Friday, January 31, 2020

What Time Does 'What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?' Start?

After 51 consecutive Sundays without a Super Bowl, a "big game"-starved nation will finally have their prayers answered this weekend when the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs meet at Super Bowl 54 down in Miami. The biggest day on the American sports calendar means one of the biggest traffic surges for online publishers, who have debased themselves year after year in pursuit of the honor of answering the following question more often than their competitors: What time does the dang game start?

This para-contest began nine years ago after the Huffington Post stumbled into SEO gold and did monster traffic on a legendary post now only accessible through the Internet Archive entitled "What Time Does The Superbowl Start?" If you would like to know what time the game starts, well, too bad. You have arrived at the wrong blog post, and also you’re an adult, you can figure it out with a simple Google of your own. Rather, herein lies the answer to an even better question: What time does "What time does the Superbowl start?" start? This is a trickier question to answer than it should be, as several publications—looking at you, CBS Sports—update old posts to gasp for air atop the Google search results. Thankfully, cached versions of most posts exist. To the scorecards!

Country Living: January 7, 12:07 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 16, 3:00 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 19, 4:44 p.m.
Bleacher Report: January 19, 5:02 p.m.
Bleacher Report: January 20, 2:00 a.m.
Newsweek: January 20, 4:20 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 20, 5:00 a.m.
Fox News: January 20, 6:12 a.m.
Washington Post: January 20, 9:48 p.m.
Los Angeles Times: January 21, 11:06 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 27, 7:00 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 27, 8:04 a.m.
TechRadar: January 28, 8:14 a.m.
SB Nation: January 28, 11:00 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 29, 5:00 a.m.
Cosmopolitan: January 29, 8:02 a.m.
The Oregonian: January 29, 12:10 p.m.
For The Win: January 29, 12:29 p.m.
USA Today: January 29, 1:09 p.m.
Business Insider: January 29, 1:15 p.m.
Sporting News: January 29, 4:55 p.m.
Sports Illustrated: January 30, 5:34 a.m.
Bleacher Report: January 30, 8:00 a.m.
NBC Sports: January 30, 3:01 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 11:00 a.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 12:00 p.m.
Oprah Magazine: January 30, 2:56 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 3:30 p.m.
NBC Sports: January 30, 3:30 p.m.
Sporting News: January 30, 3:30 p.m.
Newsday: January 30, 3:45 p.m.
NBC Sports: January 30, 5:09 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 5:25 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 8:15 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 8:25 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 9:00 p.m.
CBS Sports: January 30, 9:30 p.m.
NJ.com: January 31, 8:37 a.m.
CBS Sports: January 31, 9:25 a.m.
CBS Sports: January 31, 10:00 a.m.

As usual, Bleacher Report’s former dominance has given way to another year of on top for CBS Sports. The breadth of outlets getting in on the game has narrowed compared to previous years, with all due respect to Cosmo and Oprah’s magazine. This could be due to some kind of switch in the algorithm that only CBS has cracked, which makes sense from Google’s perspective since they give you the actual start time right at the top of the page for every possible related search term (“football time,” “kickoff time big game,” “chiefs niners start time” etc.). Enjoy the big game, whenever it starts.



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Breaking Down BigKlit's Riot Rap in 5 Songs

BigKlit has a flair for the dramatic. Her most popular music video—for a 2017 single called "Liar"—opens with a passed out man sitting on a bed unclothed, save for a towel, as BigKlit herself stands in the foreground, waving a chef's knife menacingly. She seemingly mangles his genitalia while scarfing a banana and castigating—in her off-kilter bark—liars, cheats, hypocrites, and the other varietals of awful men who dare darken her doorstep. Other artists write songs about the overwhelming pain and anger they feel when they're crossed; BigKlit just fantasizes about dismembering them.

There isn't a lot of verifiable information out there about BigKlit, but VICE recently followed Big Klit, who recently signed with Sony, for six hours ahead of one of her first big college shows ever. The few mixtapes she's issued over the last couple of years are built around the kind of extremity that fuels the "Liar" video. Her raps are, as a rule, provocative, absurdist, and violent, often all at the same time. She has a song called "FaceFuck" during which she asserts that she'll "face fuck a hoe 'til I break her spine," and if you were to cherry-pick lines at random from any of her songs, you're likely to find something just as unsettling.

stlShe wants to see just how far she can push listeners, rapping in this sandpapery squeal over beats meant for bruising sternums and blowing out speaker systems. One of her early moments of virality came in the form of a TikTok meme, in which clean-cut teens would accost their parents by rapping the lyrics of "Liar" at them—which provoked at least one mom to slap her child in the face.

But that isn't all BigKlit has on offer, she's covered a lot of ground in her short career. In between the screaming, the violence, and the bravado, she's also demonstrated a knack at more moving and honest songs—meditations on mortality and the lasting effects of trauma. Her music's more complicated than it first appears, so it's worth digging into a few of the songs that help you understand all sides the self-proclaimed "Queen of Hell."

"It's BigKlit"

The first proper song on BigKlit's first real mixtape offers an introduction to the sort of rapper she is. She screams, at length, her campaign promises for her 2028 presidential run, proclaiming she'll turn the White House into a trap. Elsewhere she free-associates about her prevailing thirst for art school girls, her love of indica, and her plan to fuck your dad and take all of his money—which isn't really much of a policy platform, but you could see how that sort of philosophy might unite this divided country.

"Liar"

There's a reason this one is the one that got the kids on TikTok memeing. It's not necessarily her most shocking song, or her most emotionally affecting, but it's probably her best—impossibly hooky in a way that a lot of her scream-rap contemporaries don't even begin to approach. There's something sing-songy, like a Mother Goose poem or a playground taunt, in the way she squelches out "Why you lyin' on your dick, lyin' on your dick." Menacing as it may be, it's the sort of song that gets embedded in your lizard brain, the one you'll end up absentmindedly humming in inappropriate places.

"FSU"

"FSU," short for "fuck shit up," finds BigKlit in apocalypse mode, calling for the death of her enemies and the destruction of the whole world over a beat that sounds like a Nokia ringtone accompanied by a hand blender. Throughout the song, she advocates for unthinking violence, then taunts the cops who can't catch her as she burns down everything in her wake. It is pure tear the club up music, and the sort of song that makes people do things they might later regret.

"Jekyll & Hyde"

Its title suggests a split from much of her music, but this song was just the first to demonstrate a more sensitive core at the heart of BigKlit music. It starts with the typical bravado, but throughout the song, she peels back the layers to reveal a raw and glowing core. She sings about learning to love herself in the absence of her father, and how trauma helped her become who she is. It's a peek into the origins of "the queen of hell," a reminder that everyone suffers in their own ways, even those who project a prickly exterior.

"Go Crazy (Girl Interrupted)"

BigKlit's most recent tape Psychosis features a trio of collaborations with the producer Nedarb, one of Lil Peep's close collaborators, and one of the architects of the broader set of sounds associated with the post-everything music people came to call SoundCloud rap. The best of his contributions comes on "Go Crazy," on which his fractured, bruising beat provides a jittery canvas on which BigKlit is able to meditate on the precarity of her own mental health. It's unsettling at points, like when she weighs the merits of jumping off a cliff, but she mostly sounds self-assured, confident in the ways she moves through the world. It probably shouldn't be surprising that it works so well—making bangers out of uncomfortable subject matter is what she does best.



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Watch Mike Pence Get Grilled by a Doctor Over Medicaid

An emergency room physician ran into Vice President Mike Pence at an Iowa diner Thursday night — just hours after the Trump administration announced its plan to dramatically overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s health care program for the poor. Pence didn’t seem to know about the plan, and he got an earful.

“I work in one of the poorest counties in Michigan, and my patients depend on expanded Medicaid. So how is that going to affect my patients?” Rob Davidson asked in an exchange that was videotaped and posted to his Twitter account.

In the video, which quickly went viral, Pence said he hadn’t heard of any cuts or new changes to Medicaid, which could strip coverage from millions. So Davidson laid out what he knew.

Earlier Thursday, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, announced the Trump administration would roll out a new, optional program for states participating in the health care program, which currently aids more than 71 million people. The new measure would allow states to limit Medicaid spending on some of their adult beneficiaries, pick and choose which medications are paid for, and cut coverage of services not seen as essential.

