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After decades of supplying stoners across America with primo weed, outlaw farmers in Northern California are bracing for what now seems almost inevitable: legalization.

The Golden State is set to vote on a Sean Parker–backed initiative to tax and regulate weed this fall, an effort that has raised plenty of cash and appears, at least according to most public surveys, to have the popular support needed to pass. Meanwhile, legislators have already transformed the state's half-baked medical regime into a coherent system, one that's on track to approach a record $1 billion year in taxable weed sales, according to numbers provided to VICE by California's Board of Equalization. Big business, along with Silicon Valley–tied venture capital cash, is beginning to pour into the sparsely populated rural region, long renowned for off-the-grid personalities—and of course off-the-charts weed.

It's tough to say exactly how much pot farmers grow in Northern California, though according to DEA data, about 60 percent of the nation's illegal weed is seized somewhere in the state. Given estimates of 4,000 to 10,000 farms in Humboldt County alone—out of what the California Growers Association suggests are perhaps 50,000 statewide—it's fair to say the area known as the Emerald Triangle (Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties) is producing a significant chunk of America's bud. And interviews with growers, experts, and activists suggest that even if legalization does pass, outlaw growers will hold out as long as they can.

"Obviously there is a financial incentive to stay in the black market," one grower who has been in the Triangle for more than three-quarters of his life—and requested anonymity for fear of law enforcement reprisal—told VICE. "Financially, it makes sense to stay in it, if you're not paying fees, and eradication budgets are stretched so thin. For a lot of people, it's a numbers game, and a lot of my friends, the people I talk with, are going to stay in it."

For many farmers, growing on the sly—and without pesky limits on production, as called for in the ballot initiative—is a way of life that they aren't willing to give up. There are perks, after all, and not just the lack of a boss or taxes. "We were outlaws for a long time," said another farmer who's been in the game for more than 30 years. Even after California granted patients limited protection from criminal prosecution in 1996, farmers were still leading clandestine lives. "We chose to live a lifestyle. For a lot of us, it was more about camaraderie, and the us-versus-them mentality. The money, when there was money, was spent locally, saved locally. We were the dopers up in the hills."

Indeed, that Northern California weed life rests on the threat of arrest and prosecution—a threat that has been baked into local wisdom. As another source put it, "We've been dealing with CAMP were to pass, what are regulatory agencies going to do with grows up north? Turn a blind eye, or ramp up enforcement?" wonders Beau Kilmer, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.

When asked about proposed changes in the state's pot laws, DEA spokeswoman Casey Rettig told VICE in an email, "Outside of DOJ's priorities, our directive is to rely on state and local law enforcement agencies to address marijuana activity through their own regulatory structures to prevent the illegal diversion of product, along with the enforcement of their own narcotics laws." (CAMP, the umbrella statewide entity for illegal marijuana enforcement in California, did not respond to requests for comment.)

As November approaches, ignorance among farmers about legalization is a factor, too—willful or otherwise. "None of them really seem to give a shit. The attitude is like, 'They're not going to bring the National Guard, so who cares,'" one source connected to dozens of clandestine grows who identified himself only as "D" told VICE. D estimates that maybe 70 percent of farmers he comes in contact with, especially "old school ranchers, and some of the biggest growers, have no fucking clue what's going on. No idea, and I don't know if they care."

Veteran farmers aren't the only ones who either hope or expect outlaw grows to persist, of course. "Legalization in California is not going to mean anything to outlaw growers because their markets are not here," Paul Trouette, CEO of Lear Asset Management Corp., told VICE. Lear is a private security company that works with local, state, and federal law enforcement to eradicate illegal marijuana grows. "There's going to be an increase in production by California outlaw growers after legalization," Trouette added. "The only thing that's going to be affected is that they're going to shift their grows into private properties, and that will overwhelm law enforcement operations. They're going to continue the game and hide the product among legal production."

To be sure, some farmers and industry leaders think the romanticized life of the outlaw grower is an anachronism, and that legalization spells serious trouble for them. "I came out and endorsed Sean Parker," founder of the annual Emerald Cup cannabis competition, Tim Blake, told VICE. "We might as well legalize it. We are over the top of the roller coaster, but the black market is going to have two or three more years and then dry up."

Blake has his reservations about the legalization. "When you get into politics, you find out that it's all about compromise," he said. But the activist thinks the writing is on the wall. In fact, a segment of farmers is already calling for appellations—that is, fancy, hyperlocal names—for weed, which they hope will protect small farms. Justin Calvino, one of the appellation effort's organizers, told VICE that farmers are moving toward responsible water and environmental use, and perhaps more importantly, that the black market is already showing signs of evaporation. "The world as we know it has gone away, and we have to change," he said.

Still, Calvino acknowledged, "I think I'm looking at the majority of farmers that aren't willing to wake up and play the game, especially farther north."

So even as some voices in the community are calling for growers to go legit, farmers insistent on doing their thing unmolested by New York bankers and Silicon Valley tech bros are edging minute-by-minute toward twilight.

"It's not like in the future it's going to be a helicopter, or a raid," the farmer "D" told me. "Fish and Wildlife or the Water Bureau are going to fine you for water, for permits, and soon you'll owe a quarter million in fines. Then they'll take your land."

Follow Max Cherney on Twitter.

Not Diego, but probably what it sounds like when Diego fucks. Thumbnail image of another pair of tortoises via Flickr user Ben Tavener

A 100-year-old Galapagos giant tortoise sex machine named Diego repopulated his species by sowing his tortoise seed and cranking out an estimated 800 tiny tortoise babies, Phys.org reports.

Just 50 years ago, the Chelonoidis hoodensis tortoise—native only to the island of Espanola in the Galapagos—was dangerously close to extinction, with less than 20 left in the total population. But that was before Diego embarked on his decade-spanning fuckfest.

Thanks to his endless well of passion and the helping hands of some specialists at a Santa Cruz Island breeding center, Diego—the dominant of three males selected to help rebound the population—has fathered around 40 percent of the current wild tortoise population in the area.

"He's a very sexually active male reproducer," Washington Tapia, a tortoise preservation specialist in the Galapagos, told AFP. "He's contributed enormously to repopulating the island."

Diego was born in the wild in the early 1900s but was living in captivity in the San Diego Zoo before some unnamed tortoise sex expert saw him in 1976 and said, That guy can probably fuck, let's get him back home and put him to work.

The rest, as they say, is history. With Diego's help, the tortoise population on Espanola is now up to around 2,000.

"I wouldn't say is in perfect health," Tapia reportedly said to AFP. "But it's a population that's in pretty good shape—and growing, which is the most important."

Read: This Turtle Hat Kickstarter Is the Corniest, Most Delightful Thing on the Internet

You know how stoners say they're better drivers when they're stoned? For all anyone knows, that might be the case, since there's still no scientifically proven connection between a certain measurement of THC in your system and dangerous driving. But if such a connection exists, the inventors of the latest roadside THC-detection system are hoping their new doohicky can find it.

Hound Labs is an Oakland-based company founded by Mike Lynn, an ER doctor and reserve deputy sheriff. With his brand-new breathalyzer, Lynn told VICE, "we're able to do what no one else has done, which is to measure breath levels of THC." They also claim it's sensitive enough to detect edibles.

And according to a press release issued by the company, their device is the "first to be tested by law enforcement at the roadside."

Under some current THC driving laws, it's illegal to drive with a certain level of the chemical in your blood, usually 5 nanograms per milliliter, like in Washington. But even the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety says that that enforcement standard doesn't correspond with impairment. According to Lynn, the 5 nanograms per milliliter amount lingers in the blood long after a person has stopped being an unsafe driver, and CNN's 2013 report on stoned drivers backs that assertion up. "What happens is you get the arrest of people that may have smoked at a party three days ago," said Lynn, calling that state of affairs, "totally unfair, and frankly pointless."

Joe Heanue, CEO and engineer at Triple Ring Technologies, actually developed the new technology, which he says is much more accurate than previous THC tests. "Our challenge is trying to take the sensitivity of a mass spectrometer and put it in a format that could be used by the roadside," Heanue told VICE. Heanue and Lynn say their device will require new legal standards that focus on a breath measurement rather than a blood measurement. "There are laws coming," Lynn said.

"I've heard these stories before," said Dale Gieringer, California state coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), pointing to systems like this that have been introduced in the past, but never made it onto any police belts. "They're all the same. None of them going to work," Gieringer added. The trouble, he claims, is that THC in the body isn't as clear-cut of a sign of impairment as it is with alcohol.

Measuring for most drugs in human breath—including THC—is tough, but alcohol and breathalyzers are a match made in heaven. First of all, the familiar range of intoxication levels, and how they correlate to impairment, is pretty uncontroversial. And second of all, the level of alcohol you find in someone's breath and the level of alcohol in their blood are directly correlated, which is not the case with THC. "The relationship between breath THC and blood THC is not linear at all," Lynn explained. "You can't make those inferences."

So he'd prefer to toss out the blood THC standard completely and described breath-THC measurement with his device as "completely different" and in need of a new standard. That means starting from square one: "You go to a track," Lynn said, to "get your drivers high." Researchers will repeatedly measure them with this device and see how that corresponds to performance, and "start to see a range." Only then can you figure out what number corresponds to 0.08 BAC, the point at which you're too drunk to drive.

Lynn has performed some tests but won't hint at the new magic number for THC. "I don't want to hazard a guess at this point," he said. But he said it likely won't be anything even close to the 5 nanograms per milliliter standard. "We're in picograms, which is parts per trillion," he offered—a much more minute measurement.

Gieringer remains doubtful that such testing will pan out, because the connection between THC levels and performance is so vague. He was adamant that, "measuring how much THC is in the brain beyond the blood-brain barrier is pretty much impossible to do from outside the brain." Until peer-reviewed scientific journal articles come along, he called the Hound Labs device "unproven technology."

Lynn, for his part, says independent researchers will be involved. The University of California, San Francisco, he said "will be conducting a rigorous clinical trial, using our device and comparing it to their own gold standard "—with the intent being "for UCSF to publish this study."

Gieringer claims that any such publication study will be slow going, saying, "I imagine it will be numerous years."

In the meantime, according to Lynn, "We are gathering data. We'll have data that other people can use—law enforcement groups and research groups." He thinks that soon we will all finally know the approximate THC breath levels that mean people are too stoned to drive.

And they'll be levels, he says, that "weren't just pulled out of thin air like blood THC levels."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

David "Cuba Dave" Strecker posing with two sex workers. All photos courtesy of David Strecker

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When police handcuffed David Strecker on September 4 in a Costa Rican airport, the 66-year-old American remembers thinking he'd only have to answer a few questions before he could board his flight back home.

But Strecker never made it on the plane. He's been behind bars ever since after being accused of violating Costa Rican law by promoting prostitution. Now, Strecker—a Florida resident who ran a popular blog about his sexual exploits abroad, mainly in countries like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Costa Rica, where prostitution is legal—will be the first person ever tried under the law in the country's history.

The statute Strecker is being charged under is part of a 2013 human trafficking law that, among other things, prohibits the use of any media to promote the country as a "tourist destination accessible for the exploitation of sexual commerce or for the prostitution of persons of any sex or age."

Fernando Ferraro, a former Costa Rican justice minister who sponsored the law, told VICE that it was designed to prevent illegal dealings, like sex slaves and child sex workers. A 2016 US State Department report found that child sex tourism was a "serious problem" in the country and that it remains a common destination for trafficking victims.

"Certainly the country has to protect its image as a tourist destination," Ferraro said. "But it's not just a matter of image. A lot of times criminal organizations, or human traffickers, are connected to the prostitution industry."

Strecker is an unabashed fan of the prostitution industry, but he claims that all he does is run a blog devoted to advising sex tourists like himself, not telling people to become sex tourists. Likely the most famous john on the internet, Strecker has whitening hair and tanned skin that has begun to sag from his once-defined arms. He's a former softball player and a diehard Yankees fan who freely quotes George Steinbrenner and has a tattoo of the Yankees logo on his right shoulder. In Costa Rica's La Reforma prison, where he's being detained, he's the lone American inmate and regularly wears muscle tees and sandals—about as gringo as gringo gets.

Strecker first made a name for himself on sex tourist forums and internet groups, where he detailed his experience touring the brothels and bars of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. He would later come to be known as "Cuba Dave" and would co-author a book called Cuba Dave's Guide to Sosua, Dominican Republic, which has since been banned from Amazon.

Once it became apparent that there was interest in the Cuba Dave brand, Strecker began documenting his sex-fueled travels through Costa Rica with suggestive blog posts, trip report videos, and photos with his girls. (He claims the women were always clothed and consenting when he photographed them.) He soon developed a following of horny male travelers by sharing his stories from the legal prostitution scene and imparted wisdom on "how not to fall in love" from his more than 40 trips to Costa Rica alone.

"Over the course of those years, I came to realize this is not real," he told VICE in a recent phone interview. "This is fantasy. This is entertainment. A 60-year-old man sleeping with 20-year-old women and believing that they really like them is crazy. So the majority of stories and videos were to explain that."

In Costa Rica, he focused his efforts mainly on an area of bars and hotels frequented by prostitutes in downtown San José known as "Gringo Gulch."

One 2010 post from his blog, which has been taken down since his arrest, read: "Miriam likes to have fun, and she is my girlfriend every day for an hour when I am in San Jose. She understands what I like, and I understand what she does. My advice is to remember what you are here for in Costa Rica, and don't question your (Costa Rican) girlfriends so much."

Strecker maintains his site was nothing more than a travel blog created to advise the single male tourist, but prosecutors say he was purposefully promoting the country to fellow gringos to come and take advantage of the legal pay-for-sex industry.

"The criminal case began after various publications were found on the internet made by the suspect in which he was apparently inviting other North Americans to visit Costa Rica, indicating that prostitution services in the country were easy to find," a spokesperson from the prosecutor's office told VICE via email.

Costa Rica—where prostitution is legal but pimping, or soliciting clients for a prostitute, is not—has long been considered one of Latin America's most popular destinations for sex tourists. Author and researcher Jacobo Schifter estimated in his book Love and Lust: American Men in Costa Rica that up to 10 percent of Costa Rica's tourists are there to have sex with prostitutes—which adds up to as many as 80,000 sex tourists per year.

Aware of that reputation, authorities are working to clean up that image and help the tourism-dependent economy come off more like Disneyland and less like Thailand.

In recent years, Costa Rican police have worked to break up organized trafficking groups and pimps who take advantage of sex migrants and child sex workers. An annual report from the US State Department said that over the previous year, officials here conducted 25 raids where sex trafficking was suspected. The State Department noted that Costa Rican government was making considerable efforts to turn around its historically poor track record when it came to fighting trafficking.

While it's not clear that Strecker was involved in any such activities, prosecutors have requested that Strecker serve 12 years of jail time for three counts of violating the statute against promoting prostitution—one count each for his CubaDave.com website, Facebook page, and a YouTube video.

The prosecution is reportedly honing in on specific photos published on the pages, as well as certain passages from the blog posts. One such entry, which Strecker said prosecutors had harped on zealously during preliminary hearings, includes the sentence, "Your pleasures are only dictated by the size of your wallet."

Strecker's lawyer, Luis Diego Chacón, said he's confident that the case will be dismissed in the trial set to begin November, since the sex tourism law was meant to combat organized human-trafficking groups, not bloggers.

"This law wasn't intended for people who have a travel site," he told VICE. "If you looked at his website, you wouldn't have seen any language deemed inappropriate in his home country in the United States."

If the trial drags on, Chacón may try to convince the judges (Costa Rican trials are decided by three judges rather than a jury) that because the domain's server was located in the US, then it should be US laws that apply.

Since the Costa Rican law hinges on promotion, Strecker's defense will also try to argue that he was merely informing readers about the country's prostitution scene, not advertising it to them. Strecker claims that before he started his blog, he received hundreds of emails from travelers asking for advice on the best prostitute-friendly hotels and the safest neighborhoods for gringos. So rather than answer each one, he doled out his advice from his web page.

"Every single thing I'm being charged with is legal," he said. "They should actually be patting me on the back for warning some of the guys about this stuff."

Now, though, he's on the verge of a trial that could end with him being sentenced to more than a decade in prison. It's been that kind of dramatic fall for the pseudo celebrity, who said his yearlong stay in preventive prison has forced him to think about why he was targeted in the first place.

All he can come up with, he said, is that he's the piece at the center of a government "ploy" to send a message against sex tourists like him.

"This is a country where if you happen to say the wrong thing, you're going to end up paying for it," he said. "I really believe I'm just being made an example of."

Follow Michael Krumholtz on Twitter.

All photos via the author

Ah, the first year of university. A time of excitement, optimism, and pure, sweet ignorance. It's a brand new world: guys and girls seem hotter, you call your teachers by their first names, and all of a sudden you're grocery shopping on your own.

I came into my first year of university (cough, cough, three years ago) with a stupid amount of excitement. I idolized all of my profs as if they were heroes without capes. I went to parties at the same beer-smelling residence every weekend, playing poorly constructed drinking games and standing around to Kendrick Lamar and Aqua. And, overwhelmed by all the people I met, I developed a crush on a new guy every week.

As a rite of passage, first year is alllll about that shit, and it starts literally the moment you step on campus. So, in the midst of a brand new fall semester, I went around and bothered a bunch of first years to ask them how their first week of university went.

Loren, 17

VICE: How would you summarize your first week of university?
Loren: Um, confusing. And exciting because you're able to study something that you're actually interested in. I'm not going into a math class thinking, oh I hate this, I don't want to do this. Rather, I'm going into a graphic design and layout course and it's so interesting to me.

What's been the best part of your experience so far?
A lot of my friends go here, so it's great that I get to see them around. But also I think actually listening to the teachers talk about the experiences they've been in and seeing that my future career could possibly be getting into what they've done.

How about the worst part?
This sounds so nerdy, but the breaks, because I don't know people and they're such long breaks. If it's like three hours, what the hell do I do? I've walked around this campus so many times.

Have you seen any hot guys yet?
Well I have a boyfriend and he goes here.

Lame.
But like yeah I've seen them. The business kids are the hottest ones so far. And they'll obviously make so much money when they're out of here, so...

Hillz, 18

VICE: How was your first week at university?
Hillz: It was pretty cool. The parties were wicked. I basically hang out at because that's where engineers are.

So do you do a lot of partying?
Yeah! Yeah. I'm a party boy. Uni's only once right? You have to enjoy it before you get out and start working.

How has actual school been so far?
Well, first week I thought was pretty decent, but coming into second week is something else for engineering. You have to keep studying for labs which are like, every week. So I think it's going to be stressful.

How are you going to stay cool?
Party on the weekend. And just make sure not to procrastinate. As soon as I get homework, I'll do it quickly. So I can party.

Lucy, 18

VICE: What are you studying?
Lucy: Fashion design.

How do you like your program so far?
It's pretty cool. I moved all the way from Vancouver to Toronto so it's confusing but I'm really interested because the profs are chill and really nice.

How is it adjusting to a new city?
It's hard. I've been here for like a month and I just can't. It's so huge. I'm also from a city, but it's not this kind of city where there's cars everywhere.

What's your favourite part about being in university?
Making friends. I haven't made a lot of friends, but I'm starting to.

Any enemies yet?
No, I hope not! I don't want to. I hope my professors aren't my enemies.

Nicole, 18

VICE: Has university lived up to your expectations so far?
Nicole: I don't like setting expectations just because it leaves room for disappointment. So I came here just hoping to have a good time.

So let's talk about frosh week. Anything crazy happen?
Besides the typical grinding action at clubs and the 30-year-olds coming in at midnight?

You're not into 30-year-olds?
Uh, no.

Right. What do you think of your profs?
I've met one who told us not to ask questions before and after the lecture because she'll put on a "resting bitch face," quote unquote. But even that professor and all the ones I've had look like they're very eager to help.

Sahiba, 17, turning 18 in a week

VICE: So you said you went to frosh week. How was it?
Sahiba: It was amazing because they made you do a lot of activities. I was known as the hoola hoop girl because we had this one activity with a hoola hoop and I literally held it the whole time.

Haha, that name's going to follow you forever. What are you studying?
Don't write that! Biology.

What do you want to do with your degree when you get it?
I would like to go into optometry.

Have you met any people here that you already dislike?
No, everyone's really nice!

That'll change.
Maybe, we'll see about that .

Do you think you'll get a job after university?
I think I will for sure, I have a job right now.

Kendra, 19, and Nicky, 18

VICE: How was your first week at university?
Kendra: Exciting, not too confusing. There's a lot of reading already, and lots of nice people and professors.
Nicky: It's a crazy environment in a good way. And everyone here is easy to talk to, not like strangers on the street.

Are you both coming right out of high school?
Both: Yup.

What's the biggest difference between university and high school?
Kendra: Probably the immediate respect people give you. I don't know, you're just seen as an adult in all of your professors' eyes.
Nicky: If you choose not to do something, you're paying for it this time. You're not going to be called about why you're not in class. And if I'm at a lecture and I think it's pointless and I know already, I can leave. It's on my own terms.

And what about frosh week? How was it?
Kendra: I didn't go.
Nicky: It was really fun. I got really tired really quick though because I'm commuting.

I.e., you got really drunk?
Nicky: No! Not yet, I can't.

Good answer. Did you try anything new at frosh?
Nicky: Um, the whole idea of it was new and out of my bubble because I live in the suburbs. Coming to the city, talking to people I usually wouldn't, being by myself, and participating when I didn't know anybody—everything I did was technically new.

Christian, 19

VICE: How was your first week?
Christian: Overwhelming, but I'm going to do my best to catch up.

You need to catch up already?
Well, I have quite a story. So it was 4 PM. I was on campus watching The Get Down, and then I looked at my schedule and I was like, "Oh shit I have class at 4." But it was already 5 PM, so I was an hour late to the lecture. The end.

Oh man. Well what are you looking forward to at university once you're back on track?
Getting a degree. Working hard. Maybe joining intramural basketball.

What are you least looking forward to?
Readings, lots of homework, late nights, studying for midterms, finals, all that stuff.

Katarina, 18

VICE: What's the biggest difference between high school and uni?
Katarina: Scheduling. Every day in high school is a typical routine, but in university, my classes are everywhere. I sleep in one day and I have time to get ready, then the next day I wake up early. I like how it's different every day.

How are your parents feeling about you being in university?
They're proud. My two older brothers are just working, they never went to school, so I was the first child to go university and take on that step. They're a little worried about me being downtown but they trust me.

What's been a struggle for you so far?
Meeting friends to stick together. On breaks I don't have anyone to be with so I'm just alone.

Who's this guy you were walking with?
He's from my high school, he's older.

Did you go to frosh?
I didn't .

Why not?
I don't know, I just wasn't into the games and stuff. I like to do my own thing.

Christian, 18

VICE: What are your expectations going into university?
Christian: I feel like it's definitely going to be a step up and I think I'm ready to take on the challenge. I'm looking forward to it.

What are you not looking forward to?
So far, buying the textbooks. That's been a little bit of a shock. I just picked up two and they were $280.

Damn, that's rough. Did you go to frosh week?
I did.

What was your most memorable frosh experience?
Definitely going to the club with my friends.

Any good looking ladies so far?
Yup ... yup.

Have you talked to them?
I have. There have been some fun moments.

Care to elaborate?
Not at the moment, no.

Follow Ebony on Twitter.

Video footage showing Aaron Driver is seen behind RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana (left) and Assistant Commissioner Jennifer Strachan during a press conference in Ottawa on August 11, 2016. Photo by CP/Justin Tang, File

Despite being hailed as a powerful tool to stop would-be terrorists from committing violence or leaving to fight abroad, just one person in Canada is currently on a terrorism-related peace bond.

WELCOME, NEW OVERLORDS, PRAISE TO THEE O MIGHTY LEADERS:

(Photo: Zoe Norfolk/Downing Street/PA Wire)

No: it's not the launch of M&S's new range of at-all-sizes wide-and-long suits and their complimentary purple ties: it is instead the new Conservative Cabinet, all clattered together for their first official photo, huddled together to plot. There's Theresa May, resplendent and angular; there's Jeremy Hunt, the middle-manager-who-just-this-year-got-really-into-cycling face of doom; there's Chris Grayling, the terror, the terror. All the big ones, all the hits. What a majestic joy to see the grey and grizzled face of power.

But, as you might have noticed, somehow this photograph defies both laws and physics and has each facial expression some how escalating in toriness, from low-level Quite Tory to high-level Extreme Toryism. What is the backstory behind each of these folds, these quizzically pursed lips, these greying temples? Who and how and why did they got here? I am, as ever, glad you asked me. Together we are going to find out:

JEREMY HEYWOOD

They Ran Out Of Alive Tories So Just Resurrected One From The Dead, #1

CHIEF WHIP GAVIN WILLIAMSON

Dentists had to intervene because, without medical assistance, he is so posh his teeth would have never stopped growing.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEREMY WRIGHT

Bit of a 'funeral director appears in local paper to defend his decision not to bury gay men' vibe, here.

CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER PATRICK MCLOUGHLIN

A coven of witches decided, for some reason, to curse a large soft teddybear to instead live out the rest of its life as a tired human man, and after a series of misunderstandings it (we must call the bear-monster 'it', it is not human enough to earn a distinct pronoun) it rose to the position of Chancellor of the Duchy. "It will not die for a hundred summers more," it says. "It will not die for a thousand years. This sad bear shall stroll the face of this earth until the sun doth consume it."

CHIEF SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY DAVID GAUKE

Your dad's posh mate who always turns up to dinner half-pissed already despite driving his Porsche here, stumbling at the threshold, slightly, your dad's mate, bottle of red just leaning forward before he does, soft driving shoes, "Hello," he says, plummily, and then with a low growl, "... and my, haven't you grown," and then he spends six hours talking about ISAs ("Well frankly they're a load of old thrubbers") and not-even-subtly pinching your mum's arse.

MINISTER FOR THE CABINET OFFICE BEN GUMMER

There is no more Tory face than this. This is the Toriest face in the world. The only way this face could be more Tory is if a fox hunt were happening across the forehead of it. The only way this face could be more Tory is if it was complaining very loudly to the Little Waitrose assistant manager that "too many povvy fuckers on five-figures or less come in here to use the coffee machine and nothing else". The only way this face could be more Tory is if it sent its son, but not its daughter, to private school ("Oh, God, don't worry darling: Samantha will marry rich"). There is no back story for this face beyond hundreds of years of inherent privilege and oppression. N/A.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY PRITI PATEL

Starred in a '"I Just Don't Care – I've Got A Ferrari!": Why THESE Women Don't Care What Their Stepsons Think of Them, Because They've Got A Ferrari' MailOnline piece posing next to her furious, lank stepson and, later, her really fast Ferrari.

ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY ANDREA LEADSOM

Andrea Leadsom, face taut like a drum, is here to offer you money to say that it was actually you who pelted the swimming pool windows with paintballs, because if they find out Monty did it it's one more strike and her son won't go to Oxford.

SCOTLAND SECRETARY DAVID MUNDELL

If there were an Olympic event for 'shutting your laptop screen closed before anyone could see what you were looking at' then this lad would win gold 20 consecutive tournaments in a row.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS BARONESS EVANS

'Why THIS Up-And-At-'Em Young Mum Who Doesn't Even Let Her Hair Dry Before Pulling On A Fleece And Some Karrimors And Going On A Hike Of A Sunday Morning Has Had Just About ENOUGH Of The Sloppy Recycling Some Of Her Neighbours Have Been Displaying In Recent Weeks And So Dobbed Them In To The Council So Hard they All Got Fines'

COMMUNITIES SECRETARY SAJID JAVID

"Sorry I'm late to the photoshoot, some bigger boys stripped me and used me as a bowling ball"

WORK AND PENSIONS SECRETARY DAMIAN GREEN

"Yeah I wouldn't go in there if I were you. Clotted it right up. Real bangers and mash job. Had a load of Guinness and ham for dinner, so it's probably that. Anyway, there's the key back. Right: how much do I owe you for the petrol?"

TRANSPORT SECRETARY CHRIS GRAYLING

"Ah, yes, hello my pretty, hello my pretty darling, won't you get ever so closer to me, my pretty little darling, please, Daddy's hearing isn't so good these days, and: my, don't we smell just delightful, haven't we got a musk, my my my, yes, very pretty, very pretty indeed. And just a dangling little cross on a chain, so innocent, just whispering against your blouse there, just the ever-so-slightest hint of a breast, yes, like the fresh scent of flowers on the breeze, my darling, you remind me of the summ— oh... sorry, I must have got distracted. I'll have a double-shot latte, please. In the name of 'Chris'."

LEADER OF THE COMMONS DAVID LIDINGTON

They Ran Out Of Alive Tories So Just Resurrected One From The Dead, #2

WELSH SECRETARY ALUN CAIRNS

"Sorry I'm late for the photo, I got in an explosion and now it looks like I'm permanently faceswapped with Alan Titchmarsh"

NORTHERN IRELAND SECRETARY JAMES BROKENSHIRE

Got down to the last two to play The Demon Headmaster but CBBC producers decided he was too quote-unquote "fucking eerie" to take the part.

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT SECRETARY KAREN BRADLEY

Ate her twin in the womb. When asked about it ever she just says "born a winner" and orders another bottle of champagne in.

TRANSPORT SECRETARY CHRIS GRAYLING

"Come closer now, yes, hmm, so young, so seductive: tell me, pretty darling: do you like to be licked?"

BUSINESS SECRETARY GREG CLARK

Sat down in the wrong meeting in 1990 once and was too polite to get up and now he's Business Secretary for the entirety of the UK. Nobody on earth says, "Ooh, lasagne? My fave!" while walking into a kitchen and sniffing more than Greg Clark.

BREXIT SECRETARY DAVID DAVIS

'Just going to check my pulse to see my heart's still beating.'

EDUCATION SECRETARY JUSTINE GREENING

Your mum's hard mate who "knows gangsters" and somehow you end up being forced to apologise to after her son stole your BMX.

FOREIGN SECRETARY BORIS JOHNSON

'Mummy I plopped my knickies again.'

HOME SECRETARY AMBER RUDD

Amber Rudd really has to shoot after this photo gets taken because she's got an appointment speaking to a group of primary school teachers to remind them – and gently chide them – that Muslims are ruining Christmas, so to keep it safe, we really must make them sit through our Christian assemblies to learn about our ways.

