Saturday, December 31, 2016
Friday, December 30, 2016
How to Make Money in Toronto
In the season finale of PAYDAY, we meet a party promoter, an ex-drug dealing window washer, a billionaire DJ, and a woman who is paid to party as they try to readjust their lives in the competitive city of Toronto.
PAYDAY airs Fridays at 9 PM on VICELAND.
Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.
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How Art Is Transforming a Facility for Miami's At-Risk Youth
Facilities for at-risk youth are heavily enclosed, but often big and sprawling. As such, they've got peculiar acoustics, simultaneously loud (echoing voices, the reverberation of slamming doors) and intensely quiet, with long, silent stretches of hallways. It's dissonant, and it can make the body feel cold.
At one South Florida facility for young men, though, there's a room that's warm and bright. It's colored by murals, dotted with framed paintings, well-stocked bookshelves in each corner. There's a speaker playing John Coltrane and Erykah Badu; teens in the facility spend an hour there, thumbing through books like I Am Malala and The Rose That Grew from Concrete. It's raining outside, but in this library-slash-gallery, the fluorescent lighting hits the colors on the wall, reflects them back in a yellowish spectrum, and makes it all look like sunlight.
Creative director DopexGold, known at the facility as Mr. E, works with youths. With the help of library donations and artist friends, Mr. E opened the library about two months ago. "I felt it was a therapeutic form of rehabilitation for the youth," he explains to The Creators Project on a tour of the center. "The youths here are predominately black males. This is the future. I'm dealing with the kings." The goal: bring literature and art to the kids who fall through the system's cracks, bolstering their collective and individual senses of self. To frame an educational initiative as something leisurely means the youths take it upon themselves to read, to examine art, to expand their own consciousnesses if they so choose. Says one young man, "I never really experienced art before I was in here. Now, art is something that makes the time in here go fast, gets my mind back, helps me gain knowledge."
Read more on The Creators Project
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An Alternate History of America's Meth Problem
Before Americans were panicking about heroin, they were freaking out about meth. By now you've probably heard something about the drug and its litany of evils; even leaving aside pop culture phenomena like Breaking Bad, the stuff is everywhere—even in the occasional donut, some cops seem to believe. If you look hard enough, we are often taught by the press, you will find meth lurking in the Midwest, spreading like a plague across the Great Plains, lingering like a scourge in the decaying heartland of small towns nationwide.
Of course, regular users of the drug, of which there are an estimated 569,000 in the United States, can suffer from addiction, anxiety, insomnia, weight loss, delusions, and other health problems; in 2009, nearly 100,000 meth users ended up in the hospital. Which is to say the drug does represent a genuine public health problem, one some supporters of President-elect Donald Trump seem to believe might be banished from America's rural idyls with his "big, beautiful wall."
But like most wars on drugs, America's Meth War has its detractors. Travis Linnemann has lived and worked in Kentucky and Kansas—prime meth country in the national imagination—all his life. A criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University and former probation officer, Linnemann has for decades wondered about two parallel realities of meth: the one he sees with his own eyes, and the far more sensational one depicted by police, politicians, and the media.
Linnemann's recently-released book, Meth Wars, is an intrepid investigation into the stories that have been generated by meth fears and the reality of the drug and the harm it actually causes. He explores how the drug has been used to sew panic and injustice in communities already on their knees in what is by far the boldest deconstruction of the meth epidemic yet. I spoke to him about how and why, as it continues to cast a shadow over rural America, he thinks a meth chimera was born.
VICE: When did you start to question what America was being told about meth?
Professor Travis Linnemann: I was a probation officer in Kansas when meth was a real hot-button topic in the late 1990s. It was consistently drilled into our brains that this was a threat, an emergency, and we needed to do what we could to address it. My job as a probation officer in mostly small towns in northeast Kansas involved lots of surveillance, high levels of drug testing and working with people who had a lot of contact with the criminal justice system.
But the rhetoric I was getting from the state authorities and the news media wasn't matching up with my experiences. In the field I just didn't see it—I can't recall a meth offender ever being on my caseload. During six years of drug test results from the Kansas state database on the highest risk community based offenders, only 2.7 percent of all positive drug tests were for meth. Even the most recent figures show that police only seized 21 meth labs in 2014 in Kansas, and those include two-liter "shake and bake" soda bottles.
In your book, you describe the "meth imaginary." What is that?
It's the way that people imagine everyday life, their relations to other people, what they encounter on the street, through [the lens of] this particular drug. So, for example, someone sees someone who's particularly disheveled, who fits the "meth head" trope, and rather than maybe having some compassion for that person and thinking, "What's going on in their life, what makes them act the way they do?" they are just imagined as a degraded junkie. It enables us to ignore issues such as generational poverty, interfamily conflict, poor health care and all kinds of other things that go on in people's lives everyday. In the imaginary, they are just "meth heads."
I don't want to disregard this as a completely mythical thing because there are people who have problems with drugs. But we imagine what's going on out there through the lens of this worst-case drug scenario. So someone with bad teeth, someone who broke into your car, is automatically a meth junkie. Maybe they don't have health care and eat a poor diet, maybe they don't have a job and are at the end of their rope.
Meanwhile in the media, we live in a meth epidemic?
Every time someone is arrested for meth, it seems to make the news. For the book I spent a lot of time with police and they would always identify meth as their biggest problem, particularly in Kansas and Kentucky, I think because it legitimizes their work. A lot of times people disregard small-town police because they don't have real crime. Well now we have this discourse around the meth epidemic—on their minds, because of meth, they are finally real police fighting real crime.
We've been seeing a lot of cell phone pictures and footage of zonked out heroin users in the last few months, among them a photograph released by police in Ohio in September. Does this remind you of "meth zombie" imagery and Faces of Meth, a project set up by cops in Multnomah County, Oregon, that aimed to deter meth use via graphic before-and-after mugshots?
Yes, it's the same thing as the "meth zombie" trope—it allows people to diagnose others as monsters. Faces of Meth is thrillingly voyeuristic for us all to gawk at, looking and judging people's lives…. "What a scumbag!" "How can they do that to themselves, look at their face!"
Maybe it makes us feel better to do this?
What these images do is hide longstanding social problems under the narrative of drugs. This is people caught on camera at painful times in their life so others can sum up their life and judge it. It's the logic of horizontal violence, where we can just write somebody off because they are a drug user. The history of someone's life, all the things they've experienced, all are linked to the one problem of drugs. So it makes them quite blameworthy.
Faces of Meth seems like a form of propaganda in this war, a kind of modern day WANTED poster.
I agree. It's all about keeping a lookout in your community, alongside all the public service warnings about meth labs and the ingredients they need to cook. It's like the anti-terrorism stuff; if you see something, say something, these people are in your community, this is what you need to do. It's incredibly divisive and unhelpful.
What did you make of Breaking Bad?
It's the same old story, the dealers were bad people, most of the users were zombies who would do horrible things for the drug, so it replayed all those old narratives. But it gives us something good to look at, right?
You spent many hours riding with police in Kansas as fieldwork for your book. What was their take on meth?
Police are in the business of identifying threats. So they generally saw all community dysfunction and crime as drug-driven. In the very small towns in particular, they felt that everything they dealt with in the community they could trace back to meth. For example, they didn't see homes in disrepair as anything but signs of meth, drugs, and depravity.
But when I looked at the statistics, they didn't follow that logic. These police were dealing with very few drug crimes, and very, very few for meth. But forget the truth. One of the wellsprings of the meth war is everyday cops, they are important producers of this logic—talking to people in the coffee shop, doing anti-drug talks in schools, they continue to spin and spin a yarn that is very important in legitimizing their place in the community and frankly their own power.
You seem to think police and the DEA are playing fast and lose with the facts on meth labs…
Well, it's true that with clandestine labs some of that stuff does explode, but it's rare. And I would question the veracity of the DEA's stats on the number of meth labs local police find. If they find some suspicious junk somewhere or a two-liter soda bottle with a strange liquid, these are counted as "meth labs," but it's not exactly Walter White. It's simply misleading. Worse, people are charged with manufacture and even jailed if they are found with two-liter "shake and bake" bottles, so are looking at a serious amount of prison. The point we have reached is the product of years and years of apocalyptic thinking, so now we have these really out of whack punishments.
