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I Tried to Find an American Husband on Maple Match

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In the wake of the nightmare-turned-reality that is a Donald Trump presidency, some Americans looking to flee the country have turned to Maple Match, an app that connects them with Canadians for strictly romantic purposes and definitely not visa purposes.
Since the election results, the app has tripled its user sign-ups, many of them claiming they are seriously considering moving north.

I needed to know how serious they were so I gave the app a shot to see if dudes were really thinking about leaving their motherland.

The first guy I talked to on Maple Match, Eric, jokingly asked if I was interested in a sham wedding while foolishly neglecting to make an offer.



Another guy, Kyle, discussed the election and some of his anxieties surrounding Trump's presidency. He said he was concerned that Trump would repeal the Affordable Care Act and overturn the decision to legalize same sex marriage, both legit concerns.

Trying to understand how it had gotten to this point, I asked Kyle what he thought had happened that would allow someone like Trump to become president. "There's a large group of people who are sick of the party politics and sick of politicians," he said. "They feel like Washington doesn't care about them and they're willing to vote for anyone who promises to shake things up."

A guy named Frank said that he had been bummed all day over the results. He said that he was honestly afraid for the next few weeks. Fights had broken out in the parking lot of his college because someone wearing a Trump hat and a shirt that said "Hillary for prison" started arguing with someone else.

By the second day and third day, many of my matches compared the feeling to recovering from a terrible hangover. Others were more optimistic; one noted that he had been planning to move to Toronto anyway, and Frank said he'd been to B.C. for a wedding. Kyle said he was interested in moving for adventure. He'd been to Quebec City once and thought it was nice. It is.



Trying to maximize my matches, I tweaked my bio and tried a couple of different angles to see if if could get more responses. First I attempted to turn the tables by claiming that I was looking to move to the States, which wasn't entirely untrue; I would like to live in California one day. Most of my matches were immediately turned off and stopped responding. Although one genius did suggest we could trade passports.

A lot of my American matches held romantic notions of Canada as a haven for progressives, offering free health care, more job opportunities, and "sustainable living" (whatever that means). There was a shared notion of Canada being 'super chill,' modern, and, of course, friendly. When I tried to explain that we have own own issues that need addressing to dispel some of the stereotypes, once again I was promptly ignored.



Finally, as much as it pains me to admit, I eventually posed as a Trump supporter, and I was either met with hostility or silence. When I asked Cody, whose profile description said he's in a "power pop band," if he could help me move to the US, he charmingly responded with, "I mean I could, but I'm trying to move to Canada to spread my US HIV to as many Canadians as possible."



While I didn't expect much from the app to begin with, it was even more disappointing than I had imagined. Not only did it constantly crash and had difficulty loading messages, but it was boring. Unlike Tinder, there was the geographical factor that hindered the potential for a genuine connection, both emotional and physical; an overambitious task for any app. Tinder is always knocked for being built on instant gratification, but compared to the slow burn model of Maple Match, I began to appreciate its directness and immediacy.

It became obvious that this was not about forming real connections (not that I expected it to be), but it was about indulging in a fantasy. The romanticized descriptions of Canada and Canadians were a giveaway; it's mostly perceived as a wide expanse of unexplored wilderness, filled with women eager host a nobel American man fleeing the burning ruins of his homeland. The reality was that unless they had been considering it before the election, most of these dudes weren't going to leave their house on the hill.

Overall, it seemed many people using Maple Match were either experiencing post-election anxiety that, after a week, had mostly subsided. Others had already been considering moving before the election and were not interested in hearing anything that might tarnish their idealized view of Canada. Either way, it was clear that I wasn't the Canadian girl of their American dreams.

Follow Lisa Power on Twitter.


The Lonely Dudes Using Magick to Get Laid

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It wasn't until after she had eaten the Alfredo that her boyfriend told her that he'd put his semen in the sauce.

But it wasn't until later, when she was cleaning that same boyfriend's altar to a Voodoo love goddess, she found something that finally made her think twice about her man.

"One day I went to dust up there and found a ball of my own hair," she wrote in a post on Reddit. "When I confronted him he told me it was all the hair he had found of mine in his apartment after we started seeing each other but before I moved in. As soon as I saw it something clicked in me."

She left the guy shortly after that and explained that, by discovering the hair, she had broken the lust (or love) spell her boyfriend had put to keep her with him.

Her boyfriend was just doing what men have done for centuries—doing whatever the hell they can to get laid.

Over the years men have turned to advisors and to shitty pick-up artist books, while most turn to wingmen, and a special few turn to magick.

Now, this isn't the type of magic outlined by pick-up artists or pulling a rabbit out of a hat so you can get into the pants of your hot neighbour. This is "magick," real men casting spells thinking that it will, honest-to-god, get them laid.

In case you were wondering, the spelling of magick with the "k" comes from occult OG Aleister Crowley and it's used to differentiate between stage magic and occult magick.

"Seduction is, of course, one of the main reasons people come to Magic, and from the days of the PGM to modernity there have been more techniques developed for that purpose than any other, except maybe for attaining prosperity," magician and author Frater MC told VICE.

"People who come to Magick do so often out of desperation, necessity or great desire. They haven't been able to achieve their goals by any logical means so they become more and more willing to try something outside the box in hopes that it might work."

Frater MC is co-authoring a book focused on magickal seduction right now but says his certainly wouldn't be the first. Books, especially E-books, on the subject are littered all over Amazon and people's personal websites.

"Whatever your gender or sexual orientation, magickal seduction is a powerful way to bring pleasure into your life," writes Damon Brand in his book Magickal Seduction—which seems to be The Game for modern-day wizards.

"I have used seduction magick for fun nights of one-off sex with old friends and people I just met. I've used it to get girlfriends and, eventually, my life partner."

There are books and websites aplenty instructing an aspiring wizard how to get into the pants of the lady, or man, of his, or her, choosing. Hell, some instructional YouTube videos have even popped up.

This type of magick is so popular—and believed in so strongly—that there are even magicians who oppose it as they believe it is tantamount to sexually assaulting a person.

So, now that we know what to look for, let's take a look at some of these spells why don't we?

Spoiler alert: they almost all involve masturbation.

Here's some reading music.

For those out there for a quick lay, the most routine spells found online involve sigil (symbols that represent magickal entities) magick. Alan Chapman in his book "Advanced Magick for Beginners" outlines how best to pull off sigil magick:

Step 1: Write down a desire
Step 2: Create a sigil by omitting repeated letters, and then arranging the remainder into a arbitrary, abstract glyph
Step 3: Masturbate
Step 4: Forget about it
Step 5: Record the result in your diary

Chapman says that it is expected for the sigil to take effect in 24 hours, so more than enough time for a young warlock to get his stamina back after jerking the magic gerkin.

One of the more interesting ones involves obtaining a goat head "with the skin still attached," pinning the name of your desired to the top of the head with a knife and chanting some spooky (latin-esque) words. Then you bury the head and paper in a graveyard making sure to "lick the soil with your LEFT FOOT where the goat is buried seven times imagining the intended leaving everything for you and coming to you."

This one, needless to say, is a little more extreme than the rest.

As for Brand, he offers a foolproof way to get yourself that honey of your dreams but he warns it "is the most powerful incantation in the book."

More or less, the spell works by placing a heavy stone on a sigil, see above, in the middle of another "magickal circle," then you light the candles and start chanting in Latin while imagining the sun. After a round of chanting you should begin to start imagining your target and, of course, begin masturbating—jerking it isn't necessary but it is recommended.

Once your "lust is strong" you call forward the spirits with Latin-esque language and, honestly, it just keeps going on like this until you climax. Brand recommends wiping your splooge on the piece of paper but "not too much, because you will be doing this for five nights."

Weird, right?

The amount of lust spells are almost never ending as plugged in wizard and witches meet on magick forums and share spells like recipes.

The God-King, a frequent poster on Wizard Forums—one of the biggest real-life magick forums on the web—has said that he has used Frater MC's book Abrasax to both bed women and take people out. He said he's reigned in his wicked witchy ways and hasn't magickally gotten in someone's pants "since college."

He explained to VICE what it's like to magickally seduce someone.

"The results don't usually appear as "magickal" unless you know what to look for. Magick tends to shroud itself in coincidence. In most cases, if your target is not present then they may text or call you seemingly out of the blue, flirting and wanting to see you. If they are present you may notice a sudden mood change..."

"They will appear to be more open with you, a reduction in inhibition if you will. In writing it sounds miraculous, but in reality it would appear as if she's just really horny."

The ethics of magickal pick-ups

Frater MC says he follows a strict ethical code when it comes to seducing a person through magick and many other serious magicians do the same. You can hire MC for his services and he says while he has got his client's laid he draws the line at helping to seduce a particular people.

"For example, if you came to me with a crush on a friend who sees you only in that capacity, or a stranger who you've seen but not met, sure I can help with that," he said. "But if you tell me you've been trying to seduce this girl next door for a year and she rebukes you every time, I'm not touching that—I'm not going to subvert her will."

"People ask me to do that and much worse, but I reject them out of hand."

Deep in the magick forums exists a faction of people who believe magickal seduction is akin to sexual assault and many a heated discussions are held in regards to the ethics of magickal seduction.

"If everyone brought morals into magick a good 80% of the spells being performed wouldn't be done. Nature is both kind and cruel, well.....so should our magick," The God King wrote in response to questions about the ethics.

The forum then descended into a flame war over whose magick could beat up who.

For those seeking a magician's touch, Frater MC warns that in the community there exists a massive amounts of charlatans out solely to take people's money. These magicians say that you can attain anything after simply using their books.

MC calls bullshit on this. He says magick works by creating "opportunities and circumstances in which you can succeed." He laughed at the notion of horny wizards running around casting spells left, right and centre to get their freak on.

"Are there techniques that would allow you to do so? Sure, and when you set out on a path of magickal study that may be your goal, but of 100 who practice magick only a handful succeed." he said. "The universe makes it an extremely long, tedious and arduous process to attain the requisite level of skill as a way of weeding out those who are unfit or unstable.

"For those who are skilled enough and have developed the necessary abilities, it's really not worth all the effort of a ceremonial rite just to 'score a nice piece.'"

So, if you're trying to get laid with magick avoid the people who offer you the moon as they can't deliver and try not blow the powers of magickal seduction out of proportion. MC said that the spells most people do make the user more attractive rather than take over the targets mind.

More or less, don't get your hopes up.

"Seduction Magick is not going to get you in bed with Scarlett Johansson or make models come knocking on your door. Likewise, if you are a hermit in your house all the time who never goes out or who is afraid to talk to women when you do venture out, this isn't going to make swarms of women flock to you like lord of the flies."

"So, to any of your readers hoping to summon a demon, prick your finger, drip some blood, recite a spell and be in bed with the lingerie model next door later tonight, it's not going to happen."

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

An Oral History of 'Spaced'

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Some of the cast of 'Spaced', from left to right: Julia Deakin, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Katy Carmichael and Mark Heap (Photo: Sky, via)

Spaced was initially pitched as a cross between The Simpsons, The X-Files and a mid-90s American comedy-drama called Northern Exposure. It didn't turn out like that at all, obviously, but that's OK, because what emerged instead turned out to be completely unique and has gone on to become a British cult classic.

It was a show about a group of erratically employed young people living in north London, when that was a thing erratically employed young people could still afford to do. Originally broadcast in 1999 and running for two seasons, it was a mix of stark realism – capturing the characters' job struggles, casual drug use, clubbing, pubbing and PlayStation sessions – and post-modern surrealism, crammed with references and homages to icons of 80s and 90s pop culture.

Created and written by Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson) and Simon Pegg, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Nick Frost, Mark Heap, Julia Deakin and Katy Carmichael, it focused on Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Hynes) living in a flat together and pretending to be a couple to appease their upstairs landlady. Their neighbour is Brian, a pretentious yet vulnerable artist (Heap); Tim's best friend is Mike (Frost), a wannabe army man; and Jess' best friend is the fashion-obsessed and mildly vacuous Twist (Carmichael).

Fifteen years since series two was last on air, the cast recall where it all began.

From left to right: Julia Deakin, Jessica Hynes, Nick Frost, Mark Heap, Simon Pegg, Katy Carmichael

BEGINNINGS

Simon Pegg (Tim): Jess and I were singled out by a producer for a show we had worked on called Asylum. They said to us, 'If you can think of a format we'd like to make a vehicle for you.' Jess and I were a bit wet behind the ears, so we boldly said, 'Oh yeah, we'll do it, but you've got to let us write it' – like we had any leverage at all. But they fell for it.

Katy Carmichael (Twist): I went to uni with Simon. Jess was a mate at the time, and my stand-up comedy partner. In meeting Simon it was as if she'd found her long-lost comedy other half. They have the same comedy DNA. They both just got each other, and so the writing partnership for Spaced was born.

Jessica Hynes (Daisy): I was living in my boyfriend's squat at the time. Simon had a degree from Bristol University and could spell; I had an electric typewriter and some fucking Tipp-Ex. I've still got the very first thing that was ever put to paper for Spaced, which was a Marsha monologue – that was the very beginning.

Simon Pegg: I was round at Jess' house writing, and Edgar came round after he'd read a draft of the first episode. He had this book of storyboards, and we looked them and thought, 'Holy shit.' He was speaking the visual language of what we were saying with text. It felt like such an incredible fit.

Edgar Wright (Director): What spoke to me about the scripts was how spot on it was about being 20-something in London and the huge gulf between the ambition of what you want to do and the reality of doing it and the procrastination and the laziness and the idea of having big ideas, but not having the drive to make them happen. That all felt very real.

ART IMITATING LIFE

Jessica Hynes: My life up until the point of when I started writing it, at 24, that was Spaced: living in squats, taking drugs, trying to find work, being out of work, trying to convince a landlady to give you a tenancy.

Katy Carmichael: We were Generation X: the slackers, the disaffected, directionless, free and human. We were all in it together, and Spaced captures that time perfectly. There was something highly creative about all that lounging around and finding moments to connect and have crazy adventures.

Simon Pegg: When I was a jobbing stand-up earning £50 a gig, I was pretty much like Tim, hanging around in the daytime playing video games and smoking weed. That was my life. Spaced came from our own flat-share experiences, but also in the wake of Friends in the mid-90s there had been a few copycat shows in Britain that were supposedly about young lives, and we just didn't feel represented in those shows at all – they were all fairly attractive people hanging around in brightly-lit wine bars, talking about shagging. We felt a bit affronted by that and wanted to write a sitcom that spoke to us on a much more intimate level than anything we'd seen before. For a while, Nick, Michael Smiley and I all lived together in Kentish Town. Nick just lived in the spare room, which we called "the crab pit".

Nick Frost (Mike Watt): The crab pit was a promotion, too. I didn't have a room for a while, but then I was allowed to sleep in this freezing room full of stinking bags of shit that nobody wanted. There wasn't even a bed, just cushions wrapped in an old piss-soaked duvet, and then me on top of that, and then another piss-soaked duvet on top of me. I think what shames me now is that I brought girls back to that room. Those poor women. We had a great crew and we hung out loads together, listened to music, went clubbing, watched The Simpsons and smoked a ton of pot.

Edgar Wright: It was slightly less drugs and clubbing for me! I don't know if, at that point, I'd ever even smoked weed. I was living in a flat in Islington that was very similar, and definitely remember wasting too much time on the PlayStation. I was more of a getting-drunk-in-Camden-and-going-to-the-movies sort of person.

CHARACTERS

Nick Frost: Mike was an amalgam of two guys I worked with in a Mexican restaurant. One was a cook who was a giant, but also a big baby; he'd get pissed and, at 4AM, he'd call his mum and she'd come out and get him to take him home. He sadly also had a penchant for Nazi memorabilia and hard punk music. He wasn't a Nazi – he was a nice guy – but he just owned things like a fucking Hitler Youth dagger. The other guy would bullshit us about his time in the Territorial Army and all the weird shit he would do to people, and I never believed him for a second. About two years ago I picked up a newspaper and there's a picture of David Cameron in Helmand Province, and standing behind him is this guy, stood there with a M4 carbine and body armour on – so it turns out it wasn't bullshit at all; it was all true.

Julia Deakin (Marsha): They said Marsha had had a bit of a chequered past, and I was exactly the right age to be a bit of an ageing hippy, so had a lot to draw on from that side of things. I chose this weird voice based on my friend Danny, a bloke. There was no blueprint for Marsha – she didn't have to have to be that drunk, she didn't have to have that weird voice, she didn't have to look like she did; it was just something I wanted to run with

Katy Carmichael: Twist is loosely based on a girl at university who was obsessed with fashion and would surreptitiously label check your clothes to see what you were wearing, compare thigh sizes and make helpful comments about how you could improve how you looked. She was forever disappointed in the other students' sartorial efforts.

Jessica Hynes: Tyres was based on a guy I met in Bath when I was about 16 or 17. He was proud of being the first ecstasy casualty. He said something about the cartilage drying up in the base of his spine, and he used to do this thing where he would talk on a loop: he would tell the same story over and over again, and it would last about three hours. He was extraordinary, and Michael Smiley effortlessly channelled him.

Simon Pegg: Smiley is a brilliant actor, but we were all comics together back in those days and he had this really bizarre dynamic to him – he was a cycle courier and a raver, so we thought he should just be that on screen for Tyres. He wasn't allowed to do it in the end, but the character of Brian was actually originally written for Julian Barrett and based on his character Victor Munro from Asylum.

Jessica Hynes: When writing Daisy and Tim, part of my subversive motive was to try and create two protagonists who were on an even keel, who were different genders but not in any way lesser or more interesting or more dynamic or more funny than one another.

THE PRODUCTION

Edgar Wright: People had no expectations for it because they didn't know who we were. I think as soon as we started editing it together, I was very excited about it. It felt really different; it felt out there. I think it was such a small budget show that nobody ever really passed too much comment from the network. All I remember is getting notes about language – that we could only say "fuck" twice and we could not say the word "cunt", and that was it. In a weird way I prefer the restriction because it makes your "fucks" count if you only have two of them.

Simon Pegg: In the episode where we watch the three Star Wars films, we could use the ewok celebration music from the end of Return of the Jedi, but we weren't allowed to use the original, so we had to re-record it ourselves and sing it. So if you watch that episode and listen to that music, that's me, Jess and Edgar doing ewok singing.

Jessica Hynes: I helped work on the costumes and making stuff, and the set design – I remember saying to them, "No, Daisy has to have WD-40 on her dressing table," and, "Tim's room can't be neat and it's got to look quite shit."

Simon Pegg: It felt like we were making what we wanted to make, and it was a very happy set as a result – especially the first season. We weren't being interfered with; we were making the show we wanted to make and it made us laugh a lot. It felt like we were getting it right. We were of the mindset that we wanted the show to make one person's head explode rather than lots of people go, "Oh that's quite good." We just wanted the one person to be like, "Holy fuck, this is the best thing I've ever seen and it speaks to me on such a personal level." That was more important to us – to be niche and precise, rather than bland and mainstream. I remember filming the scene when I shot the zombie's head off with a shotgun and thinking, 'This is going to be on after Friends.'

DRUG USE

Simon Pegg: Whenever you used to see drug use on TV there had to be some sort of punitive measure taken, even if it was just weed. We all used to come back alive when we went out clubbing, and we'd talk very fondly about those nights for months afterwards. We didn't make a big deal about them smoking weed in the show; we just wanted to make it a regular part of their day. It was part of our daily life at that time, too. The clubbing episode, we never showed anyone popping a pill, it was just taken as read that they were all E-ing off their tits and having a wonderful time and they all came home alive and lived to tell the tale because the vast majority of people who would go out clubbing and take drugs at that time didn't die. One or two people did and it was tragic – and the media rode that into the ground – but there was also this other side of things, which is that drugs can actually be quite fun.

Katy Carmichael: The clubbing scene just replicated what we were all doing on a Saturday night back then, except there were cameras there, hence its authenticity. I wore that very same fairy outfit to many a nightclub and went around granting people wishes with that wand.

THE POLICE

Nick Frost: In one episode there was a flashback of Mike stripping an MP5 blind-folded, so the prop department thought it would be a good idea if they gave me one to take home and practice with. I did the first scene of the day and then went home at about 11AM. It was a really hot summer in Highgate. I opened the back doors and put on a tiny pair of house shorts and smoked a bong for like two hours and sat around watching telly, and then started playing with the gun and walking around with it, storming Simon's room with it and using rolled up socks as flash grenades. I then started having a go stripping it blindfolded and got pretty good at it. After about the fifth time of doing it I sensed there was a person in the room, and as I looked to the back door there were six armed police officers pointing their guns at me. I was actually very calm – which I thank the marijuana for – and I put my hands in the air and sat back in the sofa away from the gun. As soon as they saw me and my blood-shot eyes they just started screaming and stormed the flat. It was terrifying. My favourite bit of that story is that it took them about 45 minutes to work out my story was true, and then the mood became quite jovial when they realised they were just dealing with a fucking idiot. As they left the main officer tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Well done, mate – a lot of people piss themselves."

REFERENCES

Julia Deakin: I'm not a great film buff. A lot of the script, which was obviously references, didn't mean too much to me. Even when I was filming I would be asking, "Why am I saying this?" I didn't know what the fuck the twins in the cupboard were doing, and I still don't. But I trusted them – the writing was so good.

Simon Pegg: I'm always much more satisfied as a viewer if I'm given some work to do and have to draw connections myself, or require some background knowledge to understand something. That's the joy of post-modernism. Because Spaced was heavily referential it created a mission for the viewer to connect the dots, and you feel a sense of satisfaction when you get a reference when you haven't been told what that is. We never tried to rest everything on those moments, though; you could enjoy them if you got them, but if you didn't they could just be enjoyed as a part of the fabric of the show.

Jessica Hynes: We are total film nerds, but we cover very different areas. Simon is Mr Star Wars. I mean, I wouldn't even go there. You could ask him what the third fucking ewok from the left was called in some scene and he'd know – he'd know the name of their mother. Our areas of film do crossover, though, especially the big classic stuff like Spielberg and the great 80s films. It became a nerd-off, basically. Although, I have to say there was a time when I wanted to do this Goonies reference and he was like, "Hmmmm..." Big mistake Simon Pegg. Big mistake.

