Tag: Vice
Who Owns Tattoos?
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Over at Vice Sports, Aaron Gordon has a fascinating piece up about intellectual property rights and tattoos. He opens with the case of the NBA2K video game series, which is currently being sued by a tattoo artist agency over the games’ digitally recreated tattoos, which appear on the virtual bodies of players such as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. But copyright issues […]
How a Good Bookie Sets Odds
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A good bookmaker will set up odds so they appear enticing to both sides of a bet: if Arsenal plays Stoke in the Premier League, the bookies want an equal amount of action on both clubs, the better to spread risk. (This isn’t how they make money, however. They do that by designing the odds so […]
‘Firsts,’ ‘Lasts,’ and ‘Onlys’ at the International Music Feed
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Over at Noisey, Lisa Mrock has written a wonderfully personal requiem for a short-lived TV channel called the International Music Feed. The music video-based television network in question only existed for three years (from 2005 to 2008), but it made quite an impact during its brief tenure: In an age where hardly anything is original, the International Music […]
What Good Is a Major Record Label Now?
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“An artist gets it to a point where they’re already self sustainable and then labels swoop in and there’s going to come a point where these artists realize the reason why they’re swooping in and giving them all this money is because they can make ten times as much if they just keep doing what […]
‘A Sweatshop for Trustafarians’ Inside Vice’s Williamsburg Headquarters
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Vice’s headquarters are a 30,000-square-foot amalgamation of converted warehouses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—hipster capital of the US. [Vice co-founder Shane Smith], who was not made available for an interview with CJR despite repeated requests, has called his office of 425 workers “a sweatshop for trustafarians” and the culture “like an incestuous family.” The interior matches Vice’s style: gritty […]
Hunting for Prince’s Secret Vault of Unreleased Music
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Vice: Is there anything, just a taste, that you’d be able to share? Mobeen Azhar: Yeah—OK, I want to know how to put this diplomatically—let me put it like this: One big theme which comes across no matter whom you speak to, in terms of people who have dealt with Prince—everyone respects him hugely, but […]
When Conservation Threatens Indigenous Peoples
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But the Maasai of Loliondo are not alone in disputing these supposed benefits. Worldwide, 8 million square miles—a landmass almost as large as the entire African continent—have been classified as protected areas by governments and conservation groups. In turn, the locals have mostly been pushed off their lands. Though no one formally counts people displaced […]
Why People Get Tattoos
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OK, changing the subject a little: Tattooing has been around for thousands of years, we’re even finding early humans with tattoos. Do you think there is something inherent to human nature that makes us want to tattoo ourselves? Sure. The cadaver that was found frozen and preserved in the Alps, which I think is about […]
So You Want to Be Cryonically Frozen—What Happens Next?
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Alcor agreed to accept Matheryn as a patient, and enrolled her as a member. The initial plan was to fly Einz to the United States while she was still alive, so Alcor’s team could perform the procedure domestically. That procedure is complex and highly invasive; the BBC calls it “intense.” It involves moving the patient onto an ice bed, […]
What It Means for an Object to Be ‘Context Free’
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In a recent piece for Vice, Jules Suzdaltsev discussed the ubiquity of white plastic chairs and what that ubiquity means for world culture amidst rapid globalization. Below is a brief excerpt about from the piece: But unlike similar global objects like lighters, televisions, paper clips, cigarettes, transistor radios, and AK-47s, these chairs are “context free.” MIT’s Director of Civic Media […]
Why Would Anyone Want to Lower the Working Age for Children in Bolivia?
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“I’d gone to Bolivia because some NGOs and activists there have been trying—seemingly against all good sense—to lower the legal working age from 14 to six years old. And this was not the doing of mine owners or far-right politicians seeking cheap labor like one might expect. Instead the idea has been floated by a […]
