Photo via Flickr user Neon Tommy

Former California governor and doting father Arnold Schwarzenegger would have challenged Trump for the chance to run for president this year if he were legally able to, Schwarzenegger told Adweek.

"If I'd been born in America, I would've run," the movie star turned politician said to the magazine. "This was a very good time to get in the race."

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has been vocal about his disdain for Trump. Earlier in October, he released a statement on Twitter saying that he would not be voting for the Republican candidate for the first time since he gained US citizenship in 1983.

It's interesting to imagine how the mashup would played out in the primaries, since Arnold is somewhat of a bizarro Trump, and not just because he's the new face of Celebrity Apprentice. Schwarzenegger, like Trump, certainly understands the power of spectacle and how to leverage celebrity for political gains.

"I realized early on in bodybuilding that you have to be able to sell yourself, your ideas, your position to the public," he continued in the Adweek interview. "You have to set yourself apart, whether it's policy or movies. How do you make them remember you?"

Schwarzenegger is, of course, ineligible for the presidency since he was born in Austria. He has yet to publicly endorse a presidential candidate.

Read: In Praise of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aging Badass

Photo via Ottawa Police Service Facebook

Black and Middle Eastern drivers are stopped by police at disproportionately high rates for traffic infractions in Ottawa, according to a new study touted as the largest race-based data collection project in Canadian policing history.

On an all new episode of DESUS & MERO, Mero reveals that he's never seen Titanic but wants to remake it anyway, and actress and singer Pia Glenn joins as a special guest.

DESUS & MERO airs Monday to Thursday 11:30 PM ET/PT

Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.

Liz May with Alberta Greens' Holocaust-denying candidate. Photo by Monika Schaefer via Facebook

What's a good way to toast to the supremacy of the white race?

Well, if you're Blood and Honour, you do it with a little Holocaust denying mixed with some folksy violin playing from a former Green Party candidate.

Blood and Honour, quiet in Canada since about 2013, is having a bit of a renaissance as of late. The notorious white supremacist group's resurgence parallels that of the rise of other far right movements in Canada—most notably, the Soldiers of Odin. The anti-Semitic hoedown will be their fifth event of the year.

Founded in Britain in 1987, by the Paul McCartney of neo-Nazism Ian Stuart Donaldson, Blood and Honour is categorized as a right wing extremist group by the RCMP and have a violent past in Canada. However, a spokesman for the group said they are "a very different group today then we were even four years ago."

Internationally, the group is known for organizing concerts and events promoting white supremacy. In Canada, they are known for, frankly, just being really really shitty.

Read More: A Look Into Calgary's neo-Nazi Movement

The name Blood and Honour comes from a song by Donaldson's band Skrewdriver, it's also the translated slogan of the Hitler Youth slogan "Blut und Ehre."

After assaulting minorities and hosting white pride rallies for several years, Blood and Honour became practically invisible after 2013. The silence lasted until the beginning of 2016 when the group re-emerged with the launch of an official website marking a "new era in organizations activism"—this is also around the time they started recruiting on Stormfront.

On their website, Blood and Honour Canada say their goal is to "raise awareness of issues concerning our nation and the people here in, as well as to unite those people with a legitimate interest in securing the future of our European cultural identity under one common banner."

Blood and Honour refused comment to VICE, citing a policy in which they do not talk to media, but they did send an April 2016 interview given to a sister Blood and Honour chapter in Serbia. In it, the Canadian group said they formed in 2010 after getting approval from the American chapter.

They say there isn't a strong white supremacy community in Canada but they are working to grow it.

In order to warn the world about #whitegenocide they're holding an event featuring special speaker and musician Monika Schaefer, a fiddle playin', Holocaust denyin', Green Party runnin' woman from southern Alberta.

According to Facebook, even Kyle McKee—Alberta's famous lil' pipe bomb making Nazi boy—will be on hand to take in the folky sounds of Schaefer.

For those of you not familiar with Schaefer, here's a quick catch-up: As previously mentioned, she's a violin teacher and former Green Party candidate who ran in 2006, 2008, and 2011, but only gained infamy when, earlier this year, a video appeared on her YouTube channel called "Sorry Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust."

I'm sure you can tell this is going nowhere good.

In the video, the woman who looks like she would be far more comfortable selling granola at your local farmer's market than giving a pep talk at a white supremacy rally, apologizes to her mom for being wrong about the Holocaust.

In 2014, Schaefer explains, she changed her mind on the death of six million Jews and says the Holocaust "is the biggest and most pernicious and persistent lie in all of history." Some of her reasonings include "how much sense does it make to have a hospital in a death camp" and that the gas chambers were showers to save the prisoners from typhus.

"I am shocked by comments made by Ms. Schaefer and I condemn her terribly misguided and untrue statements," said Green Party leader Elizabeth May at the time. "Ms. Schaefer does not represent the values of the Green Party nor of our membership."

The video garnered Schaefer a human rights complaint, an expulsion from the Green Party, and, last but not least, an invitation from Blood and Honour.

Follow Mack on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Time for "How Scared Should I Be?" the column that quantifies the scariness of everything under the sun, and teaches you how to allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

A report last week from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed that 2015 saw more STD diagnoses than any year in recorded history. That includes 1.5 million cases of chlamydia, 400,000 cases of gonorrhea, and 24,000 cases of syphilis. Syphilis in particular has been on a meteoric rise, increasing 66.7 percent since 2011. The diseases disproportionally affect people under 25 and people in the Western United States, and particularly men with male partners—as you can see in the chart below—but the increases are present across the board.

Graph via CDC

The numbers are shocking, but how should Americans deal with this new information other than by being horrified?

What we're seeing might not necessarily be a rise, according to Dr. Richard Santucci, specialist-in-chief of urology at Detroit Medical Center. It's "an almost astonishingly complex situation," he told me. Rates appear to be soaring, but more widespread screenings might just be revealing that STDs were always more common than we thought. "If you screened everyone in the US, you would get a spike in cases since you now would be picking up all the cases you were missing," Santucci said. But he cautioned against suggesting that infections aren't increasing, since "some STDs do seem to be rising."

Screenings themselves have certainly improved, according to CDC epidemiologist Elizabeth Torrone. "For chlamydia, you used to have a swab, and it was a pretty uncomfortable swab because it went up inside the penis—not something most men want to have done. Now we can diagnose chlamydia by just peeing in a cup," she told me. Such tests earned acceptance from the medical community around 2005. "We've really made a lot of advances in how easy it is to get checked for STDs, to try and break down some of those barriers."

But the situation is bleak either way. We're either seeing a sharp increase in STDs, or finally understanding how widespread these infections are. "These numbers really drive home the message that there are STDs in our communities, and we need to start talking about it," Torrone told me.

But talking about it might not do much. Jonathan Mermin, the director of the CDC's STD-fighting effort told NPR last week that "more than half of state and local STD programs have experienced budget cuts. In 2012, 20 health departments reported having to close their STD clinics."

If better infrastructure were in place to treated infected people, there wouldn't be much for sufferers of highly treatable chlamydia and syphilis to worry about. But as the CDC report frequently notes, antibiotic resistance is making gonorrhea harder and harder to cure. "Right now, there's only one class of antibiotics that is recommended for the treatment of gonorrhea, and we are constantly monitoring any changes in susceptibility to that because we know it will likely develop resistance," Torrone told me.

