Photo of real cool friends via Creative Commons.

The New York Times recently asked, "Do Your Friends Actually Like You?" If that's a question you have to ask yourself, the answer is probably, "No, of course they don't."

But what if there was a way to be sure—really, truly, 100 percent sure—that your friends had your well-being in mind at all times? Now there is.

Simply download and print out the below legally binding Friendship Contract and badger a friend, loved one, or nearby animal to sign it. Then bask in the contentment of knowing that, unless they care to face stiff penalties, the people closest to you will be forced to care about you forever.

FRIENDSHIP CONTRACT

BE IT KNOWN, this agreement is entered into on this day, __________ , 20___, between one fantastic, charismatic, and humble person, ______________ (hereinafter also referenced as "Friend #1"), and a generous, super cool, supporter-for-life __________________________ (hereinafter also referenced as "Friend #2").

Now, therefore, it is agreed as follows:

ARTICLE 1: BEING THERE FOR EACH OTHER

§ 1.1 Friend #2 will be there for Friend #1 at all times including but not limited to: When it's raining outside and Friend #1 gets sad thinking about the little raindrops dying painfully as they hit the pavement, when it's not raining, and when it's one of those days where it's raining for a bit but then not raining for another bit.

§ 1.2 Friend #2 MUST support Friend #1's artistic endeavors, no matter how amateurish or unwise those endeavors are.

§ 1.2.1 If Friend #1 starts playing guitar, Friend #2 is required to issue frequent supportive statements such as: "Now we're grooving!" "You're making that thing talk, friend!" and "You sound even better than Blues Traveler!"

§ 1.3 If Friend #1 is going through a breakup, Friend #2 must break up with their own significant other so that both Friend #1 and Friend #2 can hit the town together looking for new love.

ARTICLE 2: HELPING EACH OTHER

§ 2.1 Whenever Friend #1 needs to move, Friend #2 will help.

§ 2.1.1 Excuses like, "My back is out," or "I just helped you move six weeks ago, please find a stable apartment," are not permissible.

§ 2.2 Friend #2 promises to come over anytime Friend #1 spots a large bug or medium-size shadow that might be a bug and needs help smushing it.

ARTICLE 3: RELATIONSHIP PREEMINeNCE

§ 3.1 If Friend #1 introduces Friend #2 to a third friend, Friends #2 and #3 MAY NOT BECOME BETTER FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER than they are with Friend #1.

§ 3.2 Friend #2 is free to discuss the terms of this contract with anyone. However, Friend #2 is prohibited from introducing Friend #1 as, "The person from the contract" or "My friend who is all weird about being friends."

§ 3.2.1 Friend #1's preferred introduction is, "You wanted the best, you got the best! Ladies and gentlemen, Friend #1!"

ARTICLE 4: SPENDING TIME TOGETHER

§ 4.1 If Friend #2 is watching a sporting event, they must invite Friend #1.

§ 4.1.1 Friend #2 agrees to provide a selection of magazines for Friend #1 to read, since Friend #1 doesn't really like sports all that much.

§ 4.2 Friend #2 agrees with the statement, "It's just not a party if Friend #1 isn't there!" and so will hold ZERO (0) social gatherings without inviting Friend #1.

§ 4.2.1 Social gatherings include but are not limited to:

• Dinner parties
• Movie nights
• Lacrosse tournaments
• Bar trivia outings
• Shopping extravaganzas
• Ironic wax museum visits
• Sincere wax museum visits
• All group texts

§ 4.3 Friend #2 MUST attend Friend #1's guitar recital, even if the recital is being held at Friend #1's apartment and all of the performers are just Friend #1 and all of the songs are just Blues Traveler's Four in order.

ARTICLE 5: NONSTOP EMOTIONAL HONESTY

§ 5.1 Both parties agree that friendships can't be one-sided. Friendships must be based on mutual concern and loyalty. Therefore, if Friend #2 is being a jerk, you'd better believe Friend #1 is going to bring it up and throw it right back in Friend #2's face.

§ 5.1.1 And Friend #2 is going to sit there and take it, legally.

§ 3.2 After any fights, Friend #2 will apologize and reflect on how they hurt Friend #1.

ARTICLE 6: ENTERTAINMENT EQUALITY

§ 6.1 Friend #2 may not, under any circumstances, get ahead of Friend #1 in watching episodes of new Netflix shows. Even if Friend #1 is in a coma forever.

ARTICLE 7: TRYING NEW THINGS TOGETHER

§ 7.1 Friend #2 will share all news of cool new bands, restaurants, and books with Friend #1.

§ 7.1.1 At this point, Friend #2 and Friend #1 will enter a one (one) month-long "EXCLUSIVITY PERIOD" in which neither Friend #1 nor Friend #2 will share their cool finds with any other friends.

ARTICLE 8: INSIDE JOKES

§ 8.1 Friend #1 and Friend #2 will share a minimum of ten (10) inside jokes between them.

§ 8.1.1 If it is found that a third party did NOT have to "be there" to appreciate an inside joke, that joke will no longer count toward the minimum of ten (10) inside jokes.

ARTICLE 9: GIFT GIVING

§ 9.1 Friend #1 is looking for a new sous-vide cooker.

ARTICLE 10: PENALTIES AND SANCTIONS

§ 10.1 If Friend #2 is found to be in violation of any piece of this contract, that's OK—Friend #2 can just go ahead and destroy Friend #1's life, as if their friendship never meant anything at all. Friend #1 agrees to be sad forever and to never forgive Friend #2.

§ 10.2 Friend #1 will never play Blues Traveler's "Hook" on guitar ever again. It would be too painful.

I/We do hereby affirm and declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, the United States and the State of _____________, that this agreement has been entered into voluntarily, and without any threats, promises, duress and/or coercion of any type.

This agreement shall be enforced with the laws of the State of _______________.

Signed this ______________ day of _________________, 20__

____________________________________
Friend #1

_____________________________________
Friend #2

Witness:

______________________________________________________
The President of the United States or John Popper

{ NOTARY SEAL IF NECESSARY IN YOUR STATE }

Follow Sam Weiner on Twitter.

The author, considering the question: can Wetherspoons hotels revitalise the domestic British tourist trade?

Little known fact: Wetherspoons own and operate over 40 hotels in the UK. I say "little known" because I – a proper Wetherspoons head; a man whose blood runs worryingly thick with the chain's £3 pints – did not know that Spoons owned and operated 40 hotels in the UK until I read a recent issue of the chain's monthly magazine, The Wetherspoon News, cover to cover.

The first branch – The Shrewsbury Hotel, in Shrewsbury – opened almost 20 years ago, and the pub chain's been at it ever since, taking over old buildings, laying down one of their signature carpets and putting a "JD" over the door. Apparently every hotel offers unlimited free WiFi and a place to sleep, drink and eat from £39 a night.

Thanks to super cheap air travel (it's literally cheaper to fly from Edinburgh to Malaga than get a train from London to Brighton) interest in the Great British Holiday continues to slump. According to Visit England, in 2014 there was a 9 percent fall in domestic tourism and a £90 million decrease in the amount of money spent on caravan and camping holidays. Just today, in fact, it was revealed that those under 50 have cut spending on tourism by 5 percent over the past five years.

So could Wetherspoons hotels be the remedy Visit England is almost certainly searching for? If people knew they could pay £39 a night at The Royal Hop Pole in Tewkesbury, would they choose that over a £51 flight to Krakow and three nights in a hostel surrounded by braying stag lads trying to murder each other with alcohol? I couldn't say "yes" definitively. But yes. Definitively yes.

So in the true spirit of Brexit – something Spoons owner Tim Martin lost millions in after campaigning to leave the EU – I decided to get the word out and see if I could revive Britain's dying tourist trade. So off I went to The King's Head Hotel in Beccles, Suffolk, to enjoy a two night stay in which I would solely live, eat and sleep Wetherspoons.

I arrived on a scorching September afternoon, checked in and put my bags down. That brief amount of movement was thirsty work, so I cooled off with a nice £3 Guinness.

Here was an aspect of the British vs. overseas holiday I was a little worried about, because everybody knows the absolute best bit of any trip is drinking a pint really quickly in an airport Spoons before your flight and then trying to stifle the vomit rising quickly to your throat. But the great news is: you don't even need to fly to do that! You can just go to a Wetherspoons hotel and down a thick, creamy Guinness as fast as you possibly can!

British holiday: 1; Overseas holiday: 1.

After this, I had a wander around the place to see what kind of fun activities I could get up to on my weekend mini-break. Problem with this particular place was that it was incredibly hard to navigate and I kept getting lost in the winding corridors. Which was thirsty work.

Luckily, once I made it to the main pub area to re-hydrate, I found there were plenty of activities to keep me entertained. Your other classic weekend break locations – Amsterdam, Paris, Zante – might have weed shops, patisseries and inadvisable bungee jump opportunities, but here I had: food, cheap drink, pub quiz machines, cheap drink, lots of time to stare into the abyss, food, fruit machines and more cheap drink.

