There are
currently over 900,000 posts tagged "#oscars" on Instagram. One in particular is a photoshop of Leonardo DiCaprio as Indiana Jones, poised to grab the
award, substituted for the boulder-triggering idol in the first movie. Are all of the posts like this? Images as encouragement for multi-millionaires whom the poster will never meet? DiCaprio is a celebrity among celebrities who works with great directors
and has multiple models Uber'ed to him on any given Wednesday. He doesn't need
you to root for him.
But of course
this is the point of the Oscars. When
they're not meaningless, they promote nothing more than the status quo, and then try
to make us excited about it. Thankfully, they are most often meaningless.
In 1970, the
film critic Rex Reed appeared on The Dick Cavett Show just
before the ceremony, to kneecap the awards. "I don't think they can be
bought," said Reed, blasé, "but blocks of votes can affect awards
because studios get behind their personnel." He goes on to correctly guess
that
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
won't win because it had to split its votes with another
film made by the same studio. Reed also has a "terrible, lurking, poisonous
suspicion" that John Wayne will finally win Best Actor by reminding everyone of
his cowboy legacy in
True Grit. (In
case you can't tell, Reed does not like John Wayne.)
Reed's prognostications
remain excellent because they draw
attention to something we all suspect to be true about the Oscars: that they do
not aim to reward talent, and that most of the time they are a
fait accompli
due to weird agendas, inscrutable studio politics, and arcane etiquette. Anyone
who's seen the 2004 best picture,
Crash,
knows that on some level. Perhaps Reed's other compelling element is his
disaffection with the whole shebang. Because if you regard the Oscars as
anything but the annual, televised offsite retreat of a company that is hugely
profitable despite everything about itself (complete with the crummy inside
jokes), the problem is really with you. The Academy Awards were never meant to
be anything but that.
Initially founded
as the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927, the
Academy was the brainchild of MGM kingpin Louis B. Mayer, who saw it as a way
to circle the wagons and protect every studio from the twin threats of talkies
and unionization. Insularity being the whole point, the "international"
part was dropped not long after this.
Related: Watch our film about the two kids who remade 'Indiana Jones' shot for shot
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The Academy was
first and foremost a trade group, there to keep Hollywood running smoothly from
a business and publicity perspective. Mayer's primary concern was the Studio
Basic Agreement, the first major agreement between the studios and the unions,
but the awards, first a gimmick, came to be useful too.
"I found
that the best way to handle was to hang medals all over
them," Mayer said later, in Scott Eyman's
Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. "If I got them cups and awards
they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted." The awards were never intended to do anything but reward the
most profitable movies that featured politics and morality attractive to
Hollywood at the time. The first ceremony was held in May 1929, at a private
dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first best actor award went
to Emil Jannings, a literal Nazi who would go on to work for Joseph Goebbels.
The awards were
also never intended for public consumption, but that first year publishing magnate
William Randolph Hearst instructed Louella Parsons, gossip columnist for his
papers, to pump them up, because he assumed that he'd be able to obtain one
later for his actress girlfriend Marion Davies, according to Anthony Holden's
Behind the Oscar. The awards were only broadcast on
television, for the first time in 1953, to offset their growing costs.
Over the years
the Academy Award—if it came to mean anything at all—meant a higher gross for
a nominated movie and a higher pay rate for an actor in future roles. In 2010,
a study out of Colgate University
found that male actors can expect an 81-percent bump in salary after winning an
Oscar. Actresses tend to experience no increase at all, perhaps because their
wins tend to come in their mid-30s and the ageist industry offers women fewer
roles as they grow older.
Politically, the
Oscars have never really shaken these conservative, business-oriented origins,
and there are dozens of examples of Hollywood showing its true colors during
the Cold War, from the loyalty oath required of Academy members ("Any
person who... shall have admitted that he is a member of the Communist Party... shall be
ineligible for an Academy Award") to its awarding the 1952 best picture to
a movie called
The Greatest Show on Earth
(Rotten Tomatoes rating: 44 percent),
because it made $12 million (roughly $107
million today), over
High Noon, a
film written by blacklisted writer Carl Foreman that also happens to be one of
the finest pieces of art to come out of that era.
"I found that the best way to handle was to hang medals all over them."
The spectacle of
the awards has come to eclipse the other activities of the Academy. Last year
the event is estimated to have hauled in $100 million in ad revenue. This is
not to say its new cause is not any more worthy. Writing on the 2012 telecast,
New Yorker critic Anthony Lane likened the whole thing to "teenage sex": "It's all about the fizzing buildup,
and the self-persuading aftermath," he observed, a fizz that's only been encouraged
by the internet over the past ten years. "The dafter the matter in hand," he
wrote, "the more swollen the spleen of our opinions."
But even without
an anti-union agenda and the inflated apparatus, the fact that the Academy is
essentially the NRA of movies has led to all kinds of horrible decisions over the
years. Studio dynamics, and a general sense that one has a duty to support
what's best for business, are the only way to account for the fact that Alfred
Hitchcock and Robert Altman never won best director, or the fact that a movie
like
Forrest Gump won over Pulp Fiction.
Anyone over the age of 12 should have a memory of some year where a truly bizarre
movie swept the Academy Awards for reasons that are completely inexplicable
unless you work for a studio.
This year more
people are finally paying attention to how
old, white, conservative, and frankly boring the Academy is, and that's great.
But it's important to remember that each Oscar statuette only costs around $100
to make. To us, the moviegoing public that subsidizes all the surrounding
glamour, the award should never appear to be much more valuable than that.
Let's just get this out of the way: I have epilepsy. For the most part, it's managed by the medication I take every morning and night, but I have this nagging anxiety about when to introduce it in new relationships. I've never convulsed on a guy mid-coitus (at least, not for seizure-related reasons), but I have had seizures on dates before, and trust me, it's surprisingly not cute. Nobody asks for a sexual partner with medical issues—I mean, I don't even want to date a guy with roommates—and my insecurities have led me to enter every relationship thinking that as soon as my partner finds out, he'll leave. It's as if I'm in a polyamorous relationship with my partner and my epilepsy, or a very loveable Anne Hathaway in that movie Love and Other Drugs.
