Screenshot from YouTube

Even if Pokémon Go seems to have surpassed it in download numbers, Tinder is still one of the most efficient methods to look for fresh meat. And since the app is all about making a good first impression on someone who's listlessly swiping through profiles while taking a shit or lying in bed with a hangover, it's safe to say a lot can go wrong with those first impressions.

With that in mind, we asked girls from all over Europe what they use Tinder for, and what will get them to swipe right or left.

PAZ, 22, LONDON

VICE: What's your biggest turn-off?
Paz: A photo of them posing with something stupid like a bottle of champagne. Something that makes them look like a douchebag. I don't like it when their first photo is of them showing off already. Also, if they're sitting on a car or something trying to be cool – it's so cringe. It's like, "nah!"

What would you swipe right for?
Like maybe a photo of them smiling, having fun. I really like dogs so if they have a puppy. Just a really laid back picture, not trying too hard. And a picture of them – not a group photo because then you don't know who's who.

What would make you want to talk to a guy?
A genuine good opening line. Not just like "Hi". More like, "What do you do?" I have a really descriptive profile so it helps if they mention something I put in my bio. I play a lot of sports so if they go "What kind of sports are you into?" then I'm like, this person took the time to actually read my bio. They genuinely want to find out about me, not like "hi, DTF?"

What would make a really uninteresting profile? What would make you swipe left?
A lot of guys put their heights on their profile. How tall are you is probably not the first thing I'd ask. Or when people put stuff like "Going on holiday to Malaga, Malaga 2k16," – no one fucking cares, mate!

What would make you accept a first date?
If they initiate meeting up and if they make a genuine plan. I really like it when people are like "Do you want to go to this place, I've heard it's really nice." I don't like it when people ask you out and then try to make you decide. If they don't know where to go, do they even want to meet up?

VICE: How long have you been on Tinder for?
Dennisa: I'm not on it anymore but I used it a lot last summer.

What made you download the app?
I was single and I had just moved to Paris and I didn't know anyone. I thought it could be cool to meet new people.

So, it was not just to flirt?
No, just to meet new people. I matched with tourists, people from abroad like me with whom I could go around Paris and visit stuff.

Did you end up meeting many people?
Yes. I come from Indonesia and I am a Muslim. I met this guy during Ramadan who wanted to convert to Islam. We stayed together for a month or so. But, apart from him, it never went farther than a first date.

What makes you want to right swipe?
I don't like blond boys. Then, even if the person is not pretty, if they've got good, artsy pictures, I'm more likely to swipe right. I work in fashion and media so photos are important for me.

Anything that pisses you off?
I am Asian, so I hate it when the guys I matched with tell me things like "I've never been with an Asian before" or "I like the shape of your mouth." I don't like the fact that they insist on it and they just want to tick Asian girl off their bucket list. I don't give a shit that you've never been with an Asian girl, mate.

MARGHERITA, 23, MILAN

VICE: When did you start using Tinder?
Margherita: I used it last year, for a few months. I wanted to meet new people and I was curious to see how it worked. Then I got into a relationship and I deleted it.

And how did it work for you?
Actually, it didn't work that well. I had tens of matches but I went out with a girl only once. She was pretty weird but mostly boring. I ran away in the middle of the date.

How often did you use it?
When I was bored: on the bus, or while watching TV at home – like all social media.

You identify as bisexual. Do you go for guys or girls on Tinder?
Basically, Tinder works like real life to me: I check out boys and girls, but at the end of the day I go for girls.

What does a profile picture need to work for you?
Well, essentially I have to like her face and her attitude. I don't like selfies that are too sexy or provocative. I like girls who are not shy and are okay with their bodies. It's great if they feel like showing them off, but then it doesn't have to become too much. The line is often very, very thin.

Do you care about the bio?
I'd read it only if I wasn't sure about the picture.

Did you have a pick-up line?
Nope, no pick-up line. If I really liked someone I'd write to them, otherwise I'd just wait to be approached. I'd try to become friends with the other person first. If they were fun to chat with then we could go out for a beer.

LOIS, 24, AMSTERDAM

VICE: Why did you download Tinder?
Lois: I was single and it seemed like fun. It was mostly out of boredom, but also out of genuine curiosity after hearing all the success stories. But mostly just to have something to do while taking a dump.

What did you find the most annoying thing on Tinder?
Pictures of guys with cats. That is so clearly meant to show that they also have a soft, sweet side. Surely everyone sees right through that? And boring dudes in boring button-down shirts – that's also a big turn-off.

Is there anything you do like about it?
I had a photo of myself as the McDonald's clown on there, and that got some funny reactions. One guy said, for example: "Nice McMuffins." I thought that was a good one.

Have you gotten any dates out of it yet?
Once, almost. That guy was pretty fit but before the date he said: "I have to admit something; I did gain a bit of weight recently." And of course I'd heard the stories about guys who were a lot slimmer in their pictures than in real life, so I ended up turning him down.

IRIS, 20, BUCHAREST

VICE: How did you end up installing Tinder?
Iris: I had just broken up with my former boyfriend. A friend saw that I was sad and told me to try out this app.

Did you have any luck?
I met my current boyfriend on Tinder. We spoke for the first time in January, and met in person after a week. We've been together ever since.

What don't you like about Tinder?
Anyone with a smartphone can use it. I hated the fact that all these assholes think they can pick up chicks with lame pictures and status messages. You have to work at it, honey.

(LEFT) EMILY, 19, (RIGHT) PALOMA, 19, BERLIN

VICE: Emily, what have you used Tinder for so far?
Emily: I've been looking for girls but not for a relationship. I just wanted to meet new people and try to have a good time with them.

How long have you been using Tinder for?
First I used it to look for boys for about a month but then I deinstalled it. Later, I went back on Tinder to date women. I was only on there for three days – then I met her. [Looks at Paloma]

So, what does a profile have to have for you to swipe right?
If the first picture is really ugly, I won't even look at the others. But with good-looking people I always check out the rest of the pics too. With Paloma, it was the pics. They were just beautiful. No posed photos or selfies, but photos that show the whole person – the things she does and the things she likes. I also appreciate it when people write about themselves instead of putting up a collection of corny quotes.

What puts you off?
People who are just out to get laid. I'm not a fan of manipulated photos and duck faces either.

What are some of the worst things people have said to you on Tinder?
If you're a woman seeking women, there is a bunch of girls looking for a third party for a threesome. That's weird but it has been the only negative thing.

Paloma, how long have you been using Tinder for?
Paloma: About half a year but sporadically. Sometimes I'll spend all day on Tinder, other times I'll forget about it for a week. I'm mainly looking for sex and fun – but I have to have fun first to get in the mood for sex.

Who do you swipe right for?
I guess the criteria are pretty obvious. Beauty is key, but so is style. If a girl is really hot but a bad dresser, I'll pass. But if I see a reasonably pretty girl in great clothes, that already tells me a lot about her. I don't really care about the interests people list.

What kind of poses make for the best photos?
If the girl is hot, it doesn't matter. If she's pulling a stupid face but she's really cute, then I don't care. But I don't like body photos that don't show the face. Those people can just jog on, as far as I'm concerned. I hate that stuff. If they can't face the camera, it shows that they're insecure.

What was the worst first message anyone ever sent you?
I was living in Barcelona at the time. One woman asked me if I wanted to come round to hers, share a bottle of wine and fuck on her last night in town. I tried to ask her some questions but Tinder was so slow that everything only got through to her the next day. And I probably would have said yes, actually, if only I'd been able to find out a few more things about her. So I guess it was Tinder's fault, or the network's, not hers.

KARNA, 24, COPENHAGEN

VICE: When did you first start using Tinder?
Karna: Oh God! I've been using it for like two years or something. It was definitely when it was still a new thing in Denmark. Maybe it's been three years.

Why do you use Tinder?
I started using it as a joke. Then, all of a sudden you're sitting there, shopping people. And the likes! They give you a real confidence boost.

What do you look for on Tinder?
I like them to fit a certain mould with their looks. It's kinda hard to describe – I don't want them to be too handsome, but not too ugly either. If they're too handsome I almost know what type they are. I am like Goldilocks – I don't like them too soft, but I don't like them to be too hard either.

Do you go on a date with everyone you match with?
No, not at all. I also only date the guys who ask me out.

Do you have a type?
I like guys that are chill. I like it when they have a funny bio. And if they're doing something fun on their photos. I don't like people who take themselves too seriously.

How important is the photo and bio?
It's very, very important. Both need to really pop.

Is there a type, you would never go for?
Guys with nude photos. And too many selfies. I'm not into sports either, so I don't like the guys who post a lot of photos of that sort of stuff. It's also because I know, that we're not going to be a match.

More on VICE:

We Asked People With the Most Right-Swiped Jobs on Tinder Why Their Job Makes Them So Fit

I Reviewed My Coworkers' Tinder Profiles

Paris Lees: My Transgender Tinder Adventure

Clubbers revel at one of the last nights of Trade, a gay night that ruled London nightlife from 1990 until last October. Photo courtesy of Trade

"It's the one thing they've left legal, innit?"

It's 11 AM on Sunday morning, and I'm standing under a railway arch in London's Vauxhall neighborhood discussing poppers—the dizzying liquid high that narrowly escaped a UK government ban this March—with Jay. He wears a string vest that shows off his pecs, over which he sports a huge gold medallion and a red baseball jacket.

Jay lives in public housing just down the road in Stockwell. Despite looking young, he's in his late 30s and has been going out in the UK gay-nightclub scene for the better part of two decades. He's observed a recent shift: "There are still a lot of people going out," he says, "but the vibe's not the same anymore."

That "vibe" of UK and transatlantic gay nightlife is an elusive thing to define. There are more venues, gay partygoers, and different "vibes" on offer than ever before, but, broadly speaking, Jay's referencing his own memories of a dying LGBTQ nightclub culture, largely based around dance music. It's a culture that fizzed with glamour, drama, and excitement in the 90s and early 00s, but that scene—which once thrived at club nights like Trade and FF at Turnmill's, Garage and Pyramid at Heaven, New York's The Cock, and at Michael Alig's outré events—has dissipated into the stuff of legend.

Clubbers at Trade. Photo courtesy of Trade

While London residents lament the loss of several gay nightlife venues over the past two years—from the Joiner's Arms to George and Dragon—once-iconic parties like Trade, which reigned as one of the fiercest events from 1993 to 2008 (with subsequent special events up to 2015), are now a misty-eyed memory.

"Life's changed a lot since the 90s," says Simon, a 27-year-old media planner, by way of explaining the generational shift. "People are more health-conscious. And there's a lot more at stake with their careers. They're climbing the ladder, and places like NYC and London are too expensive. Everyone's chasing money––no one can afford to spend four days off their face anymore."

"A lot of my friends are straight, so I go to the same places that they do," adds Brad, 25, an HR director. "Also, many gay clubs are quite tacky. The music's not great and the people who are there tend to be off their faces and messy. So why would I go? If I want sex, I can just go on Grindr."

Clubbers, ex-clubbers, promoters, and DJs who spoke with VICE cited two main issues in explaining why clubbing today is, well, lamer than ever: gentrification and Grindr.

For former Queer Nation DJ Jeffrey Hinton, they form a problematic constellation: "So-called social apps like Grindr and our modern obsession with wealth reflect a language of surface, greed, and image," he says. "Thus, is empty and lonely––more so when you factor in chemicals people are using to destroy their souls and brains.

"But," he adds, "it's created a landscape that, hopefully, people will want to change."

