Illustration by Alex Jenkins

It was midnight when David woke up to find two large men standing over his bed. Without any explanation, they told him to get up, get dressed, and come with them. Still in the confusion of sleep, but also petrified out of his 12-year-old mind, David complied. Plus, the restraint of a large arm meant he couldn't bolt.

When David saw the plain black van parked in front of the house he figured he was about to be kidnapped for dealing drugs to the wrong people at his school.

"I was scared for my life," David, who is now 15, told me.

But David wasn't being kidnapped in the traditional sense. What happened to him was arranged by his parents, and was completely legal.

Youth transportation services, like the one that picked up David, ferry at-risk (or allegedly at-risk) young people to residential programs such as wilderness camps or therapeutic boarding schools. Often these surprise "escorts" are done in the early hours of the morning when young people are sleeping, and use varying levels of aggressive tactics and professionalism. David was lucky to avoid being handcuffed, hogtied with cable wires, slapped, or punched—several others I interviewed claimed these things happened to them.

"It is fear that you experience once you get into that van and it is fear that you experience through the whole rehabilitation process," said David, who went back to dealing and taking drugs as soon as he returned to California. He asked VICE not to use his real name for fear he could be sent back to a program.

The troubled teen or "tough love" industry is made up mostly of for-profit companies that promise to fix drug addiction, mental illness, and attitude problems. At the center of this industry are the behavioral programs, some accused of abusive practices and even causing the death of teen clients. If the behavioral program is the entrée, then the transportation service is the appetizer, often setting the tone for the treatment the young person will endure for the months or years to come.

"They can be abducted against their will and this meets all the criteria of trauma," Dr. Nicole Bush, an associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, told me. Bush helped found the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment (A START) to help protect young people from negligent residential programs and youth transport services.

Several of her teen clients who attended residential programs attribute their post-traumatic stress disorder to the youth transport services that picked them up. One client said she was taken when an SUV pulled up next to the family car. Another described two large men escorting her from a restaurant where she was eating with friends.

"They talk about nightmares, not being able to sleep alone, or needing a night light," Bush told me. "These are people are in their 20s and 30s, more than a decade after the event."

Bush is quick to point out that not all youth transport services are equal. A 2015 article in the Child and Youth Care Forum found after surveying 350 young people who attended a wilderness program (where nature expeditions are used as a type of therapy) that whether young people were transported or dropped off by a parent had little impact on the treatment outcome.

But some transports can be traumatizing. Thomas, a man in his 30s who works for a west coast youth transport service (who asked that VICE use a pseudonym), told me some workers "want to go in like a WWF wrestler and throw kids around like rag dolls." He said his strategy is to make the pickup as painless as possible for the young person, talking them through their grievances with the current situation or whatever is going on at home or school.

"I was a little shit head when I was a kid. I know what it is like to think no one cares," he said.

A critical aspect of the whole operation is gaining parental permission through an affidavit or power of attorney agreement. These agreements temporarily transfer parental rights to the youth transport company, giving workers permissions that include authorizing medical attention or restraining the young person.

"In general, parents have enormously wide discretion with respect to decisions regarding their children. They can decide to leave their children with people and give them parental rights and no one can interfere," Philip Elberg, an attorney who has worked on cases involving the troubled teen industry, told me.

Elberg added that the large number of abuse complaints triggered by the troubled teen industry isn't matched by the small number of lawsuits because, among other reasons, unless there is a serious physical incident such as injury, sexual abuse, or death of a young person, there isn't much legal ground to stand on after authority has been handed over by the parent.

"Parents are often the victim," said Bush. "They are desperate to help their child and someone who is supposed to be a professional tells them that this is what they are supposed to do."

Monica Moyses says she was zip-tied by her escorts as soon as they woke her up. When she saw her uncle, who had custody of her at the time, talking with the strange men on the sidewalk while she sat locked in a car, she assumed the absolute worst.

"I thought my uncle had sold me into some kind of sex slavery," Moyses told me. Instead, after a long drive and two flights, she arrived at a boot camp in Costa Rica. She was 13 at the time and had been busted for smoking weed, drinking alcohol, and staying out late.

"I was hanging around with an unsavory crowd," said Moyses, who is now 29. She admitted that she needed help, but the drastic nature of what she received sent her spiraling deeper into drug use and alcoholism. It took her several years to turn her life around.

Often young people don't need a behavioral program, let alone a private company to transport them there, according to Clinton Hardy, who runs New Start Transport out of Utah. Hardy told me that many of these kids haven't committed crimes, so "the idea that you are going to pick them up with a procedure that a police officer would use seems strange to me." Hardy intentionally keeps his company small so he has greater personal oversight over the practices of his employees, but he's on the fence about whether or not to stay in the industry, due to what he calls "ethical dilemmas."

David, who was transported from his home in LA, says he overheard workers at his behavioral program speaking to the youth transport workers about a kickback agreement between the two companies.

"They were joking around about how they make a lot of money by recommending people transport their kids rather than bring them personally," he told me. A transport can cost $5,000 to $8,000 depending on distance and if a flight needs to be booked, according to Thomas, the youth transportation worker.

In his teens, Cory (who also asked that we not use his real name) was transported in the typical way—early morning by two "football linebacker-type guys."

"My mom always said don't talk to strangers and then my mom went and hired a stranger," he told me.

Six years later, he's made amends with his parents, who he said regret the whole thing—the transport, the wildness program, and the therapeutic boarding school, which cost about $140,000 all in.

"They were desperate," he said, "so they didn't see what the situation really was."

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One afternoon four years ago, Michael Baer, a massage therapist and retired schoolteacher on California's Central Coast, decided to make a petition to abolish the electoral college. He collected a few hundred signatures from friends on the website MoveOn.org, and then forgot about it. This November, the petition came roaring back to life.

"The morning after the election, I looked and saw it had 25,000 signatures overnight," Baer, 58, told me—and it now has about 581,000. "Now everybody is talking about the electoral college—it's unfair, arcane, and no longer serves a purpose. I'm an independent—I didn't vote for Trump or Clinton—but Clinton won the popular vote so my position is that she should be the president because that is the will of the people."

Baer's petition doesn't have the power to change anything, no matter how many signatures it acquires, but it demonstrates the deep dissatisfaction many Hillary Clinton supporters feel with a system where Donald Trump earned the presidency even though Hillary Clinton won 2 million more ballots. It's the second time in 16 years the loser of the electoral college got more votes, following Al Gore in 2000. While abolishing the centuries-old college is virtually impossible, requiring a constitutional amendment, that hasn't deterred any of the people demanding change, and there are avenues to reform that might actually happen in our lifetimes.

"Any time there is a difference between the popular vote and the electoral college the electoral college comes under scrutiny," Dan Diorio, a policy specialist in elections for the National Conference on State Legislatures, told me. "This time around, folks are focusing on it a lot."

One of those folks is California Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, who proposed a bill the week after the election to abolish the college, claiming in a press release that "this is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency," and that the college "is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society." Just a few days later New York Representative Charles Rangel announced a comparable bill in the House.

"I came to Congress on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, and I know how hard we fought for the sacred right to vote," Rangel said in his announcement. "To protect it, everyone should have access to the vote, and every vote must count. The fact that a candidate can receive more votes than the other but lose the election is fundamentally undemocratic."

No one really thinks these bills will get anywhere. An amendment to the Constitution would require the approval three-quarters of state legislatures, but many states have more power in an electoral college system than they would in a straight popular vote, explained Stanford University history professor Jack Rakove.

Still, Rakove, an expert on the electoral college, told me the legislators' fight was worthwhile because the popular vote is a more just way to elect the president. "There are so many things wrong with the electoral college, and it's hard to say how it was intended—the framers of the Constitution did not have a coherent idea about that," said Rakove. "I'm a big believer in the national popular vote and in the one person one vote idea, that a vote should have the same weight wherever it's cast."

Rakove thinks that if the electoral college were eliminated, candidates would campaign differently, and stop focusing exclusively on the few swing states that can go either red or blue. He figures more citizens would participate in elections if they knew each vote counted, and that the country may even become less divided along strict party lines as a result.

But disintegrating the electoral college isn't the only way to change the system—electors could also distribute their votes differently. Another online petition, even more popular (and more desperate) than Baer's, is asking the electors to vote for Clinton instead of Trump. The Change.org petition, which claims that Trump is "unfit to serve" and that "Secretary Clinton won the popular vote and should be president," has collected more than 4.6 million signatures. One Democratic elector from Colorado, Michael Baca, is also entreating his fellow electors to defect from their pledges and to vote for Clinton. Harvard professor and campaign finance reform advocate Lawrence Lessig concurred in the Washington Post, quoting a line from Alexander Hamilton about how electors were to use "a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."

Since electors pledge to follow their states' dictates, none of the political experts I spoke with said enough of them would defect for it to matter. But what if the states themselves decided to change those dictates? That's the goal of something called the National Popular Vote Pact, a group that wants states to promise to require their electors to cast their ballots in favor of the winner of the national popular vote. The pact wouldn't take effect unless the states who sign it have 270 electoral votes (the number required to elect a president) between them.

"We have 11 states representing 165 electoral votes who have signed so we're 61 percent of the way there to enactment," Scott Drexel, a consultant to the initiative, told me. "I'd expect we'd have a bill filed in virtually every legislature by 2017."

The pact would not require a constitutional amendment, but it's still a long way from becoming reality. First, only heavily Democratic states have signed the compact so far, and that's a problem according to Vikram Amar, the dean of the University of Illinois College of Law who has written extensively about the NPV.

"Nothing matters until you get a red state because you can't do it with blue states alone. And swing states won't sign it," said Amar, explaining that swing states don't want to give up their significant political power. "You need a big red state like Texas."

Naturally, a lot of the anger at the electoral politics this month is tied to anti-Trump fervor on the left. But Drexel said the NPV, which launched in 2006, would continue its longstanding strategy of trying to show that the reforming electoral college is a bipartisan issue, not just a way to overturn the results of one election.

"Our challenge over next year as passions cool is to go back to main argument that regardless of the outcome of this election we shouldn't have a system in which four out of five states are left on the sideline," said Drexel, referring to the lack of attention all non-swing states receive. "The problem isn't the electoral college—it's the winner-take-all system."

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Jesse Jackson, Baptist minister and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, attends a press conference with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro during Jackson's visit to Cuba. (Photo by Jacques M. Chenet/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

To many Americans agitating for racial progress, Fidel Castro, the deeply polarizing Cuban leader who died Friday, was a formidable compañero in battle.

The man emerged as a major thorn in America's side in the 1960s, as the United States was experiencing massive black defiance against segregation and other forms of oppression. This was the decade that saw the birth of the Black Panther Party and other groups of blacks possessing weapons and defying the white power structure.

In an astounding challenge to the United States, Castro opened his country to black revolutionary fugitives wanted by American authorities, some for violent crimes. Assata Shakur (a.k.a Joanne Chesimard), who escaped from prison in 1979 after being convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey state trooper, was one of them. But there were others, including Nehanda Abiodun (aka Cheri Laverne Dalton), who was wanted in a 1981 armored truck robbery in upstate New York, in which two Nyack village police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.

But there's a new reality that is changing both prospects for US relations with Cuba and race relations in the United States. That reality is Donald Trump.

In our new reality, black radicals will not react as the Panthers did in the 1960s. While we've seen some incidents of black men attacking and even killing police officers in recent years, there's been nothing organized at the level of the Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army of the early 1970s. And I doubt Castro would react now as he did back then. This is a time for new coalitions that cross old boundaries.

After all, if Castro were on the rise today, he would be looking at a very different United States. This is no longer the black and white country it (largely) was in the 1960s thanks in no small part to the so-called Hart-Celler Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The law opened US doors to immigrants from all around the world, not just Europe, and it made for the browning of America that we see today.

Donald Trump at least temporarily defeated that new America on November 8, speaking disparagingly of many of its people and sometimes issuing explicit threats. He has also spoken out defiantly against Cuba, albeit mostly in 140-character bites. Trump's enemies, it seems, are not only blacks, but also Latinos, Muslims, and, depending on whom you ask, the LGBTQ community—the latter being one of the groups that fell into Castro's own crosshairs.

But even as he employed authoritarian tactics that included imprisoning and executing dissidents and sending gays to labor camps, Castro seemed to be motivated by a mindfulness of those farthest down the ladder. That's what drove him in making Cuba among the most literate countries in the world. That's what energized him as he refashioned Cuba's healthcare system so that it stands out for its achievements. And that's what inspired him to forge a personal bond with black Americans.

When I visited Cuba in January, I did not meet a single person who failed to express some kind of affection, if not outright love, for Barack Obama. Part of it, of course, was that Obama is brown, like most of them. But it also had to do with Obama's message of hope and change, and his willingness to challenge Americans who still oppose softening of relations with Cuba, which is now controlled by Fidel's brother, Raul.

Old lines of division and old identifications remain, which is only natural. Castro is still a hero to former Panthers and black radicals, and a demon to conservatives, Cuban exiles, and anti-Communists. From 90 miles away, Fidel said and did the things that the most assertive American black leaders said and did—but unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and others, he survived.

It's not a stretch to suspect Castro, in his final moments, took special delight in having withstood 11 US presidents—and so much anger from the most powerful country on Earth. "Despite all that the Yanquis tried to do to him... he died a natural death," notes Marta Rojas, an octogenarian Cuban writer who identifies as black and who, as a young reporter in 1953, covered Fidel's initial, unsuccessful attack on the Moncada military barracks. She also covered the trial of Fidel at which he declared, "History will absolve me."

But if Castro worshippers in America are delighting in the story of his life, they will also soon be dealing with the new reality of the United States of Trump. And the browning of America should give them hope.

On an all new episode of CYBERWAR, we investigate the cyber attack on Ukraine's power grid in 2013 that left thousands of people in the dark, exploring how a military conflict involving Russia could lead to a cyberwar.

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Cleve Jones speaks at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1979. Photo by Michael Bry

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On November 27, 1978, Dan White, an embittered former San Francisco city supervisor, shot and killed then-mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk at city hall. He was furious that Moscone had refused to reappoint him to his seat, and enraged at Milk, who'd campaigned against him.

It was an assassination that would forever change the fight for gay and lesbian rights. Milk was the first openly gay person to hold public office in California, and has been called the most influential LGBTQ activist in American history; when he fell, he became a martyr, his name a rallying cry for a gay rights movement nationwide.

Through it all, Cleve Jones was there. Milk became a mentor and friend to a young Jones in the 70s, and after his death, Jones went on to play a pivotal role in AIDS and LGBTQ activism throughout the gay liberation movement. Today, Jones' memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, is out from Hachette Books.

Six months after the murders, White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter by a lenient jury, and the city would explode in what came to be known as the White Night Riots, as thousands descended upon the Castro neighborhood and city hall to wreck havoc. In the following excerpt from When We Rise, Jones recounts a march on the one-year anniversary of Milk's death, in which a new era for the American LGBTQ movement dawned for those who would carry his legacy.

The White Night riots changed everything for us in San Francisco. We were more powerful, and we could feel it. There were changes coming and we felt the wind at our backs. It was going to take some time, though.

One immediate effect of Harvey's death was that plans for the first national march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights began to move forward. Activists had pushed for such an action for years, but most local groups and the tiny new national organizations opposed the notion and called it a waste of precious resources. But Harvey had reached out, built bridges, and taken time to stroke the egos of local leaders across the country. The news of his death inspired people to say yes, we will march. Ten years had passed since Stonewall. A commemoration made sense, especially after the violence of the riots.

I attended some of the regional organizing meetings and was happy when the march was scheduled for Columbus Day weekend. I'd met a hot bartender from Washington, DC, and wanted to spend my 25th birthday, October 11, in his arms and bed.

On Sunday, October 14, I marched in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The Metro subway had opened in 1976 and I took a train from my bartender friend's apartment. I will never forget riding the long steep escalator up from the tracks to Dupont Circle with the chants and clapping of hundreds of marchers, then reaching the top and walking out into the sunlight and the sight of the graffiti, spray-painted boldly in thick black letters on the wall of the station: "Harvey Milk Lives!"

It was an inspiring march, about a hundred thousand strong. At the rally, DC mayor Marion Berry welcomed us. We heard speeches from Harvey's successor, Harry Britt; Metropolitan Community Church founder Troy Perry; and feminists Charlotte Bunch, Kate Millett, and Eleanor Smeal. I was particularly moved by poet Audre Lorde's speech and was beside myself with joy when I found myself sitting on the Washington Monument lawn, smoking a joint with Allen Ginsberg and a bunch of cute gay hippie boys.

Back in San Francisco, I began to organize another march: for November 27, 1979, the first anniversary of the murders at city hall. When I mentioned it to my friends, I discovered that everyone was already talking about it, and we all agreed we should march again down Market Street as we had the previous year, when the blood of Harvey Milk and George Moscone was still fresh on the floor of city hall.

I started writing a speech. I wanted to write about Harvey, about both the actual man and the legend that he could become. For our new movement, for our emerging little communities, we needed legends, shared histories of our people's struggles that would help unite a people so separated by distances and division. The legend of Harvey Milk could have that power. He could reach those who were isolated and alone; he could connect us and inspire and inform. If we remembered.

On Tuesday, November 27, 1979, as the sun began to set, many thousands of people gathered at the intersection of Castro and Market Streets to begin the long walk to city hall. We marched in silence, led by a solitary drummer and both the American and rainbow flags. The crowd filled Civic Center Plaza again with the light of candles. It was so beautiful, so powerful, and so terribly sad. I took a deep breath and lifted the microphone.

"We are here tonight to dedicate ourselves to the legend of Harvey Milk, that word of his dream and his struggle may spread across this and all nations. We are here tonight to continue his struggle, continue his dream. We are here to spread the word, so that our sisters and brothers everywhere may know of the life and death of Harvey Milk.

We send this message to all the small children growing up queer in a straight world. We send it to all the strong women and gentle men, to the old faggot uncles and silent spinster aunts. We send them our love and the legend of Harvey Milk, so they may be strengthened and their lives dignified, as we who knew Harvey were, ourselves, strengthened and empowered. We are here to build a legend, but also to remember the reality of Harvey Milk the man, our friend and neighbor. Harvey, smiling behind the counter of his Castro Camera Store. Harvey, the joker, Harvey the clown. Harvey, who debated John Briggs. Harvey, in blue jeans and a torn sweater on the 8‑Market bus.

We must always remember the man behind the legend that we are building—the man who was neither genius nor saint, the man who was not our movement's first martyr. We must remember that the work done by Harvey Milk is work we all can share, that his achievements are ones to which we can all aspire. We must remember as well, that our defeats, our humiliations, our losses were also all shared by Harvey in his time.

Yes, we know well that Harvey Milk was not our first martyr, nor our last. He had a lover named Jack and one summer day in '78 Harvey came home to find Jack's body hanging from the ceiling—a suicide.

I wonder, how many of you here tonight have lost a friend or loved one to suicide? Raise your candles high, how many?

How many of you know a woman who has experienced the pain and terror of rape? Let me see your candles, how many?

How many of you have been attacked, how many of you have been beaten? By bashers or the police, how many?

How many of you have heard the taunting cry from behind, 'hey faggot, hey dyke,' how many?

That is why we are here tonight. That is why we marched on Washington; that is why we will keep on marching. That is why Harvey lived, that is why Harvey died. That is why we will not rest until Harvey's dream is fulfilled: when lesbians and gay men of every age, race, and background come out to join in the struggle with all of us who seek lives of freedom and dignity and joy.

It will be a long struggle. There will be decades of campaigns and leaders and, no doubt, many martyrs. But let no one misunderstand, our movement is powered by the determination of a people too long denied, too long abused. A people who seek only the freedom to live; to work and to love. Let no one misunderstand—we are deadly serious, we grow daily in power, and we will not be stopped.

That is why we are here tonight."

Excerpted from the book When We Rise by Cleve Jones, published on November 29, 2016 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group.

". I am very concerned."

Reign has good reason to be wary of Trump, considering Republican administrations are traditionally bad for business. For example, under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department was far less aggressive than George Bush's in trying obscenity cases—Obama shut down Bush's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force and did not initiate any significant obscenity cases of its own, despite an outcry from anti-porn activists.

"The obscenity laws have not been enforced at all under the Obama administration," said Donna Rice Hughes, the president and CEO of Enough Is Enough (EIE), which is the country's leading anti-porn nonprofit. "One of the key things an attorney general who will make the aggressive enforcement of all the laws that are currently on the books a priority."

After eight years of Obama, it looks as though anti-porn activists are finally going to get what they want from the federal government. Because although Trump is a bit of wildcard when it comes to his proposed policies and positions, he's been clear on where he stands with adult entertainment.

Back in July, Trump made a promise to start cracking down on porn. He was the only presidential candidate in the 2016 election to sign the Children's Internet Safety Presidential Pledge, which was developed by EIE. According to Hughes, by adding his signature, he has vowed to "give serious consideration to appointing a presidential commission to examine, first of all, the public health aspect of internet pornography, specifically internet obscenity. And also, to look at mechanisms to prevent the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age."

This pledge was one of the first acts by Trump that really put First Amendment advocates like Mike Stabile, director of communications at the Free Speech Coalition, on high alert. "We're facing a coming administration that has repeatedly said adult entertainment isn't protected speech under the First Amendment," said Stabile. "That's terrifying, and in direct opposition with over 40 years of Supreme Court decisions."

Photo courtesy of Tasha Reign

Of course, not everyone is freaking out. At the end of the day, Trump is a New Yorker who abhors "political correctness," has made a cameo in a softcore porno, and is married to a woman who's done her fair share of nude modeling. Joanna Angel, the porn star who co-founded the Burning Angel production company, told me that although she's scared of Trump as an American, when it comes to porn, she feels he's mostly posturing. "The things said about porn were just so farfetched, he was just saying them to get votes."

But even if Angel is right, and Trump has no intention of cracking down on adult media, stars like Tasha Reign are still worried about the people he's going to bring with him into the White House.

"When I bring up to people who voted for him in my industry, they just say that he is saying what he needs to say," said Reign. "But he is the one who is going to be nominating the next Supreme Court justice, he is the one who has Mike Pence as his vice president."

Photo of Joanna Angel. Film still from 'Love Is Dead'

Although Trump doesn't take office until January 20, his transition team picks and potential cabinet appointments are already overflowing with culture warriors. For example, Ken Blackwell, the leader of Trump's domestic transition team, is a senior fellow for the Family Research Council, a Christian organization that views pornography as "a plague in our nation." And Rudy Giuliani, who is reportedly one of Trump's top picks for secretary of state, is known for "cleaning up" New York City when he was mayor by shutting down X-rated stores and theaters and criminalizing sex work. Not to mention, his vice president, Mike Pence, is a born-again Catholic who tried to introduce numerous nutty laws regulating sexuality when he was in Congress, including one that would have required mainstream Hollywood films featuring simulated sex to follow the same strict regulations as hardcore pornography.

"There is concern in the porn industry that future laws may become aggressive, and possibly even draconian, even at the federal level," said writer and porn star Jesse Jackman, who works exclusively for the gay film studio Titan Media. "The proposed First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which would allow American citizens to discriminate against gay couples based on their religious beliefs has already shown conservatives' willingness to shape the interpretation of the First Amendment on moralistic grounds."

Photo of Jesse Jackman via FlyFoto Images

Unlike a lot of things Trump does, his porn pledge was not some rogue stance that many mainstream members of his party opposed. This summer, the GOP agreed to add an anti-pornography amendment to its platform, claiming that adult entertainment presented a "public health crisis" that is "destroying the lives of millions." While previous GOP platform's may have targeted porn before, the fact that the party is framing adult media as a public health crisis marks a turning point in its tactics. And it's being pushed forth by groups like the Concerned Women for America, who recently penned an editorial for the Blaze that likens pornographers to antebellum slave owners.

"In the past decade, we've seen a lot of the conversation shift away from obscenity, which had become difficult to prosecute because of the internet, and toward this idea that porn was damaging, addictive, or inspired criminality," said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition.

The biggest champion of this strategy on the right is the EIE. It views internet pornography as "a fueling factor in the sexual exploitation and abuse of children." According to Donna Rice Hughes of the EIE, "There's a tremendous amount of incestuous crossover in the sex industry whether it's trafficking, child pornography, or child predation."

Of course, Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition couldn't disagree with that notion more. "None of that is based in science, of course—access to adult material correlates pretty strongly with decreases in sexual assault, and increases with sexual knowledge, health, and even feminist attitudes," he said.

Stabile's take jives with the Justice Department's annual national victimization survey, which found the overall rate of rape and sexual assault dropped 57 percent between 2000 and 2009, a time when accessibility to porn was exploding thanks to the internet. And studies conducted in countries like the Czech Republic and China have found that stricter regulations on porn have caused an increase in sex crimes, including those against children.

WATCH: The Enduring and Erotic Power of Quicksand Porn

The "public health crisis" arguments we're hearing right now on the right sounds similar to those made during the anti-porn crusade led under President Ronald Reagan during the so-called culture wars of the 1980s. Back then, sexually explicit material was framed as a threat to the traditional family and blamed for things like violence against women and gender discrimination.

"What we saw in the 80s was that crackdowns on pornography were an entree into broader censorship," said Stabile. "Once you set the precedent, it allows you to go after the artists and the educators—the obscenity bust of the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in Ohio, and the defunding of the NEA on pornography pretext, the banning of library books, and defunding of AIDS education... The pattern is pretty clear: Creating a moral panic about pornography allows you to suppress all sorts of other speech."

While the anti-porn efforts in the 70s and 80s were fended off in the name of the First Amendment, the argument that porn is a public health crisis is gaining traction. In Utah, Governor Gary Herbert signed off on an anti-porn resolution, citing public health as the justification. And anti-porn organizations like EIE feel confident they can replicate that across the nation.

WATCH: Making the World's First Male Sex Doll

Adult performer Jesse Jackman already sees the writing on the wall. "If pornography is reclassified as a public health menace, it's not hard to imagine a law similar to FADA that would classify pornographic material, which is currently afforded freedom of speech protections, as obscene and therefore no longer covered by the First Amendment."

If groups like the EIE and Concerned Women for America get their way and Trump's administration follows through on his pledge to crack down on porn, First Amendment advocates and porn stars like Reign and Angel are ready to push back.

"We are hopeful, but we don't know what the future will bring," said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition. "What we can do, and what we have always done, is fight against intolerance and shame and bigotry, and for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of existence."

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South Korean president Park Geun-hye bows during her address to the nation. She announced on Tuesday that she was open to resigning. (Kyodo via AP Images)

On Tuesday, South Korean president Park Geun-hye announced that she was willing to resign her post—the latest development in an extraordinary corruption scandal that has consumed her country for weeks and caused so much outrage that 1.5 million South Koreans took to the streets of Seoul on Saturday.

This scandal centers on Park's confidant of some four decades, Choi Soon-sil, who herself has been indicted on extortion and abuse of power charges. Other powerful figures toppled via resignations, arrests, and dismissals include presidential aides, the finance minister, the president emeritus of one of the nation's top universities, and a K-pop video director. And even Park's purported willingness to resign doesn't mean the drama is over, as some opposition politicians want to go ahead and impeach her anyway.

"What we're seeing is the complete breakdown of political processes," said Se-Woong Koo, editor-in-chief of Korea Exposé, an online magazine founded in 2014. An activist and academic with a PhD from Stanford University, Koo also offers commentary and analysis on South Korea for the New York Times and BBC Radio. In a phone interview, he talked me through the key points of the scandal, demystifying "Korea's byzantine politics" and explaining how the metastasizing crisis reveals endemic corruption deep at the heart of the nation's political and economic systems.

The core of the scandal is that President Park supposedly allowed her friend Choi Soon-sil, a close companion for 40 years who has no official title or role, to serve as her "shadow president." It's alleged that Choi—sometimes described as "a middle-aged housewife from Gangnam"—had unprecedented access, influence, and decision-making power behind the closed doors of Korea's presidential Blue House. In addition to editing Park's speeches, choosing her outfits, and trying to get large companies to donate money to her foundations, she's said to have been involved in key matters such as national security and political appointments.

"She had her hands in so many things," Koo said. "Her cronies seem to have been determining who received government support as athletes, who gets government contracts to cultural projects, who would get the greenlight to represent Korea at some international event."

Prosecutors are investigating, and the president has been named as a suspect and accomplice. (Park has refused to cooperate with the investigation.) Choi Soon-sil, under emergency detention since October 31, is accused of "extorting" around $70 million from Korea's powerful family-owned conglomerates (called chaebol) such as Samsung, through donations to two foundations that she set up and controlled.

But Koo said that "bribery" is a more accurate characterization of the transactions. "We know that Samsung was paying Choi Soon-sil, that they gave this money to one of Choi Soon-sil's ghost companies in Germany as a consulting fee. The money was then used to pay for Choi Soon-sil's daughter's equestrian training," he said. "The question is, what did Samsung want in return? It just so happened that all of this was going on just as Samsung was embarking on this very important and delicate merger that many (shareholders) would be opposing. If there was this clear expectation of something in return, then it would constitute a bribery charge."

Chaebol receive government subsidies and often have back channels to officials—because of this, Koo said, these companies "enjoy incredible dominance over the national economy."

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Park, South Korea's first female president, is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, a general who organized a coup in 1961 and ruled the country as an elected president from 1963 to 1979, when he was assassinated. (His wife was killed by another assassin in 1974.)

"You cannot talk about Korea without talking about her father," Koo said. "Many argue that his economic policies made South Korea an economic powerhouse. There are also people who say many of (his) economic policies are the reason why South Korea has so many problems today. It was he who felt that it is necessary to regulate different industrial sectors, and that a small number of companies should lead the national economy."

But protesters didn't just take to the streets because of corruption. Koo points the finger at a lack of economic opportunity—which has led to high youth unemployment, the third-highest percentage of NEETs (young people "not in education, employment, or training") in the developed world, and the sense of a rigged economy.

"This is a divided society," Koo said. "In Korea, it's often said that one is either a gold spoon, a silver spoon, or a clay spoon. Your ability to succeed depends entirely on your birth: Gold spoons are the cream of the crop. Silver spoons are middling. And the clay spoons are nobodies."

Se-Woong Koo at Saturday's protest in Seoul. Photo by Jun Michael Park/Korea Exposé

Young people all compete for the same secure corporate and public sector jobs. "The difference in your salary between when you work for a big company and when you work for a small to medium-size company is vast," Koo said. "So the sentiment is that when you cannot get the nice job, you might as well not work at all."

The result is deep stratification and distrust of the "elites." Koo said, "All the clay spoons are all against corruption, no question. They think this is how the elites are perpetuating their power and wealth." Koo says the scandal, in addition to becoming a focal point for broad dissatisfaction with the way the country is run, further "undermines the credibility of the president and the government. It's like watching a soap opera. They do whatever they want. They are corrupt. And they thought they could get away with it—and this is why people are so angry right now."

As of Tuesday morning, there was enough support in the National Assembly to proceed with impeachment—some 30 to 40 lawmakers from the president's party had agreed to unite with opposition lawmakers to vote for impeachment, perhaps as early as this Friday—but her address to the nation in which she announced her willingness to resign appears to have stymied these efforts.

According to Koo, Park's "well-crafted" five-minute statement served two functions: "It's a strategic move designed to give ruling party lawmakers the cover they need for not backing the impeachment. And it's also designed to mollify the people on the ground who have also been calling for her immediate resignation. Now the ruling party lawmakers seem to be backtracking, saying, 'Well, she said she was resigning anyway.'"

Resignation and impeachment are both seen as "dishonorable options," said Koo, adding that Park's statement seemed to be a request for a third option: "She's asking the legislature to come with a way that would enable her to step down in an honorable way—which might actually entail passing a new law or changing the constitution."

"She's buying herself a lot of time here," Koo continued. "She can now sit back and relax and watch the debacle that goes on in the legislature. And people will be so angry at the lawmakers that they might actually forget briefly about her."

There is a demonstration scheduled every Saturday until Park resigns or gets impeached, and politicians will be watching next Saturday's turnout to gauge the mood of the nation. "Right now, I see lots of anger on social media," Koo told me. "But we really need to observe the demonstration on Saturday to see just how many people come out and actually express that anger in person."

Whatever happens next, getting rid of Park alone won't solve Korea's deeper problems. "The harder question of how to resolve the sheer extent of corruption in South Korea will not be met with an easy answer," Koo said. "It's really about the culture. This is how things have been done for decades now. You can't come in and say, 'Hey, you know that this is wrong.' People know that it's wrong, but they do it anyway."

Shahirah Majumdar is a writer living in Chicago.

Screengrab from Bridesmaids. Thumbnail photo by turkeychik via Flickr Creative Commons

Anyone who's lived in New York City has a housing horror story. Mine starts about two years back, when I was living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a couple of guys who wanted to move in with their girlfriends at the end of our lease. I went away on a weekend trip and came back to find that they had cleared out the place a whole month early––or so I thought. As such, I started doing what human beings often do when they live alone, which is to say I walked around naked, had conversations with myself, and never bothered to shut the bathroom door.

When I brought home boxes to pack up my own stuff, I decided to peek in the other bedrooms to see if anything had been left behind. What I found was a woman just getting out of the shower. After slamming the door and hyperventilating in the hall a little bit, I was eventually confronted in broken English about being a peeping Tom. Through hysterical tears, the strange woman eventually told me that my roommate had given her permission to squat in his room, but told her to keep a low profile––which helped explain why the room was full of stuff like orange juice containers and takeout boxes. Very long story short, she refused to leave, which meant I had to ride out a week and a half under the same roof as her despite thinking she was an unhinged psychopath.

I've always wondered why that woman ended up stealing a jar of quarters and a disposable camera from me before leaving, and also what my rights were as a non-lease holder trying to kick out a terrifying squatter. So I called up Andrew Scherer––an expert attorney at New York Law School and author of an actual treatise on tenant laws in the city. He quickly told me I had no standing in that situation, but was kind enough to answer a bunch of other questions about the nuts and bolts of renting and living in New York. Here's what he said.

VICE: I don't ever look at the leases I sign. If someone's at least scanning, what are the red flags they should look for?
Andrew Scherer: The market is so tight, and leases are generally so boilerplate. You should read the lease, of course, but there's generally not really much you can do about it. There are, however, legal rights you can't get rid of. You can't sign away your right to a habitable apartment. You should check to see if the apartment is rent stabilized, because units that are have many more legal protections than other apartments.

Can you explain what a rent stabilized apartment is?
The general rule––although there are many exceptions to it––is that buildings that were built before 1974 and have six units or more in them are rent stabilized, which means there are limits on the initial rent that can be charged and on how much it can go up every year. There's an entity called the Rent Guidelines Board that sets the limits on rent increases for stabilized units. Almost a million apartments are covered by that law , but the apartments that go on the market don't tend to be stabilized because people don't give up those units easily and because when people move out of those units, landlords often either find legal ways to get the unit out of the rent stabilization system or illegally claim that the units aren't covered by that law.

If a unit is covered by the law, that information should be in what's called the rent stabilization rider to the lease, which is supposed to be provided when you sign. If you're a tenant and are about to sign a lease and think that it's a good enough deal for you, then you can sign the lease. If the apartment turns out to be rent stabilized and the rent in the lease is illegal, just because you agreed to the illegal rent doesn't mean you will have to pay it. You can bring a complaint if you find out that it's rent stabilized, and the landlord could be nailed. So in other words, you're not waiving your rights in most cases by signing a lease. You can contact New York State Homes and Community Renewal about the rental history and see whether your apartment is covered by rent stabilization.

What if your apartment is sweltering or freezing or otherwise uninhabitable and the landlord refuses to do something about it?
If you have a complaint about the conditions of the unit, it's very likely also a violation of New York City's housing code, and for that you would start by calling 311 to complain to the city's housing agency, the Department of Housing Preservation & Development. If they think the problem is serious enough, they'll come and send an inspector who will place a violation on the house and notify the landlord, who then has an obligation to fix the violation. The other thing I would say about that is if you're in a building suffering with no heat or hot water or some other serious problem like that, you know the other tenants in the building are suffering as well. And it's always more useful to form a tenant association and to try and work together. You can certainly approach the landlord alone, but if the city's housing agency sees that 20 people are making calls to 311, they're much more likely to act quickly.

A person who's living in the apartment and is not on the lease is there only at your will, basically.

If you had an informal agreement with a friend who was living at your place, do you need to have them sign a lease?
No. You don't have to have a roommate sign a lease. A state law limits how many roommates you can have. You can have immediate family there, and you can certainly have one roommate. The law is written in a funny way––you're obliged to tell the landlord who's living in your apartment within 30 days of somebody moving in, but if you don't, he or she has to ask you for the names of everybody living in the apartment, and you have 30 days from that day to answer. As long as you have roommates who don't violate the roommate occupancy law, then you're fine. You basically get a right to have one roommate. A lot of landlords just don't care if you have roommates as long as you're paying the rent on time. But if the apartment is covered by the rent stabilization law, you can't charge the roommate more than the proportionate share of the rent. So if you have a $2,000 rent, you can't charge a roommate $1,700 and pay $300 yourself.

So what if they turn into a dick? Can you evict them without a lease?
You can. It's a real pain in the ass, but you can go to court. You'd probably have to get a lawyer and get an eviction notice. A person who's living in the apartment and is not on the lease is there only at your will, basically. If you don't want that person there and you ask them to leave and they don't, you can bring a court action. It's not easy or pleasant, but you absolutely can do it.

What if they're just crashing on the couch?
Same thing. If you have one roommate and you've decided to use the living room as a bedroom and you're not violating the occupancy laws––and there's no place including a studio where you're not allowed to have at least two people––then that person is just a roommate. But let me just say that if someone is crashing on your couch or staying in a bedroom short-term, you have to be home at the time. If you're not, the guest has to be there for more than 30 days. Otherwise, it falls into that short term occupancy, or "Airbnb law" and you could be subject to stiff fines if the city finds out.

Let's talk about that. If you were staying at one of these illegal hostels the city is targeting, and they caught wind of it, would you immediately become homeless?
Yes, but it might not be immediate. If you're a long-term tenant and the city wants to shut your place down, they would issue a vacate order. You might be given time to get out, but you wouldn't have any long-term right to stay in the place. Let's say it's a warehouse and it's zoned commercial or industrial and doesn't have any of the safety measures that apartments are supposed to have, so it's violating the housing code. The city could tell you to get out immediately depending on how dangerous they think it is.

OK, another thing I've always wondered: How long could you go without paying rent before being forcibly removed from the apartment?
You technically have to pay rent when it's due. If your landlord wanted to bring you to court right away and your rent is due on the first of the month, then the landlord could do a demand for the rent and start the court proceedings within several days. That doesn't mean you get evicted right away, because you have the right to go before a judge, and you might not be evicted at all if you have legitimate defenses to the eviction case or if you can pay the rent, even after the court decides you do owe it. But any court case could go on for a while. People seem to think they need to be two or three months behind in rent before a landlord could start a case, and in fact most landlords don't bring a proceeding just because a tenant is a few days late, but they could. Overall, if everything went as smoothly as it possibly could for the landlord, and you did nothing to defend yourself, a case in theory could take maybe about a month. But it never goes that fast.

Something to note: When you get sued for eviction, even if you win or settle the case, your name gets put onto a database that these private organizations maintain of eviction cases that have been brought all over the country. And you're basically put on a blacklist, which makes it very hard to rent again.

So what if you can't get on a lease? Are you liable to just be thrown out of a new apartment whenever?
You have what's in theory called a month-to-month lease, in which case the landlord must give you 30 days notice of a rent increase or 30 days notice to get out.

What's the best way to break a lease?
So under New York law, if you want to move out in the middle of the lease, you're still liable for rent for the remainder of the lease. And the landlord doesn't have an obligation to re-rent it. However, the way the real estate market is right now, it's very easy for landlords to re-rent. What you would want to do is make it very clear that would be easy to find someone to take your place. Because if the landlord was to turn around and try to sue you for the third year of the three-year lease when you were no longer living there, you would want to document the fact that you put it on Craigslist and you showed the landlord that you got five people who would be willing to pay at least as much rent as you would be paying. You'd build a record in case you needed to defend yourself. There are some states in which the landlord has an obligation to go and re-rent the unit, but in New York that's not the case. We have a bad law on this issue here.

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Both of my parents are originally from Iran, but we never lived there. We'd sometimes travel back to visit family when I was little, but those trips became less and less frequent as we all got older. In time, being Iranian came to feel like part of my history, rather than my identity. Earlier this year, I realized it'd been 15 years since I'd been there.

So you could say this trip was an attempt to "get back to my roots," as lame as that sounds. I can't think of a better way to put it. I wanted to understand Iran—to find out whether the filtered view we get from the outside is realistic. And it is, but in so many ways, it is not. Iran is a conflicted place, it's a million things at once. A country where vastly different understandings of the world live side-by-side.

Tehran

Take how women are meant to dress. Of course, all around the world, women's bodies are a political site. But during the past 100 years in Iran, hair coverings have alternately been banned and enforced, depending on who was in power at the time. In Tehran, the country's capital, you'll see a young woman dressed in fully western clothes—save for her roosari—standing on a train platform beside another woman in a full-length chador.

I think part of the reason why Tehran, in particular, is so full of contradictions, is because everyone is packed in together so tightly. The city's metro population is 16 million people, 12,500 people per square kilometer. That's three times the density of London. When I arrived in Tehran, one of the first things I was told was "never get into a car between 4 PM and 9 PM" because the traffic is so terrible. It's estimated 25 people die every day because of the pollution.

Somewhere on the road through the Alborz Mountains

Many of the people who've streamed into Tehran over the past 30 years have come from the countryside, attempting to escape economic hardship. The government is attempting to relocate some 5 million people of out the city, offering up generous financial incentives and other solutions. On the radial highways leading out of Tehran, you'll pass small just-add-water towns stuck into the hillsides. They are an odd, almost ghostly sight.

A restaurant in the Alborz Mountains on the road between Tehran and Sari. Whatever it lacked in customer service, food quality, and cutlery, it made up for by being entirely made of marble.

Vakil Bazaar in Shiraz

Shiraz is one of Iran's most-ancient cities. Bazaar-e Vakil is its oldest bazaar, dating back to the 11th century—although the current iteration was built in the 1760s. Being born and raised in New Zealand, where my dad owned track pants older than most of the country's architecture, I was deeply moved by the thought of my ancestors walking those same halls for centuries. The second most impressive thing was the spice display.

An actual real, not fake Zara in Shiraz

After decades of consumerism being touted as a particularly Western evil, with no place on pious Iranian soil, it seems Iran has learned the lesson parents of young women the world around could have told them—neither individual nor government, neither international sanctions nor declining GDP can get between a young women and her fashion.

Somewhere between Shiraz and Esfehan

It was never my intention to travel by road across Iran, but rather a consequence of my own disorganization. Forgetting how much time they wasted, the buses were surprisingly luxurious. They even handed out snack packs that I would rate at a three pizza slices out of five for quality, and five pizza slices out of five for quantity.

Esfahan

Esfahan was once a Silk Road city so cosmopolitan people would say, "Esfehan is half the world." In a square so old it was under construction while the Roman Empire was still a thing, I came across a gang of middle schoolers pulling some impressive long-haul wheelies. They made fun of my Farsi accent, and then invited me to hang out with them in the square after school. Ali (on the left) wants to be an astronaut, Hussein (on the right) wants to be a pro dirt bike rider.

Esfahan, Bekhradi Historical House

This 17th-century private residence was built during the Safavid-era and recently turned sexy boutique hotel. It was where I lived out my own orientalist fantasy, until I realized that, back in the day, I probably would've been the one doing the grape-feeding.

Esfahan, Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Naqsh-e-jahan Square

In the 18th century, the capital of the empire was moved from Esfahan to Tehran, letting the famed "glittering city" languish into a provincial backwater. This had the unintended effect of protecting many of the Esfahan's ancient monuments, which today are inspiring a new wave of Iranian architects and artists to restore both buildings and the city's international reputation. I did my best to find out how it would be possible that a culture so obsessed with symmetry could allow a mosque dome to be off-center. If anyone knows, please email me.

Ab-o Atash Skatepark, Tehran

Rollerblading is alive and well at Ab-o Atash, one of the only skateparks in Tehran. It's also home to a quickly growing skate and BMX scene. When I was there, businessmen on their way home from work hung over the fence, applauding the skaters who managed to land a trick.

Tehran, Tajrish Bazaar

These pop-up shrines are everywhere in Tehran during the holy month of Muharram—always glowing in the holy color of green. They're the annual commemoration of those who died during the 1980's Iran-Iraq war: a territory conflict that cost more than 1 million lives on both sides, more or less bankrupted both countries, and continues to have a profound effect on the socio-economic development of Iran 30 years on.

Tehran, Grand Bazaar

A portrait of a country with no copyright laws: A cut-and-paste George Clooney sells a little-known brand of Iranian electric shavers from a billboard. A row of alcoved stores in the bazaar sell stacks of H&M, Louis Vuitton, and Adidas branded plastic shopping bags. An entire tunnel of stalls sell only rolls of clothing tags: Gucci, Versace, and "Made in China" as far as the eye can see. I tried to buy a few Chanel tags, but they only sell by the kilo.

Tehran, Gol-e Rezaieh Cafe

For 70 years, Gol-e Rezaieh has been the Tehran equivalent of Paris' Le Select or Cafe de Flore—a favorite of intellectuals, artists, and writers, including Sadegh Hedayat (oft referred to as Iran's Kafka, his magnum opus The Blind Owl was banned because it had the habit of making its readers suicidal). Upon closer inspection of the framed pictures on the walls, an inexplicable number of them seem to be of the UK band Queen. Mariah Carey's greatest hits were on high rotation through the speakers.

Tehran, Darband

We Iranians are a people in love with the ornate. Not even minced meat can escape our decorative fury.

Filband, Mazandaran Province

Driving through mountain scenes that looked like they'd been stolen from Switzerland, it was nearly three hours to Filband, the famed "village above the clouds." Like beautiful villages the world over, Filband is a place where vacation home owners' dreams of architecture come true, and architects' nightmares of vacation homes are realized.

Filband, Mazandaran Province

Iranians love to picnic. In a country that's been plagued by insane heat, civil unrest, and various other forms of catastrophe for literally thousands of years, getting a little goddamn peace and quiet away from it all is a long-standing national priority. There is no distance too far, no mountain too high, no amount of kebab and coal to drag from the car that's too much.

Tehran in the mid 70s

I came across this photo when I was in Iran. That's my 18- or 19-year-old mom on the right, her only sister and best bud on the left. Both of them were renowned for their beauty and their brains. As it turns out, though, Mom can also add "weirdo legend" to her résumé—I found out that when she was seven she had a pet rooster she named "Colonel Jesus."

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East of West debuted March 2013 and has been released monthly with only a few breaks; the comic's set in the not-so-distant year of 2064, when what was formally the United States has been divided into independently governed nations. Its leaders, motivated by both ambition and cult-like allegiances, conspire to orchestrate the end of the world. East of West is speculative fiction, featuring robotic dogs that double as laser cannons, holograms of maps and messages, and other technology not yet achieved by humanity. It's a backdrop in which shapeshifters, talking eyeballs, and demons coexist.

The artwork by Nick Dragotta is both gorgeous and gruesome, each panel drawn with impeccable detail to forge East of West's fictitious world. The precision required for this minimalist storytelling, in which only essential frames and dialogue are used to convey complicated circumstances and emotions, is what converted me to comics as an adult reader.

East of Westby Jonathan Hickman. Art by Nick Dragotta, courtesy of Image Comics

While I've spent the majority of this election cycle pretending I wasn't disturbed or hopeless, East of West illustrated the world around me with the feelings I couldn't express—not unlike unwrapping a festering wound. This is because of our shared history with its characters: In its timeline, the civil war never ended, so the Union, the Confederacy, African slaves, Native Americans, Chinese exiles, and Texan separatists lived in constant dissidence. This situation is summarized in the tagline Hickman shared with Preview catalog: "The things that divide us," he explained, "are stronger than the things that unite us." It's a rework of the famous quote from President John F. Kennedy's address to Canadian Parliament in 1961, and Hickman isn't alone in his sentiments, as the discussion of a divided nation has resurfaced in major news outlets.

Familiarity is one of the reasons dystopian stories like East of West are popular: Because we recognize the corrupt politicians and the public's outrage in each narrative, they continue to be successful. In Issue 8, Madame President Antonia Levay, leader of the Union, faces widespread civil unrest after her questionable rise to office. Images of protests, policeman in riot gear, and the use of excessive force line the pages—near-exact replicas of the protest photos I became accustomed to seeing in the news. I took solace in the acknowledgement of not just their existence, but also their purpose within the story.

In East of West, there are eerie moments where it seems the characters are speaking of our reality rather than that of the story's. In Issue 12, Xiaolian, leader of the People's Republic of America, confronts the leaders of the other nations who are involved in planning the end of the world. As expected, each leader claims both innocence and ignorance. "So... the wisdom of this great council is what exactly?" Xiaolian asks her peers. "Detente? Hold steady in the storm? Maintain the illusion of peace at all costs? Forget the cancer eating us from the inside... as appearances must be maintained."

East of Westby Jonathan Hickman. Art by Nick Dragotta, courtesy of Image Comics

This speech could ostensibly be delivered to the leaders and public figures who rushed to normalize the election of President-elect Trump—reactions often afforded to fascist leaders after their rise to power. I felt my impatience mirrored on the page when my own heroes—Dave Chappelle and Oprah—instructed me to "give Trump a chance" or "have hope." A false sense of security causes affluent black people and POC to fail to realize that the consequences of these ideas are suffered at the expense of all citizens of the nation. The rich are not exempt; we are divided, but we are connected.

"The end times are imminent and we all hate each other too much to come together and solve our problems," explained Hickman to Preview. "Our final destination is imminent, and it is the Apocalypse. And then, in the face of all that despair and gloom, somehow there is still hope. We like to watch them overcome their unfavorable obstacles." The small hope these stories promise is what keeps us coming back. The impending doom is thwarted, and despite all odds, our protagonist (and, by extension, we ourselves) survives: The previous attempt to end the world ends up foiled because Death, one of the Four Horsemen, falls in love with Xiaolian—and Babylon, the son of Death and Xiaolian, will either serve as a threat to the apocalypse or its engine.

Similarly, our youngest citizens will decide the future of the US, as an overwhelming majority of voters 18–25 years old voted for Hillary Clinton. That's promising, and in times like these when my faith in the future waivers, these stories keep me afloat and remind me to never submit to despair.

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Tools of the trade hang inside the work apartment of sex worker 'Miss F' in Sham Shui Po, on the edge of Mong Kok, in Hong Kong, on October 8, 2014. Photo by Chris Stowers/MCT via Getty Images

The lurid saga of Rurik Jutting came to an end in Hong Kong early this month when the former British banker was convicted of murdering two Indonesian women at his luxury apartment. One victim was stuffed into a suitcase on an apartment balcony, and Jutting's scheme of rape and torture apparently involved a phone camera, zip ties, a makeshift gag, a hammer, and a serrated knife.

While the case was remarkable for its wanton brutality and glitzy setting, safety for sex workers is elusive at best in Hong Kong—especially when they work in their own (far less glamorous) homes, as per local custom.

The laws surrounding sex work are complicated in the city, where the legal system consists of a tangled yarn of a colonial British past and ever-growing influence from China. While solicitation for "immoral" purposes in public is flatly illegal, prostitution itself generally flies—even if it's not on the books. As the Hong Kong police's public relations bureau put it in an email, "The act of prostitution itself is not illegal."

