VICE's resident chemist and stalwart drug anthropologist Hamilton Morris is back with a new season of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, where he'll investigate the history, chemistry, and social impact of the world's most extraordinary mind-altering substances for VICELAND.

On the season premiere, Hamilton travels to South Africa—the last place on earth where you can still find methaqualone, once sold under the brand name Quaalude in the US—to explore its history of medical experimentation.

Watch the full first episode above and make sure to watch new episodes of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia every Wednesday at 10 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

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

Photo by Melina Mara/'The Washington Post' via Getty Images

US News

Clinton Opens Up Double-Digit Lead
A new national survey from ABC News shows Hillary Clinton up on Donald Trump 50 percent to 38 percent among likely voters. The poll found 69 percent of likely voters disapprove of how Trump has handled questions about his treatment of women. Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, is now saying the obvious: "We are behind."—ABC News/CNN

California Bus Crash Leaves 13 Dead
A nasty collision between a bus operated by USA Holiday Bus and a tractor trailer in Palm Springs killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others Sunday, according to police. Jim Abele, chief of the California Highway Patrol Border Division, said early reports indicate speed was a factor in the high death toll.—NBC News

Governor Donated Funds to Deputy FBI Director's Wife
A political group affiliated with Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe gave almost $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an FBI official who later worked on the investigation into Clinton's email use. McAuliffe's political-action committee lavished $467,500 on the campaign of Jill McCabe, wife of Andrew McCabe, who is now the FBI's deputy director.—The Wall Street Journal

Ordinary Devices Were Used in Friday's Massive Cyber Attacks
Details have emerged about Friday's "unprecedented" cyber attacks that blocked access to sites like Twitter, HBO, and Netflix. Cyber attackers created a "botnet" using a web of ordinary devices like baby monitors and webcams, before unleashing a massive DDoS attack on company called Dyn, whose servers reroute traffic.—VICE News

International News

Iraqi Kurds Claim Capture of Key Town with Turkish Help
Kurdish fighters claim to have seized the Iraqi town of Bashiqa, a town roughly eight miles northeast of Mosul, from ISIS on Sunday. Turkish artillery fire supported the Peshmerga effort, according to that country's prime minister, Binali Yildirim.—Reuters

France Begins to Clear Migrant Camp in Calais
Hundreds of cops and other officials in Calais, France, are moving to clear what is often called the local "jungle" migrant camp. Despite some clashes over the weekend, many of the 7,000 migrants have been lining up peacefully. The first of dozens of vehicles that will carry them to refugee centers across the country have begun their trips.—BBC News

Heavy Clashes in Aleppo After Pause in Fighting
Fighting took a brutal turn once again in Aleppo, Syria, after a "humanitarian" pause announced by Russia lapsed. Jets of unknown origin bombarded rebel-held areas of the city on Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Rebels reportedly launched counter-attacks, including a bombardment of the regime-held district of al Hamadaniyah.—Al Jazeera

Malta Plane Crash Kills All Five Passengers
An investigation is underway after a small passenger aircraft crashed not long after departing Malta's international airport, killing all five people onboard. The plane was initially said to perhaps have been chartered by the European Union's border control agency, Frontex, ostensibly to keep tabs on migrant trafficking, but now appears to have been a French customs aircraft.—The Guardian

Everything Else

Veteran Activist Tom Hayden Dies at 76
Activist and politician Tom Hayden, a leading figure in the anti–Vietnam War movement who served as president of Students for a Democratic Society and served 18 years in California's state legislature, has died at age 76. "He was the radical inside the system," said advisor Duane Peterson.—Los Angeles Times

Drake Previews Four New Songs
The artist unveiled four new songs as part of his Apple Music OVO Sound Radio show Sunday. Three tracks—"Two Birds One Stone," "Fake Love," and "Sneakin"—will appear on his new project More Life, which should drop late this year.—Rolling Stone

Bill Murray Receives Mark Twain Prize
The actor and comedian received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night in Washington, DC. "It's hard to listen to all those people be nice to you," he said. "You just get so suspicious."—The Washington Post

Kayne Will Ditch Grammys if Frank Ocean Isn't Nominated
Kanye West says he won't attend the next Grammy Awards if Frank Ocean's Blonde isn't nominated. "If his album's not nominated in no categories, I'm not showing up to the Grammys...We've got to come together to fight the bullshit."—Noisey

AT&T Buyout of Time Warner Faces Scrutiny
Public interest groups are warning that telecom giant AT&T's plan to buy Time Warner in a massive $85 billion deal could lead to higher prices for consumers. The buyout is expected to face intense regulatory scrutiny in Washington.—Motherboard

Voice Actors' Union Strikes Against Video Game Industry
SAG-AFTRA, the union representing voice actors and motion-capture artists, is striking against the video game industry. The group is demanding residual pay for high-selling games and reduced work days to prevent vocal stress.—VICE News

Ellie Milner, who was sentenced on Thursday for dealing drugs (Photo courtesy of West Mercia Police)

Sometimes, playing dumb can pay off. You probably know someone who knows someone who's been duped by pickpockets on a busy train. That group "asking for directions" in a tourist hotspot can quickly turn into the slick scammers responsible for a wallet disappearing. Gossips at the top of their game feign ignorance to get at the juiciest tidbits. Every now and then, actual naivety can work to your advantage when someone gives you the benefit of the doubt rather than taking the piss.

Take Ellie Milner, from Worcestershire. The 20-year-old was sentenced to more than two years in a youth offenders institution for dealing coke and ketamine, and holding onto a little bit of the drugs for herself. On Thursday, her lawyer Jason Aris argued that she was naive, but largely harmless, after police uncovered texts in which she offered mate's rates and joked about the drugs she had. "She presents as a very articulate and naive and, may I say, stupid young girl," he said. "She was trying to make herself look very cool. A lot of what appears in those messages is her trying to play the big shot in front of people she has become familiar with on the dance scene. In hindsight that was an incredibly stupid thing to do."

Milner was caught out by police, who reportedly had concerns about her dealing drugs. When they searched her car, in a supermarket car park, they found baggies containing white powder in her bag and purse. They nabbed her iPhone, then in a further search of her home found some digital scales tucked into a bottom drawer in her bedroom and a few more baggies of white powder. All in all, she was reported to have less than half a gram each of MDMA, cocaine and ketamine – police estimated the street value of the 303mg of MDMA, 173mg of cocaine 242mg of ket would fetch between £700 and £800.

When officers went through her phone, they found she'd mentioned making a £150 profit, and told friends that she'd "sniffed some of that". What sounded like a pretty basic operation, of the sort where you'd pick up from a friend of a friend who never really seemed like the supplier anyway, landed her in court. Since she didn't have any priors, her defence centred on her clean record and reputation.

"It's very clear that the shame and embarrassment she has not only brought upon herself but her family and employers is a considerable punishment," lawyer Aris said. "This is clearly a very intelligent, outstanding young lady who has made a rather dreadful mistake."

The judge went so far as to note that Milner's references from her employer were "exceptional", but wasn't impressed with texts that showed her seeming to brag about her little drug operation.

"You were advertising cocaine sales and boasting about it and making some profit," the judge said, addressing her before sentencing her. Since Milner had been dealing for a couple of months, and thus this wasn't a one-off, the judge sentenced her to time in an institution, rather than the more lenient option of a suspended sentence. Though Milner was hardly running a sophisticated operation, the judge still deemed the sale of Class As "a scourge on our society".

WATCH: High Society – The Truth About Ecstasy

A recent case might raise the question of just when selling and moving drugs is considered a threat. Last week, news broke of a 22-year-old undergraduate getting a relatively light sentence for her role in a drug selling operation, done with her brother. Poppy Murray, who the Telegraph reported as being a privately-educated catering businesswoman, had been helping her 19-year-old brother Joel move drugs in Manchester, ferrying MDMA and weed along to her friends. Her brother's picked up a seven-year prison sentence, while Poppy's been given a 12-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and 80 hours of unpaid work.

Poppy's lawyer, unlike Milner's, argued that drug-taking is a normal part of student life and that his client "did not see anything morally wrong with what she did. However, she now accepts plainly that it was wrong".

