May the lols be with you.
On Friday the moment we've all been waiting for finally arrived: The trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was finally unveiled.
The Best Of The Internet's Reactions To The New "Star Wars" Trailer
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30 Gifts Anyone Obsessed With Food Will Love
Are you perpetually covered in crumbs? Is there pizza grease on your chin? These are the gifts for you.
Mallory McInnis / Buzzfeed
What Did I Eat Today?: A Food Lover's Journal
For keeping track of the most important moments in the day.
Paramount Pictures / Via nitratediva.tumblr.com
Eyes on the Fries Pouch
For storing snacks (it's supposed to be for make-up, but let's be real here).
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It Finally Happened! Australian Broadcasters Had A Battle And It Was Amazing!
If you were too busy watching Beauty and The Geek last night you missed quite possibly the best six minutes of Aussie TV, ever!
The most anticipated Australian media event since the debut of Seven's Celebrity Splash in 2013 has finally aired! Ladies and gentlemen, Celebrity Battleground on SBS2's The Feed.
It was an event years in the making, with every free-to-air network in Australia finally having a showdown, including the crew from ABC News...
Sandra Sully and Hugh Riminton from Ten's Eyewitness News.
Damn Hugh, harsh.
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17 Dads Who Totally Won 2014
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This Is What The Kardashians Look Like Without Makeup
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37 Awesome "Simpsons" Cameos You May Have Missed As A Kid
A guide to some of the guest spots you might have forgotten.
Fox
Larry Busacca / Getty Images
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There's A New Teensy Baby Quokka To Obsess Over
THAT LITTLE SMILE!
Say "good morning" to Mia! She's a six-month-old Quokka joey at the Taronga Zoo.
Taronga Zoo
Her full name is "Meeuk Mia," and it means “halo of the moon” in the language of the Noongar people from Western Australia, according to a statement from the zoo.
Taronga Zoo
She might be tiny now, but she's got a bright, big future ahead of her!
Taronga Zoo
Her very important job will be "meeting and helping children learn about the importance of looking after native wildlife," the zoo said.
Taronga Zoo
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17 Unabashedly Sexual Holiday Cards
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Which Of These Basically Identical Films Is The Best?
Who says Hollywood is short of ideas?
Let's have some polls!
Millennium Films/Columbia Pictures
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34 Photos That Will Satisfy All Perfectionists
The end of this post has a peach getting peeled, and you’re going to love it.
Why hello there, pancake.
Oh, you are square, aren't you, watermelons?
Thank you for your service, tube.
Pyrite has always been the only mineral that really understands you.
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22 Times "Sweet Valley High" Covers Summed Up Sex In Your Twenties
You’re a Jessica in the sheets and an Elizabeth in the streets.
When you're trying to pick the right filter for your Tinder photo.
When he's hot until you actually read his dating profile.
When you say "hello" and he responds with an unsolicited dick pic.
When you're like, "Gay or European?"
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Testing Legal Highs Would Save Lives – So Why Isn't It Happening?
REX USA / David Pearson / Rex / BuzzFeed
When Jennifer Whiteley took Benzo Fury she probably didn’t expect to end up dead. The 27-year-old trainee psychologist, who had experience of working with drug users, consumed some of the formerly legal high along with alcohol and cocaine, started sweating, had a heart attack, and died the following day. As photographs of her in graduation robes began appearing in the papers, her family insisted she was a smart, knowledgeable girl who wouldn’t have taken unnecessary risks.
Similarly, when Richard Phillips, 26, decided to take LSD imposter Nbomb, or NBOMe, which was legal at the time but has since been deemed a Class A, he wouldn’t have been banking on brain damage. As his brother Byron vehemently told reporters: “I know for a fact that with everything Rich had in his life he would not have taken this if he knew the risks.”
The same could be said for Jason Nock from Cradley Heath, who died in 2013 at the age of 41 after overdosing on AH-7921 or doxylam, a legal morphine substitute. Or Adam Hunt from Southampton, who died in 2013 at 18 after taking AMT and etizolam. Or indeed any of the growing number of people who have been dying, or falling seriously ill, from what some are calling an epidemic.
Whether you refer to these novel compounds as designer drugs, research chemicals, or new psychoactive substances, they’re growing in number all the time. In 2009, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction's Early Warning System identified 24 new drugs, a figure that's increasing every year – the UN office on drugs and crime recently revealed the existence of 348 new types of synthetic drugs, over 100 of which emerged in the last year alone.
This bounteous new array of mind-altering products brings with it potentially dire consequences. The National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths reported 68 deaths from new psychoactive substances in 2012, up from 51 the previous year and just 10 in 2009. A recent, much-quoted report suggested (somewhat tenuously) that legal highs could contribute to more deaths than heroin by 2016.
While these numbers need to be kept in perspective, and tabloid frenzies should be taken with a pinch of salt, there has been an abundance of cautionary tales of late. One of the most striking things about the raft of stories over the last few years is the variety of compounds involved. Almost every time it’s a different culprit, and often it’s a lack of information or understanding that’s as deadly as the substance. Ignorance isn’t bliss.
The typical response from governments is to beef up legislation, outlaw these compounds, and confiscate as much contraband as they can. However, it’s these very drug laws that are causing chemists to innovate, tweaking molecules here and there to produce new, untested, and potentially unpredictable products that exist on the fringes of the law. Legislators are playing whack-a-mole: Clamp down on one drug, and several similar ones pop up elsewhere.
Add in a number of other factors – global distribution networks, information and cash flows enabled by the internet, and a good old fashioned dose of media hysteria – and you have a vicious cycle that provides a fertile breeding ground for new compounds. The drug landscape is changing fast, and governments, healthcare providers, and, crucially, users can’t keep up. You could try talking to Frank but his head is spinning from it all. As journalist Mike Power put it in his book Drugs 2:0 – The Web Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High, “the rules of chemical engagement have changed”.
“It still seems unreal five years later that my daughter’s not coming home," says Maryon Stewart, whose daughter, Hester, a 21-year-old University of Sussex student, died in 2009 after taking gamma-butyrolacton, or GBL. "It was devastating, two policemen on my doorstep telling me my daughter had died. I was more than shocked, as you can imagine."
Stewart, who refers to the current situation as an “epidemic”, created the Angelus Foundation to raise awareness around legal highs. A former health practitioner and broadcaster, she lobbies government, tours schools, and has launched an online information service called Why Not Find Out.
It was during a four-day hideout from the media after her daughter’s death that Stewart learned more about GBL – that it was banned in other countries, was known to cause death in conjunction with alcohol, and hadn’t been properly addressed by then home secretary Jacqui Smith – and campaigned to have it outlawed.
“I really thought that by getting GBL banned I’d be saving other families from going through similar misery,” she tells me, “but what I didn’t realise was that there’d be an epidemic: that if you ban substances then chemists in China tweak the molecules and put them on the market.
“Kids are playing Russian roulette with their lives. They’re not just dying, they’re ending up in psychiatric institutions, being sectioned in mental hospitals, having heart attacks, losing their bladder. … It’s ridiculous that these chemists have managed to outsmart everybody, and as a result the wellbeing and lives and longevity of our kids is in their hands.”
One cautious step on the path towards a solution is being taken in Cardiff. The Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of New Substances project (Wedinos) is an online drug-testing service based on the principle of harm reduction. Anyone can anonymously send in a sample of a new compound, adding only their postcode and a mention of the expected and unexpected effects of the substance, which will then undergo rigorous tests, with the results posted online.
Run by a small team of toxicologists and chemists and funded by the Welsh government, Wedinos was set up in response to the increasing need to find out exactly what’s in the new drugs circulating the country, and users and healthcare-givers alike are finding it invaluable.
“We were seeing an increase in concern from clinicians within emergency departments and drugs services saying, ‘We are seeing people present with psychosis, with wounds, with symptoms that we cannot explain,'” Josie Smith, the programme's leader, tells me. “They said, ‘Definitely drugs have been consumed but we don’t know what the drugs are, and nor do they.’”
The service “is really about identifying [the difference between] what people believe they’re taking and what they’re actually taking, and the potential consequences. Samples are sent in from users, concerned family members, youth services, schools, substance abuse practitioners, the police, prisons – the full range.”
Four men from Llandudno went temporarily blind in January after taking a liquid amphetamine called Brain. Their pulses soared, their hearts palpitated, and their limbs went numb. They were hospitalised, and Wedinos subsequently began testing the substance so the next time it happens hospitals will be better equipped.
Smith names a number of surprising discoveries. “Ivory Dove was sold as a legal high in head shops right across the UK,” she says, “and it contained three Class A substances”. Synthetic cannabinoid Clockwork Orange, meanwhile, had some ultraviolent side effects.
“We had a number of young people, who were smoking fairly large amounts it must be said, who were experiencing swollen lymph nodes and bleeding from the nose and throat,” she remembers. Toxicology tests confirmed that the product did indeed cause these things, so the kids either switched product or stopped altogether. The team also discovered that the Clockwork Orange sold in Gwent was a different substance to the Clockwork Orange with the same packaging in Cardiff.
Bunk Police / Via bunkpolice.com
By making this information available to all, Wedinos empowers users and doctors and exposes ruthless dealers, but Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist who was chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs until he was sacked for suggesting that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horseriding, is still somewhat sceptical.
“Drug-testing may have the potential to save lives, but you could argue that it’s a bit of a fudge, a bit of a half measure,” he says.
Naturally, the likes of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail howled in outrage at a government-run drug-testing facility that supposedly aids and abets dealers by providing a quality-control service, while Welsh Conservative Darren Millar, the country's shadow minister for health, jumped on to Radio 4's Today show in April to declare that “the Welsh Labour government have given up the fight against drugs”.
Smith denies the allegation, telling me: “We don’t quality control. We don’t provide information on purity. And actually what the service does is report on the unexpected and unwarranted effects that individuals are experiencing.” And the most popular comment under a MailOnline story about Wedinos headlined “Is this really a wise use of taxpayers’ money?” reads: “It’s a wiser use of taxpayers’ money than the hugely expensive, pointless war on drugs,” suggesting that the furore could fizzle out.
That said, it doesn’t take long on the latest iteration of the Silk Road using a semi-anonymous browser to find a forum where users and dealers openly discuss collaborative ways to test products via Wedinos, linking up the supplier information with the published results. As Wedinos doesn’t publish percentages of its ingredients, the forum users discuss using a Spanish service called Energy Control for more detailed tests if needed, but essentially they’re successfully using Wedinos to locate reliable dealers.
One forum poster’s signature is the astoundingly flagrant “the only place you need to go for your NBOMe”. On the deep – and to be honest even the shallow – web, the narcotics trade is a flourishing marketplace with all the feedback systems you’d expect from Amazon (where, incidentally, legal highs were available until Maryon Stewart campaigned against it).
The question is, though, does it actually matter if people are looking for ways to ensure their drugs are pure, unadulterated, and not dangerous?
Wikipedia / Creative Commons / FSV / en.wikipedia.org
In fact, in an official information vacuum in which selling highs is legal as long as they’re labelled “not for human consumption” rather than accompanied by dosage advice and other helpful information to reduce harm, forums like Bluelight and Erowid, where users share knowledge and experience, are invaluable.
A recent thread in Bluelight was concerned with rogue and lethal batches of NBOMe – advice that might have been invaluable to Richard Phillips – while a co-owner of Erowid told Mike Power that she receives emails every week from people who say the site has saved their lives.
Alongside untold numbers of discussions that are essentially drug users looking out for each other, there are numerous trip reports which – depending on your outlook – will either have you running to the hills or tempted to dive in. Covering a huge range of substances and scenarios, they’re often exhaustive accounts, meticulous in detail and dosage, and similar to the explicit experiments of early psychonauts like Alexander Shulgin.
Bluelight also hosts discussions on all manner of topics, from general FAQs to drug culture, drugs in the media, support and recovery groups, healthy living, and beyond. Set against the government’s propaganda division in the war on drugs, its value can’t be underestimated.
Nutt naturally has a thing or two to say about the situation. “The main intent of traditional drugs education and government information campaigns is to deter use,” he says, “and its effectiveness seems to be measured by how disgusted, upset, and fearful you can make people. All the evidence from drugs education shows this doesn’t really work. … Instead the main aim of drugs education should be to reduce harm."