It's not just me. According to the National Society for Epilepsy, one third of women and over half of men with epilepsy say the condition negatively affects their sex life. Besides the anxiety, and you know, the occasional seizure, some epilepsy medications also affect how hormones are processed, which can reduce sex drive. It's all very awkward to explain.
I've written before about how epilepsy affects my sex and dating life, but I wanted to see how other people deal with their chronic illnesses. So I asked some friends who have Crohn's disease, asthma, and narcolepsy how their sex lives have been affected by their illnesses.
Crohn's Disease
Stephanie Mickus, a writer living in Los Angeles, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was 11. Crohn's involves inflammation of the digestive tract, which can cause fatigue, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea. Not super sexy.
Early on, Crohn's affected her dating life. "I was really weak, sick, pale, and for years, was fed through a tube surgically placed in my abdomen," she told me. "I wasn't physically intimate with anyone on any level until I was in college because of this."
That's not uncommon, according to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, which also acknowledges that symptoms like incontinence and constant shitting can ruin "the mood." One man, whose story is highlighted on the organization's website, said his "symptoms hit hardest right after my wedding—cramping and diarrhea. I did not have much energy to be terribly frisky."
Besides the practical elements, dating with an illness like Crohn's can lead to a lot of doubts about relationship longevity. "I've always considered my Crohn's a liability in romantic relationships," said Mickus. "When you're at war with your body, it's hard to feel sexy and be able to express love the way you want to."
Asthma
Remember those kids who got out of PE in elementary school for having asthma? Not so fun once you've grown up and moved onto adult PE (by which I mean, sex). In a study of 350 emergency room patients treated for asthma at the Harlem Hospital in New York, 58 percent reported that asthma inhibited their sex life in some capacity. Some positions limit lung capacity by putting too much pressure on the chest; fucking too fast or for too long can wear out the respiratory system; and the adrenaline, especially during first time sex, can trigger an asthma attack.
As if that's not enough to deal with, asthmatics are also predisposed to a semen allergy. That's what happened to Brittany Meyer (not her real name), who found herself in a precarious situation after swallowing her boyfriend's semen triggered a severe asthma attack. "I had to go to the hospital and stay overnight," she told me. "I was 19 and afraid to tell anyone what actually caused it." Imagine if giving head sent you straight to the ER.
The condition, called human seminal plasma allergy, causes chest tightening, wheezing, full-blown anaphylaxis, and other symptoms when ingesting semen. For someone with asthma, who's already predisposed to these kinds of symptoms, it can be debilitating.
"To this day, my parents are like, 'Is your EpiPen up to date? What about your inhaler? We don't want that freak accident to happen again!'" said Meyer, who hasn't swallowed semen since.
Narcolepsy and Sexsomnia
Extreme tiredness from narcolepsy can lead to low sex drive or impotence, according to the Mayo Clinic, and some narcoleptics will even fall asleep during sex. Studies have also shown that orgasm can be a trigger for cataplexy, a narcolepsy-related condition that can cause someone to collapse from muscle weakness (yet remain conscious) at the onset of extreme emotions—fear, laughter, or orgasm.
Julie Flygare, a narcolepsy spokesperson and author of the narcolepsy memoir Wide Awake and Dreaming, wrote about her struggles with narcolepsy and cataplexy in an article for Women's Health, where she explained, "With orgasms, my head would start falling back like I had whiplash. It was really uncomfortable."
Narcolepsy isn't just limited to lethargy and spontaneous sleep. Another potential symptom is sexsomnia, defined as "sexual vocalizations or conversation, masturbation, sexual fondling, sexual intercourse with or without orgasm, and assaultive sexual behaviors during sleep."
Obviously, the condition comes with huge emotional and even legal repercussions.
"I've woken up in the middle night having sex with girlfriends," said Dustin Marshall, 31, who suffers from sexsomnia. "I'm speaking and functional like I'm awake. I'm scared it could be perceived as rape and technically, it is, if the person doesn't want it." Marshall added that if he does have a sleepover with a girl, he stays awake until sunrise as to not do anything sexual in his sleep.
The consequences of sexsomnia trickle down into several aspects of Marshall's life and his relationships. "To this day, I'm cautious about where I spend the night—at a friends, or even worse, around family members. I have only spent the night at a serious girlfriend's house for years, because I'm horrified it could affect a relationship."
Two guys playing Luchador at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz
Gaming is so close to being fully immersive. Facial recognition software is almost at the point where you can scan your face and render 3D versions of yourself that don't look like disfigured Marvel villains. Virtual reality headsets—once they've sorted out the fact they currently make you feel a bit sick—are nearly able to drop players into the thick of it. Gesture control tech isn't far off when it comes to characters emulating the movements of players. Humans are almost one with the machine.
So, at first, it strikes me as odd that we're apparently in the midst of widespread board game revivalism. Why would people be so enthralled with stationary bits of plastic and card when they have all these expansive interactive worlds accessible to them?
"Without a doubt, we are in the middle of the golden age of board games," says Nick Meenachan, founder of the YouTube channel Board Game Brawl.
He would say that, of course, being a man who founded a YouTube channel about board games. But he's not lying. Sales of board games have been on the rise every year for the past decade; there are listicles of the best board game cafes and bars; Meenachan's is one of many successful YouTube channels focusing on board games, most of which have tens of thousands of followers.
"There's something to be said about being at a table with your friends, live and in-person," says Meenachan when I ask him for his thoughts on the popularity of board games. "These communities will always be connected."
The communities he's referring to aren't anything new. Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons have had strong cult followings since the 1970s and 80s, spawning all sorts of clubs, meet-ups, and conventions—and those continue today. What's surprising is that, even after classics like Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly have been digitized, physical sales continue to grow.
Dave Mills (front left) and the Dark Cleo Productions team
" increased in popularity and become more normal, as with other things that were once niche and geeky and that only nerds played," says Dave Mills, avid board gamer and co-founder of gaming site Dark Cleo Productions, as we walk around the London Gaming Market, an expo held every four months for people who want to buy and trade video games, board games, and all their associated merchandise. "The idea of board gamers was always big, burly guys with complicated battle maps sitting around in dark rooms, but things are different now."
Mills explains that there are "gateway games" he and the Dark Cleo team bring along to game fairs and expos to get people hooked. "Give people a simple game—a theme they can relate to—and then introduce them slowly to the mechanics of other games," he says. "That way, more people can get involved and see the appeal."
