term prospects.

"Grim" he replies, matter of factly. He smiles and un-pauses the television. I suspect that Jason will be fine whatever happens, but it's clear that a great many people in these parts will have to struggle to make ends meet.

Follow Joshua and check out his website. Joshua was assisted by Jary Poe Villanueva.

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Crowds at Brixton Splash in 2014 (Screen shot via)

The fate of "South London's answer to Notting Hill Carnival" is in jeopardy. Lambeth council has rejected an application from the organisers of the Brixton Splash festival, an annual sound system street party founded in 2005.

According to the Evening Standard, the party has become a "victim of its own success", with last year's event seeing a surge in crime and a "huge amount of drug taking", including event staff allegedly smoking cannabis on the job, as well as a gun being found on one of the 40 arrested guests.

The news isn't wholly unwelcome, even among those involved with the event. Ros Griffiths, one of the festival's founders, who has since stepped aside, spoke to London Live this morning and said Brixton Splash had "moved away from what it was meant to be about". She agreed that "the council has a duty of care to make sure all visitors are safe. They cannot have an event spiralling out of control or wait for something to happen." The news will also presumably came as a relief to residents who complained about the noise and "mountains" of litter.

However, one of the party's current organisers, Shezal Laing, also talking to with London Live, was keen to stress that Lambeth council had barely considered the application, let alone opened a dialogue about improving safety. She claimed their application had been blocked on "every level", despite the council "not having enough information to make a decision".

This sentiment was echoed in a statement released by board members of Brixton Splash, who have accused the town hall of trying to take over the event, as well as suggesting the council has deliberately blocked any possibility of a meeting between organisers and the community. They conclude their statement arguing that "Lambeth's dwindling financial support and physical support over the last few years shows its true feelings towards the event."

That said, a spokesperson for Lambeth council has hinted that the rejection might not spell a permanent end to the event, stating: "We need to pause it for this year, let the community take it back to its roots as a safe, fun event for everyone with professional organisation."

Despite irrefutable scientific evidence calling out the dangers of asbestos, 2 million tons of the carcinogen are exported every year to the developing world, where it's often handled with little to no regulation.

For this episode of VICE Reports, correspondent Milène Larsson traveled to the world's largest asbestos mine in the eponymous town of Asbest, Russia, to meet workers whose livelihoods revolve entirely around the dangerous mineral. Surprisingly, the risks associated with asbestos mining didn't seem to worry the inhabitants; in fact, asbestos is the city's pride, celebrated with monuments, songs, and even its own museum.

Larsson then visits Libby, Montana, another mining town almost on the other side of the globe, where the effects of asbestos exposure are undeniable: 400 townspeople have died from asbestos-related diseases, and many more are slowly choking to death. Why is the deadly industry of mining and selling asbestos still alive and well?

One of many, many friend zone memes

I have to admit something: there have been many times in the past that I thought I'd been friend-zoned. There were girls I thought I had a special thing going with, thanks to the all-day text conversations, the spooning in front of films, the sheer phenomenon of them wanting to spend extended periods of time with me. But then I'd muster up the guts to ask them out and was invariably told it wouldn't work. They loved hanging out as friends and were worried that, if they said anything, I wouldn't want to hang out any more. At the time, I was indignant. How dare they! How dare a woman just want a male friend?!

It's embarrassing to recall those thoughts. Before my crash course at the Open University of #Woke I really believed in the existence of the "friend zone", a platonic purgatory you were annexed to by girls who knew you liked them, but didn't have the basic courtesy to like you back.

How did I come to define my position like this? Growing up I had long, dyed black hair and listened to Slipknot; I encountered rejection regularly. It still hurt, and sometimes I blamed the girl, but I never labelled it. According to the internet, it seems the beginnings of the phrase can – like anything fundamentally evil on this cold, dark Earth – be traced back to a 1994 episode of Friends. Specifically, "The One with the Blackout":

From Joey's quip, a millennial state of mind was spawned. "Friend zone" gradually became a verb as well as a noun. It got its own Wikipedia page; it became the basis of countless memes; it inspired an MTV programme in which contestants have to confess their love for a best friend in front of an entire camera crew in the hope they'll "escape the friend zone" and immediately go on an incredibly awkward, filmed date together

So how would you define this state of being? Google says it's "a situation in which a friendship exists between two people, one of whom has an unreciprocated romantic or sexual interest in the other". So unrequited love or lust, essentially. Only the reality is it's become much more nuanced (and gendered) than that.

Geoffrey, 26, defines the friend zone as an "accurate way of describing one of the harsh, unfortunate truths that often comes when you have a deluded moment and think you have a chance with someone". Wesley, a 26-year-old musician, says it's "a name for something that most males would give to , but their endeavours to fuck or date drew a blank. I think using the term friend zone is an admission of failure – like, your mates will take the piss and say you've been 'friend-zoned'."

And for women? Emily, 24, says the friend zone is "a bullshit way for men to justify their feelings of entitlement towards women. It's an assumption that if you're nice to a woman, they're somehow obligated to return the interest in some way." Vanessa, a 28-year-old singer, suggests the term has "definite undertones of aggression and resentment. It is often used to mean 'she has wronged me' or 'he has unfairly rejected me'. It implies perceived victimhood and injustice."

Lots of pick-up artists upload videos to do with the friend zone. This one, a man named Tripp, reckons he knows why the girl you like 'friend-zoned' you rather than having sex with you. (Screen shot via)

The difference in attitudes is stark. As I understand it, from talking to people I know, men see the term as being associated with defeat and disillusionment, like it's a competition or game they have been cheated or tricked in. Women see it as related to entitlement, antagonism and animosity – unsurprising, considering they're the "prizes" in this perceived competition.

When asked for some of their experiences, the guys' often mirrored those I'd had in the past. Some kind of lingering feeling towards a female friend builds up to an apex and an admission is blurted out and then it gets all weird.

Kevin, however, says he knew his female friend had a boyfriend, but kept hanging out "because she was really good looking and I had no self esteem". One night he decided it was time he "laid his cards on the table" and told her how he felt. She said she was flattered, says Kevin, but that she didn't have the same feelings. "She still invited me back to hers. We slept in the same bed, but nothing happened," he says. "Whenever I think back to this, I scream at my younger self: 'Go home and have some self respect!'"

These kind of mostly placid experiences weren't shared by the women I spoke to. Their stories usually involve a man being good friends with them, until one day he confesses his attraction, seemingly out of the blue. When rejected, the situation gets messy: the friend gets angry with the woman for apparently leading them on, or at the very least says he is unable to see her any more. The guy continues to act like a baby and the friendship is abruptly cut short.

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Of course, this isn't to say that any man who's had his romantic advances rebuffed will have thrown a hissy fit about it. Many men are perfectly capable of empathy and processing basic emotional and physical cues, and will understand that just because they like someone, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be liked back. However, it's clear that some men also aren't capable of that – or at least that they need hindsight to help them realise that relationships are not purely transactional. It says something pretty damning about straight men that so many of us, even unconsciously, appear to believe that you put in the nice behaviour and the friendship, and then at the end of all that you get your allocated bit of sex.

I say "straight men" because all the people I spoke to suggested the friend zone is a purely heterosexual male-female occurrence. Emily, for example, who's bi, says she's found herself in friend zone situations with "dude friends" but never her "queer women friends". Similarly, 25-year-old Todd, who's gay, says: "I don't think I've ever been what you'd consider friend-zoned. Nearly all the gay friends I have are guys I've previously dated, so I guess it's like the reverse of the friend zone? I've been date-zoned and got friends out of it."

Everyone I spoke to agreed that hetero male-female friendships can happily stay platonic, too, by the way. Straight single people of different genders can, it turns out, spend time with one another without either fucking or one person feeling personally attacked because there's no fucking going on.

"It's possible to have a completely platonic relationship, but I do think most friendships are sparked by a base level attraction, and that at some point this desire to fuck is filtered out, leaving only a platonic relationship standing," says Kevin.

Laura, a 26-year-old PA, agrees, saying: "I think most male-female friendships start through fancying, or at least being confused into thinking you fancy them because you're a girl and he's a guy and you really like hanging out, so you must fancy him, right?"

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So what does that tell us about love and sex and men and women? That – depending on age or maturity or your feelings about men's rights activism – some men believe a woman is slighting them by not being into it when they suddenly announce they want to start kissing and doing hand stuff instead of just hanging out with each other.

The phrase "friend zone" has become an acceptable way to target that blame, which is clearly not a positive thing. A culture that blames women when men don't get their way is not what we should be going for in this, the good year of our Lord, 2016.

But, you know, takeaway: if you like someone but they don't like you back, just don't freak out and say you can't see them any more. It's a really quick way to make a new regret.

Follow Tom on Twitter.

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Tame Impala playing at Zenith. Photo by Nicko Guihal.

Emma Parkinson is an Australian who was wounded in last year's terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. Today she sent us this piece on learning to love live music again. It's been lightly edited for clarity.

Reviews of Tame Impala concerts usually wax lyrical about blissed-out crowds dreamily singing along as their hands lazily drift through plumes of weed smoke. This is an accurate description. In the three times I've seen them, everybody there has been more interested in arm waving than foot stomping. The ambiance is laid back and joyful, and being part of the audience is like being part of a community. Being part of a Tame Impala audience gives you the sense that everybody is your friend.