"The money was pooled and the drugs were shared," he continued. "A prison sentence would be a punishment but it would do nothing but blight a very bright career. She is a very clever, ambitious and driven young lady." Meanwhile in Barnstaple, a man with substance addiction problems just picked up a two-year prison sentence for dealing heroin on a bike path. If lawyers are using "everyone takes drugs" as a defence, at the very least that ought to implore politicians to think about drug testing and drug safety. In the meantime, not even well-argued naivety was quite enough for Ellie Milner. She has a 28-month sentence ahead of her.

More on VICE:

The VICE UK Podcast: Will We Ever Be Able to Take Drugs Safely?

These British Police Forces Have Stopped Arresting Drug Users

Two Dealers Are in Prison After One of Them Hid Heroin in His Pants

Cannabis is the UK's favourite illegal drug. An estimated half a million people use it for medicinal purposes, and many more just to get high. In the past decade, many other countries have moved to decriminalise or even fully legalise smoking and growing weed, yet the UK's government refuses to budge. When over 200,000 people signed a petition last year calling on Westminster to make the production, sale and use of weed legal, the government responded with a flat-out no. Yet in some ways, decriminalisation is happening through the back door, with many British police forces de-prioritising the policing of cannabis.

In this episode of High Society we explore how that approach to the issue shapes the UK's weed culture, meeting growers, medical users, politicians and a couple of thieves in Birmingham who have come up with a novel way to make money off the country's cannabis trade.

AA members in New York in the 1930s. Public Archives.

A Toronto man has taken Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. and the Greater Toronto Intergroup to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, alleging discrimination against atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.

The GTA Intergroup, which acts as a central organizing hub and directory for AA groups in Toronto, has essentially kicked out all atheist groups who have changed traditional AA language by taking out the word "God" from the Twelve Steps.

There are currently 501 AA meetings held at 252 locations across the GTA. However, atheists looking for AA meetings without a God attached will not find one in any of them because the GTA Intergroup eliminated local atheist and agnostic meetings from their promotions and directories.

Now, secular options in AA are officially considered non-existent in Toronto. Accordingly, questions remain as to whether the current AA program is modern enough for a pluralistic society.

The first atheist and agnostic AA groups in Canada—Beyond Belief and We Agnostics, both of which are located in Toronto—were also the first agnostic and atheist groups to be booted out of an AA Intergroup. Since then, similar patterns have developed in Vancouver and Kingston.

Last year, Lawrence Knight, 58, known simply as "Larry" in the rooms, took AA to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to take a stand against how non-believers have traditionally been treated in AA. Knight found sobriety through AA after his drinking became too much for him to control in the early 1990s. During the early 90s. But he believes, like many others, that the words "God" and "Higher Power," which are rampant throughout AA literature, are outdated. More specifically, he's arguing that that alcoholics who have been abused by religious fundamentalists in their childhood, (himself included), can have negative associations with the word "God"—some even find the religion and the ensuing dogma which follows highly triggering.

Read More: OK, So I Can't Drink Anymore

AA literature reflects the Protestant culture of the 1930s. But without any alternatives to traditional AA recovery, atheist and agnostic alcoholics are forced to find ways to make the literature work for them, such as considering a "Higher Power" to be the AA program, rather than a "God," or using the word "God" as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction."

Knight was one of a handful of people who started the secular AA meetings in Toronto in 2009, after having watched newcomers afflicted by the abuse of fundamentalists in traditional meetings for years. According to Knight, a newcomer once gave a talk about his atheism at a meeting where he was swiftly accused of "sending people out to die," which is how fundamentalists interpret atheism in AA recovery. According to the tenets of AA, one must turn over their lives over to the care of God to stay sober, and to say otherwise, is to send the suffering alcoholic back on the street where they will meet their painful death.

A few weeks later, Larry and a few others started the first secular AA meeting known as "Beyond Belief." That meeting was delisted by the GTA Intergroup in 2011 for taking God out of the steps. After the delisting of secular groups occurred, Knight, among others, made a conscious effort to stop attending AA meetings affiliated with the GTA Intergroup.

This tension is nothing new, however. Several proposals have been considered in the past concerning the development of an official AA pamphlet directed to the atheist alcoholic. Since the early 70s, this concept has been explored at least six separate times. However, motions for official inclusivity of the atheist and agnostic perspective have been ignored, if not flat-out denied and vetoed.

Knight explained how atheists have kept their mouths shut for the sake of recovery, or out of fear of reprisal, or perhaps apathy, hoping the fundamentalism and exclusion in the rooms would eventually stop. "We finally need to step up and address the things which need to be addressed," he said. "We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the future and we owe it to everybody."

Read More: Why I Broke Up With Booze in the Maritimes

One of Larry's comrades, Roger C. (last names are omitted in AA), published Don't Tell: stories and essays by agnostics and atheists in A.A., explaining how there appears to be an unofficial policy in AA, similar to the infamous "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the US military regarding the treatment of the LGBTQ2 community.

The GTA Intergroup has been stalling over the past year, but all parties will finally sit down for mediation toward the end of November in an attempt to avoid going to court.

On November 6 there will be a district meeting in which every general service representative from every AA group in western Ontario will vote on a motion to eliminate the Lord's Prayer from that specific meeting.

Moreover, The Grapevine, AAs own "reader's digest," has for the first time released an issue completely dedicated to stories by atheist and agnostic members of AA.

As this is an ongoing matter before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, AAWAS was unable to provide comment, according to an AA spokesperson.

AAWS has requested its status as respondent be removed, based on the fact it's based in New York, not Toronto, where the agnostic delisting took place. The transcript states:

"This Interim Decision addresses the Request by the respondent, A.A. World Services, Inc. ("AAWS"), that the Application be dismissed as against it because the applicant has not alleged that it discriminated against him and because the Application is outside the jurisdiction of the Tribunal."

However, the tribunal denied this request based on the Knight's argument that, although AAWS is located in New York, its services transcend all borders. AAWS oversees the General Service Office (GSO), which serves as a world clearinghouse of AA information and publishes AA literature.

The Greater Toronto Intergroup is an official AA umbrella service responsible for listing and delisting groups in their local area.

Nevertheless, Knight still attends traditional meetings, mostly outside of Toronto when friends are having sobriety birthdays. He still values traditional AA, which he says helped save him from his addiction. But this does not mean he agrees with the exclusionary and fundamentalist behavior of some of its members who force their religious beliefs on others.

The Greater Toronto Intergroup did not respond to interview requests in time for publication.

Mediation will begin on November 18.

Founder John Bird with one of the first vendors to sell the magazine

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last week, the Big Issue celebrated its 25th anniversary—not bad for a magazine that started life in 1991 as a hastily thrown-together monthly with the peculiar idea of being sold entirely by homeless people.

Since it was dreamed up by former homeless young offender Sir John Bird, who admits he's probably the first shoplifter and car thief to take a seat in the House of Lords, the magazine has helped hundreds of its vendors pull themselves up from the streets and on to better lives.

But in the current era of sausage factory journalism, and the total dominance of the print newspaper market by pernicious right-wing tabloids and their pack of eager, automaton newshounds, the story of this maverick publication needs telling. Of how, in its heyday, on a tiny budget, it became an eye into Britain's soul and should stand as an important lesson for today's hamstrung media.

I admit I'm not an unbiased observer. Straight out of two years as a hack on local newspapers in the grubbier side of northwest London, I worked on the Big Issue's news team between 1997 and 2002. My job was getting the scoops that would be picked up by the national papers, getting the magazine some good publicity in the process.

We were journalistic underdogs. At its height, we had 12 journalists, compared to the hundreds working on each national paper. Our budget was minimal, and our wages weren't great. Most outsiders presumed we were homeless and worked for free. Or maybe that was just the way I looked at the time.

Since its inception, though, it's been a lesson for the mainstream press, then and now, on how to do agenda-setting journalism with a passionate bunch of hacks on a tight budget. In the early days, much of this was done with just a fax machine and a landline, as emails didn't happen at the Big Issue until about 2000.

The magazine was a diamond in the rough because, backed to the hilt by long-term editor Matthew Collin, we exposed New Labour's Britain like no other publication. Our journalists stepped outside the well-trodden zones to listen to the sound of the street—to give a voice to those who had none, and fight for those who other newspapers didn't give a fuck about.

It wasn't exactly hard to feel connected to the disenfranchised. There can't have been too many magazines with a ground floor that was full of homeless vendors having fried egg sandwiches and grabbing fresh copies to sell.

What's more, unluckily for the vendors trying to escape addictions, our office was slap bang in the middle of what was Britain's busiest crack- and heroin-selling thoroughfare in Kings Cross. It was also a red light district. Grabbing a morning coffee from outside meant running a gauntlet of dealers offering "brown," "white," and sex workers offering "a quid a lick"—all before 10 AM. The underbelly of New Labour's shiny new project was in our faces every day.

It was easy for us to engage in the ancient journalistic ritual of talking face-to-face with actual people, rather than stay glued to our cheap office chairs. Every week, for example, for the Street Diary column, I sat down and interviewed a different Big Issue vendor about his or her life. What surprised me was that every single one of them, behind the stress and chaos, was a sweet person with a fascinating and usually tragic story to tell. Personally, doing this and the crime and drugs stories in which I specialized gave me a massive insight into a hidden world and into the best way of gathering information—from the horse's mouth.

This was no ivory tower journalism, and it was always good fun to hear about the national newspaper journalists buying drugs "undercover" while the dealers and sex workers spun them ridiculous yarns because they could spot them a mile off.

Not long after joining the mag, I slept alongside rough sleepers during a spate of attacks where homeless people were set on fire, to look at how they were protecting themselves. As it happens, I did get punched in the head, but it was actually by one of the homeless men who thought I was chatting up his girlfriend, which I wasn't.

The cover of the first edition

As the anti-globalization movement loomed over Britain in the late 90s to cause havoc and make the basic point that we were getting rolled over by the big corporations, we were in the thick of it. Our journalists were embedded in the movement that set up the biggest anti-City riots in modern times. We managed to get the inside story from one of the world's most secretive and elite meetings, the Bilderberg Group. And we knew whenever Banksy was going to do a new job, because he told us. The Big Issue was the first to write about GM crops.

"We punched well above our weight when it came to exposing big-name companies and organizations that treated people badly," says Jane Cassidy, a former news editor at the Big Issue. "We earned a reputation for taking on investigations that the mainstream press didn't have the guts to publish. This meant that whistleblowers regularly contacted us with scoops, which were then followed up by the national media."

Perhaps the most famous Big Issue scoop was Lambeth police commander Brian Paddick declaring his affection for anarchism to us. Obviously it didn't take long for the right-wing press to weigh in, but his brave move opened the door for others in the force to express themselves more honestly.

Our investigations and campaigns won awards, changed government policy, and exposed miscarriages of justice, from scrapping the humiliating asylum seeker voucher scheme to mixed sex mental health wards and pauper's graves. "From Cradle to Grave," an in-depth six-part series of articles, involved journalists traveling around Britain looking at why so many people were locked into poverty from their first breath to their last.

"The Big Issue had a news team that had the freedom and time to investigate stories that were beneath the radar of desk jockeys holed up in Canary Wharf," says Gibby Zobel, former news editor at the Big Issue. "We proved you didn't need huge investment to break national stories.

"While the mainstream all ran toward the sound of the guns, we scoured around the vast areas they neglected. No reliance on wires, press releases, or even the internet. Just good honest journalism with a conscience, and doing the foot-soldier work of mining primary source material. There's precious few foot soldiers these days, and so news has become an online echo chamber of itself."

Today, the magazine is still doing good, original stuff, and it's far from being a pity read. But since 2002, when it lost the bulk of its journalists for economic reasons, it's not been able to put so much effort into the investigative stories that made its name as an agenda-setter. The same can be said of most newspapers.

However, the Big Issue diaspora is everywhere, still sniffing, digging, and fighting. Its former journalists have generally kept on the same path in different necks of the wood, turning the stones that may otherwise be left unturned, and have gone on to become well-known names in the field.

Tragically the most talented of the ex–Big Issue posse is dead. Tim Hetherington, who worked at the Big Issue in the late 90s before he became a world-renowned war photojournalist, was killed by a mortar blast in Libya in 2011. It was two months after he attended the Oscars, where his film Restrepo, about life for a squad of soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan, was nominated for Best Documentary.

Yet the Big Issue DNA is still about, in spirit and in person. Certainly its influence is in VICE, which I write for now. It's no coincidence, for example, that VICE's co-president Andrew Creighton used to sell advertising space in the Big Issue in the mid 90s. He played a major role in turning VICE from a Canadian skateboard mag into a global media player with a social conscience.

Now, in Brexit Britain, where the gap between rich and poor is widening at a lethal rate, we need all the good, independent journalism that is unafraid to stick up for the underclass and the scapegoats that we can get. There isn't a lot of it about.

John Bird used the magazine's anniversary to promise that he would use his seat in the Lords to fight child neglect—which he sees as being the major driver of Britain's "undemocratic" poverty crisis. But the anniversary should also be a reminder that without journalism that holds Big Business and government to account, those in Britain in need of most help will just be screaming into the dark.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

There are two types of people in this world, people who can look at an alive spider and say something along the lines of, 'huh, okay' or 'get me a glass and a small square of cardboard and I will put it outside' and then the people who are currently looking at the computer screen right now just screaming, just yelling so much, maybe doing a thing where they jolt out of their chairs in fear – every muscle in their body now somehow beyond their control, muscles just jiving away on their own haunted path, muscles working not together but as individuals as part of a whole, and the body they are attached to will either leap or fall apart, it's so hard to tell – and are just looking at this video of a spider eating a mouse and saying something close to – but not verbatim – something close to the following word: BBBBBMHEURGH.

I am of the first group of people, so this video is pretty chill:

(Video via Facebook)

It's also exceptionally fucked up and wrong, though, isn't it? In my opinion, spiders should not be strong enough to fuck a mouse up and then carry it about in its mandibles, or whatever it is spiders have. In my opinion, a spider should not be able to skitter up a horizontal plane while holding onto a creature many times its weight and at least twice its size. We all have opinions, and those are mine! Deal with it!

Now the initial reaction to what I am calling Spider 2.0 (the spider's real name is 'Hermie', and has been adopted by the Queensland tradesman, Jason Wormal, who took the footage of it this week) (I don't know why you would see a spider like that and choose to give it a home and not, say, put it in a microwave and destroy it in a way the rest of the spiders on earth can feel it) can be split roughly into two: you are either seeing this as a harbinger of the spider apocalypse, that this is the shape of spidering to come, that Spider 2.0 is just the first of many hyperevolutions that spiders will undertake in the next few years, and that by 2020 they will be car-sized, carrying elephants up the sheer side of buildings; the other reaction is just to say 'oh HELL NO' a lot until you close the tab.

There is a third reaction, though, and that is to ask:

ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO BEAT THIS AUSTRALIAN HYPERSPIDER IN A FIGHT?

I think that, if spiders were to wage a war on us with Spider 2.0/Hermie at their lead, we would stand a pretty good chance. But let's run the theory to prove it anyway: here, below, is a list of the five baddest dudes currently on the planet, and then, below below, we will discuss whether they would defeat a spider in unarmed combat. Then we will see if humanity needs to fear spiders or not.

THE CONTENDERS

IN THE SPIDER CORNER:

Hermie, that spider that carried a mouse about in that viral video we all just looked at a few paragraphs back;

IN THE HUMAN CORNER

Donald Trump, currently the man most likely to jab a red nuclear button like he was trying to usher a member of cabin crew over on a first class flight and ask them for 'a drink refresh and maybe some hand stuff, sweetie';

Tyson Fury, Gypsy King and pound-for-pound world champion, a man so hard he can only be defeated by his own disgrace;

Jackie Chan, who despite being a 62-year-old cherubic-faced half-retired actor could still Fuck You Right Up in about a thousand different ways;

Nicki Minaj, who is not technically from fighting stock in any way but I am still reeling from that time she offered Miley Cyrus out on stage at the VMAs last year and I just think that, if you were going to get in a fight with anyone – spider or not – you would want Nicki Minaj in your corner, talking smack and pulling her shirt sleeves up ready to fight for it;

Kumbuka, the gorilla who escaped from London Zoo last week and went radge and drank a load of undiluted blackcurrant squash, and though technically not a human, consider: is there anything you would mess with less, on earth, than a gorilla that just drank four litres of undiluted blackcurrant squash? And the answer is: no. There is nothing.