"Adult Medicaid beneficiaries can hope for better health, and all beneficiaries can expect a stronger, more sustainable program for years to come," Verma said of the plan Thursday.

The type of Medicaid spending plan proposed Thursday is often called a “block grant,” because it provides a fixed sum of money to states participating in Medicaid, rather than a flexible amount. (The current Medicaid spending model allows states to spend what they need to care for their Medicaid populations; the federal government matches that dollar amount depending on how poor the state is, so low-income states like Mississippi benefit the most.) Critics of block grants — and there are many, especially among Democrats — charge that when states are given more flexibility in capping Medicaid spending, conservative politicians just slash benefits that help the poor.

“Is that a good idea, or…?” Davidson asked Pence, who was in town for a Trump campaign rally.

Pence didn’t answer the question, and instead started talking about how he designed Medicaid in Indiana when he was governor. He was one of several Republican governors who voted to expand Medicaid to cover more people through the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, he said. Pence also won a waiver from the federal government that allowed his state to make poor people chip in money for their care.

“We expanded coverage in Indiana,” Pence said.

“Right, but I’m just talking about the president and your administration right now, and what they’re doing,” Davidson responded. “Right now, they’re cutting Medicaid.”

“It’s going to affect millions of people across the country — cutting Medicaid. Is that a good idea or is that a bad idea?”

“I think you’re oversimplifying it,” Pence said.

“Medicaid, as you know, has a lot of problems,” he added.

“It’s been a godsend to the patients I serve,” Davidson said. “It’s their lifeline. People with diabetes who can’t afford insulin … it’s a crisis.”

Pence said the administration was inviting innovation and improvements to the program by allowing states more control.

“Reform and innovation in the setting of cuts equals less people with healthcare,” Davidson said.

Pence said he “respectfully disagreed.”

The two men shook hands and parted.

“When I told him he is putting my patients' lives at risk, @VP deflected and denied knowledge of the policy,” Davidson later wrote on Twitter. “He either doesn't understand, or doesn't care about the impact of this administration’s policies on patients everywhere.”

And he’s not the only doctor who sees the new program as harmful. The nation’s largest physician group, the American Medical Association, joined a host of other medical and anti-poverty organizations that slammed the proposal Thursday.

“The AMA opposes caps on federal Medicaid funding, such as block grants, because they would increase the number of uninsured and undermine Medicaid’s role as an indispensable safety net,” said Patrice Harris, the president of the American Medical Association, in a statement.

The block grant proposal will almost certainly face legal challenges. If the proposal survives, states will have to first ask the federal government for a waiver to change their Medicaid programs, which could also take months. It’s unclear how many states would want to change their Medicaid programs, although conservative states have eagerly attempted to take up the Trump administration’s other controversial Medicaid changes — including work requirements to receive care — in the past. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said Thursday that he was interested in the Trump administration’s proposal and would pursue block grants with low premiums and work requirements

Cover: Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an Evangelicals for Trump Event in Sioux City, Iowa, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)



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Here Are the Most Common AirBnb Scams Worldwide

At the end of October, former VICE senior staff writer Allie Conti shared her story of a disastrous vacation to Chicago, where she tumbled into a nationwide scam run by a prolific grifter (or grifters), which exploited Airbnb’s loosely written rules and even looser enforcement.

Conti’s investigation revealed a platform with serious problems policing itself, and sought to uncover the people who’d figured out ways to profit from that disarray. She ultimately traced the nexus of her own scam experience back to a company that used fake profiles and reviews to conceal a variety of wrongs—from last-minute property switches, to units with sawdust on the floor and holes in the wall.

Hoping to get a better sense of the issue, we asked readers to tell us about their own experiences using Airbnb. In response, we got nearly 1,000 emails, many of them outlining similar tales of deception.

The stories quickly started to fall into easily discernible categories. Scammers all over the world, it seems, have figured how best to game the Airbnb platform: by engaging in bait and switches; charging guests for fake damages; persuading people to pay outside the Airbnb app; and, when all else fails, engaging in clumsy or threatening demands for five-star reviews to hide the evidence of what they’ve done. (Or, in some cases, a combination of several of these scams.)

In the aggregate, these emails paint a portrait of a platform whose creators are fundamentally unable to track what goes on within it, and point to easily exploitable loopholes that scammers have steamed their way through by the truckload. After Conti’s story, Airbnb promised to “verify” all 7 million listings on the site by December 2020. Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s CEO and co-founder, said at the DealBook conference that the verification process is part of a dawning realization that, as he put it, “we have to take more responsibility for stuff on our platform.”

“I think many of us in this industry … are going from a hands-off model, where the Internet’s an immune system, to realizing that’s not really enough, that we have to take more responsibility for the stuff on our platform,” he said. “And I think this has been a gradual, maybe too gradual, transition for our industry.” In part, Chesky suggested Airbnb would start asking more specific questions of guests upon checkout—relying on users, in other words, to help police what happens on the platform.

On Twitter, Chesky added, “Trust on the Internet begins with verifying the accuracy of the information on Internet platforms — this is an important step for our industry.” He also said the company would begin offering what he called the Airbnb Guest Guarantee: “[I]f a guest checks into a listing and it doesn’t meet our accuracy standards, we will rebook them into a listing that is just as nice — and if we can’t, they will get 100% of their money back.”

An Airbnb spokesperson provided VICE with some additional details about how the verification process will work. We will review listings for accuracy and quality and to confirm the identity of hosts,” the spokesperson said. They added:

We are working on the details, and intend to use a combination of community, agent and technological techniques, including: Agent reviews and algorithmic screening of the listing contents, pictures, etc, guest verifications of specific features of a listing, in-person inspections, and virtual walk-throughs. Hosts that pass our review will be identified clearly on the platform, but not all will pass initially. We will update our community in the coming months as we build out the specifics of our Verification Program.

If the emails we received are any metric to judge by, the process is long overdue. People said they’d found themselves defrauded, stranded on the street in an unfamiliar city, booked into staying in a shed with no running water (a real email we received), or locked in a bizarre, lengthy argument over alleged damages to an area rug. Here are the most common Airbnb scams worldwide, broken down by category.

As a note: We haven’t picked out emails to share that are the most inflammatory or most colorful. These are, in every case, representative of a far greater number of stories we did not include. These emails have been edited for clarity and readability, but their meaning has not been changed.

The Bait and Switch

One exceedingly common theme across hundreds of emails was the bait and switch: Airbnb users were promised one apartment and arrived to find something very different. Sometimes, the problem was deceptive photos that bore no resemblance to the place they arrived to find. Other times, they were persuaded by the host to switch apartments or houses entirely, only to find that the new location was filthy, unfurnished, or in a totally different part of town. (In a surprising number of stories, the new house was often full of a weird number of beds, laid out in bizarre configurations.)

The Apparent Plumbing Scam

One particular bait and switch seems popular: the plumbing scam. Dozens of people told us that they’d booked an apartment or a house, in cities both in the U.S. and abroad. Days or hours before the reservation was set to start, the host would abruptly tell them that the unit had developed a sudden and fatal plumbing issue.

I rented a place near Glass Beach and a few weeks prior to my trip when I reached out to confirm the booking, the lister told me she had a "septic problem" in the unit and she could see if she could put me up in a larger place nearby. That never materialized but she refused to cancel my booking, saying the first time that her computer wasn't working and the next time, weeks later, that her father had just passed away. I had to complain to Airbnb that she refused to cancel the booking so they canceled it but I was unable to write a negative review. - California

The plumbing scam seems to rest on the idea that if the Airbnb is uninhabitable, hosts can’t be penalized for cancelling reservations. That’s explicitly mentioned in Airbnb’s rules for hosts: cancellation fees will be applied except in the case of an emergency or “unavoidable circumstance,” like the death of a host or immediate family member, government obligations like jury duty, or “unforeseen property damage, maintenance, and amenity issues.” Those damage or maintenance issues must be ones that would make it “unsafe” to host or disrupt basic amenities like running water.

Airbnb says it currently requires proof of all those circumstances to allow the cancellation without charging the host penalty fees. A spokesperson told us, “We hold hosts accountable for honoring their reservations, and we strongly support guests with rebookings or reimbursements when things don’t go according to plan. For a host to avoid cancellation penalties, we require the submission of supporting documentation. For instance, a host citing a plumbing issue would need to submit to Airbnb an invoice or receipt of services from a legitimate business.” He added that, in general, “If we see a host engaging in problematic behavior, including frequent last-minute cancellations, that host would be subject to suspension or removal from the platform.” (This might, of course, be cold comfort in the immediate present for someone who finds themselves stranded on the street without a place to stay.)