And not to get all tenth grade health class on you, but if these infections go untreated there are consequences. Syphilis is more than just sores on your genitals. "You can get neurologic involvement with syphilis. We've actually had a number of cases of vision problems with syphilis—some people even went blind from syphilis infections," Torrone said. Untreated gonorrhea can cause infertility in women. Chlamydia can be passed on to a baby, leading to "deformities or even stillbirth," Torrone warned.

According to Torrone, if there's one thing people should take away from this report, it's not that they should be scared. "People need to get screened, and they need to get treated, but they also need to make sure they're talking to their partners about how to prevent STDs, so they don't have any of these consequences," she offered.

Patients also need to get over the stigma surrounding STDs. A CDC-led study this past June found that nearly half of patients seeking STD treatments were actively avoiding telling their primary doctors about them. Patient surveys revealed that 40 percent of patients had insurance, but weren't using it for their STD treatments. According to Dr. William S. Pearson who wrote that study, "Individuals receiving STD-related healthcare services will typically want to keep receipt of these services private."

Torrone envisions a future in which patients just level with their doctors about their own risky behaviors, and aren't shamed by their doctors about it. When that happens, she said, patients might start sounding like this:

"Hey, I saw this story on the news that STDs are going up. Do I need to get checked for STDs? Here's who I have sex with, and what type of sex I have."

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of the Rise in STDs?

2/5: Taking Normal Precautions

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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

Photo via Flickr user Rev Stan

US News

Trump Starts Broadcasting on Facebook
Donald Trump's campaign broadcasted a Facebook Live stream on Monday night featuring discussions between campaign advisors and other conservative talking heads. The Trump Tower Live show will air every night on his Facebook page, and is suspected to be the possible basis for a future TV channel, should Trump go into broadcasting after the election.—Bloomberg

Pennsylvania GOP Wants Outside Election Monitors
Pennsylvania Republicans have filed a federal lawsuit to overturn a state law on poll monitors that currently allows residents to monitor voting locations only in the county where they are registered. Overturning said regulations could allow people from outside Philadelphia to keep tabs on election sites, a tactic some fear will encourage voter intimidation.—AP

Black Graduates' Student Debt Almost Double White Graduates' Debt
Black college graduates have higher levels of student debt than previously thought, according to a new Brookings Institution report. Four years after graduating in the 2007-08 academic year, black college graduates had an average of $53,000 in student debt, compared to an average $28,000 for white students who graduated in the same year.—VICE News

Guns on Campus Raises Risk of Violence, Says Study
A new study by researchers at John Hopkins University suggests right-to-carry laws on college campuses may actually make violence more likely. The authors pointed out that bystanders with guns basically never stop mass shootings, and said that thanks to factors like binge drinking and drug use, increased gun availability may well have a "deleterious impact."—NBC News

International News

Militants Kill 59 at Police College in Pakistan
Dozens of cadets and guards have been killed after militants attacked a police college in Quetta in southwest Pakistan. Three militants with guns and bombs are thought to have entered the college late on Monday; two of the militants died after detonating their bomb vests and one was killed by security forces. A communications intercept suggested the attack might have been organized by militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but the Islamic State has claimed responsibility.—Reuters

Pope Francis Persuades Venezuelan Government to Talk to Opposition
The Venezuelan government may meet the opposition for crisis talks after an intervention from Pope Francis, according to the Vatican. Protests have been raging in recent months—and especially in the past few days after a campaign to remove President Nicolás Madurowas blocked by authorities.—BBC News

Kenyan Hotel Attack Leaves 12 Dead
A dozen people were killed in an attack on non-Muslims not far from the border with Somalia, Kenyan police say. Fighters from the notorious militant group al Shabab are thought to be behind the deadly assault.—Al Jazeera

Four Killed on Australian Theme Park Ride
A Dreamworld theme park on Australia's Gold Coast saw a deadly malfunction Tuesday, according to police. The accident apparently happened on the park's Thunder River Rapids ride, killing four.—The Guardian

Everything Else

Suge Knight Sues Dr. Dre for Alleged Murder Plot
Suge Knight has filed a lawsuit against Dr. Dre alleging that Dre hired a hit man to kill him to avoid paying his debts. The former Death Row Records executive's lawyer says Dre (a.k.a Andre Young) contracted the man who shot him seven times at a Hollywood club in 2014. Knight previously sued Chris Brown over the same incident.—Billboard/AP

Apple: 90 Percent of Amazon Chargers Are Fake
Apple is suing a company it says is hawking counterfeit chargers on Amazon, and some of those fakes allegedly have the potential to overheat and catch fire.—The Verge

Chinese Company Issues Webcam Recall
A Chinese firm has issued a recall for millions of webcams and recorders in the US following last week's massive cyberattack. Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology says customers failing to change their default passwords has made it too easy for hackers to compromise the devices.—TIME/AP

California to Vote on Wiping Weed Arrests
Lawyers and activists are pumped that California's ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana, Proposition 64, would allow judges to consider re-sentencing those convicted of pot crimes, as well as for the destruction of marijuana conviction records. The measure is expected to pass.—Motherboard

Artist Messed with the Minds of 'Melrose Place' Viewers
Watch conceptual artist Mel Chin explain how he snuck political messages—such as sex education and human rights symbols—into 1990s TV drama Melrose Place.—VICE News

The perfect store. It could have condoms, chips and weed. Photo via The Canadian Press.

Shoppers Drug Mart has officially applied to enter the medical marijuana business.

The Canadian pharmacy and retail behemoth has applied for licensed producer status with Health Canada, a company spokesperson confirmed to iPolitics. If approved, Shoppers could distribute medical pot to Canadians with a prescription at its more than 1,300 stores across the country.

"We have no intention of producing medical marijuana but we do want the ability to dispense medical marijuana to our patients in conjunction with counselling from a pharmacist and we are hopeful that the Government of Canada will embrace that opportunity for enhanced patient care," Shoppers spokesperson Tammy Smitham said in an email statement to iPolitics.

The application is now before Health Canada, and the amount of time it takes for approval varies. The department has so far issued 36 licenses.

Read More: Medical Pot Patients Can Now Legally Grow Weed at Home, Hurray!

If given the green light, Shoppers represents the first major competition to the hundreds of storefront dispensaries that have popped up across Canada, in a legal grey zone, especially in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Earlier this year, Shoppers acknowledged it was exploring the possibility of entering into the pot business.

It is the first retail chain to put in a formal application.

Shoppers' biggest competitor, Rexall, has said it is not exploring the possibility of entering into medical pot distribution at this time.

Follow Steven Goetz on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Liwaa Yazji

This article was originally featured on VICE US.

Liwaa Yazji arrived in Berlin on New Year's Eve, following over 1.1 million fellow Syrians who flocked to Germany last year. But Yazji, a filmmaker from Damascus, wouldn't call herself a "refugee." And unlike many of the other Syrians who have resettled in Germany and other parts of western Europe, she refused to apply for asylum.