So let's consider how the fights would go:

TRUMP VS. HERMIE

Out of all of the human contenders, Trump is going to struggle the most with a large-ish spider holding a mouse. He's going to spend a lot of time walking stiff-legged around the ring (the fights will be held in a boxing ring, I insist on this). Keeps pausing the fight to do effete and delicate hand gestures to the crowd. Keeps tripping over his weird long tie. "I am a terrific spider killer, just fantastic," he's saying. "This spider is garbage, it's a whole bag of trash." Somehow it takes 40 minutes but eventually yes, he steps on Hermie, killing him instantly. HUMAN VICTORY.

FURY VS. HERMIE

There's a lot of talk ahead of the fight because Fury and his camp aren't sure whether they are allowed to partake in a simple exhibition fight against a spider without the permission of the Boxing Board of Control, and despite the contest being outside of the confines of the sport and a size and weight mismatch Fury does insist on putting his WBO title on the line against the spider, but in the end it only takes two or three punches from Fury against Fury's own face before, dazed and confused, he squashes Hermie to the death with a single boot. After the fight a visibly sweating Fury sings "Sweet Home Alabama" in the ring to his wife. HUMAN VICTORY.

CHAN VS. HERMIE

Jackie Chan defeats Hermie by ziplining into the ring from a burning building nearby and knocking him out with a single cushioned kick. I mean he somehow breaks both shoulders and his skull doing it, but a win is a win. HUMAN VICTORY.

MINAJ VS. HERMIE

I do not know what Nicki Minaj's best form of offence is because I've never seen her truly on the attack but I feel like her go-to is 'just singing the verse from "Monster" really hard at people' and then maybe 'chewing gum and rolling her eyes so witheringly that everybody nearby dies' so she can do either of those – or impale Hermie with a show heel – and ease to victory while Meek Mill watches helplessly from the sidelines. HUMAN VICTORY.

KUMBUKA VS. HERMIE

Animal vs. Animal, God's Perfect Weapon vs. God's Perfect Weapon, only I imagine even a week later Kumbuka is still struggling with a sugar headache and is just mad as hell about it so snatches Hermie up, mouse and all, and consumes him in one. SURROGATE HUMAN VICTORY.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM THIS

Very, very little. But I guess the moral is, 'if you see a spider strong enough to hold a mouse and walk up a wall about it, you can still fuck it up by just kicking it'. Hopefully that has allayed some fears out there.

@joelgolby

More stuff from VICE:

Have Scientists Learned Anything from Giving Drugs to Spiders?

Photos of the Snakes, Lizards and Spiders at the Quebec Reptile Expo

Some Important Questions for the Man Who Has Been Bitten On the Dick Twice By a Spider

Illustration by Marta Parszeniew

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Daniel Wolstencroft was just five years old the first time he was sexually abused by a family member. The abuse went on for years. He started acting out as a teenager, turned to alcohol and drugs, and ended up in prison. No one thought to ask what was wrong, and it was only years later—when another man opened up to him about his own sexual abuse—that Wolstencroft found the courage to break his silence.

As many as 75,000 men are victims of sexual assault in the UK every year; around 9,000 are victims of rape. But this abuse is rarely talked about, and there's a stigma still attached to coming forward. In 2013/14, only 3,000 offenses of male rape or sexual assault were recorded.

That's why Wolstencroft has set up Shatter Boys, a new project to help other male survivors of child sexual abuse and adult rape. The project uses the experiences of men who have been through horrific ordeals themselves to empower other victims. So far he and the group have helped 60 men in Manchester, and the plan is to launch support groups across the country. I spoke to Wolstencroft to find out what stops men from speaking out and why more needs to be done.

Daniel Wolstencroft

VICE: Can you tell me why you decided to set up Shatter Boys?
Daniel Wolstencroft: It's personal. I was abused as a child and as a teen. It started at five. Nobody ever picked up on it. I was running away from home and being naughty, but I was just seen as a little shit. No one ever sat me down and said, "Daniel, why are you behaving like this?" I ended up in drug services—I've been to rehab God knows how many times. I've been to prison. There was a total lack of support. I slipped through the net all those years.

It wasn't until I found a drug worker in 2009 who told me about himself—he'd been through similar things. He was the first person I'd ever spoken to who had been abused. I thought, If he can do it, I can do it. That gave me strength to speak out. After that, I made myself a promise then that I would set up a support group for male survivors.

How does the project work?
We offer one-to-one and group support. We also talk to people online. People can remain anonymous; they don't have to show their faces. They can build their confidence up before coming to see us in person.

We're a peer-support service, not a clinical service. We're experts by experience. You can't put a price on talking to someone who's been through similar things to you—particularly with this stuff because it's so personal. We've got lived experience. That's what works.

Why does that approach work?
Because a lot of people have been abused by people in a position of authority, whether that be a social worker, a teacher... somebody in a shirt and tie. Nearly all the lads we work with have massive trust issues. If we make a disclosure about what we've been through, that builds that rapport and trust.

So few men speak out about their abuse. Why do you think that is?
Men are supposed to be strong and able to deal with stuff. So when a person speaks out, even though it happened to them when they were a child, they're worried that other people will view them as being weak—like you couldn't look after yourself or defend yourself.

Then there's what we call "vampire syndrome"—if you've been bitten by a vampire, then you become one. There's a taboo out there that if you've been abused, you go on to abuse others. Which is far from the truth—there's no research backing that, but it's a major reason why people don't come forward.

The average time for a male disclosing is 27 years; the average time for a woman is five

How do you tackle those stereotypes?
By raising awareness, by putting stuff out there online. And by sharing our truth and our stories with people. The average time for a male disclosing is 27 years; the average time for a woman is five.

One of our clients is a 54-year-old from Manchester who was abused as a child, initially by his brother. He ended up going into care. Then he was sexually abused by his social worker and in care by the older lads. He made contact with us online. I built up a rapport with him, and he gained the confidence to meet in person, and then started coming to the group. He's been flying ever since. He's now helping to support new members. It's all about passing on what we've learned.

Do you think society needs to do more to help male survivors?
Yeah, I do. There's only a handful of services that are specifically set up to help men, and there are many for women—that's the reason we set up in the first place. But we don't want any funding off anyone. Salford University has given us a room for free indefinitely, but we don't want to be tied to the NHS or anything, where they can say, "Right, your funding's stopped now." Survivors UK—Britain's biggest male-rape charity—had its funding cut to zero in 2015, despite a huge increase in men reporting sexual violence.

My main concern is that post–Jimmy Savile and Operation Yewtree, there's going to be loads of people coming forward, and, in my opinion, the criminal justice system isn't set up to help survivors of child abuse, or deal with perpetrators. We're doing what little we can by setting up these groups.

The racist. Screenshot via YouTube.

A video in which a white man is seen in an Abbotsford, BC parking lot yelling "white power" and berating a South Asian man, calling him a "camel-riding motherfucker," has prompted a police investigation.

Several versions of the video have been posted to YouTube. It starts with the white man kissing the man holding the camera. Demonstrating his ignorance of basic geography, he asks, "Is there a problem? You fucking Paki, go back to fucking India."

Police told Global News the incident took place Friday and everyone involved has been identified. According to Constable Judy Bird, the racist man became enraged when he received a fine for parking in a reserved spot. After he began verbally attacking the parking attendant, the South Asian man started filming.

The white man calls the man filming a "fucking Hindu" and says all Hindus are "camel-riding motherfuckers." While getting back into the passenger seat of a massive pick-up truck, he says "Go back to Hindi"—which is a language—and screams "White power, motherfucker."

He then retrieves his phone and starts filming the man behind the camera, asking "When did you move to Canada?" After the other man replies, "I was born in Canada," the white guy retorts, "When did you learn not to fucking mind your own business you fucking Hindu." The man filming then says, "You're actually parked in my spot."

Finally, the racist appears to be done ranting and walks back to his car, only to turn back around and spit out, "You fucking shit skin, Hindu." He also suggests that the man filming should wear a turban because his "wife would like it better." He continues to yell slurs even as he's driving out of the parking lot, punctuated by claims that "it's not a threat!"

Police said no one filed a complaint about the video but they are looking into it nonetheless.

Earlier in the month, residents in Abbotsford and a number of other BC communities reported receiving Ku Klux Klan flyers delivered alongside bags of white rice.

The literature contained messages like "Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan! Yes! White Lives Do Matter!" and "We Must Secure the Existence of Our People & A Future for White Children" and listed a "Klan hotline" phone number.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

Every year, countless reports on how to make prisons more rehabilitative are published by think tanks, scholars, and advocates. Some of them rely on interviews with prisoners, while others focus on data and documents. But a new report on how Texas prisons can improve is unique: It was written solely by prisoners.

Aaron Flaherty is serving a life sentence—for his role as the getaway driver during a 1997 convenience store robbery-murder—at the Darrington Unit, in rural east Texas, where he is enrolled in a seminary program. Two years ago, he began corresponding with Wolf Sittler, a furniture maker in Austin. "We'd throw ideas back-and-forth" about prison reform, said Sittler, himself a former probation officer.

Sittler encouraged Flaherty to write his suggestions down, and a month ago, he received the 65-page report, "Reshaping the Texas Prison System for Greater Public Safety," written by Flaherty along with David Graham, Michael Smith, William Jones, and Vondre Cash. They have named their group the "Responsible Prison Project."

"It has often been said that those who are closest to a problem are closest to its solution," Flaherty writes. "That is no less true of prisoners."

Sittler has given copies to prison agency officials and lawmakers in Austin. Some of the recommendations are likely to hit a wall of resistance, whatever their merits—letting outside overseers evaluate inmate grievances, for example, or giving prisoners access to the internet. But others are notable for their specificity and clarity, offering a fresh look at daily life behind bars.

We've pulled a handful of excerpts, and put the whole report online here. Flaherty says that anyone who wants to know more can write to him directly.*

Arrival

"When inmates arrive at a transfer facility, they are taken from the bus and walked to the entrance of the facility. Immediately they are yelled at by officers to strip naked, get 'nuts to butts,' and after being searched they are kept naked for several minutes until they are issued some boxers.... During this process, officers are yelling obscenities at the inmates.... This demoralizing routine seeks obedience but provides no direction or guidance to the inmate.

"There is no reason for the officers to be rude and degrading, and such behavior actually discourages rehabilitation.... Intake is the first opportunity to rehabilitate, and as such this stage should be taken more seriously. New arrivals should have counseling available and should receive immediate training to prepare them for the prison culture and to inoculate them against gang recruiters, extortion, and other threats."

Commissary

"Commissary also preserves the black market because of its limited selection. For example, since the prison commissaries do not sell any kind of chlorinated powder, such as Tide or Ajax as they used to, inmates turn to the black market and buy stolen bleach and powder detergent from people who work in the laundry. Likewise, commissary will not sell food seasonings such as onion powder, garlic, dehydrated onions and bell peppers, etc., so inmates buy these stolen goods from the kitchen.

"TDCJ inmates, should be rehabilitation. As a result, positive activities that encourage positive behavior should be permitted for seg inmates. For example, talent shows could be performed in seg living areas that would include live music and comedy productions from the general populations. Christmas caroling could be performed for them by the unit choir, as it is for the general population at some of the units."

Visitation

"All visits should be extended from two hours to four hours in length, regardless of the distance traveled. This would encourage visitors to drive the long distances—200 miles one way in many instances—to maintain a bond with their incarcerated loved one."

Behavior and Clothing

"Good behavior often goes overlooked in prison. The officers know who the troublemakers are and tend to let them get away with nefarious activities to keep peace among the inmate population. Prisoners who maintain model conduct are unable to distinguish themselves in any significant way because unit administration pays them no mind."

"Inmates should be able to earn privileges, not just be granted the same privileges as all other inmates. For example, many states allow inmates to wear various clothing. Texas makes inmates all wear the same uniform: white shirt and white elastic-band pants... Inmates who have distinguished themselves as model inmates could be permitted to order various styles of shoes from an approved vendor... Various units could be classified for inmates who have proven to be model inmates... They could wear jean-type pants and non-white shirts.

"Giving inmates the ability to set themselves apart from those who choose to continue to misbehave would give an inmate a reason to care about his future; it would give him hope that his futurecanbe different; and giving inmates hope about a better future will change the culture of the prison system."

*Write him at: Richard Aaron Flaherty
#00802140
Darrington Unit
59 Darrington Road
Rosharon, TX 77583

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Portrait by Hiroyuki Ito

This article appeared in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

If you started writing record reviews today, and penned one a day for the next 40 years, you still wouldn't have written as many as Robert Christgau, the legendary scribe who has some 15,000 pieces of criticism to his name and an enviably encyclopedic knowledge of music history. Christgau was among the first journalists to tackle rock music as a serious subject and to extend that same critical eye to pop culture, at-large. His Consumer Guide, published weekly by the Village Voice for nearly 30 years, became a bible to young music nerds, at a time when his opinion could help make or break an artist. An infamous grump, Christgau has an ability to garrote an album with poetic precision—often just a couple sentences—and has inspired both admiration and ire. In 1983, Sonic Youth released a song nicknamed "I Killed Christgau with My Big Fat Dick," and Lou Reed's 1978 live album includes a rant where he calls Christgau everything from a moron to a "toe-fucker." None of which fazed him: Christgau, who now writes for Noisey, still approaches each review with enthusiasm, intellectual vigor, and exactitude. Though his process has remained fairly consistent, Christgau acknowledges one recent change: Since he started going to the gym this year, he gets a lot of important thinking about music done on the treadmill. ("I discovered the new Rihanna album on the treadmill.")

VICE: If you were just beginning a career now, as a kid looking to indulge your passions in writing and music, where would you try to break in?
Robert Christgau: I hate to think about it. I think it's a terrible time to be an arts journalist. My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary. I was very deeply affected by the New Journalists—in particular Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese. But that kind of work takes time. I'm 74 years old. I have retirement money. I own this apartment, and I pay in maintenance less than most people pay for their studio apartments. I couldn't live on what I make as a writer now, and I could work harder and still not make enough. I was telling people not to become music journalists in 2000. But people do it anyway.

When you first started writing about music, how did you get good at it?
I didn't need to get good; I was good. Take a look at my early Esquire columns; they're very written. At that time, a certain kind of concision interested me—the ability to write short, funny things. I guess I still do it.

"One of my gifts as a critic is that I really like music, and I'm open and still excitable. I'm not a bored person, and I'm not tired of life."—Robert Christgau

How do you choose what to listen to from the pile?
I want it to imprint itself on my sensorium in a preconscious way. And then I find out what's actually there. I want to reproduce what it's like to listen to the radio but with albums. So I like to use a CD changer. I'll put things on and won't know what they are because I forgot what I put in there, or I'll see if I noticed when one thing changed to the other.

Do you fuck with the digital realm much? Do you ever dig into Bandcamp or SoundCloud?
No. I go to those places but only for a reason. I have to use Spotify. But I don't like it. I find it impossible to organize in the same way. I'd have to be making playlists, which is somewhat physically delicate and a tedious thing to do.

Who are some of your favorite artists of the past five years?
Most of them are rappers. I'm a big Nicki Minaj fan. And Kanye's a pain in the ass, but he's a genius. In the alt-rock world, I really think a lot of Vampire Weekend. And there are all these Nashville-associated women: Lori McKenna, Miranda Lambert, Brandy Clark, Angaleena Presley, Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe—a tremendous bunch of really first-rate writers.

You've talked about having this feeling in the pit of your stomach when you hear something you especially like for the first time...
Yeah, like right now, the Avalanches just came out with a new album. I found it on Spotify, and the second track seems to mash up a calypso I've never heard. And it's fuckin' great. I have a feeling the rest of it just isn't really that good, but I love that song so much, and I've gotta write about it. So, yeah, I still get that feeling. One of my gifts as a critic is that I really like music, and I'm open and still excitable. I'm not a bored person, and I'm not tired of life. And I'm very sorry I'm as old as I am because it means I don't have that much of it left, and I think about it all the time.

If you were no longer being paid to review records, would you still do it?
I don't think so. I need to be paid. Between jobs, did I write reviews? Yes. Did I write as many as I should have? No. Doing what I do is a lot of work.

But you love doing it, don't you?
It keeps me centered, is what I would say.

I wouldn't be surprised if you find you always have these sentences, that even without the rewriting and perfecting for publication...
Don't kid yourself, lady. They don't pop in my head that way. I think about them. I sit there. Every once in a while does one come to my head? Yeah. But most of the time, I have to sit there and think, What's my first sentence gonna be?

This article appeared in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Westworld is frequently billed as a successor to Game of Thrones, following in the latter's footsteps as HBO's next big-budget sprawling drama featuring spectacular violence, high-quality production, and a good bit of nudity. However, four episodes into the season, and it's clear that the show about a futuristic western theme park has a second, more mystery-powered TV model: Lost.

That said, Westworld can't function like either of those shows. Lost worked through an intense focus on—and extensive backstory for—a relatively small number of central characters, which made us care about their struggles even when the mysteries turned out to be duds or were dropped altogether. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, succeeds with a more sprawling cast and larger world because it's violence and plot twists have real consequences: Wars are started, heroes die, kingdoms rise and fall. In Westworld, however, the main characters are robots whose personalities and backstories are reprogrammed with the touch of a button, and the well-choreographed shootouts and horrifying tortures are cleaned up and reset each day.

Instead of being powered by character or plot, Westworld is powered by theme: What is consciousness? What does our taste in violent entertainment say about ourselves? Can man be inhuman to machine?

Sunday night's episode, "Dissonance Theory," references the psychological concept of how holding two conflicting ideas causes mental stress. Well, if two conflicting ideas can cause a little stress, what does holding 100 different personalities and storylines in one's head do?

Something Hiding Underneath

Cognitive dissonance is the reality of the robots in Westworld, and this episode opens with Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) telling Bernhard (Jeffrey Wright) how the contradictions are starting to tear her apart: "I think there may be something wrong with this world, something hiding underneath." It's either that, or "I'm losing my mind."

Back in the park, Dolores is hanging with guests Logan (Ben Barnes) and William (Jimmi Simpson) on their search for the outlaw Slim. She's glitching still, talking to figures that disappear and seeing visions of red and white figures whose blank masks with lights on each side make them look like aliens.

Thandie Newton's host madam, Maeve, is having an even harder time with the dissonance. Her android mind flashes between the present and past, and between knowing that she is alive and that she is dead. She knows she was shot in the gut, yet her skin is untouched. Above all, she is haunted by the same red and white figures. She sketches one of these creatures, but when she goes to hide it in her room, she finds dozens of similar sketches, flipping through them in terror like the "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" scene in The Shining.

We, the viewers at home, know that these creatures are merely the human cleanup crew who pick up the robot dead to hose them off, repair their skin, and reboot them back to life. But to the robots of the parks, they might as well be spirits or gods. Indeed, Maeve sees a Native American host drop an idol shaped like one of these figures. She screams for an answer and is told "that thing is part of their so-called religion."

Later, when Hector (Rodrigo Santoro)'s bandit crew attacks the brothel, Maeve demands answers at gunpoint. Hector says the figure is a "shade" that "walks between worlds, sent from hell to oversee our world." She needs to resolve her cognitive dissonance, though, and convinces Hector to slice her open her belly and see if a bullet really is inside. "What does it mean?" he asks, glancing at the bloody slug. "That I'm not crazy after all," she responds. "And that none of this matters."

"This whole world is a story."

Dropping hints, Bernard tells Dolores she needs to play "the maze" game, and at the center, she'll be free. Is this the same maze that Ed Harris's Man in Black is hunting with such bloody vigor? Or is Westworld a maze of mazes, with different labyrinths for the characters and viewers to get lost in?

The Man in Black tells Lawrence (Clifton Collins, Jr.) he seeks the maze because "I've read every page except the last one. I need to find out how it ends." He makes an allusion to Arnold, "the original settler of these parts," and how he thinks Ford's partner created a secret story "with real stakes and real violence" inside the safety of the amusement park. The next step in finding this story is, apparently, watching a bathing female outlaw with a gigantic snake tattoo wrapped around her body. He promises to spring her boss, Hector, if she'll talk to him.

Her band of bandits has a few human guests embedded, and one is starstruck by the Man in Black's presence. "I'm such an admirer of yours," he tells him. "Your foundation literally saved my sister's life." Apparently, the most depraved killer inside the park is a humanitarian outside of it. But this bestial Bill Gates growls back: "One more word, and I'll cut your throat, you understand? This is my fucking vacation!"

At the jail, the Man in Black breaks out some fancy toys, including exploding cigars that—after approval from headquarters—take out the cell, along with the sheriff's head. With Hector safely delivered, he gets his next clue from the snake lady: a backstory about the evil men who murdered her village, headed by the villain Wyatt. (Wyatt was the new villain Ford introduced last episode, so it's curious that he could be tied into a secret story that a now-dead Arnold left in the park.)

"Is that all I'm good for?"

This is what Bernard asks his supervisor, Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen Wood), after another bedroom romp. The question might be asked of all the human characters at headquarters. Everyone in the park—robot or human—is far more alive than the characters in the cold, corporate headquarters. The one exception is Anthony Hopkins's Dr. Ford, whom Theresa goes to meet.

Ford knows that Theresa actually doesn't like the park at all, and teases her with words and eerily paused robots. Ford views himself as a god, noting how he and Arnold "designed every inch of it, every blade of grass" and fought over whether they should allow in the moneymen. Theresa thinks she has the upper hand through said moneymen, and points out that the board is sending a representative who will back her. "But they already have," Ford says with a smile, "I thought they would have told you."

This is yet another mystery nugget for viewers to debate. Could the Man in Black be such a devoted guest that he somehow counts as a representative? Of the other humans we know, nice guy William seems like an impossibility, but Logan could possibly be some spoiled scion sent by a rich parent as a representative. (At one point, he says that "the company" should increase his stake in the park.)

But the biggest question is how long the show can sustain interest without heading in the character-driven model of Lost or the high-stakes model of Game of Thrones. Westworld is still humming along, but pretty soon we're going to need to either learn more about the characters or see the violence have world-changing consequences.

Follow Lincoln Michel on Twitter.

Westworld airs on Sundays at 10 PM on HBO.

Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar will face a disciplinary hearing. Photo via Facebook

The Ottawa police officer who said an Inuit artist's death was likely her own fault because "typically many Aboriginals have very short lifespans" has been charged under the Police Services Act, according to multiple media outlets.

Sergeant Chris Hrnchiar used Facebook to make the comments on an Ottawa Citizen article about the death of Annie Pootoogook, 47, a prominent Inuit artist who was found dead in the Rideau River. While foul play was initially ruled out, homicide detectives are now investigating.

But Hrnchiar, an officer in forensics, seemed to think that was unnecessary.

"Of course this has nothing to do with missing and murdered Aboriginal women...it's not a murder case....could be a suicide, accidental, she got drunk and fell in the river and drowned who knows.....typically many Aboriginals have very short lifespans, talent or not," he wrote, followed by, "Because much of the aboriginal population in Canada is just satisfied being alcohol or drug abusers, living in poor conditions etc.....they have to have the will to change, it's not society's fault."

Read more: Why the Ottawa Cop Who Made Racist Facebook Comments Likely Won't Be Held Accountable

Hrnchiar has been charged with two counts of discreditable conduct. Offences under the provincial Police Services Act are resolved through a hearing process, with potential outcomes ranging from a verbal reprimand to dismissal.

Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau at first seemed to downplay the comments; instead of condemning them as racist he told the CBC "I'm certainly hearing that they're being seen as being racist comments... I certainly appreciate and understand how those comments are being received."

He also said everyone has biases but "our job as police officers is to ensure that those biases don't impact the work that we're doing." In a subsequent interview with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, however, the chief admitted the comments were racist.

Mayor Jim Watson continues to refuse to comment on the issue. Reached by VICE, his office said "As to not interfere with or compromise an ongoing investigation, Mayor Watson cannot provide comments on an open police investigation." Watson was also silent in the immediate aftermath of the controversial death of Abdirahman Abdi at the hands of Ottawa police. He blocked Twitter users like Toronto journalist Desmond Cole when criticized online about his silence.

According to a report from the Chief of the Ottawa Police Service, complaints about Ottawa cops spiked by 133 percent in the third quarter of 2016.

Hrnchiar's hearing will begin Nov. 1.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Liberal MP Nick Whalen. Photo via Facebook

Have you ever met someone who told you to just "suck it up," despite having little to no experience in your situation?

As the presidential race drags its way, gnashing its horrible teeth and leaking slime, across the finish line, it's becoming clear that Hillary Clinton is going to win. She was the obvious frontrunner when she entered the race 18 months ago, and she remains ahead in most national polls as well as swing state polls. Though there are still a couple furious weeks of campaigning left, she is preparing to take over the White House, reportedly reaching out to Republican officials to talk about future compromises and thinking about who would run her presidential administration.

