Trump speaking at a rally in Las Vegas last February. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Earlier this week, Trump made it clear that he has no plans to change, no matter how many GOP leaders pen letters against him. He has spent the last few days proving his point. On Wednesday night, Donald Trump repeatedly told a crowd of supporters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that Obama is the "founder of ISIS" and Hillary is a "co-founder," the New York Times reports.

"In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama," Trump said. "He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder."

Trump previously trotted out a bizarre conspiracy theory that Obama has a connection to the radical terrorist group during the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, and the GOP candidate has long accused Obama of being a secret Muslim.

His Wednesday night statements about Obama and ISIS came just one day after Trump's controversial "joke" about assassinating Hillary Clinton—or just, like, voting against her, depending on who you ask. That comment was even too much for some of his supporters, though it didn't stop a fan from scaling the outside of Trump Tower to get his attention.

Read: Viral Trump Fan Would Have Taken Trump 'to the Shed' for That Second Amendment 'Joke'

All photos courtesy of Lifetime

It's a twist that not even Chris Harrison could have foreseen: Last summer, two of TV's most shameless pleasures, UnREAL and The Bachelorette, provided some of the medium's most progressive social commentary, too. The first season of UnREAL, Lifetime's buzzy drama centered on the fictional Bachelor-esque reality show Everlasting, took an incisive look at the relationship between gender and power structures in the TV industry while also providing a healthy dose of heightened melodrama that the network's built its name on. From the first shot of UnREAL's pilot, the show made no bones about being an explicitly feminist concern. Guided by show creator and former Bachelor producer Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, it also forced critics and casual viewers alike to consider the oft-dismissed medium of reality TV as a complicated art in its own right.

While UnREAL was exposing the seedy underbelly of the Bachelor's cinematic universe, the real thing was making some surprising waves of its own. The 11th season of The Bachelorette may have kicked off with the risible conceit of allowing the male suitors to choose between two protagonists for whose love they'd be competing for, but once the dust settled, Kaitlyn Bristowe's stint as the show's focal point challenged the nasty double standards that female participants have faced throughout the series when it comes to sexual conduct.

The former Bachelor contestant's decision to engage in sexual intercourse with contestants before the show's notorious "fantasy suite" episode was seen as a sex-positive triumph; Vulture's Jada Yuan drew comparisons between Bristowe and The Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and a segment of the season's "Men Tell All" episode was devoted to addressing the slut-shaming that Bristowe faced on social media (and from some of the show's contestants) as a result of her decisions. A year after the season aired, the reality franchise's female contestants are still coming forward to address the inequality of expectations that the contestants face.

It's strange that both a long-running reality-TV show and a freshman drama brutally satirizing said TV show would enjoy the same critical fate. Perhaps it's pure coincidence, too, that both The Bachelorette and UnREAL's most recent seasons—the former concluding last week, the latter coming to a close this past Monday—experienced similar dips in quality, even as the granular reasons for their respective dips differed.

For its part, UnREAL's second season has been considered, by many critics, a disappointment when compared to its enthralling initial run, a decline from highbrow drama-as-social commentary to lowbrow soap-opera theatrics. The season premiere, "War," set up an epic and destructive power struggle between Everlasting's executive producer Rachel (Shiri Appleby) and her producer and mentee Quinn (Constance Zimmer), further complicating the themes of control and professional authority that the characters face on and off the set. As the two anti-heroines struggled to keep their footing in their male-dominated profession, the show's narrative path similarly struggled to stay steady.

Part of the thrill provided by UnREAL's first season was how tightly wound it was. Not unlike the masterful manipulation that Quinn and Rachel regularly exercise at the controls of Everlasting, the season's overarching plot was impressively self-contained; even when it threatened to veer off course near its conclusion, the finale wrapped every narrative loose end as tightly as a Chipotle burrito. Comparatively, the most recent season was a Seamless order that accidentally spilled all over the bag on the way to your apartment, with plot twists and narrative themes—baby-kidnapping, domestic violence, red-state racism, ethically questionable sports medication, mens' rights activism—thrown into the show's fray with little regard for cohesion or structure.

Perhaps the most surprising letdown of UnREAL's second season is the squandering of its topical, potentially provocative twist for Everlasting's show-within-a-show: an African American suitor in the form of pro football player Darius Beck (B. J. Britt). The gambit was revealed well before UnREAL's premiere, simultaneously raising critical expectations and capitalizing on the bittersweet irony of a fictional reality TV dating show showcasing a person of color while the protagonists of The Bachelor's franchise have remained, for a decade-plus, blindingly white.

Instead, the show's attempts to engage with race—both on America's television sets and in America's structural racism—came across as half-hearted and, in the case of a subplot involving police brutality against men of color, tone-deaf and ill-advised. Shapiro acknowledged in a recent interview that the police brutality subplot " our story to tell," and the refreshingly candid admission scratched at the surface of UnREAL's larger issue as it stands: The show's attempting to tell too many stories.

If UnREAL could be faulted for having too much going on, then The Bachelorette's most recent season concerned itself with the opposite, a few cheap thrills and little more. Despite suffering heartbreak on the previous season of The Bachelor, focal point Joelle "JoJo" Fletcher frequently seemed uninterested or completely unable to deliver the type of drama and passion the show's fans come to expect; for their part, her potential beaus largely resembled a stale loaf of Wonder bread—bland and almost hilariously identical to one another.

One contestant stood out more than the others, though: Chad Johnson, an extraordinary villain who exerted a macho, shaky volatility that even the likes of reality TV—an art form that routinely preys on the emotionally vulnerable and unstable—rarely sees come to fruition. During his stint on the show, "The Chad" (as he was recently referred to on spinoff Bachelor in Paradise) provided a considerable fountain of quotables and GIFs through his uncontrolled aggression and unusual eating habits; he also provided a disturbing portrait of male violence that UnREAL's second season attempted to address in a domestic-abuse subplot involving Rachel and her spurned ex Jeremy (Josh Kelly).

Despite the accidental enlightenment its previous season provided, though, it's never been The Bachelorette's M.O. to provide meaningful commentary on anything; it exists to entertain and nothing more. Obviously, UnREAL faces a different and heightened set of expectations—and perhaps we should ask ourselves whether that's fair to the show's creators.

UnREAL's second season might have been a mess, but it provided cheap thrills in its own right, too—sudsy twists buoyed by Appleby and Zimmer's stellar performances, two of the most notable dramatic performances on TV right now—and the finale's ludicrously shocking conclusion suggests that Shapiro and her team aren't changing course anytime soon. The reality of so much reality TV is that its creators feed viewers absolute trash, and we know what we're being fed, but we love the taste, too. UnREAL's recipe for drama might be increasingly hewing closer to what we come to expect from The Bachelor franchise than its most devoted critics would prefer—and that's a twist that no one could predict.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.

Aaron Driver leaves court in Winnipeg in February 2016. Photo by Canadian Press/John Woods

A man who was devoted to the Islamic State was shot and killed by police during a standoff in a small Ontario town last night after RCMP said they received "credible information of a potential terrorist threat."

The Rob Ford crack video (YouTube/NOW Magazine)

The Rob Ford crack video is finally out.

It's pretty sad. Good day.

Quality entertainment. Photo via Youtube.

Before I get into this I just want to say a quick and hearty, "fuck you" to each and every one of my friends who have mocked me for repeatedly watching The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy, The Purge: Election Year, and The Bachelorette. Because it turns out my love of garbage programming means I'm a goddamn genius just like I've always known.

Austin James Wilkerson (Boulder County Sheriff's Office)

On March 15, 2014, Austin James Wilkerson took it upon himself to look after a half-conscious girl who'd been drinking at a St. Patrick's Day party. Or at least, that's what he told one of the girl's friends. The 22-year-old made a show of giving the woman water and checking her pulse in front of his own roommate. Later, he would go on to penetrate her and ejaculate on her stomach when she "wasn't very responsive," as the Guardian reports he initially told investigators.

Wilkerson went so far as to reach out to the girl's friend after the incident, who responded by thanking him for being a Good Samaritan.