"If you apply for asylum, you can't travel anywhere until you have your documents, and you can never return to the country you fled," Yazji told me recently at a cafe in West Berlin. "I need to go back to Syria—as long as the Syrian government doesn't ban me, why would I ban myself?"

Yazji, who came to Europe on an EU tourist visa and is now applying for an artist visa to extend her stay, is part of a select group of Syrians who have recently moved to western Europe through legal outlets other than asylum. She and others claim asylum comes with too many restrictions on their ability to travel and to stay connected to their war-ravaged home.

In Germany, asylum applicants live in assigned parts of the country while awaiting their court decisions and cannot travel unless authorized by the federal immigration authority, according to Kira Gehrmann, the press officer for Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

"Individuals who draw social benefits may not freely choose where they live," Gehrmann told me of asylum seekers, whom the government provides with room, board, and other social support. "As a matter of principle, displaced persons are obliged to have their habitual residence in the the country of origin, such as a serious illness of a close relative. But if the reasons for the journey only include the purpose for a vacation, this might be an indication that there is no real threat of persecution. If this is the case a withdrawal of the protection status is possible."

There are other restrictions on asylees, including employment options. Germany's Asylum Procedure Act mandates that refugees must wait at least three months after applying for asylum to begin working, and even then, Gehrmann noted that they must first "obtain permission to engage in work from their immigration authority."

Because of all these limitations, individuals have typically applied for asylum only when no other legal options were possible, according to Susan Fratzke, a policy analyst with Migration Policy Institute's International Program.

"For a lot of people, refugee status is a last resort to stay in a country where they're safe. People prefer to be under any other status than refugee status because it has limitations," Fratzke told me, claiming she was "not surprised" by Yazji's decision.

Yazji has no intentions of applying for asylum, and continues traveling to Syria both to visit her family and to document the nation's upheaval. She is one of the few Syrian artists and intellectuals who has not been banned from the country by the Assad regime.

"At the end of 2012, when people started to be detained, I understood I could do two things: open criticism on social media, or do what I want to and stay relatively quiet," Yazji said of the regime's crackdown on the 2012 revolution. Yasji realized that if she openly criticized the government, she would likely be detained or exiled—so instead, she engaged in more subtle forms of activism.

There are just a handful of activists who keep going back and forth to Syria with this right, Yazji said, and many of them use "pretend names" on social media so they don't get caught.

"The country is almost evacuated of intelligentsia and artists, so it's my duty to go back as I can," Yazji said. "I'm part of this population and I don't want to just read about it."

Few Syrians are as fortunate to come and go like Yazji, who flew back to the country just this spring to visit her mother in Damascus on Easter. (Yazji's mother is Christian; her father is Muslim.) While there she traveled the country taking photographs, and she tried to film in Aleppo, but couldn't enter.

"It was a very polarized time in Syria. ISIS was being cleared out of the city of Palmyra, Aleppo was bombarded, and there was an Easter celebration happening," Yazji recalled. "The temperament of everyone was so bad. But the center of Damascus where my mother lives was not bombed, so my grandparents, uncle, and aunt all fled to live with her there."

Yazji first left Syria in 2014, following a group of Syrians who fled to Lebanon. At the time, she was completing a documentary film focused on individuals in Damascus and their decisions on whether to stay or leave the country. The film would go on to be featured in a film festival in France, which helped Yazji secure her EU tourist visa shortly thereafter.

"I got my visa for France, which extended to all of the EU, early in 2015. But you can only stay 90 days at a time and then must leave for six months before returning," Yazji said. "Now, I'm applying for an artist visa."

Yazji is now writing a television series about refugees in Berlin, and feels the German metropolis is the ideal locale to live at the moment—as long as she can continue visiting home.

"I think I made the choice to be here because so many Syrians are here so the Syrian issue is present. So many Syrians are on the streets, in the metro, and in shopping centers," she told me. "As long as war is the status quo, I can't live in Syria full-time—but Syria is the subject matter that motivates my work, so I will not exclude myself from it."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

A "gropper", or "grandma with crops", who we met in the latest episode of High Society

The British weed industry has some unlikely new players taking charge of supply: green-fingered grandmothers.

A combination of easy money, the introduction of the bedroom tax and the fact there's a very low chance they'll be locked up for their crimes has led to the rise of "groppers", grannies with a crop, one of whom we met in the cannabis episode of our new UK drugs series High Society.

The story began when cannabis was downgraded to a class C drug in 2001 and the number of people growing weed in the UK sky-rocketed. It was reclassified to B in 2009, of course, but that didn't make a huge amount of difference: people had realised how easy, lucrative and relatively low risk planting a couple of crops could be.

Three years ago, in fact, the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit estimated there were 504,000 people growing crops in Britain, and between 2014 and 2015 a total of 54,711 plants were seized by West Midlands Police alone, earning the area the title of the UK's "cannabis capital". It was also in the Midlands that the concept of the "gropper" emerged: women above the age of 50 growing multiple cannabis crops because they're the last people, bar maybe children, the police would suspect.

Irish-born widow Margaret, who has three grandchildren and lives in the Midlands, first got into growing when her friend took the rap for her son's crop.

"Her son had a criminal record and would have been sent to jail if found guilty, so she went to the station and said it was her crop," said Margaret. "She barely got a slap on the wrist, her son paid her fine and remained free – everyone was a winner."

She added: "When she told me how much could be made from a crop in my box room – £7,000 every ten weeks. I've had a lot of changes in my life over the last few years; my children moved out, I had my benefits cut and I didn't want to move because I like where I live, so gropping has been an answer to my prayers. I was only going to do the one crop, but it was so easy I do about three a year now."

As for the risk that comes with the production of a class B drug – up to 14 years in prison – she's nonplussed. "I haven't got a criminal record, so the chances of me being sent to jail for a first offence have to be really low," she said.

She's not wrong: even if groppers are caught, the chance of them being imprisoned is low thanks to government measures aimed at reducing the number of female prisoners in the UK. In February, then-Prime Minister David Cameron said the government would be looking into alternative punishments, such as tracking tags, for nonviolent female offenders.

Plus, a number of cash-strapped police forces have de-prioritised the policing of cannabis, with bosses in Derbyshire and Durham saying they'll no longer bother going after people growing small amounts of cannabis.

"In low-level cases we say it is better to work with them and put them in a position where they can recover," said County Durham Police and Crime Commissioner Ron Hogg in March. "It is unlikely that a case like that would be brought before a court."

CJ, who claims to have a multi-million pound cannabis operation stretching across three Midlands counties, has several groppers working for him.

"The last ten years have been trial and error with who and where to grow cannabis crops – we've tried big crops in factories, which are great until they're found, and then it's a big loss," he explained. "At the start it was a cock-heavy industry, with most of the croppers being men who saw the opportunity to make regular money without the risks of selling class As – but they had the drug dealer mentality, which meant constant problems. Groppers are perfect because they aren't going to rip us off and aren't going to blab about it down the pub, which is important because the police aren't our biggest problem – it's other dealers robbing crops that account for our biggest losses."

He added: "If you'd told me five years ago I'd have a load of grannies with crops on my books I wouldn't have believed you, but the money is great for them. I've got all sorts who have come to gropping from different lives: women who have never worked in their lives and have been clobbered by benefit cuts and the bedroom tax, and women who have worked but thought they would retire when they hit 60, but have been stitched up by the government and face years more in work."