Nightlife is a product that supplies two demands—sex and music—and the way gay men seek both have seen a historic shift with the rise of the internet. Or, as Clayton Littlewood, author of the seminal 2008 gay book and play Dirty White Boy, puts it: "Why go out when you can order in?"

But whether gay or straight, clubs are closing across the UK: According to the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, the number of British clubs dropped from 3,144 in 2005 to 1,733 ten years later. It's created a climate where clubs must push envelopes in their programming more than ever to survive. That's a task some parties and promoters are up for, such as Larry Tee's Berlin-based KRANK, a monthly bender where dildo-sporting, PVC-clad bears mingle among beautiful young twinks. But location is important as well—increasingly, such events are held not in London or New York but in smaller, more relaxed cities like Berlin. As Tee points out, the shift bodes poorly for the former.

"When Giuliani started his New York nightlife crackdown, I remember watching the sexiness of sleazy dark rooms and sneaky shared bumps disappear," says Tee. "When was the last time you heard an underground New York record that you couldn't wait to get home and download? Or been in a group grope, like at the Cock when it was on Avenue A?"

"For me, after 35 years, gay nightlife is no longer interesting," says London-based photographer Jamie McLeod, "unless I'm somewhere untouched by commercial Western influences—places like Turkey, Mexico, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iran."

The explosion of chemsex culture, as well, provides further competition for promoters of gay nightlife. "Clubbing has suffered at the hands of home-based chill-out and recreational drugs," says a patron of London's Fire. "There's drinking, using, and shagging all in the comfort of your own home or of near-neighbors thanks to the apps."

Watch the trailer for the VICE Films documentary "Chemsex."

"'The scene' is an eroded idea," says singer David McAlmont. "Gay men are still having a good time." And for a younger generation without the benefit (or detriment) of hindsight, who don't remember how things were, gay nightlife is certainly not for wont of excitement. "We go to Orange every Sunday night," says Simon, 19, who moved to London from a small Sussex town last year. "London's like an explosion of glitter in your face. Too much fun. When people say there's been a downturn, I just look at them and think, And when was the last time you went out?"

"The scene's still exciting—you've just got to know where to look," says Hannah, a 22-year-old graphic designer, originally from Norwich. "I go out in Camberwell, and there are loads of events at places like the Bussey Building or the Flying Dutchman. But Goldsnap at Dalston Superstore is my favorite night. Hot girls DJ-ing R&B and garage all nigh—what's not exciting about that?"

Follow John Lucas on Twitter.

Some disgusting freakshake I ate for lunch today

Vegans are fat. Vegans are unhealthy. Vegans are poor. Vegans don't give a fuck about the Hemsley sisters. Despite what you have been led to believe over the past few years on Instagram, the above list can apply to a lot of vegans a lot of the time.

Here is a list of things I have consumed over the past week as a vegan: a carton of ice cream, pizza x 3, fake chicken wings, pasta, a tub of peanut butter, wine, beer, burrito, pancakes x 2, chocolate, packet of oreos, margaritas. That's off the top of my head and there's probably more stuff that is having an accumulatively devastating effect on my body. I know this is not a balanced way to live but sometimes it's the end of the month and you have no overdraft left and you need an excuse to eat everything beige in your freezer.

The headlines were hard to miss, even for non-foodies: "The Parmesan Cheese You Sprinkle on Your Penne Could Be Wood," "FDA Warns the Parmesan You Eat May Be Wood Pulp," "Cheese Exec Pleads Guilty in Wood Pulp Parmesan Scandal." Such were the gems that kicked off the great Parm-wood imbroglio of February 2016.

According to various reports, an FDA investigation found that some manufacturers were padding their pre-grated or shredded Parmesan cheese with excess amounts of fillers like cellulose, an anti-clumping agent made from plant waste, including wood pulp.

"That story broke just as my book was going to press," Larry Olmsted, a food journalist and author of the just-released Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating & What You Can Do About It, told VICE. Although the cover of his new book features a large hunk of what looks to be Parm, Olmsted's chapter on the cheese isn't about cellulose additives. It's about bewildering or nonexistent food regulations that allow US restaurants and retailers to label their cheese products as "Parmesan," even though the stuff in the green Kraft can bears almost no tactile or gustatory resemblance to Italy's storied Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Even some of the $20-per-pound Parms sold at specialty-food stores could be knockoffs from Argentina, "where the only legal standard governing its import is that it not be poisonous," Olmsted writes.

"But believe me, fake cheese is far from the biggest problem Americans face in the supermarket," he told me.

From mercury-laden "snapper" that's not really snapper to antibiotic-loaded honey, Olmsted's book details many of the common scams and counterfeits that make their way onto our dinner plates and into our grocery carts. Here, he answers questions about his book's most startling discoveries—and the implications fake food has for American health.

VICE: What was the biggest surprise for you during your research?
Larry Olmsted: Biggest single thing would probably be the restaurant side of all this. There's a long history of food adulteration, so I was not surprised that ground coffee or tea would be adulterated. But I was surprised to find the lack of regulation on the restaurant side and how often they lie with impunity. People say, "Oh, I only eat in nice restaurants, so I don't have to worry." But that's no protection. I wasn't prepared for the level of hyperbole on the restaurant side of the fence.

What kind of hyperbole are we talking about here?
The Tampa Bay Times did a big piece on restaurant fraud, especially for farm-to-table restaurants. It was a really good story, and they found that almost every restaurant was lying about something on its menu. And a lot of it had to do with seafood. Like, when you order red snapper, you're probably getting tilefish, which is often loaded with mercury. Or you order wild-caught salmon and get farmed salmon from Norway that's so high in heavy metals that people are advised not to eat it more than once a month. And that's not the worst end of fish farming. Let's talk about shrimp: Over 90 percent of the seafood we eat in the US is imported, and we consume more shrimp than any other kind of seafood. Most of it is farmed from Southeast Asia, and most of those farms have bad records of using banned or unapproved antibiotics. So there's no doubt to me that all this could have significant health effects, and that eating shrimp is one of the riskier propositions.

Are there not regulations governing all this?
There are some fed rules against misleading consumers, but they're very vague. In the book, I mentioned McCormick and Schmick. Very high-end restaurant chain. For a couple of years, they were advertising Kobe beef that wasn't actually Japanese. Complaints finally tipped the scales and led to a class-action suit. But in most cases, the damages a consumer could sue for is just the difference in cost between the $100 price they paid for a Kobe steak and the $10 steak it really was. So that's only $90. No lawyer is going to represent someone for that.

So there really isn't much risk for the restaurant, unless there's a class action suit. I think there's the potential as this gets more attention for more nonprofits to sue restaurants on principle, and I think that's warranted in some of these cases.

Should consumers blame restaurants and retailers, or are they getting duped too?
The supply chain is convoluted and opaque. But the FDA—in large part because of a government accountability survey I mention in the book that called for more regulation against seafood fraud—set up a new DNA testing lab for imported seafood. They started this pilot test of seafood labeling and found that 85 percent of seafood was labeled correctly at wholesale. So only 15 percent is mislabeled at wholesale. But that number more than doubles at the retail and restaurant level. So despite the length of the supply chain and all the middlemen, a lot of the deceit is really happening at the restaurant or retail level.

What are the harms that come from all this? I mean, apart from those fish loaded with mercury or metal, why is this bad for consumers?
Well, there's the economic fraud. You just overpaid for your steak. Also, in that Kobe beef example, the vast majority of beef in the US is what I'd call drug-laden. It's rich in hormones and animal byproducts, which basically turns cattle into carnivores when they're by nature herbivores. Lots of drugs used in US cattle. Real Kobe beef would have no drugs in it.

So on one level, you're being economically defrauded. And while there's a lot of debate over this, I would go so far as to say you're being poisoned and your health is in danger from all these added hormones and drugs. Of course there's the chance the restaurant could substitute drug-free meat for the Kobe, but most of our meat is not drug-free.

Also, a lot of our favorite geographically indicated products—like Parmigiano, Kobe, olive oil—there are very precise definitions for how they're traditionally made. Most producers ban steroids or hormones or drugs. That's true for many of these products. So their name carries an implied guarantee of quality and wholesomeness. When you get fake Parmigiano or olive oil, you're not getting wholesomeness. So there's the potential omission of health benefits. Parmigiano cheese, for example, was chosen by both NASA and the Soviet Space Program to go into space with astronauts because, for nutrition per ounce, it's like a wonder cheese. In Italy, it's one of the first things kids are given when they're weaned off mother's milk. Same with olive oil. All this wonderful heart health and anti-carcinogen and anti-Alzheimer's research. Every time they do a study they find something good about it. So if you get a lower-quality olive oil, you're also losing some of that nutritional quality—even if the lower quality isn't actually bad for you.

Wait, what's wrong with the olive oil I'm buying?
A number of studies and investigations have found various but significant levels of extra virgin olive oil sold in the US, especially mass-market supermarket brands, are not meeting the true standards for extra virgin. When I open a bottle of true olive oil, the aroma explodes out of the bottle, my kitchen smells like an olive grove, and the taste is transcendent. I've never found a supermarket bottle, even when labeled extra virgin—which is legally supposed to represent the very highest quality level—that did that.

What do I do about all this? How can I, as a consumer, ensure that what I'm buying is the genuine article?
That's the hard part. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. I give all the specifics in my book, but it varies depending on what you're buying.

Can you give me a few examples?
So for seafood, if you're buying retail, there are all these third-party auditors. The two biggest and most trusted are the Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC, which has a logo you can look for that's kind of like a fish and a check mark. I spoke with chef Rick Moonen, who's a big voice in sustainable fishing, and he said Marine Stewardship was one he absolutely believes in. The second one is the Global Aquaculture Alliance's Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) seal for farmed food.

Also, it depends where you buy it. I recommend Whole Foods. Not for everything. But they have good traceability when it comes to seafood. They'll say if it's wild caught and where it's from. Not everything they sell is good stuff, but they seem to be very transparent and honest about what they sell.

In restaurants, I'd watch out for snapper and tuna and shrimp. And I tend to watch out for what I call "value added adjectives." You see these menus listing Berkshire County pork chops and heritage-breed chickens and buffalo-milk mozzarella. If I see just one of those items, like it's their signature dish, then I believe it. But if everything on the menu is from small farms or has those premium adjectives, most restaurants can't afford that, so I tend not to believe it. It's just really easy to add those words and get more money.

What would you like people to take away from your book?
Everyone's focused on the shock and awe statistics. But it's about finding real foods, which are great and tend to be more wholesome and nutritious. They taste better.

I think a lot of this all goes to the disconnect we have from food. The old model was that you go to the market, and you buy what's fresh and local. We kind of have programmed ourselves to just open our cabinet. There's no rational reason to think that cheese is something you should be storing in your cabinet for a year and putting on food. You lose out on so many things when you eat like that. If you buy some fresh basil when making pizza, there's no problem. But it's once you decide you want a bag of dried basil in your cabinet that will last for two years—that's when you run into problems.

A mural of devoted to Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, painted by Langston Allston. Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images

In the wake of Alton Sterling's death this month, many mourned what seemed like just the latest in a series of unjustified police shootings of black men. Some people took to the streets in protest. Others reflected and grieved in private. Langston Allston started painting.

Allston, a New Orleans–based artist, has been using his artwork to address social change and stoke conversations since he studied painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010. When he heard about Alton Sterling, Allston hitched a ride to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he picked up a paintbrush to contribute to the city's anguish and healing. There, Allston painted murals, including a portrait of a local protester called Lil' Smurf, who Allston said made an impression outside the Sterling memorial. A photograph of his artwork was later featured in the New York Times.