So why do these cops believe meth is the culprit for rural decay?
Like a lot of other people here, they can't bear to face the truth: Life has been hard for a long time, life's probably not getting any better. Jobs have gone because of corporate agriculture and the consolidation of family farms, and the consequences of accumulation.
But I think it's easier to blame the local drug user, whether it was a kid you grew up with in high school, or someone you believe is an immigrant who happens to be working in a meatpacking plant who brought over a small amount of meth. It's easier to locate all your anxieties on this one visible problem than it is to confront your own history and to consider that your life may have never been that easy and probably never will be.
Watch the VICE doc about the 'Real' Walter White:
Do people in these troubled parts of Kentucky and Kansas see their neighborhoods as decrepit meth zones?
From the outside, the rural Midwest and Appalachia are viewed as the proverbial "flyover land." It's written-off territory. "White trash" is used to denigrate people, of course, but for some it's also a marker of pride and transgression in a lot of ways, a kind of noble deprivation, flicking the middle finger at the upper classes and saying 'I'm white trash, fuck you."
But even those who live here succumb to the meth head rhetoric.
Are there any parallels with America's urban war on crack?
Well, meth is associated with white people, but it's the same discourse on depravity and dependence, the same punitive logic as it was for the so-called urban black underclasses and crack. Charles Keating, the governor of Oklahoma, famously said that meth was a white trash drug just like crack is a black trash drug and that we should shame both. The cops didn't have a drug war out here, now they do. In this way, the drug war is a kind of a market that has to find new places to set up shop, otherwise it will stagnate and die.
How does the meth war compare to what is going on now in America in terms of opiate addiction?
We do one thing with drugs in this country: we treat their use with police and prisons. So I don't think its all that different. There are parallels with crack, but the opiate problem is different from the meth problem. In Appalachia, eastern Kentucky and West Virginia in particular, pharmaceutical companies identified a population and market and quite literally pumped millions of pills into the area, via some aggressive marketing aimed at patients and doctors, with disastrous consequences: mass addiction to Oxycodone and subsequently a big rise in the use of heroin. As far as I know, meth has had no such corporate sponsorship, and is far less prevalent. Even so, in Appalachia and the Midwest there is very aggressive policing of meth, and frankly all drugs.
There is a kind of rural decay porn going on here.
Yes. I think in a lot of ways we are obsessed with the death of small rural towns. A 2004 investigation by the New York Times into meth in rural America quoted a sheriff in Nebraska saying every violent crime runs back to meth and that meth was linked to several murders. For the book, I looked at the statistics and crime had not increased in the way it claimed. Also, Adams County had just three murders in the four years leading to the article—it was just a sound-bite. The readers of the NYT want to know about the meth narrative in rural America, and it's much more sexy than the effect corporate agriculture and Monsanto are having on the community.
You say that police stand to benefit from the hype. How is this?
What meth did is that it brought the drug war en masse to new territories. It's a rhetoric used to justify increasing intrusion and police violence. So there is a call for more cops, more funding for cops, that it's fine for cops to have Kevlar helmets and assault rifles in a small town. Because of this powerful [Meth] Imaginary, the public believes that something has to be done, and so people become even less critical of the kind of police behavior they might not stand for normally.
When I moved into academia, I realized how much the whole meth regime mapped onto everything we've done in this country relating to drugs, one drug after another. We erect this kind of edifice, advance it and really what it does is accomplish other political goals underneath: it brings funding, political careers are made. The authorities can [use meth fears to] broaden the types of political power they have, expand the number of police, get them new equipment.
And you say the meth war is also being used to ratchet up social control.
Mexican cartels have been bringing meth into America for 20 years—it's nothing new. But recently there has been a shift in emphasis by police and politicians onto meth production facilities to Mexico and China. This provides a powerful framework for a lot of serious political work to get done: funneling millions of dollars to militarize the border, to arm and train Mexican police, help them build new jails and prisons and provide drug education to Mexican school children.
But meth obviously is an actual issue for some Americans, so what's the way forward here?
I'm calling for a realist approach to social problems, getting honest and serious about what's going on in our communities and our country. But I'm skeptical about whether we can do that, as a nation and as individuals, because that means confronting a lot of things. It's difficult, but we need some grim realism.
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AAA Games Weren't Afraid of Getting Political in 2016
Nothing in the human world is apolitical. The very insistence that games "apolitical" attitude is in itself political, favoring the status quo, or avoiding the necessary conflicts and conversations that lead to growth and progress.
For a long, long time, many folks on my side of the political spectrum bemoaned the AAA game space's failure to really connect with larger social movements. In the last few years, we've had crucial, painful conversations about race and police brutality (and the rising militarization of American police), all while so many "big" games still set players in the roles of hyper-powered soldiers, vigilantes, or even, occasionally, cops.
It was an uncomfortable situation, to say the least.
While most AAA games still aren't focussed on the lives of the underrepresented, the disenfranchised, and those who are fight tooth and nail for better in our society, an encouraging trend ran through several titles this year. A desire, on some level, to talk about things that really, really matter: race, class, and organizing power. (And it's worth saying that independent and alternative games have been tackling these issues for years now.)
Read more on Waypoint
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The Tonic Guide to Vices in 2017
Join a gym, eat less pork fried rice, whatever, sure, go for it. But as we've explained before, it's really not worth treating the new year like some grand excuse to wipe your slate clean of indulgences.
For one thing, science has already shown that's a surefire recipe for failure—one of the many reasons only 8 percent of people who make resolutions ever hit their goals, according to one study . "The greatest challenge I have with my patients this time of year is reeling them back from the black hole of overambitious resolutions," says Paul Hokemeyer, a New York City therapist who specializes in addiction treatment. "Too many people view January 1 as some magical date from which they can become pure as snow. That's delusional thinking."
For another thing, we all need a little vice in our lives. Fucking up—and getting fucked up, within reason—can be just as refreshing as whatever week-long moon juice spa cleanse BS your latest fitspo idol is touting. "Perfect people are annoying and off-putting," Hokemeyer says. "We connect with people through their cracks. It's what makes them human and, ultimately, attractive. This certainly isn't to condone vices that cause destruction, but a little dirt in the corners can be fun and exciting."
In 2017, embrace the dirt in the corners. Here are some of the vices we're standing by, and science's logic for why you should too.
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Why This Year's Best TV Shows Make Me Optimistic for 2017
It's nothing new to proclaim that we had some pretty great television in 2016—FX Networks Research counted 455 scripted series this year, so some of them have to be good. But what stood out the most this year are the trends and storylines that make me optimistic for the discussions that will potentially take place in 2017.
Like all good art, television functions within the larger world of culture and politics. Rather than existing in a vacuum, it often responds to the outside world, even sometimes dictating its outlook—even on issues that first rose to prominence 22 years ago. The most culturally relevant show in 2016 was about a 1994 murder case: American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which revisited and recreated the murder (and subsequent trial) of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
What was notable about the series wasn't its sensationalism—just compare it (and ESPN's 30 for 30's unofficial counterpart O.J. Made in America) to the endless parade of cruel and gross JonBenét Ramsey programming that aired this year—but how it took this specific, significant cultural moment and successfully framed it within the context of 2016. It did so without sacrificing the narrative, instead letting us know that the applicable themes are still prevalent.
The entire series is fantastic—possibly my favorite of the year, even—but there are two episodes in particular that stand out. The fifth episode lays it out in the title: "The Race Card." The series deftly weaves in racism throughout, but "The Race Card" really narrows in on how race helped to shape the trial, for better or worse. It's a knockout from the cold open on, as Johnnie Cochran follows the rules (remain polite, narrate actions, don't make sudden moves) when pulled over by a white police officer. but still getting handcuffed in front of his daughters. Knowing that Cochran obviously survives the encounter doesn't stop viewers from holding their breath, since we're all too familiar with how these "routine" police stops go in real life. From there, the episode dives into the politics of the N-word, the insecurities of affirmative action, and so much more that remains and will continue to remain relevant.