TRANSPORT SECRETARY CHRIS GRAYLING

"It's an extraordinary feeling, so I've read, so I've heard, one quite distinct from the usual... quite delectable – an acquired taste, so you hear – once you have a tweak of it. Yes. Yes. There are plenty of guides for how to do it, online. One must thoroughly clean the area first, of course, and use plenty of lubrication. Condoms are a must. Thin fibres, so it is. But yes: I like to squirm my way up there like a playful fish and just be the naughtiest of all naughty boys. Naughty Chrissy, dirty boy. Sorry, what was I saying— yes, can I deposit this cheque please? And I have a couple of direct debits I need to cancel."

PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY

"I would like to say, categorically, that reports that I sleep in a coffin are hearsay and false."

CHANCELLOR PHILIP HAMMOND

They Ran Out Of Alive Tories So Just Resurrected One From The Dead, #3

DEFENCE SECRETARY MICHAEL FALLON

Leaves Amazon reviews on Myleene Klass albums that say "fantastic - just fantastic....... xx" in the vague hope she'll read them and, through a complex turn of events that Defence Secretary Michael Fallon plays out in the cinescreen in his head every night before he sleeps, finds him and fucks him.

JUSTICE SECRETARY LIZ TRUSS

This is the exact pose your mum pulled when she found a baggy in your bedroom and sat at the kitchen table, poised and silent, for five full hours before you came home from Glastonbury and got the grounding of a lifetime.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE SECRETARY LIAM FOX

Winner of the Eddie Stobart 'Cheeriest Murderer of the Year' award at the annual companywide Christmas party.

HEALTH SECRETARY JEREMY HUNT

Stifling an unexpected erection with his hands.

AND CHRIS GRAYLING AGAIN

"Well I don't mind it, of course: back in my day they all had them, great bushy plumes of them, riddling hither and yon, O, far beyond the crotches: my, my, my, what a real treat it was to plunder your head into a majestic big bush and just inhale the scent of it... but nowadays, of course, they trim them all off – or worse, shave them away to naught! – and I have to say I'm a traditionalist. Yes, we've all had a caramel-coloured honeypot bent over our knees and smacked them, bald as a coot, smacked them absolutely silly – but if you ask me a real woman comes with a few scars, a few stories, and a billowing bush full of hairs... sorry, officer, what was I saying? No I've had nothing to drink this evening—"

AND HERE, A SUPER SPECIAL BONUS ROUND: FIVE OF THE ABOVE FACES, WITH THE ADDED CAPTION 'WHEN U NUT AND SHE KEEP SUCKIN'

when u nut and she keep suckin

when u nut and she keep suckin

when u nut and she keep suckin

when u nut and she keep suckin

when u nut and she keep suckin

@joelgolby

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Mandi Gray's rapist Mustafa Ururyar has been sentenced to 18 months in jail. Canadian Press/Chris Young

Mustafa Ururyar, the York University PhD student who raped fellow student Mandi Gray, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison—the maximum penalty possible.

Judge Marvin Zuker handed down the sentence, which will be followed by three years of probation, in a Toronto courtroom Wednesday. In a highly rare decision, Ururyar was also ordered to pay $8,000 to cover part of Gray's legal fees—she hired her own lawyer to counsel her throughout the proceedings. His lawyers contested this, arguing that because Gray was represented by the Crown, she didn't need her own attorney.

While reading the guilty verdict in July, Zuker harshly condemned rape myths and the treatment of sex assault complainants in court, citing academic and feminist readings including the Maya Angelou poem "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

"No other crime is looked upon with the degree of blameworthiness, suspicion, and doubt as a rape victim. Victim blaming is unfortunately common and is one of the most significant barriers to justice and offender accountability," he said at the time.

Read more: Judge in York University Rape Trial Slams Justice System While Delivering Guilty Verdict.

He seemed to double down on those sentiments during Wednesday's sentencing.

"Rape and sex assaults are pitiless wicked crimes," he said, according to the Toronto Star. "Tolerance for rape is a very old and freshly infuriating story. Victims deserve a new solution."

Ururyar raped Gray in the early morning of January 31, 2015. The pair had been dating casually, and on the night of January 30 they left a bar together. Back at his apartment, he ended the relationship, then forced her to have oral and vaginal sex with him.

Ururyar's lawyers asked that he be given a conditional sentence—meaning no jail time—or house arrest.

Zuker disagreed, saying "Those who commit the crime of rape must understand they do so at their peril."

He also suggested victim impact statements instead be called "survivor" impact statements to more accurately reflect complainants.

In her impact statement, Gray attached evidence of her legal fees and psychotherapy sessions; the latter cost her more than $3,700.

Of her decision to seek out her own lawyer, David Butt, she wrote, "Most problematic is that due to the ongoing and discriminatory cross-examination resulting in emotional distress, Mr. Butt had to write a letter to the Crown and defence counsel to remind (defence lawyer) Ms. Bristow of courtroom ethics and the law in sexual assault cases. Victims should not be required to pay (emotionally or financially) for the failure of the courts to respect the ethics and legal protections of victim/witnesses."

Under a heading called "emotional impact" she said, "I have no interest in sharing the emotional, physical or psychological impact of being raped. As I expect you and your lawyer to minimize my claims because I do not want to go into detail, I have attached an overview of the time and money I have spent attending therapy."

Asked why she chose not to describe how the rape has affected her mental health, Gray told VICE, "I honestly just have no interest in telling that asshole anything about me. Plus he is appealing the decision, so he clearly still does not think he did anything wrong, so it feels weird to be vulnerable for someone who really does not care even a bit."

Ururyar's lawyers have already appealed the conviction and on Thursday will request that he be released on bail until the appeal is heard.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

On an all new episode of Weediquette, Krishna visits the Paiute Tribe of Las Vegas to learn about how these Native Americans are growing weed on their reservation as an attempt to save themselves from extinction.

Then, on an all new episode of GAYCATION, Ian and Ellen head to India to talk with members of the local LGBTQ community about how the country can evolve while still maintaining its deep-rooted traditions.

Weediquette airs Wednesdays at 10 PM followed by GAYCATION at 10:30 PM on VICELAND.

On the next episode of VICELAND's show GAYCATION, Ellen and Ian meet up with India's latest pop sensation, The 6 Pack Band, a singing group comprised of hijras, or people who identify as neither male nor female. The group takes the hosts back to its small hijra village to discuss how its music has brought awareness and acceptance to the country's third-gender community.

Check out the clip above and watch the full episode tonight at 10 PM on VICELAND.

A National Action flag and some food (All pictures taken from National Action and National Revival of Poland)

English neo-Nazis are conducting whites-only homeless outreach in order to spread their race hate.

Hitler worshippers National Action have taken to the streets in Glasgow and Yorkshire in conjunction with Polish fascist party The National Revival of Poland, to give out tinned food to the homeless. Pictures show value bourbon creams, bananas and some kind of weird protein drink laying on a table covered with white-power flags.

The National Revival of Poland campaign is dubbed "White Rescue: Charity Campaign for Europeans". NA's rationale for similar events is also explicitly racist. One of the reasons National Action wants to do this is for "the establishment of our brand of politics in areas it's been lacking". The "brand of politics" we're talking about here is Nazism, a brand that was somewhat tarnished by the fact that it started World War II and the worst genocide in all history.

National Action want to build a group capable of "ethnically cleansing Britain". They're part of Europe's "autonomist nationalist" subculture – Nazis who copy the aesthetics and tactics of the far left. For instance you're more likely to see them in "black bloc" type gear than fetishising military uniform. Their members have been attending Isis inspired "Sigurd" training camps, where young neo-Nazis from across the country gather to practice fighting in groups, use knives as weapons and learn about Nazi ideology. Zack Davies, who is serving a life sentence for the racist attempted murder of an Asian man in North Wales, claimed allegiance to the group. That's all pretty sinister, but on the other hand probably their most famous day was when they were utterly humiliated while trying to hold a "White Man March" in Liverpool, and hemmed into a corner of the station by anti-fascists and angry locals who pelted them with bananas, eggs and punches.

More recently they've made headlines by holding a flash-mob in Newcastle with a banner reading "Hitler was right", and by giving a Hitler salute while in Buchenwald concentration camp. They really like Hitler, and would love to see another Holocaust – but maybe homeless outreach makes them good guys really?

An outreach session in Glasgow

The homeless outreach is described as "whites helping whites" and claimed to offer "a small glimmer of hope" to white homeless people. In a report from an undisclosed location in Yorkshire, NA describe "the rare sight of a Muslim homeless man" and claim that homelessness is a problem particular to white people. This is of course completely untrue.

Nobody should be homeless, white or otherwise. But homelessness is more common among ethnic minorities and it's rising twice as fast among ethnic minority people as the population as a whole. To take one example, this year it was reported that ethnic minority people are four times more likely to be homeless in Birmingham.

Perhaps that's not the point. As Goebbels said, "hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?" In interviews on a Nazi podcasts about the action, National Action member Ben Raymond describes the outreach as "real propaganda of the deed".

A guy with a White Pride flag talking to a homeless person

Another NA member, Alex Davies, explains on a podcast that NA has been inspired by the Greek Golden Dawn. The extreme-right party has the third largest number of MPs in the Greek parliament. Its leaders are currently on trail for a wave of violence against non-white people, left-wing opponents and LGBT people.

"Their charity work, activism and social work has brought them a respect, some credibility in the eyes of the Greek people," says Davies. "...That's what gained them those seats in the Greek parliament. They used those resources then, that they gained from being elected to parliament, and they've put it back into the things that have gained them their credibility. And that's how they've gained some momentum."

"We want to replicate what Golden Dawn were doing in Greece, here in the UK. That's exactly what we want to do."

But hold on – bummer ­– apparently some cynical Greeks thought there was something wrong with carrying out racist charity work for political gain. "Their outreaches were called 'soup-kitchens of hate'", laments Raymond. "You can't even open a soup kitchen without being attacked. But I think it's the right thing to do." Europe's neo-Nazis just can't catch a break!