Hundreds of new games are being made every year to appeal to all those prospective new converts, many of which rely on crowdfunding to get off the ground. Matt Sloan, founder of Beer & Board Games, and a regular online game reviewer, says, "I think that the ability for board games to reach all the various corners of geek culture is what gets people excited about them, and the niches that they explore can be insanely specific. The possibilities are endless."
He's right: There are plenty of bizarre and sometimes controversial titles appearing in the board game market, like Operation F.A.U.S.T., a game where you have to rescue art from Nazis, Machine of Death: The Creative Assassination Game, and FUCK—The Game.
Could this interest have anything to do with the rejection of video games? Is it like the vinyl revival? Do people want something tangible as a reaction to apps and clouds and expansion packs? Have all the dads in Chucks and vintage T-shirts migrated from Rough Trade to Games Workshop, ready to brag about the rare first pressing of Cluedo they picked up in a flea market?
"I do believe that many gamers have been missing the basic human necessity of human interaction," says Meenachan. "It's just not the same over a microphone while playing some shoot 'em up video game."
Sloan agrees, saying it's the "tactile appeal and face-to-face interaction" that sets board games apart from video games.
Some of the games available at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz
Thing is, there's a huge amount of crossover between the two, and many gamers play both. MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like World of Warcraft share many similarities with classics like Dungeons & Dragons, and among those I speak to there doesn't seem to be a pick-your-side mentality. However, this doesn't mean they're the same: They exist for different reasons, and each has its own appeal. Board games are books to video games movies: Your imagination drives the gameplay; you add meaning and excitement to the inanimate cards and figures that sit motionless in front of you.
Mills from Dark Cleo suggests that younger generations taking an interest in board games could help to set them up with valuable life skills. "You learn life strategies and principles—strategic thinking, social skills, learning to lose and win," he says. "In some games, you have to learn that when you're going down one path and it's not working out, you need to change paths and rethink things. The games often teach us these things without us realizing it: organization, resource management, preplanning, changing your moves."
In an in-depth "board versus video game" thread on Reddit, many argued that solo play is both a pro and con of video gaming. Some said that gathering friends together and setting up boards was a hassle, while others suggested the isolation of video gaming has driven people towards tabletop gaming. So it's a predictably mixed bag of opinions from a discussion between loads of strangers online. However, the isolation point was interesting, considering the growing market for marathon YouTube videos of people playing board games.
Related: Watch 'eSports,' our documentary about the world of competitive video gaming.
Why, for instance, if one the main appeals of board games is social interaction, has this eight-hour video of people playing Risk Legacy gotten over 4,000 views? "It's satisfying, even if only vicariously, to watch others enjoy games that ," says Meenachan, suggesting that these videos are just a way for the disconnected to connect.
"Board games are timeless and ageless," says Mills from Dark Cleo. "We've had granddads bring their eight-year-old grandsons to conventions, and they've both sat down and played a game together. I've been involved in several groups and societies, and you get a lot of people who suffer from social anxieties or even autism and other disabilities, but they're welcomed in. You've all got something to focus on, and the social side of it comes naturally."
This open-armed ethos is certainly something to be lauded, and whether or not the skills you learn on the tabletop really do translate into life lessons, watching the groups of people playing "gateway games" at the London Games Market made me realize the simple of attraction of it all. As one Reddit user wrote: "I value board games more because playing a board game simply means I am with my friends."
This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.
The arguments for the war on drugs are collapsing all around us. Today, some 53 percent of US citizens think this war has not been worth the cost—while only 19 percent think it has. As I saw when I traveled to a dozen countries for my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, whenever a state or nation decides to move beyond the drug war, there's a three-step dance. It is massively controversial, and there's a lot of anxiety; then people see in practice what it means; and then support goes up, and stays up.
After Colorado legalized marijuana, and people saw the legal, tax-paying, kid-proof stores in practice, support went up—and now 58 percent support it, and only 38 percent want to go back to prohibition.
After Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and transferred all the money spent on punishing addicted people to improving their lives, injecting drug use fell by 50 percent. Even the cop who led the opposition to the decriminalization publicly changed his mind, and he told me he hoped the whole world would now follow Portugal's example.
After Switzerland legalized heroin for addicted people over a decade ago (called heroin-assisted treatment, or HAT), literally nobody has died of an overdose on legal heroin, and crime fell significantly. That's why even the Swiss electorate—who are highly conservative—voted to keep heroin legal by 70 percent in a nationwide referendum.
As this debate starts to become more mainstream in America, there are lots of misunderstandings and misapprehensions being passed off as fact. That's natural—this is a complex subject, and the people who are anxious about it are overwhelmingly decent folk who want to protect their kids and prevent harm. But their fears are overwhelmingly unfounded. There are three major concepts that help dispel some of the concerns around legalization.
Concept 1: The Risk Premium
The worst aspect of the war on drugs—I believe—is the violence caused by drug prohibition, in precisely the way that alcohol prohibition created Al Capone. When a substance is illegal, dealers are forced to resort to violence to protect their turf.
As I wrote here, imagine you run a liquor store. If someone steals a bottle of vodka and you catch them, you can call the police—so you don't need to be violent, or intimidating. But if you're selling cannabis or crack, and someone tries to rob you, you have to fight them—you have no recourse to the law. And you have to fight them in a way that will make sure nobody else tries to mess with you ever again. The war on drugs, as Charles Bowden put it, creates a war for drugs—fought out with guns and blood.
But many people respond by arguing that legalization will not, in fact, bankrupt drug-dealers, and they will, in fact, carry on in the same way afterwards. The conservative British commentator, Simon Heffer, made the case that legalization would still allow a black market of illegal traffickers and dealers to flourish because legal drugs would be more expensive. And Guardian commentator Deborah Orr says in an otherwise on-the-money piece that gangs will "always be able to sell cheaper... than a taxed and regulated market could or should."
Many people believe this. But both arguments are based on a failure to understand the "risk premium" involved in a prohibited market.
The best way to explain it is with another thought experiment. Imagine if I asked you to carry a bottle of rum across your city, to deliver to my aunt for her birthday. You wouldn't ask for much money—it's a fairly menial task. Now imagine I asked you to carry her not some rum, but a bag of cannabis, or a bag of cocaine. You'd be pretty wary. You'd likely say no. And if you were going to do it, you'd want to be paid a lot more than for carrying the rum—to cover the risk you are taking of getting a criminal record, or of going to prison.