The next episode, "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," went all-in on gender politics, steering away from the trial and focusing on Marcia Clark. The episode cast her in a lose-lose position—a position she was very much in for the duration of the trial as her gender was repeatedly harped on. Her love life and motherhood was brought up in court, nude photos were leaked to tabloids, and a cashier joked about her tampon purchases ("Guess the defense is in for one hell of a week"). The People v. O.J. Simpson took a murder case and flipped it into a rumination on the various shitty ways women are treated—especially if they're in the spotlight, and whether they want to be a celebrity or not. (That cashier only said what he said to Marcia because he felt that he knew her due to watching her and seeing her photos on the newsstand). It's about Marcia Clark, yes, but it's also about the invasiveness and scrutiny that women continue to face every day—and the show made sure that we keep talking about those topics throughout its run and after it ended.
That's what made The People v. O.J. Simpson so powerful to me: I couldn't stop thinking about the show, writing about it, and talking about it to my closest friends and bar strangers. I didn't want to just talk about what was on screen—I wanted to talk about the book behind it, the devastating themes, and the smart, entertaining ways in which it discussed race and gender while often remaining fun as hell to watch. I want to keep talking about it.
And The People v. O.J. Simpson wasn't the only series this year that made me feel like that. There were a ton of shows—new and old—that similarly approached mental illness, including BoJack Horseman, Lady Dynamite, You're The Worst, and The Magicians. One of the ways to survive mental illness is to normalize it, understand that it's a common thing, and to make others understand that, too—and what's more commonly loved than television? This year, we saw an animated horse and a child star tackle clinical depression and the perils of addiction; a beloved comedian use her bipolar disorder as a driving force for a fantastic Netflix sitcom; a military veteran—a group that television often forgets— deal with and seek out help for his PTSD; and a twentysomething budding magician learn that even literal magic isn't a cure.
The Carmichael Show dedicated a fantastic half-hour to exploring depression with its strong family matriarch Cynthia, breaking down the stigma of going to therapy (You're The Worst addressed this as well). Better Things and American Housewife featured child characters who have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Broad City had Ilana packing her anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds next to her vibrator. Even The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's endlessly optimistic Kimmy had post-traumatic stress disorder—which Empire also touched on after Jamal was shot. Every step that TV takes to destigmatize and just talk about mental illness is another step closer to the rest of the world following suit.
There are other aspects of this year's best television that make me optimistic for what the medium can and should continue to do next year. Behind the scenes, television took small but major steps to actively promote diversity instead of just talking about it: Atlanta has an all-black writers room and Queen Sugar hired all women directors (the next season of Jessica Jones will follow suit). Onscreen, Fresh Off the Boat and Superstore were sitcoms that found both humor and importance in the conversation surrounding immigration—Superstore, in particular, featured TV's first undocumented Filipino immigrant character—with jokes that added to storylines and avoided offensive territory. Jane the Virgin had a casual abortion storyline this year, and BoJack Horseman had a whole abortion-themed song/music video that I can't get out of my head.
Black-ish aired "Hope," which centered on police brutality but also actually articulated how, for black people watching the inauguration, joy turned to fear for Obama's life. A later episode, "Being Bow-Racial," not only featured a biracial character acknowledging being biracial but also talking about it, trying to understand what it means and how it's affected her life, and sorting out the complexities that make her who she is.
The list goes on: Sweet/Vicious centered on a rape survivor, depicting the daily devastation of living with trauma and giving us some hope in the form of beating down campus rapists. Fleabag depicted a woman who was completely unapologetic and with full agency over her own life—a real person, instead of just a "cool girl." Seeso's must-watch gem Take My Wife featured real-life married couple/comedians Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher, following their lives and careers together and proving that you can make a hilarious queer show without awkwardly writing around sexuality, fetishizing two women in bed or, you know, killing off all the lesbians.
These shows—and more!—all handed us notable and admirable examples of how television should continue to grow, build, and change in 2017. That's the mark of what made these series so great—they all pushed forward the conversations that we're going to need to carry on into the next.
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2016 Was a Great Year for Rock That Made It Feel Like the 70s Again
Maybe we're all just getting older, but with every tragic, often shocking passing of an icon this year, it feels like the past is fading into the distance, faster and faster, while the world around us in the present feels increasingly uncertain. In recent months it's been hard to focus on anything but the emotional pig's sty that was 2016, but there is a substantial silver lining: This was phenomenal year for new music. Existential anxieties aside, it was a banner year for hip-hop and R&B, from the slam dunk return of A Tribe Called Quest to Beyoncé and Solange exploring the themes of race, family and love on two of the most important pop records of the decade. This year gave us both the unsettling arias of ANOHNI and the rise and fall of G.L.O.S.S., demonstrating the grace and power trans and gender non-conforming artists achieve when unencumbered from (or in spite of) staggering prejudice. Even riding the more frivolous side of the airwaves, new-ish groups like The 1975 and Fifth Harmony injected a sorely needed dose of sex and drama into the global pop scene. Music may be the original safe space for outsiders, but while we're fed the constant, unfiltered message that everything is crumbling around us, we all need the solace and peace of music more than ever, and in that regard, 2016 absolutely delivered.
While going through the annual panic of ranking my favorite recent albums, I noticed a pattern emerge. A lot of the music I had turned to in my most vulnerable moments—post-election, after moving to a new city, during a mild case of heartbreak—were built on the soft rock stylings of the 1970s, featuring abundant slide guitars, layered vocals, and plush piano stabs. Not to assume or diminish the intent of these artists (after all, no one likes to be pigeonholed), but the similarities between their current records are striking. Weyes Blood's Front Row Seat to Earth uses the soothing tones of Carol King and The Carpenters to craft a singer-songwriter record unlike anything that's come out in recent memory. The 28 year old singer also appears on Drugdealer's full-length The End of Comedy; it's the new, and most solid record from Michael Collins, who's recorded during the past decade as Salvia Plath, Run DMT, and various other psychedelic pseudonyms. Brooklyn five-piece Pavo Pavo's under-the-radar debut album, Young Narrator in the Breakers, pulls from pulp sci-fi imagery and AM radio rock to create a fresh take on recent indie pop, while Long Island brother duo The Lemon Twigs—who somehow managed to end 2016 as both hyped and slept-on—go full tilt on their debut Do Hollywood, having nurtured their glitter and glamor and uninhibited rock 'n' roll pomp until fully matured, pouring it all into an an astonishingly sophisticated collection. And the D'Addario brothers are still not out of their teens.