WATCH: 'High Society – Weed', the latest episode of our documentary series about drugs in the UK.

The bedroom tax is an important point in all this. Lots of women in their fifties living in council homes were stung by the introduction of the bedroom tax, left with spare rooms because – for instance – their adult children had moved out, and then told in 2013 that they would start losing housing benefits because they were under-occupying their homes.

So what do you do with an empty room to make up all that lost money? Fill it with weed plants and not only make enough to bring you level, but add thousands more on in the process. From the groppers I've met and heard about, it seems to be a common reason for older women to get involved in growing weed.

Elaine, who is in her fifties and the matriarch of a large family in the Black Country, has convinced several of her family and neighbours to start gropping.

"They have cut our benefits, are trying to make us work until we die, brought in the bedroom tax and god knows what else to make women's lives harder," she said. "But gropping is a way of making a lot of women's lives easier, and if the granny of the family has more money then it won't be blown on drink or gambling, like when men get money.

"Women know best."

More on VICE:

Proof the Tories Really Don't Bother with Evidence-Based Drug Policy

How Medical Cannabis Changed My Life

Why Are Police Trying to Ban Bongs in Camden Market?

Earlier this month, The Verge ran an equally fascinating and unsettling article about a computer engineer named Eugenia who fed all of her text conversations with her late friend Roman—who died after being struck by a car—into an artificial neural network. Eugenia's goal was to see if she could digitally reanimate Roman as a chatbot that could imitate his dialogue closely enough to recreate their conversations. She accomplished her goal well enough to make her miss her friend even more, enough to trick herself into forgetting Roman was gone.

The article drew immediate comparisons to Black Mirror; the first season episode "Be Right Back" followed a nearly identical plot. But how does that technological advancement affect the perception of the Black Mirror episode? It wouldn't be terrifying in 2016 to watch an episode of television about, say, a fax machine that prints dispatches from the dead. So is Black Mirror more effective when it's just ahead of evolving technology or when it depicts an inconceivable future?

The answer to that question depends on what you define as an effective episode of Charlie Brooker's technophobic, dystopian anthology series. Black Mirror is frequently compared to The Twilight Zone, as past episodes have delivered the same kind of disturbing twists and existential dread that Rod Serling's classic series is known for. But in season three, Brooker has taken a slightly different approach to the concept. He's experimenting with telling different types of stories within Black Mirror's futuristic framework, stories that incorporate some kind of technological shift but don't necessarily aim to chill or unsettle the viewer. "Nosedive," the season premiere, is such an episode.

The excellent Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Lacie Pound, a woman with an insatiable hunger for social media validation. In the real world, Lacie's neediness would be a terribly unattractive quality. It's no more attractive in the world of "Nosedive," but it's much easier to understand. In this universe, social media approval has become the ultimate currency, and everyone is armed with the power to upvote and downvote the people they encounter in their everyday social interactions. Each person's cumulative rating affects every aspect of life, from where you can live to what venues you can get into. With a one-to-five-star rating system, "Nosedive" takes place in a world that essentially operates as if everyone is an Uber driver, and playing Katy Perry too loud or clipping too many curbs can get you exiled from society. It's not so much a dystopian scenario as a futuristic literalization of the way people currently live.

In other words, "Nosedive" is a relatable situation taken to comedic extremes. Black Mirror has dabbled in gallows humor before, but this time Brooker has help from acclaimed comedy collaborators Michael Schur and Rashida Jones, who wrote the script based on a story outline by Brooker. "Nosedive" remains faithful to the Black Mirror tone, but there's a palpable playfulness to the dialogue. For example, Lacie tells her shiftless brother that living with him hasn't exactly been a "rainbow sandwich," because apparently rainbow sandwiches are delicious. But the episode also follows a familiar "comedy of errors" structure so it feels vaguely comedic even when what's happening is heartbreaking.

The thing about social media is that it tricks you into thinking you want to be famous whether or not you actually do. So there is a certain terror baked into the premise of "Nosedive," given that it's tempting enough to contour your life for your social media audience with not much incentive beyond feeling validated. Lacie isn't a bad person; she's just someone trying to play the game according to the rules set out for her. She wants an apartment at a swanky new complex that only admits those with near-flawless approval scores. But as in real life, improving one's reputation is a lengthy process, and any attempt to speed up that process results in a counterproductive inauthenticity. Lacie gets a rare opportunity to jump the line when her childhood friend Naomie (Alice Eve) calls and invites her to be the maid of honor in her upcoming wedding. Even though they're barely friends anymore, the high-powered guest list grants Lacie the opportunity to pole-vault into the upper-echelon of scores. If she can just nail her reception toast, Lacie will have the rating of her dreams.

It's quickly obvious that Lacie will blow this, thanks to Howard's amazing, grating performance. Lacie's need for external approval has left her with some pretty insufferable quirks: the Stepford Wife voice she does in casual conversation, the ear-piercing screeching sound she uses to feign enthusiasm. Lacie's death by a thousand cuts escalates in a hurry, starting with an awkward taxi ride, which leads to an unfortunate interaction with a ticket agent at the airport which further lowers her score. She's offered one opportunity after another to drop out of the wedding, but she's already put down a non-refundable deposit on her dream apartment, so there's no turning back.

As sad and empty as Lacie's quest is, she's quite easy to sympathize with. If nothing else, I applaud her persistence, because I'd have given up almost immediately. But Lacie trudges ahead, letting no obstacle prevent her from achieving her goal, even when the bride explicitly tells her not to come to the wedding. Naomie confesses that inviting Lacie was all about numbers for her, a chance to boost her own favorables by drafting a childhood friend to participate in her wedding. Unlike Lacie, Naomie doesn't have to worry about her rating—she's just padding the lead she already has—so it's nothing for her to disinvite Lacie, especially once Lacie's rating goes into a downward spiral. Part of me wanted Lacie to give up and go home, and another part wanted her to crash the wedding and learn to stop giving a damn.

Naturally, Lacie chooses the latter option, arriving to the wedding a muddy, disheveled mess and insisting on giving the world's most mortifying wedding toast. (You've been dethroned, Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married.) She's quickly ejected, which comes as no surprise since her rating was so low she couldn't even be a guest at the wedding let alone grab the microphone. Lacie is thrown in a jail, where she winds up yelling insults at the guy in the cell across from hers, finally learning to embrace the joy of running out of fucks to give. It's a hopeful ending, and a surprisingly romantic one considering all the vile insults. Lacie's journey is reflected in the show's own evolution. By pulling its gut punches, at least some of the time, Black Mirror has shown its willingness to grow up, or at least update its firmware.

Follow Joshua Alston on Twitter.

Louise Orwin, photo by Field and McGlynn

"All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." So claimed French film director Jean-Luc Godard back in the 1960s. This quote that hit home for performance artist Louise Orwin, partly because the 29-year-old recognised the uneasy truth in it: she's long loved the smoulder of the femme fatale, and grew up on a diet of Westerns, road movies and Tarantino.