THE FUTURE OF SPACED

Julia Deakin: I'd do it all again tomorrow if they decided to bring it back. I've been acting 40 years and Spaced is easily in the top three jobs I've ever done.

Nick Frost: I think, for me, it's done. I just don't know how you'd do it; we're all so fucking old and decrepit now. Maybe I could get out of it by saying Mike made it to Afghanistan but he stepped on a mine out there or that he fell out the back of a plane.

Jessica Hynes: My door is always open. I mean, fucking hell, Jesus, who I am to say no? I don't want to make it awkward for them as they have really big careers and I'm noodling about doing my own thing, but I know Simon and I's paths will cross again – our bond is deep.

Simon Pegg: We always wanted to do three series; we just sort of missed the boat on it. We would have liked to have done three and everyone's character have a third part to their arc, and certainly have Tim and Daisy get together in the end and it lead up to this wonderfully exciting and satisfying romantic conclusion, and for everyone in the show to have their moment – but it just didn't happen. It's a source of frustration for me, looking back, but it's something I'm incredibly proud of and it makes me very happy to think we managed to pull off the three Cornetto movies , because I finally felt like I had finished something that I set out to do. The key factor is that we just don't live that life any more. The truth of Spaced was that it came from a very real place and from our hearts and where we were in life. I don't think anybody would be remotely interested in a sitcom about a relatively successful film actor living in rural Hertfordshire.

Edgar Wright: I don't know. I think, for me, it would be a no. I think with Spaced it would be a bit of a lose-lose; I don't know if people would ever be entirely happy. Maybe if Simon and Jessica came up with a really brilliant script, but I just feel because we're all different people now it would be hard. Would you want to see those characters older, or is the beauty of the show in that the last time we ever saw Tim and Daisy was sitting on that beanbag in front of the TV with Colin, and to leave them there in this beautiful time capsule of that era? I would tend to say don't risk it. It's a beautiful 14 episodes, and maybe we could have done more at the time, but I'm very proud of what we did and I don't really want to spoil it now.

Katy Carmichael: Maybe more time needs to pass before we get together again. Another 40 years, then an octogenarian Spaced Christmas special. I'd watch that. Twist with a Swarovski zimmer frame and a Prada colostomy bag, still hobbling around in platform heels but with varicose veins. Tim as a silver fox, perhaps. Daisy as a successful writer – her very own version of Barbara Cartland. Brian starts his own political party. Marsha still a landlady, but moved on from the vino to the gin. And Mike, a pipe and slippers pacifist in a nursing home.

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The Rush to Get an IUD in America Is Very Real

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A bronze cast of a Mirena IUD. Photo via Flickr user Sarah Mirk

When it became clear in the early morning hours of November 9 that Donald Trump was the president-elect, Google searches for the term "IUD" spiked to all-time highs. Related searches, like "IUD options" and "should I get an IUD," increased by 800 percent and 200 percent, respectively. On social media, urgings spread for anyone capable of getting pregnant to get a long-acting form of contraception—immediately.

IUDs and contraceptive implants, together known as LARC (long-acting reversible contraception), can last anywhere from three to 12 years, meaning they could outlast potential cuts to reproductive healthcare and abortion access under a Trump-Pence administration. They're expensive upfront—running anywhere from $500 to $1,000—but the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) contraceptive mandate requires that most health insurance plans cover them completely. Now, while the ACA still stands, is the perfect time to get one.

But that rush has put a strain on clinics that lack both the materials and healthcare providers to keep up with the demand.

In the aftermath of the election, Planned Parenthood has been inundated requests for IUDs. Its health centers have seen a 900 percent increase in online appointments made for birth control, specifically IUDs, from this time last month. Other reproductive health providers across the country have seen a similar uptick in interest.

"We definitely saw a quick increase in calls first thing in the morning after the election," said Dr. Anne Davis, consulting medical director of Physicians for Reproductive Health and a professor at Columbia University.

The interest is not entirely new: Use of LARCs, especially IUDs, has risen dramatically in the US over the last two decades. After a deeply flawed IUD called the Dalkon Shield caused extreme complications for hundreds of thousands of users in the 1970s, IUD use ceased almost entirely in the US. But safer and more effective IUDs, along with research disproving the misconception that IUDs were only appropriate for those who had already had children, led to a renaissance. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 11.6 percent of women currently using contraception in the US rely on a LARC, up from just 2.4 percent in 2002. A 2015 study estimated that in the absence of barriers, like cost and lack of properly trained providers, 25 to 29 percent of contraception users would choose a LARC.

Clinicians point out that the Affordable Care Act played a crucial role in the LARC's rise. "Five years ago before the ACA was fully implemented, there was hesitation to include long-acting methods in discussions with patients because a lot of the time they weren't covered," Davis told me. "The average young woman doesn't have $800 or $1,000 upfront to get her birth control. Now, usually they are covered, so the conversation has really been focused on what's right for the patient."

While the ACA expanded access to LARCs and other reproductive health services, aggressive state-level attacks on abortion providers simultaneously created new problems. More than 280 state-level abortion restrictions have been enacted since 2011, and at least 162 abortion clinics have closed in that time. In addition to providing abortions, these clinics also tend to be frontline providers of birth control—so when they go, so do the people who can insert IUDs.

Susan Rawlins, the director of education for the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health, has seen this firsthand. She treats patients at the Greater Texoma Health Clinic in Denison, Texas, a primary care practice that serves uninsured and underinsured patients, where she is one of only two practitioners trained to place IUDs and implants. There is no family planning clinic in the area, so the primary care clinic where Rawlins works is the only place to get a LARC aside from far more expensive private OB/GYN offices.

"In primary care settings there are often limited providers who have the knowledge and skills to place LARCs," Rawlins, who trains other health care practitioners in LARC placement, told me. "What concerns me is that we may not have enough skilled and capable providers to meet the need."

Dr. Leah Torres, an OB/GYN in Salt Lake City, Utah, echoed that sentiment. "My biggest concern is about those providers who don't normally provide LARC. Where will their patients go? Will those who have patients in need seek training, or start providing them despite personal beliefs that might conflict with that practice?" she told me.

In 2011, only 56 percent of gynecologists, family practitioners, and adolescent medicine specialists in private practice offered onsite IUD placement, and only 32 percent offered implants. Those numbers have likely increased at least somewhat since then, given urgings from several medical associations that LARCs be recommended as the most effective contraceptive method for teens and adults. But in many communities, already embattled reproductive health clinics are still the place to go if you need a LARC. In the event of changes to the ACA, those who lose coverage will likely fall back on these clinics as well.

Though Trump has eased off on his threat to repeal the ACA, he could still scrap the contraceptive mandate. The law relies on the Department of Health and Human Services to decide what counts as preventive care, so the Trump administration could potentially remove birth control from the list of preventive services, even without Congressional approval.

"Donald Trump hasn't held elected office before, so we don't know exactly what his presidency will look like. But we do know what a state under our governor, and now vice president-elect, Mike Pence looks like," Ali Slocum, communications director for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, told me. Pence's greatest hits as Indiana's governor include repeated attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and harsh abortion restrictions.

Nearly all of the providers I spoke with said that, on one hand, anything that gets more people to consider LARCs is a potential positive. But no birth control method is right for everyone, and no one should feel the need to make an important health decision solely based on fear.

"I can't blame people. We've seen attacks on access to contraception before due to dogma that has no basis in medical practice," said Torres. "But instead of making a rash decision about contraception, take ten minutes to contact your legislators and tell them that you do not want your health care compromised."

Follow Garnet Henderson on Twitter.

The Dark Web’s Largest Acid Dealer Is Running an Art Competition

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Illustrations of nominated members on The Majestic Marketplace. All images supplied

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia/New Zealand

It started with an encrypted email. "There's an interesting project we are working on," read the note from jesusofrave. "And your name has popped up."

When the dark web's biggest LSD dealer says they have an "interesting project," you can assume it will be actually, genuinely interesting, even if there's some trepidation about having your name attached to it.

I clicked on the .onion link included in the email, which took me to a post on The Majestic Garden. This is one of the more reputable drug markets on the dark web; a place which still upholds some lofty Aquarian/Libertarian values of the early Silk Road. And sure enough, an "interesting project" was selling it short.

The post for the competition

The post explained that jesusofrave is currently holding an art competition. All you have to do is nominate three people on the marketplace (vendors, moderators, market owners, helpful/outspoken community members) who deserve to have their likeness immortalised on sheets of blotter. Then, if members of "The Clergy" (jesusofrave's spokespeople) deem those nominated worthy of attention, you will win some acid (it's a little vague on how much).

Not a bad deal, but it's the arty types who really stand to cash in. Artists have been invited to draw one, some, or all of the characters nominated by the other members. Then, for every drawing chosen by The Clergy to be included on the final blotter, the artist will win 100 hits.

But if The Clergy chose you to be the "maestro artist"—that is, the person to bring all of the drawings together into one final collage to be distributed on future sheets, you'll receive enough acid to for you and everyone at Burning Man.

Avengers, founders of the The Majestic Garden

Specifically, the maestro artist will receive 10,000 hits (100ug per hit), which in a monetary sense is a decent prize. Even at the cheapest wholesale price, 10,000 blots will set you back $10,000. At Aussie full retail price, it's more like $200,000. But business for jesusofrave is obviously good and I guess they want to share the love. "We're of the opinion more LSD in the world is a good thing," jesusofrave explained.

That the world would be a better place with more people on acid is pretty much the driving philosophy behind The Majestic Garden (TMG). Established by the LSD Avengers (an independent acid testing and rating group, which had been around since the original Silk Road), there's no owner holding bitcoin in escrow and profiting from commissions—buyers and sellers make private arrangements with each other directly.

A very literal rendering of "Kittenhuffer"

Decentralised markets like TMG have developed to combat the prevalence of exit-scamming (closing up shop and nicking off with all the customers' bitcoin) by market operators. An individual seller can still disappear, but that only affects the people who have unfilled orders with them, not every buyer and seller using the site.

TMG has strict restrictions on what can be sold there; it is pretty much limited to acid, ecstasy, weed, and shrooms. The Avengers receive no payment other than voluntary donations (and probably enough free acid to trip into the next century).

My nomination

So there I was under my darknet market (DNM) username, OzFreelancer, nominated alongside my dark web sisters 3Jane and Cher. I'd like to think the nomination came as acknowledgement of my services through my journalism, but I suspect it was more because chicks are a rarity on the dark web and the nominator was hoping to see some boobs.

I decided I'd better play and suggested someone draw three dark web security legends: Guru, Pine, and Astor (RIP) who had all helped me and countless others with learning PGP encryption and other cyber safety measures in the early days of Silk Road.

I also nominated DoctorX, because any artwork depicting celebrities of the dark web would be incomplete without a man who has provided non-judgmental, sage, and sometimes life-saving medical advice to the dark web's drug-imbibing community for the past four years.

So far, the competition has caused considerable excitement and plenty of nominations, but only a few pieces of art. Maybe the prize is TOO big. Where I live in Australia, 1 gram, or 10,000 hits of LSD is considered a "commercial quantity" under the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act and carries a penalty of up to 20 years' prison. "I won it in a competition," might not cut it as an excuse should things go pear-shaped.

Mr Pickles, obviously

There's some interesting variety among the community members who have so far been nominated, but the artists have favoured a dealer named Mr Pickles. Not necessarily because he's their favourite vendor (though he's pretty popular) but because he's fun to draw. Kittenhuffer was another favourite for the same reason.

"Anyone interested in being the maestro artist to bring all the final characters together, feel free to send us samples of your work or a rough sketch of your idea for the final page with all the characters together" wrote the competition organiser. So far, only one person—Hambone505—is in the running for the major prize.

To other members considering nominating and drawing me, I suggested I'm fine with being depicted as spectacularly hot and well-endowed, while also the essence of intellectualism and humility, but they didn't seem to buy it.

More Mr Pickles

So why are the organisers running this thing? As jesusofrave explains, it's an incentive for artists to design something unique and beautiful, while honouring those who have contributed the most to the dark web community.

"Art (graffiti, artists, blotter, institute of illegal images) has long been a part of LSD culture," jesusofrave explained. "Circuits [I assume he's talking about Leary's 8-circuit model of consciousness ] within LSD tribes have developed their own folklores. The DNM are a digital family hive mind, so we wanted to capture some of that in a collaborative community fashion."

It's been a turbulent few years for markets on the dark web. There have been major arrests for some and bitcoin heists for others, netting thieves millions of dollars. But competitions and giveaways hark back to the original Great 420 Sale and Giveaway of Silk Road on April 20, 2012. I think there's some nostalgia at play here, as well as an attempt to rally the troops.

The competition is still going. Nobody has seen fit to depict me yet, but I live in hope, because being immortalised on an acid blotter going out to millions of trippers would be cool. Imagine going to a festival and wondering how many people there had licked your image?

So if you're sort of artistic, reading this, and feeling generous, feel free to throw me a bone. And just think of what you could do with all that acid.

Eileen Ormsby ( OzFreelancer) is a freelance writer, owner of allthingsvice.com, and author of "Silk Road: the shocking true story of the world's most notorious online market".

Follow Eileen on Twitter here.

Desus and Mero Talk About Dealing with Social Media Backlash

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VICELAND's Desus & Mero never shies away from tackling the real issues. And, as expected, when hosts Desus Nice and Kid Mero share their hot takes, haters take to social media to put the duo on blast. But instead of letting cyberbullies get them down, Desus and Mero put virtual threats in perspective—it's not like that random dude on Twitter spewing violent garbage is actually going to slip on his New Balance sneakers, drive over to the Bronx, and start shit in real life.

During Thursday's episode, the hosts sat down with writer Cord Jefferson to talk about these Twitter wars, Cuba, racism, and more. Check out their conversation above.

Be sure to catch new episodesof Desus & Meroweeknights at 11:30 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

Which Big Porn Trend Is Coming Next?

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A promotional image for Donald Tramp – The XXX Parody (Photo: woodrocket.com)

We like to think that our sexuality is innate; that our base desires are hardwired and our kinks and tastes unyielding to outside influence. Following that logic, we believe we watch the type of porn we do because it addresses our specific needs. We watch "chav porn" because we've always been hot for men in tracksuits, milf porn for a reason that definitely has nothing to do with our own mothers.

But when strange porn trends come and go, slipping up and down the league table of search terms, how far do outside sociopolitical forces affect what we want to see? Are porn trends more subject to the wider world than we think?

"Relationships between media consumption and wider social or cultural context are really complicated things," says John Mercer, a Gender and Sexuality Professor at Birmingham City University, who specialises in gay pornography. He says that on the most basic level, developments in technology have pushed specific trends of porn to the fore.

"There's an inevitability to the fact that the social media era, which is about people being exhibitionists presenting their lives to the world and sharing their intimacies, has produced phenomena like X Tube ," he says. "Really light and portable hardware has become available to people. Meanwhile, people are thinking so much more about how sexualised their bodies are." As Mercer points out, within the massive growth and popularity of amateur porn, the GoPro and similar technologies have pushed forward interest in Point Of View porn. "That's a piece of hardware that enables POV porn to be way more sophisticated and voyeuristic than gonzo porn – where someone has a handheld camera pretending to be the eyes of the person."

Similarly pharmacology has changed trends in gay porn. Up until eight to 10 years ago, there was mandatory condom use across gay porn. "There were niche producers who specialised in bareback porn and that was positioned as a rebellious, marginal, radical practice," Mercer says. "It was the equivalent of something like fisting or piss play now. It was presented as very out there activity too. With the advent of PrEP, increasingly condoms have been coming off – now bareback or raw sex has just become a repertoire of sexual practices in mainstream porn."

Technology and pharmaceutical innovation are very tangible changes that have influenced porn trends – but it can also be attached to events in mainstream culture too. Clarissa Smith is the Professor of Sexual Studies at the University of Sunderland and co-editor of Porn Studies, the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to exploring porn. "Porn follows trends and changing attitudes and ways of thinking about the world," she says. "Porn is in the business – just like any other media outlet – of maximising its reach at particular times. If there's someone who is making waves in mainstream culture, porn will find a lookalike or some aspect of that person and you'll get an element of that in a particular form of porn. There are ways in which porn is not separate from mainstream culture even if we pretend it is." Essentially: anything happening in the wider world reaches the porn world too. The industry doesn't exist in a little bubble.

Take an example from a few years back when "BBW" and the the celebration of "thick" African American women by Drake and Nicki Minaj became a cultural phenomenon – appropriated and adopted by white women around the world. It's no coincidence that Pornhub's 2015 statistics showed that the word "black" as a search term jumped 16 places to become the 10th most popular search worldwide. Similarly, "black teen" had 424 percent more searches in 2015 than the previous year, and "big ass white girl" rose 190 percent. In the US specifically, "black" jumped 9 places to become the 5th most searched term. This sits uncomfortably when you consider that race relations remain poor in much of the US – and the continued racial violence propagated by police.

"Porn pushes against a lot of our feelings around tolerance," says Smith. "It can be an irritant rather than a cosy reflection of culture. When you're talking about mainstream forms of television or film we look at the BBC perhaps as being tolerant – 'Oh, look how it reflects back to us how we've become such nice people and we don't go in for race hate'. Porn puts it upfront and central that actually, there are problems around our supposed tolerance of race or mixed race relationships."

Similarly, in the UK, PornHub's 2015 review uncovered that Brits are heavily into "chav" porn, at a time when the poorest in the country are being beaten down by austerity. "When David Cameron was talking about wanting to 'hug a hoodie', Anna Arrowsmith British made a film using that as a title, which played off that idea of sex with 'chavs'," remembers Smith. "That was a very direct response to something happening in wider culture."

On the day Trump officially became president, PornHub found that searches for "Donald Trump" increased 874 percent and. But the 15th November, Tiffany Trump had become a trending search on the site, up 9128 percent based on previous averages. "No doubt we will see some Trump based porn," says Smith. In fact, there's already some grim orange impersonators with big dicks and a lot of views out there but I don't want to tell her. "I think he's very ripe for some parody and also for some quite unpleasant types of porn that tap into his misogyny and his racism as a particular narrative trope."

The general air of desperation, angst and confusion felt both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of 2016 will no doubt affect porn habits in some way or another. Smith did an extensive study and found that people turn to porn in times of stress or anxiety. "Porn becomes a relief. Existential angst could be one reason people watch porn. There could be that with Trump. The world is so awful you might as well engage in something sexual. For others, feeling enraged about porn could make them turn away from porn altogether."

It'd be interesting to know whether periods of economic uncertainty and social upheaval change porn trends – or even the frequency with which porn is watched, but there has been very little in-depth research into our porn habits.

"We all like to think we know what people are doing with pornography but the fact is we don't. It's much more complex than we might want to allow," says Smith. Mercer agrees. "We know so little about why people watch what they do and what desire is, even. Porn is so much more of a rich cultural expression than people want to think of it as being." Until people see it as such, we'll never have a clear picture of why we wank to what we wank to.

@hannahrosewens

More on porn:

I Tried Out PornHub's New Virtual Reality Porn

Pornstars Talk About Losing Their Virginity

How Porn Consumers Gorged Themselves On Creampies

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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

Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images

US News

Trump Will Name Flynn as National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn, a controversial retired general and former military intelligence chief who has been openly critical of President Barack Obama and appeared at Donald Trump rallies, has been asked to serve as Trump's national security adviser. Flynn has faced criticism over his praise of some foreign governments, particularly Russia. He was in Moscow last year for a celebration of RT, a Russian government-funded network, alongside President Vladimir Putin, an appearance for which he was paid.—AP

Trump Also Expected to Nominate Jeff Sessions and Michael Pompeo to Cabinet
The president-elect is anticipated to formally nominated Jeff Sessions and Michael Pompeo to top posts. Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, is in line to become attorney general; he's been a longtime Trump supporter who shares Trump's hardline views on illegal immigration and was widely seen as a shoo-in for a cabinet position. In the 80s, he was nominated for a judgeship by Ronald Reagan but failed to be confirmed over accusations of racism. Pompeo, a Republican congressman from Kansas, is less controversial. –Politico

Fake News Writer Claims He Helped Trump Win
The author of hundreds of fake news articles has claimed he is partly responsible for making Donald Trump the next president. "Honestly, people are definitely dumber," said Paul Horner, who had stories that made it to Google News and were reposted by members of Trump's family. "Nobody fact checks anything anymore."—The Washington Post

White Democrat No-Shows to Blame for Clinton Loss
Analysis of the swing states that decided the election revealed a significant drop in white Democrats turning out to vote. In Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa, nine overwhelmingly white counties saw turnout decline by at least 5 percent, and saw a drop in votes for Democrats while Republican vote totals remained relatively unchanged.—VICE News

Video Shows Police Officer Punching Woman in the Face
A video posted on Facebook clearly shows an Arizona police officer punching a woman in the face as he and another male officer attempt to arrest her. The Flagstaff Police Department said Officer Jeff Bonar had been identified and placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated.—ABC News

International News

Car Bomb at Iraqi Wedding Kills 40
A suicide car bomb attack at a police officer's wedding in Iraq has killed at least 40 people and left at least 60 others wounded. No group has yet claimed responsibility the attack in Amiriyat al Fallujah, south of Fallujah, but authorities believe ISIS is behind it. The area has a history of opposing the extremist group.—Al Jazeera

Australian Man Sets Himself on Fire in Bank
A man used a flammable liquid to start a fire inside a bank in Melbourne, injuring at least 26 people, six of whom are in critical condition—including the man himself. After a civilian put the flames out with a fire extinguisher, the 21-year-old suspect was taken into police custody while receiving treatment.—BBC News

Former Dictator Gets Hero's Burial in Philippines
The former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos has been buried with military honors in the country's Cemetery of Heroes in Manila, despite public protests in the capital and opposition from human rights groups. President Rodrigo Duterte wanted Marcos, who ruled for 20 years and died in 1989, to receive a hero's burial. The Marcos regime was notoriously corrupt and jailed and killed many of its opponents.—Reuters

German Automaker Volkswagen to Cut 30,000 Jobs
German car giant Volkswagen has announced it will axe 30,000 jobs around the world, including 23,000 jobs in Germany. The company says this move will increase profits by $3.9 billion a year starting in 2020. The company is still reeling from the scandal surrounding its cheating on emission tests.—CNN

Everything Else

Bobbi Kristina Brown's Partner Ordered to Pay $36 Million
An Atlanta judge has found Bobbi Kristina Brown's partner, Nick Gordon, "legally responsible" for her death in 2015. He has been ordered to pay Brown's family $36 million in civil damages. —USA Today

US Astronaut Becomes Oldest Woman in Space
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 56, has become the oldest woman in space after blasting off from Kazakhstan for her third mission on International Space Station (ISS). Whitson will turn 57 during her six-month mission. —CBS News

Phife Dawg Appears as Animation in A Tribe Called Quest Video
A Tribute Called Quest's new video for "We the People" features deceased member Phife Dawg in animated form. He appears on a building as graffiti artwork and raps: "Dreaming of a world that's equal for women with no division."—Rolling Stone

Canadian Army Recruitment Website Hacked
The Canadian Force's recruitment site was hacked on Thursday and briefly redirected visitors to the Chinese government's official website. A spokesperson said the army would not speculate "on the point of origin of the redirection."—VICE

Former Facebook Editor Says Fake News Could Be Fixed
A former Facebook news curator says the company could have easily have fixed its fake news problem if it hadn't let him and his colleagues go. Adam Schrader said Facebook's "journalistic integrity" vanished when it got rid of its trending news team, which was responsible for ensuring that stories in the trending section weren't made up.—VICE News

Apple Admits Its 'Touch Disease' Problem
Apple has admitted that some iPhone 6 Pluses have a "touch disease" problem. The company announced that it would be selling $149 "repair program" for iPhone 6 Pluses that have lost touchscreen functionality because of an engineering flaw.—Motherboard


Why Spy on Reporters When You Can Spy on CEOs?

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Photo via Flickr user Jonathan McIntosh

Canadians have been shocked to learn that police in this country have for the second time this year admitted to spying on reporters. What makes the recent disclosures most ironic is not that police officers were the ultimate targets, or that spying was approved in the absence of an actual judge—but that much of the meta-data sought by Montreal police may have already existed on a government server, and could have been obtained without a warrant, thanks to the enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Act (known as "Bill C-51").

In fact, in his latest annual report to Parliament, Canada's Privacy Commissioner identified 58 such instances where Canadians' information was collected and shared without prior judicial approval in the first six months of this year alone.

Whether it's the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) illegally collecting and sharing Canadians' metadata with foreign intelligence partners, the RCMP, Vancouver, and Toronto Police departments each individually mopping up entire city blocks full of cell phone information with Stingray surveillance devices, or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) building a secret database and intentionally concealing its existence from Federal Court Judges, Bill C-51 has emboldened all manner of police and security services to push the envelope and end-run Canada's Privacy Act.

In passing Bill C-51, the Harper Government (supported by Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party), had a chance to refine an outdated information sharing regime. But instead of incorporating the recommendations of both the Air India Inquiry, and the Arar Commission, they chose to pave over old problems with new, hastily crafted legislation, animated to the all too common Conservative soundtrack of "you're either with us or with the terrorists." The net result is that we're left with a confusing mash-up of conflicting, complex, and probably unconstitutional laws.

This state of uncertainty will surely lead to more police forces playing fast and loose with our privacy rights, and most importantly for my 50,000+ friends who work in the police and security services of this country... this uncertainty is precisely how you are about to get filthy rich!

For it would seem there has never been a better time, or in fact an easier time, to go rogue. Never has so much personal information, communications data, and metadata been so readily accessible, both formally and informally, with such little oversight.

Edward Snowden has famously claimed that intercepting nude and racy photos, and sharing them amongst co-workers was "seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions." If you possess such powers in this country, if you have access to a stingray device (and can use it with no paper trail), if you can intercept emails without oversight, then it's not difficult imagining someone stepping away from the nude photos, and following these simple, totally-not-serious-you-understand-satire-right steps to achieve financial independence.

1. Create a Business Plan

The mission is to identify upcoming corporate announcements that will impact a public company's stock price. Armed with this information, you'll set up highly leveraged trades and profit from the ensuing volatility. This is called 'insider-trading' and technically it's illegal—but then again so is spying on reporters withou ta warrant, building a secret spy database, and intentionally infecting 50,000 computers with malware—but who's keeping score?

2. Identify Your Targets

The TSX 60 account for nearly half the daily equity trades in Canada. Have a look through each company's SEDAR listing and make note of their CEO and CFO. In the same vein, the top 20 law firms in Toronto will each have a dedicated senior partner in charge of the firm's corporate finance practice. Knowing who these 140 captains of industry are emailing, calling, or visiting will be your path to profitability. Fortunately, most lawyers don't encrypt their emails,incorrectly assuming that "legal privilege" shields them from your tools. Insert lawyer joke here.

3. Pick Your Moments

Each company's investor relations page lists the date of future financial releases. Diarize to increase your monitoring of individual CEO/CFO pairs five days prior to every such release. In contrast, it's a good idea to monitor the M&A lawyers on a weekly basis—for if there's any multi-billion dollar mergers, acquisitions, sales, or financings happening in Toronto, one of these 20 lawyers is bound to be involved.

4. Optimize Your Trades

Once your "research" has uncovered which stock is going to move, you can optimize your returns by purchasing a series of options or warrants (instead of the actual stock). In this manner you can make big bets even with little capital, simply because of your secret weapon—the ability to see good (and bad) news ahead of the rest of the market.

5. Optimize for Taxes

Since you're going to be so successful, plan your trades in a tax efficient manner. Make your biggest bets through your Tax Free Savings Account, for as the name implies, your portfolio will grow tax free. Each year, max out your RRSP as the growth is tax deferred. I'm sure you'll agree that a dollar left in your pocket is more desirable than a dollar left to Justin Trudeau. He may do all kinds of silly things with that money, like fund a Bill C-51 consultation that doesn't evaluate the information sharing provisions of the law.

6. Example Dry Run

Let's put this all together with a real world example for my very satirical guide. In May, BCE (Bell Canada) purchased MTS (Manitoba Telecom Systems). Early access to CEO George Cope's meta-data could have shown his cell phone IMSI captured in the Winnipeg Airport times in the dead of winter, and multiple conference calls with the CEO of MTS and George's favorite M&A lawyer. Not convinced, you could have searched his email meta-data, which by definition includes the content of subject lines. In so doing, you may even find a smoking gun: "MTS Buyout—let's do it guys, daddy needs a new pair of shoes!".

From the time the deal was announced, to the time it gained regulatory approval, BCE's TSX listed stock price increased $8/share. You could have purchased a series of near-the-money options for sub $1. Doing so would have yielded investment returns of 700+ percent in a mere 45 days, making you the oracle of Ottawa.

For the avoidance of doubt and those who don't understand satire, the above investment strategy is highly illegal and obviously my goal is not to coach any civil servants into a life of white collar crime. But this mental exercise does demonstrate how little information is needed to gain an unfair advantage in the stock market. And more importantly how crucial it is for Canadian businesses to speak out about the threats posed to our capital markets by Bill C-51.

After all, why would anyone spy on reporters, when CEOs make such juicier targets?

Frederick Ghahramani is a Canadian technology entrepreneur and privacy advocate.

'You're the Worst' Depicts How Depression Affects Relationships

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There are few shows on television that make me laugh as hard as You're the Worst; there is no other show currently airing that makes me cry as hard as You're the Worst. It's a dark sitcom with both comedic and bleak intentions. Its second season featured perhaps television's ultimate depiction of the dark holes people crawl into during depressive episodes—and the ripple effect this has on family, friends, and partners. The third mostly kept that up but while also throwing more and more obstacles at the six core characters. Most worked, even if others didn't.

If there is one big complaint about season three, it's that it sometimes felt like too much. A small sampling of major events within just 12 episodes: Gretchen begins therapy, Edgar goes off his cocktail of medications and flirts with suicide, Lindsay stabs her husband and later gets an abortion without consulting him, Jimmy gets a second book deal and then Jimmy's father dies, and so on. The quality wavered from episode to episode, often feeling a bit disjointed as it experimented with new formats (episodes that were almost entirely devoid of the main duo, an episode—featuring ambitious long takes—that focuses on a side character's surprise wedding), but at the very least, You're the Worst never lost its main focus: depicting the rough, dirty, and devastating aspects of being in love.

The season concluded on Wednesday night with back-to-back episodes. The penultimate, "You Knew It Was a Snake" was the best of the two but also the toughest to watch. It revolved around daylong fights between the three couples, whose relationships are all in different stages. Dorothy and Edgar, the newest couple, have spent the last few episodes tasked with navigating Edgar's PTSD struggles and the increasing career imbalance as Dorothy watches Edgar quickly take off in the same field that she's been struggling in. Lindsay and Paul, married for years and already having weathered a cheating scandal and a separation, are understandably arguing over Lindsay's abortion and well, generally awful behavior. Finally, Gretchen and Jimmy—who are in the middle stages of a relationship, living together and finally exchanging "I love yous"—are arguing over Jimmy's pros-and-cons list where he told Gretchen that he could never see himself having a child with her. (After all, she's broken nine iPhones.)

All three fights are savage and destructive, with the characters finally tapping into all of the anger, insecurities, and frustrations that have been lurking beneath the surface for the prior ten episodes—or even longer, in some cases. But the most heartbreaking fight, the hardest for the audience to watch, is unsurprisingly Gretchen and Jimmy's. It's not just because they're the core of the show, the ones that we're always laughing at while simultaneously rooting for them to last—after all, there is so much realism plugged into these fictional characters that it's easy to find our own traits, anger, and depression projected back to us. It's difficult to watch because of what they're really fighting about: the seemingly impossible task of maintaining a relationship with two broken people when they are broken at the same time.

Still from 'You're the Worst' (FX)

"There just isn't room for you be broken right now, too," Gretchen blurts out, after Jimmy reminds her that he's still grieving about his recently deceased father. It's the crux of their argument: Gretchen spent season two nearly comatose because of her clinical depression ("I was there first... Here, in shit, miserable," she reminds him) while Jimmy, though confused and sometimes angry at her actions, often attempted to help, tried to pull her out of it, or at least put on an annoyingly chipper face to contrast. But Gretchen still isn't better—though she's quick to point out that she has been trying to work on being better with therapy—and now Jimmy's in a similar boat. The two believe that it's only supposed to be one at a time; Jimmy likens it to a sick person in a hospital bed: One lays there, while the other takes the uncomfortable couch and sneaks home to walk the dog. It doesn't work if both people are sick in the hospital room.

There were times when I had to put off watching You're the Worst last season because it provided too accurate of a mirror of my own clinical depression; I had to take a hour-long break in the middle of "You Knew It Was a Snake" because it felt like a personal attack on common struggles in my relationship and became too much to watch in one sitting. The episode depicts a realistic problem within relationships where both people have a mental illness—I can't think of another time I've seen this on TV— and those times when depressive episodes sync up and overlap.

Depression can sometimes make you selfish because you can't focus on anything but your own shit, so there's the urge to have a depression dick-measuring contest, to write off the other person's issues as not big enough, or to dismiss someone's sadness because you don't think it's as important as yours. ("You just win because your condition is listed in the DSM," Jimmy sarcastically snarks at one point because Gretchen has a diagnosed problem—clinical depression—whereas Jimmy's issues have always been more abstract, never explicitly defined.) It also feels impossible to support and help your partner when you don't have the strength or energy to help yourself, which causes Gretchen and Jimmy to alternate between isolating themselves and lashing out at each other. But what's always been most realistic about You're the Worst is that there are never any set solutions. Gretchen and Jimmy sort of make up over something silly—bonding over the weird incestuous erotic novel he's been writing—but when they go to bed at night, they realize that didn't actually solve anything.

That's a common thread in You're the Worst: There are so many issues within relationships that are impossible to solve and you sort of have to just roll with them and find ways to exist together while knowing these problems won't go away—unless you break up. Such was the fate of two of the three couples—Lindsay and Paul finally, for real this time, get a divorce; Dorothy and Edgar break up and she moves back to Florida. Gretchen and Jimmy, it seems, are willing to just move forward and see what happens, but it's clear that this particular problem can't be swept under the rug, nor can it be solved with the elaborate murder-themed marriage proposal that occurs at the end of the season finale. Things are good for a few minutes—things seem to always be good for just a few minutes on You're the Worst—until Jimmy begins to realize what he's about to commit to and drives away. Once again, You're the Worst ends a season on an uncertain note, returning to the idea that maybe these two people can't be fixed.

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Why These People Go Through Agony to Intentionally Scar Their Faces

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Traditionally, in tribes around the world, scarification was used to mark important moments in a person's life, like marriage or puberty. Nowadays—in Europe and America, at least—it tends to be more about aesthetics, but can of course be prompted by anything, and represent whatever the recipient wants it to represent.

The process involves cutting out skin using a scalpel, before rubbing the open wounds with peroxide or lemon juice to keep the wound from becoming a raised scar—the usual aim is for an indented scar. It isn't an exact science—people react differently to the scarring process—but it is an art form that takes great skill.

Facial scarification is less common, but it's gaining popularity with the heavily body-modded crowd. During the healing process, the scars are obvious and extremely visible, but after a few years, they become fainter. Occasionally, they're barely visible at all.

I spoke to four people about facial scarification and what led to them getting their faces cut.

SHIVA

Work and photo by Shiva

Shiva is one of the most well-respected scarification artists in the industry. He started out as a body piercer, and has now been doing scarification for about six years. "I felt I wanted more, as far as the artistic and ritual sides of body modification goes," he says, adding that he doesn't take the role of scarring people's faces lightly: "It's more pressure—this part of the body being the most visible—but it's an amazing honor to be asked to do it."

The first time Shiva scarred someone's face was nerve-racking, but he's yet to refuse anyone his services, since people who ask tend to already be heavily tattooed or have other body modifications. "I would say to someone, if they were young or didn't have many mods, that maybe it's not a good idea until they are in a position to deal with what they would get," he says, adding that he'd also advise them depending on their work situations.

"Getting facial work, definitely think about what you do, as it's not a thing to be taken lightly," he says. "You might get mixed reactions from people, so be prepared." He also advises that people get work done elsewhere before they start on their face.

For Shiva, the facial scarring work is a spiritual process. "I see it as the most sacred part of the body, closest to God, so it's the most special for me from that point of view," he says.

See more of Shiva's work on his Instagram.

JOE

Joe is a self-employed 29-year-old who lives in London. He was working in the corporate headquarters of major bank when he got his scarification done, but left shortly after.

Before moving to his face he'd already had plenty of scarification done on his chest. "At the time, I'd been very much of the idea that I'd never do it again—that the sheer itching and healing I'd been through on my chest would put me off for life," he says. "But, like anything, I felt the pull again eventually to get more done."

He hadn't been planning it, but had stopped in to see his scarification artist, Iestyn Flye, because he'd wanted small circular scars around the transdermal implants on his face. Flye said that, if he were Joe, he'd get something bigger done, and sketched something up on Joe's head right then and there. "It basically just happened like that," says Joe. "I was up for it, had spare cash, and it felt like a thing to do."

Unfortunately, the bank he worked at wasn't so keen: "They didn't take kindly to my suggestion that a bunch of fresh wounds were not really covered in the employee dress code." Bar that, Joe says the scarification didn't affect too much elsewhere. "There was no real social change for me as far as friends were concerned," he says. "I'd always had a kind of 'alternative' look."

Besides the scarification and transdermal implants, Joe also has a forked tongue and plenty of tattoos. He also has other scarification on his back, neck, chest, and shoulders. But he feels passionately about his facial scarification in particular. "I think that despite being somewhat cavalier and spontaneous, it quickly became something that I really loved," he says. "It's almost like a crown, in its own way."

BETO

Photo: Beto Rea

Beto is a body artist from Mexico who now lives in Berlin, where he's a co-owner of Rusty Pig Foot Tattoo. He's 41 now, but his love of scarification dates back to his childhood. "Since I was a kid, I've always been interested in ritualistic scarification in Maya and Aztec cultures, when scarifications were just for warriors," he says. "My mom has a scar on her face due to an accident, and she always considered it ugly. I have always been fascinated by it and found it very beautiful. She is also a warrior."

In fact, Beto says, he had his mother in mind when he got his scarification done: "It was a way to show her how scars, both accidental and intentional, can be beautiful. They are signs and marks of the battle you've won in life."

He admits that he was somewhat afraid in the run-up to getting his scarification, but felt it forced him to face his own fears—to relax and let the pain flow through him. Because of his profession, it hasn't affected him negatively. Instead, his scarification has helped him connect with people. "Funnily enough, most of the time when people approach me, they are mostly curious and they compliment me," he says.

Like Shiva, he would refuse to work on anyone he didn't think was ready to have their life impacted by facial scarification. He also believes the process is a spiritual journey rather than purely aesthetic. "They are part of me, and they are marks of my history and ideology," he says. "It always reminds me of my roots, my own battles, and who I am."

See more of Beto's work on his Instagram.

ELIZIJAH

Photo: Elizijah

Elizijah is a 26-year-old body modification artist who works in Punktured Body Piercing, a studio in Brighton, England. He's been working in the body mod industry for seven years, specializing in scarification, advanced body piercing, and ear lobe reconstruction, a procedure for people who want to reverse their stretched lobes.

"I am currently inventing myself into my own version of a tribe—I have always had a huge interest in tribe cultures around the world, and this was just another stepping stone into my dream," he says, adding that he managed to look past the pain while having it done. "The main thing is to focus on how it's going to look afterwards."

Given that Elizijah already had facial and head tattoos, as well as facial piercings, the scarification didn't affect his life much. It helps, too, that most of his friends have body modifications, piercings, or tattoos. "I am quite a stand-out guy as it is," he says. "My friends and family know the industry I'm in and don't really look at the scarification in a different way; it's just one more modification, I guess."

It changed his self-image for the better—"I love it," he says—but he's not as fussed about the work as he once was. "The novelty of the scarification has worn off—same with any modification once you've had it a while," he says. "But I wouldn't change it."

See more of Elizijah's work on his Instagram.

Life Inside: My Daughter Died After Spending Four Days in Jail

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This story was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

When I learned my 18-year-old daughter had been arrested for heroin possession, it was a nightmare. But, I thought at the time, there might be a silver lining. Maybe she will get help.

Instead, her four days in jail became a death sentence.

Tori had been a talented anime artist, and she was the best debater I had ever known. But once she started using drugs, it didn't take long for my girl's life to unravel. During her senior year in high school, she became emotional in a way I'd never seen before. She started crying all the time.

Finally, I broke down and read her diary. That's how I learned about the heroin, and how I learned she had been spending a lot of time with a boy who was an addict.

So I took away certain privileges. I confiscated her phone. I didn't allow her to go online or hang out with friends. I tried to ground her. But of course there were limits to what I could do. She was going to school; I couldn't control everything she did.

About a year after I realized she was using, law enforcement officials contacted my husband and me. They asked us about the location of my daughter's boyfriend, who they said had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear for a court hearing.

It was around this time that I began thinking, Maybe if her boyfriend gets arrested, Tori will finally get the help she needs. I knew there was a chance she could get arrested, too—and it would be her first brush with the law. But maybe jail would be the best place for her—she would finally be safe and get healthy. My husband and I gave the agents the address to the apartment that Tori and her boyfriend had moved into a few days earlier.

Two days later, on March 27, 2015, Tori was arrested. I immediately tried calling everyone—the agents who contacted me, the arresting officer, the jail. I felt like I had betrayed my own daughter.

I went to her apartment to clean it out, believing that when she was released from jail, she could come back to our home and start anew. I repainted her bedroom, even drawing a sun on the ceiling.

But she'd never see it.

When she called me from jail a few days later, Tori sounded delirious; she was difficult to understand. She said that she was seeing people die and that she was going to die. She asked me to put money on her account so that she could buy lemonade, which she didn't usually drink.

My husband and I tried to visit her, but we were told she was in quarantine. We asked the correctional officer at the front desk if he could call someone to check on her. He made a call and then told us she was fine. We felt reassured and left.

Later that night, I turned my phone off thinking that Tori was finally safe, with medical staff nearby. I remember hearing an ambulance go down the road outside our home and feeling like I didn't have to worry anymore when I heard sirens.

Check out our documentary about life inside America's for-profit justice system.

I woke up to a voicemail from the warden telling us to call him back. He didn't include any other details. I made several frantic calls to find out what happened; I finally learned she had been airlifted to a hospital trauma center about an hour away.

When I got to Tori's hospital room, I dropped my purse and went to her side. Every machine was hooked up to my little girl. There were tubes going into her mouth, medical equipment attached to her head. Her skin was pure white. Her eyes were slightly open, but vacant.

Four days later, with no hope of her improving, there was no other option but to remove Tori from life support. She died on Easter Sunday.

Less than 48 hours before I saw her in the hospital, the jail had told me she was fine. But, based on what I have learned from other women who were in the jail with her, Tori was far from fine; she was severely ill from heroin withdrawal and a day away from collapse. She was unable to maintain fluids and rapidly lost weight; she suffered hallucinations and confusion; and she was so weak she could hardly sit up, let alone stand. The only people who seemed to care for her, I later learned, were her fellow inmates, who repeatedly told staff she needed to go to the hospital.

I still don't have answers to everything that happened while Tori was at the jail*. But I do know that moments after seeing the medical staff, she passed out, stopped breathing, and went into cardiac arrest. They finally got her to the hospital, but by then, it was too late: my daughter was in a vegetative state.

I don't know whether anyone at the jail has been held accountable for Tori's death in any way. I do know that on her Facebook tribute page, one of the correctional officers in the jail who had interviewed Tori when she was admitted actually wrote:

"I find this so funny that people want the tax payers to pay for people going through withdraw in prisons... So, I say let them do there 'hard' withdraw and spend the money on someone that is gonna appreciate it!!!! You do the crime, it is up to you to do the time!!!!"

My daughter needed medical care. She should have been kept safe. She deserved compassion.

She deserved better.

*The deputy warden of Lebanon County Correctional Facility declined to comment.

Stephanie Moyer is a graphic/web designer in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. On July 11, she filed a federal lawsuit against Lebanon County and correctional and medical officers at Lebanon County Correctional Facility, alleging deliberate indifference to her daughter's medical needs and violations of civil rights.

Illustration by Matt Rota

Alt-Right Recruitment Flyers Are Telling White People to ‘Save Richmond’

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: That Viral Video of a Polar Bear Petting a Dog Has Taken a Morbid Turn

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Like almost everything in life, that really cute viral video of a polar bear petting a dog took an unexpectedly dark turn we were not prepared for. Earlier this week, a clip of a polar bear gently patting the head of a sled dog like it was a proud owner was making the rounds, brightening all of our days and for 34 seconds, making us forget the world we unfortunately happen to be living in.

However, the dog's owner, Brian Ladoon, who runs the Mile 5 Dog Sanctuary in northern Manitoba where the video was shot, admits that a dog was eaten on his property recently by a polar bear. Ladoon owns a number of dogs, and it is unclear if the polar bear and dog in the above video were involved in the deadly incident.

"That was the only day we didn't feed the fucking bears, the only night we didn't put anything out," Ladoon told CBC News. Speaking to CBC News, Ladoon admitted he has been charged multiple times in relation to his dogs and said he takes "care of bears" on his land.

A spokesperson for Manitoba Sustainable Development told CBC News that "conservation officers had to immobilize a bear in that area last week and move it to the holding facility because it killed one of his dogs." Additionally, a mother bear and a cub were taken away from Ladoon's property "because there were allegations the bears were being fed and the females' behaviour was becoming a concern."

"It's like a little Garden of Eden," Ladoon told CBC News of his sanctuary. "It's a safe place... They love it and so, hey, why should I not help them?"

I dunno, maybe because polar bears will eat your fucking dog?

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter.

Another Typical American Week Saw Dozens Wounded or Killed in Mass Shootings

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Over the past seven days, America witnessed nine mass shootings that left eight dead and 35 wounded. These attacks bring the US mass shooting body count so far in 2016 to 362 dead and 1,364 injured.

Meanwhile, Europe suffered zero mass shootings over the same period, leaving the continent's mass gun violence tally so far this year steady at 46 dead and 158 injured.

The latest round of American mass shootings were much deadlier than those that took place last week, despite the fact that there was actually one fewer attack and fewer overall victims. Still, these shootings followed standard patterns of large-scale gun violence to which the US has grown alarmingly jaded.

At about 7 PM local time Saturday, a drive-by on a group of people at a barbecue in Sacramento, California, left one dead and five injured. About 30 minutes later, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, uninvited guests are said to have started a fight at a Sweet 16 party that quickly devolved into a shooting, leaving five injured. Some 30 minutes after that, a street shooting on a group of people sitting in a car in Kansas City, Missouri, left one dead and three injured.

Later that night, around 2 AM Sunday, a shooting in a crowd of people in Orange County, Florida, left four injured. Just under an hour later, at about 3:50 local time, at least one shooter opened fire into the front door of a nightclub in Kingshill in the Virgin Islands, injuring four more. And just over an hour after that, uninvited guests reportedly fired into an apartment where a party was being held in San Antonio, Texas, injuring four more people.

On Sunday evening at about 6 PM, a shooting on a car in Jacksonville, Florida, left three dead and two injured. Then, at about 9 PM local time, a man in San Diego, California, opened fire on his ex-wife and her family after a dispute with her new boyfriend, killing her parents and injuring her and her grandfather. After a days-long lull, the past week's mass shootings capped off at about 6:20 Thursday evening when a shooting at a two-year-old's birthday party in Dyersburg, Tennessee, left one dead and six injured.

A few of these attacks managed to gain a wider degree of media and popular attention than the rest because they involved especially young victims, who are often presented by the press as uniquely innocent and therefore tragic casualties. The Bridgeport Sweet 16 shooting's victims were mostly teens, the Jacksonville car attack left an 11-month-old dead, and the Dyersburg incident left a six-year-old injured and a mother dead. But even these attacks were often only able to gain temporary traction in regional outlets.

The fact is that none of these stories, whether they involve children or not, ought to slip under the national radar. As yet another quiet week in Europe attests, the scale and frequency of gun violence America has normalized is not, in fact, normal. So long as we treat attacks like the nine the US endured this week as largely inconsequential, we quietly endorse and enable a grinding mass shooting epidemic—a national shame sorely in need of a national reckoning.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.


Why the Deaf Community Fears President Trump

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Donald Trump after a meeting at the US Capitol last week. Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

"'All men are created equal.' Well, it's not true."

That's President-elect Donald Trump, a clip unearthed for a PBS documentary that shone a light on, among other things, Trump's apparent belief that some people are born smart, born to be successful, born with what he has called "the winning gene."

"The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development," Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio told the team behind the Frontline documentary The Choice. "They believe that there are superior people, and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring."

This belief, that certain genes make better people, is an echo of eugenics, a racist, pseudoscientific philosophy that aims to "improve" the human race by breeding out supposedly bad characteristics. When it became popular in the late 19th century, eugenics became the driving force behind a number of atrocities against many minority groups, including the Deaf community. The Nazis were the most infamous eugenicists, but there were many other believers. Alexander Graham Bell used eugenics to propose a ban on sign language and deaf intramarriage in his 1884 paper, " Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race." Deaf people were institutionalized and some forcibly sterilized for years afterward; deaf education was upended and students' hands were literally tied down to prevent them from signing. Bell's ideas about the superiority of oralism over bilingual schooling remain embedded in our education and legislative systems, despite having been scientifically debunked.

Today, many groups are worried about how a Trump presidency will affect them. But though the Deaf and disabled communities were not the focus of much campaign rhetoric, it seems clear that Trump has contempt for people like me. Trump has publicly mocked a journalist with a joint condition, reportedly called Deaf actress and Celebrity Apprentice contestant Marlee Matlin "retarded," and perpetuated the false notion that vaccines cause autism. There have been multiple lawsuits against his properties for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Writing for the LA Times in October, disability advocate David Perry called Trump the "most ableist presidential nominee in modern American political history."

Policy-wise, the future for deaf people is as murky as it is for everyone else, as Trump constantly introduces and walks back proposals varying in levels of moral reprehensibility, legality, and feasibility. According to his most recent statements, his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and " re-establish high-risk pools" (as his website puts it) would result in loss of healthcare coverage for many deaf and disabled people whose conditions can be classified as preexisting. Deaf and disabled people who depend on Medicaid for insurance or medical devices not covered by traditional health insurance are also fearful, as Trump's rollback of ACA's Medicaid expansion could affect the approximately 7 million people who have gained coverage under it.

Deaf and disabled people have also voiced concern about a potentially weaker ADA under Trump. The ADA is enforced by the Department of Justice's civil rights division, and given Trump's properties' alleged ADA violations and the traditional conservative stance against government spending and oversight, cuts seem likely, leaving us at the whim of private companies' bottom lines.

The ADA bars employers from discriminatory hiring practices and protects our rights to "reasonable accommodations" like closed captions and sign language interpreters at work and school. For the wider disability community, the ADA ensures things like wheelchair ramps, elevators, and handicapped parking and bathrooms. An ADA weakened by lack of oversight and money could well mean continued police brutality against people with disabilities. In the case of deaf people specifically, law enforcement already has a troubling record of arresting and detaining people without providing interpreters, or even a pen and paper, to explain the reason for arrest or Mirandize them. Unarmed deaf people, whom police misinterpret to be aggressive or using gang signs, have been killed with impunity— Daniel Harris, Edward P. Miller, and John T. Williams are among the more famous cases.

Questions of discrimination and accessibility if the ADA becomes less of priority in a Trump DOJ also extend to the education sector. Schools for the Deaf, branches of their state public school systems, are likely to be endangered by budget cuts and funding shifts from the public sector to charter and voucher systems, which Trump endorses. Deaf schools are often among the first to be cut from struggling districts, with deaf students instead sent to mainstream schools where they are unable to communicate directly with their teachers and peers. Further, Deaf schools traditionally serve as hubs for Deaf culture, providing independent living and job training for post-grads, offering (often free) American Sign Language (ASL) classes to interested locals, leading research in linguistics and special education, and hosting social and cultural events—all resources left defunct upon the closure of a Deaf school.

And where fears of budget cuts and eugenics intersect, some worry about the threat of mandatory cochlear implantation, via which deaf students could theoretically be integrated into hearing schools at a lower cost. Though it sounds extreme, it's not any larger a violation of one's individual medical choices than Trump and Pence's assault on women's reproductive rights. (The idea that the decision not to implant one's child is evidence of neglect has already surfaced in family court, though so far the argument hasn't been successful.)

Finally, as hate speech against racial and religious minorities spikes across the country, Deaf and disabled people have also experienced post-election hate speech in the name of the president-elect. In one example, Lena Van Manen, a CODA (child of Deaf adults who is a native sign language user) and a coordinator at the Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education in Indiana, wrote on Facebook about being confronted while facetiming with a Deaf friend in Starbucks. Used to people staring while she signed, she ignored the glare from a man across the store until he got in her face and screamed, "This is white America now. Take your retarded self and go somewhere else."

We can't know for sure what Trump will do, but if he does what he says he wants to do, it will hurt us. His words already have.

Marky Mark Is America’s Last Patriot Standing in This Week’s Trailer Roundup

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As most people know, November is the cruelest month, made tolerable only by the promise of holiday-themed coffee drinks and the soft, slow hum of Mariah Carey's Christmas songs filling every mall and retail corridor of our cities and towns. It is also when we collectively escape the garbage of the previous year in seasonally-specific movies like Love Actually, The Holiday and Fred Claus. The movies and trailers that are supposed to shepard in the new year are meant to be light and trite just as Jesus himself intended. But nearly all of this week's offerings are straight up clinical in their reflection of reality. Don't they know it's (almost) Christmas?

The Zookeeper's Wife
I know that given the fears of many people of colour living in Trump's America, this trailer is supposed to feel extra poignant. But between the idea that a zookeeper is walking around in a completely shit-free silk dress AND Jessica Chastain's bonkers and borderline offensive Polish accent, this movie looks like the elevator pitch was just Hitler meets We Bought a Zoo.

100 Streets
This trailer plays like an eerily realistic newsreel, shot with the agonizing coldness of an ever-churning 24-hour news cycle. Idris Elba plays a former rugby star whose early fame turns into rudderless debauchery that eventually costs him his family and potentially his life. A sharp and searing look at the spoils of toxic masculinity.

Patriots Day
Hey did you know that Marky Mark has a long and violent history of harassing and attacking people of colour, including black schoolchildren? And that one of his crimes was so brutal it left a man blind in one eye? Ok cool just checking. Anyway, here he is playing yet another American hero. Enjoy.

A Kind of Murder
Ahh it's a tale as old as time, Patrick Wilson plays a domesticized creep just waiting for an opportunity to kill Jessica Biel. I love every long, awkwardly held scene of her in a giant pink ball gown at a dinner party holding a tiny dog.

Collateral Beauty
I missed this last week, but wow, what a trailer it is. Will Smith has a beautiful mind! He's so good at business but so bad at life! His colleagues are so worried about him but also, should he maybe step down as CEO of this, I don't know, Dominos company? Why is he mailing letters to death? Do you know how much postage is these days? And of course, somehow Keira fucking Knightley is involved. Your mom is gonna love this movie.

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What's in a Name? For Some Trans People, Everything

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Harrison Browne, playing for the Buffalo Beauts. Photo courtesy the NWHL

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During college, Harrison Browne slowly began asserting his gender identity. He asked his friends and hockey teammates at the University of Maine not to call him by his given name, "Hailey." He didn't connect with it anymore. It felt foreign. It felt like someone else.

"I started teetering around with other names, like Hunter," he said. "I was testing them out. Trying to see what felt right. In the end, Harrison won out."

Browne, 23, currently plays for the Buffalo Beauts of the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL). He publicly came out as transgender this October, becoming the first openly trans athlete on an American professional sports team. His story was covered everywhere from ESPN to The New York Times. And Browne said the media has been respectful of his name and pronouns—something non-trans individuals tend to take for granted or gloss over.

"Pronouns are huge. If you keep being referred to as a 'she' even though you identify as 'he,' it feels weird," he explained. "Even people who identify as 'they' or 'them.' You might not understand it, but it's important to respect those pronouns and what each individual's wishes are."

For some trans people, adopting a new name represents their first foray into the public alignment of their gender identity and gender expression. Not all trans people transition, of course, or choose to make that alignment—but for those who do, the name they choose can have far-reaching, life-changing significance.

"It's a much bigger deal than people think it is," Browne added.

The psychological good that can result from use of a new name is hard to overstate; Browne echoed the comfort and reassurance he felt when people use his. When he was announced during his first game of the 2016 NWHL season, hearing "Harrison Browne" reverberate over the loudspeaker filled him with so much joy, he said, he thought his heart might explode. It felt good. It felt right.

Jen Richards, the creator of Her Story—an Emmy-nominated new-media series that looks inside the dating lives of queer and trans women—said the name "Jen" wasn't a conscious choice so much as an organic evolution. Years ago, before she began her transition, Richards had fallen for a woman named Jen. They shared an intense connection, and it was through that connection that Richards was finally able to open up about her gender issues—something she had kept hidden from people until that point.

"For me, it's not a matter of respecting my chosen name. It is my name," Richards said. "There's no need for more discussion. And that's true for everyone. It's a chosen name only in the sense that I chose it, much in the same way our parents choose a name for us when we are born. The name I was given was a chosen name, it just wasn't my choice."

As Richards began the process of exploring her gender identity, she would often create online profiles under the name Jen; by the time she decided to come out as trans, Richards said she had become so comfortable using it that it just seemed like a natural fit.

Tiq Milan had a different experience. The writer and trans activist didn't choose a distinctive name during his transition. He simply amended it.

"I just cut my name down. I thought about changing it to something completely different, like Malcom or something like that. But I was really worried about it being such a separation for my family. So I cut it down for them. Tiq is who I am. It's a masculine form of my previous name"—Tika—"but at the same time, it's who I've always been."

Milan said he held onto "Tiq" as a way of holding onto the wholeness of himself. He didn't want to treat his trans identity as a "rebirth" and erase the person he was. But no two trans individuals approach their transition in the same way; while Tiq felt very strongly about holding onto his past, some trans people feel the opposite—that they were born in the wrong body, and need to abandon it completely by choosing a different name.

"I respect that so much," Milan said. "But for me, that's not what it was. I came out as trans when I was 26. And it was a long process. I didn't really tell my parents until I was scheduled to have my top surgery. It was a shock to them, because I know they didn't know that trans men existed. Once they accepted me as their son and got over the grieving process of their daughter, everything was good."

Watch "A Support System for the Trans Community":


"When people tell you who they are, you should just respect them no matter what," Milan continued. "And if people go out of their way to use the wrong name or the wrong pronouns, it's just an invalidation of that person's identity."

Browne agreed. "If someone refuses to call an individual by their chosen name or proper pronouns, they're just doing it out of malice," he said. "I feel it's a form of bullying, especially if someone is doing it repeatedly. There's a difference between making a slip up and doing something on purpose."

Understanding and respecting the importance of trans individuals' names and pronouns is not just necessary—it's made incredibly urgent by the election of Donald Trump, which may seriously imperil LGBTQ rights. Trans individuals in particular cannot afford the kind of invalidation and marginalization that disrespecting their names and choices may bring.

Follow Lyndsey D'Arcangelo on Twitter.

Andrew W.K. on Loving Your Enemy

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Illustration by Tallulah Fontaine for VICE

From grades nine through 11, I was fortunate enough to attend Community High School, a free-thinking smaller public alternative school to the two larger high schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I lived from age four until 18. Ann Arbor was and still is a radical liberal town with a proud history of open-minded optimism. I was a 17 year old junior in 1996, and something happened that year that changed my life forever.

Our school was within walking distance of downtown Ann Arbor and city hall. As students, we were given permission to spend our lunch breaks and after school time in the midst of Ann Arbor's small but stimulating street culture. It was a vibrant and dynamic mixture of University of Michigan graduate students, rogue musicians, sidewalk preachers, sketchy odd-ball drifters, and leftover psychedelic hippies from the city's prime back in the 1960s.

One day, the town began nervously buzzing with news of an impending rally, staged by a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Hailing from elsewhere in the state, the hate group was planning to demonstrate at Ann Arbor's city hall, with the intention of provoking the residents of this town in which they knew they would not be well-received.

The imminent KKK demonstration quickly became the talk of the school. So much so that one of our teachers worked it into a lesson on the First Amendment, explaining how, in America, everyone had a right to voice their opinions and viewpoints, even when they clashed with the ideals most of us thought of as good and right.

Still, many of the students in my school, myself included, didn't accept this. It didn't make sense. We understood freedom of speech, but we also felt that certain opinions were simply too extreme and awful to be allowed—the people holding such beliefs should be able to be stopped by any means necessary. As a result of all this passionate debate, some students began planning a counter demonstration and were prepared to use violence against the KKK and their supporters.

I understood what they were feeling. Some of our teachers pleaded with the students not to engage in violence and suggested that this passionate reaction and dangerous backlash was exactly what the Klan wanted—to start a riot among these otherwise peaceful and loving young people, instigating them into a violent display of their own.

I cried in deep waves and couldn't explain why. My mom said it was because I was experiencing my heart opening.


When the day of the rally finally came, the atmosphere was so tense that riot police were mobilized, and temporary chain-link fencing was put up around city hall. I had planned to go along with a group of friends, but my mom begged me to come straight home after school. I admit that I was scared by the rocks and bottles I saw some students stockpiling, and the idea of getting into a confrontation with anyone—even someone I hated—was terrifying to me.

In the end, I was relieved to have my mom's threat of punishment as an excuse to bow out of rioting. I felt very cowardly at that moment, like a little pathetic child, full of shame that I didn't have that warrior spirit to fight against these prejudiced people. But I was also confused. I'd never seen my school go through anything like this before. I felt like we were all getting tricked by some evil force, and I watched in dazed horror as some of the most peace-loving hippies in our school metamorphosed into weapon-toting militants, determined to "crack some racist skulls," and show Michigan and the world that Ann Arbor hates people who hate people.

Naturally, on the day of the rally, chaos ensued. Violence broke out. And when it did a young woman and fellow Community High School student named Keshia Thomas, with one courageous act, changed my life, the lives of countless people in my high school and around the world forever.

Keshia was a year older than me, and I often saw her in my Audio/Video classroom. She was well liked in our school, and possessed a natural leadership quality that drew others to her. At the protest, the Klan was protected by police and barricades, but the crowd noticed an older man on their side of the barriers. He had a Confederate flag on his shirt and inked into his arm, along with some other Nazi tattoos. He had come in support of the Klan, and when the assembled anti-Klan rioters noticed him, they gave chase.

When they caught up to him, he tripped and fell to the ground. The crowd instantly surrounded him and began beating and stabbing at him with the wooden stakes of their protest signs, kicking and punching him as he lay curled up in a fetal position. Suddenly, without warning, Keshia flung herself on top of this man, shielding him from the increasingly violent attack, quite possibly saving his life.

In that moment, everything changed.

Keisha Thomas throws herself on top of a man with Nazi tattoos to protect him from an angry mob. Photo by Mark Brunner via Getty

The crowd stopped their attack and stood around in a sober moment of reflection. Later on, she said it was as if angels had lifted her up and laid her down on top of him. What Keshia did in that moment was so utterly selfless that it did seem like something otherworldly had transpired.

The crowd was stunned into a stupor. They had just witnessed the living example of someone loving their enemy. This young woman had literally laid her life down for a man who might not have done the same for her. It made no sense at all, and yet, in the midst of this ugly and violent event, it was the only thing that made sense. It was a kindness so sincere and deep that it broke through the confusion and created a moment of calm and clarity amidst the hatred and anger. Just hearing about the event secondhand and seeing the news accounts that followed left people in a daze.

The biggest challenges we face demand the most from us.

I remember seeing the photos the next day in the local paper and collapsing to my knees and weeping in our kitchen at home. I cried in deep waves and couldn't explain why. My mom said it was because I was experiencing my heart opening. It moved me more deeply than I can describe. In one cataclysmic moment, I felt determined to become a better person—to strive to someday be a truly loving human being—to somehow reach the level Keshia seemed to operating on.

She transformed ignorant weakness into powerful integrity using the only force powerful enough to do so: love.

She forced all who were there and even who weren't to confront the real possibility of an irrational and unconditional love—a love so strong and pure that it's impossible to wrap your head around. You can only wrap your heart around it. Why would Keshia Thomas save this man? A man who, had she not stepped in to stop his beating, could've used the attack he suffered as further justification for his own underdeveloped beliefs and hate and bigotry. Keshia broke the pattern.

The biggest challenges we face demand the most from us. Our most advanced problems require our most refined idealistic powers. I'm certainly not saying I have all these skills yet, but what Keshia did that day is proof it's possible. That type of selfless love is not a dream.

Love and hope for all humanity is not a naïve fantasy. As always, love remains the only answer. And we need it now more than ever.

Dedicated to Keshia Thomas and her ongoing efforts to unite humanity. You are an inspiration.

Follow Andrew W.K. on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Stop What You Are Doing Toronto, Some Fucker Just Stole 16 Dogs

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The three dogs pictured above were among those stolen Friday morning outside a Toronto condo. Photos via Twitter

Update: The dogs, and van, have been found. Yay!

A white Ford panel van containing up to 16 dogs was stolen Friday morning outside a condo in the Fort York area of Toronto, CP24 reports. The vehicle, Ontario licence plate AM34 530, belongs to Soulmutts Toronto Ltd., a pet daycare company. It was stolen at 215 Fort York Blvd. near Bathurst Street while one of the company's workers was picking up another dog.

Police have yet to track down the vehicle, but have released the following description of the alleged dognapper: a six-foot-tall white male. Obviously.

The pet daycare worker claims that the van was locked while they were collecting the another client's dog in the condo. They had left the vehicle running with the air conditioning on for the puppers, and had taken a second car key inside with them. They were planning on taking the dogs to a local park for a walk at the time the vehicle was stolen.

Several of the missing dogs' owners have posted on social media about the incident:

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