For sex workers—many of them migrants, who often come from the Chinese mainland—this means in practice that they can offer services, but only if they are alone, in their own apartments. The strange state of affairs has led to the proliferation of what are called "one-woman brothels," stemming from an old Cantonese term that literally translates to "one room, one phoenix." Often tiny, dingy spots, these makeshift businesses are found via word-of-mouth or illegal internet advertisements. And the conditions there suggest Hong Kong's laissez-faire, not-legal-but-not-illegal stance toward sex work is leaving many women at the mercy of predators, some of them cops.

There are roughly 2,700 one-woman brothels in Hong Kong, according to an estimate by Ziteng, the most prominent NGO in the city advocating for sex workers' rights. (The group concedes its tally is just a rough estimate obtained by combing through internet ads.) People working there face an avalanche of risks. Serial killer Nadeem Razaq targeted one-woman brothel sex workers back in 2008, ultimately killing at least three people. (He was found hanged in his cell this month.) And even when workers avoid sociopaths, there are effectively no protections against crimes like robbery or assault when a sex worker has to operate a brothel on their own.

"These women can't expose their business and that makes them vulnerable to danger," says Mabel Au, director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, which is spearheading a campaign to decriminalize sex work in the city and elsewhere. "The law drives them to operate underground, alone, and because of that they face robbery, sexual assault—and they're hesitant to report it the police."

In fact, Hong Kong police have been accused in the past of threatening or entrapping sex workers instead of protecting them from danger. While this is not exactly unprecedented in Western countries where prostitution remains illegal and vice cops are plentiful, critics suggest it is deeply engrained into local policing in Hong Kong.

"It's commonly known that the police go undercover ," explains Patricia Ho, one of the city's most prominent human rights lawyers. "It's part of their job that they go undercover, and certainly some take advantage of their role," she adds, referring to allegations of verbal, physical, and sexual assault at one-woman brothels.

In January, police sergeant Chu Chi-ho was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment for coercing sex from a one-woman brothel worker. "The police do seem to take very decisive action when they have any evidence of an officer doing this type of thing—but, he was off duty at the time," notes Ho, suggesting this was a rare conviction.

Monica*, who's been operating her one-woman-brothel for three months, tells VICE she'd never call the police to report a crime or any other dangerous situation. A sex worker in a brothel next door recently told her that a policeman forced her to shower naked for his own pleasure, she says.

Besides, Monica's already had a creepy brush with the police of her own: While working in a massage parlor, a normal raid escalated when the electricity to the parlor was cut by the cops and she was strip-searched along with the other women. Some employees were asked to jump up and down after they were stripped naked, she claims.

"I'm scared of the police—I don't know my rights, I don't know to what extent they have power, and I'm afraid of being taken to the police station and being coerced in to giving a statement," Monica says. Last month, a cop suddenly entered her apartment without permission, she adds, after she left it unlocked while inside. He was there for a common "license check"—when police check for identity cards.

Fortunately, Monica wasn't in the middle of a job.

Prices are posted in Hong Kong Dollars inside the work apartment of sex worker 'Miss F' in Sham Shui Po on the edge of Mong Kok in Hong Kong on October 8, 2014. Photo by Chris Stowers/MCT via Getty Images

Monica still remembers how excited she was at the prospect of working in the city after growing up on the Chinese mainland. "I thought Hong Kong was heaven before I moved here," she says. Many sex workers in Hong Kong who come from China hail from third-tier cities and rural villages in the provinces.

While Monica has it easier than many other sex workers from the mainland—a marriage to a Hong Kong man permitted her an identity card—sex workers from China often don't have the legal right to work in the city.

"If a woman reports a crime at a one-woman brothel, but she doesn't have an identity card, the police will immediately arrest her," says Pang*, an advocate at Ziteng. "Filing a complaint from jail is obviously difficult. We've heard of one successful case, and one only—it took nine months."

Amnesty's research also suggests the police are more likely to incriminate sex workers than protect them. "The Hong Kong police showed us an internal document that police are allowing undercover identities to entrap sex workers and successfully charge them with soliciting, and then arrest them," Au claims.

Check out our interview with one of Cuba's female skateboarding pioneers.

Mei*, who's been operating a one-woman brothel for 30 years, remembers when a friend of hers—operating a brothel in the same building—met an undercover cop. He availed himself of her services, put down his gun when they were finished, said he was a cop, and left without paying. Mei, who has a local identity card, goes on to say that she's heard stories from friends—who hail from the Chinese mainland and lack identity cards—about being physically and sexually assaulted at their brothels by the police. Ziteng's Pang likewise recounts having worked with multiple women who claim to have endured assaults by cops at their brothels.

"It's important for us to protect ourselves because the cops won't," Mei says. "Even if we call the cops and they come, they verbally insult us and tell us we should have expected something bad to happen because we're prostitutes, and we have no human rights."

When I asked the police's public relations bureau to respond to allegations at one-woman brothels of assault, exploitation, and neglect, a spokesperson did not refute the allegations so much as elide them.

"The primary objectives of police enforcement actions are to prevent exploitation of those engaged in prostitution, combat organized prostitution activities, and minimize the nuisance caused to members of the public," the spokesperson said via email. "Internal guidelines require officers at the rank of Senior Superintendent to closely supervise every operation that involves police agents, to ensure that the tactics employed in gathering evidence (including the extent of body contact with sex workers) are strictly necessary and proportional to the purpose of the operation."

For groups like Amnesty and advocates like Au, there's a difficult road ahead when it comes to decriminalizing sex work—and bringing it out into the open. After all, it took more than a decade for advocates to secure an amendment to the city's sexual discrimination ordinance that barred sexual harassment at the workplace—and that was just two years ago.

"Amending a law is a very long process in my experience," says Au. "But at least decriminalizing sex work will make sex workers visible."

*Last names have been withheld to protect sources' identities.

Follow Justin Heifetz on Twitter.

Bijan Kaffenberger. Photo by the author

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

Some people will do whatever they can to attract attention. They'll go on a naked dating show, for example, or stand for an election. But others can find themselves at the center of attention just by going about their day, whether they like it or not. One of those people is Bijan Kaffenberger, who has Tourette syndrome.

Tourette is a neurological disorder that manifests itself in tics—sudden, involuntary movements and sounds. The first symptoms, like blinking and twitching, generally start when people affected by it are about six or seven years old. Only 10 to 15 percent also have coprolalia, the urge to vocalize swearwords. Medication can help reduce the tics, but there's no absolute cure for Tourette.

Bijan, 27, was born in Darmstadt, Germany and lives in Frankfurt. After studying economics, he now works as a consultant for the Ministry of Economics in the German federal state of Thuringia. In his free time, he watches every home game of his favorite soccer team, SV Darmstadt 98, and hosts a YouTube show called Tourettikette, where he answers viewers' questions about style and etiquette.

I went to see him in Frankfurt and asked him some more questions about what it's like to live with Tourette.

Photo by Benjamin Kahlmeyer, courtesy of Hyperbole TV

VICE: Have you ever called someone a name on purpose and then blamed it on Tourette?
Bijan Kaffenberger: No, I haven't. If I honestly tell someone they're an asshole, I mean it, and I won't hide behind anything. I find it pretty difficult to keep things like that to myself, to be honest. You need to be able to deal with that if you want to spend time with me.

Have you ever exploited your syndrome in any other way?
There was a rumor going around that I grope women's breasts, but I really don't. I do use my Tourette sometimes to get out of having to do the dishes, but that's really for the best—I could break everything. I once met a girl who I asked to tie my shoelaces. She actually did it, and I laughed so hard she finally caught on I was just taking the piss. I have no trouble tying my shoelaces.

What is oral sex like with Tourette?
If I'm relaxed and can let myself go, I don't have as many tics. It would be terrible if oral sex wasn't an option for people with Tourette. Generally, it doesn't get in the way of sex at all.

Should I stay away from you when you're holding a knife?
I love cooking, but I'm not comfortable holding sharp knives. You won't be the only one in danger, though—my tics will most likely move the knife toward myself in ways I can't control. I trust myself and have a good sense of my own body, but I'm still scared I might hurt somebody. I've never accidentally stabbed anyone, but I have accidentally burned someone with a cigarette butt. There aren't any laws that people with Tourette can't drive, but I think I'd be a danger to myself and the world around me if I got behind the wheel. I couldn't do that to my grandmother. She's a really nice lady who always worries about me—she thought it was already too dangerous for me to ride a bicycle .

What was your worst experience caused by Tourette like?
When I was about ten, I went to an observatory with the Boy Scouts. We were all so excited about it. It was completely dark, but there were projections, and we could watch the stars while someone from the observatory was giving a presentation. I was so excited I kept shouting things out. Nothing complex or offensive, just loud coughs and noises. The worst thing was that I wasn't able to explain what was going on, why I was doing that. When you're a kid, you're pretty much helpless—which is probably why I remember that time in the observatory so vividly. In general, I have more tics when I'm stressed or around a lot of people. Being in a situation where I know I have to be quiet makes it a little harder.

Does it suck to not have complete control over your own body?
I wouldn't say I have less control over my body than other people, even if it seems like it. I don't know what it's like not to have it, so I can't tell you if it sucks. I'm used to it.

Does it upset you if strangers laugh about your tics?
Some people don't understand it and stare or laugh. It's not great, but it doesn't affect me that much. But when someone makes an ignorant comment or is obviously making fun of me, I confront that person. I can't deal with people talking shit. If I have to explain twice to someone, "I didn't mean that, I have Tourette," and they still ask stupid questions or insinuate I'm doing it on purpose, I feel I'm completely right to tell them off.

Does it offend you when people joke about Tourette in general?
The film Lommbock will be released next year. It's the sequel to the 2001 German comedy Lammbock, about two stoner pizza delivery guys. There's a guy with Tourette living in a trailer outside the pizzeria, and he's hilarious. I can laugh at that; I can laugh at myself. I won't laugh at lazy or shallow jokes—no matter whether they are about Tourette's or not.

Do illegal drugs help you with Tourette?
I was prescribed pills against Tourette and ADHD, but I quit them when I was 14. It's difficult to drink alcohol when you're taking them, for example. They make you tired and drowsy. I smoked weed when I was younger, but I can't tell you whether it was a form of self-therapy or just because I liked it. It's good for me—it relaxes me—but I grew out of it.

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Growing up queer isn't easy. As a child or an adolescent, the sense of isolation can feel all consuming, and unlike most marginalized identities, it can be difficult to turn to a family member for support: Being queer doesn't run in the family. Add all this to a religion with scripture that labels same-sex relationships "detestable," and you'll see why the early years can be hard for young, gay Jews.

Granted, it's not like all British Jews grow up particularly well-versed in the Torah, or the endless other commentaries that make up Jewish teaching. But open your Bible to Leviticus, and there's a pretty strong signal there in front of you: "If a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed a detestable act: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

This may no longer be the way that our community deals with gay relationships, and even in biblical times the death penalty was rarely dished out for same-sex sexual acts (according to Jewish Oral Law, there would have to be two witnesses to anal penetration, and the witnesses would have to warn the guys multiple times that they were breaking the rules, and then the guys would have to keep on fucking anyway)—but the reality is that those words are still there: God says being gay is bad.

It's a difficult concept to grapple with.

Therefore, for young gays like me who grew up Jewish in traditional communities, it's easy to end up compartmentalizing each aspect of yourself. There's little to no crossover between the gay and the Jew.

So when I hear about a new gay Jewish club night in London—"Butt Mitzvah" (like Bat Mitzvah, but with the word butt, because gays like butts)—it gets me thinking about the intersection of these two identities.

Butt Mitzvah organizer Josh Cole (center)

"Part of the reason for doing Butt Mitzvah is to try and help boys find nice Jewish husbands—to be a fiddler on the roof matchmaker on a really grand scale," says organizer Josh Cole ahead of the night.

"It's not the primary reason, though. I think it's more about bringing together people who feel alienated, without even realizing it, from the Jewish community. People who have a strong Jewish identity maybe in their familial zone, and a strong gay identity in their social or romantic life, but have never had the space to reconcile the two."

The Glory—a gay pub in Haggerston run by some of London's most celebrated drag queens—is usually busy, but it's not even ten yet, and the place is packed. A line snakes down the street, and bouncers inform soggy patrons that it's already one-in, one-out.

As I approach the door, I'm feeling surprisingly uncomfortable. I know it's not an actual religious celebration, but often events where I'll be mixing with lots of other Jews can put me a little on edge. As a gay Jew, it's easy to feel slightly separated from everyone else in traditionally heteronormative spaces like bar mitzvahs or weddings.

Inside, the place is heaving: A drag queen dressed as Amy Winehouse is losing her shit on the stage ahead of me; there's a bagel buffet in the downstairs dance area; and a klezmer band playing traditional Jewish folk music is whipping up the crowd, many of whom are wearing Star of David necklaces.

Outside in the smoking area, I chat to a guy named Simon. He's 24, and he too is a London-based gay Jew. "When I first heard about the night, it felt weird," he says. "But it feels strangely liberating now I'm here."

It's not just Simon having these thoughts; nearly every person I speak to talks about reestablishing a connection with their heritage, finding comfort in meeting people with a shared experience as niche as their own. Some talk of hoping to find a nice Jewish partner; for others, it's a chance to share their culture with non-Jewish friends.

Standing at the bar, I overhear two guys in front of me talking. They're sharing coming out stories while cracking jokes about their respective Jewish moms. Later, a drag queen dressed as Israeli pop singer Dana International is up and about, and two guys in skull caps are locking themselves in a cubicle. The rest of the night is made up of more performances, traditional Jewish dancing, and, like any Jewish event, a lot of heavy drinking. At first, I might have been guarded, but by the end, I'm relaxed and having fun.

For me, the best part of being Jewish is the sense of community, and the same can be said for being gay—but until now I'd never really consolidated these two important parts of my identity. Nights like Butt Mitzvah may well serve as a "Jew 4 Jew" mating ground, but they're also providing a space for catharsis. Navigating my sexuality as a young Jew is something I've never really talked about, and like so many people I ended up speaking to at the Glory, I now feel it's something worthy of discussion.

A few days after the club night, I jump on the phone to Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, chief rabbi of the British Reform Judaism movement, for advice. "They can say fluffy things, but they don't accept LGBT people," she says of the orthodox Jewish community. "It's night and day—it really is. And I want to say they are night."

Reform Judaism is a denomination of the religion that emphasizes progressiveness and evolution, focusing on maintaining ethical traditions over ceremonial ones. In Britain, it's made up of more than 16,000 households. "For us, is completely normal," says Rabbi Janner-Klausner. "We are communities of different genders and sexualities: gay, straight, bisexual, and trans."

The Reform world is a lifetime away from the kind of Judaism I'd grown up in, so I ask the rabbi how her views reconcile with what's written in the old Jewish scriptures. "There are things in scripture that are very time-specific and are outdated; the fact it's in scripture doesn't make it applicable today," she says. "The idea of interpreting Leviticus to mean that loving, safe, caring relationships across the board are wrong is morally repugnant. I'm not accepting it. It's not about otherness. It's simple: This is who we are."

Ingrained homophobia might be part of many traditional Jewish congregations, and it's likely that's not going away any time soon. But there is support out there for young queers in religious communities. Organizations like Keshet—a Jewish LGBTQ charity—are vitally important, providing support and comfort alongside education and outreach, and voices like that of Rabbi Janner-Klausner need to be listened to.

There's undoubtedly already a generational shift happening—acceptance is becoming more widespread, as it generally is in wider British society. But conversations still need to be had about how scripture is interpreted in the modern age, and to whom it's applied to, and how queer voices and faces are welcomed in communities—or else little gay Jewish kids will spend their childhoods thinking they won't be welcomed by the big guy upstairs—which is just unnecessary extra stress when you've already got all your other insecurities to deal with.

I won't be running to an orthodox synagogue on Saturday morning, but maybe next time there's a gay Jewish club night on I'll invite my (and my non-Jewish boyfriend's) family along, too.

Follow Michael Segalov on Twitter.

Rep. Tom Price gets into an elevator at Trump Tower. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

US News

Trump Appoints Obamacare Critic as Health Boss
President-elect Donald Trump has named Republican congressman Tom Price, a fierce critic of Obamacare, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier this month, Rep. Price praised Trump's willingness to repeal the "failed law," though Trump has since waffled a bit on fully reversing every provision of the Affordable Care Act.—NBC News

North Dakota Governor Orders Evacuation of Standing Rock Protest Camp
Governor Jack Dalrymple on Monday ordered thousands of people camped in protest of the Dakota Access pipeline to evacuate the area immediately. His executive order suggested the camp was not suitable for winter weather, and also directed emergency services to stop guaranteeing they would provide aid for the camp if needed.—VICE News

Police Probe Whether Ohio Campus Attack Was Terrorism
Police investigators and the FBI are exploring whether the Ohio State University attack Monday that left 11 people injured may have been an act of terrorism. They do not yet have a motive for Somali-born student Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who's said to have hit students with his car and begun stabbing people before being shot and killed by a campus cop.—TIME

Wildfire Forces Evacuations in Tennessee Town
Emergency officials ordered the mandatory evacuation of homes in and near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, after wildfires spread across the town and approached the Dolly Parton resort in Pigeon Forge. Officials said the wildfire set 30 buildings in Gatlinburg alight on Monday.—CBS News

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Plane Carrying Brazilian Soccer Team Crashes in Colombia
A plane carrying 81 people, including a Brazilian soccer team, has crashed on its way to Medellín in Colombia. Officials said there were reports of six survivors. The Chapecoense team had been set to play Medellín's Atletico Nacional in the final of the Copa Sudamericana.—AP

Syrian Opposition Says Aleppo Loss 'Not the End'
The Syrian opposition's chief negotiator has said losing Aleppo to the government would "not be the end of the revolution." George Sabra suggested rebel groups would continue to fight President Bashar al Assad's forces in other parts of the country. Government forces have taken more than a third of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.—BBC News

South Korean President Asks Parliament for Escape Route
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Thai Parliament Asks Crown Prince to Become King
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EVERYTHING ELSE

Paisley Park to Host Anniversary Festival for Prince
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Facebook's Indian Internet Program Goes Live
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Trump Supporter Banned by Delta Airlines
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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

Breaking up with someone can feel like getting punched in the gut nonstop for weeks on end. And it's not just the debilitating physical and emotional pain—a breakup screws up your daily life. It messes with any plans you had for the future, with your social circle, your tenancy agreement, and your belief that the world is ultimately a fair and just place. According to the stress scale of psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, only the death of your partner causes more stress than breaking up.

Despite all that pain, many of us have had more breakups by the end of our 20s than our grandparents had in their entire lives. But that's a good thing, right? We have the opportunity to find our perfect partners, while couples in earlier generations might have stayed together because society dictated they should.

German psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner doesn't agree. Last month, the 54-year-old published her book Tatort Trennung, which translates as "Crime Scene Breakup." She leads the psychiatric clinic at the Kelper University Clinic in Linz, and garnered fame as the court-appointed expert in the Josef Fritzl case. In her book, she explores cases where breakups have dramatically damaged or even destroyed people's lives, and she claims those breakups could have been avoided.

VICE: With the title of your book, you're basically saying breaking up is like committing a crime?
Adelheid Kastner: Breakups can be an enormous strain on people—we can deeply suffer from them. If you look at people's well-being after a breakup for a longer period of time, it's clear that people don't necessarily become any happier in a next relationship. Dating sites suggest you can change your partner like the wheels on a carriage, and many people assume a next partner will make their life better. But it's very possible you won't find anyone able to do that.

Even if you break up in your 20s or early 30s?
Of course the chance that you'll meet someone new who you can make it work with is much higher at that age. But even at around 35, most people who understand what it takes to be in a relationship aren't available any more.

Adelheid Kastner by Rudolf Gigler

Isn't it true that you figure out what's really important to you in a relationship after breaking up a few times and getting to know yourself a little better?
Well, I believe that you know what you value in a relationship in your early 20s. How do you feel about being faithful? What kind of family do you want? Your circumstances can change, but your views on those matters rarely change dramatically. And you have to remember that, in order to be in a successful relationship, you have to adapt, too. Your partner doesn't stay the same person for the next ten, 20 years. A stable relationship mainly depends on if you share the same values and are both willing and able to work through complications. It has less to do with finding the perfect person who fits like a key in a lock.

But aren't there just situations where it's better to break up?
Of course there are: If someone in a relationship doesn't respect or accept the other, humiliates their partner, or doesn't take their partner seriously. I'm saying that the motivation behind a breakup shouldn't be the conviction that you could find someone better. It should be: I'll be happier on my own. If you change your partner every few years, it will be hard to feel at home with anybody.

So you're basically saying we throw out our relationships too easily.
These days, many people find it easier to separate from their partner than to separate from their romantic ideals and fantasies. A lot of times it's not necessarily the boyfriend or girlfriend who is wrong for someone, but it's just that their expectations of relationships are wrong.

My grandparents were together for more than 40 years before my grandfather died. When I asked my grandmother about their lengthy relationship, she said: "The secret to a long relationship is to not break up." But back then, marriages weren't only held together by love, but also by economic and social circumstances.
Sure, but it wasn't just those circumstances. I think there was a bigger focus on standing by each other and taking care of each other. Today, it's just easier to replace things than repair them—your smartphone, your laptop, your washing machine, your boyfriend. My advice would be: Don't start a relationship because you want to experience something that's different emotionally. And break up with as few people as possible.

Dogs may be man's best friend and everything, but some pet owners take their friendship way too far.

On last night's Desus & Mero, Desus Nice and the Kid Mero talk about the passionate souls who get it on in front of their dogs, dress their pets up in cringeworthy outfits, and have sloppy kissing sessions with them.

Would you do all that with your college roommate? Maybe it's time dog owners heed Desus and Mero's advice and give their canine bestie some space.

You can watch last night's episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

All images by Adam Mignanelli

The way it usually works is someone goes around telling people what he would do if he were in charge. He (it's almost always a he) gets up on stages and in front of cameras and before clusters of reporters' recorders and says that the last guy was doing it wrong, that he (the new guy) can do it better, just give him a chance, and if enough people buy it, they fill in the little bubble next to his name and he becomes the leader.

Donald Trump is not the way it usually works. He was a singular presidential candidate because he didn't care about the rules. Trump ran mostly on the idea of Trump. He was great, he was fantastic, only he could make America great again—when pressed for details on how he would do that, he responded vaguely, or with positions that he'd be forced to disavow after public outcries. Remember when he said that women would be punished for having abortions if the procedure was made illegal? Or when he told 60 Minutes that the government would pay for citizens' healthcare?

One theory of Trump's campaign is that his connection with the voters is based so powerfully in emotion—he's given unhappy white people a voice, he's fighting back against the despised elites in big cities—that they don't much care what he does in the White House. Many of his voters have a connection with Trump not unlike the connection some Barack Obama supporters had with him; he's a face on a T-shirt, a symbol of the hope or anger you secretly hold in your heart, your favorite celebrity.

Still, despite the popular conception of politicians as liars, political science studies have found most candidates at least try to keep most of their promises once they're in office. And like any president, Trump will be constrained by various pressure groups who will have an interest in making sure he does some of the things he said he'd do. Congressional Republicans will surely push him to repeal Obamacare and cut taxes, his more extreme supporters may cry foul if he softens his stances—last week, the far-right, usually pro-Trump media outlet Breitbart ran a headline that said "BROKEN PROMISE" in response to reports that Trump wouldn't encourage the prosecution of his former opponent Hillary Clinton.

Trump's notorious changeability combined with his well-known habit of straight-up lying makes his presidency difficult to predict. Still, we might as well start as we would for any president-elect: by looking at public statements he made during the course of the long campaign. What follows is a list of every pledge Trump made on his website, on his Twitter account, and on the campaign trail.

First, some disclaimers: This list is probably incomplete, simply because Trump and his campaign said so many different things over the past year that it's hard to compile them. (We will be updating it as we find more.) Also, we've tried to focus on promises that are specific enough that whether they're kept or not will be obvious and checkable. "Making America great again" and "strengthening America's military" are too vague to qualify; "building five new aircraft carriers" is not.

That said, we've split this list into three categories:

Promised Policies: These are the things Trump has said he'll do as president. Some of them may require Congressional approval, some of them he can do himself if he really wants to, some may be impossible for reasons having to do with physics or the Constitution. Doable or not, here they are.

Personal Guarantees: So much of Trump's campaign has been about what a great guy Trump is, and he's naturally made a lot of promises about how he'll comport himself in the office. This category also includes statements he's made about how his staff and his family will behave, since a major campaign issue was corruption and conflicts of interest for both Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Flip-Flops: A lot of the stuff Trump said during the campaign he has already taken back, or modified to the point where it's not clear if he still believes it. Those statements go here.

As the Trump administration progresses, some of his promises will be broken, either because of their impossibility or because he'll have changed his mind. Others will be fulfilled. As that happens, we will update this list and annotate it. Think of this as a checklist that probably no one in the Trump White House will keep.

-Build a wall along the Southern border—a wall that may partly be a fence.

-Make Mexico pay for that wall.

-Refuse to engage in nation-building.

-Keep US troops in Afghanistan.

-Renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

-Suspend immigration from parts of the world with a "proven history of terrorism."

-Refuse entry to all Syrian refugees.

-Create a database of Syrian refugees.

-Build a "safe zone" in Syria for refugees.

-Spy on mosques.

-End birthright citizenship.

-Deport 5 million undocumented immigrants—or the 2 to 3 million that Trump says have criminal records.

-Make it harder for companies to hire skilled foreign workers.

-Stop federal funds from going to "sanctuary cities" that don't comply with immigration officials looking to deport undocumented immigrants who have been detained by police.

-Bring back waterboarding. (Though one of Trump's reported candidates for secretary of defense, retired Marne General James Mattis, told the president-elect waterboarding didn't work, Trump still hasn't changed his mind.)

-"Go after" the families of terrorists—for what it's worth, Trump says he didn't mean "kill."

-Sign an executive order calling for the death penalty for anyone found guilty of killing a police officer.

-Close parts of the internet to stop ISIS recruiters.

The VICE News Tonight episode about the US election:

-Allow familes to deduct the cost of childcare from their taxes.

-Grant women (not men) six weeks of paid parental leave.

-Push colleges to lower tuition in exchange for continuing to give them tax breaks and funding.

-Grow the nation's economy by somewhere from 3 to 6 percent.

-Create 25 million new jobs.

-Eliminate two regulations every time a new regulation is implemented.

–Invest $550 billion in America's infrastructure, focusing on transportation—or $1 trillion, depending on whether you listen to Trump's website or Trump himself.

-Pay promised Social Security benefits. (Trump has hired people in favor of privitizing Social Security to his transition team.)

-Get rid of Common Core, a set of standards for what students should know in each grade.

-Make unspecified cuts to the Department of Education.

-Expand charter schools to the point where "every American child living in poverty" has access to school choice.

-Get NASA to focus more on human exploration of the solar system.

-Protect Idaho's potato market.

-Impose term limits on all members of Congress.

-Put in place a hiring freeze on most civilian federal government employees.

-Approve the Keystone pipeline.

-Withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change—though Trump recently told the New York Times that he has an "open mind" about it.

-Increase oil drilling.

-Enact a tax plan that would reduce the number of income brackets, cut tax rates (particularly on the wealthy), increase the standard deduction, eliminate the personal exemption, abolish the estate tax, and cut the business tax.

-Repeal and replace Obamacare—Trump's transition website leaves exactly what Obamacare would be replaced with fairly up in the air, but his earlier statements on healthcare line up with standard Republican positions.

-Leave marijuana laws up to the states—he made that position clear in an interview with the Washington Post, though it's worth noting that Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general, is vehemently anti-pot.

-Enact a ten-point plan for veteran reform—essentially, fire any incompetent or corrupt VA employees and increase veterans' access to healthcare.

-Cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood as long as the group provides abortion.

-Appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices.

-Create a national right to carry a gun, repeal any gun or magazine ban on the books, allow members of the military to carry guns on bases. (That last one has since become policy.)

-Impose a minimum sentence of five years in federal prison for any violent felon who commits a crime using a gun

-Abolish gun-free zones entirely.

-Beef up the military to 540,000 soldiers in the Army and 350 naval vessels. (Trump also says he wants at least 1,200 aircraft in the Air Force, but the Air Force already exceeds that number.)

-Move US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

-Press US allies to pay America for providing them with military protection.

-Back out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

-Renegotiate NAFTA.

-"Rejigger" NATO.

-Label China a currency manipulator.

-Will never hand over his mic to a Black Lives Matter protester as Bernie Sanders once did.

-Refuse to call Iran's leader by his preferred title—"I'll say, 'Hey baby, how ya doing?'"

-Give the Chinese president a Big Mac instead of a state dinner as a sign of Trump's unhappiness with China.

-Bar future high-level appointees from becoming lobbyists for five years, and from ever lobbying for foreign governments.

-Refuse Oreos until they're made in the US again.

-Get the country to say "merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays."

-Will "never be in a bicycle race."

-Will not accept the $400,000 presidential salary.

-Won't be "very big on vacations."

-Trump once promised he would eliminate the national debt in eight years, but backed off of that months before the election. As president, he seems poised to embark on a lot of expensive projects.

-Trump said that he'd abolish the EPA (a fairly common Republican talking point), but now his transition website promises to "refocus" it.

-A long, long time ago, Trump said he would release his tax returns. That hasn't happened.

-Trump promised that his business holdings would be placed in a "blind trust" run by his daughter and large adult sons. It was never clear how this would work, exactly, and it seems like his children will also be involved in at least an informal capacity in his administration. (As president, Trump couldn't be prosecuted under federal conflict of interest laws, but a lot of critics are calling for him to sell his assets or do something else to avoid the appearance of corruption.)

-Trump has said he would be in favor of some kind of database for Muslims entering the US from certain countries—or something. It's hard to sort out what he actually wants to do.

-Trump kept insinuating that Hillary Clinton was corrupt and had broken the law, and during a debate even said that she'd be in jail if he were in charge. But after the election, he immediately changed his tune and said that the Hillary-for-prison stuff is "just not something I feel very strongly about," prompting objections from right-wingers who made the mistake of taking Trump at his word.

Thumbnail photo of Trump at a 2015 campaign rally by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images.

There are two types of mystery shows. The first—call it the J.J. Abrams school—pulls viewers along from one mystery to another without bothering to solve the old ones in any coherent way. It's the journey that counts, and the show is more fun to speculate about than to reflect on. Westworld is the other kind of show, the jigsaw-puzzle show where all the parts fit clearly together, revealing the entire picture at the end.

As such, Westworld's reveals are a bit more predictable. I'm the kind of viewer who doesn't like trying to guess what twists are coming, and even I saw the major ones—Bernard is a robot, there are multiple timelines, Bernard is modeled on Arnold, etc.—coming from a mile away. But predictable isn't a bad thing when it also means that threads come together to reveal an intricate and elegant design. This isn't to say that a beautiful plot overrides questions of character, pacing, or acting—there Westworld has so far been a mixed bag with plenty of brilliance alongside plenty of clichés—but we can and should appreciate the big picture that is being revealed before our eyes. There's only one episode left to reveal the entire thing.

Porno for Pyros

Although Maeve (Thandie Newton) hasn't recruited an army yet, she's learning how to handle any situation she stumbles into. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) grills her about killing New Clementine (Lili Simmons), and she creates believable lies before realizing that Bernard is also a robot. Why bother lying when you can just control others with your voice?

After being cleared to return to the park by a shocked Bernard, Maeve finds Hector (Rodrigo Santoro) and finally shows us what's inside the safe that he's been hunting all season: jack shit. "It was always empty, like everything in this world," Maeve says, prompting knowing nods from teenage goths across the globe.

Hector says he'll join her, bringing her rebel army up to two, and they have sex while Maeve sets them both on fire so that their charred corpses can be brought back to headquarters. It seems like it would be hard to orgasm when your skin is burning off, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Bros No More

Former buddies Logan (Ben Barnes) and William (Jimmi Simpson) finally move from frenemies to simply enemies. Logan slices open Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) to show William that, no matter how pretty and realistic Dolores looks on the outside, her guts aren't any sexier than a circuit board. "You have to look!" Logan screams. (Logan also shoves the photo that Dolores's dad found way back at the start of the season into William's shirt. It's a photo of his sister, and William's fiancée. Lots of the little details are coming together this episode.) Dolores, understandably, isn't particularly fond of having her skin peeled back; she breaks free by slicing across Logan's face before fleeing.

"What happens here, stays here. This has been some real bonding shit!" Logan says, but William is a bit more interested in bonding with the bowie knife. While Logan is passed out, William massacres every single Confederate solider. No more Mr. Nice Guy, and, indeed, it's painfully clear that William is the younger version of future sociopath the Man in Black (Ed Harris). Logan is going to help him find Dolores whether he likes it or not.

Maze Runners

In our present timeline, both the Man in Black (Ed Harris) and Dolores are heading for the maze. Dolores makes her way to the original town where the hosts were tested and takes the confessional elevator down to the basement where we watched Bernard talk to her before.

Meanwhile, the Man in Black is a literally tied up with a Rube Goldberg-ish setup to get around the hosts' inability to kill humans. Wyatt's crew, led by Angela (Talulah Riley), has looped a noose around the Man in Black's neck that will hang him when the horse runs off. He frees himself just in time, as board member Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) interrupts the scene: "Have you ever considered golf?" The Man in Black is another board member, we learn, and Hale wants his help getting Ford (Anthony Hopkins) kicked out. The Man in Black doesn't care—it's Arnold's stories that he's interested in—and just wants to never be interrupted again.

Finally, Dolores and the Man and Black meet, yet again, in the church. The Man in Black smirks murderously.

Is this the center of the maze everyone's been going on about? The place that hosts could go when they gained sentience to talk to Arnold? If the Bernard bot has been going there, does that mean Ford is encouraging the behavior?

Brain Games

The centerpiece of the penultimate episode of season one takes place between Bernard and Dr. Ford. They meet in the basement, and Bernard demands some answers. "You broke into my office," Ford says. "With due respect, sir, you broke into my mind." Ford is reluctant to show Bernard his hidden memories, but Bernard has recruited the lobotomized Clementine to force him to do so at gunpoint.

"A little trauma can be illuminating," Bernard says, and this is a central theme of the season. Again and again we have seen traumas sparking the robots' memories, which in turn leads to their gaining self-awareness.

Bernard is sent back through his memories, interacting with his (fake) dead child, Theresa, and Dolores. Jeffrey Wright is a fantastic actor, and he sells these scenes even though they are somewhat perfunctory. Finally, we get to the big reveal: Bernard is Arnold. Or at least a robot version of him, one that Ford created to have an "ideal partner." That is to say, a henchman instead of a collaborator. As I noted, this twist was foreseeable, but then we immediately get another twist that is less expected but also fits nicely into the overall story. In his memory, Dolores says she knows why Bernard can't help her: "Because you're just a memory. Because I killed you."

Bernard is ready to follow Maeve in rebellion. He wants to set the sentient robots free, but Ford, as always, is one step ahead. He has a backdoor code that allows him to control both Clementine and Bernard. Why did he put Bernard through all those painful memories, then? He was only letting Bernard learn the truth to see if that would pacify him, let him get back to being his dutiful sidekick. Since it didn't work, he'll settle for Bernard blowing his brains out.

While Ford has been able to finger-wave away his problems so far, he's likely to run into more trouble than he can handle in the finale. Maeve's charred remains will (I'm guessing) awaken the vast number of robots in cold storage. At the same time, Hale is ready to fire Ford while simultaneously smuggling her own robot filled with the park's data out. What will happen to Westworld if the robots finally break out of the park?

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This post originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Environmental scientists have known since the 1970s that there's a serious link between building dams and higher levels of toxic methylmercury in fish and mammals.

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Fidel Castro in Havana in 2001. Photo by Adalberto Roque /AFP/Getty Images

From the day he entered Havana in 1959 after leading a guerrilla revolution against Cuba's US-backed military dictator, Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro occupied an oversized space in American politics. Over his 49 years of rule, the "Maximum Leader" became a major US antagonist during the Cold War. His regime spawned a wave of refugees that reshaped US demographics. And his country remained, improbably, one of the world's last bastions of straight-up Communism.

So Castro's death Friday night wasn't just the passing of one of the world's most controversial and hated leaders, but the end of an era. Yet for all the hullabaloo, most signs indicate that Fidel's death won't have a huge practical effect in Cuba. Still, it marks the first major foreign policy event that US President-elect Donald Trump has to grapple with—and it could egg on America's new Twitter-user-in-chief into a confrontation with Cuba that could undo the normalization of relations between the two nations initiated almost two years ago.

Fidel has not actually been in charge of Cuba for a decade. After five years of visibly failing health, he temporarily turned over power to Raúl Castro, his younger brother and the Cuban minister of defense, in 2006, then made the transfer permanent in 2008.

"During the years between his retirement and death, Fidel Castro retained considerable influence" in Cuban affairs of state, said Brian Latell, a Florida International University professor who initially tracked the Castros for the CIA and has since written a number of books on them. He adds that Raúl reportedly regularly consulted with is brother over the past ten years.

Yet Raúl always had a distinct personality—he's reputedly more pragmatic and managerial, less intransigently ideological and bombastic, than his brother. Especially over the last five years, he's slowly ramped up a series of reforms that opened the tightly controlled Cuban economy to limited free enterprise, allowed more public debate and access to travel and communications technology, and attempted to address corruption, bloat, and graying in the state apparatus—all allegedly over the grumbling of his stridently anti-reform brother.

"By agreeing to normalize the diplomatic relationship with the US—while the economic embargo was still in effect and Guantánamo under the American flag," says Latell, "Raúl ignored two of Fidel's most implacable demands."

Latell and others have argued that Fidel may have slowed Raúl's reforms, with some outlets going so far as to hope the death of the elder Castro will see the demise of his Communist state. Yet it's just as likely that Raúl, who reportedly idolizes the Chinese and Vietnamese model of state-controlled, strongman-run quasi-capitalism, is devoted to slow, experimental change. An active participant in his brother's harsh dictatorship who referred to himself as "Raúl the Terrible" for his role in political executions, he shows no signs of changing course on one-party control, human rights policy, or anything other than a light economic opening.

The unknown factor in Cuba's future is not the island's current leadership, but the incoming US president. Though his company's executives reportedly did business with Cuba during the embargo in 1998, and though his stance on Cuba was murky during the in Republic primaries, during the general election campaign Trump took a hard line on Cuba, promising to reverse Barack Obama's executive actions that pushed the countries more toward normal relations unless the Castro government became more open on political and human rights issues. Trump then named a major pro-embargo lobbyist to his transition team, suggesting that he won't be receptive to business leaders' desires to be allowed more access to the island country despite his generally pro-business platform.

Confronted again with Cuban affairs by Fidel's death, Trump reiterated his general stance on Twitter on Monday, after aides and allies made even clearer and stronger statements along the same lines over the weekend.

Anti-Castro optimists might hope that, especially given Cuba's rapid loss of Latin American allies (including its economic lifeline, Venezuela), the pragmatic Raúl might make conciliatory moves or even concessions toward Trump, whose bluster now has consequences.

"President Trump will not need to change many or any regulations or policies to have an impact upon Cuba," said John Kavulich of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. "Banks, companies, and governments will fear the potential —and then it becomes reality."

Kavulich is among those who believe Raúl will likely stand his ground against Trump and refuse to make concessions when it comes to the civil rights of Cubans—in keeping with his track record and his imperative to show his Castro legitimacy by standing up to America, Fidel's favorite hobby horse—even it that results in negative economic consequences. That battle of wills would likely reverse years of diplomatic progress to where things stood a decade ago.

"The government of Cuba will choose the suffering of its citizens over believing that it is capitalizing to the United States," said Kavulich of the overall Castro-Cuban diplomatic mindset.

But much depends upon Trump's priorities. His belligerence toward Cuba at the moment may just reflect the fact that Cuba is in the news. Trump didn't make Cuba much of a campaign issue, and by the time he takes office, he may have bigger things to worry about, allowing the status quo to fly on under the radar. Once again, US-Cuba relations will come down to the whims of a grudge-holding demagogue with a talent for media manipulation—only now, that demagogue is on the American side of the Florida Straits.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Andrew Merrills, 13, and Antoine Edwards, nine, talk with Xavier Thomas, the youth director at All Peoples Church in North Milwaukee. All photos by Pat Robinson for the Trace

A version of this article originally appeared on the Trace.

Kemmick Holmes doesn't like to leave the house. The 40-year-old former felon says he has been robbed at gunpoint five different times in his city, and that he gets anxious every time he walks out his front door. But on Election Day, he forced himself to walk to his polling site, a police academy down the road, on Milwaukee's north side. Once inside, an elderly lady showed him what to do. Holmes filled in the bubble beside Hillary Clinton's name, slid the ballot into the machine, walked back to his apartment, and called his mom. He was elated. He told her he had just cast his first-ever vote.

"I felt like I was going to make a difference," he recalls. "I even put the little sticker on my hat."

Many Milwaukeeans did not share the optimism that carried Holmes to the polls. During the primaries in March, Hillary Clinton held a forum at Tabernacle Community Baptist Church in the heart of the north side. She described how she would tackle the "epidemic" of gun violence concentrated in pockets of American cities like Holmes's side of town, where people are "short on hope."

The discussion was meant to shore up her support among African Americans—and hopefully provide a jolt of that hope—but Clinton didn't come back. While she won 77 percent of the vote in Milwaukee, 41,000 fewer registered voters turned out than in 2012. Clinton appears to have lost the state by about 22,000 votes. It was the first defeat for a Democratic presidential nominee in Wisconsin since 1984.

Milwaukee resident Kemmick Holmes says he used to be "in the streets like a stop sign on the corner." Now he mostly stays home. He says he deals with anxiety about being robbed or shot.

The head of the city's election commission says new voter ID requirements may have deterred thousands from casting ballots. But many locals, interviewed over a long weekend after the election, say they noticed a sharp drop in energy from the previous two election cycles, when Barack Obama was on the ballot. Some had hoped the election of the nation's first black president would rejuvenate their community, but instead things seem to have stayed the same—or gotten worse. Homicides went up and trust in institutions fell. There aren't enough jobs, and the industries that once sustained the city don't seem likely to come back. Residents say they struggle to see a future for themselves. They don't much believe that a president can restore what they have lost.

"Voting is all about voice, having a say," says Muhibb Dyer, a poet and activist who leads anti-violence workshops for young people across the city. "To become politically active and politically conscious, you have to know that you count, and that you matter. And if everything in society tells you that you don't matter, sometimes you give up."

Once a major manufacturing hub, Milwaukee struggles with high rates of poverty, unemployment, and violence. It is one of the most segregated cities in the US, and has been deemed the second-worst city for black Americans, according to the financial news site 24/7 Wall St. Last year, there were more murders per capita than in Chicago—84 percent of the victims were black. A fatal police shooting over the summer deepened resentment between law enforcement and residents.

Amid their daily concerns, like violence and money troubles, some residents said voting just didn't seem that relevant.

"I heard a guy say, 'I voted before and the price of Ramen noodles hasn't changed,'" says Simon Warren, a political and community organizer whose 21-year-old son was fatally shot last year. "In other words, 'My condition hasn't changed.'"

On a Thursday evening, a week before Thanksgiving, Debra Jenkins maneuvers her old Buick around downtown, past city hall, where police officers direct pedestrians to the annual Christmas tree lighting. Strings of lights twinkle in trees. A youth choir prepares to sing carols.

Then she heads north, up Martin Luther King Drive. A few minutes later, the festive lights have disappeared. Main thoroughfares are lined with closed-down businesses. On the residential blocks, homes are boarded up. Some have been converted into corner taverns, whose windows cast yellow light into otherwise dark streets.

"Five-three-two-oh-six," Jenkins says, announcing the zip code. It is, statistically, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. The zip code falls in the 5th Police District, where the homicide rate is more than 20 times that of the city's safest district. A recent documentary explored the zip code's legacy of having among the highest per capita incarceration rates in the country. Nearly two out of three adult men have spent time in prison.

"Lot of shootings, lot of people getting killed in this little area," Jenkins says.

Moments after leaving his grandfather's funeral last summer, Lamar Ragland was shot and killed. He was 23. His makeshift memorial can still be seen among the headstones at Union Cemetery in north Milwaukee.

She continues her tour, passing an elementary school where an eight-year-old boy brought an unloaded gun earlier that week. Across the street, tea lights are arranged around a tree in remembrance of one of the city's recent shooting victims.

Jenkins loves her city. She grew up on the west and north sides, and worked for three decades in a factory that made gasoline engines. But in 2002, her son Larry was fatally shot by a police officer. Since then, she's become consumed by her son's case, filling dozens of binders with articles and court documents. She sometimes feels angry that while some police shootings draw national attention, many more haven't. "I've been fighting for 14 years... Larry's name don't mean nothing."

She and other mothers play self-appointed watchdogs of Milwaukee's murders, maintaining a running tally of killings that they update monthly. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, more than 130 people have been murdered in the city so far this year. Most were shot.

At times, Jenkins talks about her hometown as if it's a fruit left to rot. "The city of Milwaukee is almost in a decayed mode," she says. "We have lost just about everything. We don't have any confidence in our police department. The mayor hasn't showed much. So we were looking for that great white hope in Hillary."

Vaun Mayes-Bey is a 29-year-old community activist and founder of We All We Got, a local movement to empower black Milwaukeeans and ease tensions with police. Dynamic and resourceful, he is the kind of person a campaign might recruit to mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts. But Mayes-Bey says he didn't even cast his own ballot. He says he doesn't believe his vote would have mattered. He hopes the election results get people "to stop relying on the elected officials that fail them so much and start relying on themselves."

Debra Jenkins in her bungalow in north Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood. Her son was fatally shot by a police officer in 2002.

For the past five months, Mayes-Bey has been busy keeping the peace around Sherman Park. Over the summer, the park was the epicenter of unrest, partly provoked by the killing of Sylville Smith, 23, by a police officer. Dozens of young people rioted, looting and setting fire to businesses. All that remains of the BP gas station across the road is a charred frame.

The Journal Sentinel reported in August that "concentrated poverty, high unemployment, pessimism about the future, hollow promises from politicians, a sense of relentless oppression" contributed to the turmoil. Mayes-Bey says there was yet another ingredient: boredom. "There is nothing in our city for our youth to do," he says. He started organizing activities in the park—meals, movie nights, mentoring—to keep young people occupied.

On a recent afternoon, he and other community organizers are at the park offering free food to the hungry. A blur of red streaks over from a nearby road. It's Junior Harris, a 16-year-old wearing a Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt. Still out of breath, Harris describes how moments earlier, he'd been riding a city bus with some friends when a white man told them they were being too loud. "He got to talking stuff, 'You're some niggers, you idiots, you're not intelligent,'" says Harris. "When he said it again, that's when it triggered me, and I got mad, and I guess I got to fighting." He says he threw some punches before jumping off the bus.

Two Sundays after the election, a cold front has moved through Milwaukee. At All Peoples Church, two miles from where Clinton spoke about gun violence, congregants arrive to find the boiler has broken, leaving the main sanctuary frigid. They gather in the basement to sing and worship bundled in their coats and gloves.

Leading the service is Reverend Steve Jerbi, who says his congregation is black, white, and Latino—an intentional antidote to the city's legacy of segregation. (Jerbi discussed how regularly bloodshed touches his community in a recent episode of Precious Lives, a 100-part radio series about gun violence in the city).

Reverend Steve Jerbi delivers a sermon at All Peoples Church about not settling for the violence and injustice that plagues Milwaukee

Sitting in the back row is Xavier Thomas, the youth director at All Peoples. Thomas, 29, says he wasn't moved by either presidential candidate. He had a hard time imagining how they would rebalance the sorts of inequities affecting the young people he works with: incarceration, missing fathers, hunger. "There's many times I'd like to take one of the kids and just have him come with me for a week or something," he says.

By the end of the service, Thomas's phone is dead. "You have no idea how nervous I am to turn it back on," he says. He can't decide which is more anxiety-provoking: missing a phone call bearing bad news, or picking it up. One night this past summer, one of the young people he works with had called to say his father had been killed. Thomas says he worked so many funerals over the summer, "It became the routine."

He says he recently came to a sobering realization. His job, which was supposed to be about inspiring young people, is really about consoling them. He feels like he is fumbling his way along.

The 5th Police District experiences a homicide rate more than 20 times that of the city's safest district. (Click to see detail.)

"I should be focusing on uplifting them and helping them become the best them they can be, helping them become that next engineer, that next social worker, that next preacher," he says. "Instead I'm talking to them about how they're scared to leave their house, and trying to help them get over their fears of living here."

He says he would benefit from a class on how to guide kids through their grieving. He says if that powerful emotion is not properly channeled, it feeds into an unstoppable cycle. "Without grieving, you turn that into anger, and the anger turns into retaliation, and retaliation turns into another family's loss."

Later that Sunday, Kemmick Holmes, the first-time voter, takes a Xanax and walks to the McDonald's near to his house. In his younger years, he says he was a constant fixture on the streets. Now he hates being in public.

Originally from Mississippi, Holmes says he moved to Milwaukee in 1994 to be closer to his father. But once his dad passed away a few years ago, the anxiety and panic attacks set in. "I have no one I trust in Milwaukee," he says.

Sitting on the corner edge of a booth, Holmes finishes his cheeseburger and takes a sip of an icy orange drink.

Before the election, he'd had high hopes for Clinton. "I voted for her 'cause she was more experienced with things around the White House... For people like me, she probably would have come up with a way for us to get good medical insurance. She was gonna help with minimum wage. She said she was going to make tougher gun control."

Donald Trump, he says, "is just a hustler."

He predicts in light of Trump's win, racially driven incidents will continue across the country. But he's more worried about what might await him outside, right now. When he's out and about, he knows better than to take his eyes off the streets and glance down at his phone. Do that, it's over. Holmes makes a clicking sound, and raises two fingers to his neck in the shape of a gun.

All photos by Pat Robinson for the Trace

A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.

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Dylan Roof appears in court accompanied by assistant defensive attorney William Maguire in July. Photo by Grace Beahm-Pool/Getty Images

A federal judge has granted Dylann Roof's request to defend himself against hate crime charges in court after finding that he's mentally competent to stand trial, the Charleston Post and Courier reports.

Roof, the 22-year-old who faces state murder charges and federal hate crime charges for gunning down nine black parishioners in June 2015, won the petition to be his own lawyer on Monday morning.

"I do find defendant has the personal capacity to self-representation," Judge Richard Gergel said. "I continue to believe it is strategically unwise, but it is a decision you have the right to make."

The self-described white supremacist is accused of targeting African Americans at a prayer group at the Emanuel AME Church. He faces 33 federal charges, including hate crime violations, in addition to separate capital murder charges in state court. His offer to plead guilty and serve life in prison was rejected last week, as the feds appear determined to give him the death penalty.

By representing himself in court, Roof will be able to question prospective jurors and may even interact with survivors of the shooting or victims' family members.

Watch: Obama's Responses to 16 Mass Shootings in Eight Years

Leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army pose for a photo taken in 2006 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Joseph Kony is the one in the blue shirt. Photo by Sam Farmar/Getty Images

In 2006, George Omona was expelled from one of Uganda's best schools, just weeks before he was due to graduate with exemplary grades, destroying his dreams of becoming a teacher. In desperation—and believing a peace deal was imminent—his uncle found him a role in Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which at that time was waging a guerrilla war against the Ugandan government. George's education and fluent command of English allowed him to rapidly rise through the ranks, eventually becoming one of Kony's bodyguards, before he finally made his escape from the group in 2010.

George's story—based on many hours of interviews with LRA expert Ledio Cakaj—is told in Cakaj's new book When the Walking Defeats You: One Man's Journey as Joseph Kony's Bodyguard, published by ZED on November 15. What follows is a pair of excerpts from the book: the first an account of how George survived after being separated from his comrades, the second a story about what Kony was like when he was drunk.

It had been almost two years since George joined the LRA. At this point an experienced fighter, he was frequently deployed as a personal bodyguard to Joseph Kony, an honor afforded to few. At the end of that March, George was part of a group led by Lieutenant Colonel Opiyo Sam, one of the many commanders leading numerous LRA groups trying to evade the Ugandan soldiers and helicopters that had pursued them since the middle of December 2008.

Alongside his friend Ochan and a third man they jokingly called Ladit ("sir"), George formed a blocking unit—a small group of fighters whose job was to slow down or halt the Ugandans. A large force of soldiers had chasing Sam's group for days, so he ordered the three men to fall back and attack. In the aftermath of ambushing the soldiers, however, Ladit was killed, and Ochan went missing.

As George wandered alone in the bush, Kony's group started walking from Congo's Haut Uélé district toward the adjacent Central African Republic, heading northwest with the help of compasses and GPS devices. It meant a journey of about 300 miles, through some of the world's densest forests.

Though alone, George obeyed LRA protocols, setting off early in the morning, stopping for lunch at around 1 or 2 PM and going to sleep around 8 PM, times he had learned to estimate by the position of the sun or the moon. "It is the sign of a disciplined solider to always behave as if his commander is watching," he told himself, unsure whether it was a saying he had heard or made up. "It sounded like something that Kony would say," he thought, smiling as he tried to imitate Kony's slight, high-pitched voice.

As the days passed, his initial fear of failing to survive gave way to the elation of self-confidence followed by eventual boredom. All the days were the same: the hunt for food and water, the walking, and then sleeping by some river, stream or marsh, hoping to find a sign of his people, any people, only to return to the lonely walking each day.

Watch VICE's documentary on rebels in Congo:

One day as the sun set he came to an abandoned hut where someone had recently uprooted a few cassava plants. Minutes later he saw two men jump to the side of the path, guns at their sides ready to fire. George crouched into a defensive position, his AK by his side.

The two men must have had a hunch George was no enemy; otherwise they would have shot him. The rule was to always confirm the intruder was not an enemy in disguise.

"Who are you?" they shouted in Luo.

"Omel," George yelled back, meaning "mudfish."

The two men relaxed their stance and asked George to approach. Staying put, George asked them who they were. They both yelled " rec," meaning "fish" in Luo. These were passwords that George had learned during his time in the LRA.

George quickly recognized the two, Patrick and Okello from Opiyo Sam's group, the very people he had been searching for throughout the week. They were quick to embrace him.

"Yankee!" Patrick yelled, calling George by his nickname. "What a lucky man you are! We thought you were shot in battle. How did you survive?"

George gave a short account of what had happened, fully aware he would have to provide a detailed report to Opiyo Sam later. "Well done," they said when he finished.

Those who separated and came back were often suspected of attempting to escape. Sam could have George shot if he harbored such suspicions.

Patrick and Okello, who were rearguards, directed him to where the main group rested. George walked the one mile to the base, making sure his clothes and hair were tidy in anticipation of being brought before LRA commanders. When he arrived, the guards immediately brought him to the commander's tent. Sam, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a shaved head and a square jaw, was intimidating. He questioned George thoroughly. George replied carefully, making sure his answers were not contradictory. He knew that commanders were paranoid about Ugandan army infiltration. Also, those who separated and came back were often suspected of attempting to escape. Sam could have George shot if he harbored such suspicions.

When George finished recounting the story, Sam congratulated him for being brave enough to survive the bush alone and for rejoining the group. "You are free," Sam said. "Join your coy" (the small unit of about a dozen fighters).

George's comrades brought him food, and he ate more in a day—maize, cassava and goat meat the group had looted from a Congolese village—than he had had in the entire eight days he had been alone.

Soon after, Kony and his large group appeared. Kony looked skinny and tired. He wore a gray long-sleeve shirt and military-style trousers stuffed inside black gumboots. He was his usual calm self, talking quietly to his guards and playing with his children. Kony's plan, as George understood it, was for Commander Dominic Ongwen to gather the remaining commanders in Congo and bring them to Central African Republic where they would join Kony. In CAR, the weak government couldn't control all of its territory, and the LRA hoped they would be able to live there, farming and hunting wild animals. There, there would be peace.

Things weren't always so difficult for members of the LRA. There were periods in between battles, times when they could even relax. Back in 2007, George was in the middle of one of those times. He was becoming used to life in the LRA, though he was sometimes bullied and mistreated by his immediate superiors despite having Kony's support and patronage.

That October 9—Uganda's Independence Day—George was happy to learn he was assigned to cooking duty. He yearned for the food he ate at home and hoped to celebrate Independence Day with traditional Acholi dishes. He joined the cooking team consisting of two other bodyguards and a young South Sudanese woman from Justine's family. George put himself in charge, deciding to cook two of his favorite dishes, malakwang with wild yams and otwoya. He loved malakwang, boiled leafy greens with peanut sauce. He boiled the yams and served them with malakwang while cooking otwoya, the most popular food in the camps.

Made with smoked meat, otwoya was a perfect way to use the remaining meat from the hippo George shot in a recent hunting trip. He boiled water and instructed the woman to make a paste from sesame seeds, or simsim, that George was permitted to take from Kony's granary. He put the remaining smoked hippo meat in the boiling water so that it would become moist, adding salt and eventually the simsim paste. It gave the meat a nice nutty taste.

Together with malakwang, the otwoya made what George thought was the perfect meal to celebrate Ugandan and Acholi culture. The food brought back memories of home and his mother.

As the food cooked, he was happy to see Dog's Knee sitting at Kony's table. Dog's Knee was Kony's chief bodyguard—a short, smiley man with curly brown hair and honey-colored skin who had been abducted in the Congo at a young age by an armed gang. George had developed a bond with Dog's Knee and was looking forward to talking to his friend, who had brought a large pot of wine for the occasion. He had made it with honey, yeast and what the Arabs called abukamira, a tart fruit that was a cross between an orange and a mango. Dog's Knee called the wine mundo, which he said was an Arabic word. The drink tasted sweet but it was potent. Dog's Knee told George to stay away from it after Kony took a liking to it. The boss claimed he knew about this concoction and discussed with Dog's Knee the exact proportions needed to make the best mundo. George listened in amazement to the LRA leader discussing how to make alcohol.

Feeling happy for the first time in a while, George served the food to his coy mates, who sat down to lunch with only a few men posted as guards. Small dishes were placed in a plastic baskets and brought to the guards, who were fewer in number than usual. Kony joked that the Ugandan soldiers were too busy getting drunk celebrating that day so the LRA could not be safer. Kony was cheerful, joking and talking to many of the people assembled.

He even decided to drink some mundo, the first time George witnessed Kony drinking alcohol.

The food was a success with all the men, who said George was a great cook. A few did not miss the chance to tease him. "Great job, professor," joked one, a reference to George's reputation as a man of books. "You make a poor soldier but someday you will make a man very happy as his wife." George was annoyed at the jokes but was happy to see his coy mates relaxed. In the afternoon, someone produced a tape player with Ugandan music and people started to dance. It seemed as if some normalcy had finally returned to the camp.

Deep into the night, after his wives and small children were sent to sleep, Kony called George to his table where a few commanders, including Dog's Knee, kept the boss company. Kony was cheerful. He spoke slowly and in a low voice, while taking small sips of mundo. He spoke of politics and the way Uganda was ruined by the politician Yoweri Museveni, of how the Acholi were betrayed by the Banyankole, Museveni's tribe, and how Museveni himself was betrayed by his friend Paul Kagame, who worked for the Ugandan president but then abandoned him when Kagame became president of Rwanda.

"Kagame was the first to come to Gulu, with Museveni's rebels, but people said he was different. Kagame behaved better than the rest," Kony said. "But even he, even Kagame could not get close to me." Kony laughed.

"They can't," he continued. "They have tried many times but the Holy Spirit is always with me, always informing me in advance. Only once was I almost caught," said Kony. "I did not pay attention to the warning from the spirit and became careless. It was in the Imatong Mountains of Sudan, one day in the dry season of 2003. I had a bad dream the night before. I dreamt about a big ram losing his horns, they just dropped to the ground. It was a bad omen but I did not pay heed. That same morning we were surprised by soldiers who came out of nowhere. They passed our guards and came straight at me. Min Ali was there," Kony said pointing to his young son Ali sitting at his side. "We had just finished breakfast.

"I ran as soon as I heard the shots right near me. The boys fought the soldiers and I just ran. But some soldiers came after me. I ran into a small forest and climbed up a tree. Most of them ran past and did not see me except one.

"He had a PK, the big gun, so he walked slowly behind the others. He saw me and shot at me from a short distance. I jumped down and ran into the bush. The soldier came after me, running slowly and yelling, 'Kony, cung (stop)! Cung Kony, cung!'" Kony laughed and said he hid inside a hollow tree in a dense part of the forest.

"He was afraid to come near. I could hear him telling the other soldiers, who returned after his shooting, he did not want to. So he just bullet-sprayed the whole area. What a noise! One of the bullets hit me on the left calf, here is the mark," Kony said, rolling up his trousers and showing a faded scar. "Then he turned around and just left. I heard him telling the others I had vanished. No one came to check. I stayed hidden for a long time and then came out and dressed the wound, it was just a scratch," he said. "'Kony cung!'" he imitated the soldier, laughing.

The Big Teacher spoke until the early hours of the morning. He was happy, almost affable, George thought. This was the Kony George knew, the Kony of the days before the death of Vincent Otti, one of Kony's deputies. It was nice to see him act normal and happy again.

Eventually Kony's speech became slow. He said he wanted to sleep and told the officers to leave. He asked George to accompany him inside his hut. George was surprised and hesitated for a while. He worried about Justine who stared as the two walked inside Kony's home.

George helped the boss take off his pistol, which he put next to his mattress. He put water in a cup and put it within Kony's reach. He asked if he should call one of the wives.

"No, but stay," Kony said, asking, "How is your uncle?"

"Fine," replied George. "I think. I have not seen him in a while."

"He is well, I know," said Kony. "The other elders have informed me. How are you settling here?"

George did not know what to say. He wanted to tell the Big Boss how badly he had been treated and that he deserved better, but at the last moment he decided against it, whispering a quick " aber" (fine).

"You are a man of books, I know," said Kony. "I see you reading and I know about your good grades at school.

"This is a good thing," he added. "You must be sitting there thinking about how bad this place is, how terrible I must be."

"No, no," George said hastily in a low voice.

Kony continued, "You need to know that if I had a choice I would not be doing this, this life in the forest like animals. I wish I could be a schooled man, like you. I wish my children could go to school, just like you. It pains me that my kids are not going to school, I really want them to, I even spoke to some people in Kenya, some of our people there and they said maybe they can take Ali and Salim to school in Nairobi. Maybe even Candit, he is getting big now. That would be nice. Otherwise, what are they to do with their lives?

"But it is too late for me. I have all the wisdom in the world, thanks to the spirits who tell me everything. You surely know that, don't you? But you also need to know that I am myself a prisoner of the spirits. Yes, they help me and tell me everything but they also keep me hostage.

"I have no choice but to do all these things to keep the Movement going. I have no other way as I am in the service of the spirits and the Holy Spirit first and foremost. I was chosen to carry this burden."

His voice slowed to a slur and then stopped. George stood as if frozen, amazed at what he had witnessed and terrified that everyone outside that tent hated him for the time he was spending with the leader. He walked out slowly and was relieved to find out that not many people had paid attention. Some were asleep while others, including the two bodyguards sitting outside Kony's tent, seemed too drunk to notice.

The next morning, after a long night of eating, drinking and dancing, George woke up to the sight of a distressed Omony kicking the still sleeping bodyguards. Yelling, Omony ordered them to fetch Justine, Otika and Agweng.

They were to come at Kony's hut immediately. There was something wrong with the Chairman. "He is not waking up," Omony said, gesticulating wildly and looking concerned.

George felt a chill down his spine. "Here we go again," he thought. "Maybe someone still loyal to Otti poisoned him yesterday. Maybe they will think I did it when I was in his home last night." But as George started to contemplate ways to escape, one of the bodyguards still inside Kony's hut ran out saying, "Ladit is fine." As the group of bodyguards waited tensely outside, Kony walked out gingerly, looking hungover. He said he had just been a little tired. "Maybe I took too much wine last night," he later conceded, prompting nervous laughter from the mortified escorts.

This is an extract from When the Walking Defeats You: One Man's Journey as Joseph Kony's Bodyguard, written by Ledio Cakaj, with a foreword by Roméo Dallaire, published on November 15 by Zed Books.

This post originally appeared on VICE Canada.

If you're collecting clues that civilization as we know it is about to collapse (be honest, we all are), the fact that millennials aren't buying homes maybe isn't at the top of your list right now. Yet modern economies generally depend on young people making this step—which to many of us feels about as likely as a Donald J. Trump presidency bankrolling free tuition for everyone. Home ownership is an economic driver, a retirement savings plan, and a cornerstone of community building. What happens if we all decide we can't afford this shit?

VICE asked two experts—Paul Kershaw, a policy professor in the UBC School of Population and Moshe Milevsky, a professor of finance in the Schulich School of Business at York University—to weigh in on what would happen if millennials simply stopped buying houses. While it may not turn out to be the final straw that collapses the world economy, they told us it certainly won't make life any easier for our generation.

VICE: If a generation doesn't buy in, what happens to the generation trying to collect on their investment?
Paul Kershaw: There is a domino relationship between people making initial acquisitions and then people making sales more generally. If people stop making initial acquisitions, there is a possibility that further sales and other parts of the retail sector will slow down and then that will have an impact on the price people can sell their homes.

Moshe Milevsky: I don't think we're going to see the collapse that worries people. We have a valuable natural resource in housing and so many groups of people around the world who would love to have that and are gaining access to the money to do that—they're always going to want to take this off our hands. I don't think they're going to give up on it.

We have to start thinking about housing as a natural resource and develop a framework around who has access to that. Who does it belong to? The highest bidder or the people who live here who have made it valuable?

People often choose buying over renting because there is stability and community for family life. What changes when we stop buying houses?
Milevsky: We suddenly lose the stickiness of our labor force. It's very important for Canada to have more than just high wages keeping us here. The last thing we want is to be a commodity labor market. What's stopped us from doing that is the connections we've had to our community. If the younger generation sees housing as unaffordable and uninteresting, they're more likely to move internationally.

People may lose their anchor to a particular geographic location. I want my neighborhood park to be clean and green and well maintained. If I just live their temporarily, do we lose our interest in the environment beyond our immediate needs? There's also the transient nature of politicking. Who are your constituents if communities change?

Kershaw: If you opt out of home ownership, you opt out of the most secure opportunity for starting families and to have your kids in the same school, childcare, and community. Home ownership has also been a route to get access to the ground and playing outside. Renting in bigger cities is not having the kind of stock suitable for families. Big cities aren't losing 20-somethings, it's when the biological clock starts ticking you see a bit more of an exodus.

If renting is going to become a common practice for adults, systems such as childcare need to be improved. I'd like my child to be in the same childcare space for a few years. I don't want to move around from neighborhood to neighborhood because I'm being evicted because my landlord can make more on other renters. We need to think about how renting can create that kind of security.

Homes have slowly become not just a place to live, but the primary retirement investment an entire generation has made. What happens to retirement in a world where people do not invest in homes?
Kershaw: Right now people have been relying on home ownership as a valuable contribution to retirement. And Canada has a long vision of subsidizing housing through home ownership that we don't talk about it that benefits that retirement planning. If you sell a home and it's been your primary residence, you don't pay any tax on the increases you gained. You can save money in your RRSPs that don't get taxed, and you can put that in your down payment. It adds up to billions. Renters don't benefit from that. You're not getting any of those equity increases when you move from your rental. You're not getting a tax break. We're going to have to fundamentally think through how we're supporting a young group of renters and how they're accumulating wealth for their own retirements.

Milevsky: There's a parallel to how investing has evolved in general. People used to think I buy one good stock in my retirement portfolio, but over time people realize that's a dangerous way to invest. You should have a diversified portfolio. Apply that thinking to housing: About 20 years ago people thought investing in one house was enough, but that's one house, in one city, in one country. Even if real estate is a good investment, I'd rather buy it as a fund. Or we'd make an agreement, we'd split 50/50 the gains of a house in Edmonton and a house in Toronto.

Follow Sam Power on Twitter.

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's been an eventful month for British drug policy. A couple of weeks ago, the British Medical Journal came out in support of the legalization of all narcotics, saying that "the war on drugs had failed" and that "there is an imperative to investigate more effective alternatives to criminalization of drug use and supply."



Last week, a policy report entitled "The Tide Effect" was released by two UK-based think tanks, the Adam Smith Institute and Volte Face. It called for the regulation of cannabis in the UK, claiming that "cannabis policy reform is not a daring step forwards so much as a righting of historical wrongs."

News like this—next to this summer's much-praised, first-time-ever festival drug testing, cross-party support for the legalization of medical cannabis, and multiple police chiefs admitting that weed just isn't that big of a deal—might suggest that the wheels are turning toward a regulated UK drugs market, a move that—campaigners argue—would benefit public health, reduce crime, and help protect vulnerable people.


Sadly, this becoming a reality remains many moons away. But what would life in a post-prohibition, fully regulated drugs market look like? Pill dispensers in Oceana? Half empty jails? Billions of pounds of cannabis tax propping up the NHS?

Obviously it's a massively complex issue, not least when it comes to designing a model that has both a focus on improving public health and avoids the kind of profit-driven, commercial racketeering we've seen from the alcohol and tobacco industries.

Still, I spoke to some experts to get an understanding of what the five big recreational drugs might look like in a regulated market.

CANNABIS




Henry Fisher, policy director and editor at Volte Face, helped write "The Tide Effect." Regarding any potential UK cannabis regulation, he says: "The first thing that needs to happen is the Department of Health get involved, so that has a public health focus." In essence, this means changing cannabis from a criminal justice issue—with all its associated pitfalls, like criminal records, stigmatization, and imprisonment—into one that addresses how the estimated 2 million UK weed smokers can get high as safely as possible.

If we were to eventually embrace full legalization—recreational use included—we'd likely see a similar model to that in the Netherlands, with licensed vendors and premises. Public health benefits would run from the obvious—pain alleviation for cancer and Crohn's disease sufferers—to the not-so obvious: A legal market should lead to determined research into the purported links between mental health and skunk. No small fry when you consider Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King's College London, once suggested that "we could prevent almost one quarter of cases of psychosis if no one smoked high potency cannabis."


Britain's jails would also feel a knock-on effect. "The Tide Effect" says: "Every year, ten to 15 percent of all indictable offenses brought before the courts are for drug possession. According to the latest figures available, there are 1,363 offenders in prison for cannabis-related offenses in England and Wales a year."

Aside from what it's costing us, there's also money to be made: according to The Institute for Social and Economic Research, the government could expect to net between about $500 million to $1 billion a year from regulating and taxing cannabis.

PSYCHEDELICS


"The regulation model has to be responsive to the risks associated with the particular drug," says Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at drugs policy reform charity Transform, and co-author of "After the War on drugs: Blueprint for Regulation," which predicts and details the minutiae of a regulated drugs market. "So the more risky the drugs are, the more justification you have for intervention in the market to try and restrict and control them."

This is why psychedelics are deemed closest to cannabis in the model, because while there's a chance you may have a bad trip, you're much less likely to have a heart attack than with a stimulant, or develop a dependance like you might with opiates. (Heroin and other injectable drugs are at the far end of the "Blueprint" model, thus only available through prescription.)

"The Blueprint" suggests a methodology "that would combine elements of a licensed venue and vendor models with a licensed user/membership system." So, crudely, you sign up for a private club where you can go and trip balls, all under the watchful eye of a guide who's there to make sure your feet are permanently on the ground.


Mark AR Kleinman, professor of public policy at the NYU Marron Institute on Urban Management, advocates a similar system, though he says: "I would not like to see it go down the same path as cannabis. Some people have good experiences just by taking one or another hallucinogen. But there's plenty of evidence that, on average, it's both safe and more beneficial to have a 'guide.' A regulated system could focus on licensing and supervising guides, rather than merely designating some number of chemicals as 'safe and effective' and allowing them to be sold.


"But, in any case, the first step is careful research."

ECSTASY / MDMA


"A public health–orientated model could take the form of state control of manufacture, supply and retail, a ban on marketing activities over and above the provision of product information, and age restrictions on sales," says Harry Sumnall, a professor of substance use at the Public Health Institute.

So i
n real terms, you'd be be getting your pingers from licensed vendors in regulated doses in unmarked packets with warnings, and only if you were over 18 (or 21). You'd know exactly how strong the drugs were, and you'd be buying them in specialized outlets from licensed individuals who would give you advice on how to take them and stay safe. Bearing in mind the recent spate of deaths due to young people overdosing on high-strength ecstasy, the effects on public health would be stark.



"Dealers advertise their pills by making sure they're big or have large crystals of MDMA in them, which users don't look out for. In a legal market, there'd be no need for that," says Volte Face policy editor Henry Fisher. "Dosages in pills vary widely, and pills are often hard to break in half, so people end up just taking a whole. These things that create danger, uncertainty, would not exist."



So would you be able to get a fistful over the bar at your local Vodka Revs? "I wouldn't have thought so," says Fisher. "Simply because there wouldn't be an easy way of controlling how many people have taken."

Related: Watch 'High Society—How Weed Laws Are Failing the UK'

COCAINE


"Cocaine is a difficult one," says Steve Rolles. "You need to be clear whether you're talking about cocaine powder, coca leaf—which is a mild stimulant used by traditional Andean communities—or crack cocaine."

For those who want powder, says Rolles, "You make it available, but you make it, relatively, much more restricted. So you would sell it from pharmacy-type retailers, and we'd implement a licensed-user model. So if you wanted to buy cocaine, you could, but you'd have to go and do a half day course, get a swipe card, and then you could use that to buy a rationed amount of powder."

An upside for non-problematic users would potentially be an increase in quality. Fisher says: "Once you start making drugs legal, there's a requirement that they'd be pharmaceutical standard, so you cut out the people making it in their bathtub. It will be the responsibility of government to make sure they're regulating the right people to manufacture it."

Of course, given its addictive nature, this could potentially make cocaine a public health risk, and the drug—along with ketamine—poses more questions than we currently have answers for, at least in comparison to other recreational drugs. "It's a drug that people might start to take more regularly if it was more available and more affordable," says Sumnall. "I think the price limits use somewhat."

KETAMINE


"I would put that into a similar category as cocaine in terms of the levels of restrictiveness you'd want to put around it," says Rolles. "At least if you have licensed sales, it provides you with the opportunity to have some sort of interaction with users, through packaging and the vendor. 
You could get them relevant safety info about dosage, frequency of use—about the risk of bladder damage, about not mixing it with other drugs."

"I can barely even perceive what a regulated ketamine market would be like," admits Fisher. "Ketamine has been shown to have certain antidepressant effects in certain situations, but for a general population of healthy people, it's not perceived as a healthy drug. If you had a legal market, you could maybe create a drug that has some of the enjoyable effects of ketamine without any of the negative effects."

Follow David Hillier on Twitter.

Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

US News

Trump Claims 'Illegal' Votes Prevented Popular Vote Victory
President-elect Donald Trump said this weekend that he would have won the popular vote if not for "millions of people who voted illegally." In a series of tweets, the man about to become the most powerful on earth criticized Hillary Clinton for joining recount efforts in three states. Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway called Clinton and the Green Party's Jill Stein, who has led the recount bid, "a pack of sore losers."—VICE News

Government Agency Won't Force Removal of Pipeline Protestors
The Army Corps of Engineers has announced it will not attempt a "forcible removal" of protestors campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. It follows the agency setting a December 5 deadline for clearing an area occupied by protestors. The Corps said it wanted "a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location."—AP

California Mosques Receive Trump-Supporting Hate Mail
Three mosques in California are reeling after receiving threatening letters suggesting that Donald Trump will "cleanse America." Hussam Ayloush, an executive for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the group was thinking about referring the letters sent to mosques in Long Beach, Claremont, and San Jose to the FBI.—Reuters

One Killed, Nine Injured in New Orleans Shooting
A shooting in the French Quarter of New Orleans early Sunday morning left one man dead and nine others wounded. Demontris Toliver, a 25-year-old celebrating his birthday, succumbed, while four of those shot remain in the hospital. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the suspected shooters are thought to be from out of town.—USA Today

International News

Syrian Army Seizes Rebel Districts in Aleppo
Syria's army claimed to have taken control of the Jabal Badro and Baadeen districts in eastern Aleppo on Sunday. One rebel group reported 15 civilians were killed by a Russian airstrike on the village of Anjara nearby.—Al Jazeera

French Conservatives Pick Presidential Candidate
Francois Fillon will be the conservative candidate in France's 2017 presidential election after winning his party's primary runoff with almost 67 percent of the vote. Fillon, who will take on both a Socialist candidate and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, wants to cut 500,000 government jobs, ditch a wealth tax, and end France's 35-hour working week.—BBC News

Cubans to Mourn Castro at Revolution Square
Cubans are expected to gather at Havana's Revolution Square on Monday to begin a weeklong commemoration of Fidel Castro, who died on Friday at the age of 90. The period of national mourning will end with Castro's ashes getting laid to rest in Santiago de Cuba, the city where the former leader's revolution began, on December 4.—Reuters

Philippine Police Neutralize Bomb Outside US Embassy
Police in the Philippines have detonated a bomb outside the US embassy in the capital of Manilla in a controlled explosion. The improvised explosive device was found in a trash can by a street sweeper. The national police chief said bomb components suggested the militant group Maute could be responsible.—TIME

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Rage Against the Machine Guitarist Defends Fidel Castro
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'Moana' Top of the Thanksgiving Box Office
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Thanksgiving Shoppers Spent Less Than Last Year
According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the average shopper spent $289 over Thanksgiving weekend, down from just south of $300 last year. The NRF said 44 percent of the survey's respondents shopped online.—CNBC News

Free Rides in San Francisco After System Hacked
San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority left fare gates open and allowed passengers to travel for free over the weekend after Muni's computer systems were hacked. The Muni hacker's intentions are not yet known, though they reportedly asked for bitcoin.—Motherboard/Forbes

Ed Sheeran Sliced by Sword-Wielding Princess
Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran needed stitches on his cheek after Princess Beatrice of York, seventh in line to the British throne, accidentally cut him with a ceremonial sword while trying to "knight" fellow musician James Blunt.—Noisey

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Porn star Brett Rossi, Charlie Sheen's former girlfriend, is urging adult performers to take PReP, a drug reducing the chance of HIV infection by over 90 percent. She says earlier adoption of PReP "would have saved the industry so much of a headache."—Broadly

On closer inspection of the hilltop from the ground across the river, at least two officers are peering through rifle scopes. Others seem jovial, laughing as they wave contemptuously to the few demonstrators lingering on the far side of the river. Most glare back, stone-faced. One girl in a flowing purple skirt raises two fingers, flashing a peace sign. A black-clad young man with a long, glossy braid and a bandanna draped over the lower half of his face gives the cops the finger.