Read more on Noisey
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The VICE Morning Bulletin
US News
Senior Republicans Back Obama's Russia Sanctions
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has backed the Obama administration's program of retaliatory sanctions against Russia for election meddling. "Russia does not share America's interests," said Ryan. In a joint statement, Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called the measures "long overdue," and said they would try to impose even stronger sanctions in the new Congress. – The Hill / CNBC
School Board Demands Paladino Resign for Racism
The Buffalo Board of Education has voted to demand Carl Paladino, the New York co-chair for Donald Trump's campaign, resign from the board for racist remarks about Michelle Obama. The board will petition the state commissioner for his removal if he refuses. Paladino had said he hoped the First Lady would "return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe." – The Washington Post
US Coast Guard Searches for Missing Plane
The US Coast Guard is searching for a small commuter plane that disappeared from radar over Lake Eerie shortly after leaving Cleveland, Ohio. The Cessna Citation 525, believed to be carrying six passengers, left shortly before 11 PM Thursday. A Coast Guard official said controllers fear the plane may have crashed into the lake. – CBS News
Adults in Correctional System Falls to 13-Year Low
The number of US adults under correctional supervision has fallen to its lowest level since 2002, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. An estimated 6.7 million people were in prison, on parole or probation in 2015, down 1.7 percent on the previous year. The bulk of the decrease was due to a drop in the number of people on probation. – VICE News
International News
Putin Refuses Diplomatic Retaliation Against US
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declined an opportunity to expel 35 US diplomats. The country's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had asked Putin for permission to expel the Americans as a response to the sanctions and expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats announced by President Obama on Thursday. But Putin said Russia would not "stoop" to the Obama administration's "irresponsible" actions. – BBC News
Ceasefire Holding in Syria Despite Skirmishes
A ceasefire between government forces and rebel groups has held across Syria on Friday morning, despite some clashes in the Hama province shortly after the deal came into effect at midnight. A spokesman said the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a coalition of several rebel groups, said they would continue to uphold the ceasefire deal. - Reuters
Finnish Anti-Drugs Chief Found Guilty of Drug-Smuggling
The former head of the anti-drugs police force in Finland's capital Helsinki has been sentenced to ten years in prison for smuggling drugs. Jari Aarnio, 59, was found guilty of helping import and sell almost 1800 pounds of hashish. – BBC News
Everything Else
Run DMC Sues Wal-Mart, Amazon for $50 Million
Run DMC has filed a $50 million lawsuit against Wal-Mart, Amazon, and other major retailers, accusing them of trademark infringement by profiting from "Run DMC styled products." The lawsuit states the group has made $100 million from its registered trademark. - Billboard
Chance the Rapper Wants to Move to New Zealand
Chance the Rapper says he wants to move to New Zealand "in the next 15 years," after playing the country's Rhythm and Vines festival. He insisted on Twitter he was "very serious" about it. "Black people, we are moving to New Zealand." – Waikato Times
Ryan Gosling to Play Neil Armstrong
A new biopic about Neil Armstrong called First Man will see Ryan Gosling star as the pioneering US astronaut. It will be directed by La La Land director Damien Chazelle, and is based on James Hansen's biography. – The Hollywood Reporter
First Lady Wants More Help for Homeless Veterans
Michelle Obama has said the US needs to do more to help veterans struggling with homelessness, mental illness, and substance abuse. The First Lady told VICE the Joining Forces program she launched in 2011 was "a strong start," but said it was "utterly unconscionable" that any veteran "would ever have to sleep on the streets." - VICE
Future Drops Two New Videos
Future, the hardest working man in hip-hop, has released videos for Drippin (How U Luv That), from the Purple Reign mixtape, and That's a Check featuring Rick Ross. Thursday night's release follows a video for Buy Love he dropped on Wednesday. - Noisey
Chelsea Manning Urges Transgender Community to Fight
In a letter to Broadly, imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning has urged the transgender community to "continue to fight" for greater rights. She wrote of a tendency "to wait and see what happens, and hope for the best. We absolutely cannot afford to do that." – Broadly
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Why 2016 Was a Groundbreaking Year for the Olympics
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The Five Most Revolutionary Scientific Trends to Look Out for in 2017
2016 was a powerful year for science and technology innovation. CRISPR gene editing technology became nearly a household name with its potential to affect humanity. SpaceX rockets landed themselves. And a baby was born with three parents.
But what's in store for 2017?
While some decry the developed world is falling apart due to changing political environments, science and technology innovation is likely to continue thriving. In fact, innovation is occurring so fast, I believe 2017 will be the year governments begin to consider forming new science, technology, and futurist agencies and organizations to better contend with the rapid change. The old ones are mired in bureaucracy, conservative religious ideology, and the past—unable to contend with issues like nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Borrowing from The Wizard of Oz, "We're not in Kansas anymore.
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Chinese Retail Is Obsessed with Donald Trump
Despite all his contentious campaign rhetoric, China has embraced Donald Trump in a big way.
Take the giant Trump-rooster statue just erected at a shopping mall in Taiyuan, the capital city of China's Shanxi province, for example. The enormous effigy—to celebrate 2017, the Chinese Year of the Rooster, 2017—stands 32 feet tall, complete with the president-elect's unmistakable quiff and hand gestures. In fact, Chinese retailers incorporate Trump's "look" or name into their products frequently, including caricatured figurines, skincare items, condoms, and more.
"This is the first time we've had a president who is a brand, and it's not unusual to see various markets try to co-opt brands for their own success," said Greg Portell, lead partner for consumer industries and retail practice at global consulting firm A.T. Kearney. "But China, in particular, is trying to capitalize on the Trump brand."
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Thursday, December 29, 2016
Chelsea Manning's Final Plea to Be Seen
Chelsea Manning is currently incarcerated in a maximum-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She's been in United States custody for six years, and spent months in solitary confinement. For that entire time, she has been forced to dress like a man, with her hair cropped close to her head. Her connection with the outside world is limited: There are extremely strict rules about who can visit her, and media isn't allowed to speak with her directly, though she can correspond with journalists by mail. At times, her situation seems hopeless, but she has tried to persevere.
"Courage is not fearlessness," she wrote in a letter to Broadly this December. "Courage is the ability to keep going, even when you are unsure of yourself, even when you are nervous, and even when you are terrified. If you can still fight when the odds appear to be against you, and when it looks like you might be fighting it alone, then you are genuinely brave."
In May of 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted of six counts of espionage and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The former military specialist is responsible for what is considered the largest leak of classified government documents in American history—they include the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary, two data troves that she believed would shed light on the "true cost of war" in the Middle East, such as the United States' failure to investigate thousands of claims of torture in Iraq, the detainment of innocent or low-threat-level individuals at Guantanamo Bay, and thousands of civilian deaths.
Manning's sentence is extreme by any metric. Other convicted whistleblowers have had to serve far less time, often in the range of one to three-and-a-half years—though Manning is just a sixth of the way through her sentence, she has already been incarcerated twice as long as most other convicted whistleblowers. Earlier this year, she made a plea to President Obama to alter her sentence from 35 years to time served, which would free her immediately while recognizing her guilt. Last month, over 100,000 people signed a White House petition making the same demand. The President's second term will end in January, meaning he has less than a month to take action.
Though some people celebrate Manning as a whistleblower—she was the 2013 recipient of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize—others see her actions as treasonous and damaging to the state. "Let's charge [her] and try [her] for treason," a FOX news national security expert, KT MacFarland, wrote of Manning in 2010. "If [she's] found guilty, [she] should be executed." President-elect Donald Trump has selected MacFarland to be his deputy national security adviser, according to CNN.
And even among people who prize government transparency, Manning is often overlooked. The world seems to have rallied behind other, more visible whistleblowers, such as Edward Snowden, who has become something of a celebrity from his recluse in Russia. One of the main reasons for this, according to Evan Greer, one of Manning's biggest advocates and the campaign director of Fight for the Future, is that Manning is hidden from sight in prison, denied the right to speak for herself.
Continue reading on Broadly.
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VICE Talks Film with '20th Century Women' Director Mike Mills
On this episode of 'VICE Talks Film,' we sit down with director Mike Mills to talk about his latest autobiographical film, '20th Century Women.' The coming of age tale stars Annette Bening, who channels Mills's real-life mother as Dorthea and enlists two younger women (Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning) to help her raise her adolescent punk rock son.
Mills talks about his own experience being raised by strong, outspoken women, the role music plays in the movie, and how he built the perfect cast based on his real family.
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Thomas Morton Meets First Lady Michelle Obama on 'BALLS DEEP'
After spending time with senior citizens, Trump supporters, and college freshmen, BALLS DEEP host Thomas Morton heads off to our nation's capital to see what life is like for some government staffers on the season two finale of his VICELAND show. While there, Morton brushes shoulders with First Lady Michelle Obama, who reveals that she's a huge fan of the show.
On this episode, Morton embeds with Joining Forces, a special task force aimed to help solve the issue of veterans' homelessness nationwide. He meets veterans in the program and helps one—Wendell Banks—prepare to introduce the first lady at a White House Summit talk.
Check out the trailer above and be sure to catch the full episode airing Thursday on VICELAND.