That difference is called the "risk premium"—and it happens at every link in the chain when a drug is illegal. The farmer who grows the cannabis, or opium, or coca—in Colombia or Afghanistan or Morocco—has to be paid a higher premium for the risk he takes. The guy who then makes it into your drug in a lab has to be paid a higher premium for the risk he takes. The people who transport it across borders—usually a chain of people—have to each be paid a higher premium for the risk they take. And the guys who sell it to you directly have to be paid a higher premium for the risk they take.
Each time, that risk premium pushes the price up, and up, and up.
When you legalize—and transfer the market to legitimate businesses—there's no risk premium for legal businesses. They aren't taking any more risks than they would if they were selling potatoes, or copies of the Bible. And once the risk premium is gone, the legal product will be significantly cheaper than the prohibited product.
This shows us why the picture Simon Heffer and Deborah Orr (and, to be fair, many others) are promoting isn't right.
Now, there's a different and opposite concern they don't raise. You don't want there to be a big collapse in price when you legalize, because that might increase use. (If you make something cheaper, more people can afford it: If I halved the price of beer tonight, more of you would drink it.) So you make up the gap with taxes on those drugs—just as they have in Colorado and Washington. This is how you hold the price steady while bankrupting the criminal gangs. You also get the bonus that you can then spend on lots of great things, like schools, and proper compassionate care for addicted people to turn their lives around.
And if you doubt that legalizing this way bankrupts cartels, ask yourself: Where's the Pablo Escobar of gin? Where's the El Chapo of Bacardi? Since the end of alcohol prohibition, there has been no such person. When alcohol prohibition ended, the Al Capones of alcohol ended. Illegal businesses didn't persist in supplying the drug because the risk premium meant legal businesses undercut them every time.
Concept 2: Prohibition, a Vast Investment Bank for Crime
Many people argue that when you end the war on drugs, criminal gangs will simply transfer to other forms of criminality—whether it's human trafficking, or prostitution, or kidnapping, or even more depraved "trades," like child pornography.
In fact, there are two arguments that should help us to think about this differently.
The late 1920s and early 1930s are widely regarded in the US—darkly—as the golden age of kidnapping. Everybody remembers the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby and his eventual death. But it was one of a widespread rash of kidnappings at that time, one which has long since ebbed away.
Why would there be a sudden spike in kidnappings at that time?
In trying to solve this puzzle, it's worth noting that Colombia had a big spike in kidnappings in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. And today, northern Mexico is the kidnapping capital of the world.
Why did they also spike at that time?
There's one reason that's pretty clear. Let's imagine you and I decided to kidnap a rich person's child and hold him or her for ransom. (Before you call the FBI, I'm only thinking out loud here.) We need to spend a lot of time scouting out where the victim goes and where he can be snatched. We need a car. We need a driver. We need a place to keep the child where nobody will hear him. We need a team of people to watch the kidnappee round the clock. We need a detailed plan for how to demand the money and where the drop will be. And on, and on.
Kidnapping, it turns out, is a capital-intensive business. You need to invest a lot up-front.
You have to get that money from somewhere. There are no kidnappers' loans at your local Bank of America. You have to get it from other criminals.
Now you can begin to see why it spiked up in the US at the peak of alcohol prohibition, and in Colombia and Mexico at the height of drug prohibition.
When you ban a popular substance—alcohol or cannabis or cocaine—it doesn't vanish. It's transferred from legal businesses to criminals. Suddenly, those criminals have a lot more money than they had before—billions more. What do they do with their money? Some they take home as profit—and, like any businessmen, they invest some of the rest in other business enterprises. Like, for example, kidnapping.
Prohibition, in effect, creates a vast investment bank for crime. They use that investment bank to spread criminality to other spheres.
And that's why reclaiming drugs from criminal gangs likely won't increase kidnapping and other forms of crime; it'll decrease it. When alcohol prohibition ended, the famous kidnapping cases in the US bled away. When the center of the drug trade shifted from Colombia to Mexico, the eruption of kidnapping moved with it. That should tell us something.
Concept 3: Why Criminals Commit Crimes
Some people will respond to this by saying, "Yes, but some people are just inherently criminal. If they can't commit one form of crime, they'll just commit another form of crime because that's their nature." There's a certain quantity of the population who are inherently criminal, and all we can do is catch and detain them. You could call this the "quantity theory of crime."
So after we legalize, the criminals will move onto another area of crime—like the ones I listed above.
But there's a different way of thinking about crime. It suggests that criminals are people who are motivated like the rest of us—by incentives. If I asked you to smuggle a bag of cannabis or cocaine across the US-Mexico border as a favor to me, I bet you'd say no. If I offered you a million dollars, you might think twice. If I—as some weird drug-obsessed deity—offered you a billion dollars, I bet you'd think very hard about doing it. Think of this as the "incentive theory of crime."
Which of these theories is right? It turns out we can, in fact, test them to see. And the evidence is very clear. There's a whole field of sociology known as the "economics of crime," and we know its findings.
Criminals are, in fact, human, and they do, in fact, usually respond to incentives. It's why when youth unemployment goes up, generally crime by young people goes up: Crime seems more financially appealing when there are fewer alternatives. It's why when wages go down for low-skilled workers, crime generally goes up too: You can earn more, Walter White-style, through crime. And on, and on: There's a good summary of the evidence by two professors at the London School of Economics here. The evidence that crime is affected by incentives is overwhelming.
So if you take away control of one of the biggest industries in the world—with a 300 percent profit margin from production to sale—you take away a large incentive to commit crime. And this evidence suggests that lots of people will transfer out of crime. They're not doing it out of some criminal essence buried in their bones, but because they want a slice of the cash, and the excitement, provided by a prohibited market.
If the amount of money to be made in, say, plumbing fell by 90 percent in 2016, would there be more or fewer people who were plumbers in 2017? The same principle applies to the drug trade. When you reduce incentives, you reduce numbers of people who take up the incentives.
Some of them will try to go into other forms of criminality, of course—but those markets are already, alas, being met. Let's think about the most commonly-cited alternative to dealing drugs: pimping. There is already a market among men who want to pay for sex, and it is already being met. The day after a drug is legalized, there won't be more people who want to pay for sex than there were the week before. That market already has a group of (vile) criminals who control it. Without an increase in demand, there won't be a big increase in incentives, so there won't be a big increase in people taking them up.