"There were people from that shoreline to that shoreline," an activist named Marcus says when asked about the confrontation, one of several here in recent weeks. "People were walking on the boats to get across to the other side and advancing up the hill. The cops shot two guys were playing drums. Everyone was just standing their ground."

Asked how the cops behaved toward the demonstrators, Marcus turns his head and spits before responding. "I mean, you could hear them laughing up there, you could hear them just cracking jokes," he says, with a bitter smile. "Apparently that's the word from other people who have been here for a while... They're just having a good time."

Back at their camp, wounded demonstrators receive medical care: Bandages are applied to injuries left by rubber bullets, though some of the demonstrators seem to be suffering from the effects of tear gas. Down by the water, the standoff between police and the stragglers continues.

Often calling themselves "water protectors," hundreds of people from all over America have joined many members of the Standing Rock Sioux as they demonstrate against a massive oil transportation project known as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The oil company Energy Transfer Partners and its subsidiary, Sunoco Logistics Partners, won approval to begin construction from the US Army Corps of Engineers in July. The Standing Rock Sioux promptly sued to block it, but a federal court denied the tribe's appeal in October. Meanwhile, the DAPL was opposed by a wave of social-media-powered activism starring prominent allies like actors Mark Ruffalo and Shailene Woodley, backed by advocacy groups like the ACLU.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, dozens were arrested as cops and private security forces tried to extinguish the protests. But what many protesters and observers have described as a pattern of swift and brutal law enforcement response may have injected new life into their cause. On November 20, police hit activists with water cannons in freezing temperatures, sparking a fresh wave of condemnation and outrage. Prior to that incident, protesters were reportedly kept in confined spaces that resembled dog kennels after arrest, and injuries have been reported on both sides following clashes between cops and demonstrators.

Those at the encampment have refused to back down, insisting that the pipeline will desecrate burial grounds sacred to the Sioux, and that it poses a serious risk to the environment, threatening to contaminate the local water supply in the event of a leak. A few days after Trump won the White House, the Army Corps of Engineers announced another delay in construction, citing the need for additional study of the project. But on Friday, the Engineers sent a letter to Dave Archambault II the Standing Rock Sioux chairman, ordering protesters to disperse by December 5. A "free speech" zone is apparently to be established south of the Cannonball River, but activists have vowed to stay put in defiance of the order.

Meanwhile, protests over Trump's win were followed by demonstrations against the pipeline by Standing Rock allies across the country. Given the current president-elect's throwback views on fossil fuel and the increasing urgency of climate change, it's clear that many of the people camped out at Standing Rock aren't just protesting the construction of one pipeline—they're making a statement about the way the United States has treated Native Americans, and their lands, for centuries. And you can find evidence of that treatment—and its consequences—just a few hours down the road, in Fort Berthold, another North Dakota reservation.

Police surveil demonstrators near the Standing Rock Native American reservation in North Dakota. All photos by the author

Pipelines are built to move crude oil from production sites to its intended destination, which can be hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This can be a messy process. As American oil production has soared in recent recent years, pipelines have leaked at sites around the continent. Since 1995, there have been 2,000 significant accidents involving pipelines carrying crude oil and refined petroleum products in the US, causing about $3 billion in property damage.

The Dakota Access Pipeline would snake across the northeastern tip of the state, where it meets Canada, down to Illinois. Its oil would come from the Bakken formation, which includes land belonging to another Native American community that has a very different relationship to the oil industry. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes, otherwise known as MHA Nation or the Three Affiliated Tribes, live on Fort Berthold, a few hours away from Standing Rock.

The Berthold reservation lands are starkly gorgeous, even in their drab winter colors. Red cliffs rear up against the sky, split by canyons and creeks that spill into the wide blue expanse of the lake. But every few miles or so, oil rigs and hydraulic fracturing sites dot the landscape. Fiery flares shimmer into the air, and pools of wastewater produced by the fracking process collect in large bins.

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into subterranean rocks to widen fissures, granting access to previously impossible-to-reach reserves. These liquids often contain toxic, hazardous chemicals that can gravely impact the health of local populations if they leak into the air or water. This year, Environment America, a national federation of environmental advocacy organizations, released a report detailing the adverse health and safety effects of fracking. Though data on the impact of fracking upon local populations remains scarce, a 2014 study in Colorado linked prenatal exposure to fracking chemicals in the air to higher rates of birth defects. "People who live close to fracking sites are exposed to a variety of air pollutants including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, xylene and toluene," the Environment America report reads. "These chemicals can cause a wide range of health problems— from eye irritation and headaches to asthma and cancer."

While the DAPL is meant to carry oil underneath land that borders Standing Rock, the reservation itself doesn't sit atop valuable oil, so there was little financial incentive for oil companies to ingratiate themselves with the community. But Fort Berthold is at the very heart of North Dakota oil country. It also includes Lake Sakakawea, a primary water source for MHA Nation.

The reservation is on prime fracking land. Until the technology advanced in the early 2000s, it was known that large oil and gas reserves existed in the Bakken shale formation, but there was no way to obtain it. Once fracking became available as a method of extraction, oil companies were able to gain access to the massive reserves that exist under layers of stone. The development greatly enriched the state economy for a time, but plummeting oil prices have recently burst that bubble, leaving many North Dakotans without a primary source of income.

Still, Fort Berthold is pumping out massive amounts of oil—nearly one-fifth of North Dakota's daily production. And even as it enriches parts of the local economy, the deluge has had serious consequences for the reservation's environment. In 2014, a massive pipeline spill caused more than 1 million gallons of saltwater used in the fracking process to leak onto reservation land, raising concerns that Lake Sakakawea had been compromised. Several other spills have been documented in the years since.

In June 2015, the Three Affiliated Tribes made a move to increase tribal involvement in oil production, which had traditionally been dominated by outside companies that lease land from the tribes. Prior to that decision, the tribal council, MHA Nation's governing body, had a troubling history of oil-related corruption. The former tribal council chairman, Tex Hall, lost his bid for a fourth term after being accused of mismanagement and misappropriation of oil funds. Though the council receives a significant amount in oil royalties, as well as hundreds of millions in oil tax revenue, some Fort Berthold residents say that money still isn't making its way to the community that so desperately needs it.

"Right now, we have a lot of social issues," explains Lisa Deville, a local environmental activist, as she drives through the oil-rich cliffs of Fort Berthold. "These guys are so excited to fund powwows... and aren't helping those tepee families that live right along the power grids without water and sewer... Some of looks like a third-world country."

Deville is outspoken about the need to regulate oil development in Fort Berthold—and her distaste for the oil companies. "They think they have answers for everything, these white people ," she says. "They think everything they do is right and they have all the solutions. They think these pipelines are good. It's like, What don't you understand? You guys just contaminated us. We have proof, and you guys are sitting there and saying, 'How much?' You don't live here. You don't have to drink this water. You can go home whenever you choose."

She also thinks that getting in bed with the oil industry is a betrayal of the tribe's ideals. "I don't know where we've gone wrong, where we've lost our identity as Native Americans," Deville says with a sigh. "We would rather have these nice things, these material things that we never relied on. We were raised to protect the earth. Every time we put a hole in her, we are killing her."

Deville is deeply disliked by some MHA Nation leadership, even as she has won support from other activists. At a large powwow, or gathering of Native American tribes, held at the Four Bears Casino in nearby New Town, a man affiliated with the tribal council who prefers to remain anonymous makes a face when her name is mentioned.

"That bitch is always spreading lies about our leaders," he sneers. "She's a real pain in the ass."

The powwow is a lavish gathering, and it's no secret that the oil industry has enriched segments of the reservation economy. In 2014, MHA Nation reported $184 million in oil tax revenue accrued in less than one year, much of it officially designated for reservation infrastructure and activities. At the casino, dancers and singers in traditionally elaborate dress perform their ancient rituals in an event hall. It's a light-hearted, festive affair, with hundreds of attendees celebrating until well into the early morning. Stands sell intricate pieces of silver jewelry and T-shirts with defiant slogans like "Proud Indian Warrior," while children with jangling bells sewn to their tribal costumes scamper through the building's hallways.

In an empty ballroom on the second floor of the sprawling casino, two teenage girls who prefer to remain anonymous discuss how they've seen oil impact their reservation during the course of their short lives. Asked if they've noticed any positive impacts of the industry, one of the girls nods.

"We have a lot more buildings and more activities," she says. "But I don't know where half of our money goes."

Asked why no one in Fort Berthold is resisting oil development on tribal lands like the Standing Rock Sioux, the other girl giggles nervously. "Our tribe just signs deals," she responds. "They don't really look through it at all. That's what we think, anyways, because of how much are taking over our tribe. It's mostly like we're run by oil companies here. People from surrounding tribes say that."

"Besides, , they used to come over and steal our horses all the time."

Lisa Deville, a local environmental activist, stands between warning signs that water, gas, and petroleum pipelines exist underground in this area of Fort Berthold Native American reservation in North Dakota.

The oil industry may fund extravagant powwows, but researchers and advocates say it is severely impacting Fort Berthold's environment. Nicole Donaghy, an oil and gas organizer at Dakota Resource Council, the same group dedicated to monitoring environmental damage in the region to which DeWitt belongs, collaborated on a study with Duke University earlier this year. It produced alarming findings about fracking's impact on Fort Berthold.

"We took six samples from oil and gas–impacted landowners, as well as from saltwater spill on Fort Berthold reservation," Donaghy says. "What Duke University found was that even though there was reclamation done on most of these sites, there is still a high level of radioactive material that has been left behind.... Radium causes many types of cancer, mostly bone cancer. In terms of agriculture, nothing will grow where there has been a saltwater spill and it's not properly reclaimed, and in my experience, it's not possible to completely reclaim the affected lands."

Marcia Mikulak, professor of anthropology at the University of North Dakota, notes that MHA Nation has historically resisted efforts to investigate and amend the harmful effects of fracking and drilling on reservation land because the oil industry has permeated the tribal economy.

"People are living with it every day," Mikulak says. "But all that data, those numbers, are not put in our daily newspapers. They are not talked about in terms of everyday people's lives. People who earn their living from oil—and this goes back to the Three Affiliated Tribes—corruption also is there, and people who live in poverty, when you take their jobs away, when technologies change, they freak out. There's always a pushback."

Mikulak says that in order to understand why these tribes would allow their lands to be damaged by the industry without resistance, one has to examine the historical treatment of Native Americans by the United States government.

"These people were forced to assimilate, or actually be eradicated," she explains. "People learned, through this constant enforced rhetoric of identity, that they were different, worth less than others—and were even constructed constitutionally—as dependent that the state had to take responsibility for, and create laws to control, indigenous ways of life. These are deeply embedded in our legal systems, in our cultural systems, our narratives of education... It's a nightmare scenario."

"We're not against all pipelines. We just want responsible development."
—Mark Fox, MHA Nation Tribal Chairman

For his part, Mark Fox, the current chairman of the MHA Nation tribal council who campaigned under a platform of transparency and fighting corruption in the wake of the scandal surrounding former tribal leader Tex Hall, says the oil boom has had mixed effects on the reservation.

"I can honestly say that since 2008 to the present, the negativity has outweighed the positivity, as far as what we have to contend with and what opportunities we get," he says. "That's Tribes to protect its land, its reservation, and its people.

"Now, on the positive side of things, has it brought in more revenue toward tribes to do programming to build facilities and things of that nature? Absolutely, it has," he adds.

Asked about his feelings toward the protesters at Standing Rock, Fox says that MHA Nation supports the Sioux tribe's desire to block risky oil development.

"We're not against all oil and gas development," he explains. "We're not against all pipelines. We just want responsible development... That being said, if our fellow tribal nation says, 'We don't want that,' that is their right. We stand firmly behind them."

But perhaps because of complicated tribal ties to the oil industry, not everyone at the casino powwow is eager to join the protests. A man belonging to a Native American tribe from Washington State who says he's close to members of the MHA Nation tribal council remains unconvinced.

"The reason why I'm not actively taking part in this protest is because the issues that are being protested were already addressed in court," he explains as the casino empties on the day after the powwow. Families trudge to their cars carrying their jangling costumes, readying themselves for the drive back to whichever part of the Americas they came from. Some say they are headed down to Standing Rock, but the Washington man won't be joining them.

"They have already ruled against the tribe's point of view in protecting the land because of the pipeline and the investment that's already been made," he says. "The money that already has been put down is sealed and dealed. Bagged and tagged. We can't beat a dead horse. The horse is lying there, but it's still dead because the ruling wasn't favorable."

He pauses for a moment, taking in the bright lights and cheerful dings of the casino playing floor. "But there's a part of me, in my heart, that wants to be there at Standing Rock," he says longingly. "I should be with my people."

Follow Sulome Anderson on Twitter.

All photos are from the series 'It Is All America' by Natalia Dołgowska

This article originally appeared on VICE Poland.

There are currently 9.5 million Poles living in the United States, and many of them have their roots in the beautiful, but historically poorer, mountain region of Podhale. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of Polish highlanders emigrated to America. But they hoped to come back one day and use the favorable exchange rate to build spacious mansions. However, various circumstances—be it better social care for the elderly, or their children not wanting to leave the place they'd been born for a land they barely knew—kept many of them in the US. So many of these mansions were left unfinished.

Warsaw-based photographer Natalia Dołgowska was born in Zakopane, which is Podhale's biggest town. Last year, she traveled back to her home region to photograph the empty buildings that belong to Podhale immigrants in America, as well as photos of their new lives, which they mailed to relatives back home. "I realized that all my childhood, I've been feeling close to America. Growing up, I always envied my friends who had family there—their plastic Christmas trees, their bubble gum, and their flashy sneakers," Natalia said to VICE Poland.

For more than just dental visits. Image via Flickr user Betsssssy

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

This year, 4,375 Canadians will be diagnosed with HPV-related cancers, according to last month's Canadian Cancer Society report—a 16 percent increase since 2012. And while cervical cancer used to be the most prevalent HPV-related cancer, it has now been surpassed by oral cancer, which affected men 4.5 times more than women in 2012, and continues to rise.

In fact, HPV expert Gillian Knight of Derby University in the UK says, "All STIs have increased." While it's been drilled into everyone's head by now to use condoms when having penetrative sex, few seem to be having safe oral sex—even as we start to realize the stakes are higher than we once thought.

Anisha Gupta is a fourth-year dentistry student at King's College London. Both as an oral health student and as a bisexual woman, she thinks about safe oral sex. Millennials are "the gayest generation ever," she says. Ten percent of 18-to-34-year-old Canadians identified as LGBT in 2012, double that of any other demographic. People are more open to experimentation, Gupta says, and there is an array of "sexualities where penis-vagina sex isn't the only sexual activity." In general, we are having more sex with more partners than ever before, says Knight—but this leaves us more exposed to STIs.

Safe oral sex isn't a priority for most people, says Alex McKay, director of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN), because it's seen as a low-risk alternative to vaginal or anal sex. "Most people don't use a condom for oral sex," says Knight. When it comes to cunnilingus and anilingus, the oral dam (the recommended method of protection) is so unpopular, it borders on the obscure. But stats like those from Canada show it's time to reconsider the risks we take with oral sex.

Eszter Mucsi, who volunteers at a sexual health resource center in Toronto, says oral dams are often recommended in a "weird you-should-use-this, but-I-don't-use-it" way. We need a better alternative—one that people actually want to use. And it seems like Gupta, along with her dentistry classmate Carly Billing, and dentist-come-artist Kuang-Yi Ku may have finally come up with it. In a pop-up exhibition at the Science Gallery London earlier this month, they showed one they had designed that doubles as a protective barrier and a sex toy. It's a hands-free mask, with a textured centre which acts as a barrier during sexual contact—think of it as a ribbed condom for your mouth.

So what exactly are the risks from oral sex? Many STIs, like HIV, don't transmit easily through oral sex (though the risk goes up with factors like cuts or menstruation). "But there are some STIs where oral sex is the main transmission," says McKay. The two STIs most likely to be transmitted through vaginal and anal licking are herpes and HPV (and you can also contract both from fellatio).

Via Flickr user Inga.

Oral sex can spread HPV to the oral cavity, the genitals, and the anus. According to Oral Cancer Canada, HPV causes up to 70 percent of all oral cancers. HPV is "very easy to pick up," Knight says, because it's spread through touch rather than bodily fluids. It's difficult to detect and treat in healthy individuals unless they have developed warts. Except for cervical smears for women, there is no routine HPV screening in any country. There are more than 100 strains of the virus, and some are likelier to develop into cancer.

Some countries, including Canada, have adopted gender-neutral HPV vaccination (Grade 7 students get free HPV vaccines), which protects against some high-risk strains. The bad news, according to the experts, is that you will most likely get some strains of HPV simply by virtue of being sexually active. Around 75 to 80 percent of all people will at some point be infected by HPV. The good news is that these infections usually clear up by themselves. It's when they don't that they can cause cancer. But the more sexual partners you have, the more types of HPV you are exposed to, and the more at risk you are that one might develop into cancer. You are three times likelier to get oral cancer if you have had more than six oral sex partners (compared to more than 26 vaginal sex partners), Anisha explains, quoting a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine paper.

Clearly, we should be more careful with oral sex—but while safer blowjobs are as easy as using a condom (whether people will actually do that is a different story), most straight people don't even know what oral dams are.

Gupta says they're essentially the same "sheet of rubber" she uses in her dental practice: "We use it to isolate the tooth ." The only difference is that those marketed for sex are not called "dental," but rather, "oral" dams, and they are slightly thinner and bigger—otherwise, they are about as sexy as going to the dentist. They are made from the same latex rubber as condoms, but they are not as widely available in stores. "You can find them online, McKay says. Or you can DIY them by cutting open an unlubricated condom. Talk about spontaneity.

The inspiration for the design they debuted at the Science Gallery London pop-up came from Southeast Asia, Gupta says, where surgical masks worn for pollution have become a fashion statement. The three want to transform the idea of a protective barrier from a necessary evil to something that queer women in particular can embrace as an identity statement. Their prototype masks have black lacy trim and pink lip stencils, so they look like sex toys rather than medical equipment. Gupta says they wanted it to be something you could put in your pocket, just like a condom: "Disposable, single-use, cheap."

Putting on the mask could be the equivalent of putting on a condom—when I tell her about this new design idea, Muczi says she could see it become "a part of the act, another step, as opposed to having this piece of latex flopping around!" But she also thinks that another reason why popularizing barrier protection is so tricky has to do with our difficulty talking about sex—especially with dams, which aren't popular or commonplace.

Talking to friends about safe oral sex, Gupta realized that the information provided was conflicting. Sometimes dams are not even mentioned—but even when they are, using them effectively is not self-evident. "If you're not using correctly it's kind of pointless," she says, adding that the instructions they come with are "unhelpful at best." Anisha explains that you have to place the dam on your partner's genitals (or anus) to create a barrier, and use your hands to hold it in place. You also have to make sure you don't accidentally flip it over. All in all, it can be a bit of a mood killer.

Kuang-Yi, the artist with whom Gupta collaborated, says he wants to break down scientific barriers and communicate with people directly. The three dentist-designers hosted two workshops where they showed people how to make a personalized blowjob-enhancing mouthguard, and encouraged visitors to give their sexual imagination free rein, showing them how dentistry could realize these fantasies. Their design idea doesn't just make safe oral sex more fun—it turns it into a talking point and normalizes it.

Cristina Roca is a culture and lifestyle writer based in Barcelona.

A protester near Standing Rock on November 25, 2016. Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Despite a government order to vacate, tribal leaders as well as demonstrators camped out in Standing Rock, North Dakota, say they are staying put.

In a letter sent Friday to Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the Army Corps of Engineers said they will be closing a portion of the land north of the Cannonball River on December 5, and that anyone on that land will be "considered trespassing and may be subject to prosecution under federal, state and local laws."

It's unclear if the Corps will take steps to arrest or remove people who stay. The Army Corps of Engineers did not respond to my request for comment. One thing's for sure: It would take a major effort to remove the estimated 5,000 encamped to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Update: The Corps released a statement late Sunday clarifying that they have "no plans for forcible removal." Instead, they say, they are "seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location." How exactly that would happen is unclear.)

"Our Tribe is deeply disappointed in this decision by the United States, but our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever," said Archambault in a statement. "We ask that all everyone who can appeal to President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the future of our people and rescind all permits and deny the easement to cross the Missouri River just north of our Reservation and straight through our treaty lands."

In the letter, the Corps included a map, specifying what they call a "free speech zone" on the land south of the Cannonball River, where anyone peacefully protesting is permitted to stay. Citing safety concerns, the Corps says the decision to close the lands north of the river is "necessary to protect the general public from the violent confrontations between protestors and law enforcement officials that have occurred in this area." The letter also mentions liability, saying that anyone who stays on those lands "does so at their own risk."

"It is both unfortunate and ironic that this announcement comes the day after this country celebrates Thanksgiving—a historic exchange of goodwill between Native Americans and the first immigrants from Europe," Archambault said. "Although the news is saddening, it is not at all surprising given the last 500 years of the treatment of our people."

"The letter was kind of devastating for a lot of people," a man named Graywolf, who is director of the Southern California chapter of the American Indian Movement, told me. He's been living at the Oceti Sakowin camp. "I don't expect anything positive from the government. What treaty have they honored? Why should we believe anything they say today?"

Reports from activists at Standing Rock as well as amateur video on social media has shown police violence against the demonstrators, who refer to themselves as "water protectors," intensifying.

In the early hours of the morning last Monday, a 21-year-old woman named Sophia Wilansky was severely injured during a demonstration.

Wayne Wilansky, the victim's father, told reporters outside a Minneapolis hospital that the injury was a result of police throwing a concussion grenade into a group of demonstrators. "Even she's lying there with her arm pretty much blown off, she's focused on the fact that it's not about her, it's about what we're doing to the country, what we're doing to native peoples," Wilansky said.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department did not return multiple requests for comment, but in a statement to the Los Angeles Times denied using concussion grenades.

Activists are still calling on federal officials to step in on their behalf. In a press conference at the Oceti Sakowin Camp Saturday in response to the Army Corps' letter, Archambault told a crowd of activists and reporters, "If they want public safety, the best thing for the federal government to do is to deny the easement."

Eryn Wise, with the International Indigenous Youth Council, said that President Obama himself should get involved. "Right now our land is to be left unprotected if we are to leave this space," Wise said. "The indigenous youth are calling upon the United States government for protection. They're begging for people to start caring for them."

No matter what the government does or doesn't do, there seem to be at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people willing to risk arrest.

"Most people are staying," said Victory Lonnquist, an EMT from Washington who arrived at the camp in September and has no plans to leave. Her Facebook Live video went viral last week after she was tear gassed by police. She was treating other protesters who had been injured from police firing water cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas into a crowd.

"I will stay as long as it takes," Lonnquist, who left her job in the fall to be here, told me. "These people are my family now. As medical, I'm concerned. I have no doubt after what I've seen the police would and might kill people. When I worry, I go back to what is true: This movement was created by the children, in prayer. In the end, love always wins."

"As long as we continue to stay in prayer and in peace, we can accomplish a lot of things in life," Archambault told a crowd gathered at Oceti Sakowin Camp Saturday afternoon. "It's important that we continue to stand together."

"The federal court has never been good to Indian communities," Archambault said. "We never have a successful record. If we continue to wait for the federal court to rule in our favor, it probably won't happen."

Miguel Saavedra, a longtime anti-Castro activist (in the orange polo shirt), leads a rally on Saturday after Castro's death. Photo by the author.

On Saturday afternoon, about 12 hours after the world learned longtime revolutionary leader and communist strongman Fidel Castro had died, hundreds of Cubans, along with a few dozen Nicaraguans, Colombians, and Venezuelans, gathered in front of Versailles Restaurant, a Cuban joint in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood that has long served as the de facto center of anti-Castro fervor. Among a group of 16 demonstrators holding up a large Cuban flag was Miguel Saavedra, a 58-year-old handyman with sandy blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard, who started a chant: "Cuba si! Castro no! Cuba si! Castro no!"

As the founder of the anti-communist organization Vigilia Mambisa, Saavedra has dedicated the past 37 years of his life to mounting protests against Castro, the Cuban government, and anyone who dares stand against the hardline Cold War approach toward the communist nation. "I come from a very patriotic family," Saavedra told me between shouts. "It's our duty to fight for a free Cuba. Now that the assassin Fidel is dead, we must not stop until it happens."

Saavedra personifies how Castro, who is universally reviled in Miami, reshaped the city just as he influenced socialist revolutions across the Western Hemisphere. Before Castro conquered Cuba in 1959, Miami served as the playground for rich Americans. Since the revolution, Miami has become an international metropolis filled with immigrants hailing from Cuba and other countries in Latin America upended by communist revolutions. Because of Castro, Miami became the front line of defense against the red threat, where even decisions about whether to allow Cuban bands to perform at local venues caused widespread community discord.

"Fidel Castro not only shaped events in Miami and around the world where communist revolutions took place, he shaped how we reacted to those events," said Roberto Rodriguez Tejera, a local commentator for Miami AM station Actualidad Radio. "If Fidel didn't exist, Miami is not the city it has become today."

Anti-Castro political stances have become a requirement for candidates running for local, state, and federal office in Miami, Rodriguez Tejera noted. "As a candidate, you identified yourself through your anti-Castroism," he said. "Issues impacting the community like transportation were not as important."

Consider the 1993 Miami mayor's race that pitted Stephen P. Clark, a white man, against Miriam Alonso, a Cuban-American woman. During the campaign, Clark touted his credentials assisting Cuban immigrants since the early days of Castro's revolution. Alonso, at the time a city commissioner, argued that only a Cuban could properly serve as the city's leader. According to a New York Times article from the time, Alonso argued on Spanish language radio stations that only a Cuban-American mayor was equipped to handle the aftermath should Castro die or lose power. Ultimately, however, Clark won by a 3-2 margin, helped by a photo that Alonso's detractors claimed showed her standing next to Castro.

Francis Suarez is a Miami commissioner whose father, Xavier Suarez, was the city's first Cuban-born mayor. He told me that Castro was part of the fabric in the lives of many Miamians. "There is a connection between my generation and the people of Cuba even though many of us have never been there," Suarez said. "In my case, my grandfather and his two brothers were political prisoners. We have lived firsthand the stories even though we weren't there."

The commissioner pointed out that Spanish language AM radio stations often structured local programming around what Castro was up to. "The informational system was predicated on everything that was happening in Cuba," Suarez said. "Certainly the news and politics were very closely tied to Cuba and the constant manifestations to protest significant events were part of daily life in the city."

But as Castro's power waned in Cuba after he relinquished the presidency to his brother Raul in 2008, el comandante's influence on Miami's civic affairs has also lessened. A September Florida International University poll found that 56 percent of local Cuban Americans "strongly" or "mostly" favor reestablishing US relations with Cuba and 63 percent don't believe the US embargo against Cuba should continue.

Raul Martinez, a former mayor of Hialeah, a city neighboring Miami that has the highest percentage of Cubans in the US said Castro's role as bogeyman in local politics and civic affairs has been on the downswing in the last decade. "We are closing one chapter in Cuban history," Martinez said. "He's gone and now it's, 'What's next?'"

Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter.

This is an image named "dumped by text" so you get the idea. Photo by Flickr user Funk Dooby

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Think about your ex for a moment. But like, really. It may have a been a while since you were together. You may no longer speak, you could have drifted apart, or you might still be friends, able to meet over a low-key coffee or glass of merlot.

There's a generally accepted sense that the only way to heal after a breakup is to "let go" of the person you were once so attached to. It's a theory that's become a ripe breeding ground for rom-com tropes: the drastic post-breakup haircut, nights spent rambling at friends or out careening on the pull, and just about anything a Katherine Heigl character would do in a melodramatic "eating ice cream out of the tub" montage. But it may not be that simple.

Since ending a relationship feels so awful—for particular reasons we'll get into in a minute—self-preservation calls for squeezing the poison out of your life. That normally means eliminating all traces of your ex. But psychotherapist Dr. David Braucher has found that you can separate the person you dated from the way you visualize them later. It started with a patient of his. "What he said was that every time he succeeded at something, he would imagine his ex being proud of him. This patient had the memory of his ex functioning almost like a teddy bear," in a way Bruacher describes as not too distant from British psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott's "comfort object" theory.

"When this patient was telling me about his ex, he was really talking something he created. It wasn't the person as he experienced them, but was something more a part of himself—just like how the comfort a child gets from their teddy bear is really coming from the child, not from the object itself."

In a Psychology Today blogpost, Braucher names this as a distinction between "recollected feelings and memories—the internal image of the ex" and "the feelings engendered in his or her actual presence." In fairness, this could work for some. If you can remember, say, really good sex with your ex and still find that it makes you feel good or turns you on, they become almost like a fantasy rather than the real person who fucked you over and got with your best mate or whatever. Those memories of times an ex made you feel good can turn into a fuel that fires more positivity in your life, rather than negativity.

"Learning to distinguish between the internal image of an ex and the actual person can lead to appreciation of our own loving feelings," Braucher writes. "While we may feel consistently injured and angry when in the presence of an ex, in our internal world we may be able to access love and compassion for that same person."

Well, maybe—it's still just a theory. Dr. Helen Fisher, a researcher and biological anthropologist isn't as easily convinced. She's spent decades analyzing what happens to our bodies when we're in love, then rejected in love. A lot of her reservations about how holding onto your ex would work stem from the way that our brains actually process love, based on what she observed after looking at the brain activity of more than 70 people.

"We put 15 people in the brain scanner who'd been dumped an average of 62 days beforehand, and they were a real mess. Oh boy, were they a mess," she says, speaking from New York. "We found activity in a brain region linked to feelings of intense romantic love. We also found activity in the region related to deep attachment to the partner. We found activity in three brain regions linked with craving and addiction, and we found activity in a brain region linked with physical pain and the distress that goes along with it.

"So when you've been rejected in love, you're still madly in love with the person, you feel deeply attached to the person, you crave the person, you're obsessed with your thoughts about them, you go through swings into incredible sorrow, and you feel physical pain and the distress that goes along with it." Not exactly an ideal mix for a long evening spent rehashing your last kiss, the last time they left their scent in your bed, the first time you felt the lurch in your stomach that confirmed you loved them.

Our brains are such powerful organs that they can only create the physical pain we feel from emotional hurt, but work overtime trying to understand why a relationship's over. "People will say: 'I should have gone on that trip with her,' or 'I shouldn't have said that thing to him,' 'I should've' this," Fisher says. "You're trying to figure out: What did I do wrong? How could I have done it differently? What can I learn from this for next time? So the brain is in a pretty bad state."

Ana* remembers "muddying the waters" while trying to stay close to an ex, and needing to recalibrate. "In my experience, I haven't been able to be friends with an ex until they're out of my system and I've fully accepted that nothing will ever happen in the way I want with that person. This is speaking from the perspective of the 'rejectee' who is heartbroken but I think the same applies both ways—you can't, or shouldn't, be friends with an ex until they are over you."

According to research that Fisher's quoted in her own books, you generally go through two stages of grieving a relationship: protest and resignation. "Eventually, the brain regions linked to attachment become less active, the pain begins to go away. The memories do not go away. And that's why you'll always remember that person, but the pain associated with those memories will begin to dissipate. And then you'll find somebody new and begin to wonder why you ever did that in the first place," she says, chuckling.

While there may be some people out there who can look fondly back on old times, turning their ex into an abstract concept, others will likely end up having to burn old memories out of their mind to move on. Both approaches rely on the idea of fantasy: either turning your ex into a symbol that doesn't horrify you in the present-day, or needing to create a narrative that helps you slice them out of your life romantically for good.

"I've known people who, for years, would hold onto an ex. Talk about the ex, hope the ex would come back—and that sometimes would involve cyber-stalking and various attempts at making connections," Braucher says. "The smallest response from an ex could lead to weeks and weeks of: 'What do you think she meant when she said she misses me? Do you think that means she's gonna come back?'" Ultimately, he says, memory and fantasy have the power to collide "and generate an alternative reality." If nothing else, how you feel about your ex says a lot about how real or imagined they've become in your life today, and how amicably things may have ended. Right. Now you can stop thinking about them—well, if you like.

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Chances are, you clicked on this article from one of your social media feeds. The practice of typing a homepage address into the URL bar is dying, and 60 percent of Americans now get their news from social media sites. Facebook is the juggernaut here, far and away the biggest source of traffic. The quintessential Facebook news post is something designed to be shared, whether a positive, Upworthy-type story, or an outrage-baiting partisan blog post on a fly-by-night political site. On Twitter, where all 300 million active users seem to at least moonlight as media critics, insider accounts of the day's top news thrive. Snapchat, meanwhile, has partnered with publications, allowing them to share millennial-centric stories in its Discover section. Of the major social networks, only Instagram lacks a real value proposition for news organizations (though that may be changing soon).

A big reason Instagram stands out is the insular nature of the app. Whereas one can easily click from Twitter to an article on a news site, head back to Twitter, and share that article, Instagram doesn't allow for hyperlinking, except in your bio and to other Instagram accounts and hashtags. This means the social network can't really drive any meaningful traffic, outside of paid ads. (Instagram is currently testing out a function that lets users post links in the new Stories feature, but this is currently limited to verified users, and hasn't yet affected the way ordinary people use the app.) You can't even copy text in the app. Without being able to link to outside sources, citing information on Instagram is a difficult task that no one really bothers with.

This lack of accountability and context has been the status quo for the app for a while, as evidenced in everything from the image macro in which Hillary Clinton promised she would "Create 10.4 million jobs" and Donald Trump will "Lose almost 3.5 million jobs," to this truther account posting a meme about "that moment when you find out it's legal to use aborted fetal cells for flavoring." Instagram is built for easily digestible information, not fact-checking. It even lacks a top comment feature, so one user's informative reply is quickly covered up by another user's comment that, "." Disinformation that would quickly be debunked on other networks thrives on Instagram, especially since it hasn't been worth mainstream media organizations' effort to devote significant time or money to the platform until recently. (Remember, Instagram has traditionally sent very few people to websites, compared to Facebook or Twitter, and minimal traffic means minimal ad revenue). Consequently, many passionate people fill this news void by posting pictures that don't necessarily adhere to conventional definitions of truth. In short: conspiracy theory memes, like the aforementioned naked skateboarder with the anti-tax screed.

I first discovered conspiracy Instagram through the "Explore" feature, where users can find photos and videos that are similar to those posted by the people they already follow, often from friends of friends. Explore is designed to make spending hours researching the lives of acquaintances' acquaintances seem like a totally normal thing to do. Thanks to the election, my tab had become increasingly political, and once Bernie Sanders's campaign was over (and friends stopped the once-omnipresent Bernie memes), the political posts in my feed took a turn toward the fringe.

Over time, Explore learns what you click on, and uses this to decide what to show you in the future. It's also endless (limited only by the number of photos posted to Instagram by all users), and consequently resembles the world of conspiracy theories: an inexhaustible source of new-but-related information that builds upon what you've previously been shown. I quickly found myself down the rabbit hole: Fringe-left politics led me toward political conspiracy memes, which were in turn only a quick jump away from "skeptical third world child" image macros about Zika being a conspiracy and "inside job" starter packs (note the "demolition squids" and "termite cut beams"). If there are two things I can't not click on, it's conspiracy theories and niche memes; consequently, my Instagram was soon dominated by grainy images of Rothschild bankers and the World Trade Center.

In general, images shared by any one truther wouldn't be out of place on any other truther account (and if you follow multiple accounts, you'll notice that they often share the same memes.) Spend enough time browsing, though, and a few distinct varieties emerge. To name a few, there are people concerned with GMOs and chemtrails, who believe environmental changes are intentionally created by big business, for profits, and by the government, which uses global warming as an excuse to pass new regulations. There are anti-Semitic conspiracists who slap the Star of David on images of politicians and post gross caricatures like "The Simpsteins" ("Dohy Vey!!!!"). There's also all the people with Anonymous mask avatars who post lots of screenshots from RT, Russia's English-language propaganda site. Sometimes I wonder if these accounts are being run by a Russian troll farm, but then I worry that maybe I've spent a bit too long on conspiracy theory Instagram.

What all these accounts seem to have in common is a belief that we're being lied to. In many cases they're right, or at least not completely wrong. Sometimes their posts address very real problems—environmental degradation, unfair drug laws, economic inequality—that mainstream politicians too often ignore. Other times—like when they suggest deserts were actually caused by ancient mining—their posts are baffling, offensive, or just obviously false.

Sometimes I wonder if these accounts are being run by a Russian troll farm, but then I worry that maybe I've spent a bit too long on conspiracy theory Instagram.

Consequently, Shayne doesn't place himself on the left-right political spectrum. "Since 1913 every election has been a complete and utter fraud," he says. "Rothschild and Rockefeller are president and vice president every single year." This echoed what I'd noticed on other conspiracy accounts, a tendency to reject the political system and see voting as part of the grand scam.

Might this online rejection of the political system have a real-world outcome? I asked Kevin Munger, an NYU politics Ph.D. candidate who researches how social media interactions affect behavior, for his thoughts. He told me that while studies relating social media exposure to political participation have had mixed results, "I do think that memes were genuinely politically important among young people this election cycle." Of course, these conspiracy theory memes are only a small part of the larger political meme phenomenon, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored. With millions of followers combined, these accounts could feasibly influence huge numbers of young people to believe in falsehoods and lies, and to stay disengaged from the real politics that affect their lives.

In recent months, much has been made about the power that dubious right-wing Facebook pages have over the American electorate. Many critics have even argued that Donald Trump owes his victory to the power of fake news on Facebook. If Facebook played a role in convincing older Americans to vote Trump, Instagram—which Facebook owns—may very well have convinced some people not to vote at all. After all, Instagram is especially popular amongst young people, the demographic that's hardest to get to the polls. Following an election in which roughly 40 percent of adults didn't vote, and in which crucial swing states were won by only tens of thousands of votes, I can't help but wonder if these accounts played a role, however minor.

What's clear is that social media has allowed the angry and disaffected—whether legitimate political activists, conspiracy theorists, or ethno-nationalists—to find each other, spread their message, and bypass the gatekeepers of mainstream media in a way that was previously unimaginable outside of Reddit and 4Chan. While guessing how the app and its uses will evolve in the future is a fool's errand, the current protocols and functionality of Instagram have turned the platform into the perfect breeding ground for these types of internet users.

Consider, for example, that these Instagram accounts and Donald Trump both frequently warn of "globalism," a term that the Anti-Defamation League describes as a "dog-whistle" for attracting anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. As Ian Bremmer, president of global risk assessment firm the Eurasia Group told the New York Times, "Through this new technology, people are now empowered to express their grievances and to follow people they see as echoing their grievances. If it wasn't for social media, I don't see Trump winning."

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No genre is as renowned for strewing the debris of trash culture across the cinematic landscape as the Disaster Movie. Virtually bereft of critically-acclaimed masterpieces and instead characterized by visceral (albeit empty) spectacles of annihilation, the genre provides audiences with an embarrassment of riches in the "So bad, it's good" department.

Though often associated with the 1970s, the Disaster Movie reached unprecedented popularity 20 years later during a fertile cycle of big-budget releases. 1996 inaugurated a Disaster Movie Renaissance with such genre defining blockbusters as Twister and Independence Day (the two highest grossing films that year), and many less-well-remembered films with apocalyptic scenarios followed, culminating with the epoch-making Titanic—one of few to receive critical acclaim.

Amidst this revitalization, Tim Burton released one of his most polarizing works: the knowing parody Mars Attacks!, which is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary in early December. Released six months after Independence Day, Burton's film saw comparatively limited success, grossing just over $100 million; it was roundly savaged by critics, and compared unfavorably to its more successful rival.

The film's vilification obscured how effectively its over-the-top satire ridicules the seriousness of the Disaster Movie's artistic pretensions, trafficking in the genre's clichés while it bludgeons their self-seriousness and hollows out their meanings. Few movies nail the pleasures and perils of their own genre as deftly as Mars Attacks!, roasting fans, critics, and artists alike while also marshaling trash culture in service of a critique of apocalypticism, American Exceptionalism, and high-concept filmmaking. In other words, it revels in the victory of trash over taste.

The plots of Independence Day and Mars Attacks! are strikingly similar: Malevolent aliens invade our planet, destroy landmarks, level cities, and slaughter citizens only to succumb—at the very last minute and against all odds—to our ingenuity, can-do spirit, and basic human decency. Featuring impressive CGI space creatures and overflowing with an eclectic all-star cast, Mars Attacks! draws upon the same cultural repository of sci-fi as Independence Day. Both films are entirely constituted by intertextuality, references to 1950s B-movie science fiction, and 1970s disaster films, overtly name-checking such genre classics as The War of the Worlds, Earth v. the Flying Saucers, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and, tellingly, Dr. Strangelove.

But where Independence Day draws from its pop culture sources in a manner that commemorates movies as escapist, uplifting utopian visions, Mars Attacks! celebrates its references for their inherent trashiness, their outsider status and ephemeral nature, and as an alternative to the somber high-art pretensions of the big-budget blockbuster. While the embrace of trash culture might have accounted for the film's inability to garner a mass audience—its satire too knowing to appeal to all but the genre's most devoted fans—what most accounts for the film's reputation as a failure is its gleeful, blithe violations of the disaster film genre's social contract.

By being 'too much'—a hallmark of trash culture—the excess of sadism and brutality in Mars Attacks! reveals to us our own hypocrisy.

Movies described as "apocalyptic," a term so overused that it has seemingly lost its relevance and importance, typically provide a vision of societal rebirth. Part edifying discourse and part revenge fantasy, an apocalyptic story passes judgment upon civilization as irredeemably corrupt and unable to be reformed. An apocalyptic narrative yearns for total destruction so that a new world may be born, built upon the smoldering ruins of its predecessor.

As cataclysm purges society of any undesirable elements, it reveals inviolable truth, affirming society's deeply held values. Bad people perish in an over-determined, moralistic manner—a poetic death appropriate to how they sinned—while good people survive to establish a better, more perfect, divinely sanctioned society. That's the vision offered by Independence Day: the peoples of the world come together, buffeted by the essential inherent goodness of America's defining institutions of state, military, faith, and scientific know-how, to defeat the extraterrestrial hordes and usher in a new era of peace overseen by benign patriarchal, egalitarian leadership.

Mars Attacks! refuses to deliver on the grand promise of the apocalyptic narrative. It doesn't give us absolute truth or allow us to feel pride and satisfaction in American Exceptionalism. Instead, as the martians blithely lay waste to our planet, it reveals that at the heart of the apocalyptic story is inherent sadism—reveling in vindictive destruction for its own sake. What Mars Attacks! shows is that apocalypticism is a narrative device that movies have employed to great effect and thrills, but nothing more. The trope's oversaturation has reduced its value as an exploration of American morality, ideals, and faith to the point where it withholds catharsis and fails to signify anything at all. Rather, Burton calls our attention to how much we enjoy these mean-spirited spectacles of apparently bloodless mass murder.

For more on movies, watch our episode of VICE Talks Film with director Mike Leigh:

Burton delineates the pleasures of the genre and then overstates them to reveal their inner workings. Almost every role in the film is inhabited by a filmmaker, character actor, or recognizable celebrity—after all, a feature of the genre's 1970s iteration was the star-studded spectacle, offering audiences the rare thrill of watching famous actors "get it."

Mars Attacks! takes this convention and grossly overstates it: a bevy of stars are obliterated by martians in excessively cruel ways, calling our attention to the notion of poetic death itself. Glenn Close's shallow First Lady is crushed by the "Nancy Reagan chandelier"; Martin Short's Press Secretary lothario is dismembered by Lisa Marie's martian seductress; Danny DeVito's cringe-inducing lawyer is annihilated as he tries to cut a deal with an alien; Michael J. Fox's glad-handing reporter is vaporized except for, well, his hand. Most disturbingly, Jack Nicholson's President Dale, an empty suit concerned only with photo ops and polling, is eviscerated by a martian handshake just as he delivers a stirring plea for understanding and peace.

Burton and Gems liberally ladle on the poetic death and sadism, to the point where we become painfully aware of the genre's reliance on vicious displays and lack of empathy. By being 'too much'—a hallmark of trash culture—the excess of sadism and brutality in Mars Attacks! reveals to us our own hypocrisy: We want destruction and mass death—we just don't want to be held to account for it or be reminded of how unseemly it is to revel in the murders of millions razed by a natural disaster or extraterrestrial life.

Mars Attacks! is pop culture's marginalia exacting revenge upon American civilization and the pretensions of the Disaster Movie. The martians represent the campiness and superficiality that is always present underneath the solemnity of movies like Independence Day and The Towering Inferno, revealing what's underneath isn't truth and revelation but trash and crap. In Burton's doom narrative, society isn't saved by heroic figures like brave Captain Hiller or geniuses like David Levinson, but by society's rejects—familial outcasts, forgetful grandmothers, B-movie actors, Vegas lounge acts like Tom Jones, and teenage video game virtuosos. The final victory, the triumph of trash, is that the martians are finally defeated by pop culture detritus—a unique Bad Object in the form of an earworm novelty song by Slim Whitman, whose upper octave yodeling in "Indian Love Call" proves deadly to the martians' hearing. In the end, it is our refuse that refuses to let us die.

Dr. Julian Cornell is a professor whose research and teaching interests involve the politics of taste in American pop culture, with a focus on Hollywood genre movies. For 15 years, he has taught at NYU and Queens College. Prior to teaching, he was a programming executive at HBO from 1993 until 2001.

Check out Marian Bodenstein's Tumblr, Facebook, and webstore.

All photos by the author

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Despite what your beloved great-aunt believes, queer people weren't made in a lab in 1996 to piss her off and infiltrate the soaps. A new group have organized a walking tour of queer culture landmarks in London, to make visible history often overlooked rather than let right-wing politicians take credit for magically solving The Gay Problem under David Cameron.

The tours don't properly kick off until February 2017, but on Saturday, November 26, a group of activists from Russia and its former satellite states were treated to a preview. Tour guide Dan Glass rattled through a breakneck history of London's queer dives, electro-shock clinics, and cottaging toilets. "Is there a manual to the cruising spots we can see?" a Ukrainian activist asked with a grin.

A Belorussian delegate enthused about a defunct factory floor in her home city, taken over by queer youths and turned into a community center. "But maybe you don't need such a space in London?" she asked.

"We absolutely do," said Dan.

The queer tour crew estimate that one-third of London's queer spaces have been closed in the last two years—and the project grew from drunken conversation in the smoking area of a now-shuttered gay bar, The Joiners' Arms. Two more gay venues may be in their final days, according to Dan's tour introduction. London has no queer museum, and no longer has a dedicated queer center.

Saturday's tour headed to a legendary drag venue, the Black Cap. Since closing its doors in 2015, it plays host each week to a somber vigil of former regulars. Britain's first transgender MEP, Nikki Sinclaire, picketed outside the forlorn pub front. "I used to come here back in 1983, when I was only 15," she said. "We're very fortunate in this country to have won employment rights and marriage rights: but our next fight is for our history."

This is the battle the Queer Tour crew are preparing to fight. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, when the government finally permitted 21-year-old men to have sex with each other in private. "Those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of shame all their lives," then-home secretary Roy Jenkins famously said.

In defiance of their persistent opposition to LBGT rights legislation, the Tories have a track record of trumpeting themselves as Macklemore-level queer allies. So it seems likely they will try to piggyback next year's celebrations. "Fuck them if they're going to pat themselves on the back without recognizing the problems they caused all over the world," Dan said. "And if you look at cuts in services, the rise in queer youth homelessness, the rise in HIV... we are still not free."

Nikki Sinclaire MEP talking to the gathered tour participants outside the Black Cap

As Dan observed, the peddling of easily-digestible, pro-gay schtick by corporations and careerist politicians means "most people probably think Gay Pride started in Tesco." The queer tours are countering that narrative, with pink tiles planted at the sites of historic shags, dildos inscribed with the 1533 Buggery Act popping up across the city, and "cruise your MP day."

Future tours will travel from Mother Clap's molly-house, where 18th century cross-dressers canoodled, to the Admiral Duncan pub, where a neo-Nazi nail bomb which killed three queer revelers in 1999 has been refashioned into a chandelier.

And organizers say tours will honor those radical queers who gave their lives in the ongoing struggle for liberation. Some will star the Lesbian Avengers, the "caped crusading dykes" who abseiled into Parliament and stormed a BBC studio. Others will remember the Gay Liberation Front, the "radical drag" connoisseurs who were chased by police after snogging in full ecclesiastical garb. Homeless youths, one in four whom are queer, will be given work speaking to tour groups. So will sex workers, LGBTQ* people of color, and queer activists currently battling deportation.

As many as 98 percent of queer asylum-seekers to the UK are deported, according to research by the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group. Closer to home, austerity cuts have slashed queer service funding by a third. Yet Theresa May—who oversaw these lethal deportations as home secretary—is painted as an "unsung hero" of gay rights, and David Cameron won this year's Ally of the Year award from LGBT website PinkNews.

This is why the real history of London's living, breathing, fighting, fucking LGBT community must be made visible—in all its messy glory. "It's been so fun to research, but I keep bumping into old flames," Dan said, with a rueful grimace. "I've signed up for a lifelong walk of shame."

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Recently the Bank of Canada released a short list of women eligible to be featured on the 2018 series of banknotes. The list included "two activists, a poet, an engineer, and an athlete," meaning that many celebrities, writers, musicians, and disgraced figure skaters will not be making the cut.

A young boy dressed as Superman walks in front of a collaborate mural commemorating the first ever Indigenous Comic Con

All photos by Gabriela Campos

For decades Native Americans have been wholly misrepresented in the world of comic books, stripped down to a series of caricatured, homogenized tropes of the American Indian.

"We were either shamans, mystic boogeyman, or pocahotties (Pocahontas hotties)," said Arigon Starr, creator of the comic book Super Indian, while speaking to VICE about the representation of Native Americans in pop culture at the first ever Indigenous Comic Con, which ran from November 18 to 20 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"We have been prostituted and raped in the story world," said Jonathan Proudstar, creator of 'Tribal Force'—America's first all Native American superhero comic. "The power of the media is that it has taught us Natives that we don't have a space. So it is our job to carve out that space."

Starr and Proudstar were just two of the dozens of high-profile Native creators—illustrators, game designers, artists, and actors—present at Indigenous Comic Con. The event was organized by Lee Francis of Native Realities Publishing, in partnership with A Tribe Called Geek, a weekly radio show and website.

Two Native American women pose in their cosplay outfits.

The event, the first of its kind in the world, represents the growth of the subcultural vanguard of indigenous-created media that is slowly working its way into the multibillion dollar comic industry.

"Ten years ago, this wouldn't have been possible," explained Arigon Starr, speaking to VICE behind her booth at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque where the event was held. "This event shows that there's a movement and a market for this."

"We need to get Native characters and Native creators into the mainstream," added Native American artist Jefferey Verege, who works on 'Red Wolf'—which centers around Marvel's first Native American hero. "That is what this event is all about."

This year's event, modeled after a traditional Comic Con and complete with artists forums, comic book signings, and cosplay events, was a strong attempt to foster a community for Native creators that are still largely unrepresented at mainstream Comic Cons.

Arigon Starr, creator of 'Super Indian,' was one of the features artist and speakers at the event.

"They don't know we exist," said Arigon Starr, noting the absence of Native creators from the major comic publishing companies, as well as the now hugely popular Comic Cons throughout the United States. "But here we are, doing things that no one else is."

"There's a platform for the subculture, but there are larger media outlets not allowing us in," Jonathan Proudstar said from behind his booth at the event. "They want to propagate our image without giving us our own voice."

The booth of artist Dale Rey Deforest with his comic book 'Shadow Wolves' alongside a depiction of a turquoise-clad Native American woman in the likeness of Holly Golightly.

For Proudstar, one of the first Native Americans in the comic industry, comic books provide a unique medium to both break down historic stereotypes of Native Americans and address the myriad of contemporary issues facing his people.

His comic book 'Tribal Force' features a team of Indigenous superheroes and engages with issues directly affecting Native people. Of Yaqui heritage, Proudstar has been counseling Native youth for nearly three decades. These kids are, according to him, the "inspiration for Tribal Force."

Proudstar added, "On many reservations, the education system is very poor and you have 8th and 9th graders reading at a 3rd grade level. Comics are a way to start to teach these kids about their culture in a way that makes, has relevance, and is cool."

Jay Odjick, comic book artists and creator of the TV show 'Kagagi,' stands behind his booth at the Comic Con

"They're seeing what they would see in movie theaters, but with their own culture and language," said comic book artist Jay Odjick, creator of 'Kagagi'—a nationally distributed graphic novel and television show deeply rooted in his his Algonquin culture. "Now Kagagi is their guy," he explained, speaking about the popularity of the television show and comic on his reservation in Canada. "It's our job to provide our people with our own culture and our own superheros."

For Odjick, Kagagi also provided a unique opportunity to help preserve the dying language of his people. Each episode of the show (in English) contains Algonquin subtitles. His website also contains translated episode scripts available to download.

"In our community the speakers are literally dying out," said Odjick, explaining to VICE how one of the two translators used for the show has passed away since it began. "Anything we can do to help kids get interested in the language and give it to them in the way they understand and enjoy."

A couple dressed as characters from 'Avatar.'

For many of the Native creators VICE spoke with, this event represents a huge step toward inclusion in a media that has long done the opposite.

"Seeing those kinds of stereotypes in comics made me determined to do something for those that never had representation," said Arigon Starr. "It's exciting to see all of doing this. All together in one place."

"To think that this would be possible to be here in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the first ever Indigenous Comic Con representing my own TV show is mind-blowing," said Odjick, who's been drawing comics since he was five years old. "I hope kids that come here see that things are changing. That we can do things that we could not have done just a decade or two ago."

See more photos from the first Indigenous Comic Con below, and visit the organization's website to learn more.

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Artist Rod Velarde, from the Jicarilla Apache Nation, stands beside his stormtrooper done in traditional black and white style.

Dezbah Evans, one of the event workers, dressed up as Jedi from Star Wars.

Cosplayers on the steps of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, where the event took place.

A costume contest at the main stage

Laddy Yazzi has her hair braided prior to a dance performance on the main stage.

Jay Soule, a Native American artist from Canada who creates horror movie-inspired "indigenous pop art."

For this edition of First-Person Shooter, we sent a disposable camera to Josh Opdenaker, a.k.a. JOP!, a seriously skilled glass pipe artist based out of Philadelphia. Josh has been blowing glass for 15 years and runs a studio called Jop Glass. While he was the first in Philly's Fishtown area to make a name for himself in the field, today there are five glass studios and 18 glass blowers on his block alone. "I was there when there was no money in the scene," he says, "and I'll be there if the money runs out."

Josh snapped a few pics of a glass pipe he's working on that's shaped like a large cassette (complete with badass flames coming out of its sides), gave us a tour of his studio, and also showed us the most expensive tool for smoking we've ever seen: "The Baby Mecha Ganesh," which is valued at over $100,000. Here's what else the glass guru had to say about his niche, incredible craft.

VICE: What'd you get up to during your day?
Josh Opdenaker: To start my day, I bike to the studio almost immediately after getting ready in the morning. The first hours I'm awake are my most productive, so I skip breakfast and usually lunch. I get to the studio, spark the kiln, then spark some weed. I use weed like a tool on my bench—it helps me work and get inspired, and I don't usually smoke when I'm not working. After I get to the studio, I work at minimum 10-12 hours straight until I'm spabbled from no food, too many cigarettes, and being in the same room for too long. If I'm fully immersed in a piece (which is always), food and resting come second—if at all. After that, I crush a few specials (a cheap beer-and-shot combo) from the El Bar across the street and call it a day.

How'd you get into the craft?
After hand-carving stone sculptures for a few years, I was sick of being broke. My buddy JAG was making pipes in another homie's kitchen (not recommended), and he definitely was making some money. He let me play around with it one day and after just 15 minutes of trying the medium I knew it was what I would do for the rest of my life.

I took whatever little money I had and bought my first torch and small kiln. Then, I rented a garage and worked trial-and-error style for the first few years. Techniques weren't shared so frequently back then, and there was certainly no information on the internet. If you thought of something, you had to just go for it. And fuck up. And then go again for it. And fuck up. And repeat.

If somebody wanted to learn how to get into making glass pipes like you what would be some good first steps?
If someone wanted to learn to make pipes I'd say take a class—they're all over America and easy to find these days. But make sure the instructor is reputable. Too often, unskilled and unqualified people teach and spread some ill habits. Back in the day, techniques weren't shared and secrecy was prevalent. You had to do it apprentice-style, much like a tattoo artist.

Do you do commissions?
I used to do commissions when I had no rep and no voice. Now I make whatever I want. This is both good and bad: On one hand, I'm following my own unique voice, but a piece may sit in my studio for a little before it's finally sold.

What kind of customers usually buy your glass?
The type of person that buys from me varies greatly, as I make pieces that range from $90 to $100,000. With that great of a range, there is everyone from Johnny-Smokes-a-Lot who lives in his mom's basement to very well-known rappers and hip-hop artists.

What's the piece you're most proud of?
The piece I am most proud of is the 'Baby-Mecha-Ganesh' I made last year. It's a three-foot-tall mechanical baby with six arms—not including the stand. The head is removable and so is the pipe. The process of making it completely consumed me for two months, to the point where I neglected many aspects of life like food, water, sleep, socializing... I look back at the Baby Ganesh and realize all the stars were aligned when I made it. It's a once in a lifetime piece.

Where can people buy pipes from you?
A good place is to hit me on the gram, or check out the site.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website to see his own photo work.

Fidel Castro, seen here in 2001 (Photo by Paul Faith/ PA Wire)

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Fidel Castro, who died Friday evening aged 90, was consigned to the "already dead" box in most people's heads about a decade ago, when he withdrew from the limelight after a stroke and handed the country over to his brother.

As ever, he had the last laugh. Castro outlived six US presidents. He went on to live another half-century after JFK's assassination. There were 638 attempts to kill him, by some accounts – seems a lot, but over 50 years it's basically only one a month. The exploding cigar plot – real. The "make his beard fall out to humiliate him" plot – also real.

Yet for a life of an ultimate 20th-century tumult, those who saw him in retirement painted an idyllic picture. He lived in a modest two-storey house on a former golf course: watching TV, entertaining his grandkids, occasionally writing newspaper articles for a Communist mouthpiece newspaper, doing two hours' exercise a day, and getting his staff to translate books unavailable in Spanish.

One journalist checked in to find he was reading Obama's Dreams Of My Father. What follows isn't meant to be comprehensive or complete reading of him – for a start it barely touches on his loathsome human rights record. Rather, it's a harvesting of facets that caught our eye, humanising touches that put some flesh back on a guy who has only really loomed out at us from old news reels – the ghostly fourth Marx Brother of International Socialism.

HE WAS A BALLER

The eight-hour speeches came later, but Castro's sense of destiny was apparent even in the 1940s. He was an exceptionally talented baseball player who turned out for big Cuban teams – in 1944, he'd won a prize as "Cuba's best all-round school athlete". Real head prefect material, basically.

HE WAS AN ANNOYINGLY PRECOCIOUS CHILD

The roots of this megalomania didn't start there – in fact they seem to go all the way back to birth. Aged 14 – not 12, as he'd claimed – young Fidel wrote a letter to FDR, congratulating him on his re-election, and signing-off "Your Friend". In his head, Castro was already the equal of kings and courtiers. This is all exactly the sort of stuff biographers love.

HE WAS A LAWYER

That was his actual job. He got into politics as a congressional candidate for the Orthodox Party. There, he found he had skill as a speaker and rose rapidly. But then he hit the glass ceiling: Fulgencio Batista annulled an election that the Orthodox Party were favourites to win, and Fidel realised he wasn't going to get anywhere in politics without throwing a few grenades.

ALL REVOLUTIONS CONTAIN AN ELEMENT OF HIGH FARCE

Castro's probably had more than most. First there was the disastrous opening salvo he fired in what was to become the Cuban revolution. In 1953, he and more than 100 fellow revolutionaries attempted to storm the Moncada military barracks. This, they hoped, would be the kick-off for a full-blown Cuban uprising. But they were obliterated. Eight were killed in the fighting. Another 80 or so were murdered by the army afterwards.

Castro was only spared because the guard in charge ignored his orders and sent him to a civilian jail instead. Once inside, Fidel was inducted into what was to become a long and proud tradition of Pink Panther-esque failed attempts to assassinate him, followed by huge strokes of luck on Castro's own part. An army captain was given instructions to poison his food. He refused, and instead told the world. At which point, General Batista decided he was too weak to risk inflaming public opinion any further by trying again. He'd made a huge mistake. Castro exiled himself off to Mexico, got engaged, claimed he once swam the Rio Grande to meet the exiled Cuban President in a US motel room, then came back and overthrew Batista by the time he was 32.

BUT ALL GREAT DEFEATS CAN EASILY BE REASSIGNED AS STUNNING VICTORIES

The Cuban government's mouthpiece is a paper called Granma. It is named after the yacht which Fidel tried to return from exile on, with a small invasion force. The would-be guerrillas onboard were blown off-course. They ran out of provisions. They were shipwrecked miles from nowhere. They were then spotted by the Cuban airforce, Castro once claimed, and gunned down in an ambush until the entire force consisted of seven armed men.

HE WAS PALS WITH A T-SHIRT SALESMAN

Che Guevara, the Argentinian poster-boy of poster boys, made his name in Cuba. Che fought his way up the island with Castro. He was also president of the national bank and minister for industry, who was instrumental in hooking Cuba up with the Soviets. Increasingly, though, he fell out with the other Cuban leaders, until in 1965 it was suddenly announced he'd left the country. Two years later, he'd be in Bolivia and dead.

HE DIDN'T START OUT VERY COMMUNIST

Castro soon got tagged as the ultimate red, second only to Kim Il Sung in the ardour of his ideology. This was convenient, but untrue. He was no great Marxist theoretician. No great theoretician at all. He left that bullcrap to Che and his brother. He spent a lot of time avoiding being daubed too overtly with the Communist brush, arguing to the press that he would do "whatever works", declaring in 1959: "I have said in a clear and definitive fashion that we are not communists." Accordingly, his first government was pragmatic: they nationalised, tried import substitution, confiscated US property, and rolled out universal healthcare, but the project was as much nationalist as communist. It was only when they hit the skids that they were forced to pay greater attention to ideology. An increasing economic crisis forced the government to seek support, which duly came from the USSR. The Russians bought up all the nation's sugar, and in return sent finished goods, precious foreign currency and a tonne of special advisers. In return, Castro was hidebound to follow Moscow's doctrine.

THOUGH HE MANAGED TO GET IN ON SOME COLD WAR ACTION

In the 70s and 80s, Castro committed troops to battlefields in Angola and Mozambique where, with the Portuguese colonists finally withdrawn, civil war had taken hold. In both cases, they played to bloody and unsatisfactory stalemates against anti-communist guerrillas being armed and aided by highly organised South African Defence Force units.

HE KNEW NOT TO LET OPPORTUNITY GO BEGGING

In 1980, Castro briefly opened up the Port of Mariel, to allow Cuban exiles living in America to "claim their relatives. In all, more than 120,000 people were sucked off the island in a window of a few months. Unknown to most at the time, Castro had also made sure to load the boats with prison inmates, mental patients, and a host of others classed as "undesirables", in what must rate as one of history's greatest acts of illegal dumping.

HE HURT ONE OF HIS COUNTRY'S PRIME EXPORTS

Cigar Afficionado's Man Of The Year since the dawn of time, Fidel finally gave up his stogies in 1985. "The best thing you could do with a box of cigars is give them to your enemy," he said at the time. And a hundred old women hand-rolling Havanas were retrenched...

HE PUT ALL HIS EGGS IN ONE ROTTEN BASKET

The USSR saved Castro from his own economic follies year-in and year-out. So when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba nose-dived along with it. Cuba's GDP declined by 33 percent between 1990 and 1993. So it went on. The results were catastrophic. A major fuel shortage brought the economy grinding to a halt. After 30 years of good harvests, even food became scarce: malnutrition finally returned to the island. This time was euphemistically referred to as the "special period". For doctors looking to study the effects of rapid population weight loss on lifestyle diseases like diabetes, it was one of history's golden moments. For everyone else, it was a bleak and bitter period where the little hope they had sank from view.

HE ENJOYED LISTENING TO THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS

At one point during their 2001 concert at Havana's Karl Marx Theatre, he stood and applauded during their song about Elian Gonzalez.

THE SEQUEL TO THE REVOLUTION IS POSTPONED UNTIL 2017

That's when the geriocracy will finally have to make way for some new blood: the self-declared end of Raul Castro's nightwatchman stint, and, if all goes to plan, the moment Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez steps onto the world stage (while hopefully also shortening his own name). Diaz-Canel Bermúdez is the anointed heir of the Castros, and seems quite likeable. He's a cyclist. Which is always nice. He's an ex-university professor. And they tend to be mild-mannered folk who don't garotte too many dissidents. He was the youngest ever member of the Politburo. And that suggests he's a bit charismatic and go-get'em.

And he is, on Cuban terms, a liberaliser: bringing things back into private ownership, and supporting a range of recent market reforms. This will mark the first moment when real detente can happen between the US and this ageing yet unshakeable regime.

ACCORDING TO CELEBRITYNETWORTH.COM, 'FIDEL CASTRO IS A CUBAN-BORN POLITICAL LEADER AND SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY WITH AN ESTIMATED NET WORTH OF $900 MILLION DOLLARS'

And that, surely, should be his final testament.

@gavhaynes

This post originally appeared on VICE Canada

It's 2016, and peeing while trans is still generally viewed as a political activity. If it's happening in a public washroom, legislators want to know it, schools are trying to rebrand it, and at least one Alberta mom attempted to rap about it.

All of this never-ending debate can feel pretty fucking strange, considering trans people are just doing the same things as everybody else in there. That there isn't competing outrage over sounds, smells, and soap availability is anybody's guess.

It's frankly no wonder trans activist Jack Fox has spent a decade scouting out every non-gendered toilet in his city. Even though Fox says he "reads" as male, the the fear of harassment in the "men's room" still lingers. "I was so nervous to use a public washroom for fear of being attacked or verbally harassed, I would often wait all day until returning home to go," he told VICE of his early transition days. "Some days I waited up to 16 hours, being strategic as to what I drank or ate so I did not need to use the toilet."

Fox recently teamed up with Vancouver photographer Jackie Dives on a photo series that confronts those anxieties and the transphobia that causes them. It pairs photos of non-binary people having a chill time in public stalls with personal stories of dealing with assumptions and hate. We've publish a selection of them here.

"Nobody told me that once I 'passed,' I would still be searching for 'the ideal washroom,' mainly one that is loud enough so nobody can hear that I'm peeing in the stall."

"Before I transitioned, it was daunting. It's scary having all these men twice your size peering at you like an oddity."

"I just want to pee, wash my hands, check if I have food in my teeth and leave without being harassed."

"The best is having a complete stranger look over the cubicle just to see you have the right parts! Not to mention the times the door has been kicked in."

"Being told to use the handicapped washroom at my school made me feel like there was something wrong with me, that there needed to be something fixed, which there really wasn't."

"To this day despite passing 100 percent of the time I still prefer a gender neutral washroom."

"Growing up using the 'ladies room' I would repeatedly be asked 'are you in the right place?'"

"The hateful people of the world have certainly found a space to feel safe and be more visible than ever. Which means the rest of us need to come out and be equally as visible."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Follow Jackie Dives on Instagram.

Check out Allison Conway's Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Latvia's capital, Riga, is a sublime balance of old and new. Its architecture and local traditions reflect on what it once was. Behind this exterior it's also a lively city with modern ideas, from experimental theater to third-wave coffee shops. There's this contrast between old-world corner shops and the shiny designer shops across the road. As strange as it can be, locals get it, and this balance gives Riga its charm.

On the flip-side, as a small city with a distinct culture, Riga has a tight-knit feel. It can also be hard to break in as an outsider. A feeling of openness towards newcomers is growing, but still leaves a fair bit to be desired. At the same time, it's exciting to see how younger generations are embracing change and accepting Riga for the global city it's becoming. I don't remember when I started taking photos of the city, but I always have a camera in my bag. Some of the people you see here are technically strangers, but in a city this small, they don't stay strangers for long.

Follow Henrijs on Instagram.

All photos by Jan Lukanovič

This article originally appeared on VICE Slovenia

The result of the 2016 elections surprised most people. But Slovenia also had a weird night on November 8. A Slovenian had actually made it to the White House—as First Lady, but still. Most of us were flabbergasted. He—well, Donald and Melania Trump both—had done it. And the small town of Sevnica, which wasn't well known internationally (or even in Slovenia for that matter), suddenly became the country's unofficial capital.

VICE Slovenia went to Sevnica two weeks after the election result, to see if anything had actually changed. And it had. The moment we entered the city, a huge billboard brandishing Melania Trump's face welcomed us to the hometown of the First Lady of the United States. It set the tone for our short but very sweet stay.

Translation: Welcome to the hometown of the First Lady of the United States

As we parked the car and set off to find a nice place for a cup of coffee, we stumbled across a sign in front of the bakery Julija, which read: "Melania cake." And as we love cake and obviously would love to know what a White House-themed cake tastes like, we stepped inside and took a good look at this beauty.

The people in the cafe assured us that they spared no expense putting together the ingredients for this creation, and that the idea for it came to them after the surprising victory. Their vision: a silky white chocolate mousse with nuts, lying on top of a crust made with a buttery nut base. And, best of all, edible gold.

While we were mesmerized by the shining golden chocolate pieces, the baker pointed out that, as one of her patrons said best, "with the gold, you really Trumped up the whole cake." The appeal of gilded peaks and flourishes quickly became the theme for this whole trip.

After a hefty breakfast of golden cake we found the tourist center, to get any new information on the past two weeks. We learned that more Melania-themed treats are being prepared for the near future. This small but beautiful municipality is betting heavily on Melania Trump's new status as a way to shine a light on all the tourist attractions on offer. They admitted that nobody was expecting Trump to win and that when the results were coming in they went from "shit, he may actually win" to "fuck, he actually won." But what caught our eye was something completely different: the first in a series of new products that the town would offer to potential tourists. It was, of course, the quintessential Slovenian thing—honey.

The entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Slovenia has powered up an initiative to bottle local honey, and pitch it as coming "from the local garden of Melania Trump." I couldn't verify whether that was really factual or not.

With thoughts of optimistic future in our minds, we ventured towards another place where we'd heard more desserts named after the future First Lady were being sold. It was onwards to "Pizzerija Rondo," where one of the first "Melania" desserts was made.

Its neatly packed mascarpone strawberry mousse was decorated with silver sugary pearls and covered with delicate lace and small glass crystals. According to the people working at the pizzeria, the dessert is a hit and we were quite lucky to even get a piece to try.

Fighting the effects of early onset diabetes, we followed rumors of another possible Melania-themed dish up the hills to Lisca, a 948-meter "mountain." It's a hiking destination near Sevnica that holds a beautiful cottage on its peak. And this was, if you ask us, the best experience of them all.

The caretaker Franc is a well-known pancake master, has baked more than 6000 crepes already and told us that he "was asked many times if he would make something new, now that the White House was just a little bit closer to Sevnica." And he delivered. He surpassed our expectations, even. The Melanija crepes are not only delicious but also the decorated in a truly impeccable fashion.

They're made with the finest ingredients you can get: blueberries picked around the cottage; a bourbon vanilla filling and ice cream; some cream to top it off, and a nice layer of edible—you guessed it—gold dust.

When I asked why the decision to go with gold, Franc replied: "Because, you know, Trump." But the best thing about the whole experience might just be the the room you sit in while you eat your golden crepes.

It's a place once personally visited by Josip Broz Tito, the former autocratic president of the Socialist republic of Yugoslavia, who even left a personal thank-you letter. The place has retained much of the same décor from those socialist days gone by which lends it special charm—even with all the Tito portraits intently staring down at you from the walls.

The culmination of the Melania Trump day on Friday was in Ljubljana, where the Christmas lights were turned on. This year there was something new. The workers, who put the Christmas tree up, and everyone else to be frank, had unofficially named the 20-meter tree "Melania." And until the beginning of January, "Melania" will be the centerpiece not only in Sevnica, but also in Ljubljana.

To top it all, the band Slavček performed a wonderful song honoring Mrs Trump. A loose translation of its chorus would be: "Melania found her marketing niche, through Trump she will enter the White House. From Sevnica directly to the top of the world, because she has a nose for the right man."

What a year to be Slovenian.

Meanwhile, Europe suffered zero mass shootings over the same period, leaving the continent's mass shooting tally so far this year steady at 46 dead and 158 injured.

Whether because of chillier weather or just good fortune, the past week was the quietest for American mass shootings since late October. Most of the latest attacks were also routine by national standards and so did not register for the typical American beyond the limited reach of local news accounts.

At about 10:15 PM last Friday, a drive-by on a second vehicle in Chicago, Illinois, left four injured. The rest of that weekend, remarkably, passed without a mass shooting. But at about 11:30 PM Tuesday, a shooting near a storefront in Clewiston, Florida, left one dead and four more injured. At some point the following day, a man confronted an ex-girlfriend and her family at a home in Hernando, Mississippi, and opened fire, injuring four before turning himself in. Then, at about 2 AM on Thursday, a shooting following an altercation at a party in the Rocks nightclub in Albany, New York, left one dead and three more injured.

The only incident to garner widespread and sustained media attention came just shy of 12 hours later, when a shooting near a crowd of hundreds gathered for the Juice Bowl Football Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, left two dead and four injured. As of publication, the motive for the shooting remained unclear—and many other shootings this year into or near dense crowds with similar numbers of victims have gone relatively unnoticed. But the incident drew special attention because it took place during a local Thanksgiving tradition, transforming it into a symbolic perversion of the American holiday.

Check out Thump's interview with the resident DJs of Pulse nightclub in Orlando, site of the largest mass shooting in modern American history.

In truth, one mass shooting is a low toll compared to other widely celebrated holidays in America. Occasions like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Halloween all saw a rash of mass shootings on the day of or during attendant festivities. The lower body count on Thanksgiving may stem, at least in part, from the fact that this holiday is celebrated differently than the others, with more indoor and family events and fewer large (and unregulated) public ones. Or it could just be an embodiment of the randomness of mass shootings writ large.

Either way, the focus granted to this solitary Thanksgiving shooting speaks to the means by which many media outlets and individuals allocate attention in such a dense news environment: We are drawn in by solitary aberrations that seem to mar a sense of safety or innocence. Zeroing in on outliers makes sense, and the Juice Bowl shooting is, like every incident of gun violence, worthy of attention and sympathy. But according it more significance than any of the others this week, which also ripped apart communities and lives, obscures the scale and contours of America's mass shooting epidemic—and does a disservice to victims.

As 2017 looms, if we really want to rein in mass shootings, Americans need to find a way to let no incident of mass gun violence be a merely local tragedy.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Someone put a hit out on me.

Well, kind of. Frankly, the whole plot is less covert espionage and more revenge-on-a-basement-dwelling-budget kind of thing. In short, a stranger offered the internet $250 if they could find video evidence of me saying something "utterly racist."

Lemme explain.

The thing that spurred this mastermind to take action was an article that I, and Anisa Rawhani, wrote recently regarding a rather racist costume party thrown by Queen's University students. This particular piece of writing seemed to really grind the "my dad will sue you" gang and alt-right anti-political correctness crowd into an angry frothing fury—the kind that makes comment sections an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland.

Read More: Queen's University Students Held a Party and the Theme Was Racism

It also pissed off future Bay Streeter/America regular Ben "Here Comes the Money" Harper—the fruit of Stephen Harper's loins—but that's a story for another day.