But if Clinton the candidate wins, the question turns to Clinton the president—what will she do once in office? And how will she do it?

The first question is not that hard to answer. Unlike Donald Trump, Clinton has made a point to detail a lot of her plans on a variety of issues: She's promised to expand the use of green energy, push for tuition-free college for many students, and establish a no-fly zone in Syria. She's a centrist on trade, a hawk on foreign policy, and a liberal Democrat on most other things.

The question of how Clinton's administration would operate is trickier, but hacked campaign emails released by WikiLeaks over the past month paint a picture of an organization that is contemptuous of opposition, often obsessed with how an issue is perceived, and yet sometimes prone to decisions that seem self-defeating and dance on the knife's edge of political disaster.

WikiLeaks hasn't dropped a single smoking-gun email proving any kind of illegal activity, and often the context of the emails (which the transparency organization generally fails to provide) gets muddled in the reporting and re-reporting. To take one example of many, emails that some outlets portrayed as Clinton aides scheming to dodge press scrutiny were actually a spirited debate about answering questions at certain events.

But some emails actually are revealing, like the ones showing that in 2015 Clinton wanted to take a $12 million donation from the king of Morocco for the Clinton Global Initiative in exchange for appearing at a CGI event that would be held in Morocco. If not corrupt, this was, as Clinton aide Huma Abedin wrote in one email, a "mess": Clinton was preparing to run for president, and here she was appearing to be selling access to a foreign leader. In the end, she didn't show up in Morocco, but her initial decision to go through with it justifiably upset her campaign team.

There are other questions about what Clinton has said in private and her family's foundation, some raised by WikiLeaks emails. Why did the Clinton Foundation take millions from Saudi Arabia's repressive regime? Why did she take highly paid speaking engagements at banks and praise Wall Street in these speeches? Why were the Clintons' well-connected senior advisers so entangled in potential conflicts of interest that were called out in private by Chelsea Clinton? Why did Clinton aides talk so much shit about progressives in emails?

Clinton apologists can undoubtedly come up with some answers to those questions. But then there's another one. The Clinton campaign has been shown in emails to be deeply sensitive to how their candidate's positions and actions will be perceived. So why did Clinton (presumably knowing that she'd be running for president in 2016), make speeches and accept donations that could lead to a thousand mini-scandals blooming? It's hard to believe that Clinton didn't know that these actions wouldn't come under scrutiny. Maybe she's been through so many public fights over her private behavior that she doesn't mind a few more.

The Clinton presidency is not going to have much of a honeymoon phase—House Republicans, who will likely control the lower house of Congress, are already making plans to continue the investigation into Clinton's private email server after her inauguration. Clinton and her administration will have to weather opposition from both the right and the left, since many progressives already didn't trust her before the WikiLeaks emails came out. The White House will be under constant fire, and that means they'll likely go on a counterattack.

Apologies are Clinton's "Achilles heel," according to one adviser in a leaked email about the private server scandal. Instead of saying she's sorry, Clinton's instinct is to either obfuscate or to get surrogates to smear her accuser—on Sunday's political talk shows, VP candidate Tim Kaine suggested some of the WikiLeaks emails were fake (without citing specific examples), and her campaign manager Robby Mook objected to the focus on the emails because they were "stolen."

Clinton is a long ways away—geographically and politically—from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the pair might share a common trait. "His problem is 'noble cause' corruption," James Ball, a former WikiLeaks employee, wrote in 2013 of Assange. "Behavior he'd rightly condemn in others, he excuses in himself, because he believes, at his core, he is the good guy."

Clinton may believe something similar. Her family's foundation does good work, so raising money for it can't be corrupt, right? And her presidency will save lives and push forward the Democratic cause, so no political move to serve that end—from fundraising to tweaking her policy positions—can really be wrong.

In a normal year, that kind of logic would go unremarked upon, because nearly every politician subscribes to it. But the 2016 campaign was about purity, about noble outsiders from Vermont or reality TV stars who could break things, start a revolution, drain the swamp.

Well, it's looking like the swamp will remain undrained. Clinton will come into office dealing with not only the usual foreign and domestic crises an incoming president inherits, but a hostile and often incoherent opposition party, a left flank that may not trust her, her own tendency to dismiss outside criticism in favor of her sense of righteousness, and a staff obviously highly attuned to changes in public opinion.

"I'm a progressive who gets things done" has been one of Clinton's refrains for more than a year. Come January 20, she'll have to prove that statement to the people who elected her—both parts of it.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Fentanyl siezed by Quebec City police in April. Photo via Twitter

This story originally appeared on VICE Quebec

Fentanyl has rapidly transitioned from a pain relief medication to a source of public health catastrophes across North America. Being a part the opioid family, fentanyl is a drug prescribed to relieve chronic pain, 40 times stronger than heroin.

However, its consumption goes well beyond the medical world. On the streets, we often find medicinal gel patches which can be grated and smoked, or diluted and injected. Fentanyl can also be purchased in its powdered form, which is a bootleg, non-pharmaceutical version, and "this is what we've seen happening in the last few years," observed Jean-François Mary, general director of L'Association québécoise pour la promotion de la santé des personnes utilisatrices de drogues (AQPSUD, a health promotion association for drug users in Quebec).

Fentanyl powder can be pressed into counterfeit pills or used as a cheap way to cut drugs, such as heroin. We have seen "a little bit" of it in Montreal, confirmed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigator Jacques Théberge when he spoke to VICE. But in Western Canada and Ontario, a crisis is raging: All sorts of drugs are cut with fentanyl, often unknowingly to the consumer, who, without knowledge, consume a substance can result in an overdose.

British Columbia declared a state of emergency last April after at least 488 deaths were caused by overdoses since the start of the year. As of the end of September, that number had risen to 555. A preliminary analysis from the province's coroner's office revealed that 60 percent of the drug overdoses deaths that occurred between January and July were linked to fentanyl. The situation is equally critical in Alberta and Ontario (though, little information is available in the latter because the government isn't properly tracking it).

Is it as bad in Quebec?

From 2010 to 2014, 191 overdose autopsies revealed the presence of fentanyl, according to Quebec's coroner's office. Of these deaths, 46 were directly caused by this powerful drug, which works out to about a dozen deaths per year. And while there here have been a few notable busts in Quebec this year, including one massive seizure in Quebec City worth $1.5 million, the situation in Quebec has not yet felt the full intensity of the overdose wave which has plagued other provinces.

According to David Champagne-Turcotte, responsible for AQPSUD's communications, Montreal's drugs are not being cut with fentanyl like they are elsewhere.

"The people that will consume fentanyl know what they are looking for, therefore they are more careful. But you have to be careful, because there are counterfeit ," he told VICE.

These tablets, which come from clandestine laboratories or are smuggled in from China, are extremely dangerous. "Anybody can pretend to be a chemist, order ingredients, order a press, and fabricate their own tablets in a basement. Nobody checks the quantity of fentanyl contained inside them," warned Geneviève Fortin, communication organizer at Cactus Montréal, the city's largest community group working with IV drug users. According to the RCMP, the lethal fentanyl dose hovers around two milligrams.

For Fortin, what seems most common in Quebec are clandestine tablets that are passed off as other opioids. She explained: "We have observed that many people thought they were getting OxyContin, when it was actually fentanyl."

Opioid consumption is on the rise

"We know that people are consuming fentanyl, but we have no data on its consumption or presence on the streets," said Fortin. Reluctantly, Corporal Théberge confirmed to me that the RCMP is investigating the presence of fentanyl in Quebec, but won't confirm how many investigations are underway, nor their scope.

What we know for sure is that two years ago Quebec's Public Health Institute reported an increase in intentional and accidental overdoses caused by opioids. Generally, the sale and the consumption of medicinal opioids are on the rise.

The Collège des médecins du Québec is worried: according to them, there is no control on the prescription of opioids and on who is prescribing them. The organization fears that the situation is deteriorating like in British Columbia. "We know some of our doctors have prescribed as many as 3,000 opioid pills per month. To our knowledge, there's no medical reason to be prescribing 3,000 tablets per month to one patient. We know that there are certain patients that have access to a couple hundred, if not thousands of tablets per month," said Yves Robert, the secretary of the Collège de médecins, in an interview with Radio-Canada.

