Tuesday, December 31, 2019

All-Nighters Are Lawful Evil

Happy New Year, everyone! I’d spit on 2019’s grave and tell you that the coming year can’t POSSIBLY be worse than what we just endured, but I’ve been leaning on that crutch at the turn of every year since 2016. I’m not a fool. So bring on all your bullshit, 2020. You’re gonna suck really bad, but at least at the end of it maybe there’ll be video evidence of President-elect Klobuchar eating salad with a fucking comb.

Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Your letters:

Aine:

How do you properly pull an all-nighter? Like do you wake up, stay up all night, and go to bed the following morning OR do you wake up, stay up all night, stay up all day and then go to bed the following night?

This is where I confess that I have rarely pulled an all-nighter. I never pulled one in school. Instead of staying up all night to cram for a test, I just crammed until, like, midnight and then crashed anyway. If I didn’t get enough studying done, so be it. The sleep was worth the risk, in my opinion. I’ve also barely ever stayed up all night for a job, with the exception of a couple of night photo shoots. One of those shoots took place at a convenience store in rural Virginia. There I was at 4am, staring at cans of Dinty Moore beef stew as the director and DP held us hostage, exhausting precious darkness trying to figure out the best way to light a cash register.

I have stayed up on all night on redeye flights from LA, but that doesn’t count because I was very much TRYING to fall asleep. I have also, in my swingin’ swingle days, stayed up all night to drunkenly hook up with women, but that doesn’t count either. It’s a casual, consensual hookup. It’s not a terribly stressful situation, at least until you gotta get it up. Otherwise, no walk of shame is really all THAT shameful. I used to strut like a hobo peacock back to my apartment after the fact.

So I have not perfected the all-nighter process the way your average UChicago Adderall fiend probably has. All I know is that whenever I pulled an all-nighter—or at least stayed up deep into the wee hours to work, or to enjoy a marathon viewing of the entire Police Academy octalogy—I didn’t prep for it by changing my normal sleep patterns the day prior or the next day. I definitely napped at some point the next day. Hard. But I didn’t sleep the ENTIRE day. Your body has a circadian rhythm to it that an all-nighter disrupts. It doesn’t help you get back onto that rhythm by disrupting it a second time in some grand overcorrection. That’ll only make things worse. Also, your body probably won’t even let you pull it off.

As such, the best way to pull an all-nighter is to return to normalcy as quickly as you can after the fact. Also, don’t pull any all-nighters. The cult of the all-nighter starts somewhere in high school to prepare you for a worse all-nighter cult in college, which in turn prepares you the even worse all-nighter cult that pervades the workforce once you get out of college. I’ve had some decent ideas come to me during these extended sessions, but usually the only thing they’re good for is telling people you pulled an all-nighter. “We worked ALL NIGHT on this presentation, Mr. Flippers!” Oh, so you dicked around all day, then slogged through a full night with bleary eyes in order to work up a PowerPoint deck no one will ever read? Bully for you.

All-nighters are a fucking scourge. They still pull all-nighters at SNL and the only thing those all-nighters produce are word-for-word reenactments of press conferences with a surprise cameo from Matt Damon tossed in to make the audience go WOOOO! All-nighters leave you dumber, crankier, and more tired. They’ll kill you young, and anyone who holds them up as some fabled talisman of the American Work Ethic should be thrown into a tarpit. All-nighters are for hookups and that’s IT.

That includes tonight, by the way. What happens after the ball drops? I’ll tell you what happens: Ryan Seacrest teases a special performance by Meghan Trainor after the commercial break. Go to fucking bed. You and the world will be better off for it.

James:

Is there anyone alive who's had sex with someone who was born in the 19th Century and someone born in 21st Century? Basically this would require them to have both had sex with someone elderly in the 1960s/70s and an 18- or 19-year-old recently.

Yes. That person? Jack Nicholson.

Daniel:

Is there anything more simple yet purely satisfying as building a good fire?

There is not. I went to my parents’ house for Christmas and one of the main draws of heading up to the boonies to see them—apart from, you know, seeing them—is that they have a kickass fireplace and I get to build and stoke fires all through cocktail hour and beyond. At my own house, we have a gas fireplace. It’s very easy. It even has a remote. You push a button, there’s a fire. No rolling up a newspaper and tying it up in a knot. No stacking logs in a crisscross pattern to allow for the flow of oxygen between licking flames. No watching logs slowly burn and then suddenly collapse in a sudden, crackling frenzy. No bed of coals glowing in the midnight darkness, asking to be fed. No creating your own miniature backdraft by maneuvering smoldering logs close to one another, watching them smoke—just ACHING to burn—and then giving it a light to set off a rejuvenated blaze.

I regret the gas fireplace a little. Don’t have to sweep the chimney though. That’s a plus. Chimneys are a quiet menace when it comes to homeowning expenses. I had to get ours relined years ago and I think it costs as much as a fucking tank. Also, no stacking cordwood when you have a gas fireplace. I enjoy lumberjack cosplay as much as the next yuppie but I’m also old and lazy and don’t want to carry 500 logs a grand total of 10 yards, five logs at a time. I could get a splinter! Horrifying.

But building a real fire is, indeed, richly satisfying and never gets old. Even building one inside a charcoal grill is fun. I like to stare at the flames and have super deep thoughts. I am hardly alone in this need. Makes me feel like I wrote the Bible.

Damon:

Let's say, for instance, you farted into a jar, and that jar was mixed up with a bunch of other people's fart jars. Let's assume the farts all maintain peak freshness. Would you be able to pick yours out of the lineup?

The answer right now is no because I lost most of my sense of smell back when I injured my head a year ago, and I have yet to regain it. HOWEVER, I do remember smelling my own farts, and I do remember liking the smell of my own farts much more than other peoples’ vinegary output. So I’d like to think that, pre-accident, I could have identified my own fart out of a jarred lineup.

But that’s vanity talking. When I know a fart belongs to me, I find it much more interesting, because I am a selfish prick. But to a blind nose, a fart is a fart. I would choose the “best” fart of the bunch, anoint it as mine with unwavering certainty, and then be like WHAAAA? when the fart turned out to be Post Malone’s.

Zach:

Does Donald Trump brush his teeth?

Yes. He’s a physically repulsive man but he’s also a famously meticulous one in odd ways. He’s always dressed in a suit. He fears handshake germs. He likes his underwear crisply ironed. Keeping clean appeals to Trump’s vanity. He wants to look like he has his shit together, even if he’s got wet toilet paper still lodged in both his ass and his brain. Such fastidiousness also indulges some of the deep-seated neuroses that Trump would never cop to suffering from but that he exhibits on a second-by-second basis.

So yeah, he brushes his dentures. He might even soak them in Super Polident so that they’re nice and gleaming when some war criminal arrives for a state dinner. Trump’s cleanliness and formality are, arguably, the most consistently funny things about him. He’s desperate, at all times, to look impressive and charismatic. And he NEVER actually reaches that goal. It’s incredible. He’s the ultimate sap with dignity. Trump could get a head-to-toe glow-up from the best grooming experts and cosmetic dentists and fashion designers on the planet—literally, he could do this anytime he wanted to—and he’d still look like he asked his mom to dress him up for seventh-grade band practice.

Alan:

How long do you think you'd need to go without hearing any song by Nirvana or Sublime—or some other chronically overplayed but critically revered '90s band—to be able to actually appreciate hearing either band without it immediately becoming part of the background (as it does now)? I'd say at least 5 years?