Wilkerson was eventually convicted of sexual assault in May and faced a sentence of four to 12 years in prison, but received none. Instead, he was given two years of "work release"—school during the day and county jail at night—along with at least 20 years of probation. The case bears an eerie resemblance to that of Brock Turner, the former star swimmer at Stanford who was convicted of raping a woman behind a dumpster and whose punishment of six months in jail sparked an international controversy and a campaign to unseat the presiding judge.

After the party that night, Wilkerson began telling friends he "fingered a passed out girl" and "let his hands wander." He also told university investigators he made multiple passes at her, referring to the now-21-year-old victim as a "fucking bitch." At trial, he changed his story to say that the victim engaged with him passionately. Finally, during sentencing—and unlike Turner—he admitted raping her and apologized for the pain he'd caused.

Despite the many lies that preceded his confession, the judge—echoing the one presiding over the Turner case—expressed concern for Wilkerson and said he wasn't sure prison would rehabilitate him. In January, the same Boulder, Colorado, court gave a former Air Force cadet who was convicted of rape just six months in county jail.

The reason for these paltry sentences is that rape isn't subject to mandatory minimum sentencing, according to John Wilkinson, an attorney at the legal group AEquitas, which helps prosecutors build sexual assault cases. Every state has suggestions for what penalties sexual assault should carry––the four to 12 years in the Colorado case. But then there's a pre-sentence investigation during which the office of probation looks into the offender to see if he or she has issues of substance abuse or a prior record, among other things. After that, the judge gets a recommendation, which includes a victim-impact statement.

"Those guidelines are discretionary, although judges typically follow them," Wilkinson told VICE. "Typically the question in these cases is how long had a scheme or a plan in place, which would raise a huge red flag for me."

Sometimes when there's a jarring ruling in a sexual assault case, it's a result of patchwork laws that leave loopholes for offenders to wiggle through. But in this case, Wilkinson suspects it probably boils down to human error––the all-too-common tendency to blame the victim, or to assume that a consequence of getting drunk is sometimes getting raped.

"Somebody's gotta have a final say, and in our system, it's judges," he told me. "Sometimes we have great ones, sometimes just really good ones, sometimes we have ones who get things wrong, and other times there are ones who have a blind spot for violence against women. Judges are people, too––it's just like any other profession."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

All screenshots Luke Winkie. Faces and names have been blurred.

Most people download Tinder optimistically, but after months of withering matches and sleepwalking conversations, you might be motivated to join forces with a few of your friends and hope to run into a few other people suffering from a lack of adventure.

This is where Tinder Social comes in handy: You tag a couple people you know on Facebook and form a "group," and other groups can examine your group and decide if they want to swipe right. If the interest is mutual, you're dropped into a massive group chat where you can coordinate whatever you want—like, for instance, an orgy.

Here's the thing: I recently moved to Los Angeles, and I have a limited social life here, so even if I wanted to try Tinder Social, I don't know who I'd bring along. A few weeks ago, I came up with the incredibly stupid idea to use Tinder Social with a "group" of "friends" who were really just different versions of me. Through a combination of burner phone numbers and fake email addresses, I constructed four Tinder profiles, each with specific pictures of me that represent a radical extension of who I am. Then I united them in one Tinder Social group.

Maybe my trolling would lead to some fun new friendships; maybe I'd learn which shade of my personality is most relatable to the people of Los Angeles; or maybe I'd just give some people a surreal experience. Either way, it's time to meet our cast.

TESS

Tess discovered rap music in college, and nothing has been the same since. Roughly 80 million of the 226 million Spotify streams of Drake's "Too Good" are because of him, and when he's not ruining Future concerts at (seemingly) every festival in North America, you can find him calling J. Cole trash on Twitter. Tess loves being outside, working out, Crying Jordans, Twitter DMs, and having more money than all of his friends. Nobody has seen Tess's eyes since 2014, and he really needs to stop saying "fam."

(This photo was taken after I totaled my car. The rental company gave me a Camaro while it was in the shop, and by the time I gave it back, I could actually start to feel myself turning into Tess, which was terrifying.)

TYLER

Tyler gets really quiet when other people start talking about sex. He's gotten by on borrowed anecdotes from Reddit, but it's always a stressful experience. Tyler is doing his best to hide a deep distrust of women in the bowels of his brain, but unfortunately that's only going to keep percolating as long as he believes that impassioned soliloquies on corporatized political systems and the superiority of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless serve as charitable conversation. His preppy regalia grew out of a couple years raiding $60 button-downs at Urban Outfitters. He has a chest-piece from his Warped Tour days that he keeps well-hidden.

BRANDON

Brandon is 26 and still lurks 4chan. He deletes his browser history with the consistency and precision of a Navy SEALS strike team, and most of his sexual experiences have come from provocative Counter-Strike sprays. He has found a quiet sanctuary of insulated white men on the internet, and he's not coming out no matter what you say.

(I took this picture when I was doing a story in Japan. Almost as soon as we landed, I dropped about $60 on a hentai porn towel. I call her Yuki-chan. No matter how old or mature I get, there's still a little bit of Brandon in me.)

LUKE

This is just me. I changed my bio because there's no way in hell I'm letting a bunch of strangers on the internet see what's written on my actual Tinder bio.

So that's our crew—a real murderer's row. I'm not sure that Luke, Tyler, Tess, and Brandon would ever hang out in real life, but at one point or another, they've all represented some exaggerated version of me. Tonight, they'll hit the streets together.

Honestly, at this point, I thought the story would fall apart, and I'd have to come up with some conclusion about how nobody matched with me because people generally don't have time for this kind of foolishness. But thankfully the people of Los Angeles absolutely delivered.

The first people I matched with were a couple Scandinavian girls who (I assume) were visiting California for the summer. Fantastic! Unfortunately, they almost immediately saw through my façade.

Most of the people I connected with were immediately suspicious that they were talking to one person across four different accounts. I suppose everyone's seen their fair share of Catfish now, and no one's playing around anymore.

My favorite were the people who went out on a limb and asked if Brandon, Tyler, Tess, and I were quadruplets. How gullible do you have to be to think that four burner Tinder accounts—with different ages attached—means you're talking to quadruplets?

It was pretty difficult to convince anyone to hang out. Elaborate internet jokes, I suppose, are great in theory but rarely lead to actual rewards. The closest I got to a real rapport was when I matched with a few UCLA students who were amused and then promptly shut me down. You know what's worse than getting rejected? Getting four versions of yourself rejected at once.

However, my favorite interaction came with Tara and Sam (not their real names), who appeared to be in the same Tinder Social group despite not really knowing each other. When we swiped right on each other, Tara was in the midst of trying to woo Sam—who was genuinely perturbed by the fact that he was suddenly in a group chat with four people who looked exactly alike. This combination of narratives resulted in a truly outstanding instance of lost-in-translation weirdness.

So me and the boys didn't end up meeting anybody—we were rejected a humiliating 28 times. But that's OK. We're used to striking out on Tinder. By the way, it's important to know that if you follow in my footsteps and create your own friends for Tinder Social, you might end up getting some weird messages on Facebook from people you know in real life.

All told, managing my fake Tinder Social crew was the most fun I've ever had on the app. Maybe that says more about living in a new city and having enough time on your hands to distract yourself with dumb social games, but I don't know. There's so much posturing on social media, and it's never more apparent than when you confront people trying to look as good as possible with something incredibly silly. In moments like that, you realize you regret ever taking Tinder seriously.

Follow Luke Winkie on Twitter.

Someone destroying the planet. Photo by Chris Bethell

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Some people claim that every line you snort, pill you swallow, or spliff you smoke is a deeply irresponsible act. Have you considered, you selfish idiot, the harms caused to humans and the environment by the dirty, violent, exploitative trade behind your stash? It's an argument that, on the surface, scuppers the classic drug-taker defense: What's the problem as long as I'm not harming anyone else?

It's true: Drugs are not the most ethical products around, as some very good articles on the wider impacts of using cocaine, weed, and ecstasy have pointed out. Cocaine—despite its traditionally sophisticated image—is maybe the least ethical of them all, and the authorities use this in an attempt to reduce the huge demand for the drug in the UK.