There are other versions of this scam; another common scenario is claiming that a party trashed the house and it’s now temporarily uninhabitable. In all cases, the aim seems to be either getting to rebook the Airbnb at a higher price to someone else, to get the guest to cancel without the host incurring penalties, or getting people to agree to move to a different, less-desirable Airbnb.

We had rented an apartment and got a notice a week before we were to go to Barcelona that the apartment was unavailable due to a family emergency. It turns out that the owner rents in advance at a low rate, then if they can get double the rate they dump the first person and rent to the next. - Barcelona

I saw the same property listing that was just cancelled on us, but with larger scale photos, additional buildings, and now it was listed for $999/night, and it was available for “our dates”!!! I was really unhappy and I wrote the host asking what it meant. 1) she was double listing the same property 2) she provided a non-equivalent property as a sub for her last-minute cancellation 3) she gave a very generic excuse about "maintenance work." I demanded explanation and proof that the place was having work done, but in response the host reported me to Airbnb as a harasser. - Joshua Tree

Getting the guest to agree to move houses

The plumbing scam sometimes segues into this one, though it’s often unclear if hosts aim to get guests to switch houses because the original listing doesn’t exist or because they’ve found new renters who will pay more. In either case, we received multiple emails from people who said they’d been asked at the last minute to move to a new house or apartment, often promised that the new listing was bigger and better in every way than the one they’d originally booked. Spoiler: that was never the case.

The property was supposed to be a quaint and quiet property in downtown. Upon arrival, we were delayed by the “homeowner” stating that we would need to change properties at the last minute. Since it was only a quick two night visit, we weren’t opposed. The “new larger location” was a scummy little apartment complex on the west side of town, not the best part I might add. One bedroom was really nice (probably the photo room) and the other was bare basic with zero artwork. The rest of the apartment was exactly as you described in your article, almost as if it were a cheap hotel room. I didn’t think about it anymore until it was time for check out. We were charged DOUBLE per night plus two cleaning fees, with the mystery man in California stating that we didn’t clarify that it was two adults. What did it matter? We used ONE ROOM. How did he know it was two adults? Cameras? - Austin, TX

The single large apartment with many rooms had its address changed at the last minute, and we arrived to two random apartments with a few cots against the walls. One of the rooms smelled like vomit but wasn't airing out so it was difficult to even walk inside. We booked hotels instead. I took many photos of the place, to illustrate how it had no relationship to the apartment we'd intended on booking, but [Airbnb] still refused any claim we made and backed the person who'd been scamming us. - New Orleans

Booking the Airbnb to multiple people at the same time

Perhaps the most socially awkward bait and switch is this one: renting an Airbnb where you believe you have booked the whole residence, only to arrive and find a whole bunch of strangers. Multiple people told us they arrived to find other Airbnb guests at the house, or, in some cases, people who seemed to live there.

This is not, however, something Airbnb can easily police, if at all, because the issue doesn’t lie within their app. It’s not possible to double-book a property on Airbnb; once it’s booked through the app, it’s off the market. It is possible, however, to double-book a listing if the property is also listed on VRBO or another platform. And it’s not always malicious: In some cases, a host could’ve simply gotten their wires crossed and forgotten the residence was already booked.

We rented a whole house in Pioneertown CA for a weekend. When we arrived, the house was already full of people, yet the owner refused to reimburse us. The owner scams the clients by simultaneously renting the same property on Booking.com and AirBnB. She actually has multiple posting for the same property on each website. - California

Airbnb says that while double bookings are “usually the result of honest mistakes and not nefarious activity, it certainly leads to a terrible guest experience and so we do everything we can to support our guest so they can enjoy their vacation.” They add:

If a guest shows up at a listing to find that it’s been double-booked, they should contact our Customer Support line immediately so that we can support with a rebooking to a listing that is similar or better. If the price of the new listing is higher, Airbnb would take care of the additional cost. If we can’t find a listing on our platform, we’ll attempt to book in an alternate accommodation such as a hotel. We have a new “Urgent Support Line” available on the Airbnb app for this type of scenario for travelers on an active trip.

We would also withhold payment to a host under such a scenario. Additionally, if we find this happening more than once with a particular host, we would take action including suspension or removal from the platform.

In general, referring to bait-and-switches of all kinds, Airbnb told VICE:

Bait and switch schemes, such as those described where guests are offered worse accommodations, are unacceptable and antithetical to Airbnb’s values and the community standards. If a guest is ever asked to do something like this, they should contact us either by phone or through our app so that we can support them. Our Guest Guarantee policy entitles guests to a full refund or rebooking into a new listing of equal or better value. We would then address the issues with the host, which could include suspension or removal from our platform. If such a scheme were to rise to the level of criminal fraud, we would also seek to work with law enforcement to hold that person accountable.

Money Scams

Paying outside the app

A relatively straightforward scam is hosts who ask Airbnb users to pay them in some other way: by check, Bitcoin, or another third-party payment app. (Often, Airbnb hosts would ask for a security deposit to be paid that way, rather than the entire fee.)

There’s no reason to do this. It’s virtually always a prelude to something even sketchier, per the emails we received. Just don’t. Airbnb even tells users in their safety tips to beware of paying outside the app, one of the only scams they specifically acknowledge and warn against.

The booking looked cute, nice and light and airy. The guy seemed really nice. But I was confused as he sent me a separate email, outside of airbnb for a lease agreement and I wasn't comfortable going outside airbnb—but I went with it.

When I showed up, the place was filthy, dirty water in the sink, dust, there was one towel and one roll of toilet paper provided for a six month stay. The worst part was that silverfish was everywhere in the kitchen/bathroom. Silverfish, for me, are as bad a bed bugs, they are difficult to remove and eat your clothing. I raised my concerns, then, not hearing back for many hours, decided I was not comfortable in the unit and cancelled my stay.

I decided to cancel through Airbnb and tell them about what had happened. He went off at me, berated me for not handing it privately, told me I was acting in my own self interest and basically belittled me. I ended up having to pay the full first month even though I stayed a night… His listing is still up and a review posted after my stay also mentions the silverfish. - Montreal

Airbnb tells VICE, “We are an end-to-end platform, and the golden rule is to always book on the platform, pay on the platform, and communicate on the platform. Airbnb Marketplace listing pages include warnings to guests to never transact or even communicate off of our platform. We also have a help center page that addresses this specific concern.” It also says hosts who try to lure guests off-platform will be subject to suspension or removal.

Fake damages

One of the truly difficult things for Airbnb to police—and for guests to guard themselves against—are claims of fake damages, because it’s absolutely true that at times, Airbnb guests do damage the places they stay: clogging plumbing, digging a hole in the yard to build a fire (another real email we received) or damaging carpets or furniture.

In some cases, though, a host will charge what seem like exorbitant expenses for cleaning fees:

On the day I was checking out, I spilled a tiny amount of coffee (and I get most of it up with a towel)...as a nice person (and never again), I mention that I did this, so the host can use Resolve or whatever to get it up (the carpet was not super nice anyway).

The host (who I am convinced never looked at the stain), tried to charge me $2000 for carpet cleaning, and eventually I was able to get this reduced to $375 (which is still ridiculous. I was happy to get this—but it required a lot of tenacity on my part). - Mountain View, CA

In other cases, however, the demands for damage fees seem, well, pretty scammy:

Owner of the unit called me and accused me of losing the key to the flat. I told him I left it just where he told me to leave it, and that it should be there. He became belligerent and started yelling at me in French, which I did not understand. I repeatedly told him that I did not understand him.