I have to take these one at a time because I was never really into Sublime to begin with. This is an upset given that I am a middle-aged white boy who used to drink 40s back in college to look cool. A bunch of ska posers should have been right up my alley. They were not. I require more RAWK in my RAWK. So Sublime was always dorm party wallpaper to me. I don’t hate Sublime. But I don’t give a shit if I ever hear one of their songs ever again. So I can’t rediscover a band I never appreciated much even when it was in its prime and its frontman was still alive.

Nirvana’s a different story because I was in high school right when they broke and it as the biggest shit ever. No rock album will ever again have the impact that Nevermind had, which is good in a sense because I burned out on that album in 1993 and I’m still burned out on it. I even rolled my eyes like a complete dick when Kurt Cobain died by suicide. I went the full Wilbon. I was like, “The man just recorded a song called ‘I Hate Myself And Want To Die,’ for the Beavis and Butthead Do America soundtrack, folks. So am I surprised by this? NOT IN THE LEAST.” This version you see of me right now? This is somehow more mature than what came before it. Impossible but true.

So you could blot out “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from existence for half a decade. But even after that, I’d hear the opening bars and think to myself, “Hey, it’s been a while!” before I went right back to tuning it out again. That’s a bike you never un-learn to ride. The one wrinkle is that my kids heard “Come As You Are” in the car a while back and liked it, and it was cool to hear it through their ears instead of my own. That’s about as fresh as that shit can get for me now.

The only Nirvana song I still listen to consistently is, strangely, “You Know You’re Right.” That was a demo recording that they added to a definitive Nirvana compilation years and years after Cobain died. It plays like a classic Nirvana song, with all the quiet-loud-quiet-loud parts. But since it wasn’t beaten to death by AOR radio, I never got the chance to resent it. Nice little parting gift he left for everyone.

HALFTIME!

Tom:

Say Steph Curry’s shots stopped going in during games. He still makes all his normal shots in practice, warmups, etc. But nothing—no layups, no 3s, no free throws—goes in during the game. How long before he retires?

Derrick Rose is still in the NBA. The last time Derrick Rose made a jumper was in, like, 2011. So I think Steph would stick around for a bit during his hexed cold streak. First of all, his contract runs through 2022 and pays him over $45 million in the final year of it. I ain’t retiring before I can collect that money. I’d run around naked with a candlestick hanging out of my asshole for that much money.

Secondly, Steph could miss 50 million shots in a row and fans like me would STILL expect his next made basket to be just around the corner. He’d expect it, too. Wouldn’t you? Every headline during the curse would be like WHAT’S WRONG WITH STEPH? and FOR REAL THIS IS PRETTY FUCKED UP. Stephen A. would demand the Warriors cut him. All of the usual sports-take apparatus would be set up around Steph’s sudden and baffling ineptitude. But again, $45 million. If I were him, I’d be too proud to accept my fate and then I’d keep jacking up ill-advised threes. John Starks built an entire career out of this so I see no reason why Steph couldn’t adopt the same philosophy. He’d get mercy benched a few weeks (months?) into the slump, come off the bench to continue it every once in a while, and then the Warriors would cut him loose at the end of his contract, putting them and him out of their respective miseries.

And then the Knicks would sign him for half a billion.

Dan:

I just bought some new boxers and boxer briefs, and the boxers have a button on the flap. I'm thinking this is the most useless "functional" button because goddamn if when I gotta pee I don't need another barrier in my way. I just want to unzip, do my thing and go. Is there really a need for this button?

Why, yes. I can attest to this AS A FATHER. If I leave that button unbuttoned, chances are my dick is gonna hang out of the flap. This is not because I’m hung like a rhino. It’s because most every dick has a habit of poking out of things, especially if you’re like me and you prefer your boxers to be relatively snug. Also, I’ve probably gotten too fat for those snug undies, which means the flap is stretched open at all times, like a window you keep open to let air into the house.

None of this is a problem if you don’t have kids. If you live alone and your dick is hanging out in the morning when you make a bowl of cereal, it doesn’t matter. You’re not gonna blink. But if you have three kids, and they’re no longer toddlers, and they make seemingly deliberate attempts to walk in on you when you’re about to get into bed, that stupid dickflap button is the only thing standing between them and Oedipal trauma. My wife once told me, “Drew, you GOTTA close your boxers.” Since then, I’ve been vigilant about it. No one in this house wants dad’s penis to be a surprise tourist attraction.

By the way, after testing underwear for GQ last year, I am firmly on the side of Team Flap when it comes to underwear. You guys who rock boxer briefs with no dickhole… I don’t know how or why you put up with it.

Ryan:

What is the most acceptable non-flip-flop summer footwear? I'm thinking walking the dog, running to the corner store, picking up the mail, etc.

I just wear sneakers for all that. I spend the first 25 years of my life HORRIFIED by flip-flops for some reason. I never wore them. I thought it was strange that other people did. I am the opposite of a foot fetishist. The anti-Tarantino. I didn’t want to see a bunch of pasty dudes, myself included, walking around with their spider toes hanging out. So I wore sneakers instead, even to the beach. Never wear sneakers to the beach if you plan on removing them. I also wore docksiders. That was my summer shoe when I wanted to impress the ladies. They were NOT impressed by a pair of Sperrys my mom grabbed for me at the local JC Penney.

I have since sworn off such preppy accoutrements, even though I literally went to prep school. I fancy myself too PUNK for docksiders, even though I look like someone made a pair of docksiders into a living being. So I just wear my shitty Asics when I need to hit the grocery store in August. I can’t really think of a decent type of footwear between light sneakers and flip-flops for the job. Aqua socks? No. Tevas? FUCK AND NO. Slides? Those are flip-flops, as far as I’m concerned. Leather sandals? What is this, ancient Rome? No. Wearing loafers bareback? No. All I got for you are sneakers, fancy ones if you’re a sneaker guy. Maybe you’re the type of old man who wears slippers outside in the summertime and doesn’t give a shit if they get dirty and your feet stink, but I have shockingly yet to cross that threshold of boomerdom.

Someone in Palo Alto right now is planning on disrupting the tweener men’s summerwear space, I promise you. Two years hence, a former Warby Parker executive will unveil breathable court jester shoes upon the marketplace. His company will receive a valuation of $5.6 billion.

Kenneth:

Do you think Trump can do basic math? Like if someone asked him what 11 x 32 is could he actually answer the question?

Kenneth, I’m not sure I can answer that that question. It’s 352, right? Hang on.

[opens calculator]

NAILED IT. Not bad. Anyway, again I’m gonna go against the grain here and say that Trump can do basic math. For more advanced calculations, he relies on Jews …

... but for addition and subtraction and what not, I think he’s all right on his own. He certainly knows math well enough to fudge it. Even if he sucked at math—and not on purpose!—I couldn’t really blame him. I’ve forgotten more math than I’ve retained. My children’s homework reads like Swahili to me. Even when I do know how to solve a problem, I don’t know how to solve it the RIGHT way. They teach kids number lines and place values now so that they can do mental math in a jiffy, but I’m still carrying the one like I’m living in ancient Egypt. For Back To School night this year, my son’s fifth grade math teacher told us, “I have good news for you guys! We’re teaching some of this shit the old fashioned way this year! You can actually HELP your kids!” I still haven’t.

Anyway, Trump knows how to tally up kickbacks. Calculating a restaurant tip? Far more undesirable a task for him.

Paul:

Can I have some good picnic food ideas? I just turned 30 and it's no longer okay to bring Trader Joe's cheese and crackers to a picnic.

Like a literal picnic? With a blanket on the ground and a basket and shit? Are we at an outdoor John Tesh concert? Or are we just talking about a regular-ass cookout with park tables? If that’s the case, then the answer is Popeye’s. The answer is ALWAYS Popeye’s. I’m still aghast that people got horny for the Popeye’s chicken sandwich when their regular chicken was already perfect and already there. Bring that shit to a picnic and everyone will kiss you on the mouth.

When I was a kid, my mom used to take us out on picnics. She had a little foldable table she brought, along with cold sesame noodle salads and cans of Wispride and all that. No Popeye’s, though. I liked those picnics. I would take my own kids out for one, but sitting on the ground for longer than five seconds triggers agonizing sciatic nerve pain, plus my kids would just bitch to be on screens instead. So my picnicking days are likely over. About time Gen X killed a cultural artifact instead of those nasty millennials doing it.

Todd:

I’m 45 and live in a studio apartment as the result of a divorce (no kids). And I love it. It’s a new construction so everything is nice and clean and all the appliances are brand new and top notch. It’s a nice, large, studio apartment with a half wall to section off the sleeping area, ample room for my office setup and bookshelves and a nice kitchen. It’s not too big, so I don’t have to fill it up with superfluous furniture, or have too much to clean, and everything I need is within arm’s reach. It’s inexpensive, so with the low overhead I can afford to golf whenever I want, and take trips wherever I want, and whenever I want. Needless to say though, this does not play well with the types of women that I want to date, and I’m a little embarrassed to bring one home, even though the apartment is perfect for me. So, I ask you, am I a loser? Or have I got it all figured out?

No, I don’t think you’re a loser. You seem to have found an ideal spot for your rediscovered bachelorhood. Why doesn’t your type of lady like it? Because it’s lacking furniture? You can probably fix that by heading to West Elm and buying a coffee table you’ll never use. Otherwise, if you keep your apartment clean and organized, it doesn’t strike me as a dealbreaker when you’re trying to get laid. If you’re worried it’s too small or sparse, you can just insincerely warn a date before you take her home. “The joint’s a bit of a mess. I apologize in advance.” That way she’ll be pleasantly surprised when she walks into a fully functioning BABE LAIR.

I’m biased here because I revere studio apartments. A studio is a bedroom. It’s a dining room. It’s a TV room. It’s everything! That appeals to me on a primal level. Also, Vince Neil lived in one in the “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” video and I thought it was the coolest shit ever. That guy’s bed is dead center in the middle of everything! That joint is all about the sex happening! When I was in my 20s, I had a studio apartment of my own. I did well for myself in it. So many romantic all nighters to be had. It was just nice enough to look like I had a job, but just sloppy enough to let the girls know I was a BAD BOY who lived life his own way. I think that apartment’s why the woman who would become my wife got into me. That and the boogers I smeared on the walls. Super cool shit. No matter where you live, act like you live like a millionaire.

Email of the week!

Mike:

What is the most expensive dump ever taken? Ever stop to think about literally how much money you are flushing down the toilet? Take a minute to consider all the various costs that constitute every number 2: the cost of food & beverages, the water used to flush, the toilet paper, electricity, etc. You could even factor in costs like tax and tip if you dined out, or the cost of a babysitter if this dump followed some fancy date night away from the kids. And then there's travel costs, especially if this dump took place on vacation.

I don’t think travel costs should factor in. You don’t book a trip to Fiji just to take a shit there. Well, unless you’re me. My goal is to shit in every country on Earth before I die. I’m already far … behind? Huh? Huh?

Anyway the answer is some dump a sultan took after eating a bar of solid gold. Pricey dump.



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Cameron Kunzelman's Favorite Games of 2019

This year has been a strange one. I went into it anticipating approximately nothing, and I’ve left it with some new all-time favorites. Most of the blockbuster releases this year did absolutely nothing for me, and the smaller, more intimate games really carried me through the year. As always, my game tastes tend toward the downer, the sad, and the melancholy, but I think this list bucks that trend in some interesting ways that I had not considered until I wrote everything down.

An interesting trend to note here, I think, is that there isn’t really a trend to be found. I didn’t dig deep into any specific genre, and I don’t think this was a year where one particular genre leapt forward and asserted itself as the kind of game that we have to look for. Instead, I think this was a year where games figured themselves out; genres became more solidified, franchises worked out the kinks, and games simply improved in the quiet-but-effective way that will pay dividends down the road. Anyway, here’s the list.

10. Kingdom Hearts 3

I have been fortunate to live in a time when the monoculture was on the wane. When I was a teenager, combing a combination of print magazines and used books and the early mass internet, I felt like I existed at a specific intersection of the leylines of lived life. I did not feel like I was a part of a culture, but instead I was assembled out of things that I had drawn toward me and that I was drawn toward. I yearned for expanded universes, the Stephen Kings and the Sandmans and Final Fantasys and all the rest, because the very idea that all these unique and powerful stories could be connected spoke to a fragmented, made-up adolescent.

Kingdom Hearts was powerful at that moment because it pulled all kinds of weird shit together and did something beyond the sum of those parts. And I became a fan. Little did I know that shared universes, canonical reconfigurations, and a near-worship of lore continuity would go on the dominate the next 20 years of media production. Kingdom Hearts 3 isn’t any stranger than Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe now, but I really enjoyed the closure in this volume. Well, “closure.”

9. Project Winter

This is a competitive survival game that staples together Werewolf and Don’t Starve in a wonderful, tragic, comedic package. A bunch of survivors in a wintry land are attempting to do some tasks to escape back to civilization, but there are betrayers there to kill them and stop their plans. That’s the game.

Best played with a bunch of people who know one another, there is nothing here but betrayal and blood on the snow. Most of my times going at this game have been with my friend Jack, who reveals his saboteur status by screeching and screaming. Often we can hear him out in the hinterlands and hills, wailing at god and firing crossbows at the unwary. It’s scary stuff. You could be having a time like this with your own friends.

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8. Rise to Ruins

This game was in Steam Early Access for a number of years, but I think the full release finally came this year so I think it counts. Or even if it didn’t, I don’t care, because I lost a lot of hours to Rise to Ruins this year. A little Dwarf Fortress and a little tower defense game, Rise is about creating a little village and defending it against the constantly-expanding hell creatures who come for you. Eventually the evil creatures’ territory expands to rival your own, then it gets bigger than your own. You kick out to the world map, choose a new territory, and start sending refugees there. It’s that kind of game.

7. Disco Elysium

This game has stepped up to supplant Planescape: Torment as the game that “proves” video game stories can be good. We’re going to be hearing about it, and seeing comparisons to it, for a very long time. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It does the job, and it does it in a reasonable amount of time, but I think it is also worth considering that this game uses tried-and-true ways of delivering narrative to get to a plurality of tried-and-true stories. Chaos detectives and sad detectives and murder-solving ones are all well-trod terrain. It’s how it stitches it all together that is interesting.

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6. Don’t Wake the Night

I wrote a lot about this game earlier this year, but the short of it here is that there is near-constant praise for innovation in story or morality in games when it fits into a familiar container. Implicitly, saying that Modern Warfare or Red Dead Redemption 2 is doing something new or fascinating always comes with the qualifier of “for this kind of game.” We’re very quick to give praise to something right down the middle of blockbuster video games that swerves just a tiny, little bit.

Don’t Wake the Night is a curveball. It is a game about stories, it requires you to listen to many different perspectives on an issue, and then asks you to intervene and live with your choice. It is contained. It is limited. It is a deeper exploration of the idea of what it means to intervene in someone else’s life than most games, which frankly often just transform that into “should I pull the trigger or not,” even when that trigger is a sword.

5. A Short Hike

If you haven’t played the game where you play a melancholy little bird who needs to travel to the top of a mountain to get cell reception so that she can talk to her mother on the phone then, well, you should go do that. A Short Hike is a quaint little thing that has basically everything I want in a game in 2019. Your bird gets different abilities, but you’re not forced into Metroidvania puzzle zones to use them. You can collect things, but doing the bare minimum to get to the top is simple and clear. It does not have the deep mechanics or obligatory time-wasting that seems to power so much of what a video game “has” to have right now. It is good.

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4. American Fugitive

Travel around a rural berg stealing, hiding, disguising, and car thievin’ your way to the heart of a mystery: who framed you and sent you to prison? This game got functionally no press coverage, and it is a true shame. Imagine Grand Theft Auto III from an isometric perspective with a burglary mechanic and a disguise system. That would be cool, right? THAT GAME EXISTS!!! THIS IS THAT GAME!!! Play American Fugitive, please.

3. Dragon Quest Builders 2

Do you like creating little villages? Do you like doing a lot of monotonous work like gathering supplies, farming, and talking to people? Dragon Quest Builders 2 has annihilated every other game attempting to do these things from an orbital base of fun. I sunk a lot of hours into it earlier this year on PS4, and I’ve got it installed on PC right now so I can give it a go again.

While I cannot stand the monomythical Dragon Quest narrative in the mainline titles anymore, there’s something refreshing about that big Good and Evil thing as the backbone of a crafting game. I am not interested in questing to defeat the Dark Lord, but I am way into building to do so, and I had a lot of fun playing through this game. I don’t know. It’s good. It’s a good game and it feels good to craft things scaffolded by a very simple story that you can safely ignore from time to time. There you go.

2. Telling Lies

I’ve already written about this game, but nothing else has appeared this year to supplant it as an apex accomplishment within video game storytelling. And I specifically mean “storytelling,” the craft of plotting and making a narrative exciting for a player. The ripped-from-the-headlines abuse and horror that takes place would mean very little if not for the game’s willingness to make the player sit and stare as the dead, lying eyes of the people who drive the plot and its tragic conclusion. I mean, my god, what a game.

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1. Control

How could this not be my number one game of the year? Remedy have made a weird fiction game that leans into all the strange, out-of-sync storytelling that they’ve been perfecting since Max Payne. This is pitched right at me as if Sam Lake was sitting, gremlin-like, on my bookshelf for the past few years. I can’t help it.

It would be one thing if Control were a good game, or if it just had the shape or genre I like to see in stories, but the other thing is that it knits things together. The strangeness at the heart of the Remedy products, and especially my super favorite Alan Wake, is all getting knitted into a shared universe. And against the odds, against those Star Wars massiverses, Control is managing to keep itself pretty weird. Gameplay loops on itself and fake credits roll and Jesse Faden collapses in on herself in ways that other games could, but are not, going for. Control is my game of 2019 because it shows what people could be doing. It shows a pathway toward what I want more of: a realization that players will follow you down any road. So here’s to more weird roads (hopefully) in 2020.



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'No Way In or Out': Australians Are Fleeing to the Beach to Escape Deadly Wildfires

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Thousands of people along the southeast coast of Australia were forced to flee to the water’s edge under blood-red skies on Tuesday as wildfires tore through the region.

The country planned to send military aircraft and vessels to the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria on Tuesday to help recovery efforts, the BBC reported. At least two more people were killed in NSW, raising the fire season death toll to 12, according to the BBC.

Beautiful beach towns were turned to smoky hellscapes as Australia prepared to ring-in the New Year. In the popular camping town of Mallacoota at least 4,000 people rushed to the shore to seek safety from fires. The fires have grown so dangerous that now people are sheltering on boats in the water or finding refuge in the water itself.

"There's no way in or out," Mallacoota resident Jason Selmes told CNN after fleeing his home.

People took similar actions In other coastal towns. In Batemans Bay, about 250 miles south of Sydney, residents sat on folding chairs on the shoreline, with life-rafts nearby for a speedy escape.

"We've got literally hundreds, thousands of people up and down the coast, taking refuge on the beaches," said Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, according to the BBC.

READ: Australia keeps smashing heat records as fires rage

Photos and videos of the fire-ravaged areas showed the midday sun totally blocked by sun, a red hue taking over the sky. The fires are so large they’re generating their own weather. The storms are forming “pyro-cumulonimbus clouds” — basically localized storm clouds formed by rapidly rising hot air — that are, in turn, spreading more fire through lightning and wind that carries embers.

Military vessels are preparing to evacuate residents from the water, while thousands more people are packed into evacuation centers. Tens of thousands are without power, the New York Times reported.

READ: A ‘heat dome’ is about to make Australia’s summer from hell even hotter

Monday and Tuesday marked just the latest awful days in a long summer of fires for Australia, where high temperatures, sustained droughts and strong winds have fed blazes for weeks. And there are still several months to go until summer ends.

Robert Salway, 63, and his son Patrick, 29, died trying to defend their property in the town of Cobargo along the country’s southeastern coast on Tuesday. A 28-year-old volunteer firefighter named Samuel McPaul died on Monday when his truck flipped during a “fire tornado” near the border of NSW and Victoria.

Fitzsimmons called the summer “the worst fire season we have experienced here in NSW."

In all, at least 900 homes have been destroyed and millions of acres have been scorched. Roughly 500 million animals have been killed. And there’s no end in sight for the fires that have almost assuredly been made far worse by climate change.

“People have lost their homes, their farms, and people have lost their lives,” James Findlay, a Batemans Bay resident who lost his home in the fires, told the New York Times. “If this isn’t some kind of a sign that more should be done, then I don’t know what is.”

Cover: In this image dated Dec. 30, 2019, and provided by NSW Rural Fire Service via their twitter account, firefighters are seen as they try to protect homes around Charmhaven, New South Wales. Wildfires burning across Australia's two most-populous states Tuesday trapped residents of a seaside town in apocalyptic conditions, destroyed many properties and caused fatalities. (Twitter@NSWRFS via AP)



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Game of the Year Is Too Easy. How About Game of the Decade?

Through the rest of December and into early January, we're going into hibernation. But every day, we'll have a new podcast for you to listen to, and sometimes, an article to read. You can keep track of everything we're talking about to look back on the past year (and decade) right here.

Making a game of the year list is a funny thing. Are you picking a game because it meant a lot to you, or are you picking a game because it’s important, and it its presence is a symbol? That’s hard enough to figure out year over year, let alone over the course of a whole decade.

And yet, we tried. Not only that, but we attempted to squeeze the whole damn thing into only 30 minutes. Really? Really? Yes. I’m the one who came up with the rules, so get mad at me.

We were lucky enough to be joined by our resident keyblade master, Natalie Watson, for this segment. The format is simple. Everyone came to the table with a game that, for them, helped explain the last decade in games. There were no specific rules on how you had to pick a game, so everyone went in different directions. The result, however, is a sprawling discussion about how much the medium has changed in the last 10 years. It’s a long time!

Rob: So I’ve I said before that it takes a long time for me now know how I feel about something. My feelings about things are fundamentally mysterious to me. Years later, I will be surprised by what resonated with me. What is it, of all the things that happened to you 10 years ago, those are the memories that are happiest? I'm always surprised what they are because they're never the ones that would have picked.

I was wrestling with this because there's games that I know had a huge impact on me, like strategy games like Europa Universalis 4 changed my relationship to what strategy games could or should be. The arrival of the new XCOM series in this decade brought an entire genre back into being almost, and created a lot of imitators that I've really enjoyed its, and has generated some of my favorite memories of cooperative play.

But as I look over games of this decade, I was really surprised to realize that a lot of the things that hit still hit me the hardest were from very early in the decade, and I kept returning to two games that surprised me. They're not the games that would be like, “Here, let me let me show off my critical taste by dropping these two games.” The two games that I kept returning to were BioShock 2 and The Witcher 2.

The thing these things both have in common is they're both refinements in some ways or progressions of what the original games are trying to do, but they're not burdened with expectation of scale. And I think in many ways, this is the story of the decade. There's so many good ideas that just get all these expectations weighed on them.

Austin: We just talking about Far Cry 3, 4, and 5 in the immersive sim episode very briefly.

Rob: You can't just have a good idea. You can't just tell us tell a good story. Mass Effect 2 comes out in a similar era. Mass Effect Andromeda, again, wrestles with this. It can't just be a good Mass Effect story. It has to be this blown out new launch of the second half of this IP.

Austin: A franchise.

Rob: Yeah. And I return to these games a lot because I think they're both about wrestling with mistakes in some ways, and they both have a lot of sadness in them. And that's my shit. I like I love games, the sort of where you're the hero, but like, your ability to be a hero, your ability to set the world right, is realistically limited. Both of those games struggle with that. I think my heart is with BioShock 2 because the end of that game, when it reveals what it's really been about—it's not about you, it's what your moral code passes on in the world.

You are the role model for the most powerful kid in existence, the person who is going to take all the power that was seized in Rapture. What is she going to be she? She could be awful, or she could be a merciful goddess? In some ways, it is how you are reacting to the people that wronged you, how you are wielding go right to vengeance versus the call to mercy. That's what the game hinges on, and the way it pays off in the third act remains one of my favorite moments of this decade.


This excerpt was edited for clarity and length.

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Interaction with you is a big part of this podcast, so make sure to send any questions you have for us to gaming@vice.com with the header "Questions." (Without the quotes!) We can't guarantee we'll answer all of your questions, but rest assured, we'll be taking a look at them.

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The Video Game Vending Machines That Defined a Decade

Through the rest of December and into early January, we're going into hibernation. But every day, we'll have a new podcast for you to listen to, and sometimes, an article to read. You can keep track of everything we're talking about to look back on the past year (and decade) right here.

I think we can all agree that a video game, when reduced to its most basic definition, is simply a collection of bits and bytes that exist primarily to depict vending machines in a variety of engaging gameplay contexts.

That’s why I launched The Video Game Soda Machine Project in 2016—to chronicle virtual soda machines across every major gaming platform and, by extension, better understand why video games exist as a medium in the first place. It is with this goal in mind that I look back at a selection of video game vending machines that defined the tumultuous 2010s.

Please note that this list is not intended to reflect the most popular or critically acclaimed games, but rather to call attention to the virtual vending machines that best embody the values and attitudes of the past decade.

C.A.M.P. Vending Machine (Fallout 76, 2019)

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Following a disastrous launch, persistent bugs, and a canvas duffle bag that wasn’t canvas after all, Fallout 76 enjoyed a brief moment of resurgence with the introduction of player-controlled vending machines in 2019. A thriving in-game economy emerged where players could sell everything from Nuka-Cola to shoulder-mounter nuclear weapons for fun and profit, quickly transforming Fallout 76 into Flea Market 76. Then everyone got bored and left again. I guess capitalism was fun while it lasted.

Fizzolne Machine (America’s Army: Proving Grounds, 2015)

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As the War on Terror threatens to spill over into its third decade and America surveys a future in which it is no longer the world’s only superpower, it’s important to remember that a teeny-tiny portion of Defense Department spending went toward creating this drink machine from America’s Army: Proving Grounds, the official game of the U.S. Army.

Vendi (Yooka-Laylee, 2017)

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Nostalgia was an inescapable cultural force over the past decade, so when gamers cried out for a spiritual successor to tag-team platformer Banjo-Kazooie, it’s not surprising Playtonic Games answered with the charming Yooka-Laylee. Then, a finger on the monkey paw curled, and we met Vendi, the game’s nightmarishly anthropomorphic vending machine who dispenses power-ups to players. The word “nostalgia” is derived from a pair of Greek root words meaning “homecoming” and “pain,” and there’s no question that Vendi brings the pain.

H 2 0 Boost, Ishanti, and PopaKola Machines (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, 2016)

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As we all grew increasingly inseparable from our electronic devices over the past decade, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided stepped in to provide incisive commentary on the cyborgification of society in the most profound way possible: catchy soda machine slogans. “Machines cannot taste, but your tongue does. Keep it real.” Inspiring. “They may have batteries, but we got this.” Bold. “It doesn’t have to feel like you’re a broken machine.” Powerful.

Tana Cola (Far Cry 5, 2018)

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If the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that politics has no place in video games. Just ask Ubisoft. With Far Cry 5, Ubisoft insisted its story of a doomsday cult in the mountains of Montana founded on the principles of “Freedom, Faith, and Firearms” shouldn’t be mistaken for any kind of commentary on contemporary American politics, and they were right. It’s just a fun game about having fun. In turn, Far Cry 5’s Tana Cola vending machine is a perfectly serviceable— -- if completely forgettable— -- soda machine with nothing of real consequence to say, and that’s good enough.

OverCharge Delirium XT Machine (Sunset Overdrive, 2014)

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The energy drink market continued to boom during the 2010s, driven by the public’s unslakable thirst for taurine and other efficacious-sounding additives, but only one game was willing to ask the question, “What if energy drinks turned you into a mutant rage monster, though?” That game was Sunset Overdrive, and the drink was FizzCo’s OverCharge Delirium XT. Rushed to market without FDA testing, OCD ushered in a colorful, caffeinated apocalypse full of exhilarating parkour and rail-grinding action. And violence. So much violence.

Virility Machine (DmC: Devil May Cry, 2013)

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We live in a culture inundated by advertising, and soft drink companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi were instrumental in creating that culture. In turn, Capcom played with that idea when they handed out cans of Virility, “the only drink you’ll ever need,” as part of a viral marketing campaign for DmC: Devil May Cry. While in-game posters and billboards promised a “fitter, smarter, sexier you,” Dante would ultimately discover that Virility was made from the secretions of an ancient Succubus. I guess that explains why the game’s vending machines were warped and corrupted by demonic energy, just like the 2010s.

Monster Energy Drink Machine (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, 2015)

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I mean, its Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on a skateboard in front of a Monster energy drink machine in outer space. C’mon!



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How We Got the Always-On Job

In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proved to be false—or at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, people and businesses both trended towards a less asset-heavy lifestyle. In Silicon Valley, startups found they could run platforms without the operating costs of owning key assets like taxi cabs or hotel rooms and still attract billions of dollars in venture capital. People, on the other hand, became less asset-heavy because they couldn’t afford to buy things. For example, US homeownership from 2010 to 2019 is down approximately 3 percent, according to the US Census. In a neat merging of the two, some people actually rented cars from Uber, via its subprime leasing market, to drive for Uber, in order to make some money.

Both of these factors as well as the rise of the smartphone have given way to the “always-on” job, wedged into our lives from both Silicon Valley and corporate America in the last decade. The near-ubiquity of smartphones, contractor-run business, and a recurring promise to “be your own boss,” has made us work all the time.

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July 5, 2010: The first Uber ride

Uber’s launch marked the moment where doing something “at the push of a button” would become the template for countless startups in its wake. “Uber for X” became both a business plan template and a meme. Uber and startups like it allow people to work whenever they want, but unfortunately “whenever they want” means our new bosses are algorithms.

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February, 2013: A Google employee presents “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users' Attention.”

Tristan Harris, a design ethicist at Google, shares an internal presentation raising concerns about the company hijacking its users’ attention and the distractions of consumer technology at large. His presentation noted that a handful of designers, mostly white men in San Francisco at Apple, Google, and Facebook, had an insanely large impact on the planet by designing addictive products. At this point, such criticism of technology coming from an insider was notable. This presentation would inform the Time Well Spent nonprofit, which Harris left Google to run in December 2015.

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November 2014: Unemployment reaches lowest rate since 2008 - with a caveat.

In 2014, the United States boasted a 5.8% unemployment rate, the lowest since the 2008 market collapse. But as The Guardian reported, “an increasing number of Americans—800,000 more than last year—have taken on a second or third job.” The jobs being added to the economy were “part-time work, often at low pay,” which “boosted job creation in the food and drink industry and retail.” This means lots of people were working as contractors without benefits, or working several part-time jobs and supplementing their income with gig economy work.

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September 1, 2015: A Class-action lawsuit threatens the gig economy model.

In a California lawsuit against Uber, lawyers representing Uber drivers argue that the rideshare company must classify its drivers as employees instead of contractors. The anticipated cost for Uber to convert its California drivers to full-time employees is $200 million. If other startups are forced to follow suit, the entire gig economy model is threatened, as it relies on contractor labor. Ultimately, Uber settles for $20 million and continues working as it always has.

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February 2016: Hustle culture reaches terminal velocity

“Is The Hustle Culture And Mentality Out Of Control?”A Forbes contributor asks in 2016. As is wont in the Forbes Contributor Universe, the question is answered by another contributor, who said in 2017, if you want to succeed, “work harder than everyone else.” The contributor then explains, “the hustle mentality is more than merely working hard; hustling allows you to achieve your dreams.”

These sentiments, posted by hustlers, did not exist solely within the Forbes contributor network, but also on Twitter, and especially on LinkedIn, as revved-up sales and marketing people posted vague testaments to hustling, grinding, and multiple permutations and combinations of the two, in what BuzzFeed would call “Broetry.” We were all doing #NoDaysOff, hustling at our main hustles, side hustling, waking up at 4 a.m. to journal, and so-on and so-forth.

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December 2016: Amazon warehouse workers reported sleeping in tents.

Public scrutiny towards Amazon picked up in the second half of the decade, as consumers began to realize the same company is running a significant portion of internet infrastructure, online retail, and is also streaming TV shows about tech-led dystopias on its streaming service. In December 2016, Amazon warehouse workers in the UK were sleeping in tents nearby because they could not afford to make the daily commute. As VICE noted at the time, “The incident throws light on the hidden supply chains and unseen labor of online shopping, especially during busy periods.”

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March 2017: Temporary workers outnumber full-time employees at Google.
According to data obtained by The New York Times , by March 2017, Google used more temporary workers than it did full-time employees, (121,000 temps vs. 102,000 FTEs) showing that not only startups were dependent on precarious labor forces, but the big companies were benefiting, too. Later, Google full-time employees would stage walk-outs across the world to fight for better working conditions for their temporary and contractor colleagues.

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June, 2017: More than half of US adults own a smartphone. Growing numbers of lower-income Americans rely on one for work.

In a PEW research center survey, 77 percent of Americans say they own a smartphone. The survey also identified “smartphone-dependent” populations: people with low-incomes, young adults, and non-whites. These groups, according to the survey, often did not have access to a broadband connection at home or another way of accessing the internet without their smartphone. People who rely on their smartphone to find a job were more likely to shut off their service for financial reasons or hit the cap on their data plan. These smart-phone dependent populations have an overlap with the average gig economy worker: low-income, 18-34, disproportionately non-white.

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February 2018: A New York taxi driver kills himself, says gig economy ruined his life.

Douglas Schifter shared a note Facebook before the 61 year-old driver killed himself in front of City Hall. Deregulation of the taxi industry and the flood of black cars from Uber and companies like it had led to his financial ruin, he wrote.

“There is not enough work for everybody that pays a living,” he wrote. “I have been financially ruined … this is the new slavery.”

Schifter’s death made the suffering of New York taxi drivers impossible to ignore. One driver, Noureddine Afsi, told the New York Daily News, "You deal with the traffic, you deal with the cops, you deal with the passengers, and the prices are going up, and we're starving.”

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September 18, 2019: California signs AB-5 into law.

By signing Assembly Bill 5 into law, companies operating in California will have stricter rules in how they classify contractors versus employees. Though AB5 is casually referred to as the “Uber law,” Uber insists it does not apply to its drivers. Just in case it does, Uber, Lyft, and Doordash plan to put up a combined $90 million to fight AB5. Similar moves are already being made in other states. In New Jersey, Uber got hit with a $650 million tax bill for misclassifying its drivers, and New York is “said to become the next battleground for gig worker law” according to Bloomberg Law. Many of the startups that made their billions (in funding) spent the last ten years convincing its would-be workforce they could be their own bosses - after all, they get a separate bathroom than real employees. The next years will be spent arguing the same in the court.

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The Decade We Learned There’s No Such Thing as Privacy Online

In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proved to be false—or at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.

The last decade has seen no limit of scandals highlighting how personal privacy in the internet era doesn’t actually exist. Whether we’re talking about wireless carriers selling your daily location data to any nitwit with a nickel, or incompetent executives leaving consumer data openly exposed on the Amazon cloud, calling the last decade ugly would be an understatement.

What’s more the government, utterly captured by the industries it’s supposed to hold accountable, has proven feckless in the face of the threat. The United States still lacks any meaningful law governing behavior in the internet era, and the glaring lack of accountability couldn’t have been made any more obvious over the last ten years.

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2010: The Rise of the Internet of Very Broken Things

During the late 90s and early aughts, “internet of things” evangelists routinely heralded a hyper-connected future, where everything from your refrigerator to your tea kettle would be connected to the internet. The end result, they promised, would be unprecedented convenience and a Jetsons-esque future, contributing to a simpler, more efficient existence.

The end result wasn’t quite what was advertised.

A lack of any meaningful privacy or security safeguards quickly ruined the party, turning the IoT revolution into the butt of endless jokes. Throughout the decade, evidence emerged that everything from your “smart” television to your kid’s WiFi-enabled Barbie doll was easily hackable, showcasing that the smarter choice is often dumber, older tech.

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May 2013: Edward Snowden reveals the NSA's surveillance dragnet

Snowden, the most famous whistleblower of a generation, gave thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The documents showed in great detail how the post 9/11 intelligence apparatus was collecting data in bulk on American citizens and people around the world through programs like PRISM, XKeyscore, LoveINT, and a host of others. The revelations showed that the NSA had backdoors into the databases of many of Silicon Valley's largest companies, that it was surveilling world leaders and American allies, and that the U.S. government's surveillance state had become ever present in American life.

Snowden's revelations were published over the course of years—this slow drip of information kept Snowden, NSA surveillance, and privacy in the news, making it an ongoing national conversation over the entire decade.

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August 2013: Hackers steal the data of 3 billion Yahoo users

In September 2016, as the company attempted to sell itself to Verizon, Yahoo belatedly revealed it had been the victim of a series of major hacks in 2013 and 2014. After initially claiming that 500 million users were impacted, it would later acknowledge that the hack impacted roughly 3 billion users, the biggest data breach in U.S. history.

Yahoo would ultimately have to pay a $35 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission for pretending the hacks never happened, and another $80 million as part of a class action settlement. But as with most “punishment,” much of the money went to lawyers, and the penalties paled in comparison to the money made from monetizing user data.

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2017: Congress helps big telecom kill FCC privacy rules

Big telecom has always had a flippant relationship when it comes to respecting your private data. For years ISPs quietly monetized your every online click, and have even charged customers significantly more if they wanted their privacy respected. In 2014, Verizon was busted modifying user data packets to covertly track users around the internet without telling them.

In 2016 the FCC under Tom Wheeler tried to do something about it, passing some modest broadband privacy rules that would have forced ISPs to be transparent about what data was collected and sold, and to whom. The rules would have also required that consumers opt in before ISPs and mobile carriers could share and sell more sensitive financial data.

But in 2017 the House and Senate voted to eliminate those rules at the behest of industry, opening the door to years of additional abuse by the sector.

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March 2017: The Equifax hack heard around the world

The last decade saw no shortage of breaches that exposed mountains of personal data, be it the hack of Marriott (500 million customers), Adult Friend Finder (412.2 million users) or EBay (145 million). But none highlighted corporate incompetence or government fecklessness quite like the 2017 hack of Equifax, which exposed the financial data of 145 million Americans.

In part because data would later reveal that Equifax knew about the vulnerability and did nothing about it. But also because the punishment doled out by the FTC—which included a $125 cash payout that disappeared when consumers went to collect it—showcased a feckless government incapable and unwilling to seriously rein in corporate America’s incompetence and greed.

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2018: Facebook lets Cambridge Analytica abuse your private data

While Cambridge’s abuse of Facebook data was first reported in 2015, it wasn’t until 2018 that people realized the full scope of the problem. For years Facebook casually allowed third-party app-makers unfettered access to consumer datasets, allowing outfits like Cambridge to weaponize your personal information in the lead up to the 2016 election.

Privacy experts like Gaurav Laroia tell Motherboard that pound for pound, no event in the last decade had as much of an impact on public perception as Facebook’s epic face plant.

“The Cambridge Analytical scandal had the right combination of scale, malfeasance, and consequence to sear into everyday Americans how companies like Facebook sell access to our personal information and how dangerous that can be,” Laroia said.

“That a researcher was able to take the profile information of tens of millions of Americans and sell it to an unscrupulous company with little consequence, in violation of an agreement with Facebook, showed how industry self-regulation has failed and why the government must act to protect our privacy,” he added.

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2019: Wireless carriers busted selling your cell phone location data

Thanks in no small part to Congress’ decision to kill FCC broadband privacy rules in 2017, there’s been little penalty for telecom giants that abuse your private information. Case in point: Motherboard’s blockbuster January, 2019 investigation showing that wireless carriers routinely sell your every waking movement to a wide variety of often dubious middlemen.

The investigation resulted in numerous calls for action by politicians like Senator Ron Wyden, though to date nobody—be it the FCC or Congress—has actually lifted a finger to stop the practice or forced the deletion of decades’ worth of your daily location data.

The decade’s theme couldn’t be more obvious: either via corruption, incompetence, or apathy, giant corporations routinely pay empty lip service to consumer privacy, before engaging in face plant after face plant. Just as often, the government’s response to a chorus line of piracy scandals has ranged from underwhelming to nonexistent.

Part of the problem is US regulators enjoy a tiny fraction of the resources given to privacy regulators overseas, and thanks to industry lobbying, the U.S. still lacks any kind of meaningful privacy law for the internet era. While efforts are afoot to change that, a cross-industry coalition of lobbyists is working hard to ensure this dysfunctional status quo never changes.

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Easy Okra Stew Recipe

Servings: 6
Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

6 tablespoons|90 ml olive oil
8 ounces|225 grams okra, sliced crosswise into ½ inch pieces
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 carrots, peeled and diced
3 ribs celery, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1/2 bunch kale, stems removed and diced, leaves thinly sliced
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
8 cups|1900 ml chicken or vegetable stock
3 tomatoes, diced
1 cup|200 grams long-grain rice
1 (15.5-ounce|254 grams) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
plain yogurt, for serving (optional)
sliced scallions, to garnish

Directions

1. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high. Add the okra and cook until golden-brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Season with salt and, using a slotted spoon, transfer to a bowl.

2. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil to the saucepan. Add the carrot, celery, onion, and kale stems and season with salt. Cook until soft, 3 to 4 minutes, then stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Throw in the coriander, bay leaf, and cinnamon stick and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the reserved okra, the chicken stock, and tomatoes and let the bring to a boil. Stir in the rice and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer. Cook until the rice is tender, 8 to 10 minutes, then stir in the chickpeas and kale leaves. Cook until the chickpeas are warmed through and kale has wilted, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and divide among bowls. Serve topped with yogurt and garnish with the sliced scallions.

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Monday, December 30, 2019

Medicaid Should Cover Gender Treatments for Trans Youth in Every State

Transgender adolescents in Minnesota can now rely on their state’s Medicaid program to cover transition-related medications like hormones and puberty blockers, as The Star Tribune reported over the past weekend.

This is great news, obviously. Leading medical experts and organizations in the United States, including the American Association of Pediatrics and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, agree that giving trans teens access to gender-affirming treatment is the best way to alleviate gender dysphoria. And trans kids themselves often have an understanding of their gender by a very young age, as a recent study reported on by Reuters last week found.

Trans teens are disproportionately likely to attempt suicide compared to their cis peers, a risk which is associated with rejection of their gender identity by family, friends, and even medical providers. “Treatment delay has put adolescents at risk,” Dr. Kelsey Leonardsmith of Family Tree Clinic in St. Paul told The Star Tribune. “I’ve been pleased with our ability to get these vital, life-saving medications.”

Unfortunately, great news like Minnesota's is hard to come by in the United States. For many trans young people, gender-affirming treatment can be very difficult to obtain, despite fear-mongering to the contrary that purports such care to be too accessible to minors: Medicaid programs only cover transition-related medical treatment explicitly in 21 states, according to the Movement Advancement Project, and 10 states explicitly exclude patients from using Medicaid programs to cover transition-related care. Even if trans youth don’t live in a state in which public healthcare coverage denies gender-related treatments, they may still have to contend with gatekeeping practices from transphobic medical providers, like denying hormone prescriptions or doubting a patient’s stated gender identity, or disapproving parents, whose permission is generally required in order for a minor to obtain a prescription for hormones or puberty blockers—even in Minnesota after the state’s latest change to Medicaid.

Even fewer states explicitly cover minors’ trans health needs, though that, too, is changing in some parts of the country. In October, Vermont approved a proposal to remove age restrictions on people seeking Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgeries, allowing trans youth under the age of 21 to pursue such procedures. Perhaps more will follow suit. Gender-affirming medications are life-saving, but they can’t save lives if they’re kept out of the hands of the trans teens who need them.

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What We Know About the Machete-Wielding Suspect in the Monsey Hanukkah Attack

Federal prosecutors filed hate crimes charges against the man in custody for a horrific machete attack at a rabbi’s home in a New York suburb Saturday night that injured five Jewish worshippers.

In a complaint filed Monday and first reported by The New York Times, officials said they found handwritten journals at the home of suspect Grafton Thomas that included drawings of swastikas and other references to Nazi culture.

The complaint also alleged that Thomas had recently used his phone to search phrases like “German Jewish Temples near me” and “Why did Hitler hate the Jews.”

The authorities’ evidence points to a possible motive behind Thomas’ alleged rampage. On the heels of other anti-Semitic violence during Hannukah, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo condemned it Sunday as “an act of domestic terrorism.”

"These are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence, generate fear, based on race, color, creed,” he told reporters. “That is the definition of terrorism.”

Thomas, a 38-year-old black man from nearby Greenwood Lake, was taken into custody a few hours after the attack. He’s facing five counts of attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty.

Saturday’s violence in Rockland County — home to one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel — came after the New York Police Department stepped up its presence around Jewish communities in response to other recent suspected hate crimes. Here’s what we know about Thomas’ alleged rampage:

‘I’ll get you’

His face covered with a scarf, Thomas allegedly forced his way into Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s home around 10 p.m. Saturday as worshippers celebrated the seventh night of Hanukkah.

“I was praying for my life,” Aron Kohn, who was inside the house, told The New York Times. “He started attacking people right away as soon as he came in the door. We didn’t have time to react at all.”

“We saw him pull a knife out of a case,” Mr. Kohn said. “It was about the size of a broomstick.”

Josef Gluck told reporters afterward that he threw a coffee table at the man as bleeding victims tried to take cover.

“He said, ‘Hey you, I’ll get you,’” Gluck added.

Law enforcement officials told reporters that two of the five victims — one of which was Rottenberg’s son — were still hospitalized as of Sunday morning.

‘Blood on his clothes’

Authorities and witnesses told NBC News New York that the attacker then tried to force his way into a synagogue next door, where people had barricaded themselves inside, before fleeing in a silver sedan.

The NYPD arrested Thomas hours later in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood. WABC reported that “officers who stopped him said there was blood on his clothes, which also smelled of bleach.”

After Thomas pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary, per The Daily News, a Ramapo Town Court judge ordered him held on $5 million bail.

‘Long history of mental illness’

There are conflicting reports as to whether Thomas, who lived with his mother about 20 miles away from Monsey, has a criminal record. Family and friends told CNN that he’s no terrorist. Michael Sussman, an attorney representing Thomas’ family, added to the Associated Press in a statement late Sunday that the allegations “tragically reflect profound mental illness.”

“Grafton Thomas has a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations,” Sussman said, adding that the family had instructed him to get Thomas a mental-health evaluation. “He has no history of like violent acts and no convictions for any crime. He has no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races. He is not a member of any hate groups.”

A Jewish man was similarly stabbed in Monsey on Nov. 20, NBC News New York reported, and investigators say they’re now probing whether the two incidents are linked.

Cover: Community members stand in front of a rabbi's residence in Monsey, N.Y., Sunday, Dec. 29, 2019, following a stabbing Saturday night during a Hanukkah celebration. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)



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The Rogue Doctor Who Claimed He Made the World’s First Gene-Edited Babies Is Going to Prison

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He Jiankui, the renegade doctor who shocked the world scientific community by announcing the birth of the world’s first gene-edited human babies, will spend three years in prison.

A Chinese court served up the surprise verdict on Monday, following a closed trial in which the 35-year-old doctor and two of his colleagues were convicted of “illegal medical practices,” according to a report in China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. They deployed a gene-editing tool known as CRISPR-cas9, a game-changing technology that can tweak DNA to add a gene or knock one out.

All three researchers have now been barred from “engaging in human assisted reproductive technology services” for the rest of their lives, Xinhua reported.

Such an unusual and risky trial involving human subjects would normally require official authorization, but Dr. He and his team forged ethical review papers, the court found. They proceeded to attempt to produce gene-edited, HIV-resistant babies from parents who had tested positive for the virus, the court found. Three babies were born from pregnancies in two women, including a pair of twins.

Dr. He and his colleagues caused a global outcry in late 2018 by announcing the DNA-altered twins, named Lulu and Nana, which he claimed were resistant to HIV. The move shocked scientists and bioethicists, who blasted Dr. He for opening a genetic Pandora’s Box of human experimentation with dangerous and unpredictable consequences.

Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert and editor of a genetics journal, called the experiment “unconscionable” after Dr. He unveiled his work at a conference in Hong Kong, the AP reported.

Dr. He, who was then a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, claimed he’d “removed the doorway through which HIV enters to infect people.” But his work was not independently verified or published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

China’s National Health Commission immediately called for an investigation.

Shortly after Dr. He’s shocking announcement during a Hong Kong, reports began to circulate suggesting he’d gone missing. A month later, he was spotted living in a small university guesthouse, under guard by a dozen unidentified men.

On Monday, the court found that Dr. He began chasing the potential fame and profits that could come from gene editing technology in 2016. In addition to a prison sentence, he was fined $430,000. Two other members of the team, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou, received lighter sentences.

The gene-edited babies produced by the team are reportedly being kept under medical observation by local authorities in Guangdong province.

Cover image: He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher, speaks during the Human Genome Editing Conference in Hong Kong, where he made his first public comments about his claim to have helped make the world's first gene-edited babies. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)



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Anti-Semites Sprayed 9/11 Conspiracy Graffiti on a London Synagogue

LONDON — British police have launched a hate crime investigation after graffiti referencing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory blaming Jews for 9/11 was spray-painted on a London synagogue over the weekend.

The incident took place during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on the same day that five people were stabbed in a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.

London police said they received reports of the graffiti, which included the Star of David along with the numbers “911,” spray-painted in multiple locations in the north London neighborhoods of Hampstead and Belsize Park late on Saturday night. The graffiti is widely believed to reference an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Police say they have ramped up their presence in the area, but are yet to make any arrests.

READ: 6 Seconds of Terror: Video Shows How the Texas Church Shooting Unfolded

Norman Lebrecht, a writer who attends the South Hampstead synagogue which was targeted, said at least a dozen other sites in the area had been defaced. “This is a dark day for London and the UK,” he tweeted.

The graffiti has prompted a wave of condemnation and calls to step up the fight against anti-Semitism. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the incident “makes me sick to my stomach" and that anti-Semitism has "no place anywhere and certainly not in London.”

Historian Simon Schama tweeted: “Taken together with the stabbings in New York something truly monstrous is rising from the slime.”

Oliver Cooper, a local councillor in Hampstead, tweeted that all “decent people across Britain stand with our Jewish community — and we must move heaven and earth to eradicate this racist hatred, which was unimaginable just a few years ago.”

The incident comes amid rising concerns of anti-Semitism in Britain, from the hard left, the far-right, as well as Islamist extremists. Labour, the left-wing opposition party, has been embroiled in a long-running scandal after a string of anti-Semitic incidents involving party members. Concerns over how leader Jeremy Corbyn — who is to step down after leading the party to a heavy defeat this month — was dealing with the issue prompted many Jewish voters and a number of Jewish MPs to abandon the party.

Chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Corbyn last month of having allowed a “poison sanctioned from the top” to take root in the party. Corbyn, who has been criticized for appearing reluctant to apologize for his handling of the issue, condemned the graffiti and the Monsey stabbings Sunday. “We stand with all our communities facing hate. We send love and solidarity to Jewish communities around the world,” he wrote on Twitter.”

A report released Monday by the Community Security Trust, a charity that fights anti-Semitism, said that anti-Semitism was one the rise in British society, from a number of sources. The Anti-Semitic Discourse Report — whose publication was delayed so as not to influence voting in the elections earlier this month — said anti-Semitism “played an unprecedented role in British public life.”

It said while much of the debate around anti-Semitism had focused on the Labour party, pro-Brexit campaigners on the political right had also used “conspiratorial language about George Soros, immigration and the EU that echoed anti-Semitic tropes about Jews, money and political manipulation.” Anti-Semitic content also proliferated on social media.

Earlier this year, the Community Security Trust reported there had been 892 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the first six months of 2019 — the highest for the same period since records began in 1984.

Even amid the wave of condemnation Monday, there were signs there’s a long way to go to root out the problem. The Jewish Chronicle reported that on a Jewish Labour group’s Facebook page promoting a vigil in response to the hate crime, some users had made posts apparently endorsing the conspiracy theory referenced in the graffiti.

“Is it anti-Semitic to accuse Israel of 'false flag' complicity in the 9/11 attack though?” wrote one commenter, while another asked if the episode was “a continuation of the far right Zionist disinformation campaign?”

Cover: Anti-semitic graffiti in the form of a 9/11 sprayed onto the outside of the South Hampstead Synagogue in North London on Sunday December 29, 2019. (Photo: Aaron Chown/Press Association via AP Images)



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