As the UK's National Crime Agency's #EveryLineCounts campaign puts it, cocaine users are "feeding an industry which funds the exploitation of impoverished people, which routinely uses death, violence, and destruction, and destroys and pollutes large areas of rainforest." Journalists have attacked their dinner-party friends for sucking up lines of blood-stained coke while preaching about fair-trade coffee, animal cruelty, and human rights. In their minds, there is a big difference between addicts worthy of sympathy and the "revolting hypocrites" who take drugs for mere pleasure.

But wait: To what extent are the Brits getting a little bit fucked colluding in the narco war in Mexico, the Mafia killings in Naples, and toxic pollution caused by Amazonian jungle labs in Colombia? Are they actually responsible for the worst excesses of the global drug trade? Is a British coke user really any worse than an egg-eating chicken murderer?

Blaming drug users for the harms caused by the drug trade is like blaming voters for all that's wrong with contemporary politics. Choose your scandal: Iraq, MPs' expenses, cash for questions, cronyism, or all the political parties being rubbish. After all, you voted, so it's all your fault. This logic depends on ignoring everything else that's broken in politics. Similarly, vilifying drug users for the damage caused by the illegal drug market depends on a simplistic understanding of how it works.

It's almost impossible to disentangle the harms caused by the drug business and the harms caused by the fact it's a criminalized industry. Drug production causes harm to the Amazonian rainforest, but only because the cocaine labs that ooze out such toxic chemicals are located there in order to avoid detection. Drug mules die swallowing capsules, but only because of the cat-and-mouse game played at airports. A mule can easily carry up to five kilos in a specially made surfboard or suitcase, but can only swallow around a kilo. The only reason that smugglers have been swallowing drugs again is in response to the widespread introduction of x-ray machines at airports.

The ridiculous profits to be made from producing, trafficking, and dealing drugs—entirely a construct of prohibition—means the drug trade is steeped in a toxic cocktail of weaponry, weak states, political strife, organized crime, and corruption, from Naples and Mexico City to Guinea Bissau.

The illegal drug market does not entirely operate like a legitimate one, despite some similarities. For example, drug use can be driven by the availability of drugs, not consumer demand: This can be seen in the growth of drug use in production zones and trading routes, most recently in West Africa. Consumers have little control or influence compared to legitimate markets. Would a mass cocaine boycott in the UK actually prevent the harms connected to the trade? Unlikely: The cartels would simply seek out new markets elsewhere.

The bottom line is that dealing with the problems associated with drugs is much more complex than just encouraging people to stop taking them.

But what is undeniable is that the consumer choices of individual drug users have a minimal impact compared to regulating the beast, a move that could vastly reduce the associated harms, in the same way that the end of prohibition dealt a blow to all the illegal booze runners in the US. Right now, for example, Mexican drug cartels are increasingly being hit in the pocket as the US moves to legalize cannabis markets.

Coca leaves. Photo by Georgina Lawson, from This Is What One of Colombia's DIY Cocaine Making Classes Is Actually Like

The drug trade is not inherently a dirty one, anymore than coffee is. Cultivation and processing could be done in an environmentally friendly way. The coca plant grows easily, requiring little in the way of pesticides, and can be happily grown alongside food crops, making it potentially a sustainable crop.

There is no reason that fair trade cocaine can't exist, potentially even as a "green" crop connected to sustainable development and the long-term alleviation of poverty. Violence and corruption are hardly necessary for the trade to function. If the distribution of drugs was regulated, it would be removed in a large part from the hands of criminal gangs, dramatically reducing the violence and exploitation. This scenario depends on legalization, not a global boycott.

But let's be real. The end of cocaine prohibition is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Although most people who use illegal drugs are not happy that they must buy from a corrupt and damaging trade—and are some of the most vocal campaigners for drug-law reform—they cannot use their ideal world as a crutch; they have to make a moral decision based on the here and now.

As Tom Wainwright, author of Narconomics, an investigation into the global drug industry, explained: "The current system of prohibition makes it impossible to buy drugs such as cocaine without funneling money to mass murderers. And surely under these circumstances the only morally right thing to do is not to buy them, rather than carry on sending money to El Chapo and co. Imagine paying for sex with trafficked prostitutes—'If prostitution were legal the traffickers would be put out of business, so it's not my problem.' Not very persuasive, is it? Identifying that the government's approach is wrong and in need of reform doesn't mean that consumers no longer need to think about where their money goes."

Ethical consumerism is a minefield. Virtually nothing you buy via the global economy is completely ethical, not even cashew nuts. Even our closest friends, iPhones, are forged in the pit of hell. Choosing what to do with your own cash is a personal matter.

But unlike legal markets, drug buyers have little choice when sourcing substances. Who knows, perhaps that bag of cocaine you are buying could be funding a paid cartel assassin. Perhaps it helped to pay for a week's food for a destitute family of Colombian farmers for whom growing coca is the only way of earning money. The illegality of the trade makes it completely impossible to know.

So what can a concerned drug user do if they want to use drugs in an ethical way? Unfortunately, recent waves of drug laws in the UK have made it even harder for users to access ethically-produced drugs. Magic mushrooms—potentially the ultimate organic, free-range drug—have been illegal since 2005. Most recently, nitrous oxide joined the ever-expanding banned list.

The only way to avoid exploitation, environmental damage, and corruption might be to grow your own, although growing weed is a thirsty business. Mind you, homegrown cannabis has zero food miles, and growers are even developing lower energy production. Home growing also takes away profits from those organized criminals involved in cannabis farms connected to child trafficking.

As of yet, there is no ethical cocaine, despite some claims to the contrary. If you want cocaine but feel bad about where your money is ending up, snorting it will of course help numb your guilt. Take a pill and the last thing you'll be thinking about are the chemicals dumped in forests in order to make it. Drug users who want to be ethical exist in an existential bind, forced into being hypocrites.

But forget about all the angst and the hypocritical coke snorters: The most tangible damage to people and the environment arises from criminalizing little green plants and states of mind. If we are getting down to basics, it is willfully neglectful and ultimately pointless—and hypocritical—to lay responsibility for the trail of bloodshed at the feet of drug users. Because the root cause of the human and environmental carnage is the system that created the mess in the first place.

Dr. Jennifer Fleetwood is a lecturer in criminology at the University of Leicester

Follow Narcomania on Twitter.

Photo via Republic of Korea

The Olympics are a curious thing, because they are at once exceptionally brilliant but also really nerdy and crap and sad. Like, these people spend every day, day after day, for four years, training to do exactly one thing, and that thing is, like, judo. Imagine for a moment your life is a professional judoer. How embarrassed would you be going to the bar with your friends with real jobs? "What'd you get up to today, man?" "Wore a very tough dressing gown and chucked some guys about on the play mats, how about you?" "Yeah, I... I actually did work, but no, that sounds good" "My office is the dojo. What'd you have for lunch? I had a big Lucozade out the vending machine." No.

But the Olympics are happening now, and the best judo-doers in the world—among other sportspersons of low note—are collecting in Rio to compete for medals at the most glamorous sporting event in existence. And it's sort of good, isn't it? Not "stay up late and actually watch it" good, but it's OK. People are trying their best, and they are doing alright. It's a nice. To a non-cynic, it would be a real celebration of the human spirit, the limits of physicality, the magic of elite athletes making their bodies do things other humans cannot even comprehend.

But then I am a cynic, so here's a comprehensive ranking of every Olympic sport, based on how cool it is:

Photo via Republic of Korea

ARCHERY

Being good at archery was well cool in olden days when, if you were amazing at archery and you got caught by the enemy, they would chop your fingers off to stop you from archerying—I mean, that is honestly one of the coolest things ever. Imagine being so good at killing that someone took your fingers off so you had to live with your stumps and the knowledge that your greatest gift had been stripped away from you. History was so dope—but now anyone who is good at archery basically only did it because they didn't make any friends at orientation week and so instead got slightly too into their sports club and still has precious memories and custom-printed polo shirts with "JOHNNO" on the back of them from the Manchester Metropolitan Europe-Wide Archery Tour '08, and essentially: Nobody who lives like that can be in any way cool.

ATHLETICS

I was impressed by people who could run quickly in the playground, and I am impressed by people who can run quickly as actual adults, too. There aren't many transferable skills from the playground that can see you through to adulthood—willingness to pick up a dog shit with a stick, for instance, or chew gum that has already being in someone else's mouth, or make a fart sound cupping a single hand under your armpit—but running really went the distance. This is a cool event.

BADMINTON

Tennis for people who don't like loud noises. Bullshit sport.

BASKETBALL

I'm a millennial #thoughtful writer with a not-even-low-key America obsession, of course I think basketball is cool.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL

Beach volleyball is exceptionally cool, because anyone who hangs around on a beach all day cannot fail to be cool. We all deep down want to be beach people, but we can't, we can't let go, we thrust responsibility on ourselves, we force ourselves to have jobs and maintain apartments and push ourselves into positions of high adulthood, when really we could all just fuck it off and live in a camper van and play beach volleyball all day, but we don't, because we're pussies. Yeah, I said it: Anyone who doesn't play beach volleyball professionally is a pussy. It is among the coolest sports.

Photo via US Embassy London

BOXING

Actual boxing is amazing, a noble art, two primal muscle bags just going at each other, artistic jabbing, exquisite punching, feats of survival and aggression that defy logic, and sense. But Olympic boxing is like that only everyone has a helmet, a blue vest on, and nobody is really watching it. Ask yourself: Would Rocky, from the Rocky films, the greatest boxer to ever live, would Rocky have boxed at the Olympics? No, he would not. He was too busy hitting the shit out of some beef joints in a warehouse in Philadelphia. Olympic boxing fails the "Would Rocky Out of the Rocky Films Do It?" test, and thus is not in any way cool.

CANOE SLALOM

This is just an underwhelming bachelor party activity.

CANOE SPRINT

Same with this. Your outdoorsy friend wants a bachelor party in the woods. "Beers, guy, big house, beers." You're all up at 6 AM to be trussed into waterproofs and thrown into a frigid rivulet. Paddle a canoe a bit. Go to the nearest bar, 15 miles away, where all the locals hate you. Your body hurts. It somehow takes someone an hour and a half and an open fire to make you all bacon sandwiches. The train home takes a five-hour Sunday diversion. That was your weekend. You don't even like him. This is not an Olympic sport.

CYCLING BMX

This is cool because i. BMX was extremely cool back in the era of playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 all day and listening to Kerrang! and watching Jackass i.e. the coolest era ever on earth, and also it's very viable that whoever wins gold in this event can and will say the word "gnarly" with aplomb and ii. basically any of the hard kids who used to loop around you on BMX's when you walked home from school and call you "soft" could feasibly win a medal at this, and that's very cool indeed. A cool sport.

CYCLING MOUNTAIN BIKE

Mountain bikes are also cool, even though there was always a guy at your school who was a little too into it—"Where you going this weekend, Liam?" "My dad and I are going to Epping Forest, I've got a new exoskeleton" "Isn't that what you did last week?" "Always the same"—just took it a little too seriously, liked it a little too much. A borderline cool sport.

All these guys shout "COMING THROUGH!'" really loudly while pelting through pedestrian traffic in central London. Photo via Jonathan J.Ingles-Le Nobel

CYCLING ROAD

Now we're getting into a very difficult territory because going really fast on a bike is definitely a good thing (and, as before, was really cool when you were a kid), but now domestic cycling is dominated by 40-year-old agency heads in full lycra and a special $800 3D-printed helmet and little yellow sunglasses and a whole mess of chamois cream slathered on their junk, thus making road cycling the nerdiest thing on earth.

CYCLING TRACK

Not a real sport, sorry. If it's a sport you can definitely do outside, but you're too scared too—indoor soccer, that sort of thing—just in case you get rained on or hit by a van, then sorry, this sport is for wimps. I know Sir Chris Hoy and his massive thighs are good at track, but that doesn't make it cool.

DIVING

Divebombing: extremely cool. Diving to impress girls when you are 14: cool. Diving professionally at the Olympic Games: for nerds.

EQUESTRIAN DRESSAGE

The horse is doing all the work here, so it's not a sport.

EQUESTRIAN EVENTING

Not a sport. You trained an animal to do a thing. Well done. Where's Pudsey's Olympic medal?

EQUESTRIAN JUMPING

Not a sport! Call me when there's a Horse Olympic Games, with massive horse-size medals, and then we'll talk.

FENCING

If you're competing at the Olympics in fencing, then you're basically admitting to the world that you are your boarding school's most underwhelming graduate.

SOCCER

Soccer is obviously the sport of kings, but Olympic soccer is trash—it's just one of those trash tournaments nobody actually cares about. It is the League Cup of international soccer—and the only joy comes from Brazil really, really wanting to win it and then never winning it. That's it. Shit game.

GOLF

I'm convinced televised golf is just a government ruse to keep dads quiet and docile—cheaper and less dangerous than lacing their water supplies with bromide, and if you hit a dad with a golf tournament and then an F1 qualifier on the same day, he will basically be quiet and pliant for up to and including a week—and so by extension it is exceptionally uncool.

GYMNASTICS ARTISTIC

This is what the fucking Olympics is about. This is what the Olympics is about. Ninety percent of Olympic sports, you or I could feasibly do first try—most of us can run, or do a dive, or kick a ball, or cycle—but no fucker I know can turn upside down and just hover in the air like Simone Biles does, or any of that wacky pommel horse shit, or holding onto two big suspended rings and just flipping about a bit. Gymnastics are cool because the only people who can successfully do it have essentially transcended humanhood and pushed through to evolve into something other, something better.

Photo via the US Army

GYMNASTICS RHYTHMIC

Dunno the difference, just read the above entry again.

HANDBALL

I feel like this is just a weird joke game that all the mature students in the international halls of residence played and not a real sport at all. Just seems like it would have a disproportionately high number of players who wear protective goggles to play. Uncool.

HOCKEY

Any sport that could be feasibly dominated by a fees-paying all-girls school is not cool, I'm afraid.

JUDO

Your dad's turned the garage into "his dojo" and put a poster of Karate Kid up on the wall. Every time you go in there, he's solemnly doing his breathing and tugging at his own lapel. "What it is, son," he's saying, "is more than just me keep ing fit: It's a fine and ancient art, where I use my attacker's weight against him as a weapon." Some bloke comes over and says your dad has spilt his pint. "I never!" your dad says. He wants to take this outside. Your dad winks at you. "Watch this, kidda," he says. You have to call the ambulance yourself. Blood on your hands, smudging on your phone screen. "My dad!" you're saying. "My dad, my dad!" Doctors rebuild his skull, but he's never quite the same. He's never quite the same. Judo is not a cool sport.

MODERN PENTATHLON

Sampling a lot of sports in one day is the preserve of team-building office fun days, not the Olympics.

ROWING

Everyone who thinks rowing is good votes Conservative, owns more than one cravat, knows the names of all the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and avoids inheritance tax. This is not a cool sport.

Photo via the US Army

RUGBY

I feel like rugby has actually pushed through being uncool to make itself sort of post-cool, like, it is definitely not cool—watch rugby in this country, and it's just a load of wide posh lads saying "Twickers!" and emptying lager over their heads—but then the fact that rugby is almost unashamed in the naffness of its fan base kind of makes it cool in that uncaring way, a sort of malaise that appeals to people such as I. So actually I am going to go out on a limb here and say rugby: actually alright.

SAILING

Don't understand how sailing is a sport. When the primary mechanic of the sport is "it's quite windy today," I don't think that event can be cool.

SHOOTING

Lots of guys in polo shirts and cagoules very slowly lining up a shot from a specialist rifle while wearing massive ear protectors? Weird how the Olympics have taken the coolest thing on earth—shooting the shit out of something—and made it uncool, isn't it?

SWIMMING

Swimming when you're a kid is just a really good way to get a nose full of chlorine and a foot full of warts and spend an hour retrieving bricks from the bottom of the pool while wearing Spongebob pajamas, but when you watch Michael Phelips just be a hyperagressive mega-athlete and just power through the water like a big angry shark, then you realize competitive swimming is actually brilliant and cool as hell.

SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING

Doing anything in sync is just a party trick twins do instead of being genuinely interesting to talk to. Not cool.

TABLE TENNIS

Just something you play while you're waiting for your mom to pick you up from that Christian youth club she took you to for a bit in the hope that it would make you stop swearing.

TAEKWONDO

Taekwondo is actually exceptionally brilliant and could only be improved if they renamed it something like "Kick the Shit Out of Someone's Head."

TENNIS

Tennis is fine. Tennis is good because it's dominated by people who have played the sport intensely since they were, like, five years old, and they live tennis and they breathe it, and they adhere to all the little rules and etiquettes of tennis, tennis, tennis, tennis, like they dropped out of school to be taught lessons by their mom so they could get more tennis in, tennis is their life, tennis is their blood, they are finely honed athletes with incredible twitch speed and reaction times and strength and power and stamina, and yet also, Serena aside, I feel like I could get pretty much put every tennis player into a headlock and give them a humiliating titty twister, and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it. So: sort of cool.

TRAMPOLINE

If you've ever been on a trampoline as an adult, you will know that it's kind of fun for like a minute, maybe two, and then it's just the dullest thing in the world. You're just bouncing, get over it. Anyone who does that as a vocation is, in my opinion, clinical.

TRIATHLON

Why be good at one sport when you can be sort of alright at three?

VOLLEYBALL

Volleyball is actually very uncool when contrasted to beach volleyball, because it's basically played by people who like beach volleyball but want to ruin it by both taking it too seriously and transferring it indoors, so they can play it all seasons. Imagine taking the joy out of beach volleyball. Why bother.

WATER POLO

Water polo is just pool hijinks you play with your dad when you're on vacation, only here it's turned into a team sport where everyone has to wear ear protectors to stay safe. Uncool.

Photo via Republic of Korea

WEIGHTLIFTING

Eastern European dudes in unflattering leotards lifting something so heavy that their elbows flip backward and break is the coolest thing in the universe.

WRESTLING FREESTYLE

If Hulk Hogan were able to win Olympic gold, then this would be the coolest sport there is, but it's actually just a bunch of beefed up guys with fucked up ears manhandling and slapping one another until one shuffles out of a chalk ring. Garbage.

WRESTLING GRECO-ROMAN

Almost certainly the same thing. Until Olympic wrestling embraces entrance music, cowboy hats, wraparound shades, and smack talk, it is going to be confined to the "uncool sports" list.

AND SO:

The officially cool sports we are left with are:

Athletics
Basketball
Beach volleyball
Cycling BMX
Cycling mountain bike
Gymnastics (both Artistic and Rhythmic)
Rugby
Swimming
Taekwondo
Tennis
Weightlifting

So we need to thin this out a bit to figure out the final and coolest sport, so we need to get harsh. Example:

IS THIS AN ACTUAL SPORT, LIKE, WHEN IT'S NOT THE OLYMPICS? DO HIGHLY PAID ATHLETES PLAY THIS AND APPEAR IN COMMERCIALS AS A RESULT OF BEING GOOD AT IT?

Yes, in the case of basketball, rugby, and tennis: yes. These sports cannot necessarily be the coolest Olympic sport, therefore, because they exist outside of the Olympics. They have sports bodies and significant prize monies. They have sporting narratives we care about besides the Olympic games. They are out.

CAN YOU REALLY IMPALE AND POSSIBLY STRAIGHT-UP EXPLODE YOUR BALLS DOING IT?

Yes, in the case of Cycling BMX and Cycling Mountain Bike, you can totally straight up explode your balls if you do it a bit wrong, and in my humble opinion straight up exploding your balls is up there among the least cool things you can do, sadly ruling these two sports out.

IS THERE A SUB-EVENT WITHIN THE UMBRELLA OF THE SPORT THAT INCLUDES DOING SOMETHING LAME LIKE THROWING A HEAVY BALL A FEW METerS INTO SOME GRASS OR FLOPPING BACKWARD OVER A BAR SET AT A CERTAIN HEIGHT OR RUNNING AND JUMPING OVER A HURDLE?

Sorry, athletics, because while running really fast over 100 meters is really, really, really cool, the weird muscular dudes in sleeveless vests and wraparound shades doing an above-the-head clap to ghee the crowd up before they pole vault are exceptionally uncool, and they are looped in under the term "athletics," too.

IS THIS SPORT SOLD AS A FUN AND BREEZY ALL-GENDERS BEACH ACTIVITY IN ADVERTS FOR YOGURT AND TAMPONS?

Sadly, beach volleyball, you're out.

DO REALLY HENCH LADS IN VESTS AND YEEZYS PRACTIcE THIS AT YOUR GYM WHILE YELLING "HEEEEEYAAAAARGH" AND DROPPING THE WEIGHTS REALLY HEAVILY ON THE FLOOR BEFORE CUTTING AN EXTREMELY PROTEINY FART BY THE ROWING MACHINES?

Sorry, weightlifting, you're out :-(

DO YOU GET TO KICK PEOPLE FULL ON IN THE FUCKING FACE WHILE PRACTIcING THIS SPORT, AND THEN PEOPLE GIVE YOU A FUCKING GOLD MEDAL FOR IT, FOR KICKING PEOPLE IN THE FACE, KICKING PEOPLE IN THE FUCKING FACE

And taekwondo is the coolest Olympic sport, no argument, no disambiguation.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

The premise behind VICE Does America is pretty straight forward: send a black guy, a Muslim dude, and a Spanish immigrant lady into the dark heart of America and see what happens. Like so much of this country, the results are often hilarious and horrific. This episode is no different.

Our heroes Abdullah Saeed, Wilbert L. Cooper, and Martina de Alba take us to Pointe-aux-Chenes, Louisiana, to meet with Choctaw Native Americans who are losing their way of life as oil companies carve up their lands. The hosts hang out in the small Southern community and eat delicious seafood, learn how to shrimp, and see firsthand how unrestricted business interests can wreak havoc on the lives of everyday people.

Then the team makes its way over to Jacksonville, Alabama, to slip into 1860s-era garb and take part in a Civil War reenactment. Things go pretty well until the reenactors reveal themselves to be more than just history buffs. They're also rebel flag-waving good ol' boys who can't help but make asses of themselves.

Watch the whole episode above and be sure to tune into VICELAND next Wednesday at 10 PM to see the last chapter in Abdullah, Martina, and Wilbert's journey across the United States of America.

Illustration by Joey Alison Sayers

Tinder has brought about the dawn of the "Dating Apocalypse," declared the headline on a Vanity Fair article last September. The piece, which used interviews with members of the ever-maligned millennial generation to conclude that—surprise!—it's easier than ever to hook up in the smartphone age, was just one of an endless stream of thinkpieces declaring dating apps the harbinger of the end of human romance.

For many cisgender people, it truly is easier to date, hook up, and otherwise couple than ever. But for those who are trans or gender nonconforming, dating online is much tricker.

Navigating popular dating apps while trans can often feel like diving into shark-infested waters. Last year, reports emerged that transgender Tinder users were being "reported" to the service as gender-nonconforming and banned. In June, nearly a year later, Tinder CEO Sean Rad announced the app will unveil a better experience for gender nonconforming users within the next few months, albeit with scant details as to exactly what they have in store.

On Grindr, one of the world's most widely used gay dating apps, trans users report near-daily harassment; Trans Men on Grindr, a Tumblr that chronicles the bald-faced discrimination trans users face there (and on other gay dating apps like Scruff), makes brutally clear that even on supposedly progressive queer dating platforms, trans users are subject to bigotry and intolerance.

"We take the experience and the safety of all our users seriously, both in and out of app," a Grindr spokesperson wrote in an email to VICE. "While we can't make people behave better overnight, we in no way support any form of discrimination." They went on to elaborate that Grindr bans profiles containing hateful content, as stated in the app's terms of service, and vets user reports of such activity daily.

A market void exists in online dating for safe, supportive, gender-inclusive platforms. And while one might think that cash-flush Silicon Valley would be working doubly hard to reach trans users, new options that have emerged to fulfill the need—including the currently available Teadate, the just-launched GENDR, and Thurst, set to launch this September—are either unproven, yet to launch, or lackluster at best.

"I don't believe the majority of our society has seen trans lives as human up until recently," user experience designer and founder of MyTransHealth Robyn Kanner told VICE. Kanner is an advocate for gender inclusivity and diversity in tech, having herself experienced easily avoidable discrimination via some popular startups. "In a way, it's no wonder why the tech community is just now starting to scratch the surface on what the trans community actually needs."