About 2 hours after check out, he sent to me a text telling me I owed him $2,000.00 US dollars to re-key the door. Airbnb then messaged me to tell me that they were going to collect on that $2,000.00 and that I should make arrangements to pay same through my account. I told Airbnb and this flat owner that I thought this was extortion and I would pay ZERO. I lodged a formal complaint with Airbnb, accused the guy of trying to accuse me of something I did not do, and extort a very substantial sum of money to boot!! Within 15 minutes of my formal complaint, Airbnb did message me and told me the matter was resolved and that I did not have to pay any money to this guy. With that, they did resolve the issue for sure and quite rapidly. - Paris

Airbnb tells VICE that the “Resolution Center” used to solve issues like damage claims has “significant checks and balances,” adding that if a guest believes a host is abusing the process, “they should flag it to our claims specialists through the app.” Their full statement on fake damages allegations reads:

Our Resolution Center is critical to our mission to make things right for both hosts and guests when things go wrong for whatever reason. Often, the issues are relatively small, and the host and guest are able to work it out amongst themselves without Airbnb having to get involved. When there is an ongoing dispute, Airbnb will then intervene and mediate.

There are significant checks and balances in this work. We require clear documentation for damages, including receipts and billing statements from reputable companies, and once we receive sufficient information we’ll review all documentation and evaluate the payment request. We have a team of Claims specialists who oversee this work, and they will also research fair market values to double check that those numbers are consistent with the claimed values and documentation.

If a guest feels that a host is abusing the Resolution Center process, they should flag it to our Claims specialists through the app or through the Help Center on our website so that we can take action. We also keep tabs on if hosts are consistently flagged for this type of behavior, in which case we would take action up to and including suspension and removal.

Review scams and threats

The ultimate goal for Airbnb hosts is to keep their five-star ratings, and, if possible, attain Superhost status, which, among other things, requires them to maintain at least a 4.8 overall rating. Anything less can impact the number of bookings they get, and there’s more than one guide on keeping ratings high the honest way.

Somewhat frequently, hosts—even really, really bad ones—will seemingly ask up-front for a five-star review no matter what the stay was really like. Conti, for instance, got an odd request for a five-star review at the end of her disastrous stay in Chicago:

The last time I heard from Becky and Andrew, they sent me a strange message on Airbnb asking that I give them no less than a five-star review⁠—since Airbnb had “changed its algorithm”⁠—and that I communicate all concerns privately.

“I respectfully request that you let me know about any challenges you faced with my property directly on this message thread rather than write a 4 star review [sic],” they wrote.

Someone else who said they stayed at a “Becky and Andrew” property in Milwaukee said she received the same request from them: “After we checked out we also got a request to give a five star review, and handle disputes privately.”

That is one particularly ham-handed way to do things. But the people who wrote to us also experienced some of the other ways hosts attempt to keep reviews spotless. Some hosts demanded that guests who had bad experiences not review them, or else prevented them from doing so until the time window in which they could leave a review expired.

Getting a bad review hidden or pulled down entirely

Airbnb will hide or pull down reviews in certain situations—and, again, there are several guides available online for how hosts can get reviews pulled down, sometimes for good reason (if the guest never actually stayed there, for instance, or is clearly lying). But several people told us they felt that system had been weaponized against them, used to keep their accurate complaints hidden.

I recently left a fair, yet three star review on a host’s page, and then Airbnb took my review down saying it was "against their policy." Apparently, the host had completely fabricated a fake text conversation claiming I “extorted then for a refund in exchange for the promise of a good review” and sent a screenshot to Airbnb of the supposed text “thread.” After contacting their support to explain my situation, Airbnb claimed that they had done their due diligence of investigating and told me not to contact them anymore, case closed. - Location unspecified

Running out the clock

Several guests told us that as they tussled back and forth with hosts and Airbnb for a refund, the two weeks they had to review their stay expired, and they were unable to leave one. Guests are also unable to leave reviews if their stay was cancelled—even if it was cancelled because they arrived there, noted the house was actually, for instance, a trap house (another real email we received) and left immediately.

I cancelled the booking within five minutes of arrival as not being what was on offer on their site. I got nothing in writing either. Airbnb refused to refund me pending an investigation and stalled and stalled. As a guest one only has 14 days to leave a review of a place. Between Airbnb and the host, they stalled until I was no longer able to leave a review. I also never got a refund. - Pretoria, South Africa

Airbnb says that in this specific instance, guests should leave a review while the dispute resolution is still happening:

“We encourage people to leave reviews, even if a dispute or mediation with a host is ongoing. Our double-blind review system ensures the review will not post or be visible to the host until the host also submits his or her review, or when the two-week window lapses. We send multiple email reminders during the two-week window to leave reviews, including right before the two weeks are up.”

Retaliation

This last one is less a “scam” and more just “flatly illegal.” A small number of people described getting threatening or abusive text messages after leaving a bad review:

I wrote a scathing review on the host's profile and the host replied with a ridiculous number of abusive Whatsapp voice messages, claiming to be Lithuanian mafia. - Lithuania

Airbnb responds:

The integrity of our review system is paramount. We do not tolerate efforts to game the system, and hosts or guests attempting to do so are subject to consequences, including suspension or removal. If a guest is asked either to not leave a review, leave a false review, or feels that a host is engaging in extortion, they should flag immediately to our team so that we can take action. They can easily contact our Customer Support team about these issues through our app or the Help Center on our website.

We maintain a clear and strict review content policy, and the threshold to even consider removing a review is very high. Justifiable reasons for removal may include hate speech or extortion, for example. We want guests to see all reviews associated with listings -- both the good and the bad -- so that they can make informed booking decisions based on authentic experiences.

Hosts have bad and scammy experiences too

The problems with Airbnb don’t just impact guests, however. We also heard from a large number of hosts, who said that they too had difficulty getting a response from the company when they reported serious issues. A common problem, one host told us, is around getting Airbnb to cover simple damages and repairs, or being penalized for necessary cancellations:

1. Guest smokes, denies it, 2nd guest goes in complains about smoke—and gets a full refund from Airbnb, host complains about last guest to charge penalty—host is denied. So the host loses regardless, Airbnb and the previous guest comes out on top.

2. Guest loses key, denies it—Aairbnb does not cover you though they say they do.

3. Guest breaks something and if it's not fixed, Airbnb charges you for a rebooking for subsequent guest (shower rod the guest broke, the glass door for a bedroom).

4. If anything breaks in the condo—it is next to impossible to be compensated by Airbnb. They require a minimum of three contractors to go in, three quotes/invoices, and then give you an amortized amount if it goes through. Not realizing contractors charge money to come in, they've made it so that it’s never worth it to try to get damages handled by them, their insurance policy is an outright scam.

5. A guest stayed at our unit for an entire night, then said she didn't like the smell of the cleaner used on the floor (the morning after). Airbnb canceled the entire reservation—$900 worth, for a week—and gave her the one day free, basically taking away 25% of our monthly pay as it’s hard to get the suite rented so quickly!

Airbnb responded: "Our customer support team works hard to support hosts and mediate disputes, and our $1 Million Host Guarantee is mean to provide peace of mind that we've got their back when things don't go according to plan."

With every type of scam discussed above, people’s experiences reporting the situation to Airbnb varied widely. Some people reported getting all of their money back from the company, and some none at all.

Airbnb tries hard to convey that it is responsible for what happens on its platform, with guarantees that if either a host or a guest has a bad experience, they’ll do what they can to make it right. But they’ve also acknowledged in the past year that there are serious gaps in their system, and that listings on the platform have had their share of serious safety issues, as well as what the company often refers to as “inaccuracy” in listings on the platform.

In his November comments on Twitter, CEO Brian Chesky also pledged that the company would launch “a 24/7 neighbor hotline” staffed by real people, and “expanding manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by our risk detection models first to North America and then globally next year.”

“I want to be clear — we are not infallible,” Chesky added. “We are a platform built on a foundation of trust. We need to continue innovating on trust to make it harder for the bad actors. The trust of our community is our top priority.”

The verification process sounds like it’s an honest, albeit somewhat belated, attempt to shore up a somewhat shaky platform and attempt to make it sturdier for guests and hosts alike. But the emails we received suggest that, in many cases, the damage is already done: the trips ruined, the money lost, the silverfish-eaten shirt already discarded. And memories, as too many postcard cliches would have it, last forever.



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Europe Just Voted in Favor of Making iPhone and Android Use the Same Charger

Every time you buy a new device—whether its a smartphone, e-reader, or smartwatch—you get a new charging cable for it. Even now, thousands of old charging devices sit in the junk drawer of homes all over the world, collecting dust. Europe wants to set a standard in the tech industry. It imagines a world where the customer never has to buy a new charger because their old charge isn’t compatible with their new device.

The European Parliament has voted 582-40 in favor of a resolution urging lawmakers to set a standard for charging cables.

“Continuing fragmentation of the market for chargers for mobile phones and other small and medium-sized electronic devices translates into an increase in e-waste and consumer frustration,” the resolution said.

For the resolution to become a law, the European Commission would have to draft a law and vote on it in July. But the idea of adopting a charging cable standard has overwhelming support in Europe, as evidenced by the 582-40 vote. With some exceptions, chargers use either USB-C, micro-USB, or Apple’s Lightning Cable. The vast majority of the industry uses micro-USB and is slowly adopting USB-C.

The legislation would mostly affect Apple’s proprietary Lightning Cable.

"We believe regulation that forces conformity across the type of connector built into all smartphone stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, and would harm consumers in Europe and the economy as a whole,” Apple said in a statement published in the Financial Times. “We hope the Commission will continue to seek a solution that does not restrict the industry's ability to innovate and bring exciting new technology to customers."

The EU resolution pointed to e-waste as one of the biggest reasons the industry needs to adop a charging cable standard. “50 million metric tons of e-waste is generated globally per year, with an average of more than 6 kg per person,” it said. “Total e-waste generation in Europe in 2016 was 12.3 million metric tonnes, equivalent to 16.6 kg on average per inhabitant...this represents an unnecessary environmental footprint that can be reduced.”

One of the most ubiquitous pieces of e-waste is device chargers. We seem them as disposable because every new device comes with one. Why not just toss the old one out and let it rot in a landfill? Every new upgrade means a new charger. But that may be about to change.



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Lots of People Think Plan B Causes Abortions. Here's Why That's Wrong

When emergency contraception was first introduced to the United States in the late 90s, it was known among reproductive health advocates as the country’s “best-kept secret.” In 2000, a year after the Food and Drug Administration approved the brand-name emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, just over half of women of reproductive age were aware of it, and many of them didn’t know that—at the time—getting it required a prescription from a doctor.

In other words, about half of women capable of getting pregnant didn’t know that there a backup method of preventing pregnancy if other methods of contraception failed them, or if they hadn’t used any in the first place.

A lot has changed since then. Plan B became available over-the-counter in 2006, and overall awareness of emergency contraception has grown to 95 percent: Between 2013 and 2015, 22 percent of women reported having used emergency contraceptive pills in their lifetime, a big jump from the 4 percent who said the same in 2002.

Yet confusion persists: Though the vast majority of women have heard of emergency contraceptive pills—and are aware that they are not the same as abortion pills—recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 62 percent of people wrongly believe that pills like Plan B can be used to end an early pregnancy.

Just 44 percent of women of reproductive age know that this is not the case.

What's the difference between Plan B and abortion pills?

Emergency contraceptive pills delay ovulation in order to prevent a pregnancy from happening; they’re completely ineffective if a pregnancy has already begun. Emergency contraception is sometimes called the morning-after pill. Plan B, one brand of emergency contraception, has also become a common shorthand to refer to it, but there are multiple generic versions too. (The FDA approved another brand-name pill called Ella in 2015, which can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex though it's still prescription only.)

Mifepristone is one of two drugs doctors administer for first-trimester abortions with pills, a method also known as medication abortion. The drug stops a pregnancy from progressing and, when followed by a second medication, misoprostol, a miscarriage is induced. Unlike emergency contraception, a decades-old FDA policy requires providers to dispense mifepristone in person, at a hospital or clinic, making it illegal to sell the drug over-the-counter. Health care providers can’t write a prescription to the drug for patients to pick up at a pharmacy, as they would for nearly all other medications people take at home.

So while emergency contraception like Plan B is highly visible, the restrictions on medication abortion leave abortion pills clouded in relative obscurity for the general public, potentially leading to confusion that conflates the two, explained Usha Ranji, the associate director of women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

These barriers to access help explain why so few people are aware of mifepristone and medication abortion—just 36 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 49 had heard of it, according to the recent polling. And it also provides clues as to why so many people still aren’t sure what exactly abortion pills do that emergency contraception doesn’t.

Nathalie Duroseau, a New York-based pediatrician and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said part of her job involves dispelling these misconceptions on a regular basis. “Many patients understand that emergency contraception has no effect on an already [established] pregnancy, and others still remain confused, or not quite clear,” Duroseau said. “I make a point to go over with them how the emergency contraception pill works and that it is not, in any way, an abortifacient.”

So why do people confuse Plan B with abortion pills?

The researchers behind the recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey didn’t conduct any follow-up polling to find out exactly where this misunderstanding stems from, but experts have some ideas.

Duroseau suspects that the conflation of emergency contraception and abortion pills has something to do with a lack of comprehensive sex education. Currently, 26 states require that sex education heavily emphasizes abstinence, while just 24 states require any sex education at all. Duroseau said that leaves millions of young people without any information about different birth control methods, and with significant gaps in knowledge about how pregnancy occurs.

But experts say there’s likely another insidious factor to consider—the extent to which anti-abortion activists and politicians emphasize that life begins “at conception,” or when a sperm fertilizes an egg. The slogan forms the ideological core of the anti-abortion movement, and is often deployed as an argument against certain methods of birth control, including emergency contraception, which some abortion opponents mistakenly believe can terminate a pregnancy.

“When you have 99 percent of sexually active heterosexual women using birth control at some point in their lifetime, the anti-abortion lobby knows they don’t have the constituency to be [explicitly] anti-birth control,” said Mary Alice Carter, a senior advisor at Equity Forward, a reproductive health coalition. (Though in her experience most anti-abortion activists are also anti-birth control, she added.) “So they tend to follow the adage, ‘If you can’t convince them, confuse them.’”

Susan Wood, a professor of health policy at George Washington University, experienced this disinformation campaign against Plan B firsthand. She used to serve as the FDA's assistant commissioner for women’s health and as director of the office of women’s health until she resigned in protest in 2005, decrying the agency’s delay in approving emergency contraception for over-the counter use.

“There was huge confusion about the difference between it and the abortion pill, mifepristone [among the public], and that was definitely promulgated by the small group of people opposed to emergency contraception,” Wood recalled.

Efforts to lump these two medications together are harmful.

The conflation of emergency contraception and abortion pills can have serious consequences for people who want to end a pregnancy but aren’t sure which pill regimen best applies to their situation.

“The real danger is someone thinking, ‘Oh, this Plan B pill could help me have an abortion—it’s the same thing,’” Carter said. “That person would take Plan B and remain pregnant, and it could be many more weeks before they realize they’re still pregnant. They could find themselves in a situation where they’re going to then have a harder time accessing the abortion they were led to believe they could get with a morning-after pill.”

Any delay in abortion care can mean more barriers to accessing it associated with higher costs or difficulty finding a clinic that will perform the procedure after the first trimester.

Carter and others feel hopeful though. As medication abortion becomes more common and less stigmatized, she said she believes a younger generation will become more aware of the options available to them and the purpose each option serves.

“I’m optimistic,” Wood said, pointing to the statistics that show women of reproductive age are at least aware that there is a difference between the two drugs. “Hopefully over time that knowledge will increase.”

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Marie Solis on Twitter.

Read more about medication abortion:
Almost 40 Percent of Abortions Are Now Done With Pills
The FDA Is Restricting Access to the Easiest, Safest Form of Abortion
Buying Abortion Pills Online Is Overwhelmingly Safe, But Maybe Illegal



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Is Nvidia Building the Thing People Actually Wanted From Stadia?

The premise of Google’s streaming service, Stadia, is simple: play a game wherever you want, whenever you want. That remains an attractive pitch, but as evidenced by growing complaints in the months after launch, reality is more complicated. Google has promised Stadia will get better—it has nowhere to go but up—but in its best form, Stadia is a limited platform; the games that you already own cannot take advantage of Stadia’s technology.

Which brings us to a tweet I saw going around yesterday:

Excuse me? GeForce Now is the currently-in-beta streaming service from graphics card manufacturer Nvidia, and it’s actually been kicking around in various forms for years—all the way back to 2013. Previously, it was a service that’d been tied to the company’s handheld device, Shield. It works like Stadia in concept. You click a button and a stream whizzes to life, letting you play a video game the same way you start to binge a show on Netflix. But GeForce Now has a key differentiation: it takes advantage of the games you already own on Steam, uPlay and Battle.net, which means GeForce Now has access to a huge library.

For example, Darksiders Genesis is a game available on both Steam and Stadia. If you want to play Darksiders Genesis on Stadia, you need to buy it for Stadia because it’s a unique platform. If you’ve already purchased Darksiders Genesis on Steam, that doesn’t matter.

But that’s not how GeForce Now works; it’s a gateway to other storefronts, not a storefront in and of itself. When you click on the Darksiders Genesis log into GeForce Now, you’re asked to input your Steam credentials. From there, GeForce Now takes over. The game spins up.

Steam itself has a streaming service of sorts called Steam Link, but it requires you to already own a powerful gaming PC—it’s spitting a video signal out from the PC that it’s already connected to. Steam Link works remarkably well for what it is, but what if you don’t want to spend $1,000 on a PC? What if you want to buy a game in a Steam sale and just play it?

With some caveats, that’s basically what GeForce Now is, and it sounds potentially great.

1580484932744-Screen-Shot-2020-01-30-at-45353-PM

The ramifications of this are enormous. Take The Witcher 3, for example. I signed up for GeForce Now last night, and after “installing” The Witcher 3 to whatever computer had been assigned to me by Nvidia—you literally watch the game download and install to a computer that’s in some server warehouse—I was able to start playing with my existing cloud saves.

Here in the VICE offices, using extremely spotty Internet, I was able to pull up my most recent save for The Witcher 3, a game I’d put nearly 150 hours into, without a problem.

Again, the Internet here isn’t great, so performance was iffy, but at times, it worked like a charm. It looked good enough. Given that, I can’t 100% vouch for how well GeForce Now performs, arguably one of Stadia’s best strengths. (I know others have run into problems with Stadia, but in various environments, including at Starbucks, I had great experiences.) That said, I have talked to several folks who’ve used GeForce Now in more ideal scenarios and report it’s entirely playable. Plus, that tech is only going to get better. That’s not a big worry.

GeForce Now has its own limitations, of course. It doesn’t not give you access to every game in your Steam library, only the ones it supports. Right now, that library is pretty small. There are lots of big games beyond The Witcher 3Fortnite, PUBG, Destiny 2, Borderlands 3, etc.—but you are at the mercy of the games Nvidia deems worthy of supporting, instead of being able to just flick a switch and start streaming any game you have bought on Steam.

The real dream, I suppose, is Valve themselves offering a service that lets you pay to play everything you own through the cloud, but in the absence of that, GeForce Now sounds like it has the potential to deliver more of what people wanted from the potential of a thing like Stadia. And potentially $5 a month? Heck, free if you only want to play around for an hour?

Nvidia declined to comment when asked to confirm the specifics of this rumor, but it almost doesn’t matter if the rumor is off. GeForce Now is a very real technology with a very real service, and all that’s left is for Nvidia to figure out how they want to monetize it. If it can deliver on the idea of letting me play games I already own from anywhere? Take my money.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. His email is patrick.klepek@vice.com, and available privately on Signal (224-707-1561).



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Why Every Instagram Influencer Has That Same Big Gray Sofa

It’s a dreary Essex morning, and I’ve come to an interiors home shop in Brentwood to see a woman about a couch.

I find Tides Home and Garden’s two cosy high street storefronts, nestled among beauty salons and chain cafés. Their first shop sells tables, ornaments, and small furniture, while the other houses Tides’ own bespoke interior design service. Each stands resplendent with Footballers’ Wives crystal lighting, massive mirrors, and beds so cushioned and luxurious that they might as well have waddled off the set of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Basically every item is a neutral, comforting shade of silver or gray.

You’ll recognize the All Gray Everything home look favored by Tides and their customers if you follow a certain type of British influencer or reality star on Instagram. Often, when these women— Love Island alums like Dani Dyer and Molly Mae Hague; beloved cleaning oracle Mrs. Hinch, via the Geordie Shore girls—show off their homes online, the rooms tend to follow certain trends. Picture: silvery furnishings with smooth glass or marble surfaces; soft, velvety textures; and a sort of pillowing effect on upholstery that my recent forays into the world of furniture tell me is known as “deep buttoning.” In most cases, however, this aesthetic is assembled around an immovable center of gravity: the Big Gray Sofa.

Indeed, as Tides’ owner Jo Bristow, a glam blonde with a voluminous faux-fur coat and a kind, pub landlady manner, shows me around, it doesn’t surprise me that she describes a large, gray corner couch with a row of chrome studs along the bottom as one of her bestsellers. This style of chair—a sort of enormous haute cat bed for humans, often with curved, Italian-style arms, and buttoned detail—is a contemporary interiors phenomenon, having jumped from big British influencers’ social media accounts into the homes of thousands. But how exactly did this impractically huge, gray sofa become one corner of Instagram’s favorite interiors trend? And what does it mean for our physical living areas when home fashion originates in the virtual space of the internet?

*

Interior designer Simon Rawlings remembers when beige, not gray, was the favored hue of home decorators. “If you look back a few years ago, every advertisement for a large sofa was probably beige or brown. Now, gray has almost filled the gap,” he tells me. He thinks the reasons for that shift lie in gray’s universality. “Gray has become this color that’s synonymous with good taste. It’s not seen as dull or drab or boring anymore—it’s seen as very elegant, very desirable, but you do see it in all sorts of different scenarios,” including the more ‘budget’ sections of shops like H&M Home and Zara Home.

Jo says that she first noticed gray furniture rise in popularity six or seven years ago, and her customers have been requesting it ever since. “We’ve been 15 years in Brentwood, and we definitely adapted to what people were asking for,” she says, giving me an example: “I’ve been trying to bring gold into the shop for six years—but people in this area are not interested. People still love the gray and chrome.” Gray—more than gold—speaks to what she calls a “sort of glamorous, affordable high-end” style that people from the local area like.

Tides Home and Garden VICE Big Grey Sofa

Tides Home and Garden VICE UK Bed
Products on sale in Tides Home and Garden, an interiors shop in Essex.

As she mentions, the location of Jo’s stores is important, both in terms of what she chooses to stock and to the wider gray sofa and interiors trend. Brentwood, famously, is TOWIE country, and Tides is the furniture supplier to its sparkliest stars (as if to confirm its supremacy, Gemma Collins visited Tides during her segment on MTV UK’s 2019 Cribs reboot.) When it began in 2010, The Only Way Is Essex, along with Made In Chelsea, was one of the first British ‘structured reality’ shows to center on an aspirational lifestyle. The homes of its stars, therefore, became influential in a new way and on a national scale (see, for example, breakout star Joey Essex giving Heat magazine a tour of his home, which featured a faithful gray corner unit, back in 2014; a 2015 TOWIE episode where Arg and Lydia flirt in his gray-n-chrome kitchen over a stiff-looking oven pizza.) These preferences were then replicated even further as a result of social media, and the evolution of reality stars into online influencers.

As people become brands online, so too do their homes and lifestyles. In turn, influencer-endorsed trends then filter down to the rest of us. Like clothing companies partnering with highly-followed Instagrammers to shift more neon boob tubes, some savvy furniture businesses started to see the potential for Instagram-based influencer marketing. One of these is Arighi Bianchi, a Macclesfield-based furniture store that has gifted Big Gray Sofas to high profile reality stars-come-influencers like Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury (who live together in Manchester), and more recently last year’s winner Amber Rose Gill, in exchange for exposure to their considerable audiences.

instagram-influencers-grey-sofa
The author tests out a Big Gray Sofa at Tides. Photo: Kit Harwood

“The point of those sofas, they're lying down sofas,” says Robert, one of Arighi Bianchi’s owners, telling me about this style’s popularity. “The sofa is the only piece of furniture that you have in your room, and it's about chilling out on it.” He says it’s most popular among customers with open plan living spaces (still very popular in the UK and beyond) and wall-mounted TVs, which give this luxurious, statement piece sofa the floor space it needs. “It's a lifestyle being driven by what you're being exposed to on marketing channels,” says Robert.

Arighi Bianchi are a large part of that. They’ve been hugely successful online, thanks to high-profile influencer marketing and their own Instagram presence (more than 110,000 followers deep). Robert says both are “primarily driving the online side, which clearly, every year, is getting more and more important.” The reality stars that the brand tends to work with embody the exact type of accessible opulence that Arighi Bianchi wants to sell—part of the appeal is that, put bluntly, these women are ‘just like’ their audience, in that they often hail from ordinary backgrounds, but have become wealthy and thus adjacent to exclusive events, social circles, and other markers of aspiration. “We’re embracing social media, which is like word-of-mouth for the 21st century,” Robert concludes. It’s a no brainer.

*

The Big Gray Sofa and its associated aesthetic has taken off nationally largely because it has been promoted by a soft, velvet ouroboros constituted of influencers, influencer marketing and Instagram (a 2018 Fast Company article exploring Instagram’s effect on the interior design industry put it best: “People like the things they see on Instagram, and they’re on Instagram because people like them.”) Lauren Gilbey, who manages a pre-school as her day job, was inspired by the gray trend on Instagram when decorating her Essex home—of which she posts immaculate images via her account, @the_cubbyhole. She tells me what she enjoys about the style: “I'm really into glam decor, so for me gray velvet, and in general gray interiors, really bring that feel to a home.”

Lauren of course has her own Big Gray Sofa (a huge corner couch with chaise longue style arms). As well as finding it practical and durable, she adds the fact that “gray has become quite a luxurious color trend in recent years—it’s a very popular color used in homes that are being seen by a wide range of followers.”

It’s interesting to hear someone talk about their home decor in terms related to how strangers online would view their choices, but it’s not especially surprising. After all, Instagram and Pinterest have helped to forge our current lifestyle economy—both an attention economy and a financial one. Maybe the most widespread interiors trend to emerge from app-driven aesthetics is what Kyle Chayka, the author of Minimalism: The Longing for Less, terms “Airspace.” Simply defined, this is the minimalist look associated with hipster cafés and Airbnbs globally (the ‘oat latte’ of interior design). Airspace, at its most sinister, has effectively flattened local variety, and come to be seen as the aesthetic of gentrification and whitewashing.

I’m curious about the Big Gray Sofa as an item that has, like Airspace, proliferated through the physical spaces of so many people based on its appearance online. Certainly, there have always been aspirational home trends, from wood panelling in the 1950s to 70s shag carpets in the west, as popularized on TV and in magazines. But the difference with the Big Gray Sofa is that though it was initially a localized trend (Jo from Tides repeatedly associates it with places famed for the big-haired glamour of their residents, like Essex and Liverpool), it has widened nationally almost entirely via Instagram.

Details Tides Home and Garden VICE
Soft furnishings in—you guessed it—gray at Tides.

I asked Kyle whether, when we install interiors trends we’ve seen online in our actual homes, this changes our expectations of what our living spaces are, and what they are for. He tells me: “So much of culture now we consume purely on screens. I think it does affect what kind of aesthetics and styles we look for and what we end up desiring. There's a vaporous-ness to a lot of things that get popular on the internet; it's like a digital aesthetic gets applied to real-world objects.” Though their color is certainly practical, when you think about the sheer size of some of the Big Gray Sofas proudly showcased by furniture stores and influencers, it is easy to see how online impressiveness might outweigh livability. Indeed, throughout my conversation with interior designer Simon, he marveled at the sheer scale of the things, wondering aloud: “Something that baffles me when I see them online is, how do people have houses big enough to put them in?”

Ultimately, the Big Gray Sofa is a symbol of just one of the ways you can see technology’s influence encroaching upon our private homes: to my mind, in some ways, you can place it alongside the Ring doorbells and so-called smart fridges of the world. And of course, where there is mainstream technology, a financial motive usually doesn’t linger far behind. Kyle explains: “Particularly with sharing-economy platforms, it's not just that we're influenced by capital in what we consume, but our objects have to kind of be liquid capital themselves. We rent specific furniture to make a temporary apartment feel more like a permanent home, or we decorate our leased apartment so it plays better on Airbnb and makes more money.”

This is, however you feel about it, now simply just the way of things. As Kyle puts it, “Social media accounts play a huge role in how all trends proliferate now.” It would be wrong to categorically state that this is necessarily harmful in the context of our homes. Lauren, for example, says that she styles her home for her own enjoyment, which “always comes before Instagram; as long as my home makes me feel happy then that's what’s important,” and adds that she take lots of photos of her interiors at once, to post over time, which means that her home doesn’t have to be in peak condition all the time, while also creating an illusion of a near-perfect state online.

The online growth of the Big Gray Sofa does, however, tell us a lot about our ever-closening relationships to the internet and capitalism. You pick up your phone to see what your friends are posting, and you’re sold a couch in the process. You design your living space genuinely considering what it might look like through the frame of your phone camera. Our homes—extensions of our very selves—have more potential to be involved in transactions of currency, both real and social (which is real too), than ever.

Sometimes, a sofa is just a sofa. But most of the time—especially now, in our endlessly connected and rampantly financialised moment—it’s not.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.



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Women Go to Jail For Abortions in Mexico. But That Could Soon Change

MEXICO CITY — Miriam was eight months pregnant and home alone when she started bleeding unexpectedly. “I lost sense of time. I couldn’t move,” she said. When she regained consciousness 11 hours later, her baby was dead.

At the hospital, a doctor began interrogating her, asking her what she had inserted to damage her uterus. Prosecutors determined that she’d attempted an abortion and charged her with “aggravated homicide” of her baby. She spent 14 years in prison before her release in 2018.

Abortion has been illegal in Mexico on both a federal level and in most states for nearly a century. Miriam, 49, is one of hundreds of women who have faced criminal charges since 2000 for suspected cases of abortion. Thousands more have been investigated by the police, as well as hundreds of men suspected of helping women obtain abortions.

Now, Mexico is slowly inching toward the decriminalization of abortion, propelled by a strong activist movement and shifting politics toward the left. The movement comes amid campaigns to decriminalize abortion across Latin America, which is majority Catholic and has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Suriname have total bans on abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The biggest win in recent years for abortion rights in Mexico came in September. Lawmakers in the southern state of Oaxaca approved a law decriminalizing abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, becoming the second jurisdiction in the country to do so, after Mexico City.

In December, Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved legislation proposed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that would grant amnesty to women federally prosecuted for abortion, including those charged with homicide. The bill would also grant amnesty to around 1,000 people in prison for low-level drug crimes. It’s expected to soon go before the Senate, where López Obrador’s Morena party holds a majority.

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Miriam, 49, at the hair salon where she works in Ensenada. (Photo: Guillermo Arias Camarena/VICE News)

To be sure, the proposal before Mexican lawmakers would have limited impact in the short term, because virtually all abortion-related prosecutions occur at the state level. No women are currently serving time for abortion prosecuted at the federal level, according to abortion-rights activists. Still, they say it’s an important symbolic step, and one they hope will be replicated across the country.

“More than the number of women affected, this legislation sends a clear message recognizing women’s right to have control over their bodies,” said Rep. Lorena Villavicencio. “It opens the door toward decriminalization.”

“Abortion is assassination. The general population doesn’t accept it.”

Evangelicals and the Catholic Church in Mexico have come out strongly against the bill. Archbishop Carlos Garfias Merlos said the church supports the decriminalization of abortion for women who have been raped but opposes any additional measures. “Abortion is assassination,” he said. “The general population doesn’t accept it.”

Garfias Merlos said the Church was in “dialogue” with Mexican lawmakers to encourage them to oppose the bill in its current form.

Quiet support

Despite introducing the legislation, López Obrador is not seen as a champion of abortion. During his campaign, he forged a coalition with an evangelical Christian party that opposes abortion. Last year, he suggested that legalization of abortion could be put to a public vote, triggering an outpouring of criticism from abortion-rights activists who said women’s rights should not up be for referendum.

López Obrador has repeatedly declined to speak about abortion when asked about it in his morning press conferences, underscoring just how divisive the topic remains in Mexico. “It’s a controversial topic, and I don’t want to get involved,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in December. “And I apologize because I already have enough issues to address.”

Top-ranking officials in his administration have walked a fine line. López Obrador’s interior secretary stated she is personally opposed to abortion but expressed support for decriminalizing it.

“Of course, I am not in favor of abortion,” Olga Sánchez Cordero said at a public forum in June, noting that she has nine grandchildren. But she added that she doesn’t want to see women “deprived of freedom for 30 years” for terminating their pregnancy, referring to some of the longest sentences imposed.

The federal government’s official Twitter account has been more outspoken. After Oaxacan lawmakers decriminalized abortion, it wrote in a tweet that democracy is strengthened with “the autonomy of women to make decisions over their own bodies.”

Verónica Garzón, an attorney with the abortion-rights group AsiLEGAL, said López Obrador’s Morena party is quietly taking a progressive stand on abortion rights. “It’s not out in the open. But their actions have left it understood that they are headed in that direction.”

200 women in prison

An estimated 200 women in Mexico are currently behind bars for crimes related to abortion, including homicide, according to Centro Las Libres, a women’s rights organization.

Far more have been prosecuted, although not imprisoned. The police investigated 2,121 people for having an abortion from 2015-2018, according to GIRE, a Mexican nonprofit that advocates for reproductive rights. The legislation before Congress would not affect any of them because they were charged by state prosecutors.

“There is movement, and a context of women constantly demanding more. In this context, the law is one measure. It’s not enough, but it’s something,” said Estefania Vela, executive director of Intersecta, a Mexico City–based feminist NGO. “If this law were replicated at the state level, it could have a bigger impact.”

Governors in at least five states are considering initiatives to replicate the law, including in Hidalgo, Oaxaca, the State of Mexico, Chiapas, and Veracruz, according to Sánchez Cordero, the interior secretary.

Still, the push toward legalizing abortion in Mexico has moved in fits and starts. Mexico City’s decriminalization of abortion in 2007 spurred a backlash, with 19 states subsequently passing constitutional amendments declaring that life begins at conception.

Forced confessions

In the state of Guanajuato, some women were charged with homicide and sentenced to 30 years in prison, even when they said they had been forced to sign confessions after giving birth to stillborn babies. Following public outcry, state legislators freed the women but didn’t vacate their convictions.

Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist who studies the Catholic Church, said church leaders have become less focused on the topic of abortion under Pope Frances, who has criticized the overwhelming focus on the issue. “Seven years ago, if this law had been proposed, it would have been mayhem,” he said.

Soriano-Núñez also said Church leaders have been chastened because they failed to speak out against corrupt politicians who supported anti-abortion bans. The former governor of the state of Veracruz, which passed a constitutional amendment in 2016 banning abortion, was subsequently accused of money laundering and even giving watered-down medicine to cancer patients.

“It was an awful tradeoff, and my perception is that they are paying for it now,” Soriano-Núñez said.

While the Catholic Church’s authority has been weakened through Latin American because of sexual abuse scandals, it’s unclear how many countries will follow Mexico’s halting embrace of reproductive rights.

Most only allow abortion in the case of rape or if the mother’s health is at risk. It’s legal only in three countries: Uruguay, Guyana, and French Guiana.

In Mexico, advocates are supporting the latest legislation with reservations. “Amnesty isn’t a solution,” said Regina Tames, director of GIRE. “It’s pardoning women who have had abortions when this should be a health service guaranteed by the state. On top of that, some women would leave prison and others would enter because abortion would still be a crime.”

Miriam's story

Miriam, who asked not to use her full name, said the years she spent in prison still haunt her. She slept in cells with at least four other women and lost her relationship with the father of her baby. Most painfully, she missed raising her eldest daughter, now 23. They are in the process of “reconciliation,” she said. These days, Miriam lives with her parents in Baja, California, and works at a beauty salon. Under the terms of her release, she can’t travel without permission.

Miriam said she sees abortion as every woman’s individual choice, and the legislation before Mexico’s Congress is a step in that direction. “But there’s still a lot more to do.”

Cover: Miriam, 49, in Ensenada, Mexico, where she lives with her parents. She was convicted of homicide after unexpectedly losing her baby while eight months pregnant. She was released in 2018, after 14 years in prison. (Photo: Guillermo Arias Camarena/VICE News)

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The CIA’s Infamous, Unsolved Cryptographic Puzzle Gets a ‘Final Clue’

Almost exactly 30 years ago, the artist and sculptor Jim Sanborn was devising an encrypted code for his sculpture complex at the new CIA headquarters.

The centerpiece of the complex, called Kryptos, is an eight-foot tall sculpture of a copper scroll, with four paragraphs of letters cut from the metal. At first glance, the letters seem to be gibberish. But cryptologists, including NSA experts and the American scientist James Gillogly, gradually decrypted the first three paragraphs of the text. But the full solution has eluded cryptographers, and the 74-year-old Sanborn has just released a new clue in order to help hobbyists solve it.

Sanborn’s cryptography has eluded decryption for so long in part because he’s an artist who is interested in cryptography and physics, not a cryptographer by trade. Cryptographers who have tried to decode the sculpture told Motherboard that his code differs from many cryptographic schemes because it has artistic elements that can’t be solved by mathematical decryption methods, which are more common in the space.

In his first projects in the 1970s, he used sculpture to interpret the science of geology, including concepts like the earth’s magnetic field and the coriolis force that acts on rotating objects.

A theme emerged as he saw that his art could expose the invisible elements of science and mathematics, making them visible. When the CIA called for proposals for artwork for its new headquarters, he came up with the idea of exploring how encryption conceals meaning. Decryption, in fact, was perhaps the dream topic for his artistic vision, the perfect example of making the invisible visible.

After his proposal was accepted, the sculpture of Kryptos was gradually born, with its letters cut out of copper in hardcore, labor-intensive, painstaking work. “I went through 900 blades, 7 assistants, 10 jigsaws over a 2.5 year period, cutting it every day 5 days a week," Sanborn told Motherboard. “I had assistants who had nightmares about it.”

When the sculpture was made, amateur hobbyists took immediate interest in deciphering the encrypted text, which is itself riddlesome. The first out of four paragraphs, for example, has been decrypted to read, “BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION”.

The fourth and final paragraph has, to this day, eluded all efforts at decryption. To the delight of cryptophiles everywhere, Sanborn has just released a new clue to the problem.

“I would prefer the piece to remain a secret indefinitely,” Sanborn said. But at 74 years of age, the artist is getting older, and he wants hobbyists to at least have a shot at solving the puzzle that has vexed them so long.

With his new clue he has decoded a word that shows up early on in the fourth paragraph, now revealed to mean “NORTHEAST.” In 2010 and 2014, he had revealed that two middle words "NYPVTT" and “MZFPK” decrypted to “BERLIN” and “CLOCK,” respectively.

Understandably, the new clue has sparked a new flurry of people working on it. Chris Hanson, a software engineer and self-described nerd, helped cofound a long-standing forum for hobbyists interested in finding the Kryptos solution. Users on the forum such as “Monet Freidrich” have helped decrypt text from the sculpture. But Hanson thinks that the encryption that Sanborn developed for the fourth paragraph may be insurmountable, even with the new clue.

“He probably came up with an encryption technique that he thought would be relatively obvious, but he was thinking like an artist,” Hanson said. “To all the cryptographers that think about this mathematically, and from the rigid formal approach, they are gonna go: ‘you did what!?’”

The paragraphs that Sanborn carved out of copper are examples of classical cryptography, where scientists use two primary methods (also called ciphers) to encrypt strings of text. In the first method, letters from the original text are substituted with other letters. For example, replacing the letter “a” with “o” in the word “apple” encrypts it into the new, gibberish word “opple”.

A second encryption method called transposition consists in the rearrangement of letters. For example, the letters in “apple” might be transposed to form the word “palep”, thereby encrypting the original word.

While the first three Kryptos paragraphs either use only substitution or transposition, Hanson suspects that the fourth paragraph uses both. “It turns out if you use substitution and transposition, one after another in either order, especially on a short message, it makes it really wickedly hard to break,” Hanson said.

Modern cryptographic methods convert strings of symbols into zeros and ones before applying the same fundamental techniques. Commercial and military-grade encryption add to that process the use of advanced mathematical algorithms, making encrypted text infeasible to decode with present-day computers.

But even problems in classical cryptography can prove impossibly hard. There are numerous examples of unsolved classical problems, like Enigma messages from World War II.

Whether or not Kryptos will ever be decoded, Sanborn hopes that the mystery of the sculpture will persist across time, echoing the inscrutable paradoxes of science that mystified him as a student.

“I do think this is the final clue, I’m not gonna give another one,” Sanborn said. “Even once it’s cracked, it’s gonna be a riddle, something that’s still controversial and hard to figure out.”



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