Stewart is also keen to distance herself from the preachy side of things. “We’re not just saying, ‘Don’t take these things because we don’t want you to experiment or have fun or whatever,’” she insists. “We’re basically saying we don’t want you to risk your wellbeing or your life inadvertently because you think it’s safe and fun."
Bunk Police / Via bunkpolice.com
Britain is one of the biggest producers and consumers of new substances, and our archaic drug laws are the catalysts that fired this rapid growth in new products.
Nutt uses cannabis as an example to explain the process. “A big chunk of the new substances are new generations of synthetic cannabinoids that have been created specifically to evade three separate failed attempts to ban these cannabis substitutes,” he says. “These ineffective laws have boosted innovation and so inflated the number of new drugs, which drives up the media hysteria, which in turns boosts the pressure on politicians to demonstrate toughness with knee-jerk bans. And so the cycle continues."
As substances are banned, underground chemists take the discoveries and notes of early pioneers, such as Shulgin and his peer David Nichols, tweak the recipe to evade existing legislation, get their new creation synthesised in an Asian lab, and distribute it across the world to eager customers via the internet.
These new compounds evade existing drug laws, but how they work and what effects they might have are completely unknown, and within days the drugs are being taken by eager guinea pigs worldwide.
Shulgin, the "godfather of ecstasy", who died in June, produced two seminal books, PiHKAL (i.e. "Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved", 1991) and TiHKAL ("Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved", 1997). Considered sacred texts by psychonauts and drug connoisseurs and “cookbooks on how to make drugs” by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, they contain detailed information on his synthesis and sampling of 200+ psychedelic compounds, most of which he discovered himself.
Nichols was also involved with the books. He’s become a world leader in dopamine research while investigating new treatment ideas for Parkinson’s disease. His work on serotonin receptors ultimately led to the distribution of ecstasy substitute MTA, which caused several deaths in the '00s, and he spoke out in 2011 about his work being exploited by illicit chemists and causing deaths, declaring that he felt “hollow and depressed”.
REX USA / David Pearson / Rex
Nick Bonnie, 30, from Stroud, died last year after overdosing at Manchester’s The Warehouse Project on PMA, a drug that's often sold as ecstasy but comes on slower and thus encourages users to take too much, with sometimes fatal consequences.
Since then, the club has been working with Fiona Measham, professor of criminology at Durham University and an expert on drug culture, on a testing and awareness project.
Once a month she heads to the club and tests drugs seized from people entering or dropped in an amnesty box. If she discovers anything nasty, she passes the information on to the owners, who put out warnings on social media and in the venue.
Measham is remaining tight-lipped about the details of her experiment until she publishes her results, but agrees that there’s a potentially fatal ignorance regarding drugs on the market, exacerbated by the proliferation of legal highs, and would like to see testing more widespread. She told me she’s not convinced about Wedinos though, citing “problems of delays because of postal service” as a key factor.
Measham's project might be groundbreaking, especially for the UK, but it’s not unique. Drug tests have been running across Europe from Portugal and Spain to Belgium, Austria and Switzerland, and the Netherlands has been offering on-the-spot testing for some time. The latter is only good for established drugs, though, and results are approximate – and relatively useless when it comes to the ceaseless flow of novel substances.
Colombia has also trialled drug-testing labs at clubs that tell users whether the substance they’re about to take contains what they think it does, and whether it contains adulterants.
REX USA/David Pearson / Rex / BuzzFeed
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Ryan Knight Of "Real World: New Orleans" Dies Thanksgiving Morning At 29
Knight was found unconscious on Thursday morning after a night out with friends. The Kenosha, Wisconsin, police are investigating his death.
The 29-year-old was found unconscious at a friend's house, TMZ first reported. Attempts by friends and first responders to revive Knight were unsuccessful, according to the Kenosha, Wisconsin, police department.
Knight had been out with friends in Kenosha on Wednesday night and returned early Thursday morning. Police said there were no visible signs of injuries, and are awaiting a toxicology report to determine the cause of death. A police statement did indicate that Knight had complained about having "stomach issues" during the two days prior to his death.
"We are saddened to hear the news of the passing of Ryan Knight," MTV said in a statement. "Our thoughts and condolences are with his family and friends at this difficult time."