On the topic of why there's less fentanyl in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, opinions among those who work in the field were all over the place.

For some, like Carole Morissette, consulting physician to Montreal's public health department (Direction de la santé publique de Montréal) it is first a question of supply. "The consumers purchase what is on the market, and thankfully drugs that contain high quantities of fentanyl are not available at this time, unlike what we see in western Canada," she told VICE.

For others, it is also a question of demand, because for the moment, it is not opioids that are consumed most in the city. Geneviève Fortin said that, "it continues to be marginal. We see a lot more cocaine and crack. But among users of heroin and other opioids, more and more people are turning to fentanyl or OxyContin because they are cheaper than heroin."

Different cartels, different markets

"The thing with drugs is that there are no places where they are distributed the same way," Julie Soleil, director of Montreal's Group for Research and Psychosocial Intervention (GRIP) told VICE. According to her, the large variations in the presence of fentanyl across Canada can be attributed to the different cartels that control drug trafficking in those areas.

Soleil went on to explain: " or bikers, but it is not the same in all provinces. In the west, we find different cartels, notably Asian cartels that have many links to China where fentanyl comes from."

Jean-François Mary supports this hypothesis: "It is certain that the availability of fentanyl , compared to British Columbia, is really different. They have strong links to Chinese drug trafficking networks that has been established for a very long time, which is not the case here."

RCMP Inspector Jacques Théberge did not want to confirm the cartel theory. He stated: "It is something that I cannot openly discuss."

Fentanyl is also being purchased on the dark web, which adds a further complication to tracking its distribution.

Another hypothesis that could account for the weak presence of fentanyl in Quebec, is that drug users and traffickers might simply be coming to the game later than the other provinces.

"Everything that happens out West eventually makes it to Quebec, but there's a lag," said Geneviève Fortin. "Crystal meth came to Vancouver ten, 15 years ago, but we're only starting to see a lot of it in Montreal. We expect it will take ten or so years before crystal meth consumption in Montreal reaches the levels we're currently seeing in Vancouver."

Théberge disagrees fentanyl will inevitably make inroads in Quebec. "For years, we kept hearing that crystal meth was coming to Montreal, but it never happened." Théberge nonetheless concedes fentanyl consumption patterns could more closely resemble those for crack, which is widely used in Montreal. It could go either way, he says.

Quebec is preparing

Though Quebec has managed to avoid the crisis up until now, it remains crucial that the province prepares for such an eventuality. Théberge warns that, "We must not forget that Montreal is a hub for drug trafficking, therefore we must expect to also see fentanyl."

The Direction de la santé publique de Montréal has put in place many measures to prevent and deal with the eventual crisis after a brief wave of 79 overdoses in 2014, which caused the deaths of 28 people in Montreal. The powerful opioid was detected in the analysis of one of the first overdoses, but "the inquiry permitted us to conclude that fentanyl was not the cause in all cases," corrected Carole Morissette, who participated in writing the inquiry's report.

Fentanyl or not, the Direction de la santé publique de Montréal has since proceeded to institute an oversight group tasked to quickly repair problematic situations and to transmit information in real time. The Direction has also been working on awareness tools that can prevent or recognize overdoses and also raise awareness about prevention. She has also pressed for the implementation of a program for access to naloxone, an injectable antidote that stops an overdose.

"In 2014, only a dozen paramedics had access to naloxone in pre-hospitalization services in Montreal. Now, almost all medical emergency paramedics are trained to use it," said Morissette. "Our goal, is to make sure that all persons susceptible to overdoses have access to this life-saving injectable."

The consulting physician added that since June of 2015, 350 people were trained to administer naloxone and that it has successful been administered 23 times.

Still a long way to go

Resources are still lacking with the—imminent or not—coming of fentanyl. Fortin pleads for legislation supporting testing services, which are permitted in many European countries. This would allows for the detection of fentanyl in drugs unbeknownst to consumers. In other words, she does not accept that naloxone "hasn't been made available to enough people," even if many field practitioners and users already have their naloxone kit.

For his part, David Champagne-Turcotte criticizes Quebec's tardy implementation of supervised injection sites, a service that has been in the works for 20 years. "It's been years now that we've been hearing that it would come in the spring... Now, they are conducting interviews for nurses. We hope that it will be here in next spring," he said with a sigh.

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Photo via Mike Pearl

Lawyers for Adnan Syed, the focus of the first season of the Serial podcast, have filed a motion to get the 35-year-old convicted murderer out on bail after a Maryland judge granted him a new trial back in June, the New York Times reports.

Syed has served 16 years of a life sentence after being convicted in 2000 of killing his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. His new lawyer, C. Justin Brown, claims that the new evidence that's helped grant him a new trial should be considered in his bail application, including faulty cellphone tower data, poor legal representation, and the credibility of witness Jay Wilds.

"We feel that we have met the burden that we have to, and we can show that he is not dangerous and he is not a risk of flight," Brown told the Times Monday.

Back in June, Baltimore City Circuit Court judge Martin P. Welch granted Syed a new trial after his legal team produced new evidence and argued in post-conviction hearings that Syed's original defense attorney, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, had been negligent. Welch ultimately decided that there was "a substantial possibility that the result of the trial was fundamentally unreliable," according to his memo.

Although bail motions are pretty standard procedures, Brown isn't sure the Maryland attorney general's office will even respond to the request, so the whole thing might just be a Hail Mary attempt to get Syed out for a short time.

"Usually, there's not a response," Brown told the Times. "But this is not the normal case, so who knows."

Read: Adnan from 'Serial' Is Hoping to Get Out of Jail on a Cellphone-Related Technicality

Photo of Fogle outside an Indiana courthouse last year by Joey Foley/Getty Images

The ex-wife of disgraced Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is suing the sandwich franchise because she claims the company knew he was a pedophile and failed to act on it, CNN Money reports.

Katie McLaughlin, who married Fogle in 2010, alleges in the suit that Subway executives had received reports of Fogle's "depravities" and attraction to children as early as 2004 but did not make the information public or alert her.

"Subway's ambition for sales and growth came at the expense of Katie ," the suit reads. It alleges the chain received three separate reports of Fogle's interest in children and still neglected to contact police.

"A responsible corporation would take immediate action when hearing of this behavior, even if it was only allegations," it continues. "Subway failed every test of corporate responsibility in its response to each of these complaints."

Fogle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for child sex charges in 2015.

Read: Subway Jared Allegedly Got Beat Up in Prison

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania.

It's somewhat rare to see large groups of ethnic Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, and Roma hanging out together at the same place and time in rural Eastern Europe. While borders around them have changed over the centuries, different cultures in the region have traditionally kept to themselves—especially in poorer areas.

But if there's one thing that can bring people from all cultures together, it's a great bargain. Which is exactly what you'll find at the famous annual fair in Negreni, a small village in northwestern Romania. This marketplace has always attracted thousands of people of different ethnicities from around the country selling their vintage treasures and looking for a great price on knock-off goods.

Photographer Hadju Tamas went to this year's Negreni fair and came back with these photos.

Painting of Christopher Marlowe via Wikipedia

A group of scholars tasked with editing a new collection of William Shakespeare's work has decided to give playwright Christopher Marlowe a co-author credit for Shakespeare's Henry VI plays, the Associated Press reports.

While we already know that Shakespeare was probably a stoner, the legitimacy of his authorship remains somewhat of a long-running conspiracy theory. Some believe the playwright had to have collaborated with a small group of talented writers, while others believe his works were penned by someone else entirely.

In preparation for the new Oxford University Press collection, four top scholars wanted to investigate how much collaboration actually went into some of his plays by using computerized data sets. After analyzing the similarities between Shakespeare's work and the work of his contemporaries, the researchers found that his Henry VI plays contained uncanny similarities to the work of Marlowe, another 16th-century British playwright and poet, and determined that Marlowe must have helped Shakespeare pen at least some of his famous plays.

"Shakespeare, like other geniuses, recognized the value of other people," Gary Taylor, the lead investigator from Florida State University, told the AP. "What is Shakespeare famous for? Writing dialogue—interactions between two people. You would expect in his life there would be dialogue with other people."

You can checkout Shakespeare's—and Marlowe's—new collection, along with an accompanying book from the scholars about their research, this November.

Read: Some Professor Thinks He's Proven That Shakespeare Was a Stoner