Again, this isn't theoretical. In Switzerland, after it legalized heroin for people who were already addicted to the drug, the country didn't see an increase in prostitution and pimping. In fact, as I learned when I reported there and interviewed people on the ground, the opposite happened. Because women working the streets were given legal heroin and support to turn their lives around, street prostitution virtually ended, and it has never gone back to the level it was before, when heroin was in the hands of criminals.
If the people who believe in the quantity theory of crime were right, that would make no sense—the drug dealers would have transferred to being pimps. But pimping was in reality radically reduced. It is there for us to learn from.
There's a lot, of course, we still don't know about ending the war on drugs. To paraphrase what Barack Obama said when he was running for the White House about ending the war in Iraq, we need to be as careful getting out of this war as we were careless getting in. But there are plenty of things we do know, from the experiment with alcohol prohibition, and the experiments with ending drug prohibition that are now happening all over the world, from Uruguay to Washington to Switzerland.
But there is one thing I learned above everything else—one that led me to these concepts. As we end the drug war, we have to be guided not by fear, but—at last, at long last—by cool, hard facts.
This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook orTwitter.
It may sound kinda dumb, but I told you these tricks would be stupid! ;) If your goal is to have an epic orgasm, you’ve gotta want it. Tell yourself you’re giving your parter the best damn luvin’ s/he’s every received, contract those pelvic muscles, and voilà! You’ll be climaxing like never before.
2. Make lube your best friend.
TRUST: Lube will be the key to your sexual success. In order to enjoy sex, being properly lubricated for the act is a MUST. Do yourself a major solid and add a fat tub of coconut oil—nature’s (incredible) lube—to your next Amazon shipment. It smells delicious, it melts on contact with your skin, and it’ll change your sex life, guaranteed.
3. Take. Your. Tiiiime.
One of the best ways to enhance your sexual pleasure is to ease your way into sex. Don’t rush it—spend at least a half an hour touchin’ and teasin’ before you get to bangin’. A hot, occasional quickie is always fun, but generally, the slower the burn, the bigger the O.
4. Cuddle!
For real. Cuddling (and other intimate love-gestures) prompts your body to release oxytocin—the “love hormone”—which, in turn, delivers a far grander finale.
5. Make sure you’re getting ample practice.
If you don’t know how to pleasure yourself, your partner never will. Do the both of you a favor and get to know your body and what makes it tingle—alone—on a regular basis.
6. Go toy shopping.
It’s 2016, y’all. If the human body and all its accoutrements aren’t enough to give you the pleasure you need, stop by your friendly neighborhood sex shop, and pick up some reinforcements.
7. Show your clit serious love!
YOUR CLITORIS IS VERY NEEDY, I repeat, YOUR CLITORIS IS VERY NEEDY! If you’re not showing her the love and attention she deserves, you’re cheating yourself out of the best sex you can have. Get her involved. Always!
8. And, finally, do your damn kegels!
Life hack for women everywhere tryna climax: Once a day, when you go pee, hold your urine flow for 10 seconds. It’s low-key hard af, but it’s a great way to strengthen your pelvic muscles, and strong pelvic muscles = FIRE orgasms!
"The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city," writes Parag Khanna. The author of several books on global strategy, Khanna argues that (some) cities, as islands of good governance in an increasingly unstable world, will become the cornerstone of a new World order.
That new world order won't be a "global village" of nation states, for globalisation is corroding national sovereignty. Rather, it will be a loose network of semi-independent city states, perhaps resembling the Hanseatic League and other medieval trading alliances.
One difference between the city states of the Middle Ages and those of the 21st century: the decreasing significance of Europe. Even though half the world already lives in cities, urbanisation is still speeding up — but mainly in Africa and Asia. Over the next 20 years, 275 million Indians are projected to move from country to city. By 2025, China will have 15 megacities with 25 million inhabitants each. Europe will have none.
Yet perhaps Europe too can already be understood as a network of city states, rather than a patchwork of nation states. It may lack urban megacities the size of Mexico or Mumbai, but its biggest cities transcend their anchor countries, and share more characteristics with similar metropolises than with their own hinterlands.
In all, Europe counts 305 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants, and 99 metropolitan areas with over 1 million people. The biggest of these metro areas have far outgrown their historical urban cores. Metro London has a population of around 13.6 million, of which only 24 percent live in Inner London. Of Metro Paris' 11.9 million citoyens, no more than 19 percent live inside the historical boundaries of the ville de Paris. Numbers three and four are both in Spain: Madrid (6.4 million) and Barcelona (5.4 million). Five and six are German: the Ruhrgebiet and Berlin (both around 5 million).
This map shows the largest of Europe's conurbations. While maintaining the geographical shape of the continent, the map both erases national boundaries and shows with an immediate clarity which are Europe's major urban centres: London, Paris, and Istanbul — all counting more than 10 million inhabitants. Then come the Spanish and German megacities. Athens and Italy's three biggest cities are the only other larger conurbations. The rest of Europe is dominated by mid-sized metropolises such as Frankfurt, Birmingham, Budapest, or Lisbon, or smaller ones like Antwerp, Gdansk, or Bilbao.
For much of the 20th century, urban growth seemed a thing of the past, at least in Western Europe, where historical urban cores had been emptying out. Inner London lost 55 percent of its inhabitants between 1911 and 1991. The ville de Paris has shrunk by more than 25 percent compared to 1921. Copenhagen's population diminished by 35 percent over a comparable stretch of time. Most of the population drained away into suburbs and exurbs, effectively extending urbanity to well beyond the core city.
Since 2000, this "urban draining" has been reversed, largely as a result of migration from beyond national borders. However, not all urban areas are growing at the same speed — or are growing at all. All of Italy's and Greece's urban centres are losing inhabitants, as are the Ruhr and Katowice, Ostrava and Bucharest. Biggest winners? Istanbul and Ankara, plus two other Turkish cities, and Brussels and Amsterdam — all gaining more than 2 percent p.a. Growing more modestly, at 1 percent, are the English and Scandinavian cities, and a scattering of towns across Europe and Turkey.
The Kurdish key - "Kurds are key to a Middle East solution as they hold the balance of power in Iraq and Syria, as well as being in the midst of an insurrection in Turkey. The US needs the Kurds as much as it needs the Turks in its efforts to defeat Isis." (also btw /r/Kurdistan: Who Exactly Are 'the Kurds'?; End Times for the Caliphate?)
Xiaodong Lin-Siegler, an associate professor of cognitive studies at Columbia University's Teachers College who led the study, told Quartz that the results surprised her. The experiment could have gone two ways, she explained: Learning that Einstein or Curie struggled could lead kids to throw up their hands and say "if Einstein can't do it, then I certainly can't either." Or, it might inspire them by showing that everyone—even the greats—face seemingly insurmountable challenges.
"In our culture we always say you don't want to intimidate kids, you don't want to tell them how hard the work is," she noted. But the experiment showed the opposite strategy works better: Showing how great scientists had to muddle through lots of tough stuff made the subject matter real and allowed students to connect with them as people.
La llegada del rock and roll a Inglaterra supuso toda una hecatombe para una sociedad acostumbrada considerar a sus jóvenes deudores de esfuerzos pasados: ellos habían ganado la guerra y aseguraban que este (la Inglaterra que se recuperaba de los bombardeos) era el mejor de los mundos posibles. Cuando irrumpió el rock and roll y el pop, creando subculturas acostumbradas al baile y la moda como rockers, mods o teddy boys, que aterrorizaban barrios enteros de la capital, cada semana surgían nombres de bailes que triunfaban entre los adolescentes. «The shake» fue uno de estos bailes.
Primeros años sesenta. Adolescentes ingleses bailan el shake
El baile se convirtió en una amenaza. Esa amenaza llegó incluso a la Unión Soviética. A comienzos de los sesenta, los shakers podían verse en un puñado de lugares, casi siempre clandestinos, de las principales ciudades soviéticas. Habían tenido a sus stiliagui (el equivalente soviético de los beatniks) y muchos no dudaron en calificarlo de «nefasta influencia occidental».
Uno de los más enconados antishakers fue Ígor Moiséyev, entonces director de la Compañía Rusa de Baile y nombrado en 1953 Artista del Pueblo de la Unión Soviética, quien acusó al shake de ser la «ideología de la anarquía». Todo formaba parte de un malvado plan. Para Ígor, el baile había sido introducido de forma deliberada por las potencias occidentales para corromper los valores soviéticos. El baile, según él, no era otra cosa que «ejercicios libres de sexo».
Instrucciones para bailar el shake
Las ideas del rock and roll llegaban en contadísimas excepciones a mercadillos ilegales de discos y entre muy pocos fans que debían esconder esas inclinaciones: «Muchos de los llamados bailes modernos, deben ser considerados peligrosos. El aspecto imprudente de espectáculos de este tipo pueden afectar a un hombre normal», afirmó. El shake estaría liderando una avanzadilla de anarquía y vandalismo: «El shake está subordinado a los mismos elementos anárquicos que lideran la decadencia de la pintura, escultura, teatro y la novela occidental».
Ígor Moiséyev
El soviet se venía abajo y todo por culpa de los shakers: «Estos bailes echan por tierra todo aquello que es característico del pueblo soviético: el espíritu colectivo, el sentido común en las relaciones humanas. la forma de vivir y el deseo de que nos relacionemos con armonía las distintas personalidades». Mientras tanto, a pesar de las apocalípticas palabras de Ígor, cada vez más jóvenes soviéticos hacían oídos sordos. La anarquía era imparable.
Instrucciones para bailar el Hitch-hike, otro baile similar al shake
The frug, al igual que el shaker y el hitch-hike, se hizo famoso por aquellos años
Las claves del célebre bend it
En el «otro lado» sucedía algo parecido: para una parte de los ingleses, tras el fenómeno del baile se escondía el fantasma de la locura, el extremismo y la violencia. En ambos casos, en el este y el oeste, el baile significaba liberación, crítica, locura.
En la novela de ciencia ficción Mundoanillo, de Larry Niven, se describe un dispositivo que induce una corriente de placer extremo en el centro del cerebro. Probablemente todos adquiriríamos uno de esos dispositivos si estuviera disponible. La buena noticia es que ya existe. La mala…, que no debería existir.
El primer botón de la felicidad
Decía Hemingway que «la felicidad no es más que buena salud y mala memoria». Es una de tantas recetas que ponen de manifiesto el anhelo por obtener una felicidad casi edénica. Sin embargo, la forma en la que ancestralmente se ha accedido a ese reino ha sido a través de las drogas. Una actitud que también puede observarse en diversas especies animales.
En definitiva, todas las criaturas buscan la felicidad, porque esta se asocia a la supervivencia (y quienes no la buscaron, pues, ya se extinguieron). La felicidad está, en consecuencia, relacionada con el placer, que a su vez está estrechamente vinculado con la nutrición y la reproducción.
Sin embargo, la mayoría de accesos al Edén son costosos, no son perdurables y tienen efectos secundarios gravosos (por ejemplo, en el caso de la nutrición y la reproducción: obesidad y superpoblación, respectivamente). Hasta hace poco. Imaginemos que pudiéramos hackear los circuitos neuronales de la felicidad. Que pudiéramos producir felicidad a granel sin necesidad de buscar todas las cosas que nos proporcionan efímeros instantes de felicidad.
La estimulación de un área cerebral muy concreta, el núcleo accumbens, basta para suscitar un efecto gratificante, si bien la felicidad está cimentada en experiencias más complejas. Con todo, tal y como explica el neurólogo holandés Dick Swaab en su libro Somos nuestro cerebro:
«Un tumor cerebral en el lóbulo temporal también puede inducir a esa clase de experiencias de felicidad extática, como al sentir un contacto directo con Jesús. Después de que el tumor hubiese sido extirpado, la persona no volvió a tener esas experiencias».
Pasando por alto las leyes éticas más elementales, Robert Galbraith Heath, director del Departamento de Psiquiatría y Neurología de la Universidad Tulane, de Nueva Orleans, experimentó hace unas décadas con los centros del placer del cerebro en pacientes afroamericanos de centros psiquiátricos sin el consentimiento informado de los mismos.