In addition to appearing on Real World: New Orleans in 2010, Knight also made appearances on MTV's "Challenge" seasons in more recent years, including "The Challenge: Rivals II," "The Challenge: Battle of the Exes II," and "The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons."
His friends and former Real World co-stars expressed their condolences on social media.
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11 Film Posters Improved By Mark Kermode's Scathing Reviews
BBC Five Live’s film critic Mark Kermode is famous for his Kermodian rants at the worst cinema has to offer – so we added them to film posters.
The Hangover Part II, 2011.
Warner Bros / Legendary Pictures
Bride Wars, 2009.
Fox 2000 Pictures
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011.
Paramount Pictures
Run For Your Wife, 2012.
Run For Your Wife Film
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Beloved Mexican Legend Roberto Gómez Bolaños, "Chespirito," Remembered On Twitter
The Mexican actor/comedian suffered a fatal heart attack in Cancun, Mexico at the age of 85. Beautiful and sad messages flooded social media.
On Friday, Roberto Gómez Bolaños, known for his iconic roles as El Chavo del 8 and El Chapulin Colorado, died of a heart attack in Cancun, Mexico at the age of 85.
The actor and director had been suffering from deteriorating health in recent years. Most recently in May, doctors had lost hope for a full recovery, according to Univision Noticias.
Bolaños had remained in stable condition, but lost all mobility according to his son Roberto Gómez Fernández. Doctors told the family back in April to "brace themselves for the worst."
Getty Images
Bolaños was born in 1929 in Mexico City. He studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before dedicating himself full-time to writing scripts for television and film.
His popular sketch comedy show Chespirito debuted in 1968, that spawned his now famous characters like El Chavo and El Chapulin Colorado.
He was nicknamed Chespirito after director Agustin P. Delgado referred to Bolaños as "Little Shakespeare" or "Shakespearito."
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These Two Tory MP Landlords Just Blocked A Bill Banning Revenge Evictions
There were 90 minutes allocated to the debate. Christopher Chope and Philip Davies talking throughout the whole allocated time.
AFP / Getty Images VASILY MAXIMOV
BBC
Two Conservative MPs today blocked a bill that would have stopped private landlords from being able to evict tenants without any reason.
The two MPs, Christopher Chope and Philip Davies, are both private landlords and the bill, which would have repealed part of the Housing Act.
They filibustered the bill, which means the pair spoke throughout the time allocated for the debate and therefore prevented a vote from taking place.
There are 9 million renters in the UK and housing and homeless charity Shelter found that 2% of all renters in the private sector have been evicted after they complained to their landlord or letting agent about a problem.
Revenge evictions has particularly been a problem in London, where 14% of all families renting private have been a victim to the practice in the last year.
Crisis, a charity for homeless people in the UK, were quick to criticise the decision. Matt Downie, the charity's director of policy and external affairs said: "This defeat is a huge blow for the many renters who out of fear of eviction are forced to put up with horrendous conditions, powerless in the face of landlords who ignore their responsibilities."
Noting that the bill had cross-party support from the three main parties, Downie said: "Tenants should be able to ask their landlord for repairs or to complain about poor conditions without fear of losing their home."
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32 Gifts Every Health Nut Will Love
This health and fitness swag is so great you’ll want to keep it all to yourself. And maybe even take up running while you’re at it.
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21 Winter Cocktails To Get You Through The Cold
♫ Oh the weather outside is frightful / And this booze is damn delightful ♫
BuzzFeed / theviewfromgreatisland.com
Spiced Irish Coffee
Whiskey + coffee: A perfectly acceptable way to start a cold winter day. Get the recipe.
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Weird Things Couples Do When There's A Spider
Get rid of it! But don’t kill it!
Buzzfeed Yellow / Via youtu.be
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37 Things You Already Forgot Happened In 2014
Yes, all of these things happened this year.
John Travolta mispronounced Idina Menzel's name as "Adele Dazeem" at the Oscars.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences / Via popsugar.com
Dumb Starbucks opened in L.A.
And it was actually a stunt put on by comedian Nathan Fielder, for his show Nathan for You.
Ashley Perez/BuzzFeed
After wining the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Performance in a Series, Miniseries, Jacqueline Bisset gave an insane acceptance speech that instantly went viral.
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