So in celebration of Wetherspoons founder and Vote Leave campaigner Tim Martin gambling away lots of his money on Brexit, I too gambled away my money, on the fruit machines. I lost five quid – so two pints and some chips – and finally felt like I was fully living la vida Spoons. Which, in this case, translated to: a slightly deflated sense of loss.

READ: Meet the Woman Trying to Visit Every Wetherspoons in the UK

But hey, I wasn't about to let some tenuous political commentary ruin my holiday. Not when there are pints of Magners cider available for literally £2. TWO POUNDS! You can get pissed on a tenner! You can find an excuse to add some Jagerbombs to your round and suddenly realise it's 11PM and that you've been drinking all day and that it's probably a good idea to give it a rest before your liver starts bleeding loads!

And that's one great thing about Wethersoons hotels: if it is your wont, you can spend hours getting shitfaced for a very small amount of money, and your bed is just a short trundle away. So off I went, for a little rest.

RISE AND SHINE, YOU'RE LIVING IN A WETHERSPOONS! NOW CLEANSE YOURSELF WHILE DRINKING A PINT OF GUINNESS THAT ONLY COSTS £3.05 THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE FROM NINE IN THE MORNING.

And another glorious day it was. Especially because I already had a good buzz going by half 10 in the morning.

I spent the first half of the day wandering around the beer garden, talking to people and trying to work out who exactly the target audience is for Spoons' chain of hotels. Turns out there's not really any rhyme or reason; guests there were as varied as they are at any other hotel.

There was a rowdy hen-do already pissed by 11AM, a few sullen men cradling pints and a load of elderly people having a lovely time eating food and drinking drink and doing your general pub stuff.

As the day wore on, it seemed the staycation gods were smiling down upon me, so to test how that other big holiday necessity – tanning – fared at the Spoons hotel, I hit the car park of The King's Head Hotel to catch some rays, bringing a pint of Kronenbourg with me for that continental touch ; )

Turns out the sun has the same effect on me in Beccles as it does anywhere in the world: my skin goes tight and red and I start to feel sick.

British holiday: 2; Overseas holiday: 2.

I'm not sure if you've ever tried to drink alcohol from the moment you wake up to the moment you lay your head down to rest, but without stuff like "food" or "water" or "cocaine" to level you out, it can be a little tricky. Luckily that night was "Curry Night", which meant I could get a huge curry and a red wine for about £7.

Can you do that in the cafes and bars of Strasbourg or Milan? I don't think so.

British holiday: 3; Overseas holiday: 2.

The pub was pretty lively by this point. There were some actual young people there, with their trainers and their backwards caps, and I thought I'd ingratiate myself among my peers by boasting about how I'd been drinking all day. Turns out nobody in the known universe is capable of being impressed by a stranger with beer breath bragging about how many pints he's drunk, so it didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. It was time for bed.

RISE AND SHINE, YOU'RE LIVING IN A WETHERSPOONS. NOW NURSE YOUR HANGOVER AND SHAME WHILE EATING A 1,500-CALORIE FRY-UP WITH A PINT OF KRONENBOURG THAT ONLY COSTS £6.99 IN TOTAL THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE FROM NINE IN THE MORNING.

I have to admit, by day three, close to spending 48 hours in the Wetherspoons hotel, the magic and initial excitement had somewhat worn off. My stomach was starting to solidify into one giant hardened intestinal tract, and I think I must have begun to smell like the very carpet I walked upon, i.e. spilt sambuca shots and stale Magners.

I longed for freedom, to escape and know what it was like on the outside, where music was allowed to be played publicly and the TV wasn't constantly stuck on BBC News. Let me free, J.D; let my spirit soar.

So could Spoons hotels be the cure to a decline in domestic British tourism? If my detailed scientific score-card is anything to go by – with British holidays coming out on top, thanks to the wonders of Wetherspoons and its cheap booze and comfy rooms and very affordable curry – yes. Yes it could.

@williamwasteman

All photos by Frederick Paxton for VICE

Taylor's morning routine is usually interrupted by the sight of a sailor furiously masturbating, usually as she is on her way to the shower.

"She do it the same time every day," she says, drawing on a cigarette. "One leg be hanging out with the curtain open."

"At this point I'm just... do whatever you do, you know what I'm saying?"

On board the USS Harry S. Truman, routine is everything. It's 10PM, which means Taylor is in the smoking area, a claustrophobic red-lit corridor on the edge of the boat that is atmospherically somewhere between Berghain and Burger King. 18-25 year-olds lean against the humming metalwork sipping sodas, the tinny beat of Chance the Rapper on somebody's phone punctuated at seven-minute intervals by the 150dB shriek of an F/18 taking off. Everyone here has their own rhythm.

Taylor finishes her 12-hour shift. She eats. She smokes. She returns to bed. She wakes to the half-mute pant of her roommate, leg swaying in her line of sight.

"It's the pretty girls," she says. "All the pretty-ass girls who come out my berthing, they the nastiest ones."

VICE visited the aircraft carrier for three days over summer. To understand life on board is to understand what it's like to be a beat in a giant metal musical with a choreography that diffuses down ten floors from the flight deck to the vessel's fat nuclear heart.

The Truman began its deployment on 26th of November last year, and by the time it finished in July, the Islamic State had lost half of its Iraqi and a fifth of its Syrian territory. Between December and our arrival in June, planes had flown 2000 separate sorties and dropped a record-breaking 1598 pieces of ordinance . America is winning the war. But we arrive the weekend after the mass shooting in Orlando gay club Pulse, which was initially claimed by the proto-state, and there is a tangible sense of unease that has spread right up to the flight tower, where Bret Batchelder, the commander of the harrier, is explaining why the Truman's tour has been extended a month.

"I'm not sure that there are more targets, but there are continuous targets," he says. "The fight is taking a while and I can't put a timeline on how long it might take."

Batchelder gazes down at the flight deck, 20 metres below, where the mechanical ballet of the F/18s is underway.

"Have you looked out the window?" he says. "In about one minute you're going to see those two airplanes up there get fired up and shot off the cap. "

The deck whirrs into life like a cuckoo clock. Hatches open and close.

"Here we go right now, they're getting ready. There is nothing like this in the world."

Men and women in brightly coloured jerseys cluster around the poised jets, their fist pumps, squats and lunges giving it the feel of a baseball field.

"It's an incredible team," says Batchelder. "There are 6000 members in this team. If you put it in the football analogy if the left guard misses his block, you know it's a three-yard loss and you're looking at second and 13. Here it's 6000 left guards and everybody's got to do their job to make the whole team successful, and it's incredibly inspiring and motivating to be a part of that."

It's a pristine operation. But it's also a long way from home. And the question of the role America's military plays in curbing the domestic threat of terrorism is on everyone's mind.

"The way we prevent from happening domestically in the United States or any other allied partners is to get at the root of it and eliminate the hate that the radical terrorists are perpetrating," says Batchelder.

"I think we defeat the homegrown terrorists by destroying the people that inspired them, okay?"

Not everyone on board agrees. Ethan is an ABE, meaning he launches planes from the flight deck. During a busy day, he can work 16-20 hours in blistering heat. Ethan enjoys the work and is pretty cool about the hours, although he misses his daughter.

"We may be able to destroy over here, but we're not going to be able to take them out in the States," says Ethan.

"There's really not a short answer for what you can't control. You won't be able to stop it. If somebody wants to do it they're going to do it."

"Do you think it's a gun control issue?" I ask.

"No, I love my guns! I'm a proud gun-owner myself. I have a lot. I have nine handguns, two shotguns, four 45s, one 90mm, one .38, two .40s and a .44."

Ethan spends the little free time he has working out. There are gyms everywhere. In the Hangar Bay, between the jets and the mechanics, men and women squat, press, heave, everyone slick with oil or sweat. Some of the hulks barrelling down the corridors are so big you're forced back into alcoves like you're playing Donkey Kong. Space is a rare commodity, and any scrap contains a treadmill or a bench press. The Truman abhors a vacuum.

The pilots enjoy a slightly upgraded lifestyle. Those who place themselves in harm's way on the frontline in Syria are rewarded with a few perks, including the Ready Rooms –a briefing area for each squadron where they can drop by to drink coffee, play Xbox (Fifa is usually the choice) and watch films.

Every pilot has a "call sign" or nickname as part of their ritualised initiation into the squadron, and when we visit the Wallbangers, it's "Zipples" who happens to be on duty, brewing coffee and playing Old Dominion on the stereo.

Zipples earned his call sign from the way he anxiously tweaks the pectoral zips on his flight suit. He's in charge of the evening film.

"I was thinking about Pearl Harbor," he says.

Do you ever watch Top Gun?

"Occasionally, just to laugh at it. There's a lot that's wrong, just wrong."

Zipples is a Hawkeye pilot, which means he flies surveillance missions in the area. I ask if he's been keeping an eye on the Russian frigate shadowing the Truman on the horizon. The zips oscillate wildly.

"Just checking out the area," he says.

Nighttime on the boat is signalled with a sudden transition to red lighting that bathes the metal skeleton in a soft pink light. As the sailors diffuse to their berths, the carrier seems to expand in every direction, the pink flanges of the empty corridors stretching like an infinite mirror lengthways along the boat, the great iridescent innards of the Truman sprawled out as far as the eye can see. A strange metallic stench pools in the corridors, like stale water or tissue fluid. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the clanking labyrinth, is a prismatic shrine to 33rd US president Harry S Truman, who coined the "Give 'Em Hell" slogan that adorns battle flags all over the boat.

At this time the smoking area is packed, and we are talking about sex.

"Honestly, I don't think a lot of people do it here," says Sara. "I know people that have and they usually get caught."

"Josh does it all the time."

"Yeah, but Josh is a shitbag. I'm smart and I'm not gonna do that shit."

Stacking thousands of young people in cramped conditions for eight months in any other context would probably result in a rapacious and unforgiving sexual hunger games; a rutting mass of oil-stained excessively toned gym bunnies working off months of sexual frustration. But get caught here and the penalties are severe. It begins with a trip to see the captain and ends with half-pay for the month, and a red band on your arm. And it's not really the kind of place where everyone is looking to get laid.

" treat you kind of like a guy," says Renae, 21. "And then you get to a port and you're like, wait a minute, I'm a girl."

Even so, some people manage it. There is only one point at which our press liaison prevents us from taking a photo, and that is when we stumble on a bucket of condoms in the medical room ("You can't take a picture of that," she says, whisking them away).

The frustrations of life on board sometimes express themselves in other ways. Late at night, the evening before we leave, we meet two glazed sailors stuck on the night shift.

"You get numb to the boat," says Michael. "You don't even feel time anymore."

" it was June 6th and I didn't even realise it was June 6th. I thought it was still the 1st. Especially at night when you never see daylight. It's weird."

They're on nights because they're being penalised. One swore at a superior; the other got into a fight.

"A lot of people lose their shit out here," he says.

Medical professionals and ordained pastors on board offer assessments, workshops and advice for sailors dealing with mental health issues and the stress of deployment, and there is a noticeable culture of looking out for each other. But you sense that everyone develops their own ways of coping with the tensions of deployment. Sara is a 23-year-old parachute packer with a total of seven stuffed animals on in her berth posted from her mum back in West Virginia. She recommends carrying two packets of cigarettes at all times, running up and down the ladders ("If you do it slow it's more tiring"), and learning not to fight the boat.

"It's like your mum. It rolls you to sleep and feeds you. It gives you balance," she says. And if you can find balance in this strange cocktail of Stockholm syndrome and ritualised purposefulness, you'll probably be OK.

"I love it here," says Sara. "I don't want to do it again, but I love it."

*Some names have been changed

@benbryant / @freddiepaxton

More photos:

Illustration: Tiana Dunlop

"Think of it this way," writes Plenty of Fish user JPD0414. "If you have a girl who's already happy and confident, there isn't much for you to improve, and you won't affect her life as much. But if she's depressed or has a crappy home life, you have the chance to be one of the few good things in her life and she'll like you more."

This anonymous internet nice guy goes on to explain that he has a real thing for girls with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression. You see, their mental ill health works in his favour! This white knight can stride in on his big shiny horse and rescue them from the depths of their own minds. He is there to save them from themselves, for that is his gift: he is a special man with a real passion for manipulating women.

In response, other users agree that "crazy chicks are the wildest in bed".

If you've had a long-term mental illness, you might be aware of the kind of men who look to women to satisfy their white knight fantasy. If you haven't, you only need to look to the internet for proof: scour forums and you'll find male teens asking questions like, "Why do I think suicidal girls are hot?" and young women wondering, "Why is this boy hitting on me more when I'm sad?"

There was even a study conducted in 2012 by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin that found, in general, men are more likely to go after you if you look "psychologically vulnerable" – but only for short-term involvement, i.e. sex.

So what do you do when you find yourself trapped with a partner who thinks your illness is the most attractive thing about you?

The problem, of course, is that these relationships don't tend to start as transparently as that. At the beginning, the attention paid to your mental illness might well be reassuring; finding someone who will openly say your depression is "fascinating" can almost seem like a relief – it's a sign they won't ignore you when you're sad or leave you because of something you can't control.

"I felt like I was being accepted," says Rachel of her first boyfriend, Chad, who would fetishise her depression and request that she cut herself to prove she truly loved him. "I felt like finding someone who would not turn their back on me for my mental health problems, especially at 17, would be impossible. In the beginning I saw it as someone accepting me for who I am, flaws and all. And the fact that he found my flaws attractive made me feel like we had a deeper connection."

Yet, really, the connection is superficial. You become the manic pixie dream girl. As the girls I speak to point out, your sickness is there to give the guy's life a sense of meaning and depth – which is exactly what he craves, granted you're not too overbearing and, you know, he actually has to look after you too much.

"Ultimately, Chad was a narcissist in its purest form," explains Rachel. "I think he was drawn to girls who had mental health problems because that was a reflection of himself. He also liked to assert his male dominance a lot, which meant he looked for broken birds that he could bend to his will. I don't think these guys want to save us – they want us to stay on the floor so they're always above us."

Trying to make some sense out of why certain men would behave like this, I reach out to practicing psychologist and therapist Eliana Barbosa.

"It's hard to understand completely, because each case is a case," she says. "But I think you can mainly split this behaviour between men who are sadistic – who get pleasure off seeing a woman in pain – and men who are emulating the cultural aspects of misogyny by dominating these women through their low self-esteem to assert themselves. Depression sometimes can make you destitute of your own desires, so girls who are struggling can end up submitting themselves to another, in order to feel some type of desire. It's not a conscious decision that these girls, or boys, who end up in manipulative relationships are making. These types of men take advantage of something that is lacking in these people's lives."

Lisa's relationship with her ex started as any would: they were happy for a while, she told him about her past traumas and disclosed her struggles with major depression and generalised anxiety disorder. He sounded sympathetic, making it clear that – due to his vast previous experience – he would know what to do and how to act if she experienced a depressive episode or a panic attack. It turned out he didn't at all.

"All his exes were also mentally ill," says Lisa of her ex-boyfriend. "He wouldn't exactly brag about it, but he would make it sound like all of them were still somehow in love with him and that any past break-ups destroyed these girls' mental health even further. He even implied that one of them got so much worse after they broke up that her fatal bike accident was probably her killing herself over him. Later, I found out she wasn't even driving and was in a new relationship at the time."

A person who actively seeks out someone who is mentally ill as "easy prey" to their manipulation is clearly someone trying to feel powerful. And, of course, once they progress into the relationship, in many cases – sadly – they will end up exerting a huge amount of dominance over their partner, which can make it very hard for that partner to break things off. But it does happen.

"Girls who were able to end things were still able to lay out boundaries," says Barbosa. "Regardless of how much abuse they endure, there comes a point where they go, 'No, this is enough,' which means there's still some strength left."

Lisa's boyfriend had a habit of being abusive by referring to her mental illnesses whenever she would display a negative emotion. "He would start fights over text, and several times he said, 'Go get yourself some treatment' in a pejorative way, even though he used to discourage me from going to my psych appointments," she says. "Whenever I said I liked him, he'd call me a liar. I broke up with him once and that made the emotional abuse come down harder. Any word and I was a crazy, hysterical, unloving bitch."

After a close friend shared her experience of previous emotional abuse, Lisa cut things off for good.

Dealing with mental illness in relationships is never easy, but now Lisa and Rachel are with people who respect them as partners and have stuck with them through difficult periods without being awful. Which is – surprise, surprise – a perfectly doable thing when you see your partner as an actual person and not just an ingredient in your own personal narrative.

"The difference between my ex and some other guys who fetishise mental illness is that he wanted to make me worse," says Lisa. "Most fetishists believe they will be a cure, the answer to all the problems. Those become even more abusive when they realise they're not."

To any women who might currently be dating men with white knight syndrome, or men who want you to be worse so they can feel better, Rachel has some pertinent advice.

"Those guys will eat at you, very subtly, until there's nothing left and you won't even notice when everything is gone," she says. "It's important to try to think about the parts of yourself that you think are worth noticing, and think of why he isn't looking. Most of the time, it's because he's too busy looking at himself. Be strong, ask for support and just fucking leave."

@bijubelinky

More on mental illness and relationships:

What Young People Fear the Most

How Young People Feel About Going Out, Housing and Mental Health

The NHS Can't Afford to Help the Mentally Ill Unless They're Desperate

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

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

US News

Clinton Wins First Debate, According to Polls
Initial surveys and focus groups indicate a majority of viewers thought Hillary Clinton won the first presidential debate. A poll of viewers by CNN / ORC found that 62 percent thought Clinton won and only 27 percent thought Donald Trump did. A similar poll by Public Policy Polling found that 51 percent thought Clinton won compared to 40 percent for Trump. And while both polls may have a Democratic lean, focus groups of undecided voters had similar results.—Vox

Police Kill Houston Gunman After He Injures Nine
At least nine people were injured when a gunman wearing an old military uniform and armed with thousands of rounds of ammunition opened fire in Houston Monday. Police killed the gunman, as yet unnamed, after he began shooting randomly at passersby. Police were seen removing what appeared to be a swastika from the gunman's car.—NBC News

Wildfire Spreads in the Santa Cruz Mountains
A fast-moving wildfire has spread across 1,000 acres and prompted the evacuations of 300 buildings in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. Crews continue to battle the fire, which is only five percent contained. A large plume of smoke coming from Santa Clara County can be seen for miles.—ABC News

At Least One Charlotte Officer Did Not Switch on Camera Until After Shooting
Some evidence in the police shooting of Keith Scott isn't going to turn up anytime soon because an officer failed to activate his body camera that day. The cop from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD, who has not been identified, did not turn on his camera until after the shooting, a violation of department policy.—The Washington Post

International News

Twelve Killed in Aleppo as Airstrikes Continue
Airstrikes erupted in rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Monday, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting at least 12 people, including three children, were killed. Rescue workers tried to help hundreds of wounded Syrians after a Russian-backed government air offensives, but just 30 doctors were said to be active in east Aleppo.—Al Jazeera

Colombia and FARC Sign Peace Deal
Colombia's government and the Marxist FARC rebel group have signed a peace deal to end over 50 years of war. President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leader Timochenko signed the accord with a pen made from a bullet casing. Colombians will vote on Sunday on whether to ratify the agreement, but polls suggest it will pass.—VICE News

Saudi Women File Petition to End Guardianship
A petition calling for reform of Saudi Arabia's much-maligned guardianship system—signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women—was said to be delivered to the government. As of now, women require the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad and often need permission from their guardian to work or study.—BBC News

Jordanians Protest Assassination of Writer
Protesters in Jordan staged a demonstration outside the prime minister's residence in Amman, angry at the failure to protect a Christian writer shot dead after he shared a cartoon image seen as insulting Islam on social media. A former Muslim preccher, The writer, Nahed Hattar, was shot by a former Muslim preacher on Sunday.—Reuters

Everything Else

Water Plumes Spotted Above Jupiter's Moon
NASA has revealed images of what may be water vapor plumes erupting from the surface of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. The revelation could pave the way for exploring signs of life without drilling past endless tracts of ice.—The Guardian

Ty Dolla $ign to Play MTV's Millennial Voting Event
Ty Dolla $ign and Vic Mensa will perform at MTV's Total Registration Live, a one-hour special on Tuesday for National Voter Registration Day. Kendall Jenner will also appear to encourage millennials to register to vote.—Rolling Stone

LeBron James Says He Respects Kaepernick's Protest
The NBA star backs Colin Kapernick's protest against police shootings and racial inequality, but does not plan to kneel during the national anthem. "When I'm passionate about something, I'll speak up on it, so me standing for the national anthem is something I will do. That's who I am, that's what I believe in. But that doesn't mean I don't respect and don't agree with what Colin Kaepernick is doing," he said.—AP

Canadian Officials Seize Enough Fentanyl to Make 8.4 Million Pills
Canada Border Services Agency officials have seized fentanyl 32 times in the past several months. Those seizures add up to 18.65 pounds of fentanyl—enough to produce more than 8.4 million pills at an estimated street value of $128 million.—VICE News

Twitter Refuses to Block Turkish Journalist
A Turkish court ordered Twitter to block the account of a noted journalist last week, accusing him of "instigating terrorism," but Twitter has decided not to comply. The account of Mahir Zeynalov, a well-known DC-based writer, is still up.—Motherboard

DEA Set to Ban Herbal Alternative Used by Heroin Users, Pain Sufferers This Week
A federal ban of Kratom, a South Asian herbal remedy used to treat both chronic pain and addiction, is set to start September 30. Forty-five members of Congress have written to the DEA asking them to delay the ban.—VICE

Photo collage by Adam Mignanelli

This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

The life of the freelancer is visibly lonely but invisibly crowded. It may seem like just you, your laptop, and your coffee shop, while all along you're competing for a livelihood with a crowd of strangers. Some of them might even work in the same coffee shop, emailing with the same bosses, each of you being played off the other. That disguise of loneliness is part of what makes freelancers so easy to rip off.

The grass may be somewhat greener in Wellington, New Zealand's seaside capital, on the southern end of North Island. It's the home of Enspiral, the subject of whispers and legends among knowing freelancers the world over—a parallel universe where self-employment is no longer lonely and powerless.

From 2003 to 2010, Enspiral was just the domain name used by Joshua Vial, an Australian software developer who lives in Wellington, for his personal-consulting business. By 2010, he was trying to spend less time on paid work and more on volunteer projects, and he turned Enspiral into a tool to help others do the same—sharing gig opportunities and freeing hours for good works. The company became a cooperative, co-owned by its members, of whom there are now about 40. Enspiral also includes about 250 "contributors" who are participants in the network, and 15 small companies called "ventures." Many members are techies of some sort, but people of any profession can, in principle, join. Vial stepped down from its board earlier this year. He's now, more or less, just another member.

Today, Enspiral serves as a financially lean, but anecdotally essential, connective fiber among these independent workers and small companies. Enspiral members still pass jobs around to help stabilize the ups and downs of freelancing, but now they also fund one another's business experiments and assist one another if things go sour. They hold retreats twice a year. They're relying less on the Robin Hood strategy of taking corporate contracts to pay for volunteer time by creating their own jobs and companies with do-gooding built in. Enspiral-affiliated ventures, for instance, include ActionStation, an online organizing tool; Scoop, an alternative-news source; and Chalkle, an education platform.

Maybe, when equality is its premise, work need not be segregated from life, from the ambitions and needs of our actual selves.

I spent a morning with Vial in a conference room at Enspiral Dev Academy, a web-developer boot camp he opened in 2014. He gave me a tour of the network on his laptop. Enspiralites work at several co-working spaces across town—and, increasingly, outside Wellington—but the space that most unites them is a cluster of online tools. Some are commercial platforms like GitHub and Slack; the most important ones, though, had to be built from scratch. My.enspiral.com is home to a bookkeeping tool, and at Cobudget.co, contributors and members allocate funds for their projects and worthy causes. Inspired by the Occupy movement, Loomio.org serves as the network's decision-making platform, and now activists, schools, governments, and companies from all over the world use it.

As Vial showed me the various tools and tasks, I asked questions about how they prevent bad actors. What if someone wanted to rig a decision on Cobudget to get money for his or her project? What if the project was a sham? He replied with a small shrug.

"It's a high-trust network," he said. "We don't try to optimize for low-trust situations."

A short walk from the Dev Academy, at the closest thing to Enspiral's main office, I met Alanna Krause, a migrant from California who found Enspiral early in its transition to collectivity. She is now, among other things, the "bossless leadership geek" at Loomio and an Enspiral board member. She and some of her co-workers relayed the litany of ways the network differs from any other co-working space.

"Somebody's laptop gets stolen, we buy them a new one," Krause told me "Somebody's house burns down, we pay their rent. Somebody's organization has to downsize, the other ones will hire those people." They also cover one another's therapy sessions, when needed. And the result of this safety net, she thinks, is "actual innovation." When you know someone has your back, it's easier to take risks.

"Co-ownership is another factor that builds trust," added Hannah Salmon, an artist who was part of the Dev Academy's inaugural class and writes code for Loomio. Just as Enspiral's members are co-owners, Loomio is a worker-owned cooperative. She was leaning her body against Ben Knight—her partner, a founder of Loomio, and the drummer in their punk band, Unsanitary Napkin.

Among the Enspiralites, I noticed an unusually affectionate office culture, with evidence of both monogamous couples and more polyamorous tendencies. Gone, it seems, is at least a major portion of the freelancer's conventional loneliness, together with some of the ramparts that guard the work-life divide. I was assured that consent reigns over all and that, contradicting the conventional wisdom of HR the world over, the cuddling doesn't cause problems at work.

Maybe problems just haven't happened yet—or maybe this miracle has something to do with the trust and the co-ownership, which supplant the dynamics of hierarchy that make romance in conventional offices so toxic. Maybe, when equality is its premise, work need not be segregated from life, from the ambitions and needs of our actual selves.

This story appeared in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Best guess for what's going on here is Donald Trump is attempting to charm voters with a Muppet impression during Monday night's debate. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The first presidential debate took place during primetime on America's eastern seaboard, but in London, where I watched it, it was the dead of night. It was an event meant for the witching hour—moderator Lester Holt may as well have stage-whispered "something wicked this way comes" as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took the stage—but it ended up being a particularly banal kind of witching hour.

Here were the forces of hell unleashed in a place that looked like a suburban conference center. The ground beneath our feet was crumbling but the backdrop remained Prozac blue, and one of the hell creatures had a bad case of the snuffles. This is what everyone's afraid of? A confused man telling people how good his ten-year-old son is with computers?

We British have always liked to think we have a particularly informed take on American elections. The "special relationship," a shared language, and an understanding of the importance of getting your dick out for Harambe are just some of the things that have us believing we get American politics in a way that our European neighbors don't.

I'll make no claims there, but having worked on two hour-long documentaries about Donald Trump this year, I've spent more time thinking about the Great Orange Fear than is healthy. There he is, telling me that "a lot of people are saying" he's a really terrific guy, and that "by the way," Crooked Hillary founded ISIS with Barack Obama. There he is, floating before me, pulling his two trademark hand gestures: the one where he makes an "O" with his thumb and index finger and the one where he does a sign with his thumb and index finger. (He did the second one a lot on Monday night, which for me was Tuesday morning.) Trump is the loud-mouthed illusion of democracy. If you look at him for too long, he will haunt the shit out of you. You will dream about him, though it is the last thing you want to do.

The Trump on the debate stage was the same Trump that's appeared on countless other stages for the past year and a bit. Anyone who's sat through his rallies will have heard Trump say the things he said last night. His friend who says Mexico is the eighth wonder of the world, China, trade deals and the political hacks who negotiate them, Hillary Clinton's emails, being friends with Sean Hannity, knocking the hell out of ISIS and making America great again. That's politics, though. You repeat the same shit ad nauseam and hope that some of it sticks. Hillary was repeating the same lines as well, though it was hard to tell because it turns out that her "deadpan" performance on Between Two Ferns is actually just her regular performance.

But this is politics in a time of crisis, politics in the darkness of the night, not the light of primetime. This is politics played by the most dangerous presidential candidate the United States has known and a deeply compromised, deeply uninspiring representative of a ruling class that has failed not just America but the world. Trump had, by all traditional markers, a lousy debate performance, incoherent at times and far too quick to take offense. But he didn't get here by hitting any of the traditional markers, and when Hillary Clinton repeated her obviously rehearsed "trumped-up trickle-down economics" line and smiled at nobody, it was like watching a robot take pleasure performing a function its maker had come to feel deeply unsure of.

Both candidates did something like what was expected of them. Trump played the outsider ready to tear down the DC Establishment. Clinton played the grown-up politician.

Trump paid deference to the occasion by making a big deal out of calling his opponent "Secretary Clinton" rather than "Crooked Hillary." But before too long, his performance began to more closely resemble that of his rallies. He interrupted Clinton time and again; he used phrases like "very against police judge," he worked the hell out of his hand gestures, and he ranted about what a special "temperament" he has. Trump feels most at home loudly telling anyone who'll listen about how great he is. That shtick works when he's in front of crowds who already love him, but it's not clear if it's enough to win over those mythical undecided voters.

Here's the problem for Clinton: When Trump talks about the damage free trade deals have done and the problems faced by working- and middle-class communities across America (and indeed the world), he strikes on something that people not only feel, but something that is backed up by statistics. When he denounced the damage done by NAFTA, it was one of the few things that Clinton had no good response to.

The jobs have picked up and gone to the places where the labor is cheapest. Trump knows this—his companies have benefitted from it, after all. He may be totally insincere when he says he'll do something about it and his existing plan to do something about it may be terrible, but Clinton represents an Establishment that has failed and Trump—the self-proclaimed billionaire, the man with the hair—has looked into the eyes of the people and bellowed, "I am your voice."

I'm a long, long ways from Long Island, but in the darkest point of the night, it is that voice that echoes. On this side of the Atlantic, we know that voice because it sounds an awful lot like Brexit. It is the voice that offers easy, fabricated solutions to chronic problems. It is the voice that speaks to the people who have been left behind and the people with ice in their hearts. But it is also the voice that says, "I am not responsible for the problems you face. You have been let down, and I will make everything better. I will make everything great. I will make you happy." That voice is powerful, wherever it is heard.

Outside my window, one of the world's capitals is crawling into life. Creatures are arising from the depths. The shape of the trees is something to behold. It does not seem like a world ruled by reasons that make sense. If our rulers have ruled us badly, we will pay the price, not them. Trump is that price—that balance due—and right now, despite all the Twitter zingers, I can't help but feel like this rough beast has come slouching out of our computer and television screens to punish us, his hour come round at last.

Follow Oscar Rickett on Twitter.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Mosef. Photo by CP/Adrian Wyld

A civil liberties association and a group of lawyers representing refugees are suing the Canadian government over a law that allows it to unilaterally strip people of their citizenship—and point to Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef as someone who could be caught in its crosshairs.

Reporters at the presidential debate. Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was a made-for-TV event, like the Super Bowl or an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. There was a live audience—who broke decorum several times during the course of the night to cheer or laugh—but everyone was playing to the cameras. And just like the Super Bowl, the analysis and hype drowned out the contest itself. If you saw it on TV, you might have gotten the impression you were witnessing history. But if you were there to cover it as a member of the press, like I was, you witnessed history getting made—the difference being the difference between going to a barbecue, and watching a cow get hit with a bolt between the eyes.

After arriving on campus in a bus packed with restless reporters, I felt as if we had stumbled on some sort of polarized and politically charged pep rally. A literal media circus—NBC had a huge balloon—had taken over the parking lot in front of the student center, where CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News had set up outdoor stages for their MTV Spring Break–like live broadcasts. Clinton fans crowded the cameras with "I'm with Her" signs in front of the MSNBC stage, while Trump fans chanted "MEGYN KELLY!" like they were at a Hofstra football game (go Pride!), as the FOX News anchor took her seat across the lot.

It was jock politics in action: If Clinton fans ventured into enemy territory, they were eyed with suspicion, and vice versa. Chants were overtaken by other chants. And while a group of young Trump and Clinton supporters tensely debated the definition of "immigrant," one guy gleefully showed off his sign to news cameras. It simply read, "Everybody Sucks 2016."

On the line for media credentials, one reporter pointed out to me a reality that would later be confirmed: The WiFi logins here cost $200. "In 2012, it was $175," he added. "Inflation, man."

To compensate, journalists were given a goodie bag of Debate 2016 swag, including a white T-shirt, a pin, and an on-the-go thermos for all the coffee you'll need to get you through the rest of this mad panic of an election. Once past the Secret Service security checkpoint, a tent awaited with an overwhelming amount of free food, free beer, and free mugs. (No Trump Steaks, though.) And from the Budweiser-emblazoned benches, you could almost hear the protesters marching in the "free speech zone" nearby, but their chants were drowned out by sound bites of pre-debate punditry.

As the feeding hour drew closer, everyone began to move into the media center, which was located inside of a large sports arena. Here was where we would be watching the debate on TV, just like everyone else. The room was cluttered with rows of long tables, and flat screens in every direction, all playing different networks' coverage. The B actors of the political world, like Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Coach Bobby Knight, strutted through the crowd, seemingly just to be seen by someone, while live broadcast stalls occupied spaces around the perimeter. And since a lot of people didn't want to pay for the bourgeois WiFi, most were stuck staring at their phones—luckily, for theirs and ours sake, every seat had very clear and precise instructions on how to properly Facebook Live the event. Thank you.

I took a seat in the back, and when the debate started, all the reporters rifling around came to a standstill. A hush broke out in the room. The media instantly became like the rest of the country, transfixed on the endless number of screens, watching the debate's start intensely, and silently—until Trump addressed Clinton as "Secretary Clinton," and then added, smiling, that he wanted her to be "happy." That broke the ice, and reporters chuckled and shook their heads throughout the night, a sentiment that gradually acquired an edge of schadenfreude as Trump's rejoinders became more and more muddled.

The biggest laugh lines in the room included Trump's claim that betting on the housing collapse was "business, by the way," his interruptions of Clinton, his speculation that a "400-pound" hacker was responsible for the cyberattack on the DNC, his repeated denials about the unconstitutionality of stop-and-frisk, and the entire tax return exchange, which resulted in Trump saying something that sounded like an admission that he didn't pay a federal income tax. Reporters laughed, too, when Trump said he had better temperament than Clinton, as did the audience—not a great sign for the mogul.

As the debate dragged on, particularly by the time Trump had trouble explaining cybersecurity in complete sentences, I noticed that many reporters had begun packing up their things, or prepping for the post-debate work they had to do. This, too, is a common sight at sporting events—to file on deadline, journalists need to start typing as soon as the result is obvious, which comes long before the final whistle. If anyone needed quotes, they could be found in "Spin Alley."

I'm not sure where the tradition of a spin room came from, but it's a strange sight, watching celebrities and politicians parade through gaggles of journalists to recap what everyone had just spent an hour and a half watching. Trump spokesman Jason Miller said his guy had won, Clinton spokesman Robby Mook said the opposite—at least at the Super Bowl, there's a winner and a loser. After the debate, there's just... more debate. (It's worth noting that by Tuesday morning, most pundits, including even some vaguely in the pro-Trump camp, thought Trump embarrassed himself.)

Naturally, Trump broke precedent, wandering into the spin room—you really can't keep him away from a microphone—and said something about holding back from bringing up Bill's "indiscretions" because Chelsea was in the crowd. But that rather rude remark will probably get lost in the shuffle; less than 12 hours after that, Trump would be making more headlines for essentially calling a Miss Universe winner fat. In any case, I couldn't spend much more time in spin alley. I had to go find some free WiFi.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

The 'Tapping' Peeper Creeper. Screenshot via YouTube

This week, dads across North America lost a valuable asset in their arsenal of corny holiday humour, as Home Depot (the store that literally every father insists on dragging their kids to at least once a year) pulled a series of peeping tom Halloween prank toys from their shelves after a woman complained that they satirized sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Fentanyl, pictured above in bootleg Oxycontin-80 form, has been the cause of many opioid overdose deaths in Canada. Still via 'DOPESICK'

VICE has learned that the Canadian government will be holding a summit on November 18 and 19 to address the country's growing opioid crisis. Eric Hoskins, Ontario's minister of health, will be co-hosting the event, which is set to take place in Ottawa.

Once and for all, Black Lives Matter is not an anti-white group. Canadian Press/Mark Blinch

Earlier in the summer, I wrote a column about Black Lives Matter Toronto in which I said people who've never experienced racism—particularly politicians and media pundits—should be careful when weighing in on the subject, especially if they're just going to be dismissive.

One of my friends reacted to the piece with absolute outrage. This person, a white male journalist, told me that I was trying to "shut down white voices." Towards the end of our exchange, in which he admitted he was worried he was eventually going to lose his job to a person of colour, he called me a "bigoted little witch."

His views sound extreme, especially for someone who works for a mainstream media organization. But he's not alone. It seems the more we talk about racism, the stronger another narrative becomes—one that paints white people as the ones who are truly oppressed.

According to a survey released last year 52 percent of white Americans said they believe discrimination against them is on par with discrimination faced by black people and other minorities. In Canada, a poll taken in 2014 showed that most Canadians don't think they're racist—84 percent claim they have friends of different racial backgrounds—but 32 percent make occasional racist comments, and 27 percent agree with racial stereotypes. Those ideas are at odds with each other, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the basic concept of racism.

Last week, news broke that Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef was born in Iran, not Afghanistan, as she'd been led to believe her whole life. The Globe and Mail revealed the truth about Monsef's birthplace, prompting Monsef's mom to admit she'd lied to her daughter about where she was actually born. Consequently, some accused Monsef of being deliberately deceitful to the public and even suggested that her citizenship should be revoked and that she should step down from her job. While many journalists were quick to back up the story as legitimate—and aspects of it might be—there seemed to be a resistance to even entertaining the possibility that a white politician who'd been born outside of Canada would not have faced the same level of scrutiny. For suggesting as much, in a story VICE published, I once again found myself being accused of racism against white people.

My default reaction to claims like this is to roll my eyes. But seeing as it's no longer just Twitter trolls who believe in reverse racism—white fragility probably accounts for a large part of Donald Trump's popularity—I decided to reach out to some social justice advocates to ask why they think a certain segment of white people get so defensive when minorities vocalize their oppression. And why groups like BLMTO are being painted as divisive and race baiting when really all they're doing is fighting for equality.

"When you're so deeply invested in your privilege, and in this case white privilege, racial equality feels like oppression," said Anthony Morgan, a Toronto-based civil and human rights lawyer.

Simply put, Morgan said reverse racism doesn't exist and a person who claims otherwise is "outing themselves as someone who has little to no experience or knowledge of what racism is."

Read More: White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed

Racism is based on a couple of things—historical, systemic oppression and power, Morgan explained. And as far as history goes, white people have never been persecuted for the colour of their skin—so there's no point comparing their experiences to those of black, brown, and Indigenous folks.

"It's slavery, colonialism, theft all kinds of violations on systemic proportions... versus feelings being hurt."

There's a difference, he noted, when white people who are in a position of power espouse a hatred of minorities than when it's done the other way around.

In April, BLMTO co-founder Yusra Khogali was highly criticized when a tweet of hers that said "Plz Allah give me strength not to cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today" was discovered.

But Morgan said even if all people of colour straight up said they hate white people, it wouldn't affect a white person's ability to get a job, an education, or increase the odds that they'd get carded or charged for a crime. "If all white people had that view , that would have a very dramatic life impact on the material reality of all those people."

The exclusion of white people in spaces created for minorities is another controversy that sometimes comes up in the media.

Last fall, flyers for a white students union popped up on a handful of Canadian university campuses. On its website, the group behind the campaign, Students for Western Civilization, claims schools are bombarded with the message that "only white people can be racist, because white people are the sole beneficiaries of this white supremecist (sic) system." To balance things out, a white students' union "would serve as a platform to promote and advance the political interests of Western peoples."

Meanwhile Ryerson University's Racialised Students' Collective received backlash for kicking two white journalism students out of a meeting because they weren't marginalized or racialized. Ditto when BLMTO refused to sell white Toronto musician Sima Xyn one of its protest T-shirts during this year's Pride Parade.

"Denying me service due to my race when I'm showing my support to the Toronto #blacklivematter movement is ironic and killing my human rights," Xyn tweeted at the time.

Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, broke down why none of the above can be considered racism but is instead, again, about hurt feelings.

"It's interesting that as soon as you de-centre whiteness, it becomes about people being anti-white," she said, noting that at a panel for queer black people she attended, some white people were asked to move to the back to make space for black people. A few were offended.

"Why is it that in a place created for black people to have a conversation amongst themselves... to talk about what it means to be black and queer, that white folks felt they had to be at the centre?"

Morgan added that creating something like a white students union or having White History Month would be redundant.

"If you look at pretty much every profession in which folks have gainful employment or relative social prestige, it's overwhelmingly white."

As for the rise of the white victim narrative, both said issues like economic downturn—particularly in the US, where working class Americans are finding themselves struggling financially—play a role. Immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments that stem from falsely equating Islam with radicalization is another factor. But it's also just a response to more people calling out racism.

Douglas said the only reason we're talking about race more right now is because of blatant incidents that can't be ignored—the police beating death of Ottawa man Abdirahman Abdi, or the fatal shooting of Colten Boushie, an Indigenous man from Saskatchewan are two recent examples.

"As soon as we begin to interrogate issues of racism people get uncomfortable with it and hence the pushback we're seeing," she said.

If your default reaction to these discussions is to see white people as victims of reverse racism, Morgan has some advice: educate yourself.

"Anybody who would want to use or identify something as reverse racist, I would strongly encourage them to stop for a moment... and really think seriously about the last time they really have taken the time to study or get a deep understanding of what racism is and how it impacts different communities."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Still via VICE's documentary 'DOPESICK'

As health officials across the country scramble to get a handle on the deadly opioid crisis, federal health minister Jane Philpott issued a strong condemnation of the woefully inadequate statistics available on opioid overdoses in Canada.

No one really "wins" or "loses" a presidential debate. These arguments take place onstage, but also in the minds of the millions of voters watching, and there's no expert on any cable news panel anywhere who can say what will stick. On Monday, did Donald Trump come off as a rambling moron with a bad case of hay fever, or a bold alternative to decades of lousy leadership in DC? Was Hillary Clinton a model of composure, or smug and overly rehearsed? And what in God's name are undecided voters undecided about, after all this?

In the aftermath, the media scrambles to answer these questions, because we've got TV channels and websites to fill with speculation, and debating the debate is a tradition as time-honored as any in American politics. But definitive judgements on debates are only made in hindsight—once we know who wins an election, we'll go back and cherry-pick the worst Clinton or Trump gaffes as signs the loser was losing. For now, however, we're lost in the fog of electioneering.

All we can do is look back on a night of hectic back-and-forthing and try to decipher what went on. So here are some of the most important moments of the debate translated into plain English (quotes are taken from the Washington Post transcript):

Moderator Lester Holt: "At the start of each segment, I will ask the same lead-off question to both candidates, and they will each have up to two minutes to respond. From that point until the end of the segment, we'll have an open discussion."

Translation: "I am going to ask a question, one or both of the candidates will ignore it, and then they will get into a heated argument that will go way over the allotted time. But we will get to see them talk to each other, at least."

Trump: "Our jobs are fleeing the country. They're going to Mexico. They're going to many other countries. You look at what China is doing to our country in terms of making our product. They're devaluing their currency, and there's nobody in our government to fight them. And we have a very good fight. And we have a winning fight. Because they're using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing."

Translation: "This is my whole campaign right here: Other countries are screwing us over, and our government is letting them—they're ganging up on you, the (white) American worker. I don't have anything else to tell you, even if this debate is going to go on for another 80 minutes."

Clinton: "You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that's all to his benefit.He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we'll be and that everything will work out from there."

Translation: "It always makes Trump so, so mad when people bring up his father's wealth, and even angrier when people use hard numbers. Ha ha."

Trump: "Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton—yes, is that OK? Good. I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me."

Translation: "Fuck you."

Clinton: "Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real."

Trump: "I did not. I did not. I do not say that."

Translation: "I want this tweet to become very popular:

Trump:"And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I'm very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. But regulations, you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence."

Translation: "I am a Republican."

Clinton: "What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in the economy. And I think it's time that the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share to support this country."

Translation: "I am a Democrat."

Clinton: "You know, I made a mistake using a private email... And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I'm not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that."

Translation: "Is this, finally, the right answer to any question about my email? Is this what you vultures want to hear? Fine. Whatever gets us through to the next thing."

Trump: "The other thing, I'm extremely underleveraged. The report that said $650—which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that's really not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money relative to what I had.

"The buildings that were in question, they said in the same report, which was—actually, it wasn't even a bad story, to be honest with you, but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion. And the $650 isn't even on that. But it's not $650. It's much less than that."

Translation: "I am annoyed that I have to explain my real estate dealings to you plebs, but I'm also sort of bad at judging what people even understand about my business or have read, so my answer is pretty opaque and confusing. I'm also maybe getting tired, and I have this cold, but look—the point is that I am rich and not about to go bankrupt again, OK?"

Trump: "We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot."

Translation: "Do I know how racist this sort of talk is?"

Trump: "We have gangs roaming the street. And in many cases, they're illegally here, illegal immigrants. And they have guns. And they shoot people. And we have to be very strong. And we have to be very vigilant."

Translation: "I guess I do know how racist this is, but I don't care. I'm talking to white people right now."

Trump:

Translation: This one is pretty self-evident.

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Image via Bobby Viteri and Alan Levine

When Martin Shkreli isn't playing Magic: The Gathering, bumping the latest Wu-Tang album alone, or serving as the muse for an off-Broadway musical, he's apparently just waiting for someone to come hit him in the face, NBC4i reports.

This week the pharma bro—most notorious for hiking up the price on a life-saving drug used to treat conditions like HIV—tweeted about a new fundraising venture of his by asking people to bid for the opportunity to slap or punch him in the face.

Just three house later, Shrkeli updated his followers on the highest bids made so far.

Shkreli also added that he would match donations to help out his late friend's family, and donors could even film the slap or punch if they'd like. So if you have a mean backhand and an extra $80K laying around, just send Shkreli a DM and place a bid. Who knows when you'll get another chance to pay someone to punch him.

Watch: Martin Shkreli on Drug Price Hikes and Playing the World's Villain

A family deported to the Bărăgan Plains, Romania. Photo courtesy of memorialuldeportarii.ro

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania.

After World War II, the former fascist pro-Nazi government in Romania was replaced with a Soviet regime, which had a very strained relationship with neighboring Yugoslavia. Afraid that ethnic minorities living in the west of Romania near the borders with Yugoslavia would revolt, Romania chose to forcibly relocate these minorities—among them Serbs, Bulgarians, and Ukrainians—to the other side of the country. There was one mass deportation on June 18, 1951, when Romanian authorities deported nearly 44,000 people from the counties of Timiș, Caraș-Severin, and Mehedinți to the Bărăgan Plain—a steppe plain in the southeast of Romania.

My grandmother Iuliana-Zlatinca—now 75 years old—was ten when she, her parents, her grandmother, and other members of the Serbian community were taken from their village Becicherecu Mic near the Serbian border and were brought to the Bărăgan Plain. I asked her about what it was like to see your family removed from your childhood home and to have to sleep under the stars for months.

Iuliana-Zlatinca, several months before being deported. Photo from the author's family archives

VICE: What did your life look like in your village, right after World War II?
Iuliana-Zlatinca: There were three ethnic groups in our village: Romanians, Germans, and Serbs—each with their own school and church. We were all respectful of one another and we got along—while each group had its own language, we all spoke all three. And each group had their own specialties. The Germans were very good craftsmen, for example. They were carpenters or tinsmiths. It was a close-knit community.

What were your first thoughts, when they came to take you away?
Officers came by our house on the night of the 17th to the 18th, of June 1951, and we had no idea what it was about. They had deported the Germans a short while before that, and we didn't know what had happened to them. We were scared that they would take us to Russia.

What did they say?
They woke us up in the middle of the night and told us we had two or three hours to pack our stuff. We could bring only the essentials and some food, and had to leave our homes at dawn. They sealed the doors to our houses, and we could only use one cart to carry our belongings.

Did you ask where you were going?
Yes, but they said they weren't at liberty to tell us. I remember an office telling my father to "stop asking so many questions." They were just soldiers—they didn't know much either. They took us to a train station, where we spent a couple of days, waiting for them to prepare the train. We slept on the grass in the heat.

I was ten years old at the time, and two years earlier, my parents had bought me a baby carriage and a beautiful doll. I always played with it and so did all the children in my street. I wanted to take it with me, but the soldiers didn't let me—one of them just flung it over a fence behind the station. The night after that happened, I climbed over the fence without telling my parents and got the carriage and the doll back. I was scared, but the doll was so beautiful. I had it for years after, even your mother ended up playing with it. I remember what it looked like to this day.

What did your family bring?
Two beds, a wardrobe, clothes, bed linens, pots, a stove, a table, two chairs, and a canvas tarp—plus two horses, a cow, and a pig, I think. We had to fit all of that, plus ourselves, on a freight train carriage.

Did anyone run away or protest?
No, everyone kept quiet and accepted it. You know—before, they would just take you quietly in the night. The Communist regime once took your grandfather's father and beat him up because he didn't want to join the collectivization.

How long were you on that train for?
The trip took a full week, and the conditions were inhumane. There weren't any rations; we could only eat what we had brought. They gave us some water, that was it. We were locked in a carriage with our animals, and we had to relieve ourselves there, too. And then, after a week, the train just stopped, and they said: "Now you get off."

Did you know where you were?
No, we had no idea. Other soldiers were waiting for us at that station, who told us to unload and took us out to the fields where sticks demarcated different pieces of land. They assigned a piece of land to us and told us to build a home there out of adobe bricks—a building material made of earth. We didn't even know what that was.

What did the locals think of you?
We ended up in Dâlga, Călărași County in the southeast of Romania, and the people there figured we were brought there because we were bad. But later, once they saw what we were like and the kind of homes we built for ourselves, that mentality changed.

How did you live before your new house was finished?
We slept in the open field and had to pull ourselves together and figure out what we needed to do to get by. At night, the youngest among us would go to a farm nearby to steal food for our animals. We would look for dry wood at the edge of the forest to build fires. After a while, our relatives from other villages in southeastern Romania who hadn't been deported were allowed to send us care packages. Those came with letters, but our packages were checked before we received them, and the letters our relatives wrote were seized.

How long did it take to build the house?
It took about three months. That didn't come too soon, because it was already way too cold to sleep outside by October. Our house had one bedroom, a kitchen, and a small veranda. The toilet was a hole we had dug, and we built a stable for the horses and the cow behind the house. We spent five years there. After a bit, everyone came together to build a school, and when the school year started, children who had gone to high school became our teachers. They taught Romanian and Russian, and a German woman was a teacher there, too.

So if you were forced to live there, was it guarded?
No, it wasn't, but we were too afraid to run away. And how could we have run? My ID showed I lived in mandatory residence—I couldn't just run off. And if they'd caught me, I'd have been sent to prison.

A soccer team made up of deported men. Photo courtesy of memorialuldeportarii.ro

How did people earn their living?
There was a state-owned farm in the area, with cotton fields as far as the eye could see. Everyone worked there, including the children. We'd each get an apron, and we had to collect the cotton—they paid us according to how many kilos of cotton we had collected. They gave us soup for lunch. There was a horse farm in the area where a cousin of mine worked as an accountant and at about two miles from our town. There was a turkey farm. I worked there for about a year, when I was 14.

At some point, my father sold a horse. But right after that, the national currency changed. They switched to other bills, and we couldn't change ours. We lost everything: the money we had brought with us and the new money we had made. It was a huge blow for my parents. I don't know how they managed to survive.

After about five years, you were allowed to go home, right?
Yes, the Serbs were the first ones who were allowed to go back because the Yugoslav leader Tito and the Romanian leader Gheorghiu-Dej had made up. About a month after us, the Germans came back, too.

An improvised farm in Bărăgan Plains. Photo courtesy of memorialuldeportarii.ro

Was your house still there when you returned? In what state did you find it?
It was. Our house had been used as the officers' mess hall. They had turned half of one room into nothing but a stove, and they had kept pigs in a smaller room at the front of the house.

They had made a latrine of the basin in the front of the house, where we used to collect the rainwater. My parents got me to clean it up, because I was small and skinny, and the basin was cramped. They tied a rope around my waist, lowered me into the basin, and gave me a bucket. I filled the bucked and emptied it—it was awful. We couldn't move into the house right away because all the windows were gone and replaced with plastic sheets. We slept at our neighbors' for a while. It took us about two years to fix the damage the soldiers had done to our house.

How did your old neighbors treat you?
They were very nice to us. But I remember that when I went to their houses, I recognized a lot of our stuff in their homes. They had either stolen it from us or bought it from someone, who had taken it from our house. I remember visiting one neighbor, seeing a lamp they had and saying, "That's ours."

Did you gain anything positive from your years in the Bărăgan Plains?
It gave me so much respect for my parents. The bond we created was quite something.

Illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham

Ever since Austin and I joined VICE Gaming, the number one question we've heard from readers and fans is whether or not we're starting a podcast. Thankfully, that changes today, with the first (and very rusty) episode of our new twice-weekly gaming podcast.

It's called... uh, we don't know yet. If you have any suggestions, believe me, we're all ears.

This week, we focused on my ongoing lack of sleep, the explosive response to reports that Oculus creator Palmer Luckey has been privately supporting and financing Donald Trump through weird internet groups, bemoaned the distinct lack of R&B in video games, and more.

In addition to not having a name, the music isn't final, and Austin doesn't even have a proper place to record the show. (Seriously, this morning he spent an hour in VICE's equivalent of a broom closet.) But we didn't want to wait any longer, so the first episode is ready to download. We'll add an iTunes link when it's live there.

The plan is to record on Monday and Friday mornings, so we can track and discuss the full week of gaming, without worrying that we're going to miss a major story. We'd love to stream each episode, allowing people to tune in and submit questions, but we're still working out the tech to make that happen. Stay tuned! Podcast gods willing, that could happen this Friday.

In the meantime, if you have a question, you can submit it to gaming@vice.com with the email header "Questions." Each episode, we'll choose one excellent, insightful question to be the focus of an episode-ending segment.

But wait, doesn't VICE Gaming already have a podcast? That's true: In the UK, Mike Diver has been hosting a monthly podcast for a while. But as VICE Gaming grows, so will our library of podcasts. Mike's podcast (find all those episodes here) isn't going anywhere—there's just more for everyone.

VICE Gaming isn't just a place to write about games. It should be a community for smart, thoughtful people to gather and think critically about the medium. This podcast should be an extension of that. We may be the hosts, but you're the reason it works. Join us?

Follow Patrick Klepek on Twitter, and if you have a news tip you'd like to share, drop him an email. Follow VICE Gaming on Twitter, and give us a like on Facebook.

Debris from a house explosion is cordoned off in the middle of the street as emergency service personnel work at the scene, Tuesday, September 27, 2016, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

A house cops suspected might be involved in weed cultivation exploded in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx exploded early Tuesday morning, killing one firefighter and injuring as many as 20 other people.

Firefighters responded to a 911 call over a suspected gas leak at the two-story home around 6:20 AM. Upon spotting what seemed to be grow house equipment in a brick rental property attached to the house, they called the NYPD. It was roughly 7:30 AM when that structure burst into flames, injuring nine firefighters, six cops, and five others, according to the Daily News. An FDNY battalion chief named Michael Fahy was killed after being hit by a piece of debris, making the 17-year veteran of the department its first casualty since 2014.

The property in question had already been under investigation for a few weeks after cops were tipped off, according to the New York Times. It's unclear if the explosion was linked to any drug-making activities or paraphernalia. It was felt blocks away and had left a pile of smoldering, the paper added.

Erin Mulvey, a special agent with the DEA, told the Wall Street Journal that grow houses are recipes for disaster––much meth labs in the 1990s. The combination of around-the-clock fluorescent lighting, shoddy electrical set-ups, and on-hand pesticides can be deadly. When the grow houses are making wax or dabs, butane is needed, which can make them extra dangerous.

"This all adds up to a ticking time bomb that can explode, especially if there's a gas link" Mulvey said.

A neighbor told the News the property was usually rented to college students in Manhattan, but that the current tenants drove expensive cars like BMWs. So far, the people living in the house have not been named, though the owner has denied any knowledge of a grow operation.

"We had a tragedy today," Mayor de Blasio said about Fahy, who was a father of three young children. "A tragedy has befallen a family, a fire department, and our entire city."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Mario Maker is a game that allows users to make their own stages and then share them with other players. The catch is, players can't actually upload their creations unless they've beaten them first. For the last ten months, this challenge has consumed Branden Moor's life. Moor started making his own ultra-hard Mario Maker stage, appropriately titled "Trials of Death," back in January. At 385 hours and counting, Moore has spent more than 16 days of his life dying over and over, hoping to reach the end of his platforming gauntlet.

"I have always found enjoyment in trying to bring video games to their limits," said Moor. "Whether that be high score, a fast time, or even just achieving 100 percent completion, I always want to put down the game feeling accomplished."

However, that sense of accomplishment won't arrive until he beats the stage and uploads it for other players. For all of Mario Maker's flaws, most of which involve how poorly Nintendo treats its online community, this is a devilish rule. A difficult stage may seem impossible, but, technically speaking, it's not.

That day is not today, but Moor regularly streams his latest attempts on Twitch.

Follow Patrick Klepek on Twitter, and if you have a news tip you'd like to share, drop him an email. Follow VICE Gaming on Twitter, and give us a like on Facebook.

Bas Gul, an Afghan woman who now lives in a shelter, became a child bride at age 11. Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Rima was only 13 when, last year, she married a 30-year-old man she'd only just met. It was her safest option: Alone in a refugee camp in Turkey, she'd been raped many times. So Ammar, 30, another Syrian in the camp, offered to wed and look after her, bringing her all the way to Germany to seek asylum.

When they arrived in Germany, however, authorities separated the newlyweds, declaring the union illegitimate since German law requires individuals to be 18 to marry, or 16 if they have parental consent. Rima now lives in a shelter for refugee girls, where she can receive daytime visits from Ammar, the only person she knew coming to Germany.

Child brides like Rima have flocked in record numbers to Germany since last year, when Prime Minister Angela Merkel opened the nation's doors to 1.1 million refugees. About 1,500 married minors have migrated to the country since 2015, Brigit Zeller, a representative of Germany's Youth Welfare Offices, told me.

The influx of young brides presents Germany with a dilemma: whether to protect the girls by separating or preserving these marriages. The girls—predominantly from Syria, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—come from a wide range of unions. Some wed for protection, like Rima; others were forced to marry; some had arranged marriages in the tradition of their cultures; a small portion married out of love.

The child marriage debate has grown heated this summer, after Germany's current policy—of separating most minor marriages but considering each one individually—led several wedded refugee teens to remain with their husbands.

"The youth offices generally separated people who were supposedly married raped, abused, and beaten," Hoffmann told me. She currently cares for one 15-year-old Syrian girl who desperately wants to be with her 25-year-old husband, whom she wedded in an arranged marriage, and told me other girls have even run away to be with their spouses.

But on the opposite extreme, some youths have run away from their home countries to escape forced marriages. One 17-year-old Somalian girl in the shelter was married at age ten to a 55-year-old man, after having her clitoris removed so she could not enjoy sex. She was her husband's fourth wife.

"The law definitely needs to be changed here," said Hoffmann, adding that her youngest resident was age 11. "Child marriage should be forbidden."

Hoffmann declined to let me interview her residents since they were minors, but one Afghan woman I interviewed outside a refugee shelter in Berlin told me she indeed had no option but to wed at age 15. The woman, Mahdia (whose name has been changed to protect her identity), married a man five years her elder in the town of Baghlan at her grandfather's orders.

"My mother and father were killed by the Taliban when I was a child, because they were teachers at a public school, so to the Taliban they worked for the government," Mahdia, now 25, told me. "I lived with my grandfather, and he decided I should marry because my husband had money, a house, a car, and family."

Mahdia said she did not protest because "in Afghanistan, the girls do not choose—the girl belongs to the family." At least one-third of Afghan girls are married by age 18, UNICEF found in a report published this June.

Madhia moved in with her husband's parents, who forbid her from leaving the house, and had her first baby when she was 16. Eventually, Mahdia told me she grew close to her husband and fled with him and their two children to Germany last year.

"I wouldn't leave my husband because my husband is a good man," said Mahdia, who now enjoys the freedom of walking down the street whenever she likes. Her greatest hope, now, is for her nine-year-old daughter in Berlin.

"I want her to be successful," Mahdia said, "so she can decide if she marries."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.