A Girl and a Gun is now the title of Louise's new play, a B-movie pastiche which asks the audience to consider what makes this combination so attractive – and so troubling. After she started seeing girls and guns everywhere, from music videos to porn, she also started to question whether a woman wielding a weapon is a symbol of power, or just a male fantasy.

Louise likes to make uncomfortable work: in her last show, Pretty/Ugly, she posed as teenage girl on YouTube and asked people to rate her attractiveness. But for A Girl and a Gun, it's a male audience member who gets dragged into murky waters: each night, a man who's never seen the script before plays the hero (or villain) of the piece. As the show tours the UK, I asked her about how to stage sex and violence, and where the limits of your own pain should be.

Hi Louise. What initially grabbed you about that Godard quote?
That combination was familiar to me in a lot of the films that I loved. I wanted to interrogate that: what does a girl and a gun do to a film? You might think, 'oh this is a powerful woman', but then you realise she's in a bikini, she's holding a gun in a way that's very phallic... who is the image created for? Probably not for women.

We enjoy this B-movie aesthetic where the girls are in bikinis, the guns are huge, the men are cool. Hollywood has taken this formula, and used it over and over again; it's just become a thing in itself, rather than a pastiche.

Did you find your own feelings were conflicted?
Absolutely. I try to be really honest about the fact that, as a woman who presents myself in quite a feminine way, I've always been really drawn to those femme fatale characters. But as my politics developed, I began to wonder a) how good it is to want to look like them and b) how much of it is a choice if we don't have any other characters that are presented to us in pop culture? If I had grown up with different types of powerful female characters on film, maybe I wouldn't have this longing to be a femme fatale.

Sometimes I can see a guy might be really struggling, and actually be quite brave in following through on the action, because in a way he's sacrificing himself for the show

It's quite a modern anxiety, worrying about being a "good" feminist and whether you're allowed to find something that's troubling also sexy.
Part of the show is about this idea: can I knowingly embrace this submissive, sexy female role and enjoy it without feeling guilty that I'm reinstating ridiculous gender roles? I wholeheartedly support the notion that a woman should be able to do whatever she wants if she's knowingly made that choice. But I also think that it's not great to carry on recreating these images without questioning them, that it supports a system that isn't good for women.

The show is rooted in that B-movie style, but did you look at more modern examples of girls-with-guns?
The research phase started looking quite broadly at these images. It was really intense, watching all the videos, all the porn, all the cinema. Look at any action movie and you see it time and time again. I keep thinking about the Beyoncé and Lady Gaga video for 'Video Phone' – they present themselves in their white leotards with their pastel-coloured guns, like it's mocking this idea, taking references from Godard or Pedro Almodovar films. But are they subverting those images, or are they using them because they know audiences like them?

You perform with a different man each night who hasn't seen the script – how's that going?
At the beginning it's a lot of fun. Mostly guys get stuck in: they get to wear a cowboy outfit, play with toy guns, be silly. Then the tone darkens. I ask them to do increasingly violent actions towards me. They can either walk away, or do it, and mostly they will do it. The audience sees all the stage directions – what they're asked to do and the decision they make. I'm not trying to damn these men, but that device asks the audience to question what they'd do.

Does it feel like a braver decision if the man follows the instructions, or says no?
Sometimes it can be brave to take a stance and say no, and fuck the show. But sometimes I can see a guy might be really struggling, and actually be quite brave in following through on the action, because in a way he's sacrificing himself for the show.

Has it ever felt scary or uncomfortable for you?
The more I do the show, the more in control I feel. But I'd be lying if I said I haven't been uncomfortable on stage sometimes. I've had a couple of times when I've been hit so hard I've started crying, just as a physical reaction. It's about intent: sometimes I can just sense that a man relishes that opportunity.

That's really dark.
If you've grown up with toy guns, watching violent cinema and video games, I think maybe you do relish the chance to play-act and take on this role. Occasionally there's a man who just thinks this is what men do, and it's quite easy for them to access that physicality or mental space.

In your last show Pretty/Ugly you created teenage personas and uploaded videos asking people to rate how attractive you were. How was that experience?
Obviously, it was horrible. I had horrific, horrific abuse, and an absolute barrage of private messages from men, really manipulative, grooming messages. This is a trend among really young girls, mostly aged eight to 13.

I feel like more and more we're asking young people to perform: there's this weird, neo-liberal idea of branding yourself, constantly editing your personality online, and that is an addictive performance.

Do you think this is one of those moral panics that parents freak out over – and that actually, teenagers are fine?
You're totally right, every generation of parents are worried about a new-fangled thing that teenagers are doing. But the flipside is that digital culture has grown faster than parents are able to get a handle on it. I'm not trying to induce a moral panic – like ban the internet! – but parents need to be educated that this is happening, and kids need to be educated about how they present themselves online.

A Girl and a Gun and Pretty/Ugly are on tour till 15th December. For more info see louiseorwin.com.

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The Prime Minister doesn't much like talking about "hard" or "soft" Brexit. Neither do I; it's not a pretty landscape. Some of us, exhausted by all the bickering and uncertainty, just want to lick fat greasy dollops of Marmite directly out the jar and then collapse into a Brexit as soft and cushioned as possible to fall asleep. Others have stranger desires; they dream of hard Brexits, rock-solid and throbbing, to splinter the crummy illusions of middle-class Britain in kinetic streams of nationalist rage. Theresa May, meanwhile, insisted at the start of this month that "there is no such thing as a choice between soft Brexit and hard Brexit". On Friday she offered her alternative, announcing that her personal preference would be for a "smooth" Brexit (as opposed, presumably, to a "crunchy" Brexit or a "bebop" Brexit). May disapproves of the hard/soft dichotomy because it runs against her own grim tautological catchrphrase, that "Brexit means Brexit". Nevertheless she might have a point.

In the end, it's a deeply boring binary metaphor; hard or soft is no useful way to arrange our political choices. It's not as if there were some kind of Mohs scale measuring the hardness of potential Brexits, from the easily lacerated flaccidity of mere human flesh to the adamantine glint and dart of Theresa May's eyeballs. There are so many options, and our future's at stake: we need to dream bigger, certainly we need to do more than just asking for things to be smooth. The Europeans, who tend to be better than us at this sort of thing, have today warned that we might see a "dirty", naughty Brexit. It's a good start.

Why aren't we thinking in terms of a "wet" or "dry" Brexit? Will the country slosh over its borders in flows of international aid or prowling gunboats, or will it shrivel and desiccate into itself? Will our future be flying or burrowing? When we went to the polls this year, did we vote to exit the EU in a way that was straight-laced and boring, or screamingly, fabulously camp?

One could plot Brexits on multiple axes, ending up with an n-dimensional phase space of potential futures. Hot/cold and moist/dry are the obvious options, following ancient humoural theory – a cold and moist or melancholic Brexit would look something like the Norwegian model, involved but sullenly unparticipating, while a choleric Brexit, hot and dry, might involve invading France – but we could invent others.

Or given that, as all sketchwriters know, politics is basically an extended metaphor for what's on TV, why not propose a Lannister Brexit (protect the banking sector at all costs), a Targaryen Brexit (mass ritual suicide in front of Buckingham Palace), or a Stark Brexit (every citizen is assured one bowl of turnip soup a day)?