We spoke to Allston about his murals and why he sees painting as a viable form of protest.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Part of the mural painted by Langston Allston in Baton Rouge. Photo courtesy of Langston Allston

VICE: How did the mural at Alton Sterling's memorial come about earlier this month?
Langston Allston: I've been super active in terms of including in my art how fucked up the world is. I've kind of always had a particular thing about police brutality in my work because it's something that's always been close to me. I went to Ferguson . But we ran into a lot of protestors who were really inspiring—people from the community who came out and were just mad—so I just pinpointed a guy we were talking to earlier in the day named Lil' Smurf. Lil' Smurf was out going hard and protesting and I was like, Man, I've got to immortalize this somehow. Because it's sad how quickly this activism reacting to a sad event fades away. If there's any way to keep people visually energized and plugged in, I think that's a useful thing to do.

Image courtesy of Langston Allston

Do you see your paintings or murals as helping people in some way?
I personally don't think a mural by itself is an incredibly helpful thing. But I find as I'm talking to people that sometimes the things I paint take on a life after I've left that they didn't have when I was there. They mean things to people over time. Creating emblems and icons for people to gather around and talk about is definitely a useful thing to do, but I think there's more that has to get done. The visual element of any movement is always critical because it helps people remember it, helps people identify it, and helps people plug into it who weren't previously plugged in. But everything else has to happen in addition to that. There's definitely room for art in activism, but it's not end-all-be-all by any means.

What are you trying to accomplish with your artwork?
I really want to do work that lets people understand that the issues we're grappling with are complicated, but also understand that they're reversible and changeable. Activist art is something I've wanted to avoid, even though my art features activism, if that makes sense. I want stuff that will talk to people for a long time because these issues haven't gone away. We've been fighting this fight since slavery, basically, to get respect and to get people to stop murdering black people in cold blood. It's obviously going to be ongoing and obviously individual incidents really polarize people or pull them together. It's really important to remain active and aware of what's happening, but it's also important to understand things as being broad issues that affect everybody all the time.

Image courtesy of Langston Allston

If you don't categorize your work as activist art, what would you categorize it as?
I guess I would just call them paintings. I aspire to be active and affect change, but at the same time, I think that my paintings are just paintings.

Do you see this current movement—specifically, the Black Lives Matter movement—as something as significant as the civil rights movement?
I think I do see it as being equally significant. Really, it's a young movement; it just started. But those things we're looking back on and talking about like the civil rights movement or black power, those were things that started as young movements in times where it was necessary for them to exist. There was a gap where people really weren't polarized by it and the conversation wasn't happening on a national scale, and I think we're overdue to readdress this kind of shit because I don't think it's gotten better. In many ways, it's gotten worse.

Where I live in New Orleans, all these problems are extremely real every single day. There's no getting away from the reality of it. The law, in many ways, has lost its legitimacy—especially here in Louisiana. It's the incarceration capital of the world, so everybody down here is on papers in some way. Cops representing justice isn't really a thing. You don't see police come through New Orleans or Baton Rouge and think, Oh that person represents justice and fairness and equality. You already know they have the power to fuck up your life and probably will at some point. It's extremely necessary to start addressing that huge problem we have—especially here, because it is so fucked up. Little changes would do a lot. We just need to get a little bit of movement.

Follow Sean Neumann on Twitter.

Illustration by Sarah MacReading

In this day and age, it's almost old hat for gay characters on popular TV to trend more toward Homer Simpson than Waylon Smithers. From Happy Endings' Max Blum to Looking's Richie Ventura, the "masc" gay dude has gone from an easy punch line to the new norm, and it's far from a huge leap to claim that in 2016, certain ideas of gay masculinity have finally become firmly entrenched in mainstream Western pop culture.

Masculinity is, indeed, something that gay men obsess over and have obsessed over since the 1970s and the rise of clone culture. It's an obsession often manifested in derisive and self-loathing ways, because gay men often fetishize masculinity to the point that they look down upon and subordinate their feminine peers. The same pattern is evident among straight men—sexism and misogyny, after all, are alive and well—but this same type of anti-effeminacy often goes unnoticed among gay men themselves.

The parallels between how anti-effeminacy plays out between the two groups—straight and gay men—is too-little studied. So while completing my master's degree in sociology at Louisiana State University, I conducted an ethnographic study, using 20 in-depth interviews with New Orleans and Baton Rouge-area gay men from a variety of racial and economic backgrounds, to explore how sexual aggression plays out in straight and gay bars.

After two years spent in watering holes of all stripes (it was for science, I swear), I saw many stereotypes confirmed—for instance, that sexual violence runs rampant in straight bars, or that gay and straight men negotiate sexual consent in vastly different ways—but one surprising pattern slowly revealed itself: The way straight men discuss women and the way gay men discuss effeminate men are remarkably similar. And I found, most surprisingly, that gay men can be just as sexist against effeminate men as straight men are against women.

the infamous and supposed Madonna-Whore Complex (the idea some men "want to have sex with a 'slut' but not go out with one,") manifested as neatly and awfully between gay men as it is with straight.

Throughout the study, I encountered several gay men who had protected women from unwanted sexual contact, only to turn and blame those same women for their own victimization. Conversely, men I spoke with—whether bears (gay lingo for a stocky, hairy, stereotypically masculine guy) or twinks (lithe, boyish, and stereotypically feminine-presenting men), hypermasculine or feminine—frequently blamed men more effeminate than them for causing aggression in gay bars. Just as in straight bars, where women did not cause certain instances of aggression that they faced, gendered and sexist stereotypes were placed upon effeminate men.

Feminine men were repeatedly described as acting like they were on soap operas; one masculine guy I interviewed hilariously told me that a slapping fight between two young twinks in the French Quarter was like watching "Gays of Our Lives." Others made reference to "pissy queens" and a disdain for feminine men so strong that they would rule out going to certain bars to avoid them. One bear I interviewed recalled threatening violence against a twink at one point for simply talking to his boyfriend. In both straight and gay bars, twinks and women were blamed for instances of aggression such as these that they did not directly provoke. That said, the extent to which I witnessed or observed actual aggression involving effeminate gay men, aside from narratives of verbal arguments or slapping fights, was zero.

Several men told me about near-hookups in bars that began as exchanged glances but ended after a brief conversation because the guy's voice was said to be "too femme." I would later observe those same men head home together, speaking to a broader pattern of gay men who despise feminine guys in public but have sex with them in private, in much the same way some straight men will admonish women as "sluts" while later having sex with them. If said woman refuses, they go from a "slut" to a "bitch"—the infamous and supposed Madonna-Whore Complex (the idea some men "want to have sex with a 'slut' but not go out with one") manifested as neatly and awfully between gay men as it is with straight.

But gay men worship masculinity—that's nothing new. So what?

The sociological theory known as hegemonic masculinity, developed by R. W. Connell in their groundbreaking sociological text Masculinities holds that someone who performs masculinity always needs something to subordinate. In gay and straight bars alike, it's apparent that such subordination falls upon the shoulders of women, effeminate men, and gender non-conforming individuals.

To that end, the study ultimately revealed that masculinity and sexism are inextricably intertwined in queer culture, a phenomenon termed "queer sexism" by sociologist Jane Ward, author of the popular book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men. And queer sexism allows gay men to perpetuate the same effects of sexism writ large—income inequality, victimization, and internalized sexism—against men based upon their masculinity or effeminacy.

Data shows that men—and those who perpetuate a certain version of masculinity—are often those who perpetuate violence. Masculinity is not inherently toxic, but masculinity does have its toxic effects within queer cultures. LGBTQ peoples can do better than condone the marginalization of the marginalized, yet that, ultimately, is what is produced by the fetishization of masculinity.

Swede White is a doctoral student in sociology at Louisiana State University examining identity construction and social networks. Follow him on Twitter.

(Photo via Swindonlink)

Hey, good buddy, what you got there? What you got there in your foreskin, my boy?

A MAN who hid a packet of cocaine under his foreskin while naked in the car park of Homebase has appeared in court.

Well! Thank you the Swindon Advertiser for that! I have crossed my legs over one another and I am never uncrossing them again, because all I can now feel up there is the phantom papercut-like feeling of a flattened baggy being squeezed indelicately up my foreskin! I am never going to un-feel this feeling! The corners! The corners are invisibly pranging my tenderness!

declined to comment.

HOW CAN YOU HAVE. SEVEN POINT TWO GRAMS. OF COCAINE. UP YOUR DICK.

UP IT.

UP YOUR DICK.

I have spent a shocked hour – maybe an hour-and-a-half – on the logistics of stuffing seven grams of coke up your dick, and I have come to a few conclusions here re: stuffing seven grams of coke up your dick, and—

i. I mean, I suppose point one is seven grams is a lot of cocaine to shove up your dick! I consulted with a nameless VICE employee who knows a lot more about cocaine than me (and, by extension, storage thereof) and asked him how much seven grams was, in terms of volume, and he (or she; girls love gak, too – it could be a girl) he came over with a little bobble of tissue to illustrate "one gram of coke, by volume" and then he said "this, only times seven" – i.e. bigger than a marble, smaller than a gobstopper – and we both just imagined that amount of cocaine and looked off into middle distance and imagined shoving it up our respective bellends—

ii. Point ii. the first question you are probably asking is "did all seven grams of cocaine necessarily have to be up the dick? The details are sketchy" – but, from the Salisbury Journal: "Prosecutor Keith Ballinger described how the wrap had 'emerged' from private parts," suggesting it was a singular package of cocaine concealed about his person rather than a number of grams dotted about the place, for example up the arse, in an armpit, &c. So, essentially, when questioned by the police about what he was up to at 8.30AM in a Homebase car park, this dude answered by silently emitting a singular wrap of cocaine from the tip of his dick. As answers to questions go, that is imperious, and—

iii. Only way I can imagine storing that much cocaine at once is all folded up in a Lottery ticket, and basically: Did my boy shove a Lotto ticket full of gak up his slit?

Listen, we've all taken things places we shouldn't have done – a hip flask to work, fireworks to school, ket to a wedding – but, clearly, us mortals are thinking on too low a level to truly ever smuggle contraband on a major scale. A Swindon man turned his foreskin into a kangaroo pocket just to keep seven grams of cocaine out of the hooved hands of the police, and for that he must be applauded. Instead, "The Man" has decided this week that he must spend 13 weeks in prison. There's no justice.

@joelgolby

Various old cocaine headlines from VICE, slightly altered to make it sound like they are about shoving cocaine up your dick:

How Your Low-Key Cocaine Habit Actually Affects You

London, This Is What's Actually in Your Cocaine

How Unethical Is

War. All things considered, it's probably one of the things people like least about the world. Unless you're Genghis Khan or Tony Blair, when asked if you'd want to wage war you'd probably go "nah" and make a face like you've just discovered you've been sitting on an unwrapped Twix.

Conversely, the past. People fucking love the past. Old people, yes, because they are hurtling towards the ground at the speed of light and so can't get enough of the past, when they were decades further from death. But younger people, too – the types who grow twirly moustaches and go to Blitz parties, presumably forgetting that The Blitz was the name given to the relentless and not-fun-at-all bombing campaign waged by the Germans during WWII.

So what happens when you wedge these two things – both war and the past – together in a massive field in Kent? You get The War and Peace Revival show, a five-day military and vintage festival at Folkestone Racecourse.

It has all the things you get at a normal festival, like music, beer, mud and people dressing up in embarrassing yet painstakingly-created costumes. It's just that instead of the music being about "getting blunted" or promiscuity, it's about doing "The Lindy Hop" and maintaining stable relationships. And instead of costumes like "sparkly sequined glitter hippy" or "nu-rave native American" it's more "deeply problematic SS uniform".

I've often wondered why people are so obsessed with World War I and II. I mean, sure, it was the last time the world truly came together to defeat a terrifying and genuine evil, and the lessons we learnt from the tragedies that took place have dramatically shaped the course of modern history, but fucking hell, we do love to bang on about it; it feels like there's been a new movie, book or video game released about the Wars at least once a day, every day, for the past 60-odd years.

To find out why people enjoy re-imagining a period that saw some of the greatest losses of human life history has ever seen, I went down to the festival and had a walk around.

The first thing I noticed was the sheer scale of the thing. I had a little wander around to get my bearings and it was probably about two-thirds of the size of Glastonbury, but just absolutely rammed to the gills with tanks, army uniforms and people camping in makeshift barracks rather than bright orange Halfords £30 jobs.

The campsite genuinely looked like a bit like a scene in Full Metal Jacket, complete with signs saying things like "God Is My Shotgun" and "You Yell, We Shell, Like Hell". They even still did that annoying "wacky flag above our area so we know where we're camped" thing, but instead of being Spongebob Squarepants or an acid house smiley it was giant American, British and, in some cases, Nazi flags.

I started talking to a guy called Marcus, who was sitting in the Vietnam section dressed as an undercover CIA agent and drinking what looked like JD and Coke, despite the fact it was 10 in the morning. I asked what drew him to playing dress up in a giant field of other people playing dress up.

"I used to be in the army," he said. "To be honest, doing this is the closest thing you can get to the camaraderie of being in the army – I think that's why a lot of people do it."

In between sips of his drink he told me he was a history teacher in his spare time, and that this is only one of many re-enactments he attends, his favourite being the Tudor-themed War of the Roses re-enactment where he likes to play an Italian merchant.

"The thing is," he continued. "The thing is, my rank is actually pretty high as a CIA agent. Basically, I'm on the same level as a colonel, so I can tell anybody here if I wanted to to let me use their helicopter or tank and they'd have to let me."

I'm not sure if he was in character at this point, or if he actually believed what he was saying, but either way he let me try on this fancy gas mask so I couldn't complain.

There were various sections of the site dedicated to different facets of war. Some contained just tanks and vehicles. Some contained tanks, vehicles and fake battle scenes, complete with guys (and it was 99 percent guys) just kind of sitting around in their uniforms looking nonplussed.

I struck up a conversation with an owner of a tank-type people carrier thing, who was more than happy to explain where he got every single tiny part of the vehicle, down to the side lights and the authentic German hip flask on the inside.

One common trait among everyone there was that they were extremely keen to talk. This guy had come all the way from Latvia to show off his rustic Batmobile and wasn't prepared to let me go without chewing my ear off about every little nut and bolt. It was actually quite sweet to see a grown man essentially reduced to the level of a teenager discussing his latest Pokemon Go catch, until you remind yourself that his Pokemon Go catches are relatively ideologically unsound.

As I pottered around the dusty fields I started to see more and more incredibly detailed uniforms, most filled out by slightly overweight guys who – although I couldn't ask every single one – I safely assumed have never been in the army.

I got talking to this lovely-looking fella who, even in midday heat burning the top of my bald head, was so dedicated to his outfit – one worn by henchman from the shady Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil universe – that he wouldn't even take off his face mask to talk to me.

"I just love how everything looks, and how it feels to be in full uniform," he said. "For me, it's more about collecting all the individual parts and then designing the costume myself. I take a lot of pride in how good it looks."

Next, I wandered into what looked like a massive branch of Rokit – a vintage clothing arena full of rockabilly, polka dot type stuff, which didn't chime with the trenches I'd seen a minute earlier, but hey-ho. There, I got speaking to Natalie, who was selling vintage gear out of a 1950s style camper van called Twiggy.

"I just think the whole look exudes class – that's why I'm into it," she explained when I asked why she dresses the way she does. "It's something that I think is missing from modern society. People in those days had a lot more time to do themselves up; they took care over their appearance. These days, girls just put their hair in a scrunchie and go outside like it doesn't even matter."

Needless to say, a lot of people at the festival were pretty enamoured with the "good old days", a simpler, sepia-toned time when children respected their elders and nobody got angry about halal butchers because they didn't really exist. You get the impression that, for the people who attend War and Peace, nationalism is a thing to be proud about, rather than shied away from. There will have undoubtedly been some Remainers among their number, but I got the sense that these were the kind of people an emotionally-led, nationalistic campaign like Vote Leave would have worked a treat on, because they're already so heavily invested in a rose-tinted version of the past that they would be willing to ignore stuff like "facts" and "expert advice" in favour of returning to an age where jingoism wasn't a bad word.

To guns now, and: there were a lot of guns. Extremely realistic BB guns, paintball guns, shooting ranges, deactivated guns, old guns, new guns, even this £2,500 golden AK-47 gun, which I'm fairly certain Gaddafi owned at some point. The owner told me its story:

"It was actually found in the Middle East," he said. "When it was found it was covered in blood and guts. You see the bullet hole at the back of it?"

Sure enough, there was a big old bullet hole on the other side of the gun.

"That's where someone had obviously taken a shot to the stomach and died."

It's good to know there are still people out there who are committed enough to looking like evil dictators gone mad with power that they're willing to spend thousands of pounds on gold automatic weapons.

I also noticed there was a black SS flag hanging up behind his counter. The SS being the Schutzstaffel, AKA the guys in charge of enforcing Nazi racial policy, AKA some of the worst bad guys in history. I saw a lot of Nazi memorabilia around the place – people in uniforms, swastika flags, skull and crossbones patches; y'know, evil stuff – and so had to ask the attendant at yet another stall bearing a large Nazi flag what makes it OK to so brazenly display the kind of iconography that would offend hundreds of thousands of people.

"I just specialise in bomb fuses. I really like bomb fuses, and the German ones were really well made," said Tony, adding: "I think, for a lot of people here, they just like the beauty of it. Everything the Nazis made was incredibly well-made; the knives are all hand-crafted, the machines are all still great examples of their kind."

But what about the inherent awfulness associated with it all?

"I think you don't come to a place like this if you are sensitive about things like that. I think some people might share that ideology, but most people are just here to collect and trade."

In fairness, Tony didn't actually own the flag – it belonged to his stall manager – and did seem like he was genuinely just really into fuses, there to collect rare items, as many others were too. And because of the rarity of German war items (most sell for double, if not triple, the amount of Allied gear), the market for Nazi stuff will always be stronger and therefore more revered in these circles, purely on a financial basis.

But that's not to say the festival didn't feel quite problematic in parts. Throughout the whole day I didn't see anyone who wasn't white, bar a Japanese guy in full Japanese WWII uniform who shouted "Banzai!" a lot. It wasn't a problem for me, as "white bald guy" seemed extremely on trend at War and Peace this year, but I can't imagine what it would be like for a Jewish person if they had to walk around, seeing what – at surface level, at least – sometimes looked like a very lackadaisical Nazi rally in a field in south-east England.

As the day was winding down, I decided to take a quick breather in this tank. I spoke to its owner, John, about how he came to own such a tank. "I built it from scratch over three-and-a-half years," he said, proudly. "It took me a lot of effort to make this vehicle, and I'm pretty much retired now just so I can focus on my vehicles."

John seemed like a very nice guy, and his enthusiasm for "vehicles" helped me understand the festival a little more. Away from its dodgier facets, the event – and the entire culture around it – is essentially an extension of those little Aircraft kits, only absolutely massive and about 40 times as expensive. And instead of toy soldiers in toy vehicles and tanks, you dress yourself up in full regulation uniform and sit around all day getting pissed, talking to whoever will listen.

@williamwasteman / alexandermcbridewilson.com

A dying man. (via Wikipedia)

As you trundle your grey viscera into your office, that place with the bad lighting that you don't see anywhere else, grab the back of your ergonomic chair, yank it out slightly, park yourself down, yawn, look down at your keyboard and then shut your eyes for a few seconds of black tranquillity before you sigh a deep sigh and enter the password for your machine, you would do well to remember that you are dying at an incredible rate.

Not just normal dying like in the films where someone gets hit by a car or gets cancer or something. I mean bad dying, where every day the unmoving dullness and static monotony of your life burns the gumption from your blood cells until you're just a putrescent bin liner full of pigs' trotters waiting to be crushed by the sticky teeth of an old dust truck.

The World Health Organisation, a body we only hear from when they're turning the global epidemic status from yellow (uh oh) to red (seriously guys do not get bird flu), have stated that at least one hour of exercise or activity per day is required to offset the powerful damage that working in an office does to you. The risk of dying after sitting on your arse for eight hours a day – an astonishing time to be sat down, to be quite fucking honest with you – increases by almost 10 per cent, while the more active among us, those lucky bastards only sitting down for four or so hours are only 6.8 per cent likely to die.

Our feckless laziness isn't just damaging our bodies, though, oh no. It's ruining the fucking economy to boot. Medical journal The Lancet reports that people not running around enough costs the global economy £51 billion in medical bills and lost productivity.

"You don't need to do sport, you don't need to go to the gym," says Prof Ulf Ekelund, lead author of the paper. "It's OK doing some brisk walking, maybe in the morning, during lunchtime, after dinner in the evening. You can split it up over the day, but you need to do at least one hour." But how am I supposed to walk anywhere when I've got this work to do? This work that I will never remember, that no one will ever remember me doing, maybe even forgotten about a mere week after it's completed. I'll walk to Pret to get my daily stomach ache, but you can't make me try and extend my pointless life by briskly walking, World Health Organisation.

The trouble with things like this is that people won't take any notice. "Sitting down for eight hours a day makes you die eh?" people will say. "That's really bad, I don't want to die. But I have an arbitrarily constructed working time and environment in which I have to complete my tasks, so even though it's literally making my heart slow down, I will continue to follow this lifestyle until my bone marrow turns to tar and I have a cardiac arrest at my desk while I'm trying to play Miniclip Pool in between inputting futile digits and letters into a variety of documents, holding back tears for my lost health before I'm allowed to creep out of the exit, by which time the sun itself has died and fallen to the ground and all that's left is the pitch darkness, which I have to wade through to climb onto a tube train where I will scramble to get a seat even though I've been sat down for what doctors are now calling a fatal amount of time. Ho hum!" I'm looking forward to getting buried with a vacuum packed copy of Microsoft Word in my casket, which is an L-shape because of my fucked-up work spine. Ah, the sweet release!

@joe_bish

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This is actual sky news and not a spoof pic.twitter.com/4yyICC1H8f
— Bobby Faghihi (@BobbyFaghihi) July 28, 2016

What the fuck, Sky News? Yesterday, during a segment about Tuesday's attack on a church in Normandy, in which a priest was murdered and worshippers held hostage, a Sky correspondent was beamed into our homes from St James' Church in Surrey, there to prove how easy it would be to enter a place of worship and kill everyone inside. Which has now gone viral because of course it has.

"The morning service began about 20 minutes ago, and there are no obvious signs of any security," said Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt, a worried look on his face – understandable, of course, as most British churches employ armed militias to guard their entrances at all times. "In fact, this sign at the church door says everybody is welcome," he observed, visibly worried about a church being welcoming.

We then see him walk in and walk back out, a sombre look on his face. "There are about a dozen worshippers in there, and one priest. If I was a terrorist, I could have killed them all," he says.

As much as it seems like a Chris Morris sketch, it is not. It is real.

Marina Joyce (Screen shot via)

At the beginning of this week, few people outside of the YouTube community knew the name Marina Joyce. Come Tuesday, however, #SaveMarinaJoyce was trending across Twitter and Facebook – a rallying cry to rescue the London-based fashion vlogger from some unknown, definitely dangerous situation.

The drama started when Marina posted a new video, "Date Outfit Ideas", to her 1.3 million YouTube subscribers. Commenters noted that, in the clip, she seemed unusually dazed. Some said they could hear her whisper "help me", others claimed they could see bruises on her body and the reflection of a hooded man in her eyes. Because this all happened on the internet, everything got very out of hand very quickly, and before long Marina's fans had convinced themselves that something was up, starting the #SaveMarinaJoyce hashtag and coming up with all sorts of theories about what might have happened to her, and why – they believed – she was surreptitiously asking for their help.

Amid all this, Marina tweeted out an invitation to a "morning rave" in Bethnal Green, which inspired rumours that the 19-year-old had been kidnapped by ISIS, drugged and forced to lure her fans to the event so the terror group could attack them all. The police were called – in what must have been an extremely confusing conversation for whoever picked up – and went to investigate, finding Marina "safe and well" at her home in Enfield. Bizarrely, this didn't stop anyone from freaking out, with tweeters and YouTube commenters – including YouTube celebrity Alfie Deyes – urging people not to go to the morning rave, or anywhere near Bethnal Green, lest they put their lives at risk.

The whole thing was, of course, just tweens working themselves up for no reason whatsoever. Marina was absolutely fine the entire time and was shocked to see #SaveMarinaJoyce trending, telling The Sun, "I now know that if I'm ever really in trouble or in danger then my YouTube viewers will be there for me. It is incredible what people have done. They have helped my channel so much now."

So that's nice – Marina's fine and her channel is going great. But what about Bethnal Green, this highly dangerous place that nobody in their right mind should ever visit? How do its residents feel about living in London – nay, the world's – most dangerous place? To find out, we went and spoke to a few of them (most of whom didn't want their photos taken).

VICE: Are you worried about her?
Sam, 24: I couldn't care less, to be honest. I think it's ridiculous. She's got no relevance to my life. There's more important things going on in the world than some vlogger.

What about you? You're in Bethnal Green – do you feel like your life is in danger?
Actually I'm really scared I'm going to be kidnapped like this Marina girl, you know? Not sure if I'm going to sleep tonight, I'll probably be shitting myself.

So do you think you'll show your support at the meet-up?
I feel like I'm starting to warm to Marina now and should show my support. I feel like we should look after the local community.

(Screen shot via)

VICE: So will you be joining in to #savemarinajoyce?
Darryl, 33: I'm a massively cynical bastard; it sounds an awful lot like a massive publicity stunt. I say massive – it sounds like a half-arsed attempt at a publicity stunt. A lot of people will go, "Oh my god," whereas cynical bastards like me, as horrible as that sounds, will go, "Yep." It might be real and atrocious and terrible, but there's always that cynic in me.

Do you think your life could be in danger now? I mean, one girl has already been kidnapped.
Not any more than usual. I'll try my best not to sleep.

ISIS could be using her as bait. Worried?
I'm pretty certain if I did an uncomfortable poo these days that ISIS would probably take responsibility for it. They'd totally say it was their doing.

So do you think this could turn into a war? Maybe ISIS vs YouTubers?
No, not at all. I think both sides have got better things to do with their time.

Are you scared you could be next?
Quentin, 25: I had no idea. I wasn't aware it happened, so yeah, obviously! I'm scared in general – doesn't matter which area. I'm surprised nothing has happened in London yet.

Do you believe ISIS have kidnapped her?
Every time something happens, first thing they think of is, "It's ISIS." There's no evidence.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Everyone Wants to Talk About Sex, But Are They Doing It Well?

VICE: Do you think you'll be able to sleep tonight?
Ben, 24: I did hear about it on Facebook. I wasn't really worried. I think I'll manage eventually.

How do you feel that ISIS could be on your doorstep?
Who knows? There's always apparently a risk, isn't there?

You've lived in Bethnal Green all your life. What with all this going on, maybe it's time to move?
I think I'll be OK.

VICE: Are you worried about being kidnapped any time soon? You do live in Bethnal Green, after all?
Nichol, 28: Why should I be scared that I'll be kidnapped in my own house? No, I'm not. I'm a man. I live with a lot of people. I'm not scared.

(Screen shot from a genuinely bizarre safe sex PSA, via)

VICE: Are you scared about ISIS targeting you?
Ruby, 22: If she's a public figure, I'm not saying she's brought it on herself, but if she's a public figure then they obviously knew who she was. They must have targeted her because she's a public figure.

Still, it's worrying, isn't it? ISIS kidnapping YouTubers. Do you think you'll sleep tonight?
I'm not scared to sleep – I've got a concierge! I've lived in some dodgy houses before. But that was in Mile End. Mind you, Bethnal Green isn't any safer.

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Green Party placards on an anti-austerity protest (Photo by Adam Barnett)

Voting is now underway in what can only be described as the election of the summer. No, not the Labour leadership coup-cum-contest – the Green Party are voting to replace their leader since 2012, Natalie Bennett. Not because of infighting but because the Greens are so lacking in hubris that every after two terms, their leaders stand down and let someone else have a crack.

The Greens are a fringe political party but, then again, so are UKIP and just look what they've achieved. They want to challenge the hegemony of our two party political system and change the game. This sounded stupid a few years ago but we've entered something of a twilight zone where anything's possible. So, who's running for the Green Party leadership in the hope of heading up a serious alternative for voters on the left before heading up the Corbyn/Green coalition government of 2025?

CAROLINE LUCAS AND JONATHAN BARTLEY

Age: Lucas is 55, Bartley is 44

Why are there two of them?: They're running on a joint ticket and propose to share the job.

Where are they from?: Lucas was born in Worcestershire where her dad sold solar paneling. She landed in Brighton via the hotbed of veganism that is Exeter University after ten years working at Oxfam. Bartley is from the smog-filled metropolis we call London.

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of?: 50 per cent Caroline Lucas, and a man who once worked for John Major.

Highest office held: Lucas is not only MP for Brighton, but has been leader of the Greens before and was once an MEP. Bartley is the Green Party's Work and Pension's spokesperson.

What are their politics: Caroline is khaki, a very practical and wearable green you'd expect to find in M&S that doesn't look out of place at important meetings. Bartley is British Racing Green, he used to work for the Tories and once described himself as a "floating voter". He's also a man of faith who founded the progressive Christian think tank Ekklesia.

Most notable moment: Lucas was listed by the Observer as one of "50 people who could save the planet", which for a Green is like making the Sunday Times Rich List. Bartley once publically grilled an unsuspecting David Cameron over special needs in schools. Bartley has a disabled son.

Something they've said which is actually of interest:
Bartley is a man who isn't afraid to cite parenting as a legit reason for job sharing, which, frankly is pretty radical: "Like any parent I struggle to balance work and family life and with the barriers that a disabled child like my son faces. I just couldn't dedicate the time needed to be the sole leader of the Green Party."

Will they win?: This is certainly the most well-known ticket but the Greens don't do cults of personality.

Summary in a few words: This alliance is Progressiveness personified.

Simon (left) with his very cool Green Party tattoo and current leader Natalie Bennet (Picture via Facebook)

SIMON CROSS

Age: Simon, enigmatically, doesn't seem to have listed his age anywhere publically. The Green Party press office "don't hold such information".

Where are they from?: Originally from Labour heartland, south Yorkshire.

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of?: No. Simon describes himself as a "family man" who works in ethical sales. He has a Green Party logo tattooed in his shoulder which is... certainly aesthetically better than one of Jeremy Corbyn's face?

Highest office held: He was the Green's candidate in the 2015 election for Rochford and Southend East. He lost out to the Tories. So none.

What are his politics: Grassroots green from the bottom up. Active in the party for 30 years, he's a traditional "100 percent renewable energy" candidate.

Will he win?: Probably not, he's competing with our next candidate, Clive Lord, for the core Green vote.

Summary in a few words: A very Green everyman.

Clive Lord (Photo via Clive Lord for Green Party Leader)

CLIVE LORD

Age: At 81, Clive is the oldest candidate in the race.

Where are they from?: Leeds.

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of? No. You might not know Clive but he's actually the party's longest-serving member. He co-founded the People Party in 1973, a forerunner to the Green Party. He might just be the only name long-time Greens know better than Caroline Lucas. Everyone else, not so much.

Highest office held: Never elected but Clive has stood as a candidate in General Elections since 1974 and local elections since 1980. This man's dedication!

What are their politics: Clive is a Green who campaigns tirelessly for a citizen's income. In 1993 he said, "I'm afraid I cannot retire from Green politics until the significance of the Basic Income is understood and taken for granted on all sides."

Something he actually said: "A recession can be fun."

Will he win?: Like Corbyn, he might be the oldest and the least mainstream-friendly, but he's potentially the most politically radical option. So you never know...

Summary in a few words: Makes Corbyn look like a youthful and naively centrist slave to the status quo.

David Malone (Photo by Andrew Williams)

DAVID MALONE

Age: 54

Where are they from?: Currently based in fracking country, David lives in Scarborough. He was born in North Shields but grew up in London in the 1970s and came of age in the 80s.

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of?: No. He's a documentary filmmaker who used the troll the Guardian's comments section under the name Golem XIV, criticizing bank bailouts and austerity. In 2010 he wrote The Debt Generation.

Highest office held: Never elected, he's stood in multiple local elections since 2011. So n/a.

What are their politics: David's main focus is economics. He's highly critical of how the financial crisis was handled.

Most notable moment: It's got to be the trolling.

Quick quote: "They bailed out the banks and forced debts on the population. Who asked me? There was no democracy in this. SHOULD we be bailing out insolvent banks? There was no discussion! There was NEVER open debate."

Will he win?: David's a motivational speaker for hire who could just prove that the Green's are about more than fixing the ozone and give them a voice on economics. He might galvanise those who don't want Lucas a second time.

Summary in a few words: Totally motivational.

Martie Warin (Photo via Martie Warin for Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales)

MARTIE WARIN

Age: The youngest of the bunch, Martie is a millennial 27.

Where are they from?: The former mining town of Easington, County Durham. A place the BBC once billed as "the whitest place in England".

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of?: No. Martie, who is proud to call himself an "Eco-Socialist", is a relative newcomer to the party. He joined in 2010.

Highest office held: He might be the new kid on the block but he was elected as a Parish councilor for Easington village in 2013.

What are their politics: Martie is what you might call a watermelon, to the extent that his Twitter pic is actually of a watermelon. Green on the outside, socialist red on the inside, he's the sort of left winger who's defected from Labour because they're not socialist enough.

Fun fact: Martie is a musician and "strict vegetarian". Could this be his industrial black metal soundcloud?

Will he win?: Martie might appeal to other young voters on the left who are disillusioned with the offering of mainstream politics.

Summary in a few words: Kind of inspo, actually. While the rest of us sit around in the throes of existential quarter life crises he joined a party and got himself elected to serve in the community in no time. Inspo-Goth.

David Williams (Photo via David Williams for Green Party Leader)

DAVID WILLIAMS

Age: 60s

Where are they from?: According to his website, David grew up in Hanky Park, which he describes as "a notorious Salford slum". He now lives in Oxford.

Are they Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party politician I have heard of?: No. He's almost as well-established, however. David has been a local councillor in Oxfordshire for 27 years.

Highest office held: As a local councillor David has held positions such as Chair of Education and Economic Development.