Or that's what it's normally like—but not when I saw the band on January 31. That was the first gig I've been to since the Eagles of Death Metal massacre at the Bataclan.

I moved to Paris from Germany in early November 2015 to try and get a bit more independence. I'd been working as an au pair in Germany, and it was quite socially isolating. So I was excited to be in a position where I had complete control of my own schedule. Goodbye to the small sleepy towns I'd lived in before. I was moving to a mecca of culture. Every day would mean new places to go and new people to see. I would do things like go to concerts alone and meet new people.

On the night of Friday, November 13, that's exactly what I did. I was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert when members of ISIS opened fire on the audience. I was very lucky to get out quickly—injured in the crossfire but not seriously. I was ecstatic to be alive, and I was going back to Australia to recover. Living in Paris, I never expected that I'd deal with such a horrific thing.

In the following months, I felt anxious in crowds, especially in theaters. I even had a few anxiety attacks, but I found these were relatively easy to deal with because of the professional help I was receiving. I had the right coping strategies in place, and I was prepared for anxiety. What was much harder to deal with was the lack of trust I had developed in myself and in the people around me. Harder still was an incredible feeling of isolation. I felt like nobody understood me, or what I went through. I've had a big part of my innocence ripped from me in a such a way that my friends and peers can't understand. And I don't—I wouldn't—want them to.

Emma in Germany. Photo by Sam Gunner.

Fast forward a few months. I've come back to Paris. Eagles of Death Metal have re-scheduled their concert for February 16, and I plan to go. I'd bought tickets to see Tame Impala at Zénith some months back, so I decided to arrive early and see that concert too.

The contrast between my experiences as a Tame Impala audience member since the last time I saw them, at Paris's Rock en Seine festival, was stark. Instead of a sense of community, I felt completely alone. It frustrated me that so many people (over 6,000) could feel so joyously carefree while I felt so uneasy and afraid. I was jealous of their innocence.

The band opened with "Let It Happen," one of my favorite songs off its new album Currents. The song, like many others in the band's discography, deals with themes of isolation—"the notion growing inside / that all the others seem shallow / all this running around / bearing down on my shoulders."

It completely mirrored what I was feeling in that moment, but the urgency of the drums and synths was reflective of my anxiety, and it helped me to dance instead of running away like I wanted to.

A few songs into the set, I decided that being at the front of the audience was too much, so I headed to the balcony next to an exit. Walking with my back to the stage, past thousands of smiling faces, while Kevin Parker crooned the lines "try to be sane / try to pretend that none of it happened" was an incredibly intense emotional experience—probably the most connected I've felt to a piece of music in my life.

Then something happened. I was feeling so alone and broken, but my intense connection to the music, slowly and without my noticing, gave me back that sense of belonging that I'd missed so much. Standing there, watching the crowd sing along to lyrics like "I know that I'll be happier / and I know you will too / eventually," and dancing made me feel as if we were all a part of the same thing, even though I felt as if I wasn't occupying the same space as everybody else. It felt like these songs had been written for me, to help me deal with what I was going through. I spent nearly the whole night crying and dancing like a maniac—the people around me probably thought I was insane. It wasn't what most people would describe as a positive concert experience, but for me, it was incredibly cathartic and beautiful.

The overall tone of Tame Impala is joyous melancholy, knowing that things are really shit right now but also seeing that change is inevitable and that things will probably get better. This felt especially pertinent to me that night, but I think it's relevant for all people, no matter their past experiences.

Everybody in that room was connecting with those ideas, and through the music, we were all connecting with each other. That's the beautiful thing about music. It's an abstract expression of emotion, which means that everybody can connect to it emotionally. Music has been there for me when I needed it all through my life, and it's still there for me now. Music gives strength in the face of adversity, and fosters a sense of community in everybody—especially, I think, in those who need it the most.

So if I can urge anybody to do anything, it would be to get out there and support the bands you love, to go and find new bands to support and love, but most of all, to support and love each other.

When a handwritten list was discovered in the bedroom of one of three Bethnal Green schoolgirls who fled to join Islamic State in Syria last February, items included a £50 epilator, a £12 bra and a pair of new knickers. The scribbles told us something. "It's stuff a teenage girl would pack when she's going away with a girlfriend to Ibiza for the weekend," says comedian Shazia Mirza. "Yet you're going to join a sixth century, barbaric terrorist organisation. It's an absolute fantasy."

When the fantasy became global news, Shazia was on a sofa in New York with a friend watching pictures of these young girls flash up on CNN. What she saw "horrified" her: "I really felt like I had something to say about this". Within months, she'd written all the material for her show, The Kardashians Made Me Do It – a comedy gig about IS and jihadi brides, censorship and fear, which is now touring the UK.

Shazia was born in Birmingham but now "doesn't live there any more because she's doing well" (according to her own website). She made her name on the comedy circuit in 2001, when after 9/11 she'd open her shows with the line: "My name's Shazia Mirza – at least that's what it says on my pilot's licence." Six years later, she presented a BBC Three documentary which was similarly brazen. Its title? F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman. We caught up with her to ask about the merits of confronting IS with satire.

Shazia Mirza. Photo via Wikimedia.

VICE: Hi Shazia. Why did you decide to make a comedy show about young women joining Islamic State?
SM: I find it very difficult these days to have an opinion that I care about... But I was horrified by the story of these girls. I really felt like I had something to say about it. I felt like I could relate to them in some way. I think this is the first time in the 12 years I've been doing standup that I've actually written a show that I really want to do.

I don't believe that people go and join ISIS because they're angry about a war in Afghanistan when they weren't even born to witness it. I used to teach in Tower Hamlets, round the corner from where the girls used to go to school, and they never talked about religion but they always talked about boys.

When David Cameron says they're radicalised: me and my friends don't even understand what that word means. They're not radicalised – they've been sexualised by these men.

You've been very outspoken about these things in the past. Do you get a lot of grief?
I feel that I was forced to say things in the past. When I first started I was the only Asian woman in comedy and I felt so much pressure immediately to represent all Asians, speak for the community, explain why wars are happening – to explain things that a) I know nothing about and b) I wasn't a developed enough comedian to deliver.

A lot of the early reviews for The Kardashians Made Me Do It used words like "brave". You've referred to IS as the "One Direction of Islam". Are you nervous about putting yourself out there with this material?
All the early reviews of my show were written by white men, all of them, and a lot of them don't understand what I'm talking about. And you can't blame them for that, because why would they know? As I say in the show, they say that they want to hear the things I'm talking about, but in actual fact I feel like they don't want to hear it from me. They want to hear it from Stewart Lee and Mark Thomas – straight, white men they can relate to.

Speaking of straight white men, David Cameron's "language fund" to teach Muslim women English seems to have made your show even more relevant.
The Muslim women I know speak better English than the English people I know who have been born and brought up in this country. I kind of understand David Cameron: he's a white, upper class male. It's a very particular life that he's lived. Where during his life has he met a lot of Asian or Muslim women and known them? Probably never.

But to call me "brave", I find quite patronising. I'm not brave – I'm just like every other comedian. I'm not doing standup in Syria. I mean, that would be brave. I'm doing standup in a democracy where you can say what you like.

You are, but you still have to deal with complaints because of what you say.
So does Frankie Boyle...

Last year you spoke about "liberation" on Radio 4 and said: "I know Muslim women who are head-to-toe covered in black who are very liberated in their thoughts and actions but one might look at them and think they're imprisoned." You got quite a few complaints after that – were you surprised?
Yes, I have a whole section in my show about that. I said exactly what I thought: I think the burka is very liberating because you don't get judged for your sexuality. A lot of women equate liberation with covering themselves up but still having a free mind.

I don't know any women who have been forced to wear it. I know a lot of women who wear it and their husbands don't like it. My father never liked my mother wearing it – and my dad is a pretty culturally strict, Pakistani man. I know very few women who wear the burka. I have a friend who wears a niqab and that's her choice.

You called your show 'The Kardashians Made Me Do It'. What do they have to do with jihadi brides?
I didn't want to call it that. I wanted to call it 'The Road to al-Baghdadi' but the Tricycle Theatre putting it on wouldn't let me because they were really worried that ISIS were going to turn up.

Are you scared of that too?
Everybody's scared. You'll never know the truth as long as there's fear, which is exactly what ISIS wants. I think they were worried somebody would turn up and kill people in the theatre for putting the show on. Which is not out of the realms of possibility... they thought it would end up on Twitter and, of course, ISIS are always on Twitter.

So why did you go for the Kardashians name instead?
When the three girls from Bethnal Green went to join ISIS, their sister said, according to the Home Affairs Select Committee, "I can't understand why she's gone – she used to watch the Kardashians, you know?" That's what she told the government! I couldn't believe it! But I could understand. She was trying to say – look, she was normal. She watches the Kardashians like everyone else.

Thanks, Shazia.

Shazia Mirza is touring the UK in 'The Kardashians Made Me Do It', including a stint at the Soho Theatre, London, March 1-5.

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(Photo via kov-A-c)

On Sunday, a New York-bound Virgin Airways flight returned to Heathrow Airport after a laser beam was shone at the cockpit. The laser reportedly affected the pilot to such a degree that he had to be met by ambulance staff, but not hospitalised. So that's good. The British Airline Pilots' Association was quick to comment on the incident, calling for the British government to classify lasers as "offensive weapons" in order to prevent such incidents from ever happening again.