We won't do this, of course; it'll most likely be hard or soft Brexit right up until it actually happens, at which point everyone will be too busy trying to fend off the inevitable giant rats to bother complaining about nomenclature. But why is it this particular metaphor, rather than any of the more interesting ones, that's being so repetitively drilled into the national consciousness?

Like any political metaphors, it's a deception, and one that's very convenient for both sides. Its associations allow us to think that our options are rigour or moderation – and, crucially, that these are the only options. It's not true. The choice that the government has outlined for itself isn't one between hard or soft, it's between leaving everything pretty much the way it is, to rot slowly, or dynamiting it all in one go.

A "hard" Brexit means cutting off the imported labour that prevents us from fast-tracking our way to demographic crisis; it means abjuring London's status as a one-stop shop for international finance and in doing so instantly popping the housing bubble that's pretty much the only thing keeping our economy afloat; it means systematically wrecking our institutions of higher education because we're terrified of foreign students; it means shutting out refugees from a country that soon might not even be able to honestly offer safe asylum; it means descending further into social madness and fascism, and the conversion of what was once only an ugly imperialist power into the North Korea of Europe. Much easier to just say "hard", or even (like May) to collapse the distinction altogether, and sound like you're only following the referendum vote to the letter.

But as moderate Tories and their sycophants like to insist, this isn't what people voted for; there was nothing on the ballot paper about sending the finance sector to Frankfurt and subsisting off domestically-produced gruel. People voted for Brexit, not hard Brexit – it was just a "leave", an abstract negation waiting for someone to come along and determine it.

If we're going to play at this kind of cack-handed crowd psychology, then it'd be far more reasonable to argue that 52 percent of the electorate really voted for voluntary human extinction and the end of the world, a full-nihilist cataclysm of which the destruction of, say, the British universities system would only be a minor part. "Soft" Brexit is another euphemistic fiction; it allows the referendum vote to be represented as a measured and rational request for some minor policy tweaks. Its advocates want to change precisely nothing: we'd lose our vote but carry on participating in every important EU institution; Britain would continue to rely on financial speculation and overinflated house prices forever, and all the while the inequalities and resentments that led to the Brexit vote would keep on bubbling, waiting to burst out again in a different form.

This is why it's essential to think beyond these two paths off the same cliff: for all the nightmares it's created, the blank abstraction of a referendum result really does offer some slim opportunity to introduce something new. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party has done a decent job at outlining alternative priorities for the Brexit negotiations, but it's not as if anyone's listening. It's on us, and at long last we need to get creative.

@sam_kriss

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On Sunday, Snapchat superstar DJ Khaled welcomed his first kid into this world, and he did it just as you'd guess he would: by documenting the entire experience on Snapchat.

During last night's episode of Desus & Mero, the two hosts discussed Khaled's social media home video, which included angled shots of his fiancée giving birth while tracks from his album play in the background. It was a sight to (somewhat) behold, and was almost as legendary as the time Khaled shared his harrowing journey lost at sea on Snapchat last December.

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

Canvasser Emily Eastman talks to Tony Ruffino in his apartment. Eastman is working for Rights and Democracy, a progressive group trying to turn cynics into voters. Photo by the author

Here's where the country is at as the 2016 election approaches: A poll of voters under 36 found 39 percent said they'd rather have Barack Obama as president for life than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton occupy the White House. Twenty-six percent would prefer the presidency be picked by random lottery. And almost a quarter would rather a meteor destroy the earth.

So no, it's not a great time for idealism and optimism. Bernie Sanders may have energized young progressives in the Democratic primaries, but his defeat after a heated campaign left many of them even more embittered. But some liberal organizers say they've found a way to circumvent the deadly depression of this election season. They're focusing on the people on the ballot not named Trump or Clinton, and on building a longer-term movement to push for progressive policies. And, oddly enough, some of them say that the grotesque mess at the presidential level is helping them find recruits for their cause.

"Almost every single person I talk to, the first thing they say is how much they despise both candidates," said Emily Eastman, a canvasser for the progressive grassroots group Rights and Democracy (RAD) in New Hampshire. "I get it, because I also feel that way."

Eastman, who was involved in the Bernie Sanders primary campaign, said that sense of shared disgust is often the first place a canvasser can find a connection with a voter.

"We all agree that this is a messed up time that's happening right now," Eastman said. "Something is broken. How do we fix it?"

In a move that's fairly common among grassroots groups, RAD is reaching out to voters talking not about Clinton or Trump but about the Senate and other down-ballot races. RAD's ultimate goal is not just to help more progressive people get in office but to build an organized constituency to push for progressive, broadly popular goals like raising the minimum wage, fighting climate change, and reducing the role of money in politics.

Maria Fitzsimmons, the group's organizing director, said RAD will continue canvassing, and working with the people who've signed up to help, after the election. The group wants to do the traditional grassroots work of holding elected officials accountable and also recruit people who might eventually run for office—particularly in places where Republicans tend to dominate.

"We really want to build some key relationships here, to find some people that are going to be a vanguard for progressive organizing in this area," she said. "I've met people who've said, 'I am a progressive, but I'm terrified to talk to my neighbors about it.' Those are the people we're trying to find."

This past Friday afternoon, Eastman, who uses the pronouns they/them, was out on the doors in an apartment complex in the southern New Hampshire town of Derry. A 25-year-old with half a head of long blond hair (the other half is mostly shaved), they quit a job running a Newbury Comics store about a month ago to take a job canvassing.

True to Eastman's predictions, nearly every door they knocked on revealed a voter with a grudge against a political system that made a Trump/Clinton race possible.

"It's taking up way more headspace than it deserves," said Tony Ruffino, a gray-bearded man who opened the door holding his toddler granddaughter. Ruffino was clearly busy with child-wrangling, but after just a few questions from Eastman, he invited them into his apartment to talk more. Yes, he's emphatically in favor of raising the minimum wage. He's very concerned about student loans and can't believe how far in debt his son is, despite having a good job in IT.

"The election sucks... Our country is going to hell in a handbasket."

Ruffino didn't require any convincing on RAD's core issues. He was a Bernie Sanders man himself. But he'd recently moved in with his son to care for the little girl, and his name wasn't on the lease, so he wasn't sure how to register to vote in Derry. Eastman made some suggestions and signed him up to keep getting information from RAD. By the end of the visit, Ruffino was still marveling about the state of the 2016 election.

"The word that I'm most able to get this down to is 'absurd,'" he said.

At another door, a woman in a Red Sox hat was even more irritable about the choices before her on November 8.

"The election sucks," she said. "Our country is going to hell in a handbasket."

Unlike Ruffino, she had some mixed feelings about the minimum wage. She'd like to see it raised, but she has a master's degree and works at a nonprofit, and she doesn't want to see high school–educated workers making more than she does. She and Eastman talked amiably about the state of the economy, and the importance of raises for all workers. But when the conversation turned to the candidates for Senate, she returned to full-blown cynicism.

"They both suck," she said.

One of Eastman's goals on the doors Friday was to harness that kind of sentiment. In the New Hampshire Senate race, Fitzsimmons pointedly said that RAD is not working for Democratic candidate Maggie Hassan, but against her Republican opponent, Senator Kelly Ayotte. While not all of Hassan's positions fit RAD's agenda, opposing Ayotte definitely does.