What are their politics: He was once a Labour councillor but left the party when they supported what he deemed "illegal wars". As he saw it Labour were only helping "the rich get richer" and basically "started privatising the NHS".

Fun fact: In 1983, David helped to draft the Labour Party's manifesto and stood as a candidate for Colne Valley in Kirkdale.

In his own words: "British politics is in meltdown and we must be consistent and clear in this chaos". He also says "tomorrow is another day... the fight goes on." Carpe Diem, David.

Will they win?: Could David be the man who appeals to disillusioned Labour voters? Could his story of defection inspire them? You could see it happening. But he's still not Caroline Lucas.

Summary in a few words: Experienced.

Results will be announced at the Green Party conference on September 2nd.

@Victoria_Spratt

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Something weird happened to Cristiano Ronaldo this summer, and that was that he won an international tournament. This de facto made him the best player in the world, the best player of all time. Messi, his closest rival for the crown, has now lost a World Cup final, lost a Copa America final, gone full mad and dyed his hair blonde ¹,² and quit international football for good.

In the goliathic tussle between Messi and Ronaldo, a force of muscle versus a force of sublime balletic touch – a wordless fight between two men mainly fought in the comments sections of YouTube compilation videos – I personally have always erred more on the side of Messi, the perfect imp boy, over Ronaldo, the preening mega-athlete. But then Ronaldo won Euro 2016 with Portugal and, sorry, but silverware trumps skill. Ronaldo is now the GOAT. He had a winner's medal and a moth on his face to prove it. Messi is garbage and Ronaldo should be permanently handed the Ballon d'Or. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules, I just enforce them.

So we just need to nip inside Ronaldo's head for a second: at 31, on the cusp of the edge of his powers, he has conquered his eternal rival, but also did it in the least Ronaldo way possible, struggling through two of the three group games, at times anonymous, at times towering, and then, as underdogs in the final, he went off injured after 25 minutes. Ronaldo won a tournament without personally dominating it. His team ground down France in the final in much the same way Greece did him bad in 2004. This is not how Ronaldo is used to winning: Ronaldo is sprinting from the halfway line to catch air time and power in an 86th minute header; Ronaldo is taking three deep breaths and hammering home a sublime free kick; Ronaldo is taking it past one, two, three men, pulling it back and taking it by another, lifting it over the keeper so insolently the keeper just takes his gloves off and throws them in the net, loses his cleats, walks out of the stadium in his bare socks, refuses to talk to the press. Ronaldo doesn't win from the bench with his knee bandaged up and his team playing a rigid, erosive game. Ronaldo doesn't rely on Eder, a failed Swansea striker, to win him a tournament. Ronaldo has to be Ronaldo.

I think the immediate mental aftermath of Portugal winning a tournament with Ronaldo, but also without Ronaldo, can be summed up in the following picture of Ronaldo:

Ronaldo has lost it now. Ronaldo winning a tournament without winning a tournament has sent him here. He is a blanket salesman now. And in a way, that is the ultimate flex: he has achieved so much in the game that he is choosing to abandon it, at his peak, both physical and in terms of legacy, to instead sell blankets with a Spanish Jesus fresco-level portrait of himself on it. Finally, Ronaldo has answered the ultimate question: what do you get the man who had everything? A large fleece blanket – "44% larger than a regular blanket!" – with his own name and likeness on it.

If you have watched Ronaldo, the film about Ronaldo, on a plane once like I have, then you will know a few things about Ronaldo: firstly, this is a man who would hire a film crew to spend two years basically making a piece of pro-Ronaldo propaganda and then literally call it Ronaldo; two, his best friend is a three-headed hydra made up of his agent, his not-good-at-football brother and his mysterious lab-bred son; and that he essentially lives alone in a palatial modern mansion near Madrid where he just drinks orange juice and stares at decorative ponds a lot, and sometimes makes his son read aloud. He's basically just Patrick Bateman run through Google Translate from English to Portuguese a few times and allowed to go wild in one of those weird continental fashion shops where all the T-shirts cost €800. So that's Ronaldo.

This, also, is Ronaldo, blanket salesman:

This, right now, is Ronaldo's golden moment. This summer he is untouchable. By all means he should rule the world. But instead, this is how we will remember him: at his prime, in perfect physical condition, the deep tan of a four-week holiday spent backflipping off a yacht into the sea, in a dingily-lit hotel room, fully naked under a CR7 fleece blanket, saying, "Hi guys. I hope that– I hope that you like my blanket. Like I do. Very comfortable ".

The greatest football player of all time wants you to buy a £100 blanket with his name on it.

The greatest football player of all time clearly took about six takes to try and sell a "very comfortable" blanket to you, and even then he fucked it, even then he fucked it up.

My theory is that the above work of art – "Cristiano Under Blanket", 2016, artist unknown – is actually the first true peek into the hall-of-mirrors psyche of Cristiano Ronaldo. First deduction: Ronaldo has some incredibly bad advisers. This is the man who just a month ago starred in the greatest football advert of all time, and now here he is, posing under a blanket on Twitter in the most unnatural-under-a-blanket pose I have ever seen (looking again at this photo, I don't think it is a stretch to say Cristiano Ronaldo has never used a blanket before, so alien he looks to the concept of blanket usage), filming himself in a hotel room on his iPhone, diverting his supporters to cr7blanket.com. This is because somebody told him to do this for money³. Enter into Cristiano Ronaldo's mind palace. Walk past the room where he just rubs olive oil into his six-pack for two hours a day. Walk through the lab where he bred a clone of himself with the express intention of playing for Real Madrid forever. Enter instead into his blanket fortress. Cristiano Ronaldo, the best footballer ever, surrounded by fleece likenesses of himself, hammered from all sides by cosy proclamations of his name. Cristiano Ronaldo, the Mad King.

Essentially, what Cristiano Ronaldo has done with this blanket is broken the artifice. We want our athletes to be incredible, untouchable, superhuman: too cool to care about blankets, or you, or me; too rich to need another business arm to prop up their existing wages. But what Cristiano Ronaldo has done, seconds after finally ascending as the greatest footballer in the world, is prove that he is also a really embarrassing, like, sub-reality TV star moneymaker. Cristiano Ronaldo under a blanket is the level of some guy who went out first on Big Brother this year selling teeth whitening stuff on Instagram. Cristiano Ronaldo under a blanket is his "selling teatox on QVC". Cristiano Ronaldo is being authentic with his peers. Cristiano Ronaldo is copying and pasting the email from the PR, "Hi Cristiano!" and all, into a scheduled social post. The world's best footballer is also the world's most embarrassing one. What a year for the sport this has been.

^{1. This is called "going full Bowers", after Dane Bowers. I want to make this happen. It is a crime that the man who bought us the masterwork that is "Bomb Diggy" isn't linguistically marked in some way by our wider language. ↩}

^{2. It's also very "lad who married his childhood sweetheart and got divorced on his 29th birthday, loses perspective a bit and terrorises the local Yates's", isn't it↩}

^{3. For further evidence of Cristiano Ronaldo's Bad Career Decisions, see here↩}

@joelgolby

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All images courtesy of Garage227 studios

Of last year's top ten selling video games, seven featured violence as a core mechanic. The other three were sports games.

Even when we put aside the ongoing arguments about the direct psychological effects of violence in video games, the omnipresence of violence as the key mechanic in big-budget game releases should remain a concern. It reinforces a reward system for players that says the only solution to their problems – whether those problems are family conflicts, lover's quarrels, or troubling foreign relations – is violence. It's not that these games cause people to be violent; it's that the constant violence is monotonous. There's little to no room for empathy or cooperative problem solving (unless the thing you're cooperating on is murdering someone else).

Cue Garage 227 Studios (and a host of other indie devs) that are looking to transform how we look at violence as an essential mechanic in games.

"The game is just a medium. It could be a book. It could be a movie. It could be a song. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that you focus on your message."

Before Daniel Monastero – one of the founding members of Garage 227 Studios and the studio's primary 3D modeller and texture artist – became a game developer, he was a member of Brazil's military police, cracking down on drug trafficking and other violent crimes in the favelas of São Paulo.

The average gamer might recognise favelas from their prominent role in the 2012 action game, Max Payne 3, or the Academy Award–nominated film City of God, but for those unfamiliar with the term, a favela is a Brazilian slum that's similar to an American housing project, but with a degree of violence and poverty that is nearly unheard of in the States. More than 12 million Brazilians live in favelas, and they're at the center of the nation's drug-trafficking problem. Much of the favela population consists of remnants of Brazil's slave trade, creating tension between the nation's black, indigenous, and European populations.

The tension between police and civilians weighed heavy on Monastero. Police action is so prevalent, he says, that the residents of São Paulo have become increasingly desensitised. Even as dozens of armed police storm through the favelas of São Paulo, children keep playing. "It doesn't even matter to them anymore. It's just another freaking day."

Although we face increasing concerns about the militarization of the police in the States, Brazil's uniformed police are in fact a reserve unit of their armed forces. If you're being arrested for drug possession or drug trafficking, you're dealing with a wing of the army. The divide between police and citizens is stark enough when cops are simply civilian law enforcers, let alone part of the military itself.

In describing the cause of this widening gap, Monastero shared a Brazilian saying: "'If you go looking for a horse's head, you'll find one if you put it there.' So if you're in the military, and you go chasing these fires... We were always looking for the 'bad guy' and doing nothing for the people."

The Oddworld games were a major influence on 'Shiny.'

Whether Shiny can deliver as a functional platformer, or if its message resonates with the audience remains to be seen, Monastero brought up "saving lives" and "sharing energy" more times than I could count in our conversation. Whatever the artistic intention of Garage 227, it's clear that Monastero's experiences have shaped his artistic goals.

A story like Monastero's is rarely heard in game development. In a highly competitive field dominated by computer-science majors from top schools, game development in the States and Europe is overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white and disproportionately from comfortable economic backgrounds, according to the International Game Developers Association. But game developers like Monastero or Cameroon's Kiro'o Games live in nations where that privilege and comfort aren't as omnipresent, and it permeates the images, mechanics, and themes of the games and worlds they create.

Monastero believes it is the obligation of studios from parts of the world that don't traditionally gain the attention of the mainstream gaming press to forcibly grab it. There are so many games these days, Monastero argues, that if devs don't put themselves in a position to be noticed, their work will just disappear. But it's also a responsibility of the press to actively look for games that challenge our notions of what our medium can and should be. For Monastero, witnessing the violence of the favelas on a daily basis made it important for him to create a game where there was none.

I have to wonder if developers in America will begin to do the same. As of July 26, there have been 259 mass shootings in America this year. That's more than one mass shooting a day. There was a mass shooting on July 25 where two people were killed and 18 were injured. If our fetishisation of violence in AAA games arose from a position of privilege in a nation where brutal, ugly violence isn't a visible, everyday occurrence of our lives, might years like this one challenge that privilege? Could the violence we've faced as a country this year encourage US developers to make nonviolent games too?

It's clear today that our culture of violence is tearing America apart. It's time to embrace games that believe we can be more than a toxic reflection of our worst influences. It's a lesson the team making Shiny has already learned.

Follow Don Saas on Twitter. Follow VICE Gaming at @VICEGaming.

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy

In August 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov became the second human in space and the first human to vomit outside earth's atmosphere. He had a serious case of space sickness, but you wouldn't have blamed the guy if it had been because of the kind of food cosmonauts of the time had to ingest: his predecessor in space, Yuri Gagarin had to squeeze puréed meat from a tube into his mouth for lunch.

Since then, culinary circumstances in space have changed drastically – last year Samantha Cristoforetti became the first person to brew a proper espresso in space. In the past, research into space food had been mostly focused on technical aspects like weight, volume and a long shelf life. The ingredients in space food are sterilised in an autoclave – a kind of pressure chamber. The food needs to last for two or three years and astronauts should be able to consume it without having to prepare it and at zero gravity. It needs to be packaged so it's easy to transport and store – since a space station is very cramped, every centimetre counts.

Inside the HQ of Argotec in Turin

Faced with all those limitations, you'd soon forget that other aspect of food: that it's supposed to taste good. But luckily, more recently, researchers in the field of space food are giving more attention to that particular part of the culinary space experience.

Argotec is an Italian company producing food for people in space, and its main focus is to make their dishes as tasty as possible. Like every human being ever, I too grew up dreaming of being an astronaut, so I'm very curious to see what's on the menu once you get to outer space. That's why I'm heading to the Argotec HQ in Turin with my friend Federico – who has been through many an eating experiment with me – to get wined and dined like an astronaut by Argotec. The people working there didn't want to personally be named, which is why I'm keeping them out of this article.

Antipasto: Barley and prawns

You can't light a stove in space, so space food is ready to eat and dishes are packaged in vacuum, single portion bags. And there's no reason to bring out the Wedgewood and the nice cutlery at zero gravity, so astronauts eat from these bags directly with a spoon.

Given that space stations are so small that all food is vacuum packaged, it's notable that astronauts apparently do find room to stash some antipasti – some pre-starters if you will – because that's what we're being served first. It might be space food but we're still in Italy. It's a salad of rice, prawns and courgettes – a bit bland, but the Argotec employee explains that your perception of flavours changes completely in space. In the absence of gravity, your saliva becomes congested between the nose and the throat, which has a similar effect on how you perceive flavour as when your having a bad cold. One dish could taste like nothing to one astronaut and be an explosion of flavours to another – which is why it's important to provide a wide variety of flavours.

We take only a few bites to keep room for the rest of the courses. The first thing that strikes me about the barley and prawns is the consistency of the dish – the ingredients have largely retained their natural texture, which I wouldn't expect from food prepared in an autoclave. The flavour wasn't mind boggling but I had prepared for the worst, and rather than being the sort of thing that you'd only eat on a spacewalk, it seemed like something you could very well bring to a picnic. It wouldn't get the ooohs and aahhhs Mel's green papaya salad always gets, but it'll do fine.

The First course: Rice with chicken and vegetables

After the antipasto we move to the first course: a dish of rice, chicken and vegetables that isn't really a risotto and isn't really a chicken curry. But the rice is al dente, the meat feels like real meat and the vegetables have maintained the colour they're blessed with here on God's green earth. It's pretty amazing, really.

And the flavour is intense, thanks to the fact that they've been generous with the turmeric. It's actually so heavy on the turmeric that it drowns out all the other flavours. Humankind has used spices to preserve food for centuries, and it's heartwarming to know that the tradition continues in the era of space exploration.

The main course: Sorghum with beef

As a main course we're served beef and sorghum – that's a type of grain. The dish is tasty, its structure is great and it's my favourite of the day. While the other dishes were served on a plate, we ate the beef directly from the plastic packaging – just like astronauts do. The best thing about it is that when you open the packaging, the food clings to the sides of the inside. According to the Argotech people, this was the most vital part of the research into their dishes: how to make sure the food clings together and keeps the different grains from having a grain party, floating through your space station and getting in your machinery.

They figured it out (don't ask me how), and the technology is now being used for earthly means, like sustenance for people going on Arctic expeditions. That shouldn't come as a surprise, really: many civilian technological innovations are based on developments in space technology.

The side dish: Quinoa salad

The quinoa salad is fine – it reminds me of the rice dish, but here the mackerel dominated and hid all other flavours. It's Frederico's favourite, and apparently Samantha Cristoforetti's too, when she was on the International Space Station. Cristoforetti wasn't just the first astronaut to brew an espresso in space, but she also was the first to "cook" there – in the sense that she chose and mixed what she wanted to eat from bulk packaging, instead of just having a ready made meal. That might not seem like much, but on a space station getting to choose what you want for dinner is a giant leap for mankind.

dessert: A Fruit-chocolate bar and a smoothie

For desert, we're having a chocolate-goji berry bar and an apple-pear-strawberry smoothie. The bar itself has a particularly uninviting greenish brown colour, but it tastes okay – though not chocolaty enough for me. It tastes only of goji berries, so I figure the bar could make some yoga instructor very happy someday. A space yoga instructor.

The author and his friend Federico in the background

The juice is exactly that – juice.

When people think about the future and functionality of food, images of protein shakes and pills that make any other kind of food unnecessary come to mind. But it's a comforting thought that engineers are working on space food that isn't just about the functionality. When sooner or later a mad visionary actually makes space tourism a reality for us mortals, we'll have something proper to eat along the way.

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Promotional imagery for 'Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games', via Nintendo

With the Olympic Games in Rio starting on August the 5th, you'd be forgiven for expecting to see a tie-in video game stacked in specialist stores and supermarkets alike. Riding high in the chart, no doubt, and rubbing shoulders with FIFA, Minecraft and whatever shooter's got a deal on at the moment. Proud and muscular figures staring out from its sleeve, all strong chins and bulging thighs; athletes at the peak of their physical prowess, at the top of their respective sports. It's not like it's unprecedented: ever since 1992's Olympic Gold and its digits-knackering A-and-B-button-bashing sprints, there's always been an officially licensed game available to coincide with the Summer Games.

But in 2016, that game is nowhere to be found. All that's available is the Sega-developed, Nintendo-published (still sounds weird) Mario and Sonic mash-up, ...at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, out now on Wii U and 3DS. It's just as official as Olympic Gold was in terms of earning its Rings, but instead of starring real-life sportsmen and women, or at least anatomically accurate analogues of them, it rounds up a raft of characters from said platforming et al franchises and pits them against each other across events such as archery, rugby sevens, table tennis and beach volleyball. I've dipped a toe into what it has to offer through the 3DS demo, which allows free access to boxing and the long jump. It's fine, you know; it works, and I can imagine that the full game would distract me for a fair few flights, given the chance. But there's something really missing for me.

And that's the athletes. But the Mario and Sonic games, while giving off the impression of being arcade-style knockabouts with little connecting their gameplay to that of more traditionally stylised multi-event sports games, actually don't play too dissimilarly to the "realer" deal (occasional power-ups aside). And perhaps that's why, in 2016, there's no need for a "proper" Rio 2016 game: even if there was a companion title with the same disciplines included, but you controlled Usain Bolt – or someone designed to look and act like him – instead of Bowser and Robotnik, how it played would most likely be incredibly close to the Nintendo platforms-exclusive titles bearing cartoon avatars.

But when we see the furore over who's going to be on the FIFA cover each year – fans of the series have voted Marco Reus the global star for 2017's edition – and the additional visibility that affords the chosen one, or some, beyond their own sports-specific audience, you've got to wonder what featuring a rising sprinter, javelin thrower or swimmer on the sleeve of a non-Mario Olympics game would do for their career prospects. Do you know who Fabrice Lapierre is? I didn't until a cursory internet search told me that the Australian could well light up the men's long jump in Brazil. Who's Chad le Clos to anyone who doesn't regularly follow the swimming world? (Turns out he won the 100- and 200-metre butterfly at London's 2012 Games.) English Gardner, anyone? She's maybe the fastest woman in the US right now, over 100 metres.

None of these people are truly household names, in the way that Sonic and Mario, or Messi (definitely) and Marco (possibly, certainly soon to be) are. Back in 2008, for the official Beijing Summer Games tie-in, then published by Sega, shot-putter Reese Hoffa and swimmer Amanda Beard, both Americans, appeared on its cover, doing wonders for their public recognition across the world. That the game in question was multi-format, on Sony and Microsoft consoles and PC – the Wii and DS got their Mario and Sonic games – furthered its reach in a way that no Nintendo-only release can aspire to. The stateside cover for London 2012 also featured a quartet of Team USA contenders, depicted as titans, towering superhumans, above landmarks of the English capital.

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Many competitors at the Summer Games aren't rolling in monetary rewards for their physical efforts in the same way as top stars in the English Premier League, American NBA or the most outstanding talents in golf and tennis. They're in it for the pride and the glory, to meet that challenge of excelling over all of your peers. However, if you're winning in a vacuum of publicity, that's no help whatsoever for the continuing health of your chosen sport.

In the UK, in 2015, it emerged that casual participation in sporting activity was falling across the board, most noticeably in swimming, despite the enthusiasm the nation at large had expressed around London 2012. The biggest team games like football and basketball have their pedestal-positioned superstars to forever attract new fans – but here we see a sign, in a mostly individual discipline like swimming, that having no central figureheads can play a part in a national decline of involvement.

There's more to it, of course – investment in local facilities, to actually enable participation, is something that requires attention. But knowing what a successful video game can do for alternative-media engagement – how many people get into a new band through a game, or actively pursue new stories set within previously unexplored comic-book universes – I'm sure that not having the most promising and most likely to alike from Rio 2016 on the cover of a video game is, however slightly, nonetheless damaging to the public's appreciation of just how phenomenal these men and women are.

'London 2012', launch trailer

We all know Sonic can run quickly, and that Mario's pretty nifty when it comes to leaping about the place. But having these characters in real-world sports, using power-up tricks also seen in, for example, Ultra Smash or Super Mario Strikers, feels like a substantial underselling of just what it takes to reach the top level. I'm not sure that it trivialises their commitment, per se, but it definitely takes away that superhuman element: Mario and Sonic's version of the 2016 Olympics features a robot in the javelin and a gorilla in the boxing. Now that's just cheating even before someone squirts ink everywhere, isn't it?

Why no Bolt-et-al game to complement Mario and Sonic in 2016, then? To me, it's something that's always been there, ever since the very first official release. (I played the hell out of Olympic Gold, on the Game Gear. I'm surprised I didn't hammer right through the console, or at the very least develop RSI at a stupendously young age, given the punishment of its 200-metre freestyle.) Not seeing one up there, out there, beside the now-established cartoon-y Nintendo take, is a big disappointment.

It turns out that the developer of 2012's game, Sega Australia Studios, closed its doors in 2013, and that was that for a 2016 tie-in, with Sega Sports Japan taking the reins for Mario and Sonic and nobody else stepping up to handle the companion affair. A cruelly simple explanation, but a puzzling one, too. It's not like London 2012 performed ostensibly poorly – in the UK, it was at number one on the all-formats chart for three weeks, and sold close to 700,000 copies in its financial year. That's not a bad return given the naturally short shelf life of any game explicitly tied to a real-world event. And the short shelf life shouldn't be a factor, either – EA continues to issue World Cup games alongside its FIFA series, and its 2014 World Cup Brazil release even made a mark on the US charts as anticipation for that year's big kick-off grew.

New on VICE Sports: Remembering the 1980 Olympic Games

This year off for a "proper" Olympic game – well, eight years off really, given the next opportunity for one will come in 2020 – doesn't bode well for a return come Tokyo's Games four summers from now. Depending on how well virtual reality gaming establishes itself in the home, there might be an opening for a great track-and-field collection that used that technology to give players a sense of what it's like to hurl a spear across a stadium; although anything more kinetic, like the hurdles or gymnastics, would be a motion-sickness challenge that no developer would gladly take on today.

But I can't see it happening. The Mario and Sonic releases are sold on their cast of decades-long-known anthropomorphic avatars rather than their selection of events, and with fencing, table tennis and hammer throwing hardly rivalling the NFL for viewing figures, converting these sports into intuitive interactive games is something I think we'll now see an end to, outside of Nintendo's blessedly blinkered commitment to the cause (no doubt in some way informed by the company's continuing dedication to improving its players' "quality of life"). I could be wrong. I hope so, because it must be massively motivating for any young athlete to see someone they look up to staring back at them from a video game. But with Sega stalling and Mario dominant, I suspect that's it, game over, for another crack at Olympic Gold.

@MikeDiver

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What the fuck is that? No idea. (Photo by Javier Aroche)

Politicians tend to be deeply weird people. For every MP who went into the job out of a genuine and misplaced desire to leave the world a slightly warmer and better place than they found it, there are dozens of the others: not just craven, power-hungry and queasily libidinal, but downright strange. You might remember them from uni – the kids who wanted more than anything to join the political class, who acted it out through all those po-faced student union elections, awkward at parties but full of a terrifying, otherworldly intensity. People hate politicians, and they're right to. They're not like us, they don't share our priorities, their thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are their ways our ways.

Not Owen Smith, though. The boiled potato who would be Labour leader, the man on a mission to save the party from its own membership, has staked everything on the idea that he's a normal man. He has a normal house and a normal wife and normal children and used to do a normal job doing PR for a very normal pharmaceuticals company. He can really understand the concerns of everyday people, not like Jeremy Corbyn with his out-of-touch socialism, or even Angela Eagle with her metropolitan homosexuality. And because he's so normal, the reasoning goes, normal people will want to vote for him. Except, of course, that this normal man doesn't exist. He's a void. Apart from a few lizard-brain attachments – a vague sense of Englishness, a sporadic violence towards foreigners – the normal man can only be defined apophatically, in terms of what he isn't: he isn't clever, he isn't fancy, he isn't allowed nice things, he isn't in support of any political ideology, he isn't different in any way. The normal man has no qualities whatsoever; he's nothing more than a hole for food to go into and fury to come out of.

But politicians, who are not normal, keep trying to appeal to him, because this is what they think of us. This is how they think we are.

It might almost work for Smith, who is after all a preternaturally boring person. But even a personality black hole like Owen Smith betrays some mild particularities, and when they come out he has to extinguish them. Which leads to some moments that are just utterly absurd. Case in point: Smith's recent interview with the Observer, which his campaign team liked so much that they reproduced it on his own website. Most of the interview is devoted to his weird, meaningless, chiasmic attempts at political triangulation – "we live in a capitalist society and the Labour party is about trying to achieve socialism within that" – but that's not important right now. What matters is the first paragraph, which really needs to be appreciated in full. The Observer's Daniel Boffrey writes:

Receiving his "frothy coffee" in Pontypridd's Prince's cafe, Owen Smith stopped mid-sentence to express some amusement. "I tell you it is the first time I have ever been given little biscuits and a posh cup in here," Smith said, looking up at the owner David Gamberini, as his order was placed on the table. "Seriously, I would have a mug normally," the MP added, examining the refreshments in front of him.

And as everyone above the age of six knows, a coffee with frothy milk is not called a "frothy coffee"; it's a latte or a cappuccino, and it's often served with perfectly unremarkable little biscuits. This is normal now: Britain might not be in great shape, but in the 21st century Italian food no longer exclusively comes out of a tin and more than one type of coffee is available to all. It's reasonable to assume that Owen Smith, who made a six-figure salary at Pfizer, has had enough access to the good things in life that he knows the names of all the different types of coffee. Owen Smith lied to us. He pretended not to know what a cappuccino is or how it's served, and he lied.

There's a sad, keening desperation to that lie, a frantic insistence that he's utterly baffled by a perfectly normal cup of coffee. "I tell you," he says. "Seriously," he says. Try to picture the scene: Owen Smith's delicious, milky cappuccino is plonked down on the table in front of him, but suddenly there's a wrenching, sickly twist in his gut. Is this what normal people drink? He tries to remember: something about builder's tea with four sugars, something about the burly pub-goer's instinctual hatred of fancy coffee with little biscuits in foil sachets. The fate of the country might depend on this. And so out comes a hasty flurry of excuses: this isn't my coffee, I've never seen this coffee before, you can throw it down the toilet for all I care. Little biscuits? I don't know whether to eat them or shove them up my arse. This is how you connect with ordinary people.

But it's too late now; Owen Smith will have to keep going. Now that he's outed himself as someone childishly confused about the process of dunking a biscuit in coffee, he can't drop the charade. If the media stumble on him eating food with a knife and fork, he'll have to explain that this is all new to him – he usually drinks gruel out of an old boot, just like normal people. He won't be able to take a ride in his official car without loudly exclaiming what strange and fancy mules they have down in London. If he's caught watching television, all he can do is express his wonder and suspicion at what kind of witchcraft put the tiny people in that box. Because he's a normal person, and that's what normal people do: they act like a shapeshifting alien, trying and failing to mask their total ignorance of human life.

Coffeegate is ground zero for the essential stupidity of British politics. These people and their PR teams know but don't understand; they get that they're considered to be dangerously out of touch and indifferent to the lives of the people they represent, but because they're idiots, they think it's all about coffee. When people complain about a careless political elite, it's all taken on board, but they think it's a question of drinking out of more authentic crockery. We saw something similar earlier this year: when the Labour party denied McDonald's a stall at its conference over their violations of labour rights, Wes Streeting MP rushed to the defence of the multi-billion pound company, because while it "may not be the trendy falafel bar that some people in politics like to hang out at", nonetheless, "it's enjoyed by families across the country". When the party criticised Sports Direct for its inhuman exploitation of workers, the Mail's perma-cretin Dan Hodges was on hand to bravely insist that the company was "favoured by millions of Britons". This is apparently what distinguishes the working class after Marxism: they're the people who have never eaten a falafel, who won't see their favoured brands insulted and who care more than anything about what you dunk in your frothy coffee.

@sam_kriss

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Tim Commerford (left) playing bass with Rage Against the Machine (Photo: Chris Pizzello / AP)

Well, looks like my work here is done. This is probably the last Generation Fucked Update, and not because I've saved us all through the power of sheer columnism; sadly, things are still looking pretty bleak. But it's time for me to pass the torch. There is a new voice of Generation Fucked, and that voice is former Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford and his new band Wakrat.

Yep, the guy behind the bass hook on 2009's Christmas number one has started a new band and released a song called "Generation Fucked". I'm not annoyed that they chose that name five months after I started this column, oh no. I'm pleased to have been an inspiration to a musician whose early work I really love, assuming he's ever read anything I've written, which tbh is fairly unlikely. Unfortunately – and there's no nice way of saying this – the song fucking sucks. Have a listen:

You can see what they're getting at: it's angry, riffy and shouty – but RATM's catchy, aggressive groove has been replaced by the kind of maths-y progressiveness that's generally practiced by competent musicians who care more about noodling than making things sound good.

Appropriately enough, the band is signed to Earache Records. Tom Hadfield of Earache said, "We are so excited to be working with Tim Commerford. Since Rage Against the Machine there has been a distinct lack of politically charged bands around. Corruption is everywhere and those responsible for the inequality and suffering need to be held accountable. What better place than here, what better time than now?"

That fact he used lyrics from the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 sound-tracking Guerilla Radio doesn't really give you much hope than there's more to this band than the presence of a member of another band that was good. Also, the idea that there has been "a distinct lack of politically charged bands" recently is very silly; Beyoncé referencing the Black Panthers at the Superbowl is enough to tell you that, to give just one example.

But there might be some truth to the idea that there are fewer big, heart-on-your-sleeve political bands whose lyrics are overt calls to revolution and communist polemic.

So let's turn to Tim to give us a people's manifesto. He told the NME: "We are gearing up to be on the offensive, assaulting the populous with our debut album on Earache Records. We have put a shit load of blood and sweat into this and we want it back! Our mission is to attack modern music and smash the grid. Unapologetic, unrelenting, unbridled and uncensored. Understood?"

Yeah, totally understood! Smash the grid (What grid? The national grid? Fuck electricity?)! Assault the... er... populous?

Okay, maybe the lyrics can give us more clues.

Verse one:

We do a dance, until it aches/ making an enemy, a mortal enemy/ to pin omega on this allegory/ Gotta chain it to the cave dwelling son of a bitch until you make it to the pitch)

Nope, don't know what any of that means, and verse two is more of the same vagueness, but maybe it's something clever and profound that I'll understand by...

Verse three:

Human waste I hate the smell/ Who created this living hell? / Made a fist. Grabbed a knife/ Cut my wrist. Turned to Ice

Seems to be a complaint about the toilets at Reading festival?

And the fourth:

Remain confused, these ocean views/ Shadowed truth/ Unjust what we do, yeah / Who we keep, chained in caves / Lives asleep, deep within a grave

I sure do remain confused, but those ocean views bum me out too, man. Obviously political lyrics don't have to be as literal as the King Blues' "Let's Hang the Landlord", or System's "Prison Song", but what is going on here?

Then there's the chorus:

We're fucked, truly fucked/ Declaration: totally fucked / Generation Fucked/ Yeah we're fucked / Clearly fucked / Destination: somewhere fucked/ Generation fucked

Each iteration has variations on this theme:

No solution: very fucked

F.U.C.K.E.D: Fucked

Without question: super fucked

And so on. There's no specific complaint being aired here – it's kind of like they don't have much experience of being part of a dispossessed generation; that they've just been told that that's a thing. Which, not to be horribly ageist, makes sense, since Commerford is 48 and has millions of record sales under his belt.

Maybe that would be OK if they were bringing anything enlightening or interesting to the table. But as the outro rams home, you can see plainly that they're not:

You son of a bitch/ You fuckin' son of a bitch/ You son of a bitch/ you fuckin' son of a biiiiitch

Who is this son of a bitch? The guy who did a bad shit in the Reading toilets? We don't know, the band state that they do not know ("Who created this living hell?"). It's not an identify-able son of a bitch like Donald Tump or Theresa May or a racist police officer. If there's a system or oppressive structure that this son of a bitch is supposed to be personifying it's not made clear. "Explanation: It's all fucked" goes the chorus, which is a non-explanation. Question: Why is it raining? Explanation: Because it's raining.

The band topped it off by launching with a publicity stunt: An "occupation" of Parliament Square, "declaring their own sovereign state", the Republic of Wakrat (which, politics nerds might notice, has an anarcho-syndicalist flag despite apparently being a "state"). This is a remarkably fatuous gesture for someone who was part of a gig outside the Democratic National Convention with lyrics so incendiary they put the frighteners on the City of Los Angeles and caused the police to provoke a minor riot.

Well meaning and nearly-there lyrics can perhaps be forgiven with decent tunes, but if people start repetitively, tunelessly chanting "now we're fucked, totally fucked" at a protest near you any time soon, then we really are totally fucked.

@SimonChilds13

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This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

If you're in Europe and you're reading this, there's a big chance that you are sweating your shirt off in a heatwave. For a lot of countries this is pretty bad news, because even though you have lakes and rivers going through most major cities, you're not really allowed to go swim in them, for safety reasons or simply because the authorities are too lazy to supervise that area. In some countries you aren't even allowed to relax on the grass in the parks, which only leaves you with air-conditioned apartments and expensive swimming pool memberships.

In Berlin, however, things are a little different. Coyness is not held in high esteem in the birthplace of Free Body Culture – to the point that in many parks it's generally allowed to sunbathe naked. Photographer Ana Topoleanu took a stroll around the city's parks and took some beautiful analog shots of naked Berliners on their lunch break.