Tras concebir un pulsador que, al ser accionado, generaba una corriente eléctrica que estimulaba el centro del placer del cerebro, descubrió que sus pacientes se volvían adictos a ese pulsador, olvidándose incluso de comer. Otros experimentos similares llevados a cabo por otros investigadores en mujeres dieron resultados de adicción compulsiva a la recompensa, como explica el neurólogo David J. Linden en su libro La brújula del placer:
«La paciente se autoestimulaba todo el día hasta el punto de descuidar su aseo personal y sus obligaciones familiares. Acabó con una ulceración crónica en la punta del dedo que empleaba para ajustar la intensidad de la estimulación, una intensidad que intentaba aumentar manipulando el aparato. A veces suplicaba a su familia que le limitara el acceso al estimulador, pero no tardaba en exigir que se lo devolvieran».
En 1985, la estimulación magnética transcraneal (TMS) fue desarrollada por Anthony Barker en Sheffield, Inglaterra. Mediante el uso de un imán para despolarizar las neuronas, este método no requiere de cirugía invasiva para estimular el cerebro. Ha sido aprobado por la FDA para el tratamiento del trastorno depresivo mayor en pacientes adultos, pero solo si los medicamentos recetados han fallado.
En internet también empiezan a comercializarse los primeros dispositivos para practicar el wireheading, la estimulación directa, no exenta de riesgos, de los centros cerebrales. Y, a pesar del peligro que entrañan, hasta se ofrecen tutoriales para construirse en casa uno propio. En highexistence podemos leer un ejemplo de esta nueva tendencia, y también cómo describen de un modo un poco exagerado, y engañoso, los efectos que se pueden obtener:
«Imagina, por un segundo, la dicha definitiva. Éxtasis + ese primer beso + el climax de tu canción preferida + ganar la lotería + el mejor orgasmo que hayas tenido en tu vida x 1.000.000.000. Un placer tan alucinante que casi duele. ¿Y si pudieras vivirlo las veinticuatro horas al día, los siete días de la semana, sin cansarte jamás?».
El secreto es la felicidad con cuentagotas
La felicidad absoluta es la muerte biológica (como hemos visto anteriormente) y también mental (imaginad una psique construida únicamente con los mimbres buenrollistas y simplones de Mr. Wonderful). Pero la falta de felicidad absoluta también lo es, como podemos observar en la anhedonia, una de las características de la depresión que también aparece en la esquizofrenia y el autismo.
El exceso de optimismo que deriva de la felicidad sin fisuras también es contraproducente. Puede empujarnos a llevar a cabo acciones imprudentes que finalmente nos dañen. Y, en determinadas situaciones, la idea de que las cosas siempre mejoran puede originar un bucle de insatisfacción permanente, tal y como sucedía en un estudio de George Loewenstein, del Carnegie Mellon, en el que plantearon un caso hipotético de colostomía a pacientes del centro médico de Michigan. Tal y como explica Joseph T. Hallinan en sus libro Las trampas de la mente, los que tenían una colostomía permamente eran más felices que quienes la tenían reversible:
«Durante el periodo de seis meses, los investigadores hallaron que los que tenían colostomías permanentes mejoraron rápidamente. Pero los que tenían colostomías reversibles permanecían relativamente insatisfechos. ¿Por qué? La conclusión de Loeweinstein es que «la esperanza impide la adaptación». En otras palabras, si usted tiene que soportar algo, aprenda a vivir con ello. Y cuanto más pronto aprenda a vivir con ello, más feliz será».
A los efectos contraproducentes del optimismo desaforado se les llamada paradoja de Stockedale.
Habida cuenta de cómo funcionan los circuitos de recompensa del cerebro, encontrar una forma de burlarlos y ofrecer siempre una felicidad completa parece que entraría en conflicto con nuestra propia supervivencia. La razón de que el ser humano viva, actúe, piense, sueñe y trace planes estriba en que persigue una felicidad esquiva. Si esta ya se obtiene de forma permanente, sin fisuras, entonces probablemente, como sucedía en los experimentos de Galbraith, nos olvidaríamos de comer, y hasta de vivir. O como lo resume Juan José Sebreli en El asedio a la modernidad:
«El optimismo absoluto es la negación del progreso porque considera que vivimos en el mejor de los mundos, que no es necesario cambiar nada, todo lo que pasa está bien. La idea de progreso es una combinación de pesimismo (las cosas están mal) y de optimismo (las cosas pueden mejorar); pesimista con respecto al presente, a la realidad presentada; optimista en lo referido al porvenir, a las posibilidades».
Durante tres décadas, la artista española hizo un exitoso número de magia vaginal en los cabarets de Benidorm. Su adiós con 72 años es el fin de una era.
¿Las máquinas de cápsulas son ETA? Para el común de los mortales, no, puesto que han encontrado en ellas un trasto capaz de hacer café de la manera más comodona posible. Sin embargo, los auténticos aficionados a esta bebida sí las miran con recelo, convencidos de que el buen café no vive en un vasito de Nespresso o similar.
La explosión no acabó con su vida de inmediato. A duras penas logró avanzar unos metros hasta desplomarse. Tenía el cuerpo destrozado: había perdido su mano izquierda y el estómago estaba reventado. Los primeros en encontrarlo fueron unos niños. Luego, cuando llegó la policía, por mucho que lo intentaron, nadie logró arrancarle una confesión del motivo del atentado. Murió al poco de llegar al hospital de Seaman. Fue el 15 de febrero de 1894, cuando caía la tarde, y después de que el anarquista Martial Bourdin, un francés de veintiséis años, dejase su habitación de Fitzroy street, Londres, para llegar hasta el Real Observatorio de Greenwich, en el parque Greenwich.
El Real Observatorio de Greenwich instantes después del atentado, según los artistas Rod Dickinson y Tom McCarthy
Era la época de los grandes atentados anarquistas que sobre todo asolaban Francia y Rusia, aunque toda Europa vivía bajo el miedo a las «máquinas infernales» que dinamitaban casi cada semana. Bourdin era una incógnita. En su chaqueta se le encontró una elevada suma de dinero, lo que hizo sospechar a los agentes que, tras la acción, pretendía abandonar el país. El atentado desató una feroz represión contra los anarquistas ingleses, que casi no conocían el terrorismo. El club Autonomía fue registrado en un intento de las autoridades por trazar una conexión entre los temidos anarquistas franceses de la propaganda por el hecho y los ingleses.