However, if you went on eBay right now and searched for a "5mW laser", hundreds of results would appear, with prices as low as £4. If you were in the mood to attack an aeroplane from the ground – and, by the way, we are not saying you in any way should – these are the doozies you would use. Easy access means that this damage isn't being caused by a group of evil masterminds, but instead by bored teenagers pointing key rings at planes for fun.

Between 2009 and June of 2015, 8,998 laser incidents across the country were reported to the UK Civil Aviation Authority, with nearly 200 incidents of laser targeting reported in the US each day in 2015.

Coincidentally, on the same day as the Virgin Airways laser attack, the International Air Transport Association released a report stating that 2015 was an "extraordinarily safe year" for air travel, with the global jet accident rate equivalent to just one major accident for every 3.1 million flights.

This begs the question: is all this worrying about lasers for nothing? Is air travel safer than it's ever been, or will lasers soon cause us all to regularly screech out of the sky? I asked aerospace writer Paul E Eden to debunk a few flying myths.

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VICE: What happens when a laser beam hits an aeroplane?
Paul E Eden: With the laser light, by the time it gets to the aeroplane it's spread quite widely. This isn't just a pinprick of light shining in their eye; this is a light that floods the cockpit. Because the windscreen panels are made of layers of material, the light defuses, and what you can get is whole panel that turns the colour of the laser light. You can't see though it at all – even if it's just for a couple of seconds.

Oh, so these laser beams can actually be pretty dangerous then?
Luckily, there hasn't been a case of permanent damage to a pilot's eyes yet, but to a pilot, eyes and ears are everything – you can't fly without them. Then there are the actual hazards of flying if you are blinded, even for a couple of seconds – the pilot will be lost and could hit something.

How is the threat of lasers different from other hazards pilots face?
Pilots naturally train for the unexpected; they look around the cockpit all the time. They will literally lean forward in their seat to look for potential hazards. So as soon as something unusual happens, like a laser shining at them, they naturally look towards it. And this is what you absolutely shouldn't do, because it will blind you. So a pilot's training instinctively causes them to do the one thing they shouldn't do in this instance. Pilots have to be able to recognise that threat and work in a way that's alien to them to avoid it.

If there haven't been any accidents yet, should passengers be concerned with the threat of lasers, or of consumer-level drones causing planes to crash?
Personally, I would be more concerned with choosing a safe airline to fly with, rather than being concerned by the risks of a laser shining at the aeroplane. If you are flying in the UK or North America and most of Europe, really, you haven't got any concerns with safety. People like to say, 'Ah, maybe flying with EasyJet or Ryan Air is more of a risk because they are cheap,' but the maintenance is fabulous; all the planes are maintained so well and the crews are trained so highly, so it's judging about where you fly and whom you are flying with.

So some countries have safer aviation systems than others?
If you look at the statistics for where the most aeroplane accidents happen, it's clear. Airlines in countries such as Russia, and then parts of Asia and Africa, are more prone to accidents. It really all comes down to the oversight; sometimes there aren't necessarily the government organisations ensuring that the standards are kept and that training is done to standard. Also, you sometimes don't get the same ethos within the industry; you don't get the same experience levels in other parts of the world. In the UK, a lot of our pilots come from the RAF, with brilliant knowledge and expertise. But for an airline in other countries, when something does go wrong, often people don't have that background to decide what's best to do.

So, really, we shouldn't worry about lasers?
Lasers are less of a threat to aeroplanes, as they are only in contact in take off and landing, and usually at that time you don't have anything in front of you. But when you start thinking about police or ambulance helicopters, which have also been targeted, that's difficult, because they are flying much lower down and are slow moving. If you think of a police helicopter over London, all those tower cranes and chimneys, a pilot wouldn't have to make much of an error before they are down in the high stuff. It is a worry – it really is.

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Apart from lasers, what are the main hazards pilots are looking out for?
Typically, if there are other aeroplanes that have deviated from their flight path. Often that would be a light aircraft, someone who has gone out flying with their friend. Another thing that pilots are constantly aware of is birds, as they can do a lot of damage to an aeroplane very quickly.

From flying into the engine?
Yes, they can damage the engine, but other parts of the aeroplane as well. It would be unlikely for birds to bring down an airliner, but they could damage it enough for it to have to return to where it had just taken off from. In very rare cases a bird will actually make a hole in an aeroplane.

What's the biggest hazard to an aeroplane?
Sorry to be boring, but it's weather. Wind shear, for example, is probably the biggest risk. Imagine you were leaning left on someone with all your weight and suddenly they push you right; that's what windshear is: a completely unexpected push in the opposite direction to where you think you were going. But this is something airlines are getting to grips with now because there are new systems in place where pilots can be forewarned.

How do pilots prepare against these hazards?
Through very advanced simulated training. Typically a pilot will be in the mock cockpit with all the system that would be in the real aeroplane, and they will have moving visuals around them. Pilots don't just use simulator tests in their training, but have to go regularly throughout their career to practice emergency procedures. The tests will run a programme of emergencies, but also insert things they weren't expecting, like failing an engine. The pilots are always being tested to extremes they will probably never encounter.

What about bombs – should people actually worry about them?
Well, bombs are quite different because they come from people causing damage with intent. Aeroplanes are built to standards where they are far stronger than they need to be to fly safely. But you can't make an aeroplane bomb-proof. Ultimately, it comes down to stopping those bombs getting on the plane in the first place.

So, overall, is flying becoming more or less dangerous?
I don't think flying has been dangerous since the 1940s. Of course, there are always risks involved, but I think those risks reduce all the time. Every new airliner is safer than the one that came before. Also, the industry is very inward-looking at any mishaps it has had, always questioning why it was that something went wrong and trying to find a way to fix it. For example, if a car crash happens on the M1 because a driver has pulled into a lane without signalling, and then if all car drivers , things naturally become a lot safer.

Thanks, Paul – that's put my mind at rest.

@ameliadimz

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The new BBC Three launches with the bloke off Twilight and Greg Davis. Hilarity ensues?

They saved 6 Music, they saved the libraries, but they couldn't save Stacey Dooley. On Tuesday night, BBC Three, Britain's only publicly funded station aimed at young people, switched off its channel and moved online.

On its final night it on telly, it ran trails for its new online incarnation, repeatedly promising that it would "provoke a reaction". But mostly, it showed old episodes of the channel's greatest hits, like Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey, Don't Tell The Bride and other family viewing staples, most of which subsequently found homes on more mainstream channels.

Perhaps the above shows were conservative commissions, or perhaps they shifted the boundaries of mainstream taste to the left, but it's a moot point. Look at TFI Friday, launched as a teatime anarchic lad culture show in the 90s, only to return in 2015 as a jewel in the crown of primetime, its host now middle-aged and still listening to U2. It highlighted the way one decade's groundbreaking anything-goes format is the next's here-we-go-again template.

But we know that when it works, youth TV can have a phenomenal impact on culture. Shows like The Tube and The Word had relatively low ratings at the time, but they have become part of the cultural shorthand for their respective decades. The same goes for comedies like Big Train, Jam, The 11 O'Clock Show and the eponymous outings for Adam and Joe and Armando Iannucci. Those shows all demonstrated a new generation of comedy writers in touch with the way culture was changing at the turn of the century. Their impact on comedy is still felt today: you don't need to tell anyone who works at VICE about the lasting popularity of Channel 4's one-season hipster sitcom Nathan Barley, for example.

BBC Three itself was responsible for a raft of inventive shows it chose not to showcase last night: Monkey Dust's hand-drawn dystopia and the macabre hairdresser comedy Nighty Night, as well as astute pirate radio parody People Just Do Nothing and The Revolution Will Be Televised, a hidden camera show with a deep grasp of political economy.

Now that it is free from the shackles of broadcast television, BBC Three has an opportunity bring new young voices into British culture. We are desperate for that. How can it be that our most astute British TV comedy commentators - people like Charlie Brooker, Stewart Lee, Armando Iannucci - are all white men who have been in television for over twenty years?

This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.

Four months ago, I dropped my boyfriend James* off at rehab – the same rehab I took my first boyfriend to 10 years before. While James filled out paperwork and spoke with counselors, I worried that his insurance would only cover the five-day detox that never worked for him. I worried that he would die.

It was terrifying, yet familiar. I'm 27. Since the age of 17, I've had three long-term relationships – and all three were with men who were addicted to heroin.

Even though drugs seem to be everywhere in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where I live, this can't be a coincidence. After the first guy – Timothy, a wrestler I started dating in high school – I told myself I'd never date a heroin-user again. (I don't even smoke weed, and I've never touched opioids.) But it kept happening.

I know everyone else thinks it's weird.

People tend to assume I fall in love with the thrill of addiction. But I fell in love with their personalities – with people who happened to have addiction issues. None of my boyfriends were actively using when we first met. One experimented on the party scene and got into opioids; another got into heroin after being prescribed Percocet; another was in recovery when we got together, but relapsed. All of them were fiercely passionate about their love for me.

I liked their intensity and their edges. They were hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside types. Bad boys who ran with tough crowds, who cursed and were unpredictable. They were outgoing at parties – fun guys. As an overly cautious person myself, I was drawn to the way they sought out adventure. They were curious about the things that scared me. They protected me, and I felt safe with them.

When I say they were soft on the inside, I mean they knew pain. James lost his dad to suicide. He is one of seven, and all of his siblings have addiction issues. Ryan had to deal with his mom's alcoholism his whole life. They would say they were good at pushing their pain away, but they all had these insecurities that made them so sensitive – a quality that is rare to find in a guy.

With them, I felt understood, and loved as a whole person, all my flaws included. They were uncomfortable people who knew how to comfort others. Because I loved them and they treated me so well, I went out of my way to try to make them comfortable, too.

My friends and family didn't like that. They said that I – a bubbly former cheerleader who demands to be taken to the emergency room if I even have a bad hangover – was too good for them.

"He won't change," everyone told me, which only made me angrier: I don't know that, and he doesn't know that, so who are you to say that?

I cried in the shower because I couldn't find a person who would listen. Even online, everything I read was negative: He's an addict? Dump him!

What no one seemed capable of understanding was that I was in love and fighting for my partner's health – just as theywould if their significant other were ill. I wasn't better than my boyfriends, though I did have an easier time growing up.

Those people who talk down to me also don't understand that what they have is not necessarily better, just because their boyfriends' screw-ups are less stigmatised. When I think about my friends' relationships, I'm not jealous. I can't imagine putting up with half the shit that my friends in "normal" relationships do.

I never worried that my boyfriends would cheat on me, or fall in love with someone else. They were beyond committed to me, devoted almost to the point of obsession. They sent cards with long letters, gifts on every holiday (whether they were stolen or purchased, I don't know). They knew what it was like to have your back against a wall, and so they always had mine.

This kind of ride-or-die commitment was compelling. Sometimes, that was a bad thing. When you're dating a guy like this, what you love about them can also be what drives you crazy. That passion can turn into a threat to jump out the window, with them counting down: "Five, four, three – are you going to get back together with me? – two, one."

That wasn't love; it was manipulation. You have to learn the draw the line.

And of course there were other lows – like the time Ryan was out of Suboxone and withdrawing the whole drive back from the Jersey Shore, puking out my car window. I was freaking out over him being so sick, trying to take him to the hospital (of course), but he wouldn't go.

Instead, I drove him to a corner in Philly, where he got out of the car while I parked, panicking – and I mean, freaking the fuck out – while dudes offered me drugs. And then I looked in my rear-view mirror, and Ryan was gone, and I bawled my eyes out as I imagined every awful thing that could have happened to him. Two seconds later, he's back with a big smile on his face and a pink lemonade.

I've been on drug corners, threatened to kill drug-dealers, and followed, high-speed-chase-style, to make sure my boyfriends were going to 12-step meetings (they weren't). I've called their families and their parole officers, spent hours researching treatment online. I looked through phone records – not just to see who they called, but the cellphone towers they pinged. My detective skills are legend.

And it's weird, but having spent so much time researching addiction and making schedules of AA meetings, I sometimes talk like a person in recovery. I catch myself using phrases like "the pink cloud." I know the recovery mantras and the rehab red tape. The red tape drives me crazy.

How could it be so hard to get help for someone? How many times do I have to see RIP on Facebook, or read another obituary about a 24-year-old who "died suddenly," before we fix this? I had so much trouble getting Ryan into rehab that I joked about pulling a John Q until they would take him.

It's heartbreaking to watch your boyfriend suffer like that. I've seen men cry because they could not figure out how to stop the one thing that was destroying their lives. They hated themselves so much for their failures. I wanted to help them feel like they could be ok, that we could be happy together without drugs. I'd light candles and put on meditation music, stay up with them all night when they were withdrawing.

But love wasn't enough. They couldn't do it for their moms, they couldn't do it for themselves, and they couldn't do it for me.

And even during those spells when they were sober, things weren't magically better. James has now been off opioids for a month, and he's always asking me when we can get back together, like I owe it to him now that he's off drugs. But things got to the point that I was always accusing him of being high, investigating everything, and that was no good for either of us. Addiction had become so engrained in our relationship that sobriety didn't fix our problems.

None of this means I'm bitter. I made a decision to end a relationship that had become unhealthy, even though it started out amazing. I still care about all of my boyfriends, and I try to keep in touch. Right now, all of them are off dope. I have faith in their potential, that they will stay strong and make themselves and other people happy, like they did for me.

I don't know whether my pattern of romantic involvement will continue, but I have no regrets about the time I've spent wrapped up in it. Loving these men taught me how to love harder, how to fight for what you love and believe in, and how to never give up on someone because the situation isn't ideal.

My heart grew bigger because of them.

*All names have been changed. Bree Marie is the pseudonym of a woman who lives in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Andy Smith

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

In light of the recent spate of sextortion cases that have been occurring in which men are convinced by catfish accounts to get on Skype, perform sexual acts, and are then extorted for money, we spoke to a legal expert to figure out what the nuances are inhibiting the scammers involved from being brought to justice. In a recent article on VICE, a male victim, Taylor Cooper, thought it pointless to report what had happened to him because he feared law enforcement would be useless. He suspected the person extorting him was in a different country. However, he was willing to go on the record with his full name to help support other potential victims and warn others who could potentially become victims.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

Kendrick Lamar onstage at the 58th Grammy Awards on February, 16, 2016, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for NARAS

Kendrick Lamar swept the Grammys in rap last night and also provided the most incendiary moment of the event, stealing the show with a prison chain-gang medley of "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright" dedicated to Trayvon Martin. But the critically exalted To Pimp a Butterfly didn't take the biggest golden gramophone of the night, losing out to Taylor Swift's 1989 for album of the year. We're now in for a week's worth of think pieces and hot takes telling us why this shouldn't have happened and unpacking what it really means—for the Grammys, for the music industry, and for American culture as a whole.

Ultimately, the Recording Academy's recognition of Lamar's album—despite the fact that it lost out to Swift's—was both a departure from its historically vanilla style of artist selection and yet another affirmation of it. Much like Crash at the 2006 Oscars, To Pimp a Butterfly's inclusion in the Grammys provided a convenient way for a notoriously conservative organization to project an image of progressiveness by celebrating a work of art that addresses race issues while also maintaining the status quo.

This isn't to say To Pimp a Butterfly and Crash are artistically on the same plateau. The former—far and away 2015's most lauded album—is an examination of the African-American experience as told by someone who's lived it. The latter, the millennium's most hated best picture winner thus far, is proselytizing disguised as a movie. Characters and plot exist only in service of its ham-fisted message: Every problem can be solved by admitting racism is bad. It's about "love and about tolerance and about truth," according to producer Cathy Schulman's acceptance speech. The movie's message is a comforting solution for the privileged who have only a cursory understanding of racism. It's naiveté for everyone else.

Crash was the worst best picture nominee in that 2006 class—literally any of the competing four ( Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Good Night, and Good Luck ; and Munich) would've been more convincing choices. To Pimp a Butterfly, on the other hand, would've won album of the year if we were judging strictly by critical acclaim; it holds a 96 on Metacritic, which is 11 points higher than Chris Stapleton's Traveller (not to mention it is Metacritic's highest rated hip-hop album ever). You can also objectively say that Lamar's sophomore album is the most ambitious of its class. It's the rare major-label record that blatantly stretches through centuries of black culture to make a radical statement. You might even say it's deserving.

But what do we talk about when we talk about "deserving" at an award ceremony? For Lamar, deserve didn't refer only to TPAB, but also to 2014, the year the Grammys trolled hip-hop. Juicy J's first Grammy performance was a throwaway guest verse for Katy Perry; some malfeasance forced Lamar to perform "m.A.A.d city" with the bland Imagine Dragons; and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's The Heist beat good kid, m.A.A.d. city for best rap album. With a nominee class that included Yeezus, Jay Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail, and Drake's Nothing Was the Same, The Heist was the weakest possible choice. Lamar made a compelling, Compton-bred bildungsroman only to lose to a bad rap album, which chief source of acclaim came from its perceived social awareness. There's nothing revelatory about the opening lines, "When I was in the third grade / I thought that I was gay," in " Same Love." But it was a song addressing homosexuality in a traditionally homophobic genre—so the Grammy's made a show out of it.

This year's 11 nominations and five victories validate Lamar, who's undeniably evolved as an artist and is now at the top of his game. The victories also validate the Recording Academy, which remains Eurocentric (there have been only three black album of the year winners in the past 15 years). Even though the Grammys have acknowledged Lamar's work, its values remain unchanged. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below are the only two hip-hop albums to win album of the year. Neither quite centers itself on hip-hop: Miseducation is at least halfway informed by soul, and Andre 3000 was way more interested in psychedelia for The Love Below.

An album of the year win would've been huge for Lamar—and, by extension, hip-hop. But the Recording Academy still remains a conservative institution, idolizing a rigid aesthetic as its cultural cachet rests largely on its status as a legacy brand. To Pimp a Butterfly is superior to Crash, but both are linked in how they tiptoe the Academy and Recording Academy's classicism (for the Oscars, predominantly white, self-serious dramas) while allowing the organizations to exist under a progressive guise.

The difference, of course, is that Crash won best picture. To Pimp a Butterfly lost to 1989, the most vanilla of the album of the year nominees. The organizers let Lamar make his pro-black statement in his live performance. But their own statement was clear when Swift took the stage to receive her award.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

The RCMP and an officer are being sued after after a cop's gun was stolen. Photo via Wikimedia

A Canadian teen who was shot last year with a gun stolen from an RCMP cruiser is suing the national police force, the attorney general of Canada, and the officer in question for an undisclosed amount.

Sixteen-year-old Calli Vanderaa was shot in the parking lot of the convenience store last October, where she had stopped with a few friends. The single bullet that hit her left her with a punctured lung, along with damage to her ribs and internal organs.

The semi-automatic handgun used in the shooting was allegedly stolen from the cruiser of Sergeant Chris McCuen earlier that evening after it was left sitting in open sight on one of the backseats of the car.

Although the police said Vanderaa was not the target of the shooting, 22-year-old Matthew Wilfrid McKay and 25-year-old Matthew Andrew Miles have been charged with a number of crimes, including an attempted murder charge for the shooting of McKay.

Vanderaa's lawyer launched the lawsuit last week, which seeks compensation for both "physical and psychological" damages sustained by Vanderaa.

"This is a little girl, who had a bullet tear through her lung, her spleen, her colon, took two ribs on the way through. I mean, she was massively beat up," Robert Tapper, Vanderaa's lawyer, told the CBC.

"What is she looking for? She's looking for compensation. It's really as simple as that."

A similar incident happened in Barrie, Ontario, last year when an officer with the Peel Regional Police left her handgun unattended in her car at night. The man who stole the gun and its ammunition was later arrested and charged after he posted a video threatening to kill his cousin with the weapon.

That officer—43-year-old Constable Tracy Cleland—pleaded guilty to careless storage of a firearm. Davin Charney, a Toronto lawyer with an expertise in criminal law and police wrongdoing, told VICE he would expect to see a similar charge against McCuen, which will come on top of the lawsuit launched by the victim.

"I would be surprised if the officer wasn't charged with careless storage of a firearm," Charney told VICE.

"If someone steals a gun and shoots someone with it, that action isn't the criminal responsibility of the officer, but he or she does have a responsibility to store the gun properly. What changes in all of that is that the RCMP could be liable for a much more substantial claim ."

Making note of more-typical examples of police brutality such as the shootings and assaults that have dominated the media, Charney said that this case is an example of one of the main issues that is overlooked when it comes to "bad policing"—the financial cost.

"When we think of bad policing, we think of harm caused to people, or where people are beat up and they die, but there's a financial cost to all of this as well. Bad policing is expensive, it increases the cost of what the public pays for policing, and the people ultimately bear that cost."

The RCMP responded to VICE's request for an interview by saying that the matter was still under investigation, and the police force could not comment on the matter.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Very fuzzy screenshot (it's a leak) via YouTube.

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

On Monday morning, one of the most cringeworthy rap battles to ever grace live television aired on Canada AM, CTV's morning show. This thing was so bad that the station had to apologize for it multiple times and refused to post the footage online. Thankfully, someone else stepped up to the plate.

The segment in question was promoting Blackout6, an upcoming Toronto rap battle being hosted by a group called King of the Dot.

"It started in the streets?" This was the question unassuming CTV host Marci Ien asked Organik, MC and founder of King of the Dot. It was a reference to the battles.

"In the streets, yes," said Organik, describing a rap battle as "two people competitively attacking each other with poetry."

Ien then introduced rappers HFK and Charron and green-lit their performance, saying, "Go at it, guys." Those words will likely haunt her for the rest of her career.

What followed was offensive on multiple levels but primarily because it was so terrible.

The guys, who are godawful lyricists, made gay jokes, trans jokes, fat jokes, and slut jokes. No jokes were funny. On a show whose viewership is primarily made up of suburban parents and their kids (it was Family Day in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan), they quipped about jerking off, blowjobs, and "virgins in Oshawa." They also dropped references to "true dough," Dion Phaneuf, and Michael Cera, giving this shit-pile of a performance a distinctly Canadian flair.

HFK opened the battle, referring to himself as "Hugh Hefner going up against Bruce Jenner." He continued, "Please save all your comments. Before I grab your girlfriend and turn her O-N, like the Canadian province. I spent my Valentine's Day with a girl who's incredibly awesome. But you spent yours alone in your room, looking at pictures of Beverly Thomson." (Beverly Thomson, the woman who HFK suggested his opponent masturbated to, is a host of Canada AM.) Ien already seemed pretty uncomfortable at this point and appeared to be looking at someone off camera, but for reasons unknown, the show carried on without cutting to commercial break.

Charron continued the searing hot exchange by teasing HFK for being fat and looking forward to Ribfest. Very timely. He added:

"I'm from the nation's capital. You gotta girl in T-dot with woof . But I had her move from Toronto to Ottawa. Dion Phaneuf."

Then there was some back and forth that implied people in Oshawa, Ontario, have a lot of sex. In fairness, there might not be all that much else to do there.

"Chances of you being a gangster are about as low as finding a virgin in Oshawa," said HFK. Charron responded, "It is hard to find virgins in Oshawa, especially cause your girlfriend lives there."

In an incredibly ironic diss, Charron said, "It's funny you say I look like Michael Cera—but your rhymes are super bad." (At no point did anyone else mention Michael Cera.)

Incredibly, the four-minute battle continued uninterrupted. Personally, I think this soundbite from HFK summed it up nicely:

"And since I got the spotlight, and I'm on TV, there's something I want to say: Just cause Charron gave me head, it doesn't mean that he's gay. But hey, happy Valentine's Day."

When it was done, a somewhat stunned Ien thanked her guests and said sorry to viewers.

"Because we're a morning show, and this isn't the streets, we gotta apologize for some the language right there," she said.

The men were reportedly then escorted out of the studio by security before they could hurt anyone else with bad poetry.

Canada AM followed up with a Facebook apology that said "the lyrics were unexpected and not reflective of our beliefs."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo by Raf Troncho

Chests puffed, faces crimson, two roosters glared at each other from glass pens. The arena was packed with men in pressed shirts, gobbling fried chicken and throwing their hands overhead. "Four hundred! Five hundred!" they yelled in Spanish, placing bets on the roosters. Outside, shops were empty and business was slow, but here in San Juan's cockfighting club, workers were in high demand.

Puerto Rico's economy has tanked. The territory is $72 billion in debt, unemployment has reached 12.2 percent, and the poverty rate is 45 percent—triple the poverty rate in the United States. But as businesses shutter, the cockfighting industry stays strong, employing countless workers around the island.

Cockfighting, which is legal in Puerto Rico and considered the island's "national sport," generates about $100 million annually on the island from bets, entrance tickets, food, and other expenses, according to a National Parks Service report. There are about 200,000 fighting birds each year, and each requires breeding, feeding, medical care, and training. More than 1.2 million people worked in the industry in 2003, the latest year for which numbers are available. Industry insiders I spoke with estimated that the number of workers had remained consistent, but they noted that many cockfighting businesses had gone underground, avoiding government regulations and taxes.

Photo by Raf Troncho

In San Juan, at the Cockfighting Club of Puerto Rico, members assured me the sport was hotter than ever. One recent Saturday afternoon, the club held 40 back-to-back matches, filing the stadium.

"This is our culture—people won't give it up," Efrain Rodriguez, president of the Cockfighting Club of Puerto Rico, told me in Spanish in the club's downstairs bar one recent Saturday afternoon. "When I was born, my parents put a rooster in my hands."

Rodriguez, who owns "700 or 800 roosters," explained that the industry continues thriving, despite the poor economy, because wealthy men pay for membership to the cockfighting clubs and for the roosters to be raised and trained. The San Juan club has 46 members—mostly lawyers, doctors, and businessmen—who get front-row seats to the fights three times a week, entrance into a special VIP room, and other perks. Each member has hundreds of roosters.

Photo by Meredith Hoffman

The cockfighting workers I spoke to agreed they've lucked out by entering the field, since each one has a special role.

Caring for the roosters, both before and after the fight, is the most involved task. An entire room in the Cockfighting Club of Puerto Rico is dedicated to nursing the victors after battle.

On Vice Sports: Cockfighting in America

"I've worked some other jobs, but this is more stable," said Carlos Perez, who has worked on and off at the club for decades. As we spoke, he held a rooster beneath a faucet and sprayed it with hydrogen peroxide. "My friends are getting kicked out of work, but here there's always something to do—you can train the fighters, you can care for them."

Beside Perez, a new employee gave a battered bird the full treatment—peeling open its bloodshot eyes to squirt them with antibiotic drops, then petting its belly and prying open its beak to push in banana mush.

"I used to be a house painter, but I love these birds," the employee, Edwin Ramos, told me. He said this work also paid about 20 percent more than his previous job.

Watch: Sabong Is the Philippines's Billion Dollar Cockfighting Industry

Even the waitresses told me they'd remained loyal to the club, since the customers—"men with money and tourists"—pay bigger tips here than at typical bars or restaurants.

"We always earn more here, and only have to work three days a week," Yesenia Hill, a 41-year-old waitress with dark bangs and tight jeans, told me. "I've been here since I was 18."

Rodriguez and other members of the San Juan club say their attendance has not faltered despite the island's economic crisis. But Puerto Rico's official Cockfighting Commission has voiced concerns that government-regulated clubs are actually seeing a downturn in business. The commission receives taxes and fees from 87 government-regulated clubs, but the president told the Associated Press in 2012 that more fights were going underground to evade extra costs. The commission did not return multiple calls requesting comment on the current situation.

Photo by Meredith Hoffman

Underground fights may concern the government, but for folks in the industry, all that matters is that the cockfights continue. Some residents grew worried after Congress passed a farm bill in 2014 that made cockfight attendance punishable with a $10,000 fine, but Puerto Rico has not enforced the legislation as the sport is legal on the island.

In the rural village Nagaubo, lined with vacant homes and abandoned farms, one plot of land bustles with 300 cocks and their steadfast caretakers.

Photo by Meredith Hoffman

"You have to train them like boxers," Wito Velazquez, the farm owner, told me while cutting a rooster's feathers in his lap. Velazquez, who started training roosters at age 13, said he was already teaching his six-year-old daughter the practice.

"People always have money for fights—it's a culture," he said.

Beside him, Wilfredo Burgo, a middle-aged man in an oversized black T-shirt, also snipped feathers. "It's like taking care of a baby," he told me, glancing up. "You take care of it from the egg. But you get used to it when they die."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

Frozen breast milk. Photo via Flickr user Bart Everson

Nicole, a Portland, Oregon–based account director for a health company, flies frequently enough for work that she has the security procedure down to a science. She's also the mother of a baby boy, and because she's often away for a few days at a time, she travels with a breast pump and keeps the milk in dedicated storage bags, tucked in a cooler that she typically checks through to her final destination.

But before a recent cross-country flight back home, the configuration of Newark Liberty International Airport delivered her straight to the security level after dropping off her rental car. So she kept her cooler full of pumped breast milk in her carry-on bag and lugged it through security.

She went through her usual routine, asking if she needed to take out her breast pump (she did not) and declaring all of her liquids to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. She expresses about 26 ounces a day and was carrying two-and-a-half days' worth of breast milk. When the agents held the bag for a manual security check and scan, it set off additional alarms.

"And that's when they called the bomb squad," she said.

When the TSA introduced its "3-1-1 rule" in 2006, limiting the amount of liquids allowed on board, medications and breast milk were exempt. But per its guidelines, the TSA may use "random and unpredictable security measures" at officers' discretion, which can lead to mishandling of breast milk, breast pumps, and other items with traveling mothers.

The process of searching Nicole took nearly 45 minutes, involving a full pat-down inspection by a TSA agent, and two bomb specialists who manually inspected and photographed each of her items. The hold-up in security caused her to miss her flight.

"These guys are trained on how to handle someone with a walker or someone with a CPAP machine," said Nicole. "It's upsetting that they don't seem to think it's important to be trained adequately to deal with women's breast milk and breast pumps."

In another case, Sapna McCarthy, a Bay Area–based human resources consultant returning home from a two-day business trip, told me her breast milk passed through airport security at Los Angeles International Airport—but her freezer packs were confiscated for being partially thawed.

"The more questions I asked, they just said it was policy and refused to discuss it with me or get a manager," McCarthy said. Instead, she was told to collect ice from a coffee shop in the terminal to keep her breast milk cool, which she had to replenish repeatedly as her hour-long flight was delayed by several hours.

A TSA spokesman told me the agency "provides regular training and updates to personnel regarding screening of liquids and gels, including breast milk" in order to "avoid discrepancies in screening experience."

But it's these very discrepancies that often frustrate mothers traveling with breastfeeding supplies. In McCarthy's case, the TSA's website clearly says that if gel packs and other accessories are "partly frozen or slushy," they are subject to additional screening, not immediate confiscation.

In 2012, passenger Amy Strand was held up at security because she had ice packs for her breast milk, but her milk bottles were empty. An agent informed her that she could not travel with the ice packs unless it was accompanied by breast milk and directed her to a public restroom to pump into the bottles before she was allowed through. (The TSA later issued an apology.) Recently, at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, passenger Katie Champ claims she was harassed by airport employees who had her lift her shirt during a pat-down procedure and told her she shouldn't have brought breast milk to security if she didn't want to undergo additional screening.

On another recent flight out of Portland, Nicole—the woman whose breast milk set off the bomb squad—was stopped in security to have her breast pump examined, which involved a TSA agent fully disassembling the pump. She was eventually cleared, but when she boarded her cross-country flight, she discovered that the pump was totally inoperable.

Several other women have shared with me their stories of random manual inspections of breast milk and formula, including gloved hands, swabs, and litmus paper—unsettling to any parent who spends hours sterilizing bottles and pump parts to avoid contamination.

While it's not always made clear, according to the TSA's rules, technically only the passenger can open and close bottles; should you prefer not to have the milk examined, you can request alternate screenings such as an enhanced pat-down and bag inspections (to some, a puzzling solution to the potential threats posed by liquids).

Most policies regarding breast milk, formula, and the screening options available to passengers are detailed on the TSA's website, in part thanks to Stacey Armato, a Hermosa Beach–based attorney who sued the federal agency after being "harassed and abused by TSA agents" in 2010.

At the time, Armato was traveling weekly for work between Phoenix and Los Angeles, and she explained she was "getting a lot of infections because would travel and not pump all day." Her doctor warned her she could lose her milk supply altogether if she didn't start pumping, so Armato started bringing a breast pump on her trips. Uncomfortable with the idea of running her breast milk through the X-ray machine, she came armed with a printout of the TSA's official policy, which stated she could request an alternate screening for the milk.

She made it through security without problems the first few flights, until one trip she was stopped in the security line. According to the complaint later filed against the TSA, she was held up for 40 minutes and subjected to repeated inspections "for not simply 'pumping and dumping' her breast milk." Finally, "the TSA permitted her to pass through security with the 'alternate screening' process for her breast milk."

But when she got on a flight the following week, Armato encountered the same agents at the checkpoint, who stopped her and held her in a glassed-off area for about 40 minutes.

"They were telling me to be quiet if I knew what was good for me—that my milk was going to get thrown out," she told me. After about half an hour, she burst into tears, which led agents to summon the Phoenix police. "The police officer said they were called because I was out of control—that I was crying too much."

The amount each woman can get in one pumping session varies drastically, some collecting only enough for the next feeding—so Armato didn't want to just "pump and dump," as the TSA agents had originally suggested. "People don't know how much effort it takes to get that milk, and I was a day-to-day pumper," she explained. "The milk was for my son to drink the next day."

Armato filed a formal lawsuit against the federal agency in 2011, and four years later, the TSA settled the case to the tune of $75,000, along with an agreement to retrain its officers on proper breast milk-screening procedures and to clarify the language on its website.

"I felt like that was a bigger victory," Armato said. "If it went to court, we couldn't be guaranteed that they would retrain their employees; we expect them to follow the rule in every other arena, so why not this one?"

But even the most clearly spelled-out rules aren't always followed or are interpreted differently among agents.

"I think there's still a training issue," Nicole said. "Frankly, I believe they don't think it's important to be trained—nationwide—on how to deal with women's breast milk and breast pumps adequately, and I find that really upsetting."

Follow Sarika Chawla on Twitter.

This March, Netflix will add to its ever-growing platter of original streaming options with the release of Pee-Wee's Big Holiday, the first Pee-Wee movie in almost three decades. For his comeback, it looks like Pee-Wee will be conquering a fear many of us had to face: leaving home for the first time. Netflix dropped the film's trailer Tuesday morning, and it's just as nostalgic as you'd expect.

Paul Reubens has somehow managed not to visibly age at all since the last time he donned the grey suit and red bowtie—possibly thanks to spending the better part of the last decade in the climate-controlled environment of Walgreens. (He also pleaded guilty in 2004 to an obscenity charge.) It's fun—if a bit eerie—to see the guy in 2016, exactly as we remember him.

The movie, which is produced by Judd Apatow, will also feature mega-hunk Joe Mangianello of Magic Mike fame, who apparently rides into town on a motorcycle to rock Pee-Wee's world by suggesting he leave in search of adventure.

The flick will be available on Netflix starting March 18. For now, watch the trailer above.

Cops on the job in New York City in 2011, when stop and frisk by the NYPD was at its peak. Photo via Flickr user vincent desjardins

Back in September, the New York City Police Department officially started giving people receipts when they stopped and frisked them. The procedure was designed to prevent dubious searches, increase officer accountability, and help repair the relationship between cops and minority communities. But according to a report filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, the cops charged with issuing those receipts rarely do so—and are often unable to explain why they stop people in the first place.

If you've never personally experienced it, stop and frisk is a controversial practice based on the "broken windows" theory of policing, which holds that the way to prevent major crimes is by cracking down on minor ones. In this case, that means hitting people up in rough neighborhoods to check them for guns or drugs. After stop and frisk was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2013 for disproportionately targeting people of color, an outside monitor was brought in to audit the NYPD. This latest report is monitor Peter Zimroth's second so far, and it shows that even as the use of stop and frisk has declined massively since peaking five years ago, officers can't or won't explain why they hassle people on the street.

"It is apparent from focus group sessions and discussions with individual officers throughout the ranks that many police officers, including supervisors, are not well informed as yet about the changes underway or the reasons for them and, therefore, have yet to internalize them," the monitor wrote. "Many appear not to understand what is expected of them."

Recorded stop and frisks reached their height of 685,724 in 2011. Last year, the total was down to about 24,000, but skeptics say that this is the result of confusion and underreporting—not a real change in how New York cops interact with blacks and Latinos.

Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD detective sergeant and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, remembers being on the force when officers were first required to check a box explaining stops in 2011. He says that was a huge burden on cops, who previously could offer a narrative explanation of the incident, and that as a desk sergeant, he used to "kick all the time."

"It didn't take much to think that officers would stop doing them altogether," Giacalone explains. "These forms and the procedure are toxic to officers and their careers. I think this generation of cops will abandon it altogether, if not already, especially if the department comes down on officers and supervisors for administrative mistakes."

Of course, cops neglecting to report the searches they conduct would obscure the problem of stop and frisk rather than solve it. That worries advocacy groups like Communities United For Police Reform (CPR), a representative of which said in a statement Tuesday that "there are serious concerns about the continued unconstitutionality of many stops taking place that are and are not reported."

In his report, Zimroth encouraged police supervisors, such as sergeants, to play a more active role in making sure the reports are filled out correctly—and more often. But Giacalone thinks even many police officials are out of touch with the reality of policing in 21st century America.

"You can tell them as many times as you want, include it in mandatory training, but it shows you that even those in the highest ranks don't understand the cop culture," the former police sergeant says. "It's been so long since those in charge have actually been a part of it, that they have forgotten what it feels like to be left out in the open. When the rank and file feel like the politicians don't have their backs and they have become political pawns, their performance suffers, just like any other profession."

Giacalone's comments echo those made by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said at the time of the 2013 ruling that the judge did not "understand how policing works." Yet for all the squabbling over whether the people making the rules understand what it's like to be a beat cop, it remains unclear whether stop and frisk has any effect on crime whatsoever.

"It seems that this is a form of either passive resistance or passive aggressive behavior by the police," Jeffrey Fagan, an expert on policing at Columbia University Law School who was cited more than any other person in the 2013 court ruling, said in an email. "I think they know perfectly well what policy requires regarding reporting."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

"This is literally the Street Fighter vision, isn't it? You pick a character and you fly around the world kicking everyone's ass. And now, the vision is fully realised, where you as a competitor are literally playing World Warrior right now."
Fighting game veteran and author Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez

Eight years. That's a long time in video games. Think of all the other big games that came out in 2008. Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid IV, Fallout 3, Burnout Paradise, Braid, Mirror's Edge. It was a hell of a year. And yet one game eclipses the lot, a game that gave an entire genre a thick-soled, US Air Force boot up the backside. It didn't just improve its scene in terms of quality and competition, but also encouraged the community around it to grow and embrace new technology, while providing exposure to a grass-roots, almost punk-rock underground circuit. The game moved from bouts on a battered arcade machine sat in the London Trocadero to independently-run sessions in local bars, all the way to a gigantic, neon-lit stage in San Francisco in front of thousands, with $120,000 going to the competition's winner. That game was Street Fighter IV.

And now it's gone. Well, gone from the biggest stage of them all, anyway. The titles set to make up the world's biggest fighting game gathering, July's Las Vegas-held EVO 2016, also the biggest stop on the Capcom Pro Tour, have been announced – and there is no sign of Ultra Street Fighter IV, IV's fourth and swansong iteration. After a massive 2015, perhaps the biggest year yet for Street Fighter, and so much amazing skill displayed by its finest professional players, USFIV isn't going to appear at EVO. It's not a sign of the game being dead and buried – the community will be playing it at many other events in 2016. But it's definitely a sign that the Capcom Pro Tour wants Street Fighter V to be front and centre in its launch year.

As a massive fan of all things Street Fighter, and someone who's put countless hours into Street Fighter IV and its updates, I'll obviously miss the game at the fighting community's biggest events. And I'm not alone in feeling that way. I spoke to several players of IV to find out how the game's impacted on their lives, and where they feel Street Fighter is heading with the arrival of V.

"When Street Fighter IV first appeared, I played it in an arcade. When they still existed! The camaraderie and the crowds and that arcade element were still around. , but the roots of this stuff was very much in the arcades. There was a lot of aggression, and that's not necessarily a bad thing – sports need that. You had to earn your respect through getting good."
Fighting game YouTuber Maximilian "Maximilian Dood" Christiansen

"For me, this is literally a childhood dream. I can straight up say that. I still remember conversations when I was seven years old, and my brother would yell at me because I didn't want to go outside and play football with the bigger kids! I wanted to stay indoors and play video games! When I see these pro-players and they're getting flown out, getting media coverage, getting sponsorships and salaries to play Street Fighter – it's a dream come true."
Pro-player and Fighting Game Community partnership lead at Twitch, Mike "Mike 'Mike Ross' Ross" Ross

"I only got into the fighting game scene with IV. Year on year, it's grown. EVO every year has gotten bigger and bigger. The major events around the world have gotten bigger. Stream viewerships have grown, sponsorships, everything. It's all getting bigger. For me, it's been an explosion of community. All of those things don't happen unless you've got people who want to consume it or take part in it. The thing that SFIV's done is bring so many people – like myself – to that community. We weren't involved beforehand. It's been an incredible thing."
Street Fighter commentator and analyst Logan Sama

The fighting game community grew exponentially during the lifespan of Street Fighter IV. Other titles, from series like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, have communities that are in rude health, and it's hard to imagine those games being released and being as high quality as they are without Street Fighter IV's influence. And it's only going to get bigger, too. Mortal Kombat X sold five million units in 2015, the biggest fighting game sales to date. Twitch viewerships are up for tournaments. YouTube numbers are growing.

"I do feel like things like online, actual community scenes and giant events held by Capcom, which just wasn't a thing for the longest time, have got us to where we are today. It's much grander exposure, but my whole thing is that we don't forget the old stuff. I still collect old arcade board and restore them. You shouldn't forget that this stuff came from a bunch of dudes in sweaty room around an arcade cabinet. That mentality is still there, but it's in a Twitch chatroom."
Maximilian

Even though Street Fighter V's been on the horizon for a while, the last year of IV competitive play has suggested that its predecessor could easily run for another 12 months or so, in tournaments both large and small. Players like Infiltration and Xian have gone with less-than-obvious character picks, and perfected them to an absurdly high standard. It got the scene thinking: maybe we're yet to see the very best that Street Fighter IV has to offer, all these years after its emergence. We now know this isn't going to be the case, at least on the biggest stages. But perhaps, much like Super Smash Bros., where the soon-to-be-15-years-old GameCube release Melee still rules the roost, the community will make enough noise to keep the older game alive.

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Watch the trailer for VICE's new film, commissioned by Capcom, 'Street Fighter V: KO Dreams'

"I guarantee you there will still be a huge community of people in the scene who still play Street Fighter IV. As many people started playing fighting games on that as they did on Street Fighter II. So many people are familiar with it, and have stuck with through its multiple iterations, that they're going to want to play that game. Why would you play something new and suck ass at it when you're really good at the older one? It's going to be a game that's supported by the community. Is it going to be supported officially? No, because you're not selling any more copies. It'll still be at tournaments. Like 3rd Strike is, and Alpha 2. It might be that we're playing it in small groups at tournaments, in dingy arcades or with the 150 or so players on Fightcade. But that'd be the coolest thing ever!"
Maximilian

"Looking at Street Fighter IV itself, like the actual gameplay, I dunno... Focus Attacks? Like we're going to look back fondly on those? Maybe not. But looking at the big picture, it was a return to form, or resurrection of Street Fighter, and all of the things that we learned from IV are fixed in V, in terms of stuff like communication, the community or different events. And no Focus Attacks, thank god. Let's get that shit out of here! I mean, IV will always be played in the same way 3rd Strike or Super Street Fighter II Turbo are played, but if I never have to watch another Street Fighter IV match again... Once V is out, I don't see myself playing IV again as long as I live!"
Gootecks

Street Fighter V, which was released on February 16th, is currently in the midst of a few launch-period teething troubles. With a lack of single-player content and server issues plaguing its multiplayer side, we're currently left with an astonishingly good fighting game that nobody can quite play properly right now. It's a problem, because Capcom has made it very clear that SFV is designed to be a much more accessible game, designed to grow the community and grab a chunk of that lucrative eSports market. Something that will no doubt have a knock-on effect for those creating Street Fighter content, and those looking to compete.

"I guess I look at SFV as a fresh start, and SFIV as kind of the beta test for all the stuff that we wished we could've done back then, but just couldn't. Every single mistake that could've been made in IV is rectified with V. Right now, on YouTube, we have a base of 130,000 subscribers, which is big in terms of fighting games, but small compared to big-name YouTube channels. However, with the release of SFV, it seems like the game is going to be big enough that the player base is going to double, or even triple. When you got into SFIV, if you didn't already know that there was an active scene or community, you just existed kind of by yourself. We're trying to prepare for the growth and put out more content that our audience would be into."
Gootecks

"I never really got into Street Fighter IV, partly because of real-life responsibilities. It's tough when you're an adult to do this kinda stuff. Also, there are certain things in Street Fighter that I am familiar with – footsies, anti-airs all that – but the mechanics of SFIV effectively eliminated those things. SFV is kind of like a reset button, a new game, and each time Capcom makes a game there's a chance it's one I will enjoy. I went to Twitchcon and tried it out, and it clicked with me immediately. Many kids, like BJUnchained, who just turned 23, started their gaming careers with Street Fighter IV. I've been there and they are excited, but with SFV for me it's kind of like it could possibly be the final chapter in mine. I have always had love for this community and the people in it. Some look at me as a rival right now since I'm doing well, but honestly I'm a 40-year-old guy that hasn't played seriously in nine years and just wants to see all these people again. I haven't been this happy in a long time. If I don't do this now, ten years from now when maybe it's not possible to come back, I'll ask myself why I didn't try one last time."
Returning Street Fighter pro-player Graham "GrahamWolfe" Wolfe

"SFV will continue to bring in new players in the same way IV did. I hope SFV continues to bring in players who want to compete at the highest level and be the best, because that's the best part about video games you can play competitively. Knowing that you have things like that Capcom Pro Tour means that people can aspire to be on those platforms – being the best means something."
Logan Sama

"We're already riding this avalanche of Street Fighter. Seeing it grow from being in a room with only 12 people watching to, what, 255,000 people on Twitch watching EVO this past year, it's not going to detour at all – it's going to keep rolling down the hill. It's just a matter of whether people are going to want to stand in the way and get caught up in it or start running away! That part we don't know yet!"
Mike Ross

Street Fighter IV changed everything. Everything. Not just fighting games, but the people who played them. It was a key part in building a huge community that is set to get so much bigger in the coming years. It laid the foundation for what could be an entire eSport. It launched careers. It brought people together. Everyone involved in fighting games has something to say about how Street Fighter IV changed their life.

"Of all the things it has done, I think SFIV's legacy is creating a new generation of players. From top to bottom. From your Xians and Infiltrations and Poongkos to your newcomers playing online for the first time, with their Xbox pads, they're all happy. I hope SFV can build on this."
Logan Sama

On Motherboard: Rapper Lupe Fiasco Just Beat One of the World's Top Street Fighter Players

"SFIV has consistently put me in the right places at the right times to meet the right people. I wasn't doing anything, but SFIV was the only thing I cared about and I put everything I had into it. Through that, I was able to travel the world – and I didn't even know I liked to travel! But I've been so many places because of this game. I've met so many amazing people. I mean, I've met people who are really close to me in my life and I met them because of this game. I'm sure I'll meet a whole lot of other people because of SFV but, y'know, that's the part of it I'll always feel was the most important. Winning, losing, competing, whatever, that's great, but it's separate from the community that is built around the game, and the places that it'll take you when you're following your passion. It's really easy to look now and go, 'Street Fighter is about to blow up, there's so much money, blah blah blah,' but who cares? That shit doesn't matter. What matters is the people that you meet, the places that you've been and the experiences that you've had."
Gootecks

"When people look back on IV they're going to remember that is was the game that allowed people to branch out and become something. It was a game that gave birth to a lot of people – it gave birth to an industry. They're going to thank Street Fighter IV for everything. No matter what, this game did so much for a community. It did so much for everyone."
Mike Ross

@Andihero

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It's no spoiler to tell you that Fragments of Him begins with a death. One of the game's four "playable" characters, Will, is involved in a car accident within ten minutes of starting. Everything that happens afterwards, be it told through flashbacks or present-day ruminations, through any one of three other characters, is connected to Will's passing. The fragments that the game's title alludes to, the pieces, are the memories of Will that those close to him – his boyfriend Harry, ex-girlfriend Sarah and grandmother Mary – continue to hold onto. Through them, we learn about Will's life, hopes, loves and regrets. We form a picture of a man whose fate cannot be altered by the player's actions. Fragments of Him begins at a set point, and ends at one, too – your involvement, your direction, cannot change where this story's headed.

"The player does get to make their own decisions along the way," the game's narrative designer, Professor Mata Haggis (also a lecturer at NHTV University, in the Netherlands), tells me, "but the way we use the choices is more to express the emotions and experiences of the characters.

"I think players are used to decisions in games being a way for them to express power over a the narrative. But here, you're dealing with a situation over which you have no power. We don't want to give the player the idea that they can rewind time and save anyone, or that you can somehow change the ending of the game, as that'd be underselling the theme, and the story we're trying to tell here. So there are dialogue choices in the game, but they're all to do with the emotions the characters are going through, rather than a way for the player to dictate the narrative."

Fragments of Him places its emphasis not on action, puzzles or any other form of demanding precision, but on a very clear and emotionally engaging plot, split between the recollections of four distinct individuals. I get to play around a third of the game and spend time with Will and his university-period girlfriend, Sarah. The two are (well, were – the game flashes back to the late-1990s) students at the University of Winchester, and Sarah's dorm room is modelled on Mata's own that he had while studying in the same English city. Incidentally, Winchester is where I was born, and I spent plenty of nights during my late teens and early 20s drinking my way through its various public houses – so when I see an evocatively built in-game version of the Royal Oak pub, I crack a nostalgic smile. It is, however, a rare moment of gaiety – Fragments of Him is not a happy tale, and while some of Sarah's memories are sweet, it's not too long before her relationship with Will begins to change, and Harry comes into both their lives.

As well as its story being relatable but singularly structured, how the game plays feels unique. You hover around the characters, directing them towards glowing objects, flashes of colour against a monochromatic background, which when clicked trigger the next stage of any given scene. You don't steer anyone directly, like you do in most first- or third-person games. Mata calls this a "second-person perspective".

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"It's like you're the director, walking onto the stage with the actors. They've got their script, or will be improvising around it; but the director can stand there and point at something, and then the actor will go ahead and interact with it. So the director is there to bring the story to life, to help the actors get through it – not to change the story, but to help the expression of it. And that's where the player is in the game, really.

"Although it's played first person, we're sort of selling it as playing from a second-person perspective. You're not controlling who you see in the third person, as you might in an Uncharted game, and you're not the person's own eyes, as you might be in Gone Home. You're that second person, which is something a little unusual, and it might feel odd when you start playing the game. All of our design choices have been made in order to keep this very consistent narrative."

The story of Fragments of Him, likewise the foundations for how it looks and plays, began at a games jam three years ago. "The theme of the jam was minimalism," Mata recalls. "I already had an idea for a puzzle game that looked at the breakdown of a relationship, and the things that are left with you. The minimalism theme led to thoughts of people living in places with no objects in them. Why would you choose to live in a minimalist environment? And the answer I came to was that all of the objects you might have would bring back painful memories. So from that image, the rest of the game began to take shape – who was this person, what was that relationship like, what happened before a particularly painful moment, and what happened after it?"

You can see the jam prototype of Fragments of Him online, here. While comparatively basic against what's coming out commercially, it attracted plenty of attention from players and potential partners alike, which ultimately led to the game I've played.

'Fragments of Him', cinematic trailer

"We started getting emails from right across the world," Mata says. "We had people telling us about their own grieving process, and how they could relate to our character, Harry. One guy said how happy he was to see that there was this point you reach where you can cope with loss, and grief turns to hope. And one of the things that really moved us was that we were getting messages from people whose own circumstances weren't directly related to the game, but who could still associate with it, and come to terms with grief in a very clear way. It didn't have to be about a partner, or an accident, or anything like that. But the expression of love that we have in this story is something that a lot of people closely linked into.

"Then (Dutch studio) Sassybot, who I'm collaborating with to make the game, with programmer Elwin Verploegen and creative director Tino van der Kraan, said that they wanted to make it a full title. In the years since those discussions, we've toured the world with the game. Everywhere we've been, a lot of people have found it to be a powerful experience, in terms of what they think regarding what emotions games can bring out, and also about the potential of the medium to tackle heavier issues."

Mata is pleased to see Fragments of Him come out in the same year as That Dragon, Cancer, the console ports of Gone Home, Firewatch and more games that prioritise storytelling over "traditional" gameplay elements, and also risk to the player themselves. "There does seem to be a trend for more serious topics being covered by games at the moment, and I'm happy about that." Much like Firewatch, Fragments of Him won't take up a lot of its player's time – I got through around a third of it in just under an hour – but really, if you're still weighting up the "value" of a video game based on the hours you get out of it versus the money you put down for the privilege, I think you need to reconsider how you're approaching the most progressive entertainment medium in the world.

"It's funny," Mata says, "but when you compare video gaming to other entertainment, we talk about games in a different way. I went to see the latest Star Wars movie at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and I paid $19.99 for a ticket. And I look back at that experience, and I loved it, and I have no sense of how I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd paid less.

"I suppose in the end it comes down to personal consumer choice. Small teams like ours can make 2D platformers that have hundreds of hours of gameplay with procedurally generated levels and all kinds of things. Or, we can make these personal, heartfelt stories. And because of the quantity of content that has to be handcrafted to make these games, unless you're as studio with hundreds of thousands of pounds already in the bank, you just can't create lengthy experiences."

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And yes, I know what you're thinking. Maybe what you've been thinking since that first paragraph, where I made it clear that you, the player, can't change the outcome of Fragments of Him. "Is this even a game?" If you're asking yourself that question, you won't be alone. We've seen it asked of Gone Home, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, That Dragon, Cancer and many more titles before now – and, as the medium develops, it's a discussion that'll appear more frequently around new titles that go somewhere new with their style, playing out almost more like interactive films than what's typically regarded as a video game.

"I know people will say that this isn't a game," Mata says. "And that's okay. It's up to them, and that's their opinion. I think it's a game, but there's a strong argument to be made either way. And in the end, I don't mind. As long as they find it interesting, and it reaches enough people, I'm a happy man. And that's what this is about – creating something that an audience finds emotional, or drama-based, for their 'play' time. And I find it fascinating that the big platform holders, like Xbox and Sony, and Valve with Steam, are so excited for something that's really on the borderline of even being 'a game'. Xbox knows this isn't the 'typical' game that its players are going to gravitate towards, but I know that Xbox values having a variety of content on their platform. And this is something Sony really wanted on their platform, too. We really hope that existing players might want to try something a little different."

Fragments of Him will be released soon for PC and Xbox One, with a PlayStation 4 version following before the end of 2016. Find more information on the game at its official website.

@MikeDiver

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