Talking with voters, Eastman noted again and again that until recently, Ayotte had supported Trump. That's a talking point because Trump's polling in New Hampshire has been much worse than Ayotte's. A few people Eastman talked to seemed horrified to learn that Ayotte has called Trump a role model for children—a statement she made at a debate, retracted hours later, and has been regretting ever since . Hassan's campaign produced an anti-Ayotte commercial highlighting that moment, which could potentially cost her the election—that's how toxic this presidential campaign has been.

Another RAD canvasser, Justin Roshak, a 24-year-old working in the scenic New Hampshire communities of Haverhill and Laconia, said he's also found that Ayotte's ties to Trump worry voters.

"I think a lot of people have a lot of respect for Kelly Ayotte," he said. "They think she's bright and hardworking. I think the fact that she's tied herself to Trump has really been on people's minds... There's some disappointment in Kelly Ayotte that she made such a poor choice."

Like Eastman, Roshak said he doesn't see the negativity many voters feel about the presidential race as something that's necessarily a problem. He said he worries about people who just don't seem to care about politics at all, but cynical voters are a different story.

"The people who have been cynical, in my experience, are the people who seem to care the most about politics," he said. "The more I talk to them, it becomes clear that it's because they have all these hopes and dreams for the country."

Follow Livia Gershon on Twitter.

Barack Obama is still in the midst of his final presidential victory lap, which means that Monday night he headed over to Jimmy Kimmel to tackle another round of Mean Tweets.

Most of the tweets this time around are standard 140-character disses, ranging from "Barack Obama is the Nickelback of presidents," to saying he "dances like how his jeans look"—whatever that means. But his final angry tweet comes from the supreme champion of late-night Twitter tirades: Donald Trump.

"Hey, @realDonaldTrump," Obama says, "at least I will go down as a president." Then he drops the mic, er, smartphone. Watch the whole thing above.

Read: Has Obama Ever Listened to Punk? An Investigation

After nine years of patiently waiting to find out where Rory and Lorelai have ended up, Netflix has finally released the first trailer for The Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, a new four-part revival series airing November 25.

The trailer finds the mother-daughter duo back, of course, in Stars Hollow after what seems like some time away. Rory is somehow flitting around unable to find a job after graduating from Yale, spending her time traveling the world, and catching up with old flames like Jess, Logan, and even brooding old Dean. Lorelai seems comfortable at home, still boasting a fridge full of frozen tacos and old leftovers.

As for Emily, she's taking the loss of Richard—the family patriarch portrayed by actor Edward Herrmann, who died in 2014—so hard that she's gotten rid of most of her belongings and traded in her fancy outfits for a T-shirt and jeans.

The trailer gets us caught up with a lot of supporting characters, too. Taylor is up to his town meeting antics; Sookie is back creating some kind of mess in the kitchen; Luke, by Lorelai's side, seems less grumpy than usual; Kirk makes an appearance as a dinner guest at Emily and Richard's table; Michel is still acting like a diva at the inn; and Stars Hollow itself looks just as charming as ever.

Check out the trailer above, try not to tear up, and watch the special coming to Netflix on November 25.

Read: The Cast of 'Gilmore Girls' Made Me Feel Normal After My Leukemia

Outside his office overlooking a stunning harbor, Michael McMahon was showing me a map of heroin overdoses on Staten Island. It seemed like there were dots everywhere in the New York City borough where, as Richmond County district attorney, McMahon enjoys the mantle of top cop. "People on the North Shore think it's a South Shore problem, and people on the South Shore think it's a North Shore problem," he tells me. "But really, it's all over."

When McMahon took office in January, Staten Island had just capped off a year that saw 38 heroin overdose deaths. And as of this writing with some two months still left, 2016 has already seen roughly 75 such deaths on Staten Island, mirroring a citywide scourge, particularly in the south and central Bronx. Last month alone, nine people died of overdose in McMahon's territory in a span of ten days.

With sales and deaths constantly in the headlines, the oft-lamented "forgotten borough" is becoming better and better known—for heroin. If you speak to virtually any Staten Islander, he or she will likely be able to name someone who has struggled, if not fatally, with opioid addiction. The grim moniker "Heroin Island" has appeared in headlines and TV shows, and funeral florists are now reportedly hammered every week.

Seemingly overnight, the scourge has been woven into the borough's social fabric. With its collection of small-town, mostly white communities, Staten Island seems more in line with New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or even nearby Long Island, where the heroin problem has spun out of control. But this is still New York City, a rich land of universal pre-kindergarten, ID cards for undocumented immigrants, and a long legacy of cops aggressively targeting drug use. How could things get so bad here?

We sat down with DA McMahon to discuss how heroin overdoses became so common in the first place, and what might be done to stop things from getting even worse.

Staten Island district attorney Mike McMahon speaks at the City Hall event. Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press via AP

VICE: OK, so walk me through it—how did the problem get to this point?
District Attorney Michael McMahon: Well, clearly, its beginnings are in the opiate pill situation that arose from a confluence of profit-driven big pharmaceutical companies that were pushing opiate-based painkillers, and the medical community that was writing prescriptions for them under the belief that they were not addictive anymore. So you have this sort of opiate-based, pharmaceutical-company-pushed flood of prescription drugs on the market, and they're highly addictive. That's really where the beginning is. And then, add to that a very responsive heroin industry that figured out, Hey, there's going to be a demand for heroin in the United States, so let's get it up there so we can sell it.

The confluence of those two factors together with, I think, a certain segment of our society that is prone to addiction—some, it's genetic, and others try it once or twice, and they're addicted. If you look across America, at some communities where there's a sense of loss and lack of direction, you bring all of those factors together, and you have a very troubling and life-threatening situation.

But why is this such a problem on Staten Island as opposed to Manhattan or Brooklyn?
Staten Island is most like other parts of America where the problem is very severe. This particular drug epidemic is really rooted in more middle-class, more suburban and exurban parts of the country, and predominantly white, I would say. Some education, but not the highest levels of education—so high school and some college is where you see it, but maybe not post-graduate studies. You don't see it there as much. And that speaks to Staten Island. That describes the demographics of Staten Island.

Also, I have a theory—unproven, for sure—but it seems to be more pervasive in communities that somehow have been through some trauma, whether that trauma is the closing of a factory, or the failing of a tourism industry, or whatever it is. You look at parts of New Hampshire, where maybe the tourism industry is off, or whatever. There was also manufacturing, or there's just not a clear path. There's a sense of loss in the community. Staten Island has had two major traumas in the past 15 years: 9/11 hit Staten Island very severely, and then Hurricane Sandy also set Staten Island back dramatically.

So if you look at those factors, you can see that it's a very fertile place for this current flood of heroin sales.

And where do we see it on the Island? And among who, exactly?
What's shocking is that it's really every neighborhood. The other thing we see is that it's a way of using drugs that—I don't know—is different in the past. It used to be in the shadows: under the train stations, or in dark alleys, and in sort of suspect neighborhoods. But now, the people are overdosing in their own bedrooms, their own homes, in cars, in diners, in restaurants, in parking lots. So it's sort of come into more mainstream, in terms of location, which is just a shocking development.

A lot of the deaths are also in that 35 to 55 range. There was a guy a few weeks ago that was born the same year I was born: 1957. It's mind-blowing that it's in all age groups, all demographics, both from racial and ethnic, and financial—it's rich people, it's poor people. Young, old. What we're always coming to terms with is that heroin and heroin-like substances are so accessible and acceptable. Certainly, when I grew up, heroin was always something that was very taboo, and clearly illegal. Other substances were always illegal, but not as taboo. And now, for some reason, it's become less taboo, and it's become more accessible.

What's interesting, too, is that there's this paradox on Staten Island, where you have a heroin epidemic unfolding out in a borough that is particularly known for its strong law enforcement pride. How do those two things coexist?
There's no question that it's really part of what inspires our detectives to want to work on this project, and to work so hard on it. We have bi-weekly updates with the team, and it is quite often that you hear the conversation—that "this is my town, and I want to do something about it." It's either some have had family members, or some have certainly had people in their extended families or their neighborhoods who have been afflicted by this addiction illness. It's part of the overall scene, no question.

In Staten Island, too, there's a lot of insured, because a lot of the city workers live here. You look at other parts, when there's real upticks in applications and receiving of and other factors. We estimate that, with our 74 suspected deaths this year, there's probably 30 percent more that we don't know about.

We also have now in place since the first of October a special narcotics trial part in the Staten Island Supreme Court where all the narcotics cases are being transferred. So we'll have a judge who can oversee and bring to trial those cases that are against the actual drug dealers. The court is now directing the resources necessary to allow those cases to be prosecuted and defended, and not caught up with all the other cases that are in the system.

We're also working on—and we hope to have running soon—an early diversion part, so that people, soon after arrest, can be diverted toward treatment and engagement, as opposed to the traditional drug court model now, which is much later in the criminal justice process, usually at the time of sentence. Now it'll be at the time of arrest, to try to get people to treatment for low-level possession.

Looking beyond these initiatives, what else can be done?
I wish, with the waving of a magic wand, that we could cut off the supply that comes to Staten Island. We've met with other levels of other law enforcement, and we keep trying to step up the efforts of interdiction. And we're working with the US Attorney's office, and the special narcotics prosecutor, but I'd like to see that done.

The other thing, without question, is more education on this issue. The best tool in the kit is prevention, and we don't have a mandatory drug addiction curriculum in schools. We should have that. We don't have the public service announcements that we have, for example, with smoking, and the commercials that show people's lungs and what people look like when they smoke. Well, you should see the pictures of what someone looks like when they use heroin for five years—a 20-year-old who ages 75 years in two years when you look at those before and after pictures.

We could have a better public service campaign and education in schools—I think that'd go a long way. And we certainly need more treatment slots, and more long-term treatment. A lot of insurances cover 28 days, which is not going to make any difference whatsoever.

To me, heroin treatment should be a non-partisan issue. It's something affects everyone, and that we all agree is a problem, right?
Let's face it: Drugs, especially heroin and opiate-based drugs, certainly still have a great stigma. Some people still think, Well, OK, it's taboo, and it's not in my world. And yet it's totally become a mainstream problem. I think that's part of it. I think that society hasn't comprehended yet how bad the numbers are. We're talking about more deaths than car accidents and gun shootings combined, yet we're not talking about it on a daily basis, like we should.

So I think there's a lack of total recognition, a stigma, and a lack of comprehension of just how serious the problem is.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie as Joe Dick and Billy Tallent. (All photos courtesy of Bruce McDonald unless otherwise noted.)

The 1990s were a heady time for square-eyed aspiring filmmakers. Super movie-nerd and ex-video store clerk Tarantino won the Palme d'Or in Cannes for Pulp Fiction, Kevin Smith was still making good movies, and there was a sense that if you had passion and guts and a little bit of luck, you too could make it in film. It was arguably the last time true independent culture has walked that fine knife blade between authentic independence and commerce. This sensibility extended across the arts and underground music found mainstream favour and suddenly it was okay to be an artist, a weirdo, a punk.

A protestor holds a sign at Pussy Grabs Back Toronto. All photos by Jake Kivanc

A year ago, one would've passed by downtown Toronto's Trump International Hotel and Tower without thinking twice. Save for Trump's signature all-caps branding, the building blends easily into its financial district surroundings.

Things are different now. Throughout the US presidential campaign, Donald Trump has become a symbol of racism, sexism, misogyny, and incredible arrogance, leaving everything bearing his name tarnished. So it was fitting that a group of Toronto women, disgusted from afar at Trump's glorification of sexual assault, chose to protest outside the hotel Monday night.

The event, Pussy Grabs Back Toronto—a play off Trump's comments that he can grab the pussy of any woman he wants because he's famous—featured speeches, drumming, and cathartic chanting ("Snatch that tower with pussy power", "We believe survivors").

Many of the speakers were sex assault survivors who said Trump's behaviour is part of a rape culture that exists everywhere.

"Why is that we cannot just go and report and be taken seriously and validated? Why is it we have to beg?" Linda Redgrave, the first witness to testify against Jian Ghomeshi during his sex assault trial, asked the two dozen or so protesters. Redgrave, like many others in the crowd, was dressed in costume; she wore all black, with cat's ears, and thigh high black stiletto boots.

"I am a nasty woman and tonight I am a nasty cat," she declared to loud cheers.

Redgrave addressed the accusations being pitted against the 11 women who have publicly alleged Trump sexually assaulted or harassed them—that they're hungry for fame and money—and said she faced the same thing after pressing charges against Ghomeshi.

Linda Redgrave speaks at Pussy Grabs Back Toronto.

York University rape survivor Mandi Gray was also in attendance. She told VICE Trump is an ideal target for a protest like this, but also to help launch bigger discussions.

"He embodies everything that is shitty but at least he is transparent about it. And the topic is particularly relevant within the social context right now, Brock Turner, Ghomeshi, Bill Cosby," she said.

"He's just an easy person to hate."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Steven Seagal: Lawman was a thing. Photo via Steven Seagal: Lawman.

We live in a world where violence seems to be seeping in from all sides. From terrorism, drone bombings, hate crimes and the constant racist burbling of insurgency from Trump devotees, unrestrained savagery is beating at the door of civility. How to understand this violence? In my mind, if you are trying to understand violence there is only man to look to: The king of the wrist-snap, Steven Seagal.

One of my happiest memories is staying home from school sick one day. My father was also home from work with an undisclosed ailment. We both decided that the best way to hang out with the least amount of talking was a movie marathon. And since we were two grizzled dudes that meant action movies. Our action hero above all others was Seagal. He was the man. Why? He's not good at acting, being funny or telling a good story, no, what he's good at messing people the fuck up. Satisfying the urge for violence is what Seagal traffics in. He's the champion of male vengeance against a world that is unfair and unjust. Perhaps a deep dive into Seagal's films will help me understand why this violence appealed to me and millions of men the world over. I decided to have another movie marathon sick day and watch four movies and see what sticks out like a ruptured femur after a particularly brutal side kick. The four movies I picked trace the spine of Seagal's career as well as match the insurrectionist theme of the current political climate.

They were: