The author in the pub. Picture via the author

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's 11 PM, and I'm sitting in a pub, blowing into a breathalyzer. An icon pops up on the glowing blue screen and tells me that I shouldn't drive anytime soon. Neither should my male friend Sam. We've had the exact same number of drinks all night, but I'm significantly drunker than he is.

Someone comes over and asks what we're doing. "Don't worry!" I say. "It's for science!"

We're here, getting trashed for science, because women are now drinking nearly as much as men. A recent study carried out by researchers at the University of New South Wales found that men born in the early 1900s were 2.2 times more likely to drink than women. Nowadays, they found, men born between 1891 and 2000 are just 1.1 times more likely to drink than women; the great gender booze gap has nearly closed.

To investigate why this has happened, I decide to carry out my own, highly scientific analysis. I begin my research at 7 PM in the pub with Sam, who—alongside me and my sister, Rosy—will be the other participant in my study. Sam and I order a pint each, Rosy a rum and coke, and we get to drinking.

Earlier today I spoke to James Nicholls, director of Policy at Alcohol Research UK, to get his opinion on why women are drinking more. "In many aspects of life, we've become less patriarchal," he said. "And one of the consequences of that is that in activities like drinking, women's behavior has come closer to men's."

It all started in the 1960s, he says, when the rise of feminism meant that "there were fewer taboos about women going out and being in social spaces doing the kinds of things that men do... more women were working and had disposable income."

The alcohol industry followed the money and began marketing drinks to the new generation of working women. Bottled lagers, for example, were initially marketed to women who wanted to drink with men after work, but wanted a lighter alternative to pints of bitter and ale.

The author doing some more drinking

One hour and one drink down, my blood alcohol content is at 0.037. Sam's is the same, and my sister Rosy's is a measly 0.004. I send her off to buy another round and remember what Jeremy Corbyn said recently when he criticized Britain's after-work drinking culture as sexist—discriminating against mothers who feel forced into going to the pub in case they miss out on a promotion.

Are women today actually only drinking as much as men to conform to work norms, in the hope it brings them professional success? Dr. Patsy Staddon, who helps run Bristol service Women's Independent Alcohol Support, says the stress of balancing work and family life really is driving women to drink more.

"It's really hard work trying to keep up a home, which a lot of women are still doing to a bigger extent than men," she says. "So the expectations that we have of ourselves are very high. And then there are all of the other reasons that incline people to use alcohol as a drug, such as mental-health issues—which can happen to men as well as women, of course."

Back in the pub, it's 9 PM. My blood alcohol level is at 0.073, Rosy's is 0.008, and Sam's is 0.057. I get the sense that another drink will lead to a hangover tomorrow, but buy another pint of IPA anyway and apologize to my liver—which, according to Dr. Staddon, is much smaller than Sam's. So as well as me being a few inches and a few stone lighter than him, I'm not going to be able to process this alcohol as well tomorrow.

"If women drink the same amount as men, we can expect to feel more serious effects—we just aren't as big, and we don't have as much water in our bodies," she says. "So alcohol is more toxic to us in the same amount as men are drinking." She means dangerously toxic, too—women are more vulnerable than men when it comes to developing alcohol-induced liver damage and dying from cirrhosis.

If women everywhere are matching men drink for drink, as I'm doing now, do they know they're getting drunker? And what pushes a woman to want to be hammered, surrounded by men who are not as drunk?

Dr. Angus Bancroft is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh. He researches the drinking behaviors of young women and says that alcohol marketing has a lot to do with the rise of women drinking. "There's a huge demand to be this personality type who is really bubbly all the time," he says. "The ideal of a young women who is always up for it—mad for it—is an image that's constantly fed and replayed through alcohol companies, even though that person is actually probably hideously annoying to be around."

And some more

Do I feel like I have to be a fun time party girl when I go out? I don't think I do. It's now 10 PM, and the alcohol in my system is at 0.11, but that's just because I've been drinking a lot over the course of an evening, not because I've felt any particular pressure to get wasted. We go to a gig, and I push my sister into the middle of a mosh pit to see what being fun feels like, but she just gets annoyed. We both buy new drinks.

It's 11 PM, and my alcohol level is at 0.16, Sam's is at 0.13, and Rosy is at 0.033. I wonder if she's been pouring her rum and cokes away, and envy her sober composure in the smoking area. I think about how drunk women are treated by society—how we're shamed for being "unladylike" and called "foolish" when we're the victims of sexual assault and rape after we've been drinking. "Men seem to have this kind of shame shield, which stops us being judged when we get up to the same stuff," says Dr. Bancroft.

He adds that one of the freedoms now afforded to many young women is that they're allowed to risk getting stuff wrong. "Drinking can represent a risk, but taking risks is a good thing," he says. "It's part of growing up... how you find out who you are. It's quite natural that women would want an equal part in that."

But young people are actually, on the whole, drinking less than their parents. So perhaps women might not actually be drinking as much as men—it's more that men are just drinking as little as women.

It's midnight, and the band is finished, and I'm standing on the street, drunk, watching everyone go home. Most of them are not as drunk as me. After five or six beers, my blood alcohol content has reached 0.18—at least 0.02 points above my male companion's. I'm dizzy and sick. I get in an Uber home and pass out in the back of it.

Whatever Dr. Bancroft says, I don't feel very empowered at all.

This Aussie family made a less than graceful exit from the carriage. Screenshot via Global News

Anyone who has ever taken a horse-drawn trolley ride through Vancouver's Stanley Park knows that, while scenic, it's about as exciting as riding a motorized wheelchair. Maybe even less so.

That changed Monday when a couple of horses went rogue during a routine stroll along Stanley Park Road.

The animals had stopped on the road due to the presence of anti-Kinder Morgan pipeline protesters when, according to Global News, a driver in a nearby car honked his horn, setting the horses off completely. Environmentalists could not have dreamed up a more perfect metaphor.

A brief, but highly amusing (as no one was seriously injured) video clip shows the two normally calm beasts leap over the curb and narrowly miss a tree, throwing three people in the front row, including the driver, onto the ground. Now driverless, the horses plow into a bench and continue trotting along the seawall as someone yells, "hold on!"

Read more: Watch This Young Woman Get Bodied by a Police Horse After Slapping It

Not liking where this is going, a dad in the back row stands up and jumps off the trolley, heroically saving himself. He does so successfully, but when his wife and two children attempt to copy him, they each, in sequence, faceplant onto the pavement. It's not clear if the dad jumped first to help the rest of his family escape safely, but if that was his intention he didn't execute it well. He doesn't even seem all that fussed when they eat curb; the most he does is pat his wife on the shoulder. I'm guessing he's never seen Force Majeure.

Later interviewed by Global, the family said they are from Australia and were worried the horses were going to dive into the water.

"They knocked over one of the poles and then took out one of the park benches. One of the pieces of timber came up into my face, missed my face luckily, that's when we decided to make a jump for it," said mom Karen Arnold.

Jerry O'Neil, owner of the horses, said the animals are exposed to all sorts of conditions, including various noises, and that nothing like this has ever happened before.

He said the horses will be assessed, presumably to soon return to servicing lazy tourists, rather than trying to murder them.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

When he landed in the Austin airport with his wife and three young kids, Mohammad Al Samadi knew just two things about Texas: It wasn't a war zone, and it would be his family's new home. For the young Syrian construction worker, that was enough.

"It's safe. The city is beautiful," Al Samadi, 32, told me through a translator last week as we sat in the office of the nonprofit Refugee Services of Texas Austin. He arrived two months ago and is yet to make friends, find a job, or learn English—but compared to his past life, he told me, "difficulties don't exist." His family fled heavy fighting in Daraa, Syria, for Jordan back in 2012, and then spent years interviewing with the UN and US State Department before they were finally resettled.

"People here have treated me very well," said Al Samadi. "In America, someone can work, go out, and live normally. In Syria, there's no such thing."

The Al Samadis comprise five of the 912 Syrian refugees who have been resettled in Texas in the past year, nearly all of them families, with 75 percent women and children, Refugee Services of Texas Austin spokesman Chris Kelley told me. And the Al Samadis join a total of 7,802 refugees placed last year in Texas, the second highest number in the US after California.

But now Texas is pulling out of the federal resettlement program, which Texas governor Greg Abbott said was "riddled with serious problems that pose a threat to our nation." The withdrawal, which he announced in September, will go into effect January 30, 2017.

Abbott claimed in a press release that the federal government had the "inability to properly vet refugees from Syria and countries known to be supporters or propagators of terrorism," and that President Obama was "ineptly proposing a dramatic increase in the number of refugees to be resettled in the US."

The announcement, which made national headlines, followed a year of fierce anti-refugee fights by the state. Abbott tried last November along with about 30 other Republican governors to block Syrian refugees from resettling, writing a letter to President Obama detailing concerns after a terrorist attack in Paris killed 130 people.

But the federal government and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a nonprofit charged with distributing refugees, continued placing Syrians in Texas and throughout the US, since resettlement is a federal, not state, decision.

In response, Texas's Department of Health and Human Services then filed a lawsuit against the IRC, arguing that the agency could not place Syrian refugees in the state. But Texas dropped the case last month after Indiana lost a similar suit in federal appeals court. The judges in that case said refusal to accept Syrians "clearly discriminates" against the population.

"The lawsuit was a political scam about the states not wanting to resettle any refugees based on a groundless proposition that Syrians represented a security risk that was found by the court unfounded and discriminatory," Dana Rubin, the executive director for IRC's Dallas office, told me.

Watch on Vice News: Unsettled: Syrian Refugees In America

Now, Texas has resorted to withdrawal from the federal resettlement program—but the same number of refugees will continue to be resettled in Texas, according to Victoria Palmer, public affairs specialist for the US Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. The difference is in the distribution of funds and services for those individuals and families. Currently, the State of Texas receives the funds to distribute to nonprofits, which distribute money to the refugees and offer support services. Now, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) will instead choose one or a few nonprofits to receive and distribute those funds.

"While we of course regret Texas's decision, ORR is working to appoint designees to administer services to refugees in Texas," Palmer told me. "ORR is working to prevent a disruption in the delivery of services and benefits to refugees and entrants in Texas."

And the US Department of State, which screens refugees and works with ORR to distribute them, said Texas would continue to receive all groups of refugees, including Syrians.

"Applicants to the US Refugee Admissions Program are currently subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States," a State Department official told me in an emailed statement. "Syrian refugees are screened to an even higher level."

Since Texas's withdrawal can't block resettlement, immigration experts told me the move was purely for show.

"It makes no difference, it's just a political thing. It's a public announcement by Texas saying they don't want refugees," Tammy Lin, a national spokesperson for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me. "It's very frustrating because on the state level the rhetoric is like this, but on the community level, people have been very welcoming."

Lin and Palmer both told me that Texas would eventually operate resettlement through a model that 12 states already use, called the Wilson-Fish Program. Under that program, the federal government picks one or a few organizations to serve as long-term partners, distributing funds and services to nonprofits and to refugees throughout the state. Palmer said ORR would soon make a request for "competitive bids" to serve as the distributors.

"The organizations chosen to be the main agency for the state will be more burdened, but these agencies have been doing this for a very long time," Lin said.

Texas will be the largest state to use the alternative program—which Aaron Rippenkroeger, the CEO and president of Refugee Services Texas, said was cause for concern.

"It was very surprising and extremely disappointing," Rippenkroeger told me of the state's withdrawal announcement. "We feel like we've built an international model for success on how to integrate folks into Texas. Resettlement includes health screenings, medical care, work placement, and case management, so there are a lot of complex elements."

Rippenkroeger told me Texas was consistently in the "80 to 90 percent range for self-sufficiency based on employment and verified income level" within 180 days of refugees' arrival. "We're going to have to work extremely hard to make sure that the impact of the state's withdrawal is not felt by our clients," he said.

But Rubin of the IRC assured me that Texas's withdrawal may even open the door to a better resettlement process.

"We see this as a great opportunity not only to continue our work but to improve upon it," Rubin said. "We're already ready and able to jump on the role of whatever is asked of us by the federal government."

Meanwhile, these political and organizational shifts mean nothing to the Al Samadis, who know nothing of Texas's withdrawal or even of national opposition to Syrian refugees.

For the first several months in the US, the family receives federal financial aid, but a small amount: They receive $1,000 to last their first four months, and then $400 a month for four more months, RSTX Austin Community Integration Program Supervisor Qahtan Mustafa told me. The family also receives housing, food stamps, and Medicaid.

"I've applied for jobs in hotels," said Al Samadi, whom RSTX is helping find work. "I want to live here in dignity and for my kids to get a good education. I want people to know that Syrians are very simple and humble.

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

Look at Anna Haifisch's art and comics on her website and Twitter.

Los Hermanos de Manos perform at a Prop S rally before San Francisco's City Hall earlier this year. Photo by the author

Meet Mason Jay: A trans multidisciplinary artist, poet, and lifelong San Franciscan, Jay was raised by women of color and drag queens at the tail end of the AIDS crisis. Now a literary mentee of renowned queer author Michelle Tea and an alumni of the prestigious Voices of Our Nation literary workshop, some might say Jay—and his prolific body of poetry, which grapples with intersectionality and identity—personifies the social justice ethos that once characterized San Francisco's arts community.

But San Francisco's housing crisis has pushed artists (alongside marginalized groups) out of the city; Jay was no exception. Earlier this year, his landlord tripled his rent, and he was forced to relocate from his childhood home in the Fillmore district—a home he and his foster family have lived in for more than 40 years.

San Francisco boasts one of the largest artist workforces in the US, with 4.3 percent of city residents making their living solely from their art practice. Last year, the San Francisco Arts Commission surveyed nearly 600 artists who had either been currently living or recently lived in the city; they found that over 70 percent of respondents either had been or were in the process of being displaced from their homes, workplaces, or both due to rent increases.

Their struggle reflects a larger existential crisis within the world's most expensive cities, from New York to London, over the fate of its artist workforces. And as housing increasingly transforms from a public right into an investment good, and the artist populations who gave such cities their cultural cachet in the first place find themselves priced out of them altogether, those cities are faced with a choice: Support their artists, or watch them leave.

Today, San Franciscans will decide whether their city will opt for the former or the latter as it votes on Proposition S, a citywide proposition that aims to reallocate 16 percent of the city's existing Hotel Tax Fund for arts organizations and homeless families in 2017, a figure set to increase to 21 percent over the next four to five years.

If two-thirds of Prop S voters vote "yes," the city will be mandated to give a set percentage of hotel tax revenue to homeless families and arts organizations of all sizes. In addition to these set-asides, the measure seeks to establish two new funds: the Neighborhood Arts Fund, for artist residency programs, and the Ending Family Homelessness Fund, to subsidize case management services for homeless families.

"More funding means a bigger budget for culturally specific communities, like the LGBTQ community, women, and communities of color," said Prop S campaign coordinator Jasmine Conrad. "So instead of just funding a string quartet, you could also get a drag show. All without raising taxes."

Supporters of Prop S gather at a town hall meeting to rally for the arts and homeless families. Photo by the author

Prop S represents merely the most recent move in a decades-long fight for equitable funding for San Francisco's arts organizations. San Francisco's Hotel Tax Fund was originally established in 1961 to support arts-granting agencies through collecting a 14 percent tax on all San Francisco hotels. It was believed that funding the arts would stimulate San Francisco's tourist economy. This model was the first of its kind, and replicated across the country. As of 2014, San Francisco's arts tourism draws more than $1 billion annually. Low-income housing was added to the funding stream in 1971, and for more than 30 years, both the arts and low-income families were served by this tax.

Then the 2008 recession reared its ugly head, and this funding was gradually reduced until 2013, when it was removed in its entirety and reallocated to general city activities. Funding for the arts and homeless families was never restored despite increasing hotel tax revenues and growth in other municipal departments.

Arts organizations of all sizes have joined with homelessness advocates to create Prop S. "We've had extremely difficult conversations, acknowledging the city's painful history of inequitable funding between large and small arts organizations, and still working together toward a solution," said Shwetika Baijal, the Prop S campaign manager. "San Francisco's arts community has never come together like this before. And homelessness services providers are incredible, equal in our work. It's powerful."

Watch "The End of HIV? The Truvada Revolution"

Critics of the proposition see it as a mere stopgap in addressing San Francisco's housing crisis. "Yes, displacement is a crisis. And the first to lose are artists and low-income people," said Laura Clark, the executive director of GrowSF, a housing-focused nonprofit. "It's great to reallocate funding to homelessness and the arts, but the major crisis is housing. We need more subsidized affordable housing."

Others have voiced stronger dissent. The San Francisco controller's office, which ensures the city government's financial integrity through regular audits and reports, has publicly denounced the measure as detracting from other city services. The San Francisco Chronicle echoed this sentiment in an editorial recommending a "no" vote on the measure, citing that it limits the city's spending flexibility.

In a more dramatic tone, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, an LGBTQ-focused Democratic group, has declared Prop S a "poorly written" measure that "cuts valued city services."

The San Francisco Republican Party (SFRP) only disagrees with subsidizing homeless services. "If you look at the money we're spending on homelessness, we're going way overboard," said Howard Epstein of SFRP.

Whether Prop S passes or not, advocates predict the measure will become a promising new funding model for urban arts programs. "The result of Prop S here in San Francisco will be a strong indication that this kind of effort can prevail in other metro areas," said Brad Erickson, arts advocate and executive director of Theater Bay Area, who is confident the measure will pass.

For a city with a history of setting national examples on the social policy stage, it's just another effort to maintain its civic soul; for other world-class cities across the world with endangered artist populations, it may be the precedent they need.

Kyle Casey Chu is a drag queen and multidisciplinary artist in San Francisco.

(Photo: Michael Bentley, via)

When you are trying to think, the clock always ticks that bit louder, that bit slower. Tick. That's the clock in your boyfriend's room, hunched, as he is, over his glowing laptop, the ephemera of his third wank of the day scattered around him, still in his pants with the heating on. Tock. He's taken the day off from his job as a creative at a design agency to instead stay on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat all day getting #numbers. Tick. He's got a tab open with polls analysis site FiveThirtyEight loaded up, even though he doesn't really know how the polls work. Tock. He's got an ironic "Make Britain Great Again" hat he paid 25 fucking quid for from Zazzle. Tick. He's going to wear it to the same late-night Hackney speakeasy election party that I am going to tonight. Tock.

And here he is, the glow of the laptop making him look wan and weak, finally typing out the Facebook status to end all Facebook statuses, the blips of binary code and digits that will, like a butterfly flapping its wings, somehow unseat Donald Trump (your boyfriend still calls him "Donald Drumpf") from his presidential bid.

And it goes:

American friends. Do the right thing today. (The right thing = not voting for that cockwomble)

3 Likes, 1 Comment from his mum saying "Cockwomble! Brilliant x"

Meanwhile, your girlfriend who thinks Lena Dunham is good and who is not even quietly disappointed in Taylor Swift for not declaring at this election ("It's such a shame," she's saying, over her hygge book. "She's, like, so influential? And yet she hasn't said she's on one side or another. I'm starting to wonder if she's even a feminist any more, hashtag tee-bee-aitch!"), is really pro-Hillary after seeing a six-photo gallery of old pictures of her looking young and studious on HelloGiggles.

"She's a woman, but she's also a politician," your girlfriend is saying, adding "but what about the Iraq war" to the flat's list of banned sayings, along with "emails", "detox tea is a myth" and "Game of Thrones books". "And that makes me like her."

And ah god, she's tagged you in on her status update:

Hoping. Praying. #WithHer
— with 207 others

12 Likes, 2 Comments, both of which are from girls she knows called "Laura" saying "with #Her too x"

It's that self-proclaimed smart guy who you went to sixth form with and who always derailed English lessons with extremely long unrelated monologues about Ayn Rand, and who dropped out of his Engineering degree because living away from home frightened him too much, and now it's six years later and he works late-night shifts at the BP garage so he can stay up and sketch intricate pencil drawings of dragons in a fucked up old A3 sketchbook while serving commuters Mars bars and hot pasties while tutting.

His wispy moustache hair has somehow grown long enough to get tangled into the wet fronds of the sideburns he's been growing since he was 18. This guy only drinks out of a goblet; he's on his second of three warnings for wearing pentagram jewellery to work; he deep down hates himself in such a hollow way that he can't really articulate it; he could have been anything and chose, through the path of least resistance, to be nothing.

This guy – i.e. you; you are this guy – he reckons he's the first person in history to figure out the Trump/Hitler comparison and hath taketh to Faceth book to enlighten the masses:

Today America goes to the polls to vote for their next President. Excuse the political post (lol) but I really have to say something about this Trump character. Consider:

— FACT Trump is racist and outwardly says so. (source: Huffington Post, 'Here Are 13 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist')
— FACT he wants to build a big dividing wall (source: Huffington Post, 'Trump's Border Wall Would Cost $40 Billion')
— FACT he threatened to IMPRISON anyone who disagrees with him! (source: Huffington Post, 'Donald Trump's Campaign Goes All In On Jailing Hillary Clinton')
— FACT there's some weird sex stuff going on, haven't looked into it too much tbh (16 days NoFap after my last reset!) (source: Huffington Post, 'Woman Says Trump Sexually Assaulted Her, Offered Her $10,000 For Sex')
— FACT has a haircut nobody would ever want to emulate

UH, REMIND YOU OF SOMEONE?

Guys

Voting
For
Donald
Trump
Is
Literally
Voting
For
HITLER

Would you vote for Hitler? No. So don't vote for Donald Trump. That's all I have to say on the topic, lol. Will be staying up all night to watch the results come in if anyone wants to hit me up on Twitch

1 Share (WoW Guild Facebook Page), 6 Comments, 0 Likes

Your uncle who "knows how politics works" and has had a cupboard full of shotguns ever since he got Really Into those freemen-on-the-land forums has an opinion, but first he needs to start a Facebook account (your uncle, you remember, deleted his original Facebook account after the divorce from Aunt Lynn – "Too many memories," he said, holding a Guinness glass just a little bit too hard, "too many tagged photos. Too many... good times" – and plus he's exceptionally scared of the government tracking him for some reason ), so he's signed up as "Liam No Name", and anyway:

In some ways I actually do hope Trump wins tomorrow

62 comments, one of which is from your Uncle's mate Neil who doesn't believe AIDS exists, 2 Likes

Ah, shit. Fuck. Why did— why did you sign your dad up to Facebook that Christmas? You thought it would be fun, didn't you? You thought it'd help you stay in touch. You've been drifting away from your dad, haven't you, since you left home, two asteroids gently nudging each other in the vacuum of space and drifting coolly, emotionlessly away from each other, and he just seems further away now, doesn't he, consumed as he is with his dad things, the trains and the dog and when Top Gear is coming back, and it's just— it's just not how it used to be, is it, with the two of you?

Do you think – really, if you sit down and think about it, turn your phone screen over and focus – do you think, ever, you will get that magic back? Or has the relationship with your dad gone into a chrysalis from which it will never emerge as a caterpillar again, and it might come out a moth or it might come out a butterfly, but either way it is changed, morphed, in a way you can't control and a way you can't tell him you hate? When was the last time he called you unprovoked? When was the last time you texted him to see if he was OK? How many beats does that old heart have in it any more? Does he even know if his prostate is good or not? You have a finite amount of dad left and you still can't bring yourself to call him on a Thursday night when all you're doing is sitting at home waiting for a potato to bake. Is he the bad parent, or are you the bad child? Bet you're just getting him socks again for Christmas this year, aren't you? "It's all he likes!" you tell your boyfriend. But it isn't. It's just the only thing you ever bothered to discover he enjoyed, and then you gave up. You absolute prick.

Anyway:

Listen kids, take it from a wise old sage who's been around the block a few times (a few too many times, some might say!): this election doesn't matter. Yes, the race is between a hairy niknak and a dead-behind-the-eyes personality vacuum, but in my experience, these things have a way of levelling out. I lived through the 80s, remember. Everything worked out fine. I bought a house when I was 22. I've never experienced direct racism in my life. University was free. A rising, bubbling, seething movement of overt right-wing hatred doesn't really affect me because I'm in my fifties and leaning that way anyway. So don't worry. Everything will be fine.

I refuse to go in on your mum because mums are sacred and anyway this is the only Facebook status she's made this week:

Anyone remember the old pegs? We used to have such different pegs xxxx

And then there's you, isn't there, but you're above it all, aren't you, because you see things from above, floating, always, above the action, too good to have an opinion – sure, if pressed, you could have one, but you'd have to explain so much, wouldn't you? You've read a lot of Slate pieces and you'd have to explain each one for context, and you know Hillary is low-key meant to be bad but you don't exactly know how bad, and so maybe you'll comment on a few threads – "fucked either way" (2 Likes) – and maybe you'll Like a few statuses calling Trump an Oompa Loompa, but you won't get involved, will you, because fundamentally – look inwards, look past your guts and into your bones, turn your arch sideways glances in on yourself and look deep, deeper, the deepest – fundamentally you know you are a coward, an uninformed coward, and this is big, too big, much bigger than you, much grander; you don't dare weigh in one way or another on this election because all it's made you feel is ultimately insignificant, in this country and America, in your life and within the universe, this election has made you realise one thing: You Don't Matter. So you do something ironic, like this:

Hope to see some real anti-Trump messages on Facebook today! That'll really show him!

— because that's all you can do. Pull a smile across your face and watch through blistered eyes as the world burns.

@joelgolby

More stuff about this election:

The Election Isn't Going to Doom America, No Matter Who Wins

What You Need to Know If You're Staying Up Tonight to Watch the US Election

I Asked Ordinary Voters if They Could Explain Clinton's Complicated Email Scandal

I first met April Ayers Lawson in 2012. She was kind enough to write me about a story of mine that she had liked. This was especially flattering, considering that her own story, "Virgin," had won the Paris Review's prestigious Plimpton Prize. In her story, a young bride from a religious home insists on waiting until marriage to sleep with her non-religious fiancé. Her virginity first heightens his desire, then becomes nightmarish and threatening as her deeper issues and sexuality surface. Meanwhile another character, a cancer survivor, grows in importance, her mastectomy becoming a symbol of sexual and maternal power. I had never read anything quite like it: Strange, funny, beautifully disturbing, it felt completely alien yet completely true on some unconscious level. I became a fan, and have been awaiting her debut collection ever since.

Though I'd read some of these stories in earlier states, the finished book, Virgin and Other Stories (an excerpt from which appeared in VICE magazine), as a whole struck me as extraordinarily intense. She pins raw emotional truth to the page with the pressure of a style that is elegant, cool, hyper-intelligent, and witty. The stories are both more upsetting and funnier than I recalled. Over email, we recently discussed, God, trauma, childhood sexuality, the South, the importance of smell, desire, and the endless complexities of human connection.

VICE: Scent seems to be extremely important in this book. Nearly every story mentions it, while most writers rely on sight and sound.
April Ayers Lawson: I have pollen allergies and live in one of the worst places for that—North Carolina—and so half of the time I don't smell much of anything. But when I do, I think my sense of smell is pretty sensitive. As a writer, I think some moments need scent to come fully alive. Also, if we have normal sight, then we trust what we see the most. It's "real" if we can see it. Scent is more elusive, unstable, mysterious—when you're out, you can get a distinct whiff of something suddenly in passing and be like, What is that? And then it's gone before you figure it out.

Childhood sexual trauma, as well as other scenes of young people being sexually shamed, plays a role in several stories. Yet the innocent are often highly sexual beings themselves.
I think a fair number of people start becoming aware of sexual response at an early age. Some boys are born with erections, but they don't understand it—it's like a physiological thing. Kids want attention. This can be easily exploited by sick and selfish people. Even if the kid willingly participated, the kid doesn't understand the whole picture—it's not the kid's fault. But it's very easy to shame and fault an abused person. People who've been abused struggle with blaming themselves anyway, in part because it would make more sense if they'd deserved it.

Broadly Meets award-winning author Margaret Atwood:

And these kids are growing up in very religious backgrounds, which doesn't seem to help.
In a context in which people are highly religious but maybe not so self-aware or psychologically astute, there's the tendency to want to assert one's goodness by pointing out what seems identifiably "bad" in others. At, say, a conservative Christian college, you can walk in and catch someone drinking or in the act of fornicating, but you can't walk in and catch the condition of someone's heart. You can't very easily walk in on someone being self-righteous; you can't walk in on someone doing a good deed out of ego rather than compassion; or having racist or sexist thoughts. I think the extreme focus on sex—the privileging of this over other matters in some churches—might have more to do with an anxiety over contamination and loss of control than Christianity.

Like in the title story, "Virgin," where the character's virginity it almost a fetish.
Sexual purity continues to be something more associated with women than men, most especially in religion. The way it's still set up in some people's heads—there's such an emphasis on a woman's purity, implying that to lose it ruins her. But human beings get sexually abused and raped. Does that mean they've lost their spiritual purity? What is this purity we're talking about, then? It's targeted toward the female, and it does as much damage as what it portends to protect her from. Christ was a revolutionary who emphasized the condition of a person's heart, forgiveness, compassion. But from some people in the South today, you'd get the idea he must have been someone who went around scaring girls into equating their value with being virgins before marriage and stopping people from having alcohol and gay sex.

But I want to stress, too, that I don't think all churches and Christians in the South are like that. It's just those are often the pushiest and loudest and quickest to attempt to control others—and therefore draw more attention and are the ones people from other places hear about in the news. There are also true Christians in the South who do life-altering things for people out of loving hearts and don't resort to shaming to control.

"Sex with someone you don't know very well is dangerous."

The female characters also seem to often be preyed upon by the men and their victimization is made harrowingly real. Disturbingly, they also seem to be offering themselves as prey. Was this an intentional theme?
To say they offer themselves as prey would imply they aren't already easy to harm; that they are offering to become what they already are. For example, in the story "The Way You Must Play Always," Gretchen isn't fully cognizant of the big picture in regards to what's happening between her and Wesley. She's seeking the same intensity of attention she got from her cousin with an older man, who is pretty much the only guy she gets to talk to alone at this point in her life. She wants connection and intimacy—she wants to be wanted. Becoming an object for someone, even before touch, has a palpable quality. It's not love, but it's a form of attachment. I mean, she thinks she loves the guy. Maybe she does.

In "Vulnerability," the longest and most devastating story, the main character, an unhappily married artist, falls in love with two men over the phone. She arrives in New York and is brutally assaulted by one of them. Yet this barely scratches the surface of the manifold disturbing currents at work here. The narrator seduces men who resemble her molester into posing for her. This places her in jeopardy, yet she is the hunter. Similarly, she is drawn inexorably toward her abuser. Yet we learn that he is vulnerable, too. I wonder what you are thinking about in these cycles of mutual use and abuse.
Well, she wants to take advantage of them. I think maybe she thinks it balances things out in the way people taking advantage of other people often enough do until they realize that type of empowerment is cheap and short-lived. While I knew in advance what would happen, events-wise, I did not know how she would end up seeing it. The surprise to me as writer wasn't what happened, but how she sees herself going through it, her evolving recognition of the cycle you speak of. I believe people do come out of these kinds of cycles—that people grow and change, but I think it's often a very long and messy journey. Though at the end, I questioned myself, like, "Shouldn't I write something with a more obviously positive message for women who've been abused or are still going through it?" I couldn't.

"Vulnerability is learning what it means to be in a body."

And she keeps thinking of these volatile and immediate connections as "love."
Sex with someone you don't know very well is dangerous. Biological bonding stuff happens that can be very hard to wrest yourself from, physically and emotionally. Learning humility is maybe not fashionable now, but I think too the protagonist of "Vulnerability" is learning what it means to be in a body. And that's humbling.

In your stories, characters are frequently concerned with religious matters. Yet they live in a world that is not only secular, but I would say, often feverishly carnal and even deeply Freudian. Can you talk about the role religion plays in your work?
I believe there's a God—a conscious, omnipotent entity. I have felt it since childhood. Though my reasons for believing it as an adult have to do with more than just feeling and intuition. But I am in a state of question as to what that entails. I go to church, but there's always a tension for me in the sense that religion as a system is inevitably flawed, though I believe the potential good outweighs the potential bad. The church is people. People always have and cause problems. Fiction requires people having problems. Forgiveness, redemption, and that kind of thing—it means nothing outside of a carnal, material world. I am not interested in a Tupperware-container kind of faith in which I seal myself off from anything potentially challenging, messy. As for Freud—well, I think Freud is fun.

Follow David Gordon on Twitter.

Photo by Megan Magdalena; styling by Chippy Nonstop

On February 22, 2015, I walked off my 11 hour and 23 minute flight from Narita International Airport to LAX relieved and excited to see my boyfriend (at the time) and to finally be back home in the US. But the reason I remember everything I felt that day is because it was one of the worst days of my life. Instead of grabbing my shit and heading home, I ended up sitting in a cold, vacant back room at LAX, waiting to be deported (it's a long story) and crying uncontrollably thinking about what was going to happen to me.

One of the sights at the Venus 2016 Festival in Berlin. Photo by Grey Hutton

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

For years, educators and politicians have been in a constant debate over what sex education in schools should entail, leaving most kids to get their sexual education online—in the form of an iPhone video of a BBW getting bukkaked by a group of burly guys.

There is no question that porn plays an important role in how young people perceive sexuality. According to the Guardian, "a recent survey of more than 1,000 children aged 11 to 16 found that 94 percent of them had seen Sarah Champion suggested last week that educators should start teaching kids about pornography before they stumble on it themselves.

A good way to start doing that is by showing that even if porn doesn't always reflect reality, the actors are real people—people, who at one point, also experienced the stress of having sex for the first time. We visited the Venus 2016 Festival in Berlin to ask porn stars about their first time and the differences between real sex and sex on camera.

Aaron Van Damage, 38

VICE: How old were you when you had sex for the first time?
Aaron Van Damage: I was 15. I was at a heavy metal concert in a youth club in Kassel, Germany, when this 25-year-old girl picked me up. I was so drunk that I could hardly walk. When we finally got to her place, it all happened very fast.

Did you have sex right away?
Yeah. It was like we blinked, and we were naked. She sat on me while she was pretty dry. When it really kicked off, it kind of hurt at first and burned. But it was still really fun, and I was happy with how I did.

How long did your first time take?
I lasted about 15 minutes. Afterward, I felt insecure because my dick was so slippery. It was very dark in that room, so I didn't understand why everything was so wet. Until I finally realized that her butt, the wall, and floor were all red. I thought she had had her period—but the blood came from my dick.

Why did you bleed?
At first, I didn't think much of it. I was so horny that I just wiped the blood off, and we had sex again right after that. The second time, everything was OK, but during the third time, I got really dizzy. She didn't care about the state I was in—she fell asleep while I lay there almost bleeding to death. When I finally got home and sobered up, I realized that I had ripped my banjo string.

Was your second time as painful?
No, quite the opposite. About six months later, I had a proper first time. I had just fallen in love and was totally crazy about my girlfriend. When we had sex for the first time, I was so excited that the sex didn't take longer than three minutes. I think it's fine if your first time is like that—short and with someone you love.

Violett Porn, 25

VICE: Do you remember your first time?
Violett Porn: I think that the first time you have sex it's either shit, embarrassing, or great. I would say that my first time was shit. I was only 12.

How did it happen?
It was a difficult time. I had been together with my boyfriend for eight months, but he wasn't a good guy. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. He wasn't a virgin, and we didn't plan the first time. During that first time, he kept throwing me onto the bed, and my spine really started to hurt. It wasn't fun at all.

Did your relationship continue?
It got worse. Shortly after, he stopped calling me and ditched me for another girl. When I think back to that time, I still really want to punch that asshole.

Is sex different when you're a porn star?
I've been working in the porn industry for three years now, but my sex life hasn't gotten better just because of it. It took many years for me to figure out what I like and what I'm into in bed. Everyone defines "good sex" differently, anyway. Maybe in ten years, I'll look back and wonder how it's possible that I was satisfied with my sex life today.

Jason Steel, 34

VICE: When did you lose your virginity?
Jason Steel: It was New Years Eve going from 1996 to '97. I was 14, and some friends of mine were having a house party. I was hitting it off with a girl named Christine all night, but sadly she left pretty early, so I started to kiss another girl named Jenny. But then Christine showed up again, and she was pretty shocked.

That sounds like a lot of drama.
I don't know where the confidence came from, but I suggested the three of us would kiss together—which we did for a bit. But Christine didn't like it and left. When I took Jenny home, my mother opened the door, and she was horrified—she didn't want to let me into the apartment with this girl. We left and found a random floor in the 18-story building, I lived in. She gave me a blowjob, then put a condom on me, and rode me. I came in about ten minutes, and then I started to panic because the condom ripped. Everything turned out OK, though. I didn't get her pregnant during my first time.

Do you think the accessibility of porn has changed the way young people have sex?
I do. When I was young, blowjobs were frowned upon. It was a taboo to come in someone's face. That has completely changed. I've been working in the sex business for 16 years, and porn has become a lot more extreme during that time. It gives a completely distorted view of sexual reality. Male actors have relentless erections—let's be honest, nobody can hold a hard-on for longer than 45 minutes.

Back in the day, you would see a flaccid dick now and then. These days, all you see are massive boners popping out of guys' pants. And the way they switch from vaginal sex to anal in porn... it really doesn't work like that. A woman has to be relaxed, has to stretch herself—otherwise, the guy could hurt her. When you watch it, you need to understand that it's not something you should try to live up to.

Freddy Gong, 26

VICE: How did you lose your virginity?
Freddy Gong: I grew up in England and went to boarding school there. One night, a girl from my school took me by the hand and led me to the girls' dormitory. I had sex for the first time there, with her.

How old were you?
I was 16. I don't know how old she was. I do remember that she moaned really loudly. So loudly that we got caught.

So did you get into trouble?
No, luckily they only gave us a warning. I thought it was all very exciting. At boarding school, I had sex in the dining area and in the library—always with different girls. I only ever got caught my first time.

Sammy Fox, didn't want to tell us her age

VICE: Tell us about your first time.
Samy Fox: I was 16 and fancied this guy from my neighborhood. One evening, his parents weren't home, and we had sex in his room. He was on top, and it was all pretty unspectacular. I much prefer telling people the story about my second time.

Please do.
Our parents couldn't find out that we were having sex, so we had to do it in secret. To be sure they wouldn't find out, for our second time, we agreed to meet in my parents' cellar. There was a wooden folding chair in the cellar, and when I came down, he was sat on it completely naked. When I tried to sit on his lap, the chair collapsed, and we were both lying naked on the cold cellar floor. We laughed so long and hard we couldn't carry on anymore.

The diesel spilled off Bella Bella near the Great Bear Rainforest. Photo via the Heiltsuk Nation

Justin Trudeau's announcement of a national Oceans Protection Plan ahead of the December deadline for Kinder Morgan's TransMountain pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia's coast is stoking fears from environmentalists that the Prime Minister is in a pipeline-approving mood.

In Vancouver on Monday, Trudeau pledged $1.5 billion over five years for a "world-leading marine safety system" to protect Canada's coastline. Among other things, the plan includes better regulations for marine protection, expansion of the Canadian Coast Guard's role in responding to marine incidents, and new Indigenous Community Response Teams in BC.

It also, crucially, partly addresses conditions BC Premier Christy Clark put on her support of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, making the project more politically palatable. Trudeau has made it clear he intends to approve a pipeline that carries Alberta crude oil to international markets, and TransMountain, which has sparked mass protests in Burnaby, remains one of the favourites.

"I have to say I have no cause for complaint with what we've seen today," the premier told reporters in reaction to the announcement.

The province had asked for three heavy rescue tugboats, and the plan states two large towing vessels will be leased—however it doesn't say those would be for BC.

Environmentalists are reading between the lines.

" is clearly a step that allows Christy Clark to say this has met one of her five conditions, but it does nothing to address concerns of those opposed to it, including climate change and Indigenous opposition," Cam Fenton, 350.org's Canadian Tarsands Campaign Manager, told VICE News.

"Certainly they are attempting to through these types of announcements, which are certainly improvements, but in no way diminish or get rid of the risk of a major spill or a major disaster," Eugene Kung, lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, told VICE News.

"Unfortunately no matter how much money you throw at this problem it won't make diluted bitumen float."

Monday's announcement came weeks after a tugboat ran aground and sank, spilling diesel off Bella Bella near the Great Bear Rainforest—an incident Trudeau called "unacceptable". It also follows a two-year push from the Haida Nation for a ban on tankers along the Pacific northwest coast.

Related story: The Town That Hates Pipelines—How Canada's Energy Future Hit a Wall in Burnaby

Haida Nation President Peter Lantin is cautiously optimistic about the Oceans Protection Plan.

"We have pressed hard to have the federal government wake up to our reality," Lantin said in a press release. "We pressed the issue in 2014 and made little progress, but under Prime Minister Trudeau we have seen movement."

But Lantin continued to call for "a full moratorium on tanker traffic" on the BC coast, which Trudeau promised during the 2015 election campaign. Transport Minister Marc Garneau has said that announcement should come by the end of the year.

On Sunday, a boat towing a barge loaded with gravel and sand flipped and spilled its load north of Bella Bella, forcing one of the ships that was responding to the Nathan E. Stewart diesel spill weeks ago to leave and respond to the new spill instead.

In May, the National Energy Board approved TransMountain with 157 conditions, including that Kinder Morgan would have to offset greenhouse gas emissions from the project's construction. The board found the pipeline would have negative effects from increased tanker traffic, but because 90 percent of the pipeline expansion would follow an existing route, it wouldn't create too much environmental disturbance.

A final decision on the pipeline is expected by December 19, although the government could extend that time limit.

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter.

Well, they both have famous hair in common. Photos via Facebook/AP

"I will work with whomever gets elected."

Seven words that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau learned to repeat, amid an incessant question: How will you deal with a Trump presidency?

Although that talking point was largely meant to dispel any notion that the Canadian prime minister would get involved in the political bloodsport down south, Trudeau is going to have to live by it in the four years to come.

It's hard to imagine a campaign, a candidate, and a victory more diametrically opposite that of Trudeau's, who won on a promise of multiculturalism, environmentalism, globalism, and feminism, capped with a promise to significantly increase Canada's intake of Syrian refugees.

Donald Trump promised a complete overhaul of the North American order. A ban on Muslim immigration to the United States. A border wall with Mexico, and the mass deportations of scores of Mexican migrants to America. The end of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Though many of Trump's policies—on trade, on immigration, on social policy—will still need to make it through the House and the Senate, big wins in both those chambers may provide the president-elect with some political capital to pass the Trump agenda. But the mere effect of his candidacy, and his victory, have upset, and perhaps poisoned, the American political order for good. The rise of Trump has been shadowed by a rise in xenophobia, a spike in hate crimes, and a multiplication of Islamophobic, misogynistic, and antisemitic sentiment nation-wide and online.

Regardless of their prospective differences, Trump and Trudeau could be just another pairing in a long list of presidents and prime ministers who personally and politically reviled each other. So, in that sense, things will be status quo on the continent. Nevertheless, Trump will likely follow the tradition set by many of his predecessors, and make his first foreign visit to Canada. So Ottawa will need to start figuring out what his victory means, and quickly.

Read More: How Did Trump Do So Well?

Defence

Trump committed to shred the status quo at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Canada is a member, forcing member states to "pull their own weight" in the defence of the Western hemisphere. He's repeatedly called the organization "obsolete" and has remained open to getting rid of it altogether.

Dovetailing his support for withholding funding for NATO, Trump presided over a massive shift in Republican policy since his ascension to the top ranks of the party that has given Russian President Vladimir Putin a massive win. He's publicly said that Russia, despite all observable evidence, was not "going into Ukraine," and watered down his party policy to end calls for armed support to the Ukrainian army.

That throws all of NATO (and Canadian) policy in the region into turmoil. In recent months, Trudeau has deployed 450 Canadian Forces soldiers to Latvia under a NATO missioned aimed at blunting Russian expansion in the region. The fact of those sorts of missions now feel entirely uncertain. That's on top of existing NATO and Canadian training and support missions in Ukraine, aimed at helping Kyiv beat back an insurgency of Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Donbass.

Trump, too, has swore up and down that he would intensify the war against the Islamic State, through yet untold ways. He's committed to nothing less than a trade war with China, unless the Communist regime stops manipulating their currency—a practise that Beijing has, at least according to most experts, already ended.

Read More: Trudeau Government Keeps Leaving Classified Info Around Parliament

Pipelines

Though Trudeau has been dubbed "the anti-Trump," the two opposites will find common ground on one thing: Keystone XL.

Trump has said he would give the pipeline, which crosses the Canada-US border, a green light. "I would absolutely approve it, 100 percent, but I would want a better deal," Trump said during a stop in North Dakota. "I want it built, but I want a piece of the profits. That's how we're going to make our country rich again."

Trudeau had previously expressed disappointment when US President Barack Obama refused to sign off on the project.

Environment

But the two will butt heads on climate change—an issue on which Trudeau has positioned himself as a progressive, and that Trump has repeatedly shrugged off as a Chinese hoax.

Environmentalists warned Monday that Trump's election would result in "planetary disaster" due to his promise to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement—a threat that's possible for him to carry out. A US withdrawal would allow other countries to back out of the deal too, which would pose a huge setback as the world attempts to peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.

Trudeau on the other hand has championed the climate deal, saying Canada will demonstrate its commitment to the fight by making science-based decisions, collaborating with the provinces and territories on the issue and supporting developing countries.

Trade

Arguably the hallmark of Trump's campaign was NAFTA.

Trump spent much of the campaign telling voters that NAFTA was "the worst trade deal ever signed," vowing to rewrite the entire agreement to make it more "fair" to America. He's never elaborated on those comments.

Wisconsin and Michigan, two Democratic strongholds and rustbelt states hit hard by the flight of blue collar jobs, appear to have bought the Trump line that NAFTA and globalization were to blame for the hollowing out of middle America.

The Trans Pacific Partnership, of which Trudeau is a tacit supporter and Clinton was a tentative enemy, is a favourite punching bag of Trump's. A trade deal with Europe, modelled on a Canadian agreement that was just inked by Brussels and Ottawa (CETA), also appears futile in Trump's new anti-globalist world.

Read More: The World Responds to Trump Win

Governing Style

Clinton's plan to bring in 65,000 Syrian refugees, working in conjunction with Ottawa and a host of other G20 countries to reduce the migrant crisis plaguing the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, is dead in the water. In the last days of the campaign, Trump even took aim at Minnesota's Somali population, insisting that the state's Muslim residents had been "joining ISIS."

Last December, before the first Republican primary, before Trump was considered a serious candidate, a newly-elected Trudeau, asked about Trump in a town hall hosted by Maclean's Magazine, reiterated his mantra: it is important "to be able to have a positive relationship with whoever Americans choose as their president."

Trudeau threw caution to the wind after that, with a well-placed "however."

"I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I stand firmly against the politics of division, the politics of fear, the politics of intolerance or hateful rhetoric," Trudeau told the audience.

"If we allow politicians to succeed by scaring people, we don't actually end up any safer. Fear doesn't make us safer. It makes us weaker."

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

Members of the press at Hillary Clinton's official election night campaign event in New York City. Photo by Jason Bergman

After the first polls closed Tuesday night, millions of Americans huddled around their TVs, posted up at bars, and bathed in the cool light of their phones. Many of us, those of us who followed the polls and listened to the experts, figured we knew what was about to happen. Donald Trump, the man accused by many women of sexual assault, the man who has promised to build a wall along the Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the country, was going to get stomped. And not just in the electoral sense—he was going to be humiliated in the most dramatic fashion possible, a sort of cathartic moment of national awakening.

Instead, it was the naysaying media who got humiliated. Pundit types, pollsters, the vast majority of liberals and lefties who write things on the internet—almost none of them saw this shit coming.

When initial results were posted by the national news networks and on prediction sites like FiveThirtyEight Tuesday night, it quickly became clear this was not going to be a smooth ride for Democrats. The other thing that was clear almost from the jump: There are a lot of angry white people out there, and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

In recent years, many Democratic thinkers have been optimistic about their party's future thanks to what they see as baked-in advantages among Hispanics and socially progressive, upwardly mobile white voters. Those blocs have been setting up camp in a big way in key swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado, and the fact that Barack Obama carried all three in 2008 seemed to send a clear message: The version of conservatism based largely or partly in a white racial identity was on the way out, and a politics of inclusion was the new thing. Obama's victory in 2012 (he narrowly lost North Carolina, but fairly easily nationwide) seemed to reinforce the prospect that presidential elections just weren't friendly to the GOP, even if their advantage in rural areas allowed them to remain powerful in Congress.

The message America got on Tuesday was really this simple: Demographics are not destiny. Or, maybe simpler: Not yet they're not.

Downwardly mobile white voters, so often dismissed as racist misogynists who are practically going extinct, asserted themselves in a big way on Tuesday. Massive turnout that exceeded projections more than compensated for a burst in early voting (and strong support from Hispanics) that favored Clinton in battleground states. And while some Clinton supporters were quick to pounce on what they saw as evidence of simple prejudice in such massive support for Trump, the story is obviously a bit more complicated than that.

"I don't believe it's helpful to say 'anger at economics versus anger at culture,'" Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist and sociologist who studied the Tea Party, told me of Trump voters. "I think it's a sense of being bypassed, and a loss of status that Trump was giving expression to."

"I also happen to think we can overdo the sociology of this," Skocpol added by way of caution. "I think the Comey letter was crucial. It created a window in which all of the attacks on her could be renewed."

It's easy to blame Clinton's loss at least partially on the aura of scandal that, rightly or wrongly, surrounded her all campaign. But regardless of Clinton's perceived flaws, weren't Hispanic voters, irate or terrified at the prospect of Trump taking over, going to save the day? All we heard about in the run-up to the vote was how dominant Clinton was at getting her voters to the polls, which seemed to herald victory.

"But that probably also signaled to people in these whiter and rural exurban areas that it was a competition and they needed to mobilize themselves," Skocpol suggested. "I think the pollsters missed this was because the turnout level went up above what they expected" in rural America.

The professor is getting at another apparent truism in American politics: that polls, well, work. They tend to be accurate, or at least they have been in recent national elections. Political observers were generally confident Obama was going to win the 2008 and 2012 elections, and polls in key states proved accurate in almost every case in those cycles. They had also anticipated the Republican takeover of Congress in 2010, and with the exception of a surprise defeat for Clinton in Michigan, they were pretty spot-on during the 2016 presidential primaries, too.

But something went terribly awry on Election Night—and pollsters are the first to admit it.

"We have to figure out what went wrong, honestly," Celinda Lake, a prominent Democratic pollster, told me late Tuesday. She went on to say she saw evidence of a "hidden" or "secret" vote in her firm's own polling and other surveys this summer, where online surveys captured more support for Trump than phone ones. That might speak to a Trump-specific version of the "Bradley Effect," so named after the Democratic mayor of LA who polls predicted would cruise to a victory in the 1982 California gubernatorial race but in fact was defeated. The explanation for the discrepancy, many observers came to suspect, was that white voters experienced social desirability bias and didn't want to admit a lean against the black candidate to pollsters over the phone. Basically, they didn't want to seem racist.

Trump has been claiming the polls are biased in favor of Clinton for a long time, and as of this writing, he was ahead in states like Wisconsin and Michigan where Clinton was strongly favored—with Florida and North Carolina already safely in his column. All of which suggests what will, for some, be the most disquieting possibility in an age of seemingly limitless knowledge and scientific inquiry: Maybe we actually don't know how to gauge public opinion after all. Maybe America is just a big, mysterious mass.

Of course, let's not forget that even as Trump wins the presidency, he may lose the popular vote, or at least not earn a majority of it. His victory is far from absolute.

"I don't think the evidence is that the American people as a whole are embracing Donald Trump," Skocpol told me. "They're deeply uneasy about him, which means that his presidency is going to be even more fragile in some ways than hers would be."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

This article has been updated to account for Hillary Clinton's concession to President-elect Donald Trump.

Is this Canada's Trump? Photo via CP

A leading Conservative leadership candidate who has proposed screening immigrants for "anti-Canadian values" suggested that the movement which propelled Trump to a shocking victory in the US presidential election should be brought to Canada. Others in her party, however, seem mortified at his win.

"Tonight, our American cousins threw out the elites and elected Donald Trump as their next president," wrote Ontario MP Kellie Leitch in a congratulatory note sent to supporters Tuesday night. "It's an exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well. It's the message I'm bringing with my campaign to be the next Prime Minister of Canada."

According to a Mainstreet Research poll conducted by Postmedia, Leitch is currently leading the race with 19 percent of the vote.

But Leitch's position wasn't shared by Michael Chong, who is running against her for the leadership, in third place behind Andrew Scheer, with 12 percent of the vote.

Chong came out swinging against Leitch, saying in a statement that Leitch urging Canadians to take Trump's "divisive path" is a "mistake."

Canadian Conservatives win when we offer voters an ambitious, inspiring and inclusive vision of our country and its potential, he said.

"For us in Canada we need to be very careful that we don't fall into that same trap of not having a place to talk about legitimate issues in a way that is positive," Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, who was in the United States for the election, told CBC radio on Wednesday.

This article has been updated to reflect additional reporting.

Hey, America! Well: you fucked up. "Oh, but you guys, with your Brex—"

Yes, we also fucked up. But we fucked up in a way that only hurts us. Here's an analogy: we're that neighbour of yours who used to live down the road, and your mum always warned you not to knock on our door at Halloween because "he's a very strange man", and we haven't left the house in six years, and when we die – we always die, in this analogy – we die crushed under a pile of newspapers that have been accumulating since 1968. That's us. Weird, but ultimately harmless. A danger only to ourselves. A laughable footnote. You're the neighbour who went all wrong and set fire to his own house and then all the other houses and then shot that car and then sent a nuke at himself. That's you. You fucked up so bad that an analogy doesn't even cover it any more.

Anyway, the point of all this is to offer you soothing words of salvation in this, the toughest time anyone has lived through ever on Earth. Because we've done this already this year: we voted ourselves out of the EU for no discernible reason at all and woke up to this same choking, throttling sense of despair, of helplessness and fear, the one you're feeling now. But hey: we're more or less over it now! Sort of! More or less!

Another analogy to stretch taut to breaking point: we are like that wise, slightly older girl, who, despite being cooler than you, is still your friend, and you are going through your first break-up but we've been through loads, and so it is our job – we, remember, are the cool girl; we wear a leather jacket with panache and yet fuck-bois keep doing us over – we are the sisterly friend who comes over and gets you out of bed and combs your hair and fixes you a fake ID so she can take you to a bar and buy you a shot and go girl, he wasn't shit anyway. This is us, and that is you. You are feeling dread and we have survived that. We are here to get you over this. And you will get over this. The world – the world not so much. We have just done irreparable damage to the world. But you will get over this. So sit up.

THE SEVEN STAGES OF GRIEF, AND HOW YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THEM NOW, IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE MOST VITAL INCIDENCE OF WIDESPREAD LUNACY AND DERANGEMENT SINCE THE LAST ONE, I.E. THE ONE WE DID, TO OURSELVES, I.E. BREXIT.

SHOCK AND DENIAL

You've already gone through the denial bit of this – it was when you woke up on the sofa this morning, the TV still on, and saw the banner headline, white on red, "DONALD TRUMP ELECTED US PRESIDENT", and blinked twice and called softly to your housemate to confirm that, hold on, seriously, is this actually real? Am I reading this right or is this a fun joke?

But the shock is going to take you out for a day, maybe two. The shock is like— well, have you ever seen a bad thing? A car accident, or something? I saw a dead body in the aftermath of a car accident once – so still – and I was just a bit off all day. I was a bit like, "Huh: guess we're all just meat" about things. I just sort of realised everything we are can be snatched away from us in an instant – one errant lorry and we're gone – and essentially I wasn't too usable or viable a human being for a good 24 hours afterwards. Only now, that is everyone on earth, apart from the 58 million people who voted for Trump yesterday. But everyone else. That's the shock you're feeling.

PAIN AND GUILT

You're going to feel guilty because you assumed your side would win, and you're going to feel pain because they didn't, and these two emotions are going to blend into a compound feeling I like to call "guh-pain". This, too, will pass. Thankfully, we have Twitter now, so a good way to assuage yourself of guilt and pain is to go on there and blame literally everyone but yourself for what happened, and start conspiracy theories about how this is actually 's fault. Look, try it. I'll try it:

I don't know how but this feels like it's Taylor Swift's fault

It feels better, right! Try it!

ANGER AND BARGAINING

Listen: you're going to want to start an e-petition. I know. I know this hurts to hear. Nobody wants to hear this about themselves. But you're not in your right mind. You're going to think this is a good idea. You're going to think this can change things. You're going to forget this can't change things. "But, surely, 100,000 signatur—" No. This is futile. Stop this. This is the bargaining stage, and it is embarrassing.

(The anger stage, by the way, will manifest itself with you texting the uncle you know voted for the thing you dislike – Trump, Brexit – and deliberately starting a fight with him. Know that you are doing this with both Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon and he is going to be there, in his big red cap, making it awkward for you if you do. Still do it, though. You have to hold dickheads to account, especially if their blood pumps with your own.)

DEPRESSION, REFLECTION, LONELINESS

In my experience, this manifests itself as you going straight home after an unbearable day at work to make a big spaghetti bolognese and just yell. No advice.

THE UPWARD TURN

This doesn't exist. There isn't an "upward turn", as in one of those neat, TV-friendly moments. There is no moment where you are hiking, alone up a hill, in the early dappled light of the morning, and as you crest the hill you come to a view of a perfect vista illuminated in orange glory by the rising sun, and you breathe a deep chest full of air in and then out, healthful, wholesome, and smile widely with your teeth, and go ah, and say, I'm over it. I've moved on. I forgot about The Bad Thing. No. That doesn't happen. Basically, the agony is just slowly ameliorated by distance, and that is all you can hope to hope for.

RECONSTRUCTION AND WORKING THROUGH

No.

ACCEPTANCE AND HOPE

We had a good bit last week where we thought three judges had blocked Brexit, but then we realised they haven't a hope of Actually Blocking Brexit, so this is also a no.

OTHER THINGS THAT ARE GOING TO HAPPEN NOW, IN OUR EXPERIENCE:

– Overt in-the-streets racial harassment will be even more OK than it currently is!
– POC will suffer!
– Women will suffer!
– The poor will suffer!
– LGBTQ people will suffer!
– Wealthy, entitled white guys will more or less be alright still!
– Your money is worthless!
– That cloying sense of a dread that we are all going to die – that the motions have put in place for us all to eventually die, sooner than expected and more violently – will not go away!
– This rage will dissipate into the same old left-versus-right online discourse that ultimately achieves nothing!
– Fucking!
– Hell!

Listen, I'm sorry. I was supposed to make it better but I can't. We fucked up and you fucked up too. We – humanity – keep fucking up. Fuck ups, as far as the eye can see. If we could farm fuck ups for energy, then we could power this planet for the next 100,000 years, based on yesterday alone. But we can't. The only thing we can do in the midst of a fuck up is endure it.

I found myself actively trying to be nicer post-Brexit. It felt necessary. Don't litter, hold doors for people, be considerate on public transport. Tiny kindnesses for a greater whole. I am, I admit, essentially useless. But it feels like in 2016 – The Year of the Fuck Up – being slightly more decent to each other is, at least, a start. That's all I can tell you, America. You're right to feel pain. You're right to feel mad. You're right to feel despair. We did it too and it's not got better yet. This is the only advice I have: try to do something – anything – to make the world feel less bad. Because it is all fucked up. Never has it been more so.

@joelgolby

Here are some fun links rather than political links, because We All Need A Laugh Now Don't We:

How to Have a Night Out in London Without Spending a Penny

I Went Trick-Or-Treating, Aged 25, for My Dinner Party Shopping List

I Held Parties on the Night Tube to Save London's Nightlife

Photo: Evan Vucci AP / Press Association Image

Well, it's done. Donald Trump is now president-elect of the United States. Here's what our colleagues around the world make of the news, accompanied by images they chose to represent what it means to them.

MEXICO

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Mexico. Cropped image, original by Irving Cabello via

As with every grieving process, the first reaction is disbelief. Then, denial, anger, depression and finally – accepting that against all odds and a lot of polls, Donald John Trump is going to be the 45th President of the United States.

Thanks to Congress, the Supreme Court, his allies around the world, treaties, international organisations and lobbyists, he'll soon find out that it was easier for him to be a candidate than a president. The government of the most powerful country on the planet can not be run as a company or as a reality show. As president, he will not have the last and only word on the unlikely promises of his campaign – like building a wall between his country and ours.

I think it's likely that in four years, the world will see Trump as one of the most ineffective presidents the US have ever had – the showman who sold the world.
– Oscar Balderas, reporter for VICE News

GERMANY

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Germany. Photo by Grey Hutton

What a fucking nightmare. First we get Brexit, now this. Is anyone taking the world seriously any more? We have no idea what this means for Germany and Europe – and what makes this even scarier is that we're pretty sure Trump has no idea either.

Will he sell all of Eastern Europe to Putin in exchange for building permits for golf courses in the Tundra? Will he try to nuke every country where men on average have bigger hands than him? Should we all just elect populist xenophobic assholes, give up on cooperation and have them just slug it out with each other until no-one's left standing? If you think that sounds irrational, just stop and remember that Donald Trump was just elected as the world's most powerful human being.
– Matern Boeselager, VICE Germany

SERBIA

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Serbia. Photo by Jovana Netković via

According to an online poll, the majority of Serbs in America voted for Trump to be the next president of the United States. So for us this is apparently the beginning of a happy new era. It's a great day for our nationalists, who openly urged the Serbian diaspora in the US to vote for Trump. They did so because in their opinion, Hillary was the mastermind behind her husband's launch of the NATO bombings of Serbia in 1999.

Others are happy with this outcome because they hope that First Lady Melania Trump will pay us a visit – she is, after all, originally from our former Yugoslav partner, Slovenia. There is one other group supporting Trump – left-wing intellectuals siding with Slavoj Žižek in thinking that Hillary is the preserver of an unbearable status quo, and things should be shaken up.
– Aleksandra Nicsik - News editor, VICE Serbia

DENMARK

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Denmark. Photo by Lousy Auber via

It was bound to happen. First we lose our status as the happiest nation on Earth. Then our British brothers vote to bail on us and the rest of the European Union. And now America elects a dangerous cartoon character as president. The world has become a darker place, and nothing is beyond imagination anymore. Today's bad joke is tomorrow's reality. This also means that our chances of meeting nuclear oblivion could be considerably higher than our chances of ever winning a major football tournament again.

Hopefully, Trump is as bewildered as we are by him being elected, and he'll just withdraw to Trump Tower forever. Even Donald Trump has to admit that the world's most powerful job is probably best kept out of the reach of someone who tweets things like this.
– Lars Jellestad, Editor VICE Denmark

CANADA

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Canada. Photo by Diego Delso, via

Well, we had a good run, didn't we? A century of economic growth, political stability and the most amicable and meaningful relationship of any two nations in modern times. Not too shabby, eh? But, much like the hit legal dramedy Night Court (1984-1992), all good things must come to an end. So, too, must the bromance between Canada and America.

NAFTA, the unquestionably good deal that has driven down prices on virtually all consumer goods – that's gone. Russia will seize the high Canadian Arctic. Justin Bieber, still on his work visa, will be forced to renounce his Canadian passport or face deportation. Sure, the hordes of American emigrates coming across the Niagara Falls will aid the Canadian economy, with cultural celebrations livening up Little Pittsburg on July 1st and Hoagie shops opening up on every other corner. But, ultimately, this is the end of a very special friendship.
- Justin Ling, VICE Canada

UNITED KINGDOM

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE UK. Photo by Flickr user Charles Ei1 via

Wake up, open your eyes to a brave new world. You are Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America. "I can do anything!" you say. "The immediate area around my eyes is fucking purple and white, and nobody even points it out! That's how much I can do! I can do anything!"

It's 3AM, because that is the time you wake up. You gorge yourself on your usual breakfast of pale scrambled eggs, turkey sausage and two or three Big Macs blended to a paste. You close the unfastened buckle on your sleep trousers (you sleep, as you live, in a suit) and stumble downstairs. There are, like, 20 or 30 Secret Service agents there, in shades and with earpieces. "Mr President, Sir," they say, and sit you down in front of a reinforced-looking laptop. "We need to get you a login." You sit still for a second. "What's a login?" An agent steps forward. "For the Presidential laptop, sir. We need a secure login." You don't know what a login is. Go through the Donald J. Trump decision-making flowchart:

The world outside shifts imperceptibly on its axis, while a new motion of right-wing violence takes seed and, slowly, we edge ever nearer to apocalypse, because The World's Angriest Bro is now also The World's Most Powerful Man. That can't be good for anyone but for now – because of you – we are all fixed on a timeline that you just know ends in smoking wastelands of shard-like skyscraper remains poking out of a desolate desert, of riots in the streets. But for now, you are Donald J. Trump and you are angry that you have to think of a password. "FUCK," you type, thick fingers on a tiny hand, picking out each button one-by-one. "THIS."
– Joel Golby, staff writer VICE UK

GREECE

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Greece. Photo by Panos Kefalos via

The world seems a strange place this morning. Mostly thanks to the inescapable image of Donald Trump that's been all over our screens from the second we woke up – his face seemingly a shade more orange than usual.

This incredibly banal victory of a powerful, rich, aimless man charged with the illusion of superiority is a tragedy. Rhetoric has defeated logic, reason lost out to demagoguery. Now what?
– Dimitris Theodoropoulos, Managing Editor VICE Greece

NETHERLANDS

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Netherlands. Photo via

I'm not entirely sure what's going on in this picture I chose to represent the state of the world now that Donald Trump is elected president. But frankly, I don't want to know. Much like how I don't really want to know what's happening in the world anymore.

Donald Trump was democratically elected as president of the United States, and Muse have threatened to make a hip-hop album. That's quite enough for me for now.
– Ewout Lowie, Editor VICE Netherlands

AUSTRALIA

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Australia. Image via

I don't know what to say. This is bleak and unexpected. I keep trying to think of some other clown president of the past, to figure out if this is normal. Reagan is the obvious one, Bush also has some crossover. But neither talked about nuclear weapons like Trump. Not even in the late 1950s – when the US military was using nukes to dig holes and considered blowing up the moon – were presidents referring to arms with such cavalier disconnect.

And that's the sticking point. A bad leader can sink an economy and trash social order, but a special kind of bad leader can start a war.
– Julian Morgans, VICE Australia

POLAND

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Poland. Photo by Mikołaj Maluchnik

According to the Centre for Public Opinion (CBOS), 74 percent of Poles thought this US presidential election were "quite important" or "very important", making it basically the first election that Polish people cared about (the turnout at our own election is about half of that percentage). Only 6 percent thought it would be better for Poland if Trump won, with 57 percent rooting for Clinton.

Given that we don't know how eager Trump is to push that big red button, it could be wise to ask our parents for advice on how to deal with radioactive clouds. For now though, we'll comfort ourself by living life as usual: eat sausage, drink vodka and nostalgically listen to Disco Polo songs about freedom.

ITALY

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE Italy. Photo by Flickr user Jeremy via

This wasn't supposed to happen. It's not just me thinking that – I don't really believe Trump himself wanted this to happen. I can't imagine he ever meant for us to take him seriously, because his campaign seemed like just one big cry for help.

What is he supposed to do now? Actually build a wall with the Mexican border? Defeat Isis, ban Muslims from the United States, put Hillary Clinton in jail – all without any sort of actual plan? This really wasn't supposed to happen.
– Flavia Guidi, Junior Editor VICE Italy

FRANCE

The state of the world now that Trump has been elected POTUS, according to VICE France. Photo by Billie Grace Ward via

To be honest, I feel that Donald Trump being elected the next president of the United States is less of a surprise than it should have been. The fact that he was a candidate in the first place was a fair warning that America has lost its mind.

However, I can imagine that this election won't change much in the end. Most of Trump's promises are too grotesque to actually be realised. But it will likely inspire more pompous, sexist douchebags around the world to run for president – and probably win.
– Julie Le Baron, Editor, VICE France

More on VICE:

Everyone Was Wrong

Americans Stocked up on Assault Rifles Before Election Day

I Lived on Trump Products for a Week to See if It Would Make Me Great Again

All photos by Jason Bergman

As Tuesday night became Wednesday morning, as it became increasingly clear that the pre-election predictions were all wrong, as the world began to wake up to the three little words "President Donald Trump," no one was more shocked than the people in the Javits Center.

They had gathered for what was supposed to be Hillary Clinton's victory party, a symbolic breaking of a glass ceiling in US politics. Instead, it was everything else that broke—poll projections, hearts, the overwhelmed servers running Canada's immigration site.

There will be a lot written about this election, the greatest upset in modern US political history. But what lingers on Wednesday, in New York and many other places, is the sense of confusion and devastation captured by photographer Jason Bergman at Javits as a coronation turned into something closer to a wake.

Here's what Ginny Robinson, a 76-year-old from San Diego, had to say:

"I tell you something: Hillary will always be a believer in the good going forward. We're going to still have her faithfulness and her confidence for the future.

"It's like being in New Orleans and going down into the minor... we wanted some success tonight, but we're going to rise it into the major and sing a good song tonight."

See more photos from Javits below:

At least he used Vaseline. Photo via Wikimedia

Truly nothing gold can stay, not even in one's ass.

An Ottawa judge found Royal Canadian Mint employee Leston Lawrence guilty on Wednesday of theft and money laundering after it was discovered he was using the ol' gold-up-the-ass trick to smuggle $138,000 worth of gold nuggets out of the facility, the CBC reported.

The incident triggered an internal examination (editor's note: lol) of the Mint's security measures, or lack thereof, and it's exercises that ensure nothing slips through the back.

The jig was up when a teller at the Ottawa Gold Buyers noticed Lawrence had deposited several cheques in the $6,800 range between November 2014 and March 2015. In all, 18 nuggets were recovered, which, together with the cheques, totalled about $179,000 in stolen funds.

It was reported by investigators that Lawrence had a container of Vaseline in his locker—apparently not unusual for Royal Canadian Mint employees—and often set off the metal detectors stationed at the exits of the facility. It was only when he attempted to wire money to his family in Jamaica that he began to draw suspicion.

The Mint reported that it has since upgraded its security measures, including high definition cameras, improved tracking of precious metals, and "trend analysis technology," none of which stands a chance against the human tendency hide stuff in our asses.

Follow Lisa Power on Twitter.

A bar in Odessa, Ukraine (Photos by Sónia Almeida)

As war tears up eastern Ukraine, the country's "marriage agencies" continue to attract hordes of western men seeking love abroad.

Known as a city of contrasts, where Lamborghinis park beside Ladas, Odessa – far away from the fighting in the Donbass region – is a mecca for dodgy dealings, and marriage is one of them.

Old men hold hands with beautiful young women, who look awkwardly away as the men slobber on their cheeks while drinking pints of local beer. Despite reports of a lag in Ukrainian sex tourism during the war, the country's "marriage agencies" are unmissable in the Black Sea city, and those looking for love seem unswayed by the violence raging next door.

In one of Odessa's trendy bars I meet Ana and her husband Nikita, who are acting as translators for Quan and his prospective wife Tanya. Originally from Chile, Quan tells me he lives in New Jersey and wants to marry a Ukrainian woman because "she'll be poor and easier to manage".

Shockingly, the Chilean charmer fails to impress the markedly younger Tanya, who leaves in a taxi after spending the evening staring at the floor. The same scenario is played out all over the city, with older men salivating over young women. The people really winning are agents like Ana and Nikita, who have wrangled a corner of the country's marriage agency market.

The average Ukrainian marriage agency will charge $30 (£25) to send a "small but beautiful" cake to a lady. They'll also send her "15 beautiful roses for $100 ", which is a pretty decent mark up when you think the same cake costs $5 (£4) and the roses $30. You can also get a "custom photo shoot of your lady" in a location of your choice (and, creepily, wearing the outfit of your choice) for about $200.

The marriage agency business is big money in a country where the average salary plummeted to less than $250 during the war, and unsurprisingly can leave men feeling exploited. Translators, agents and "potential brides" run scams throughout the city, emptying men's wallets as they go.

Over in Mick O'Neill's Irish bar – home to Odessa's expats – I meet 52-year-old George Perry, a dentist from New York who just got engaged to his third Ukrainian wife. The psytrance fanatic brought me over a slice of his homemade pumpkin pie before filling me in on his complicated love life.

George came to Ukraine over a decade ago and married his first wife, Irina. They stayed together for eight years. Irina, he says, was a translator for a marriage agency that he claimed was a "special kind of bullshit" back in those days. Despite that, George and his translator bride-to-be hit it off and decided to date.

"Our first day was straight to the point, no bullshit. We talked about plastic surgery, where we would live, kids all that stuff," he says. "At one point she asked me, 'Will you allow me to come back to Ukraine to visit my family?' I told her she'd have her own card to book the flights."

After breaking up with his "best friend" Irina, George travelled the world looking for a new wife in Thailand, Kazakhstan, Japan and India. When that didn't work out he went back to Ukraine, where he got engaged to "Yulia".

"I decided to stay on in Ukraine, and Yulia travelled to the US before me," says George. "Guess who met her at the airport? My first wife, Irina. You get how this works now?"

After a falling out between the two women, Yulia left for another state to stay with friends. George's latest wife, also called Irina, is currently about to travel to the States for the first time.

"I won't have to change the name on the credit card," he jokes.

An advert for a strip show

George's situation seems to be relatively common in Odessa, and I as I spot more couples I'm reminded of Quan's assertion that he needs to have a Ukrainian wife as "My first wife is Ukrainian and I need someone who can understand that fuckin' language to talk to the kids."

I ask FEMEN leader Inna Shevchenko, who was kicked out of Ukraine for cutting down a Christian cross, what she thinks of women from her home country marrying old westerners. For Shevchenko, women in Ukraine are the ultimate victims.

"The reason women make this 'agreement with a devil' is purely economic," she says. "It's difficult for women in Ukraine to be economically independent, even though they are educated and skilled. The war is making their situation even worse. Our currency is extremely weak we now have security risks that make life for women there the worst it's been in decades. Young women see, in the foreign men, a chance for a better life, a possibility to leave and escape from life-long struggle that their mothers and other Ukrainian women experience. Who should we judge here? Definitely not the women."

The US embassy, on the other hand, seems happy to judge the women in their efforts to protect their vulnerable citizens for being exploited. A list of warnings they have issued to Americans visiting the country to meet prospective wives include, but aren't limited to:

- You only know your friend or fiancé online and may never have met in person.

- Photographs of the scammer show a very attractive person, and appear to have been taken at a professional modelling agency or photo studio.

- The scammer's luck is incredibly bad – he or she is in a car crash, or arrested, or mugged, or beaten, or hospitalised.

- You have sent money for visas or plane tickets, but they can't seem to make it to their destinations, citing detention by immigration officials, or other unexpected reasons that prevent them from travelling.

The embassy also warns: "Even if the woman you have become acquainted with does exist and is honestly trying to visit you in the United States, it is unlikely that she will be issued a visa."

So it seems that while Ukraine's marriage services can be a scam for Westerners, it's often the women who get a really shitty deal.

@normcos

More from VICE:

Why I Pretended to Be a Ukrainian Sex Tourist

The World's Most Famous Sex Tourist Is Fighting to Free Himself from Costa Rican Prison

The Cambodian Organisation that Stalks Western Child Molesters

Photo via Flickr user Dank Depot

On Tuesday night, as the American electorate collectively decided that Donald Trump will be the next president, California, Nevada, and Massachusetts voted to legalize recreational marijuana, bringing the total number of states with legal weed up to seven.

The New York Times reports that both Arizona and Maine had marijuana reform on their ballots as well. Arizona voted firmly against the bill, and Maine's decision is still too close to call, though it's leaning toward legalization at press time.

"I think of this victory in California as a major victory," Lauren Mendelsohn of Students for Sensible Drug Policy told the Times. "It shows the whole country that prohibition is not the answer to the marijuana question."

Along with the recreational marijuana decisions, Florida, North Dakota, and Arkansas voted to legalize weed for medical uses, and Montana alleviated some of its existing medical pot restrictions, according to the Washington Post.

Watch: A Tale of Two Dealers: Washington, DC