Polish and English far-right flags at an outreach session in London

Ben Raymond encourages other members of the far-right to get involved in charity work: "This is a very good thing nationalists should be involved in, because even the existing charities that are already set up, they don't have enough people, there's an enormous space we can fill." Look forward to getting chugged by a guy with a swastika tattoo.

The tactic of homeless outreach is common among European far-right groups. Dr J F Pollard, an expert on fascism at Cambridge University said, "It is a well-known fact that Casa Pound, and other neo-Fascist organisations in Italy, have put a lot of effort into 'social outreach', including helping homeless and unemployed people and also OAPs."

Casa Pound is a fascist group that has taken on some of the aesthetics and lifestyle of crusty squat-punks and the naughties anti-globalisation movement. "Their HQ in the centre of Rome is effectively a squat and I have visited it. It houses a number of hitherto homeless families. They have also followed this strategy in other Italian towns and cities. Like National Action, Casa Pound is a largely middle class/student based organisation."

Dr Pollard continued: "Of course this is nothing new: the NSDAP/SA [the original Nazis] invested heavily in social outreach during the Great Depression in Weimar Germany and this was institutionalised into the Winterhilfe – literally, 'winter help' – after they came to power." And sure enough, National Action give a quote from a Herr Adolf Hitler in its report as a reason for helping the homeless. There are also similarities here with the mobile food banks used by the BNP to gain trust with voters before the 2014 local and European elections.

A White Pride flag and a tin of food

Back to NA, apparently locals near the outreach at Argyll Street in Glasgow "came by to enquire as to the nature of our charitable work and to applaud our efforts," although the racists were met with some resistance, or as NA put it: "there were a couple of leftists who were wailing uncontrollably." Not to worry. "Local police also intervened on our behalf". VICE contacted the Glasgow police for comment but did not receive a response.

The Radical Housing Network is an organisation which campaigns around housing issues. We approached them with the news that some Nazis were trying to help the homeless. Perhaps they'd be pleased? Not really:

"The absurdity of NA's logic is demonstrated in the fact that they believe multiculturalism is to blame for homelessness when there are over 800,000 empty homes in the UK, which is larger than the entire homeless population.

"The real problem with housing is not the colour of people's skin but the financialisation of housing by those seeking to profit from the fundamental need for shelter. It will not be petty racism, but mass collective action that will end the housing crisis."

VICE reached out the National Action for comment but received no reply.

National Action anticipated that their action might be controversial. They write, "It is highly likely we will be attacked for this over the coming month – the media will twist our messages to present us as ideological opportunists and call our kindness hatred." Mate, these journalists are so unfair. It's almost as if charitable actions for the homeless are somehow less kind if they're done with the massive ulterior motive of spreading race hate.

@jdpoulter / @SimonChilds13

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English Neo-Nazis Were Totally Humiliated in Liverpool

We Saw Fascists and Anti-Fascists Make Each Other Bleed in Dover

Hitler and the Nazis Were Bang into Their Amphetamines and Opiates

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

A yard sign expressing support for Hillary Clinton, who took some time off the campaign trail after being diagnosed with pneumonia. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

US News

Clinton Returns to Campaign After Doctor Declares Her Healthy
Hillary Clinton will return to the campaign trail Thursday after a case of pneumonia forced her to leave a 9/11 memorial event on Sunday. Her doctor, Lisa Bardack, conducted a physical and released the results, declaring her to be in "excellent mental condition... She continues to remain healthy and fit to serve as president of the United States." Clinton's health has in recent weeks been the subject of many rumors and conspiracy theories. Donald Trump released health data of his own on a Dr. Oz Show taping, which will air Thursday.—The Washington Post

Florida Police Arrest Suspect in Mosque Fire Case
A 32-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the fire attack at the Florida mosque occasionally attended by the Orlando nightclub shooter. Joseph Michael Schreiber was arrested in Fort Pierce and will be charged with a felony count of arson with a hate crime enhancement. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. —NBC News

Lawsuit Launched Against IRS for Trump Tax Returns
VICE News has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS demanding that the agency turn over all audits of Donald Trump's tax returns from 2002 onward. Separately, VICE News has asked the FBI to disclose all documents, if any exist, referring to two inflammatory comments made by Trump. —VICE News

Obama Creates Marine Monument in the Atlantic
President Obama will announce the creation of the Atlantic Ocean's first marine monument, using his executive power to preserve an expanse of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. It will cover an area roughly the size of Connecticut sitting 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. —The New York Times

International News

Typhoon Meranti Hits Mainland China
Typhoon Meranti has reached southeastern China, leaving 1.65 million homes without electricity. Dozens of flights and trains across Fujian Province have been canceled and tens of thousands of people evacuated. The super typhoon killed one person and left half a million homes without power in Taiwan on Wednesday. —Reuters

Israel Strikes Hamas Targets in Gaza
Israel said it launched strikes on a trio of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from those locations in an exchange of hostilities that resulted in no casualties. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place since 2014, but militant groups in Gaza have occasionally launched rockets toward Israel. —AP

Train Crash Kills Six in Pakistan
An express train collided with a stationary freight train in Pakistan's Punjab region early Thursday morning, killing at least six people and injuring more than 150 others. Rescue officials worked through the night to free people from overturned carriages after the Karachi-bound train crashed. —Al Jazeera

Head of Missing Mexican Student Investigation Quits
The head of Mexico's criminal investigation agency, responsible for examining the disappearance of 43 college students, has resigned. No reason was given for Tomas Zeron standing down, but the families of the students, who have been missing since September 2014, dispute the official version of events and demanded that he resign. —BBC News

Everything Else

Apple Runs Out of iPhone 7 Plus
Apple has exhausted its initial supply of the iPhone 7 Plus, meaning there won't be any available in stores when it officially goes on sale Friday. The smaller iPhone 7 in the "jet black" finish is also sold out, but silver, gold, and black should be available. —Fortune

Additional Naked Donald Trump Statues Appear
Two more of anarchist collective INDECLINE's nude Donald Trump statues have been erected: one near New Jersey's Holland Tunnel, another over a billboard in Miami. They were commissioned by Israeli-born developer Moishe Mana. —Rolling Stone

Indonesia to Ban Grindr, Other LGBTQ Apps and Websites
Grindr, Hornet, and more than 80 other apps and websites with LGBTQ content face a ban in Indonesia. The Ministry of Communications has agreed to craft legislation to "block websites promoting LGBT." —BuzzFeed News

Frank Ocean's Songwriting Credits Are Made Public
Songwriting credits for Ocean's album Blonde have been revealed. Tyler, the Creator and Pharrell Williams co-wrote and produced "Pink + White," while Jamie xx and Rostam Batmanglij joined forces for "Ivy." —Noisey

Dakota Protestors Claim Facebook Censored Video
Media collective Unicorn Riot has claimed that Facebook blocked a video of the arrests of protestors at the Dakota Access pipeline sites in North Dakota. The link has since been restored, but the collective believed the livestream was censored. —Motherboard

Canadian Cops Carrying Fentanyl Antidote Spray
Federal police in Canada are now carrying naloxone nasal spray in case they come in contact with fentanyl, since inhaling even a small amount of the toxic drug can be fatal. The police force is also distributing naloxone kits for officers to use on overdose victims. —VICE News

(Photo by Pixabay user aitoff via)

People cheat. You'd be lying if you said you haven't done it, or at least thought about it. Researchers in one strand of evolutionary biology recently theorised that women were naturally programmed to line up a replacement mate, and thus to ditch monogamy for more than one sexual partner. The study found that straight women are drawn to "cultivating 'back-up mates'", switching to a new guy if their man loses his usefulness. To translate: if a woman realises her partner's sperm isn't up to scratch, or he picks up an illness that makes him a less-than-ideal mate, she bails.

For a while, the gendered idea that men cheat to give their sperm the most chances to turn into fertilised eggs has proliferated in wider society. But do women stray for similarly rigid reasons? I did the very scientific thing and asked some ladies myself.

"I saw my virtually non-existent sex life stretching out ahead of me"

Imagine being in a sexless three-year relationship. Don't bother: that was me. I didn't mind too much at first when he said he didn't believe in sex before marriage. As I'm from a pretty traditional family as well, but I thought I could persuade him. I was wrong: nothing I seemed to do did the trick.

I'm embarrassed thinking of how many nights I wasted worrying about how he didn't fancy me and how low my self-esteem was throughout the entire relationship. To make matters worse, we were also planning to get married not long after graduating so I didn't feel like I could give him the chuck when I'd invested so much into our relationship (our parents had met and we'd organised some of it already).

I felt trapped and could see my virtually non-existent sex life stretching out in front of me. So when a guy gave me the eye over a few drinks with some mates, I took the opportunity and ended up sleeping with him. It wasn't great but it felt amazing to feel wanted. I didn't even care that he was a virgin – although I only found that out after. I didn't feel guilty for too long: turned out my boyfriend was cheating on me with a girl from his course (so much for saving yourself for marriage) and I rebounded with the not-so-virgin for a few months till I got over my ex.

— Surjit*, 23

"The more weight I lost, the more other men started to notice me"

I spent most of my earlier 20s as a bigger girl. If I ever went on a night out, guys would take the piss out of the way I looked so I ended up a bit of a recluse too. When the 'eat clean' trend was in full swing, I got massively inspired and ended up hitting the gym and cutting out Two for Tuesdays.

Within a year, I'd shed about three stone and looked like a completely different person – some people still don't really recognise me if I walk past them in the street. I'd initially wanted to shed the weight so I could be healthy, but I started to notice it had another effect: the more weight I lost, the more men started to pay me attention. At first, I didn't really care – I was already in a long-term, serious relationship. I'd met Rowan* at uni and we'd been together for around two years and were considering moving in together.

But the more compliments I got, the harder I worked out. And soon, I started flirting back. I thought it was harmless. After all, I wasn't going to end things with Rowan: He'd stayed with me the entire time I was fat and I was adamant I wouldn't be one of those girls that dumped their guy as soon as they "got hot".

Then I went to a private art showing in Chelsea and met an art director, who was quite persistent. He was really charming (and loaded too) so I ended up giving him my number. We exchanged flirty messages for about two weeks and pinned down a date for dinner. When Rowan found out we'd kissed, I didn't even have to grovel much – he took me back almost instantly so I lost a bit of respect for him. I know if I did it again, I'd probably be dumped, but have I learnt my lesson? Not really. I'm exchanging messages with the art dealer right now and we'll be meeting up again for our second date next week.

— Samia*, 24

"I'd spent most of the weekend silently resenting my boyfriend"

My boyfriend paid for my Boomtown festival ticket as I'm perennially skint, so I felt obliged to hang out with him. In the end I could barely catch up with some of my own mates – and he'd semi-threatened that I couldn't stay in his tent if I pulled one of my "vanishing acts". I was really starting to doubt whether I could see a future in the relationship when, just because he paid for me, he thought he could treat me however he wanted. But I also didn't want to completely get rid of him.

I spent most of the festival resenting him so the day I got back to London, I headed straight to my favourite gay bar and proceeded to get with Xavier, a hot Spanish guy. Admittedly, he was a bit younger than me, at 21, but he certainly made up for it. I proceeded to get down and dirty on the dancefloor much to the chagrin of everyone there, who wasted no time in telling me, "this isn't a straight club".

WATCH: Apps and the Mobile Love Industry

I could barely move my neck the next few days and it was completely covered in telltale marks. To make matters worse, there was a heatwave that next week so I couldn't even wear a rollneck. When I met my boyfriend, I ended up wearing said rollneck. It clearly didn't do its job as he saw the bites and was suspicious where I'd got it from. I lied and said it was my best friend who'd hit on me at the bar as she was 'confused' by her sexuality. Weirdly enough, he totally swallowed it and we're still together. I've got Xavier on Instagram and I'm not going to pretend that I don't slide into his DMs whenever I'm a bit horny...

— Charlie, 25

"Do I regret that I cheated? Sure – but positives came out of it"

I'd come from a pretty religious background. By the time I headed to uni, I was struggling with my sexuality and had internalised of lot of homophobia thanks to my overly Christian parents.

I lived with about 12 girls in first year and was terrified of being "caught". I got a boyfriend not long after, mostly to try and convince myself that I was straight. It didn't really help that he was homophobic either. I soon met a girl – ironically enough at church – who'd also been struggling with her sexuality. We kind of clicked and then ended up getting together.

Do I regret that I cheated? Sure, but there were loads of positives that came out of it too: for the first time in my life, I was comfortable with myself and came out to most of my friends and family not long after we got together. Although we're no longer seeing each other, I definitely owe her a lot.

— Maria, 26

*Some names have been changed to protect privacy/dignity.

@its_me_salma

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WikiFeet, "the collaborative celebrity feet website," has a simple purpose. Famous women have feet, men (we're really just talking about men here) want to look at those feet, and here is an open-source compilation of 46,000 pages—shrines, if you will—dedicated to those feet. And not only do men come to look at the feet, they engage in lively discourses reminiscent of Plato's Symposium. They limn the inherent beauty of high arches, debate ideal toe length, imagine various foot odors, and fantasize about being used as a footstool by the feet at hand.

Like literally every forum, message board, chatroom, social-media network, and comment section, wikiFeet is also a breeding ground for pointless arguments. Regulars with names like Shoegazer69 and Pervert_Otis seem unable to help themselves from devolving into tiresome debates over things like celebrity foot rankings, sniping at each other over whether Taylor Swift's toes deserve four stars or five, or whether Jennifer Lawrence had bunion reduction surgery. Naturally, the rancor on wikiFeet seems to be most toxic when politics get involved.

All screenshots via wikiFeet

Though wikiFeet is mainly concerned with actresses, models, and singers, there are also plenty of political figures floating about. You can find pages for senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kelly Ayotte, and Elizabeth Warren. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has a page showcasing her foot in a cast. There are former legislators like Michele Bachmann, Wendy Davis, and Gabrille Giffords (whose photos have been removed) and failed candidates like reputed witch Christine O'Donnell. And before you ask, yes, somebody somewhere thought to add Nancy Reagan's feet to the mix.

Women in politics are often judged by their appearances. The media fixates on their hairstyles, their clothing and makeup, scowls and tics. Any deviation from the expectation of ladylike propriety is a judgement on a female politician's ability to do her job: There are bags under her eyes—maybe she can't handle the stress of campaigning?

What one finds in the wikiFeet comment section, though, is not that subtle machinery of oppression, but rather a ridiculous distortion of it. When these fetishizing commenters objectify women, they do so in the most literal way possible: by considering a single part of their bodies as actual objects and debating how sexually arousing it is. The foot purists don't watch female politicians on TV looking for ways to demean or upend them—Oh, she's wearing white, that must be a desperate attempt to convey innocence, how crass—but for those fleeting moments when a woman walks to the podium, in the hopes that the cameras will provide a glimpse of some open-toe high heels.

Take Hillary Clinton's wikiFeet page, where the Democratic presidential nominee's feet are rated about 2.5 stars out of five, and her comment section is a hotbed of debate. She has her fervid supporters:

And her detractors:

There's one or two folks just here to have a goof:

And finally, I think this picture perfectly encapsulates the three central modes of thought in our current political discourse:

That's all to be expected. Some people love Clinton, some people hate her, so naturally same goes for her feet. But there are others who are just sick of the bickering, like Starbuckwylde, who wants to know what ideology has to do with the feet:

BigDaddyWhizz is also ready to end the fighting. What matters is not whether a foot is right or left, but whether they can be jacked off to or not. (He says Clinton's feet are "OK," so I guess the answer is... maybe?)

Donald Trump doesn't have a wikiFeet page, but his third and current wife Melania does, a pretty popular one with 184 foot photos. (Her feet are rated five stars out of five.) Even so, there are purists—the #NeverTrumpers of wikiFeet—who nitpick. The biggest objection is to her bunion. Perhaps they're pro-Hillary partisans who identified some flaw they could craft talking points around. Perhaps they get off on being incredibly pedantic about a woman's appearance. Or perhaps they really just don't like bunions:

Much like the alt-right nuts who posit that the elderly alleged billionaire is secretly a fellow otaku, one commenter leaks that Donald might just be a wikiFeet adherent:

Even higher ranking than Melania is Trump's daughter Ivanka, whose nearly 500-picture gallery on the site has earned 702 five-star ratings. Whereas the commenters on Melania's page are priggish and critical, the commenters on Ivanka's page are more, ah, submissive:

The wikiFeet commenters take the usually unspoken sexualization of women in politics and make it grossly, obviously explicit. But in doing so, they illustrate the odd relationship between admiration and attraction. I bet Rich Lowry doesn't sit up straight when, say, Palin impersonator Tina Fey winks on 30 Rock; likewise, GEMINISTALLION74 isn't just drawn to Palin's feet but her whole persona. It's no fun to worship the feet of a woman who you think is a traitor to the country. While some users struggle to put politics aside and maintain a consistent and fair aesthetic, the majority convince themselves, through compartmentalization, that the feet of their political opponents are not worth getting off to. As far as wikiFeet is concerned, the political ideology trumps the sexual one.

But ultimately wikiFeet is a site made up of everyday people just like you or me, people who want the best for their community and want sweeties to show them the feet. Some love Clinton, some love Trump, and some are just sick of a political landscape that will never give them what they want. "Goodbye America," Tff2184 wrote last month on Clinton's page. "Even the first female president will have the feet of an oxen (sob)."

Virgil Texas is a pseudonym. Follow him on Twitter.

No idea what the We-Vibe is doing out here. Photo via Facebook

An Ottawa-based vibrator company is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly monitoring and recording how its customers jerk off.

Standard Innovation, the company behind the smartphone-controlled vibrator We-Vibe, has been accused of deliberately violating privacy laws to "secretly collect intimate details about its customers' use of the We-Vibe," according to a lawsuit filed in Illinois.

The We-Vibe website says its users can control their own vibrators and their partners' with the We-Connect app, giving them the opportunity to "tease and please with custom vibes you create."

But that teasing and pleasing comes with a heavy price tag, as the plaintiff in this case, an Illinois woman who goes by the initials N.P., allegedly discovered after purchasing a We-Vibe in May 2016.

In what can be described a worst-case jerking-off scenario, the plaintiff alleges the makers of her $130 We-Vibe were keeping track of things like "the date and time of each use and the selected vibration settings" and was transferring that data, along with customers' emails, onto their Canadian servers. Think about that: some randoms out in Ottawa potentially have access to often We-Vibe users and their partners get each other off, and whether or not they're feeling a "cha cha cha" vibe or going straight for "crest" mode at any given time.

According to the lawsuit, Standard Innovation failed to notify or warn customers about its allegedly creepy masturbation surveillance. (Wonder why.)

The plaintiff is seeking an injunction prohibiting Standard Innovation from monitoring people's self-pleasuring habits without written consent and is demanding the company destroy all current information of this nature in its possession. She is also seeking financial compensation including the cost of the vibrators plus punitive damages.

In a statement to Motherboard, Standard Innovation said the company uses certain limited data in "an aggregate, non-identifiable form" to help improve products.

"There's been no allegation that any of our customers' data has been compromised. However, given the intimate nature of our products, the privacy and security of our customers' data is of utmost importance to our company. Accordingly, we take concerns about customer privacy and our data practices seriously." Not exactly an outright denial.

Showerheads have never been more appealing.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Pixabay

People living in abusive situations can now more quickly and easily break their leases in Ontario thanks to new legislative amendments that came into effect last week.

Photo via Pixabay

Working in retail sucks. Not because it requires you to parrot current promotions (even though signs that plaster the entire store say the exact same thing) or because you have to abide by a set of corny acronyms that dictate how you should first approach a customer. For black women, working retail is particularly excruciating because we are constantly reminded by both coworkers and customers that we are in fact black women. We find ourselves in a never ending cycle of having to negotiate the emotional labour that accompanies working in retail occupations. Speaking up about it means deciding whether or not you want to subscribe to respectability politics or be tone policed or fall into the angry black woman stereotype. Alternatively, choosing not to speak up means deciding that you are going to negate your own feelings so that you don't lose your job, hours or seem like a nuisance to management.

At my last retail job, a commission-based footwear store, I was helping an older white lady find an item. It had the makings of a perfect sale: she selected a high-end brand, there was good employee-customer interaction, and she even agreed to purchase some product care. While cashing her sale she asked, "All that hair, is it yours? It looks like it but I'm not sure." I didn't answer. The politics of black hair is not my responsibility to explain, especially to people that I don't know. I instead asked her if she would be paying by cash, credit, or debit. She chose her tender, I put the receipt in the bag and expected her to walk out. She stared at me and asked, "So your hair?" I gave in and said, "I wish it was all mine," and then she smiled and walked out.

I doubt non-black women are asked, sometimes multiple times in one day, whether or not their hair belongs to them. Both inside and outside of the work place, the appearances of black women—notably with regards to sporting natural hair or protective styles—are policed, surveilled, and enforced under the guise of complying with dress code policies and appearance standards. Comments on hair, often appear in form of microaggressions disguised as compliments that end up turning into extremely invasive experiences. "Time and time again, customers would reach out, with both hands, to grab fistfuls of my hair and tell me, 'I would never need to purchase a pillow,'" shares former retail worker Tia Gordon. "Some customers even went as far as to resting their head on mine to tell me that my hair was so big they could sleep in it."

Even more invasive is when customers ask you to justify or prove your Blackness. I've had co-workers tell me that I wasn't a "typical black person" on the grounds that I could "articulate myself well." Martika Jabbari, who has worked retail since her mid-teens recalls a similar experience and mentions, "The most uncomfortable conversation that a customer has brought up to me was about my appearance and how I don't look black. Then while explaining where both my parents come from, their response was, 'Oh, so you're not that black.'"

Though going to work may seem like a mundane activity, much like going on Tinder or buying a jacket, there are obviously other concerns for black women that transcend what they are immediately doing. Worrying about whether or not you'll be dehumanized in some capacity by a customer or co-workers is a reality that could ultimately affect one's attitude towards the workplace and other employees, and even more so when, in some instances, there is little to no help from management to ensure that comfortability is priority. At that point, full- or part-time employment in retail can easily become a dreadful experience.

Rules of employee conduct and the invisible barrier between customer and employee won't stop offensive comments and behaviors from occurring. Let's just hope that while residents of cities like Toronto continue to make claims towards accepting diversity and multiculturalism, that it doesn't stop while they shop.

Follow Sharine Taylor on Twitter.

Eddie Carmel with one day's worth of food. Photo via Getty

Let's say you want to lose some weight. Which of these foods would you choose: A skim-milk latte, or the same drink with whole milk? A low-cal breakfast bar, or steak and eggs? A salad tossed in light dressing, or the same salad doused with buttermilk ranch?

If you're like most Americans, you either aren't sure how to answer, or you're very sure—but very wrong. And it's not your fault. It's the fault, experts say, of decades of flawed or misleading nutrition advice—advice that was never based on solid science.

The US Department of Agriculture, along with the agency that is now called Health and Human Services, first released a set of national dietary guidelines back in 1980. That 20-page booklet trained its focus primarily on three health villains: fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.

Recently, research has come out strongly in support of dietary fat and cholesterol as benign, rather than harmful, additions to person's diet. Saturated fat seems poised for a similar pardon.

"The science that these guidelines were based on was wrong," Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told VICE. In particular, the idea that cutting fat from a person's diet would offer some health benefit was never backed by hard evidence, Lustig said.

Just this week, some of Lustig's colleagues at UCSF released an incendiary report revealing that in the 1960s, sugar industry lobbyists funded research that linked heart disease to fat and cholesterol while downplaying evidence that sugar was the real killer.

Nina Teicholz, a science journalist and author of the The Big Fat Surprise, said a lot of the early anti-fat push came from the American Heart Association (AHA), which based its anti-fat stance on the fact that fat is roughly twice as calorie-dense as protein and carbohydrates.

"This advice to avoid fat allowed the food industry to go hog-wild promoting low-fat, carb-heavy foods as 'light' or 'healthy,' and that's been a disaster for public health," Lustig said.

"[The AHA] had no clinical data to show that a low-fat diet alone would help with obesity or heart disease," Teicholz told VICE. But because fat was high in calories, they adopted this anti-fat position, and the government followed their lead. Surely the 1960s research rigged by the Sugar Association, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, added to our collective fat fears.

By the 1990s, when Teicholz says the epidemiological data started piling up to show that a low-fat, high-carb diet did not help with weight loss or heart disease—calories be damned—much of the damage was already done. The US public was deep in what nutrition experts sometimes call "the Snackwell phenomenon"—a devotion to low-fat and low-calorie processed snack foods, which people pounded by the bagful because they believed them to be healthy.

"This advice [to avoid fat] allowed the food industry to go hog-wild promoting low-fat, carb-heavy packaged foods as 'light' or 'healthy,' and that's been a disaster for public health," Lustig said.

The stats back him up. Since the US government first published a set of national nutrition guidelines in 1980, rates of obesity and related diseases like diabetes have more than doubled. "Childhood diabetes was basically unheard of, and now it's an epidemic," Lustig said.

Overseas, national health authorities followed America's lead on fat. The results have been similarly grim. Earlier this year, a UK non-profit called the National Obesity Forum (NOF) published a blistering condemnation of its government's diet and nutrition policies.

In its report, the NOF argues that advice to cut back on fat and cholesterol is "the root cause" of Britain's skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes. Speaking shortly after the report's publication, Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who consulted on the NOF report, said, "The change in dietary advice to promote low-fat foods is perhaps the biggest mistake in modern medical history.

Along with ripping its government's "failed policies," the NOF report called for a "complete overhaul of dietary advice and public health messaging."

In a recent editorial appearing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researcher Zoe Harcombe from the University of the West of Scotland explains that obesity rates among British men and women rose from 2.7% in 1972 to 23% and 26%, respectively, by 1999.

"There are only three macronutrients," Harcombe told VICE, "protein, fat, and carbohydrates." Nearly everything you eat or drink contains one or more of these. And if you followed the government's advice to eat less fat, it's inevitable that your carb consumption would shoot up, she said. That's just what happened at a population level during the 1980s and 90s.

A whole generation of health professionals accepted—and passed on to their patients—the government's guidance to avoid fat and cholesterol. Many still do.

To give credit where credit is due: The latest iteration of the US Government's dietary guidelines no longer makes a point of capping total fat and cholesterol intakes. But this omission is more a furtive walking back of bad advice than a public acknowledgment of error, Teicholz said. Worse: "When you look at the actual nutritional modeling that the government uses to inform its feeding programs, such as the National School Lunch program, they are all still low in fat," she said.

Another example of the government's persistent crusade against fat: The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans still push low-fat dairy over full fat—a recommendation the latest research doesn't support.

"Studies have not shown benefits of low-fat dairy over full-fat for weight loss, especially if the fat calories are replaced with sugar," Walter Willett, chair of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, told VICE. "If anything, the evidence goes the other way."

Willett is quick to point out that he doesn't consider whole milk and full-fat cheese "health foods." Nuts, for example, are a healthier source of fat, he said. But if you're going to sip some milk or eat some yogurt, the evidence suggests your waistline may be better off with the full-fat stuff—probably because it's more filling, and so curbs excessive eating.

Teicholz said it's hard to overstate the effect of national health authorities' pro-carb, anti-fat stance. A whole generation of health professionals accepted—and passed on to their patients—the government's guidance to avoid fat and cholesterol. Many still do.

"Both professional and institutional credibility are at stake," she said when asked why more doctors and policymakers aren't making noise about the harms caused by the government's dietary guidance. She also mentioned food industry interests, the potential for "massive class-action lawsuits," and the shame of copping to nearly a half-century of bad diet advice as deterrents for USDA and other health authorities when it comes to admitting they were wrong.

In the United Kingdom, the disconnect between nutrition science and government dietary policy has opened rifts within the public health community. Since its report's publication, the National Obesity Forum has lost four of its senior members, and the fallout has sparked a national debate among doctors, nutrition scientists, and policy makers over what sorts of food truly belong in a healthy diet.

"Our previous reports had garnered little interest, so we had no way of knowing this one would go interplanetary," David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum and a professor of obesity sciences at Robert Gordon University, told VICE.

Repeating the advice put forward in his organization's report, Haslam said he firmly believes public health would be greatly improved if we all just ate fewer refined carbohydrates—stuff like baked goods, chips, breakfast cereals, and other packaged goods—and instead ate more "natural foods" regardless of their macronutrient content.

This last point—that we should all pay less attention to a food's nutrient makeup—is an important one. Harvard's Willett said focusing only on a food's specific macro and micronutrient content is confusing, and not a good way to evaluate an item's health impacts.

So what's a confused dieter to do?

Jenny Knight, 30, is a speech therapist and mother of two in Norman, Oklahoma. "I've struggled with my weight since I was eight years old," Knight told VICE. At 5-foot-9 and close to 250 pounds, she's obese by any definition.

Like many heavy Americans, Knight has experimented with a hundred different diets that, when you boil them down, all advocate for cutting fat or calories in order to lose weight. Sooner or later, all of them failed her. "Even when they were working, it was all about willpower," she said. "I'd be so hungry I'd be shaking, and eventually I wouldn't be able to keep that up anymore, and I'd gain all the weight back."

But since February, Knight has been on a fat-centric diet championed by David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at Harvard.

Speaking to VICE, Ludwig said that cutting fat from your diet in favor of processed carbs can trigger a cascade of unhealthy metabolic shifts that fuel diseases like diabetes and cause your body's fat cells to lock in—rather than dump—their energy. All this results in "out-of-control" hunger, he said. Cutting more calories from your diet just adds fuel to that fire.

His plan, which he lays out in his book Always Hungry?, champions a shift away from carb-heavy processed food in favor of a diet heavy in fats from nuts, full-fat dairy, natural oils, and other whole foods.

So far, Knight has lost 32 pounds on Ludwig's plan. But it's not just the lost weight that has her feeling optimistic. "This is the only diet I've ever tried that feels effortless—just no willpower required," she said. "It honestly feels decadent to eat things like dark chocolate or peanut butter or coconut milk, and I'm not hungry like I used to be."

Ludwig's diet may or may not be the answer to all our weight-loss prayers. But one thing is clear: dietary fat was never the boogeyman health authorities made it out to be.

"I think most of us would be 90 percent of the way to a really healthy diet if we just cut out processed foods," UCSF's Lustig said. "We wouldn't need diet guidelines if we ate real food."

Boom Festival attendees wait for test results on their drugs near Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, last month. Photo by the author

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If you've been to a mainstream music festival in the United States, you've probably encountered your share of robust security measures. Long bag-check lines and uniformed police or private security guards are routine, and they're often tasked at least in part with weeding out illegal drugs.

But in Portugal, where the government's approach to drugs is almost completely outside the realm of law enforcement, the climate at music festivals is rather different. Onsite drug-checking services test purity, and virtually no one is hassled for their supplements of choice. That's because 15 years ago, a bold national policy was implemented where low-level possession of all drugs was decriminalized. Now the people doing the regulating are health officials, not cops.

As a frequent festival-goer in the past few years, I wanted to see for myself how one of the countries that's come the closest in the world to ending the drug war handles substances at these events. So I reached out to Dr. Maria Carmo Carvalho at the Catholic University of Portugal, head of Kosmicare, an organization that helps concert-goers dealing with a bad trip—or worse. At the Boom Festival, a biennial gathering held near the Spanish border around the full moon last month, about 100 Kosmicare volunteers committed to round-the-clock care for the more than 30,000 attendees throughout the weeklong event. I was one of them.

Kosmicare is in the thick of what's called the "harm reduction" trend—which is to say it's all about minimizing risk and keeping people from going off the deep end. But unlike the harm reduction efforts aimed at, say, providing clean syringes for heroin users or safe places for them to get high, Kosmicare is a pioneer in psychedelic harm reduction, specifically drug use at musical festivals. That means drugs like LSD, shrooms, ketamine, and various psycho-stimulants, often in combination with alcohol and weed. After all, when you combine a dry, hot environment with 18 hours a day of pounding psytrance, bad trips are bound to happen.

"We estimate that our service covers around 1 percent of the total festival population," Carvalho told VICE, adding that many people who come to the festival are from countries like France and the United Kingdom and are not used to the openness of such a service. While drug use itself is still not technically legal in Portugal, the decriminalization process has all but removed police involvement from casual use, instead keeping cops' focus on interdiction and high-level suppliers. Because of this, Carvalho explained, "People have nothing to fear from using our services, which includes our staff."

In order to be accepted on the Kosmicare team at Boom, this past February I tried to gain some experience by volunteering for the US-based Zendo Project in Costa Rica. Helping people stuck in the throes of challenging psychological experiences, often stemming from drug use, is the more modest goal here. One man I encountered kept asking, over and over again, "Really, though, am I in trouble, did I do something wrong? This kind of work is confidential, so I can't reveal his name, but can say that for the previous few hours, I'd been chasing the 20-something from Canada around the grounds of Costa Rica's Envision Festival, trying to contain his fitful behavior.

"That's where services like Zendo come in," explained Sara Gael, the Colorado-based psychotherapist who heads up the organization. She said the group has served some 1000 guests since 2012, both in the United States and abroad.

Not knowing for sure what, if anything, this particular man took, I could only try and make sure he was safe and didn't do anything he might later gravely regret, like giving away all of his money to strangers in the food court. (He tried repeatedly.) Once in my care, he eventually calmed down, presumably when he stopped peaking. When he came to shortly after sunrise the next day, he was confused and upset with himself. But he was also grateful that he wasn't in jail or a hospital—that a modern approach to recreational drug use had helped him out of a jam.

Once I made it to Portugal, I learned that unlike the legal atmosphere back home—where those who try to test drugs on site risk expulsion or arrest—a culture stressing safer use has been inculcated in plain sight, and spanned the entire course of the festival.

Every night near Boom's main dance stage, a team of volunteers ran the check!n table, where people could drop off small samples of drugs and a few hours later learn the results of what was actually in their baggies. In addition to this service, funded by a Portuguese NGDO, Boomers could receive drug information pamphlets, ear-plugs, and even tiny water bottles for nasal rinsing and paper cards meant to be used as snorting paraphernalia.

Facing my own culture shock with such progressive services, I was encouraged by the dozen guests I sat with throughout the week at Kosmicare, most coming by themselves after they realized their need for support. Instead of telling me they took "acid" or "molly," they referred more specifically to drugs they had tested at check!n, which informed them that they were actually consuming LSD or MDMA.

One of Dr. Carvalho's former classmates*—also a Kosmicare volunteer—is actually conducting a study on the impact this information from drug checking has on someone's decision-making over the course of a given music festival. For example, check!n received several samples of one gram baggies of coke going for €90 (about $100) that, when tested, revealed no cocaine. The former classmate, Helena Valente, wants to know whether people cut their losses and tossed the bag, or rolled the dice and gave it a sniff anyway.

All of this may sound like some kind of utopian vision for a drug-fueled future of partying, pushed by the clandestine agendas of private organizations taking advantage of international legal flexibility. But as festivals around the world attract more and more people, Gael hopes that calls for broader social cohesion—and harm reduction—will prevail in the United States, too.

"I believe that we are seeing increased public awareness of the importance and necessity of services which support the mental and emotional well-being of people who choose to use substances," she said.

Kevin Franciotti is an independent journalist in New York whose work on psychedelic research has appeared in New Scientist magazine and Reason.com. Follow him on Twitter.

*Correction 9/15: An earlier version of this article said the study was being conducted by a student rather than a former classmate.

Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka in Pennsylvania. This week the Republican candidate rolled out a maternity leave plan that falls short of what Hillary Clinton supports. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

This week, Donald Trump made history as the first Republican presidential nominee to propose paid maternity leave and a childcare plan for new parents. It was a moment that went relatively under the radar, focused as the media was on "deplorables" and the scandals around Trump and Hillary Clinton's charitable foundations, but it was important nonetheless. The GOP's standard-bearer has essentially endorsed an idea more usually associated with the left: Women shouldn't be punished by their jobs for becoming pregnant.

Trump's plan is predictably light on the details. Under his proposal, new mothers would get six weeks of paid leave, and families would get an income tax deduction for childcare. The Trump plan also offers a $1,200 childcare spending rebate for low-income families and a savings account for childcare costs, which the government would match up to $500. Parental leave is popular among voters, and it could impact a lot of lives. Some 70 percent of American women with children under 18 work outside the home. In four in ten American families with children, the mother is the primary breadwinner—often because she's the only breadwinner, and the only parent, in the household.

At first glance, the Trump plan seems to be a recognition of this changed social landscape, and an indication that maybe the Republican Party is moving into the 21st (or even late 20th) century when it comes to questions of women and work. But though you might think that a presidential nominee would make sure his own party backs his proposals, there's been radio silence from leading Republicans: Nothing from House Speaker Paul Ryan, nothing from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, nothing even from Trump running mate Mike Pence, who held a Capitol Hill press conference with GOP congressional leaders on Tuesday and declined to discuss Trump's maternity leave plan.

Ryan's own "Better Way" reform agenda, which he released in June and which Pence touted , included nothing about childcare or parental leave. There's nothing in the GOP platform about family leave, and the only Republican presidential candidate to propose any form of paid leave was Marco Rubio, although his took the form of tax subsidies for businesses that offered paid leave to employees.

Paid parental leave and subsidized childcare have never been favorites of the Republican establishment. The official point of resistance hinges on generalized opposition to government programs; perhaps the more salient objection, if the one few Republicans will say out loud anymore, is simple ideological hostility to programs that make it easier for women to work outside the home, upending a long-declining traditional family model the GOP continually tries to politically engineer.

What makes Trump's plan even potentially appealing to his party is that it still reflects some very retro ideas about men, women, and work. Most notably, it's a plan for maternity leave, not parental leave full stop, and is therefore only for women.

Taking women but not men out of work to care for new babies sets the wheels of inequality in motion: Female employees, but not male ones, will bear the burden of their leaves being considered costly and onerous on their employers, which can have professional consequences for the women themselves as well as potential female hires, who employers may fear will take too much time off. Maternity leave without paternity leave potentially exacerbates the pay gap, leaving women poorer. And those early days of parenting are a steep learning curve; if only the mother bonds with and learns how to care for the baby, it's both a loss for the father and a potential career-interrupter for mom—when it's mom and not dad who knows how to soothe the baby, change the baby, and feed the baby, it starts to "just make sense" that mom will take on more of the childcare work, potentially to the point of giving up on paid work.

Clearly, Trump thinks caring for children is a lady problem—he's bragged about refusing to changediapers, and his maternity leave and childcare plans are clearly in the sphere of his daughter Ivanka, who is publishing a book about women and work next year. In announcing his plan, Trump imitated his 34-year-old daughter: "Daddy, daddy, we have to do this," he said.

Some Republicans are criticizing the Trump plan as Clinton-lite, and they're right: It's sort of like what she's offering, but not as good. The Clinton plan, released a year ago, promises 12 weeks of leave for new parents, anyone caring for a sick relative, or someone who is seriously ill themselves, at two-thirds of their full pay. It's financed by tax hikes on the highest earners (Trump's plan would be paid for by a vague promise to root out unemployment fraud). Clinton would put a cap on childcare costs at 10 percent of a family's income; families would recoup the rest in tax cuts and state-issued subsidies. She would also expand universal preschool options, raise wages for care workers, and offer childcare scholarships to student parents. Her plan isn't exactly the feminist dream either, but it's marginally closer.

Another way Trump's plan falls short of Clinton's in scope is that it doesn't do much for the poor. Most of the childcare benefits would come in the form of income tax breaks, which won't benefit the poorest Americans, who don't pay income taxes and would have to pony up for childcare up front. Trump did offer up to $1,200 in childcare spending rebates over a year, but evidently he doesn't realize or doesn't care that $100 or less a month doesn't get you much when childcare costs often exceed the price of in-state college tuition. Many childcare facilities also either refuse to accept or charge more for infants—and if women are going back to work after six weeks, they're going to need infant care.

If Trump wins, we'll see how serious he is about all this, and whether he could get Congressional Republicans to go along. If Trump loses, one imagines that it will be easy for the Republican conservative orthodoxy that his campaign has challenged to reassert itself, writing Trumpism off as a failure and playing back to the old base. Maternity leave and childcare would likely be among the first Trump proposals to be tossed to the wayside. But who knows—Paul Ryan famously refused to give up his family time for work. Maybe, in a few years, his daughter will take a cue from Ivanka and tell her daddy it's time for a change.

Jill Filipovic is a journalist and author of the forthcoming The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.