Among established players, OkCupid has emerged as one of the most queer- and trans-affirming platforms in the industry. In November 2014, the site released what should have been a game-changing number of gender and sexuality options—20 new gender identifiers and ten new orientation options.

"When we launched our expanded gender and orientation options, 20 percent of the OkCupid team identified as LGBTQ+," OkCupid CEO Elie Seidman told VICE. "Inclusivity is a genuine part of our team's DNA and something we're always thinking about. created user experience problems to solve within our site and apps, but these challenges were worth it, because we understood and believed in the need; for many other apps and sites, this complexity could be a deterrent."

Seidman notes that initially, many within OkCupid's user base expressed confusion as to the meaning of these new options—but rather than define those terms themselves, they turned to those who knew them best to create a crowd-sourced dictionary they call Identity.

Among the smattering of apps that try to address the gender-inclusivity market gap, most come up short or are too new to successfully judge. Teadate, founded by trans-attracted entrepreneur Michael Osofsky and transgender model Pêche Di in summer 2015, aims to provide an affirming environment for trans folks and those interested in dating them to meet. However, in this reporter's experience, the site is buggy and often stalls.

Two new apps—GENDR, which launched on July 12, and Thurst, which will launch in beta this September—are setting out to redefine how queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks interact and connect with like-minded (and like-experienced) individuals.

On GENDR, the brainchild of event producer Barry Brandon and experiential marketing consultant Christine Courtney, dating and sex take a backseat to loftier goals: Establishing a safe community for transgender people where sharing one's story is part and parcel of the user experience.

"There are dating apps for both the straight and gay community, but my intention wasn't to date or hook up—it was to just start conversation," Brandon told VICE. "It felt as if there was a need for a safe space where people can present their authentic selves without the pressure of romantic or sexual interaction."

With 300 users so far, user profiles on the app focus beyond the physical, emphasizing instead common interests like music, gaming, activism, and more. The app's creators say GENDR's subscription-based membership model, at $5 per month or $30 per year, will support live events and subscriber workshops while deterring trolls.

GENDR already features posts on a range of topics, from coming out to traveling while queer to advertisements for events hosted by the app creators. Users of almost every gender or sexual identity imaginable are represented. In the app's infancy, the small user base has shown a high amount of engagement with the platform—but people of color may find the app lacking, as most users are white.

That's where Thurst comes in. Developed by self-taught genderqueer coder Morgen Bromell, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, the platform grew from their own experience navigating online dating. Bromell is still looking for funding to provide a fiscal cushion ahead of the launch of what "could be the first truly inclusive dating app," as the Daily Dot wrote last February.

"I really hated existing apps like Tinder, OKCupid, and others," Bromell told VICE. "It's so much easier for cis men, especially cis white men, to date on those platforms. For people of color and any other gender or orientation, it's difficult."

Bromell thinks that the entire app creation process needs to evolve in response, which inspired him to launch Thurst.

"These apps are based on white male sexual desire. There's something that needs to change in the building process—the consideration of how we interact and connect with people," they said.

Designed with simplicity at its core, Thurst's beta will focus on interactions most are accustomed to: matching, messaging, reporting, and blocking. Bromell hopes to expand the user experience in future iterations. In fact, their only worry is finding funding, which has been grueling to come by.

While both GENDR and Thurst can't promise perfect experiences and long-lasting love, it at least matters that trans- and gender-nonconforming folks and queer people of color are finding their voices and the tools to make a reality of the lives they desire.

Follow Raquel Willis on Twitter.

Screenshot via YouTube

IKEA is nothing if not a unifying fixture in our society that calls to mind relationship-testing arguments and the inevitable frustration of assembling and dissembling its signature particle board furniture. If you have a piece in your home from the Swedish company and did not think What in the actual fuck? while looking at that stupid, smiling dude in the illustrated directions while building the damn thing, then you must be far more intellectually superior than the majority of us.

Rob Ford, seen in the infamous "crack video."

Rob Ford was Toronto's most infamous homophobe.

This is not a controversial statement. Ford repeatedly shunned the Toronto Pride parade, voted against LGBTQ issues whenever he could, snubbed a gay colleague, drunkenly ranted about wanting to pull the Pride flag down—and that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

So when the existence of the crack video was first reported by Gawker and the Toronto Star in 2013, it was pretty believable that a drunken, drugged-out Ford would call Justin Trudeau a "fag." That's what the Toronto Star said they heard come out of Ford's mouth, while Gawker said they heard "Pierre Trudeau was a faggot!" offscreen and then in an update said that the Star said it was Justin. "It's hard to keep all these Canadians apart," Gawker's John Cook wrote.

Photo via Flickr user Andrew 鐘

If you are medical marijuana patient, you can now grow your own medicine at home.

Tonight, on an all new episode of Dead Set on Life, host Matty Matheson goes to Saskatchewan, Canada, for the Great Prairie Feast before heading to Saskatoon to get some camo and go duck hunting.

After, in the season finale of Party Legends, Bobcat Goldthwait, Sean Patton, Estelle, Rory Scovel, Kreayshawn, and Howard Kremer get their wildest party stories animated.

Dead Set on Life airs Thursdays at 10 PM ET/PT, Party Legends airs at 10:30 PM ET/PT.

Voting is one of the most boring things you can do. You have to find out where you vote, get yourself there, wait in a DMV-esque line, tell the usually very nice polling workers your name, go to the booth where you fill in the bubble or hit the appropriate buttons, then go about your day. You know that voting is important, people tell you that all the time, but also that your vote may not decide anything. That is, your ballot is insignificant, but you should still cast it because what if no one voted? Well, something bad would probably happen, that's what!

Somehow, though, no matter how many times young people are given the message that they should vote, a bunch of them skip the whole deal. Only about 20 percent of US citizens under 30 cast ballots in the 2014 midterms, and though that number is abnormally low, it's generally been true that the younger you are, the less likely you are to vote. This is bad! So, for decades, the well-meaning tryhards of the political class have tried to draw young people away from their smartphones/incomprehensible music/genitals and into the voting booth.

That is how we ended up here, at hashtag-69TheVote, a new video from the millennial content generators and treehouse fans at Mic.

The idea here, I guess, is that millennials love 1. puns 2. emojis 3. statistics and 4. sex positions that are more trouble than they're worth, all of which are featured prominently in this video. But judging by the YouTube comments ("This doesn't make voting look cooler, it just makes sex look worse"), the video is not going to be the silver bullet that kills the werewolf of young voter apathy, or whatever.

Unbelievably, this is not even the worst, or even fifth-worse, attempt to attract young voters. Here are some of history's more facepalm-y (as the kids say) campaigns to get the under-30 crowd into politics:

This nonpartisan radio ad appeared just a few months after the 26th Amendment extended voting rights to 18 year olds in 1971 and is an extremely direct appeal to teenagers to register to vote. Back then, commercials of all sorts were basically just white-sounding dudes telling people to do things, so this was pretty solid by the standards of the day.

Less solid was "War Song," which Neil Young and Graham Nash recorded in support of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern. (Sample lyric: "There's a man / says he can / put an end to war.") It wasn't popular, probably because it sucked and was boring, and neither was McGovern. Though the candidate appealed to a lot of young people's left-wing and anti-war sympathies, he ended up losing even the under-30 vote to Richard Nixon, who targeted young voters in at least one ad.

We're going to skip ahead to Rock the Vote, the long-running MTV-backed campaign to get young people into politics. One of its earliest spots starred Madonna and was apparently brought to you by the letter C (for cocaine) and the self-aware slacker aesthetic of the early 90s. Rock the Vote is I'm sure very admirable, etc., but in 26 years of existence, it has never, ever figured out how to make voting cool.

Case in point: This spot from Smackdown Your Vote! that makes me very, very happy not to be in its target demographic. Smackdown Your Vote! is a joint venture from AT&T, the WWE, and Rock the Vote that was started in 2009 and appears to have petered out (its Facebook page has been dark since 2010). The idea was to register voters at WWE events; it also created ads like this one, where John Cena, the most charismatic collection of rectangles to ever come to life, tells you to "get your cellphone out."

Other attempts to target millennials have also fallen flat. In 2004, you had Sean Combs's much-derided-even-at-the-time "Vote or Die" campaign, which he quickly abandoned (in 2015, Combs said of voting, "this whole shit is a scam"). And 2006 saw the birth of Declare Yourself, a group that produced some David LaChapelle–directed videos that were notable for their fucking insanity:

See, what happens here is it's an ad for something that's sorta like Pimp My Ride, then a guy nails his mouth shut! Doesn't that make you want to vote?

In recent years, political ads targeting young people have disappointedly shifted from aggressive surreality and toward a celebrity-dominated model, the theory being that kids love famous people. Most notably, Lena Dunham made a much-derided 2012 video for Barack Obama that compared voting to losing your virginity.

Then, in 2014, this happened:

"Wait, you're Lena Dunham! And you're celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson!" Lil Jon says. "I can't wait to see season four of Girls."

Combine those three sentences with a millennial-targeted GOP ad featuring a whiny dude pumping gas and telling his fellow kids to embrace pro-business policies, and it's no surprise that four out of five young people chose to sit that election cycle out.

Presidential elections are the big ones, and candidates have gone all out to attract millennial support in 2016—Ted Cruz made bacon with a machine gun, Hillary Clinton went on Broad City, and Bernie Sanders, that oddball, spoke to issues young people care about like student debt and the price of college tuition. There are new nominally nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts too, like MTV's Elect This, which has been producing cutting-edge videos like this series where, um, animatronic animals make jokes:

Please vote.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Misty Plowright. Photo by Michael Herrera, courtesy of Misty for Congress

When we met in July, Misty Plowright was waiting outside of a tea house in an industrial part of Colorado Springs. It was 95 degrees outside, but she was sipping hot tea. Her voice was calm, and she seemed unfazed by the national and international media attention she's received over the past month, since becoming one of the first two openly transgender people nominated for national office by a major political party.

With hundreds of other congressional seats up for grabs this year, Plowright doesn't think her bid to represent Colorado's fifth district in the US House of Representatives is all that special. But it is. This June, while working 40-hour weeks as an IT consultant, the 33-year-old Democrat defeated primary opponent Donald Martinez—a decidedly moderate cisgender Army combat veteran—running as a progressive outsider in Colorado's most conservative district.

And though it isn't—and shouldn't—be her campaign's focus, Plowright is, indeed, special. Alongside US Senate hopeful Misty Snow—a Utah Democrat who defeated primary opponent Jonathan Swinton by nearly 20 points—the two first-time candidates have made history, giving the transgender community a platform in congressional politics for the first time ever.

Plowright's success is all the more surprising, given her frank, even crass, personality. She's a bit of a character—last month, she told the Guardian that she'd like to own a Hello Kitty AR-15 and predicted that the next major American civil rights movement will involve artificial intelligence.

But she refuses to let herself be caricatured. And she's quick to argue that its her honesty and straightforward campaign style—rather than her gender identity, personal quirks, or the open, polyamorous triad marriage she shares with her wife and husband—that make her interesting.

Still, unconventional is perhaps an understatement when describing Plowright's campaign in a deeply conservative congressional district that's been held by white male Republicans since its creation in 1973. Her Republican opponent, US representative Doug Lamborn, has held the seat for five terms.

But Plowright thinks she has a fighting chance. Noting her Southern Baptist upbringing in an impoverished part of Northwest Arkansas, she pointed out that, unlike most politicians, she knows what it's like to have to choose between paying the bills and buying groceries.

"Show me one that knows what it's like to stare at cat food and wonder if you're really that hungry," she told VICE. "That experience does not exist there."

She describes her political ideology as that of a "social libertarian and compassionate capitalist," noting that "if people want or want to do something, they're going to get or do it."

"I'm not in favor in bans on things," she added, "but rules should be in place."

Though Plowright enlisted in the military in 2002, at age 20, she says that she knew from an early age that something about her was different. "Going into the military was kind of a last hurrah, to prove that I could actually do the man thing," she said. "I was running away from myself." She left basic training after a year and a half, receiving an honorable discharge due to a chronic leg condition. She began hormone therapy six months later, on December 9, 2004.

She met her now-wife and campaign manager Lisa Wilkes through a dating site in 2007. Plowright was living in Denver at the time, while Wilkes was in Colorado Springs, and they began an open, long-distance relationship. They entered into a domestic partnership in Seattle in early 2010.

The couple first met husband Sebastian McRae about six years ago, and in 2014, brought him into their marriage—during a trip to "Vegas for the World Series of Poker," Plowright told the Guardian. In our interview, Plowright said the relationship has an invaluable source of stability during her congressional bid and said that both Wilkes and McRae have played a role in the campaign.

The decision to run in the first place wasn't easy, though; in fact, it took the trio until just a few weeks before the local Democratic Party Convention to pull the trigger. But eventually, Wilkes told VICE, they decided that if not them, who else would change the calcified conservative climate of Colorado Springs? And what better way to do it than with the most unconventional candidates to ever grace the district's polls?

"Sometimes you sit there and say, 'What right do I have to run?'" Wilkes said. "Then we got to a place where it was, 'What right do we have not to run?'"

Within days of Plowright's historic primary victory, her campaign had garnered headlines in the Guardian, Washington Post, and Politico. And though the campaign has received hate mail and even death threats, there's also been a surge of support from trans people across the country.

"We were getting emails from people saying, 'I can actually have a life now. You're showing me that I can move forward with my life,'" Wilkes said.

Plowright protesting at the 2016 El Paso County Democratic Convention. Photo courtesy Misty for Congress

In Colorado Springs, though, Plowright said support from Democrats has been limited. An avid Bernie Sanders supporter, she made a name for herself when she refused to leave the floor at the local county Democratic Party convention, placing blue tape over her mouth to protest the delegate selection process.

Since then, Plowright's relationship with local party leaders has been strained, she said, adding that the Democratic Establishment would have preferred to nominate her more moderate primary opponent, a Latino single father and combat veteran.

"She's not from Denver or Boulder. She's from the wing-nut heartland, but I didn't think she had a chance," said Gerrit McGowan, a Colorado Democrat who, like Plowright, supported Sanders in the Democratic primary. "I was like, 'Latino veteran, or trans IT girl.'"

Although she defeated Martinez, winning 13,000 votes to his 9,600, Plowright said party leaders still seem reluctant to embrace her campaign; she believes they think she has an "optics problem," because of her willingness to speak her mind.

They want "to pat themselves on the back for being inclusive," Plowright said. But "the fucking established powers of the Democratic Party here were against me. They were behind Martinez and against me. And they were against Misty Snow too. We won our primaries in spite of them, not because of them."

Faced with lack of Democratic Party support and a right-wing voter base, Plowright said she knows the race will be an uphill battle. But she's determined to pull off what even just a few years ago would have been unthinkable: win.

"Everyone's written this district off," she said, "but I've spent my entire life overcoming the odds."

Follow Mason Miller on Twitter.

Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Plowright has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. She has not.

This past weekend saw the inaugural Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS), the world cup of boost-propelled football. It is not the first Rocket League tournament ever held, but as the game expands in popularity, developer Psyonix bet on its future in eSports with an ambitious tournament setup and a glitzy Hollywood finals. Parts of RLCS felt like a glimpse of the mainstream future for eSports, and it was all down to the game.

Many of the greatest competitive games have an enormous audience, outside of which they don't travel so well. Look at all the articles written to help non-players understand the International, the DotA 2 jamboree taking place this week. Competitive games from StarCraft to Counter-Strike, unless you're already a fan, are difficult to watch and enjoy.

Rocket League's simplicity is a virtue. This was not developer Psyonix's first attempt at making a boost-powered car football game: 2008's Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, after seven years of refinement, became Rocket League. It is stripped-back to the essentials: teams of rocket cars in an enclosed arena trying to score goals. You don't need to have played Rocket League to watch and understand, and it has even more innate advantages in the parallel to an existing sport and the five-minute matches—so many eSports events, even now, suffer from needless downtime.

The RLCS was the culmination of two qualifying rounds, held since April, during which any team from Europe or North America could enter their region's heats—first an open knockout, then a points-based league tournament. More than 20,000 players entered, and though small cash prizes were on offer, the real prize was a trip to Hollywood as one of the eight final competitors. In qualifying order, Europe sent Northern Gaming, Flipsid3 Tactics, Mock-It eSports, and the Flying Dutchmen, while North America was represented by Kings of Urban, iBUYPOWER Cosmic (iBP), Exodus, and Genesis. If you think those last two have a biblical thing going, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The RLCS finals use a double elimination format that means each team can lose once—but only once. Pre-tournament standings were quickly blown away on day one when the NA favorites Kings of Urban took an unceremonious spanking from the Flying Dutchmen, and losing 3–1 in a best-of-five match series, were dumped into loser's bracket. The final pairing in this round was iBP against the much-fancied Flipsid3 Tactics, and in a portent of what was to come, it took five closely fought games before iBP squeaked through.

This was the beginning of a streak that would take iBP to the final, but simply listing results would be dry. The privilege of the RLCS was seeing Rocket League played with superhuman skill at a relentless pace, the kind of knife-edge competition where the tiniest mistake loses everything. At this level, it becomes a different game, almost like ping pong, because both teams are so skilled at striking the ball in the air. There were languorous stretches where the ball was batted back-and-forth by mid-air combatants, hornet-like aerial duels, and sensational hits from space.

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As the tournament wore on, it also became a test of team mentality. The loser's bracket match between Kings of Urban versus Flipsid3 saw the former wilt under expectation, while Flipsid3 began a resurgent run of form that would take it straight to the final. And what made RLCS feel like a great competitive event were the human stories that began emerging from these teams. The most irresistible was the rise of a new Messiah.

They call him Rocket Jesus. The resemblance, in truth, is only down to long hair, but on the pitch, iBP's 0ver_zer0 had his own line in miracles. An early glimpse came on day one against Flipsid3, when, for North America's sins, he babied this outrageous carry all the way home.

It gets better. iBP came into this tournament as outsiders mainly because team regular Gambit—considered among the world's very best—took a Rocket League sabbatical for personal reasons. 0ver_zer0 was his substitute, and something about that showed. Rocket Jesus was a hungry man on a grand stage, and he gobbled up every half-opportunity and grand air dive that presented itself. One of the hallmarks of professional Rocket League teams is discipline, the ability of each member to rotate through positions on the field and cover their team—another word for it might be "trust."

iBP has this quality and showed it throughout their games, with Lachinio a defensive colossus and Kronovi simply a beautiful all-round talent. But in Rocket Jesus, they had a player with the flair that can make a superstar. When watching iBP, it became usual, as you saw a ball hang in the air, to wonder which direction the hirsute wonder would be arriving from. Did he miss a few? Sure. But other times he'd score from nowhere, set up a teammate, or simply shut down the opponents' offense and move play upfield.

Against this Flipsid3 had the brooding Kuxir97, an Italian Batmobile-fancier of sensational skill: He scored from flying double-taps off the wall, he saved with boost-powered backward flips, he played throughout like the atmosphere itself was under his command—delicate toggles of boost to guide the car forward in 3D space and pedal-down flights into the ether. Kuxir's favorite zone is six feet in front of goal and roughly 30 feet high, making deft touches that turn the ball goalward but keep the momentum intact and crashing downward on anything that looks loose.

Flipsid3 is a gorgeous team to watch, and as the tournament wore on and Kuxir racked up goal after goal, the team seemed to grow in strength. The pinnacle may have been its third game against the Flying Dutchmen where, already two games up in a best of five, Flipsid3 put on a show and racked up what the Rocket League community calls a "Brazil"—a reference to Germany tonking Brazil 7–1 in the 2014 World Cup. The seventh was scored by M1k3rules, backward, before the occasion's poetry was ruined by his immediately smashing in another. The Flying Dutchmen came crashing down to Earth with an 8–2 loss, but having beaten two fancied teams and ended up in fourth place overall, it put in a big performance.

YouTuber XFijter's top ten goals from RLCS

As iBUYPOWER Cosmic and Flipsid3 progressed through their respective rounds, a rerun of their first round meeting grew more and more likely. Flipsid3's momentum and tournament story was the grand comeback, and as the goals flew in, the march to glory seemed possible—maybe even, in that wizard Kuxir97, somewhat destined. Northern Gaming hammered Flipsid3's goal in the second game of their semi-final match, but the scores stayed level—then in overtime Flipsid3 scored a sloppy winner, and from that point, NG buckled.

But if Flipsid3 were the comeback kids, iBP had fought to the final without losing a match. Throughout RLCS, iBP turned games and matches around—so many times the team went behind before coming back. In the final itself, Flipsid3 took the first game 1–0, but there was no panic. At some point, there was a sign in the crowd saying, "Take the Wheel Rocket Jesus," and perhaps He saw it because, in a game with everything on the line, 0ver_zer0 took risks and most of them paid off.

Flipsid3 play iBP in the RLCS final

Flipsid3 led 2–1 after three matches, but the final comeback belonged to iBP. The North American team went on a stunning run of three straight victories and became the first RLCS champions with a 4–2 victory.

Rocket League's heartbeat is purity, and the sky-high standard of RLCS was a wonderful showcase. But what made the inaugural RLCS worth watching was the passion of the players and fans, exemplified in Rocket Jesus. The guy's attitude was infectious, and after being awarded MVP following the final, his joyous disbelief was a magic moment.

RLCS delivered incredible skill-based competition, for which every team deserves credit, and human drama to boot. There will be many more to come but, in the tale of a humble substitute who went on to become Cosmic's saviour, the RLCS has one hell of a founding myth.

All RLCS matches are available to watch on YouTube, here.

Follow Rich Stanton on Twitter.

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Simone Manuel became the first African American woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming, taking gold in the 100-meter freestyle in Rio. "It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality. This win hopefully brings hope and change," she said following her race.—The Washington Post

Turbulent JetBlue Flight Leaves 24 Injured
A JetBlue flight from Boston to Sacramento hit severe turbulence Thursday evening, causing injuries to 22 passengers and forcing an emergency landing in Rapid City, South Dakota. The 22 passengers and two crew members were taken to a local hospital, treated, and released, all suffering minor injuries.—ABC News

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A series of coordinated explosions across tourist towns in Thailand has left four people dead and dozens more injured. Two people were killed in Hua Hin, 125 miles south of Bangkok, where four blasts took place. Police said links to Thai insurgents remain unclear, but international terrorism had been ruled out.—BBC News

Power Plant Blast in China Kills 21
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I am actually quite hungry. Photo via Flickr.

It was, very nearly, the perfect culinary crime: poisoning somebody's meatballs. But it didn't work. As the Age reports, a mother and daughter stand accused of attempting to murder the family patriarch, after the man was allegedly abusive for some 25 years.

The accused are Shannon Debono, 19, and her mum Joanne, 53, both from Gowanbrae in Melbourne's west. Police heard that Joanne suffered "continued physical, emotional, sexual abuse and controlling and threatening behaviour" while Shannon had to seek mental health treatment after witnessing the abuses against her mother. Police say Shannon also recorded several threats her father made to her mother on her phone. Joanne allegedly turned to murder "so that could live like normal people."

Shannon and Joanne's original plan was allegedly to beat Stephen with a shovel, but when the time came, they couldn't do it. They came up with a different plan: first, they made sure Stephen was unconscious, allegedly sprinkling 75 crushed sleeping tablets into his meal.

Then, police allege Joanne made a DIY poison by combining motor oil, weedkiller, and brake fluid. She injected the mixture into Stephen's arm with a syringe while he was still knocked out, but he woke up in the process.

Shannon and Joanne fled, hiding at a relative's house before heading to the local police station to confess. Officers then sent an ambulance to their family home. Stephen was still alive, but needed emergency medical attention.

At the hospital his doctor told police Stephen threatened revenge: "when he gets out of hospital he will kill everyone who did this to him." The doctor felt Stephen was serious about his promise to kill his wife and daughter.

The women were charged with attempted murder, but will contest the charges in an April 2017 trail. Currently, they're both out on bail.