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Everything You Need to Know About the Tenuous Cease-Fire in Syria
Syria's government and opposition groups have agreed to a nationwide cease-fire and are ready to hold peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday, raising faint hopes of movement toward a political settlement in the complex, years long conflict that has left hundreds of thousands dead and 11 million displaced.
Syria's military and the Turkish foreign ministry also confirmed the agreement, brokered by Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with the military saying that the deal was being made to pursue a political solution.
The deal—which excludes the jihadi groups ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and all groups linked to them, according to Syria's military—will go into effect at midnight.
"Reports have just arrived that several hours ago there was a development that we all have looked and worked for for so long," Putin said at a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to Russia's state-run Tass news agency.
Three documents had been signed under the agreement, said Putin: a cease-fire between the Syrian regime and the armed opposition; a package of measures to monitor the cease-fire; and a "declaration of readiness" to commence peace talks.
He said Russia, Turkey, and Iran would act as guarantors of the agreement. The three powers announced their intention earlier this month to broker a solution to Syria's nearly six-year conflict, sidelining intermittent UN-backed efforts, jointly led by Russia and the US, which have failed to bear fruit over the years.
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Christmas's Hottest Toy Has a Pretty Foul Mouth
Few things beat Christmas when you're a kid (if your family adheres to it). Getting up early, surrounding the tree with your loved ones, and of course, opening presents. This is the big moment, that gift from Santa—that money gift—the toy you've waited all season for is finally yours.
Then that magical toy says, "Fuck me."
That's what at least one family experienced around the Christmas tree this year. Sarah and Nik Galego, a couple in Victoria, BC, bought a Hatchimal (one of the season's hottest toys) for their six-year-old son, and when unwrapped, the little thing started to channel Regan from The Exorcist.
"Fuck me," it says repeatedly, among what can only be described as moans.
Hatchimals are sophisticated little toys that arrive in eggs, then hatch when played with enough, and once out of their eggs, can learn how to talk, walk, and all sorts of other neat stuff. The toy doesn't have a preset foreign language for it to speak when hatched, but it learns its own personalized language, which is where the mistake could be originating from. The thing is, the Hatchimal isn't supposed to talk while hatching, but this one came out of its egg swearing like a sailor.
"It was doing its hatching process and it fell asleep, and we both looked at each other, and we're like, that's not what it's saying, is it?" Sarah Galego told CTV.
Others have noticed the problem as well and uploaded similar videos to YouTube.
As the Furbies of 2016, Hatchimals sold out of stock before Christmas, and the toy, with a suggested retail price of almost $90, was being sold on E-bay and Kijiji for upward of $400. Spin Master, the company behind the toy, said that it "sincerely apologizes" to anyone having issues (other Hatchimals just didn't work), and the company has increased its customer-care hours.
"While the vast majority of children have had a magical experience with Hatchimals, we have also heard from consumers who have encountered challenges," Spin Master told VICE in a statement. "We are 100 percent committed to bringing the magic of Hatchimals to all of our consumers."
As for the parents who bought the foul-mouthed little toy in particular, well, they're pretty darn chill about the whole thing.
"It's good at teaching him responsibility. It's been really cool watching him take care of it," Galego told CTV. "I found our little flaws with the Hatchimal pretty hilarious. "We're not going to return it or file any complaints with it. It's pretty funny."
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Andrew W.K. on Growth
Given my public "Party" persona, many are surprised or even disappointed to learn I'm not naturally upbeat—that I wasn't born a golden ray of sunshine. Like most of us, I have moods. And for as long as I can remember, I've been almost supernaturally prone to negative emotions. Maintaining a positive outlook has been something I've desperately struggled with. I've never seen myself as a naturally optimistic person, and have instead lived with an almost unshakable sense that all aspects of existence were inherently wrong and trending towards ever-increasing levels of failure, suffering, and darkness. Any effort to see things in a hopeful light, I thought, was naive or delusional.
But carrying those kinds of feelings—a soul heavy with dread—can take its toll. So over the years I've made more and more of a rigorous effort to try and sublimate this inner despair that has colored so many of my experiences and perspectives. I do this by finding tiny moments of unquestionable joy and holding on to them tight. Things like music and laughter and inspiring encounters with culture were undeniably uplifting, so I surrounded myself with these things to find small bits of relief and motivation, some pin pricks of light in a vast sea of darkness. These experiences were often fleeting and short-lived, but the impressions they left on me were long-lasting. If I could feel this radiant joy even for a moment, maybe there was a way to hold onto it for longer. Maybe even forever?
Is the glass half full or half empty? This familiar proverbial phrase has always stuck with me, because it says so much in its perfect simplicity. In ways both real and imagined, how you see the world colors what you see in the world. If you see the world positively, that positivity is reflected all around you. You notice the beautiful and appreciate it, and in turn, notice more of it—seek and ye shall find, what you look will show itself to you. In my darkest moments, I'd obsess over this idea of this metaphorical glass, and put a tremendous effort to see it (the world) as half full. I was willing a positive outlook from within myself, even when nearly every part of my inner view saw otherwise.
Then inevitably something crushing would dampen my most determined efforts, and make it all too easy to slide back into the shadows, thwarting my rigorous commitment to a positive outlook, and making all my efforts seem absurd and foolish. I'd quickly fall back into familiar, negative thoughts and tell myself I was an idiot for even trying to see life as a beautiful experience. I'd bounce back into believing my efforts to be cheerful were pointless and embarrassing, and that underlying all reality was an unspeakably brutal spirit of malevolent nothingness.
I'd swing from one side of this emotional pendulum to the other, wrestling back and forth between despair and hope, clarity and confusion. This, of course, was an exhausting dance, so I began to think about ways to transcend it, and jump off this chess-board of duality. There had to be a way to step back, or rise up, and observe this process from an enlightened distance, I thought. I needed to find a way to balance these two worlds or risk spending my entire life oscillating between manic highs and devastating lows.
In ways both real and imagined, how you see the world colors what you see in the world.
Then, one day, it struck me. I didn't need to see the glass as half full or half empty. Perhaps I could be outrageously happy and grateful that I was able to see the glass at all, and consider its condition in the first place. My outlook from day to day didn't need to be the lens through which I judged the world, and even on days where I woke up feeling that all of existence was a struggle, I began to understand that the simple act of getting to exist at all was genuine net positive.
In life we're given a couple gifts. 1) A physical body that can carry out action in the world based on 2) Our mind and the thoughts radiating from within it. Those things are outstanding, and just by existing as a human in the universe is almost like winning a kind of cosmic lottery, regardless if we had a conscious choice in entering this contest. That thought alone has helped me, and even on days where I see the glass as half empty, I'm eternally grateful that I can pick up that glass and drink from it.
Life is a test to see if you can find a way to embrace and learn from those parts of you inside that would otherwise crush your spirit. We're here to grow, to not be beaten down.
In the end, it's the experience of life itself that is a transcendentally positive thing. The motivation to live beyond just mere survival, to strive to do more than subsist at the minimal possible level, that takes a type of conviction. It takes a real effort. This is more and more what I'm attempting to do, not be beaten down or overwhelmed by the immensity of life, but instead enthralled with it. Rejoice in it, laugh with it, have a dance about it.
We can figure out that we don't have to have it all figured out to still appreciate the experience. We can let the baffling puzzle of life delight us, surprise us, and challenge us. And most of all, we can continuously celebrate the fact that against almost insurmountable odds, we have come into being.
This is what allows me to persevere. Life is never going to be easy, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad. It's just very intense. And it's our obligation to grow stronger, and more resilient, so we blossom ever more openly into life and face it with a smile.
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The Ongoing Voice Actor's Strike Is More Than Just a Little Drama
The strike that was supposed to raise the consciousness of working people in the games industry has been strangely quiet since it was announced. The SAG-AFTRA voice actors strike began in late October of 2016, a full two months ago now. There's been scant footage of picket lines, no canceled or delayed games. For all the world, it looks like it's barely happened at all. But behind the scenes, there's a palpable anger.
"They led off undervaluing what we provide to the video game industry," says JB Blanc, a voice actor and observer on the preliminary negotiations. "I was at the second negotiation which occurred. Scott Witlin (the lawyer representing the studios) sat down and said—and I will quote him almost verbatim—'it's so great to see so many of you coming here to support your contract, we're very proud to see you all here. Really no one cares about voiceover in video games, and we could get anyone to do what you do for 50 bucks an hour. So we're showing extraordinary good faith by even turning up.' I think he still believes that, and he's patently wrong." Scott Witlin did not respond to our request for comment.
It was this notion that voice actors are so easily replaceable that got their backs up, in Blanc's words. It's also an idea that seems resoundingly disrespectful, not only to the voice actors, but also to people who play video games. It casts them as ignorant consumers, unable to discern good performances from bad. Sean Vanaman, co-owner of Campo Santo and co-director of the studio's debut game Firewatch, finds the quote shocking.
"Yeah, maybe it doesn't matter so much for the next AAA shooter. Fine. Continue to make that game," he says in irritation. "But when that game is no longer viable, you're not going to have many places to turn. That person should be fired. That's malpractice. He's saying that industry tastes aren't going to change, that market trends will not fluctuate, and that something popular in 2016 will be popular in 2019. I would be very, very afraid as a shareholder if that's the attitude."
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Why 2016 Seemed Like the Worst Year Ever
"Man has become a kind of prosthetic God," Sigmund Freud tells us in Civilization and Its Discontents. "When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but… We must not forget that present-day man is not happy in his Godlike character."
The good doctor might have been wrong about the value of the vaginal orgasm, but he was right about the crippling, self-destructive anxiety undergirding modern life and how poorly our species seems equipped to handle it. This was prescient when Freud first published it in 1930, and like too many other things out of that decade, it feels fresh again at the end of 2016.
It's common to lament 2016 as a kind of spectacularly miserable year, a singularly awful global catastrophe where all the good celebrities died and all the bad ones became president. But 2016 is not sentient and it's not deliberately tormenting you (no matter how much it sometimes feels that way). It's really just the year a number of cultural, technological, political, and ecological trends all collided into one another in the worst possible way.
In hindsight, it's easy to see how everything that boiled over this year was bubbling away for the better part of the decade. It feels like we live in a markedly—even unthinkably—different world than we did in 2015 or 2011. But we're really just catching a boomerang. This was the year our chickens came home to roost.
Can't Get Enough of That Kulturkampf
2016 has infamously racked up an impressive celebrity bodycount, including David Bowie and Prince and Leonard Cohen and Muhammad Ali and John Glenn and George Michael and Carrie Fisher and, and, and....
Many of these people were cultural giants of the 20th century—in a way that might be impossible in the 21st century. Thanks to the proliferation of media technology (and changes in its consumption), it's difficult for anyone to cultivate the same kind of universal cultural appeal or influence of someone like Bowie or Fisher. As Sam Kriss has noted elsewhere, we're not only mourning the loss of beloved idols but the last links to a fading world: "There really were more celebrity deaths in 2016 than in previous years, and there'll be even more next year, until everyone who unified the culture is gone, and the only people left are aging YouTube stars and problematic faves, heirs to a more atomized world, whose disappearance will be wailed at by their isolated fanbases and utterly ignored by everyone else."
This metamorphosis in media has been underway for more than a decade, but 2016 is the year we finally began to understand its true ramifications. There is no question that the spread of smartphones over the last decade is changing the way people interact with each other and the world. It's trendy in technophile circles to call this a revolution, but counter-revolution works just as well. Social media in its present form—that is, a disparate network of privately-owned websites functioning as a public space, the content of which is subject to manipulation by advertising algorithms powered by personal information extracted from users—is as profoundly, maddeningly disempowering as it is a vehicle for personal enlightenment, community engagement, and social organization.
Take this year's absolute meltdowns about "fake news" and "post-truth." Fake News morphed from a descriptive term for deliberately false stories circulated on social media for advertising revenue to "deliberate misinformation from agents of [the Russian state/international Jewish financiers]" to "anything dissenting from the [liberal political establishment/Alt-Right hivemind]" to "anything I don't like." These are not the conditions of 'post-truth'—because political discourse has always exceeded (and often contradicted) empirical reality—but rather what Alex Tesar has dubbed 'meta-truth.'
Changing media technology, dovetailing with the precarious economic conditions prevailing since the Great Recession in 2008 and the bankruptcy of traditional economic, intellectual, and political authorities have landed us in a condition of epistemic anarchy. The political earthquakes of 2016 have demonstrated, that in conditions of meta-truth—the intellectual state of nature—the only rule is brutal, naked, awesome force.
The Circus Comes to Town
Shock and awe was how the far right won most of 2016's major political battles.
Consider, first, the Brexit blitz. When David Cameron called the referendum on Britain's membership in the EU, it was on the assumption that it would be a resounding success for Remain and that the Euroskeptic fringe that had been floating in the Tory coalition would finally shut up and go away. Business leaders, tenured academics, and every other member of the liberal political establishment was trotted out to stress how terribly complex leaving Europe would be and how they had all these statistics about how neoliberal globalization might be a touch uncomfortable for the poor but that everything otherwise was tickety-boo. The Leave camp, by contrast, focused on stoking racist fantasies about murderous immigrants, completely disingenuous claims about how much money they would could funnel into the NHS if they weren't paying Brussels, and the fabulous lie that moving political power from the technocracy in Brussels to the plutocrats in London would make life better for the average (white, aging, anxious working-class) Briton.
The ghost of an entirely imaginary British Empire—the wrong answer to the right questions—cut the country off from the continent in a political upset that the Leave campaign did not anticipate. The pro-Remain coalition spent approximately zero time wondering how they misunderstood the mood of the electorate or why they were so out of touch, and instead immediately moved to asking why voters were so stupid. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and nobody learned anything and the exact same experience was repeated four months later across the pond.
Constitutional wranglings in the United Kingdom have nothing on this year's American election, when what was a punchline for 20-odd years slowly metastasized into president Donald Trump. Trump is one of the greatest conmen in American history, channeling the anxiety, alienation, and resentment of white, rural America into a victory over one of the worst political campaigns ever run in the history of the republic. Faced with overwhelming evidence of widespread popular dissatisfaction with the status quo, Hillary Clinton campaigned on the absurd slogan that "America is great because America is good" and was so convinced of her own inevitable coronation as the khaleesi of corporate feminism that she didn't even bother campaigning in Michigan. Half the electorate stayed home and a few million useful idiots for a bargain-bin American Bonaparte handed control of the world's preeminent nuclear arsenal to a 70-year-old toddler and his merry band of vampire billionaires.
Like Brexit, the Trump campaign was running a scam of Biblical proportions and improbably won the day—thanks to a perfect storm of antisocial radicalism bubbling at the fringes of American life for the better part of the last decade. What observers had once assumed was the Republican party eating itself in the face of Barack Obama's triumphant liberalism was actually the total colonization of the GOP by Andrew Breitbart's parasitic ghost. Meanwhile, disaffected white virgins who had been radicalized on pick-up artist websites in 2012 and spent 2014 laying the groundwork for a violently reactionary white identity politics by getting mad about video games online and became, in 2016, a vanguard of computer literate neo-Nazis described in the press as the 'alt-right.'
Fascism has been a hot topic in 2016, specifically because of the ongoing argument over whether or not Donald Trump and the alt-right can be called a properly fascist movement. They are definitely not classically fascist—there are no partisan paramilitaries storming through the streets (yet)—but they belong in the same family tree of extreme reactionary politics. You can call it neo-fascism, or post-fascism, or even proto-fascism, and there is a valuable debate to hold about splitting these semantic hairs. But I think the f-word works just fine, because the genius of fascism is that it is always morphing its shape. It is the ultimate pastiche ideology; an ideological chameleon, rearranging its spots to suit the historical moment, pressing stoner cartoon frogs into the service of white supremacy.
Fascism flourishes in conditions of meta-truth precisely because it is so malleable, so forcefully beguiling, so deliberately free of even pretending to care about the liberal establishment's idea of "truth." It recognizes, consciously or otherwise, that truth is a function of power. Donald Trump's regular, pathological lying underscores that the real goal of fascist rhetoric is not to convince, but to awe and impress. This is why fact-checking the alt-right's absurd claims are useless and arguably counterproductive—everything they do and say is intentionally performed in bad faith.
Keith Olbermann can scream and sob into a flag all he wants. It only makes Trump stronger. He may or may not ever build that border wall, but the central promise of his campaign remains true: he will do whatever he wants, and the rest of us will pay for it.
This Planet Is Burning Up
Not that there's ever a good time for the political triumph of reactionary nationalism, but this is an especially bad one. Major countries are turning inward and the international community is fracturing at the exact moment when coordinated global action on climate change is most necessary.
The real sense in which the future arrived in 2016 are all the ecological barriers the planet broke this year. Not only was this the hottest year ever recorded (RIP 2015), but the planet also permanently passed the threshold of 400 parts-per-million of atmospheric carbon dioxide for the first time in millions of years, which by all accounts is not so great a time. Second, and more alarmingly, the Arctic has been anywhere from 20-30 degrees Celsius warmer than usual all autumn, losing 19,000 square miles of ice over five days in November.
These are significant developments. Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere along with abnormally warm temperatures in the Arctic bring us perilously close to triggering a number of unstoppable climactic feedback loops. A markedly warmer Arctic means more dark, sunlight-absorbing ocean surface, which in turn warms the arctic further, and on and on. (Pay no attention to the melting permafrost behind the curtain.)
All of these trends existed well before 2016, but we can point to 2016 as the year we blew past those major milestones and definitely entered the Anthropocene. Ironically, the surest sign that humanity has entered a geological era defined by our impact on the planet's ecological metabolism may turn out to be that we are no longer able to control or mitigate what we have unleashed. There is no question now that after 2016, we live on a different planet than the one any previous generations in human history inhabited.
And as 2017 looms, epistemic anarchy reigns. The incoming president of the United States believes climate change is a hoax and has appointed a former Exxon executive as Secretary of State. If the long arc of history does indeed bend toward justice, the devil and his angels are making sure they grab everything that isn't nailed down before the final trumpets sound.
The situation is dire. Angry baby boomers are taking their countries back at the same time as the world spins catastrophically out of their control. Everyone is connected to one another and the entire compendium of human knowledge by the supercomputers we carry around in our pockets and we have never felt more anxious or alone. We are prosthetic gods hell-bent on our own crucifixion.
But it would be irresponsible to wrap all this up on such a bleak note. There are reasons for hope. If 2016 was the year that the old order of the world finally started cracking to pieces, that means it's also the moment when space opened up for something new. Right now, the forces moving to occupy those spaces are monstrous. But their victory is fragile, and they can be pushed around. There is a clear hunger for a different future; something better, something not constrained by the beige, dead-eyed dogmas of technocratic liberalism.
Millennials take a lot of shit for being apathetic, flighty narcissists. But the other major Western political upheaval of 2016—the one spearheaded by a geriatric Jewish socialist named Bernie Sanders—shows that we'll come out in droves for anyone who will listen to us, for anyone willing and able to give voice to the demand that our lives don't have to get worse forever just so some monsters with suits and stock options can get rich off our labor while cities sink into the sea.
The clock is ticking, but it shouldn't be paralyzing. Nihilism is a disease and irony is a vector. It is possible to dream differently and it is possible to organize and it is possible to win. Let 2016 be a kick in your ass, not a boot on your throat.
So slam as many drinks or joints or pills or lines or quiet moments of sobriety as you need to get through New Year's Eve 2016, and then get the fuck up. The future is here and it's ours if we take it.
If we don't, somebody else will.
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Philippine President Walks Back on Comment That He Once Threw Someone from a Helicopter
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made another shocking claim this week when he said that he once threw a "corrupt" person from a helicopter in flight as punishment. He then threatened to do it again.
"If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out," Duterte said in Filipino during a speech about typhoon-relief efforts. "I've done it before; why can't I do it again?"
Duterte's helicopter threat was aimed at officials who misuse relief-effort funds. The person thrown from the helicopter was a kidnapper and murderer, Duterte said.
Later, however, Duterte denied that he had thrown someone from a helicopter, implying the comment was a joke.
"We had no helicopter. We don't use that," he told CNN Philippines.
Duterte then went on to poke fun at media coverage of his comments. A spokesman has said Duterte's comments should be taken "seriously but not literally," echoing statements made during the US election, that the press takes Donald Trump literally but his supporters take him "seriously but not literally."
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There Is Going to Be an Extra Second of 2016
Bless the mysticism surrounding New Year's Eve that makes us think that the stroke of midnight resets our lives. Next year is probably going to be shit too; the regression, the death, the flaming political trash fires—there is little reason to think all this could just halt with the change of a number on a calendar. Anyway, for all of you who can't stop bitching about how 2016 is the worst year ever, here's some more bad news: The year that just won't end is going to last an extra second.
There will be something called a "leap second" at 6:59:59 PM EST on New Year's Eve, the Huffington Post reports. The US Naval Observatory announced the extra second back in July of this year, surely before knowing just how much of a disaster the rest of 2016 was going to be.
"Historically, time was based on the mean rotation of the Earth relative to celestial bodies and the second was defined in this reference frame," Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory stated in the announcement. "However, the invention of atomic clocks defined a much more precise 'atomic' timescale and a second that is independent of Earth's rotation."
We're not exactly sure what that means, but at this point we wouldn't be surprised if the rapture happens this weekend, and tbh, thank Christ. Farewell, dear readers.
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The Best Short Films of 2016
2016 has been a weird, wild, and kind of horrible year. Between the election, refugee crisis, global economy, David Bowie, Prince, Ebola, Brexit, Carrie Fischer, and mass shootings, it's been hard to find the light. Thankfully, it didn't affect any of the films that were released online because they are still pretty outstanding (and, technically, weren't actually made in 2016). At any rate, it was hard to narrow down the list from the over 2,000 short films I've seen this year—some of which I've written about for this site—but I was able to do so by placing them into categories and setting a few ground rules, which go as follows:
- 1–40 minutes in length, per Academy standards (not that 40 minutes is particularly short)
- Released online in 2016 (the production year can be earlier, but it must have still been traveling on the festival circuit)
So, without giving too much thought to the inherent ridiculousness of year-end "Best Of" awards, here I go:
The "I'm So Glad This Isn't Happening to Me" Award
Winner: The Procedure. Probably one of the strangest and most horrifying "what if" torture scenarios ever put on tape, The Procedure is equal parts shock and stomach-busting laughter. It also garnered the 2016 jury prize for fiction filmmaking at Sundance.
Runner-up: Her Friend Adam. I've never been able to decide if one should or shouldn't watch this film if you're in a relationship. It is pure jealousy and anxiety put on screen. Grace Glowicki's performance as the titular "her" puts When Harry Met Sally's Meg Ryan to shame.
The Your Dead Mom Award
Winner: I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked. Winner of the 2014 Sundance jury prize for non-fiction, this short documentary by Yuval Hameiri is unlike anything you'll have seen this year—or other years. Using a number of household items, he attempts to recreate the last moments of his mother's life. It's raw, handmade, and unbelievably moving.
Runner-up: Thunder Road. You know that moment when your mom dies and you're supposed to eulogize her in front of all of her friends and family and then everything goes horribly awry? Well, Jim Cummings, who writes, directs, and stars in Thunder Road, knows it—or else is able to imagine it convincingly—and the evidence is in this impressive and wonderfully cringe-inducing single-shot film. Winner of the 2016 grand jury prize at Sundance and a host of other international prizes, Thunder Road will make you laugh, squirm, and shake your head.
The Extremist Documentary Award
Winner: Speaking Is Difficult. Five years of American mass-shooting 911 calls and footage from those places in the present make up this haunting and devastating short. Director A. J. Schnack calls his short "open-started," referring to how he has continued to add more calls to the beginning as they continue to happen. It's super heavy, but very powerful and sobering.
Runner-up: Born to be Mild. On the entirely opposite end of the spectrum of "extremist" is this short about the most dull men on earth. These old farts just lay back and literally watch grass grow, and yet Andy Oxley's 15-minute doc reveals the famously tedious activity to be as interesting as it is entertaining. I've already joined the Dull Men's Club, and it feels great.
The Dealing with the Refugee Crisis Award
Winner: 4.1 Miles. One of the most eye-opening and heart-wrenching documentaries about the refugee crisis was made by Daphne Matziaraki, a recent graduate of UC-Berkeley's School of Journalism. It's about a 4.1 mile stretch of water between the Turkish coast and a small Greek island and the Coast Guard who patrols it, saving hundreds of lives in the process. It's currently shortlisted for an Academy Award.
Runner-up: Over. Blending fact and fiction, Jorn Threlfall's wildly acclaimed short Over is a decidedly different take on refugees. Told in reverse and running just under 14 minutes, the film makes the audience jump to many conclusions and has a more shocking ending than Memento.
The Animated Fever Dream Award
Winner: Manoman. Whenever I'm feeling down and I want a good old fashioned pick-me-up film, where I can see puppets scream, fuck, fight, and piss all over each other, this is my go-to. By the end, you'll be a primal scream therapy convert and a chanter of their mantra: "MANOMAN, MANOMAN."
Runner-up: Symphony No. 42. Réka Bucsi is one of the most talented and imaginative young animators working today. Her ideas and characters come together in such strange and surprising ways that it's less than a delight to watch what unfolds. She has a new short on the circuit this year called Love, and it's been taking festivals by storm. After screening around the world, it will be at next month's Sundance.
The WTF Award
Winner: Short Stories About Love. Boys do cry, and this video is proof. Here is my monkey brain at work, and this is the best one to end on.
See you in 2017!
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More Students Are Graduating Because High School Is Getting Less Boring
This October, President Obama announced to much fanfare that America's high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high—83.2 percent for the 2014-2015 school year, the most recent year for which data is available.
This was the cherry on top of five years of consecutive growth that also includes a big leap forward for minority groups, such a African American students (a 7.6 percent increase) and Native Americans (a 6.6 percent increase). The president took that chance to tout some of his education initiatives such as investing in preschool education and a push to connect classrooms to broadband internet.
While these initiatives may have helped, education experts are still pondering why the graduation rate has increased. Could it be teaching the real world skill of coding in classrooms? Or engaging group learning that solves world problems? How much did social and emotional learning where students are taught about self-awareness, relationships and human decency, have an impact? However you slice it, it seems like teachers are making school less boring, potentially keeping kids in classrooms long enough to graduate.
"Students are using Snapchat and Instagram, so there is the ability to create something that relates much more to life after school than anything else." —Hadi Partovi
"There is a whole bunch of things going on simultaneously," said Laura Hamilton, a senior behavioral scientist from RAND Education, part of the policy think tank RAND Corporation. "It is hard to say which of these might be responsible for the rise in graduation rates, but together this stuff does seem to be working to some degree.
Hamilton pointed to classrooms with project-based learning, where, for example, math and literacy instruction is packaged in a real world problem for students to solve as a group. Students might spend an afternoon using Pythagoras theorem to find the distance between their avatar and an enemy in a computer game, rather than memorizing an equation on a blackboard.
"Students are using Snapchat and Instagram, so there is the ability to create something that relates much more to life after school than anything else," said Hadi Partovi, the CEO of Code.org, a nonprofit that brings computer science and coding into schools.
Code.org provides computer science course curriculum for students from elementary to high school age. In the one-year course for high schoolers, students use HTML to build their own web pages from scratch, and develop basic games and animation through a repeat cycle of design, testing, and debugging. So far, about 2,000 schools have incorporated this course and more than two million students have been reached across all Code.org courses, according to Hadi.
The Code.org programs have been around for three years, which isn't long enough to say how it might impact graduation rates. But a survey from Change the Equation, an education nonprofit whose founding members include CEOs from Intel, Xerox, and ExxonMobil, put computer science as the third most enjoyed subject, behind graphic arts and performing arts. "This class [computer science] is not only more fun and engaging," said Partovi, "students can immediately see how it can help them develop a high-paying career."
Technology has also enabled some schools to quite literally flip classroom learning on its head. "Flipped learning" or "flipped classrooms" are where students view a lecture at home, often a video from their teacher, and then go into class to workshop what has historically been considered homework. This allows them to learn at their own pace at home; then, when they apply what they've learned in an engaging classroom setting, there is a teacher on hand to help.
One Michigan school that experimented with flipped classrooms in 2010 saw student fail rate drop from 30 percent to ten percent, according to a New York Times article.
"Whenever I had a problem on the homework, I couldn't do anything about it at home," one senior student, Luwayne Harris, told the New York Times. "Now if I have a problem with a video, I can just rewind and watch it over and over again."
It's hard to say how much flipped classrooms affect learning or graduation rates. One 2013 survey of research on flipping found that anecdotal evidence showed student learning did improve, but recommended further studies. Limitations like uneven access to technology in the home also complicate the bigger picture.
Of course, all this—technology's integration into school learning—would not be possible without the internet in classrooms. One of President Obama's initiatives, ConnectED, sought to bridge 99 percent of students to high-speed internet by 2018. So far, 20 million students have broadband internet in their classrooms.
Another initiative, Next Generation High Schools, tied together private and public innovation and funding. One of the partners, computer giant IBM, helped develop a New York City high school that went from grade nine to 14. At the school, called P-Tech, students graduate with an associate's degree in either computer systems technology or electromechanical engineering technology with a prime position to enter IBM's workforce.
It isn't just new technology that's keeping kids engaged, but an added focus on what humans have valued since the dawn of time—problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, persistence, and how to maintain relationships. Teaching these skills and traits comes under the banner of social and emotional learning.
"These skills have always been important in the development of children, but we've gained a lot of knowledge in the last ten years or so that indicates that these skills matter in school," said Emma Garcia, an education economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that evaluates the economic impact of policy ideas.
The contribution that social and emotional learning has made to high school graduation isn't completely known, but Garcia says evidence does suggest a connection. She pointed to a study that compared those who completed high school and those who dropped out and later received a GED. Both groups had similar cognitive skills—what you use to think, read and write—but the group who completed high school displayed greater non-cognitive skills, such as perseverance. (Non-cognitive skills is another term for social and emotional learning.)
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is one of the non-profits helping students develop these skills. CASEL works with schools and districts to integrate social and emotional learning into a student's day. This can include explicit lessons on a range of skills like the importance of listening and communicating in relationships. In one lesson filmed on video, students from the Oakland Unified School District, which works with CASEL, practice conversations with prepared questions on an everyday subject.
"What did you do on the weekend?" one of the students asks the other. The two then proceed to talk about shopping and a track meet. While mastering a good conversation might seem too basic for a sixth-grade class, Hamilton argued "a lot of students are not in the kind of environments in the home or in the community that foster the development of those skills."
Lessons can also be less obvious and folded into every moment of school life. Melissa Schlinger, a vice president at CASEL, stressed the importance of school climate. For example, students soak up a lesson in managing relationships just by observing how a teacher interacts with say, the custodian or the bus driver.
"You can imagine that you are in a school where there is a deliberate focus on building relationships, that is obviously going to go a long way just getting kids to attend," Schlinger said.
Looking forward to 2017, researchers like Hamilton are looking for the data to back their suspicions of what is causing the increase in high school graduation rates. She called social and emotional learning a "hot issue" amongst researchers and funders. But under the new administration, it's unclear whether the trend toward more wired, engaged classrooms will persist.
"Of course the specific policy changes that might be enacted are unknown," said Hamilton, "so I think we'll have to wait to see what happens."
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