Ilustración que muestra el momento posterior del atentado. Bourdin, de rodillas y herido y, tras él, un agente de policía
Poco después, el atentado sirvió de inspiración para Joseph Conrad y su novela El agente secreto, en la que Bourdin es Adolf Verloc, quien es instigado por los rusos para destruir el Real Observatorio. Al igual que Bourdin, Verloc no logra su objetivo y muere a causa de la explosión.
La noticia en un periódico de la época. Secuencia del atentado: la habitación de Bourdin y los alrededores del Real Observatorio
Sin embargo, la pregunta que todo el mundo se hacía era otra: ¿Por qué había atentado contra el Real Observatorio? El objetivo no había sido un teatro, una comisaría o un café burgués, que una y otra vez estaban siendo atacados por los anarquistas, sino una institución científica. Entonces, ¿cuál era la razón? Bourdin atentó contra el centro del mundo, su meridiano cero, el exacto meridiano base o primer meridiano. Alrededor de aquellas fechas, Greenwich era tomado como una manera de medir el mundo, de establecer sus coordenadas. Teóricamente, la tierra se movía según su meridiano, y el 15 de febrero de 1894, cuando abandonó su habitación para llevar a cabo el plan criminal, se dirigía al centro del mundo, a su mismo corazón, a la línea que iba de norte a sur y que lo atravesaba.
Su exactitud en la fecha resultó pasmosa: ese mismo año, el meridiano fue adoptado como referencia en una conferencia internacional celebrada en Washington y a la que asistieron delegados de veinticinco países. Entre los acuerdos que se adoptaron estaba el considerar el meridiano que atravesaba el Real Observatorio como el meridiano inicial. Es decir, el centro del mundo.
El meridiano de Greenwich de Londres
Sin embargo, Bourdin erró en sus cálculos, aunque su equivocación es comprensible: por entonces no existía el GPS. Actualmente sabemos que existe un desplazamiento del meridiano, quedando situado unos cien metros al este del meridiano de Greenwich del Observatorio. Casi el centro del mundo.
John Oliver dedicó su Last Week Tonight de este domingo a Donald Trump. Según el cómico, el aspirante a candidato republicano a la presidencia es ese lunar en la espalda de Estados Unidos: “Parecía inofensivo hace un año, pero ha crecido de forma aterradora e ignorarlo ya no nos parece inteligente”.
Oliver le llamó “mentiroso en serie” y desmontó su imagen pública. Por ejemplo, citó a Politifact, una web que comprueba la veracidad de las declaraciones de los políticos. Politifact reunió 77 declaraciones de Trump y concluyó que el 76% de ellas incluía “algún grado de falsedad”, incluyendo su afirmación de que su campaña no se financia con donantes (un tercio de sus fondos son donativos y además su propio dinero está puesto a modo de préstamo).
El cómico también desmontó la idea de que Trump es una marca de éxito y recordó cómo el empresario lanzó una compañía hipotecaria en 2006, poco antes de la crisis, entre otros proyectos de dudosa viabilidad y similar resultado, como su marca de vodka. La revista Time ya hizo una lista en 2011 con los diez fracasos más sonados del empresario, repasando los momentos en los que ha tenido que declararse en quiebra.
Pero la escena culminante del programa fue cuando Oliver citó el libro de la periodista Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations That Built An Empire ("Los Trump: tres generaciones que construyeron un imperio"). Según este libro, el apellido familiar es Drumpf y lo cambió uno de sus antepasados durante la Guerra de los Treinta Años, en el siglo XVII. La familia de Trump es originaria de Kallstadt, en Alemania, y su abuelo emigró a Estados Unidos en 1885.
Hay que recordar que la palabra Trump en inglés significa sobrepasar, triunfar, además de triunfo en los juegos de cartas, y que el empresario ha puesto su apellido al frente de todos sus negocios. En cambio y como recuerda el Boston Globe citando el libro de Blair, “Drumpf suena casi cómico en inglés". Como dice Oliver: “Drumpf es el sonido que hace un gorrión obeso mórbido cuando se estrella contra el escaparate de una tienda cerrada de Old Navy. ¡Drumpf!”.
Oliver contó que ha iniciado los trámites para convertir Drumpf en una marca registrada y ya ha abierto la web DonaldDrumpf.com. En esa página uno puede descargarse una extensión de Chrome que cambia todos los 'Trump' del navegador por 'Drumpf' y comprarse una gorra con el eslogan: “Make Donald Drumpf Again”, que juega con el lema de campaña de Trump (“Make America Great Again!”). Y el hashtag #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain suma más de 300.000 tuits solo en las últimas 24 horas.
¿Esto puede molestar a Trump? Aunque suene a poca cosa, es muy posible que le ponga nervioso. Oliver recuerda que un periodista de Spy le llamó en 1998 “ordinario de dedos cortos” y desde entonces el autor recibe fotos de Trump con un círculo alrededor de sus manos para subrayar que sus dedos son normales, habitualmente con una nota que dice: “¿Lo ves? No tan cortos”.
* Para que no te pierdas nada, nosotros te mandamos lo mejor de Verne a tu móvil: ¡únete a nuestro Telegram telegram.me/verneelpais!
Niantic announced a new partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) earlier this year. It’s for a brand new mobile game, NBA All-World, which also now has a release date.
The NBA All-World release date is set for January 24, 2023, and it’s a free-to-play title that allows you to find pro ballers that live near you. You then challenge them in a bid to find out who’s superior on the court, and if you win, you get to recruit them for your team. Yes, this is the first of its kind when it comes to sports, and we’re glad it’s Niantic at the helm.
Furthermore, not only is this game a terrific way for you to interact with like-minded individuals that love the NBA as much as you do, and compete against some of your favourite players on their home turf, but you can also customise your character to give a unique feel.
The Plant Food Tree of Life leads you through the major plant foods and their evolutionary relationships. It is a complement to the list view of the same information, in which each link takes you to a related article at the excellent blog, The Botanist in the Kitchen.
Photo by Daniel Arnold from our magazine photo series, 'Photos of the Wolfpack's First Visit to Hollywood'
Two guys playing Luchador at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz
Dave Mills (front left) and the Dark Cleo Productions team
Some of the games available at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz
