(Picture by Stefan Rousseau PA Wire/PA Images)

Sound the air-raid sirens, hide in your cellars, hold the people you love close to you and don't ever let go: Tony Blair is back. And why wouldn't he be? In an ideal world, all disgraced former Prime Ministers would be put down painlessly, with a bolt through their heads to make sure they never bother anyone again. But this is far from an ideal world. The evil is returning everywhere; the whole planet hates what it's become, and is now busy trying to twist and churn itself back into an earlier shape.

Brexiteers are trying to rebuild the country out of clotted cream and the Queen's greying flakes of sloughed-off skin; they want a Britain permanently frozen in the three or so years between VE day and the arrival of the Windrush. Bring back the blue passports, bring back imperial measurements, bring back hanging and unpaved roads dense with horse manure and an average life expectancy in the late teens – if nothing else, we won't have to spend so much on education. America is shortly to be great again; France is in serious danger of electing a new Vichy regime, helplessly puppeteered by itself; a world that can no longer think of new ideas is collapsing chaotically into its own past. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the leering, spectral face of Tony Blair is once again hovering over British politics.

The line is that he's here to rescue us from this reckless slide into our own past, to halt the Brexit madness and make the sensible centre-left relevant again; only someone with the charisma and experience of Blair can get us moving forward. Don't believe it for a moment. He's not the solution; he's just another symptom, another dark childhood memory that has inevitably returned to haunt waking life, bursting in with all the senselessness and terror of the repressed.

Naturally, he's denied everything. The first grim omen of Blair's return – aside from the strange tidal waves of blood sluicing through the streets of British towns, the oily residues appearing all over Parliament, the mass die-offs of migrating birds and so on – was an exclusive in the Sunday Times, unsubtly titled "Blair: PM is a lightweight and Corbyn's a nutter so I'm back". An unnamed source told the paper that the former Prime Minister thinks there's a "massive hole in British politics", one that only he had the virility and grit to fill up. He would, it was claimed, shortly be seeking a new political headquarters in Westminster – no doubt soon to be circled by hundreds of portentously croaking ravens. Almost immediately, his spokeswoman denied the report. "The London staff will all come together in one location," she admitted, but "it won't be in Westminster" – and the idea that he would try to influence Brexit negotiations are "wholly false". Which, given Blair's previous history with the truth, pretty much amounts to an early warning that he's about to parachute into Parliament, firing depleted uranium in all directions.

These denials weren't helped by the appearance of his former advisor and perpetual lickspittle John McTernan on Newsnight, words leaking from his cabbagey head as he drawled that "people are getting very excited, and correctly excited, because he's the biggest political figure of our era, and people can't stop talking about him because everyone wants him back". Who is this "everyone"? A horrifying picture emerges, of Tony Blair sneaking back into Westminster like Napoleon returning from Elba, to meet a new French Infantry of simpering policy dweebs and dribble-smeared TV commentators: an army floating in its own private reality-bubble, ready to conquer Europe once again. It'd be a farce and a failure of a campaign, but he keeps on doing it. After all, Tony Blair never really went away; he could hardly shut up throughout last year's Labour leadership campaign and beyond, constantly popping up like a whack-a-mole to obliviously announce how little understanding he actually has of politics. Forget a windswept island in the South Atlantic – if we want to finally be done with Blair, we need to shoot him into space.

It's safe to say that everyone does not want Tony Blair back. He remains one of the most widely loathed politicians in the country, damned for taking us into a war under false pretences that is still filling the skies of Iraq with burning oil wells and soaking the desert with blood; hated for his corruption and his mad greasy glibness; abjured and irredeemable – only 8 percent of the public believe he has nothing to apologise for, a full 53 percent say they can never forgive him. If he were to take command for the beleaguered, zombified remnants of the Remainers, all it would do is confirm the sense among Brexit voters that the political classes are made up of dusty ghouls and has-beens, creatures stuck in the past with no idea how people really think. Which raises the question: how is this even possible? How can the idea of someone so utterly discredited returning to politics – even the slightest suggestion of it – be taken seriously? Why is it discussed in the papers and on Newsnight rather than circling unnoticed on the Blair office's Twitter feed and in the "in other news" sections of the local press?

We should take Blair seriously when he says there's a hole in British politics; it's just not where he thinks it is. The moderate centre-left he claims to represent is hardly lacking for representation – there are hundreds of whining liberal mediocrities making their Quixotic moral stands in Parliament or in the opinion pages, the Hilary Benns and Owen Smiths and John McTernans. Since Blair left he's spawned an army of tiny, feeble, mewling Blairs to clog up the gutters of politics.

The hole is everywhere: politics has been hollowed out. The Prime Minister is freewheeling, fanatic and incapable; she won't let us see the secret Brexit plans she doesn't have; she attaches herself leech-like to the forces of blind dumb patriotism and arbitrary social cruelty, because what else is there?

The Leader of the Opposition lacks a constituency or a purpose; he's increasingly unable to articulate popular discontent or even anything at all. The SNP are a grandstanding parliamentary rump, made incapable on a national level by Britain's system of elective dictatorship. Politics has exhausted itself. Decades of middle-way managerial politics have led us into a catastrophe that nobody really knows how to escape, beyond hiding in the past. It's cycled through every permutation of the conventional wisdom, wearing through the fabric of ideology to open up a vast and ravenous void that's now tearing away at everything from the inside. This is why Blair is back. It's not that a space opened up and he slithered his way back in – he's empty space himself; a lacquered glossy sheen forming around an utter nothingness. Blair never had the answer to any problem; he was just good at rephrasing the question. He can't save us, because he's the affliction. A space has opened up in British politics, and it looks like Tony Blair.

@sam_kriss

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George Soros in 2014. Photo via Flickr user Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung

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

US News

Clinton Team Urged to Call for Swing State Recount
A group of computer scientists and lawyers are urging Hillary Clinton's team to challenge the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The group believes Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in Wisconsin counties that relied on electronic voting machines, which they see as an indication of possible manipulation. The White House reportedly opposes a challenge.—New York Magazine

Trump to Choose Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is reportedly set to picked as the next US ambassador to the UN by President-elect Donald Trump. The 44-year-old Republican governor, daughter of Indian immigrants, is expected to be announced as Trump's choice today, according to multiple sources. —The Post and Courier

Federal Judge Blocks Expansion of Overtime Pay
4.2 million workers set to become eligible for extra pay from December 1 will have to wait at least a little longer. US District Judge Amos Mazzant granted an injunction to halt a new Labor Department regulation, which would have ensured those earning less than $47,476 were eligible for overtime. —USA Today

Dakota Pipeline Protestor May Lose Her Arm
Sophia Wilansky, a 21-year-old New York woman, is fighting to save her arm after she was badly injured in clashes with police at the Standing Rock pipeline protests. Wilanksy, who claims she was hurt when a concussion grenade fired by the police exploded, has reportedly undergone eight hours of emergency surgery. The Morton County sheriff's department denies responsibility. —VICE News

International News

Indian Army Kills Nine in Kashmir, Says Pakistan
An Indian artillery shell struck a passenger bus in the disputed Kashmir region, killing nine people and injuring another nine, according to Pakistani officials. The fracas follows the death of three Indian soldiers on Tuesday, after which their army threatened "retribution." —Al Jazeera

Colombian Government and FARC Set to Agree New Deal
President Juan Manuel Santos's Columbian government will sign a new, revised peace deal with the FARC rebels on Thursday. A previous peace deal was rejected by popular vote in early October. Rather than be subject to another referendum, this one will be put forward for approval by congress. —BBC News

Saudi-Led Air Strike Kills 12 Yemeni Civilians, Say Residents
An air strike by the Saudi-led coalition killed 12 civilians traveling in a pickup truck in Yemen's Hajja province early Wednesday, according to local residents. The locals said the truck was going to the market in Hiran, an area controlled by Shia Houthi rebels battling the Saudis. —Reuters

Court Upholds Khmer Rouge Leaders' Life Sentences
Cambodia's Supreme Court Chamber has upheld the life sentences of two senior members of the Khmer Rouge regime. Former President Khieu Samphan, 85, and Nuon Chea, 90, had previously been found guilty of crimes against humanity by a UN tribunal. —AP

Everything Else

George Soros Gives $10 Million to Fight Hate Crime
The billionaire George Soros is donating $10 million to community groups and civil society organizations in a bid to tackle a surge in hate crimes. The philanthropist said "dark forces" had been "awakened" by the recent election. —The New York Times

Dalai Lama Has 'No Worries' About Trump as President
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader claims he has "no worries" about Donald Trump becoming president, explaining that leaders work "according (to) reality" when in office. The Dalai Lama also said he looks forward to meeting Trump. —AP

Yassin Bey Announces Retirement Shows
The artist formerly known as Mos Def says he will end his performing career after forthcoming shows at New York City's Apollo Theater and Washington DC's Kennedy Center. Bey plans to move to Africa after retiring from music.—Rolling Stone

First Posthumous Prince Song Released
The previously unheard Prince track Moonbeam Levels, first recorded for his 1999 album, has been released. The old song will be part of the new greatest hits compilation, Prince 4Ever. —Noisey

Home Sales Rise at Fastest Rate Since 2007
Sales of existing homes in the US rose 2 percent in October from the previous month, according to the National Association of Realtors. That brings the annual rate of home sales to 5.6 million, and marks the fastest rise since February 2007. —VICE News

Valley Bigger than the Grand Canyon Discovered on Mercury
Scientists have discovered a valley larger than the Grand Canyon on the planet Mercury. According to research published in Geophysical Research Letters, the valley in the planet's southern hemisphere stretches for 621 miles. —Motherboard

Adam Driver in Paterson.

Before meeting Adam Driver, I resolve early on that I'm not going to mention Star Wars as far as I can help it. In many ways, it makes things easier for me – knowing that I'm not going to put him in the uncomfortable, and surely boring, position of having to regurgitate the non-disclosure mantra he must have spent every interview repeating since he was cast as bad guy Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens.

Trouble is, if we're going to talk about his new film – the Jim Jarmusch-directed Paterson – that presents another problem entirely. How do you talk about a movie in which nothing happens?

"I love that about it," he says when I ask him. "I liked what Jim was after, which was this sort of antidote to action-driven movies."

This is no criticism, but for an actor chiefly associated with the constant emotional flex of Lena Dunham's Girls, the pastiche Brooklyn pseudo-artist in While We're Young, or the cosmic melodrama of Star Wars, it's sobering watching him in Paterson. In the titular role, he plays a bus driver who writes observational poetry between his shifts around a town in New Jersey – in a town which is also called Paterson, by the way. He lives in a modest house with his girlfriend, adhering to strict, ascetic routines: rising early, working, walking the couple's English bulldog, drinking a beer in his local bar.

"It was a great to play for a couple of months. Just to listen – that's his main action, really, just to listen," he says.

Does he ever pine for a pre-Star Wars universe, where he wasn't subject to such a global audience? "All the time!" he blurts back immediately. "It's part of my job – as contentious as it sounds – to be invisible, to be a spy, to observe, live life, have failures, get things wrong, to have experiences. When people are suddenly looking at you, you can't help but become self-conscious, and you have to fight to be in your own world. Then you're also not taking in the world around you. It's challenging."

When people are suddenly looking at you, you can't help but become self-conscious and you have to fight to be in your own world.

Driver's Paterson is very much attached to the real world. He's a working class American male – a character largely imagined in the left's how-did-Trump-happen discourse as either a victim or a bigot – and definitely not a poet. There is also an allusion made to the character's previous service in the military. For Driver, who served in the Marine Corps for three years, this has an obvious personal resonance, but it's made all the more pertinent by Arts in the Armed Forces – a non-profit he founded in order to provide entertainment and start conversations between military and civilians through the arts. The organisation spends most of its time staging performances of contemporary American monologues that an audience of veterans – who can enjoy them free of charge – will likely draw parallels with.

"You see a picture at the beginning that shows Paterson in a military uniform, but then it's never mentioned again – it's not something that defines him," Driver explains. "He drives a bus, he's a poet, but he's not defined by that either. It's sort of what we try to do with our project. There's such a broad gap right now – in the military and civilian divide – in the United States, more than at any other time in our history, because less than 1 percent of our population are serving."

The object of Arts in the Armed Forces is to attempt to bridge this gap, by breaking with stereotypes that veterans are likely to be "aggressive" or PTSD sufferers. "The misunderstanding about military culture by civilians is very broad," says Driver. "Their interests are broad, they are a diverse range of ages and races. Why generalise a culture and declare that certain things won't resonate with them?"

Paterson also offers a welcome reminder that America is as much a place of inconsequential deeds and fleeting human interactions as it is the vision of constant upheaval and unrest we're now accustomed to seeing in the news. Driver is more reticent to apply any grand socio-political reading to the film, as if reluctant to muddy its innocence. He defers any questions about its wider meaning to the director: "I think that's a question for Jim," he says again and again. "I don't really remember that being part of the conversation."

That said, for Driver, the location of the film is as important as any actor starring in it. For a seemingly unremarkable town on the northeastern edge of America, it has produced a remarkable number of notable figures – from Lou Costello, to Alexander Hamilton, to Fetty Wap. "It's the weird, rich history of Paterson we were interested in rather than a broader comment on America," he says. "It's a place a lot of people migrated to because of the silk trade, but it's strange how all of these cultural characters ended up coming from the same small town. Seems kinda random in the grand scheme of the States."

But the film feels less "random", more an unconventional interpretation of the American Dream. Paterson isn't about serendipity or mythicism, it simply serves as proof that America is a country of all things and all people – good and bad. A place where everything – or, in this case, barely anything – can happen.

Driver says that he agreed to the movie without reading the script – just so he could work with Jim Jarmusch: "He creates the ideal environment to be working in – it's very focused, but at the same time very playful." Having already worked with the Coen Brothers on Inside Llewyn Davis, Driver is surely making light work of most actors' director wish list – a tally he's adding to with his next film, Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese.

Silence is based on the novel of the same name about missionaries in 17th century Japan, and has been the director's passion project for nearly three decades. "It could easily be a dictatorship, given all he's achieved in his career, but it's not," Driver says. "Scorsese has been planning on doing this movie for 28 years, so you'd think he's got the whole thing mapped out, but it's the opposite – he's got some things figured out, of course, and he knows his subject material, but he's completely willing to throw it all away in the moment for a better idea."

Before we part ways, I ask Driver if he's slipping into the dream routine of many actors – alternating between big budget studio projects and small independents. "My only goal is to work with really great directors," he concludes. "If a really great director is doing something really interesting that happens to be a studio movie, then great. If it happens to be a film with no money, where we bring our own clothes to set, great."

This genuinely seems to be how Driver works. Whether he's playing a poetry-writing bus driver or Darth Vader's grandson, he speaks with the same bemused enthusiasm about every role – as though he's grateful but a little confused to have been asked in the first place. "It's a strange job," he shrugs.

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Hero? Photo via Facebook

American politics have many of us feeling like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are right around the corner.

But luckily, here in Canada, our government "scandals" offer a soothing antidote to all that drama. Why? Because they're boring as hell, and reliably so, I might add.

Take for example the "controversy" over inappropriate language that has taken parliament by storm in the last week.

In case your eyes glazed over when you saw the headlines, like mine do when question period is on, the first involved Conservative MP Michelle Rempel. While delivering a feisty 10-minute-speech in the House of Commons about unemployment in her home province of Alberta, Rempel uttered the following:

"Why does the government treat Alberta like a fart in the room that nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge? That is where my constituents have been with the present government for over a year. We are tired of it."

In the world of Canadian politics I guess that counts as "shots fired." Because immediately afterward, Green party leader Elizabeth May demanded Rempel "withdraw" the comment.

"I heard her say a word that I know is distinctly unparliamentary, and I think she may want to withdraw it. The word was f-a-r-t," said a straight-faced May, spelling out the offensive (!) word in the same manner parents talk about Santa in front of their kids.

The "fart" heard round parliament. Video via Youtube

Rempel mocked May (rightly imo) and later tweeted, "this is the craziest, most useless, out of touch intervention from another MP that I've ever experienced in my experience in public service."

But the language wars didn't end there. They picked up during Monday's question period, when Bloc Québécois MP Simon Marcil, used the word "bullshit" to rant about the government's cheese policy in Quebec. According to the National Post, the phrasing "caused a visible stir among MPs," who I guess only watch animated kids' movies?

It turns out that "bullshit" is in fact on the list of words that are considered "unparliamentary language" and can't be used in the House of Commons. And so Marcil, who withdrew his remark somewhat sarcastically, has effectively been gagged for the next little while.

If you are still reading and not desperately watching that neo-Nazi "Heil Trump" video in an effort to feel something again, let's consider for a moment that "bullshit" and "fart" are probably words that a 10-year-old could get away with saying. Like, if my future children don't say "fart" I will assume they are doomed to be lame and will divorce them over irreconcilable differences.

But it gets even better. Because according to this list of parliament's banned words and phrases, compiled by iPolitics, there are far more ridiculous entries.

Some of them actually date back to the 1800s, including: "A bag of wind" (they reallllly don't like flatulence); "scarcely entitled to be called gentlemen"; "coming into the world by accident"; talking twaddle; and "blatherskite."

I admit I had to look up "blatherskite" and it's actually "a person who talks at great length without making much sense," so basically Donald Trump.

Anyway, now that you're hooked, let's go through some of the sassier ones: "the political sewer pipe from Carleton County; "Canadian Mussolini" (Hi, Harper); "idiot"; "ignoramus"; "pompous ass"; "to hell with Parliament attitude"; "sick animal."

(While we are on the topic, shoutout to our current PM Justin Trudeau who once called a fellow MP a "piece of shit.")

Kinda miss this version of Trudeau. Video via Youtube

And in a final category I'll call "normal words" we have things like: "false"; "hypocritical"; "illegal"; "crook"; "deliberately misleading"; "deceive"; "dishonest."

Apparently, over the years, a bunch of these terms, including sexy stuff like "smokescreen" were deemed acceptable after all.

But if "bullshit" is still worthy of censure... Let's just say that when I started working at VICE, a friend told me that I could never get into politics now. And based on this puritan list (plus my column on masturbating), I'd say they were right.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photos via Facebook

It's very fashionable in this day and age to believe that God is not real, or that She is dead, or has otherwise gone into several thousand years of cosmic radio silence since we brutally murdered His Son.

I don't think this is true. I believe God is constantly screaming at us. He doesn't listen to us; we have nothing interesting to say. Instead god is pulling Their hair out and yelling until Her throat is hoarse and throwing heavy-handed symbolism at us that sails above our heads and breaks into a million pieces against the walls in which we have imprisoned ourselves.

Take these frozen moose in Alaska. This is some biblical shit. Local middle-school teacher and Bible camp volunteer Brad Webster is out taking his new friend for a walk in the frigid wilderness when he stumbles across two bull moose, antlers locked, frozen together in a pool of ice.

It's breathtaking. It's a darkly beautiful summary of the zero-sum game we call life. Moose are great hulking ugly delicious creatures, and like all other organic life on earth they are driven in all things by the pull of hunger and lust and the idiot thrill of mortal violence.

Antlers are nature's second dicks, great big boners growing out of your forehead, a permanent display of phallic power. Males will slam their antlers into each other as a mating ritual and the winner gets to fuck. This is the brutally beautiful hierarchy of the animal kingdom. To the victor goes the spoils, all spoils, the pure spoil for which all others are pale substitutes.

But like real dicks, antlers are subject to the cruel genetic lottery. Some are smooth and large, aesthetic marvels that human art will never reproduce despite its slavish dedication. Others grow arbitrarily in hideous nonsense patterns, a broken jigsaw puzzle of velveteen bone.

And so it was on some fateful autumn evening when two male moose met near an Alaskan river. Mating season was almost over and both of them had fucked up antlers. It was now or never. One would live forever through the genes he shuddered into a uterus and the other would skulk around screaming the word "cuck" and posting on incel forums.

They snorted and charged. Their antlers clashed together, smashing thunderously, slamming into one another with a brittle thud. They were locked, the gentle clacking of their dead bone foreheads punctuated by grunting and wheezing. They staggered back and forth, two betas trading inches in the mud. Minutes pass. Hours. Eternity.

Suddenly, something gives. A hoof in the mud, a solid grip, a final thrust. An antler pierces the skull. Instant braindeath, legs buckle; an immediate collapse. But the winner is robbed even of the short, thrilling frisson of victory. He tries to pull his antlers away but instead he's stuck, locked into a fatal embrace. The weight of the corpse pulls him down into the river and he frantically struggles for air.

It's too little, too late. He can't get clear of the river. He is trapped beneath the water by the foe he has just vanquished. He will die without fucking. The only sweet release he will know is the cold embrace of death, slipping in as the frantic nerve impulses ebb away. He struggles until the cold water fills his lungs and slowly encases him in ice.

It's not glamourous. But it could be worse. They could both have lived, entangled, stranded on the forest floor, slowly starving to death, or eaten alive by wolves or bears or worse. They could have died forgotten, bleached skulls decaying far from the prying eyes of man, far from the judging eyes of God.

But instead they laid there, bound together in eternity, frozen under eight inches of ice. Until an amateur Bible camp groundskeeper stumbles across them on a wilderness hike.

"It was a surreal sight—o serene and quiet, but a stark vision of how brutally harsh life can be," Webster said later of the encounter. No shit.

The skulls have since been carved out of the ice, sitting in a freezer somewhere in the northernmost state of the Union. The rest of the moose were left there for the dogs and any other scavengers in the area. The plan is to clean the skulls and mount them at the nearby Bible camp, to remind the children of how fierce nature is and what will happen to them if they masturbate too much and let their dicks consume their lives.

Motherfucker found this a week before the US election. A week before a tangerine clown's performance of hypermasculinity would catapult him into the White House and destroy the fucking planet. A perfect visual metaphor for the folly of man, the folly of reducing the human condition to a gentrified animal kingdom. He who lives by the sword will surely also die. He who waves his broken dick around will get a bunch of idiots killed.

God is screaming at us. We are bad at listening.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

One of the first ways President-Elect Donald Trump screwed me is with all the post-election email chains. Over the past two weeks, friends have reached out with calls to organize, get active, grieve together, please bring cheese. Those of us who weren't already making the world a better place (I write about pop culture, for God's sake) know that it's time to act. But what's much less clear is how to take impactful steps against the orange demagogue who's about to become America's commander in chief. So when Beau Willimon, the creator of House of Cards offered to "facilitate a Culture of Action," it's no surprise he got an overwhelming response. If we have a reality star for a president, we might as well have a showrunner helping lead the opposition.

On November 9, just after Election Day, Willimon threw his hat into the ring by tweeting, "The new movement starts today. Alert your networks. I'll have more info soon about short/long term action items and organizing. #BandTogether." In a world where Lena Dunham is leaving voicemails for Paul Ryan on Instagram and Mark Ruffalo offers up a nude scene in exchange for Hillary votes, it's not rare to see one of our "intellectual" celebs get political. But Willimon's call to action came equipped with places, time, and an apparent desire to follow through. His Action Group Network—which is what he's calling his loose organization—will hold public meetings in nine US cities over the next month.

More than 400 of those concerned citizens showed up at New York's introductory meeting this Saturday. Two dozen volunteers were on hand to wrangle the assembled lawyers, playwrights, parents and children, the director of the left-wing Working Families Party, and at least one House of Cards actor, into a warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Everyone I met was a friend of a friend of Willimon's. One volunteer met him through a friend's Tinder date two years ago and had stayed in touch. Another simply worked at the event space, and when she met Willimon, decided to stay and help set up. It's a testament not just to the hatred Trump inspires, but Willimon's people skills—one 22-year old volunteer called him "empathetic and compassionate"—that an entire South Brooklyn industrial space was filled so quickly.

Willimon has a longer history in politics than most celebrity activists. Before spending all that time with George Clooney to write Ides of March, he did legwork for the Senate campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer and presidential campaigns for Howard Dean and Bill Bradley.

Willimon told me that the goal is to form groups of ten to 50 people who are passionate about the same issue. The network will be "decentralized," although as of now Willimon himself is footing the bill for a staff. He envisions "friends, family, colleagues, working together on the concrete issues that matter to you. That could be electing someone to the school board, linking up with a larger organization like the ACLU, fundraising for something local or national, you name it." At the New York event, speakers' suggestions for "concrete actions" ranged from sending money to underserved abortion clinics to signing the Change.org petition to put Clinton in the Oval Office—Electoral College be damned—to protesting at Steve Bannon's next speaking engagement to tutoring local high school students. Many called attention to hate crimes (and anti-hate crime vigils) local to Brooklyn.

An easy criticism to make of all this is that there are many people fighting these battles already, without the Culture of Action. "If you have a cause that you're interested in, it's best to see what work is already being done in that space, try to get involved, and expand what operations are already happening," New York-based immigration attorney Lauren DeBellis, who also attended the action group meetup, told me. "A lot of groups have already been working on these issues, but now there is an abundance of people who want to get engaged. It's important to remember that a lot of this work is already in place, and there are resources that you can tap into."

Activism, as Willimon is quick to point out, is a habit like any other. A linked network means when the untenable policies start to roll in, people who are already used to spending three hours per week fundraising can switch over to making phone calls or protest signs. "We're creating people that have peer accountability to each other and a shared sense of responsibility," he said. "That overall culture of action will move the needle in a more progressive direction."

Over the course of the three-hour meeting in Brooklyn, Willimon called on individuals as they voiced concerns over the laundry list of issues that the president-elect has promised to trample on: immigration policy, access to abortion, freedom of the press, Medicare, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. Ten issue-focused groups came out of New York's event. OK, not bad for 180 minutes, but now what?

"I hope there's follow-through beyond email," said Fordham professor Eric Anthamatten, who volunteered to head a committee on prison reform. "It's great to see moving out of the hashtag activism, though you look around the room and there's only two or three persons of color here. This is grassroots, but it's already in another tier."

A focus on diversity is something that these action groups might learn from established organizations. Nicolás Ruiz, business agent for the Hotel Trades Council, a hotel worker's union, told me that "black women are the fastest growing group of union members. I hope that concerns post-election will bridge this supposed disconnect among the working class, and between the working class and the rest of the progressive movement."

Renata Pumarol is the communications director for the progressive New York Communities for Change. When I spoke to her about Willimon's efforts, she emphasized the importance of structure when starting an advocacy effort. "People that form groups organically, especially to do unpaid work, also have jobs and families," she said. "It can be hard to keep groups moving without structure, finances, and motivation."

The rush to join Action Group Network—41 cities in 30 states so far—speaks to new communities feeling the motivation that can come from feeling like their rights are under attack.

"There is something refreshing and important about thinking outside of the box, and I do think that new ideas from all different backgrounds can reinvigorate the discussion and techniques we use to approach all these major issues," said Lauren DeBellis. "But from the top down, it must be imparted to everyone who is interested in organizing right now that this is a marathon, not a sprint."

Follow Leah Prinzivalli on Twitter.

Still via 'Workaholics'

This article originally appeared in VICE US.

Let's say you're a person who smokes weed. Maybe you live in California, Massachusetts, Nevada, or Maine—one of the four states that legalized recreational marijuana this month, or the four others where it was already legal. Or maybe you have a prescription to use weed for insomnia, or back pain, or chronic illness, in one of the 28 states with medical marijuana policy on the books. Maybe you roll your own joints; maybe you use a bong. It doesn't really matter.

Now let's say you, a person who smokes weed, are applying for a new job. There's the usual rigmarole—the sending of your résumé, the interview, the formal offer letter. And then the drug test. It seems old-fashioned, but more than half of all employers still ask new hires to pee in a cup to test for narcotics, amphetamines, and yes, marijuana.

You might think this is unfair. You might even think it's illegal, since you and the other people in your state exercised your democratic rights to legalize marijuana where you live. That's what Brandon Coats thought when he was fired from his customer service representative job at Dish Networks for failing a random drug test. Coats had a license and a prescription to use medicinal marijuana. So when he got fired, he was confused: Medical marijuana had been legal in Colorado since 2000. How could his company fire him for doing something totally legal?

Coats could be the poster child for medical weed. He's a quadriplegic, wheelchair bound since age 16, and was prescribed marijuana to treat the persistent leg spasms that come with his paralysis. So when his case went all the way up to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2015, it seemed like few pot smokers could be more sympathetic than him. But the court ruled against him, deciding it's not illegal to discriminate against employees who use weed, medically or recreationally. Dish Networks was perfectly within their rights to fire Coats, and your company can probably fire you, too.

"It's perfectly legal for an employer to fire you for legal off-duty behavior, so making marijuana legal doesn't mean anything," said Lew Maltby, the president and founder of the National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates for employees' rights.

There are two main issues here: First, while individual states have legalized marijuana, it's still illegal—and a Schedule I drug—on the federal level. Federal laws supersede state laws, which basically invalidates any claim that marijuana is legal at all. Or, as Maltby put it, "Legal means legal, not half-legal."

Second, in most states, your employer can actually discriminate against you for the things you do outside of work. (Certain things like race, religion, or sexual orientation are protected.) In 2000, a man in Louisiana—who, by all accounts, was a model employee—was fired from his job for cross-dressing in his free time. A federal judge ruled that his employer could legally do so, because there's no law saying your boss has to be a decent person.

A handful of states specifically prohibit employers from discriminating against employees who use medical marijuana, according to Sachi Barreiro, the employment law editor at Nolo, a publisher of DIY legal guides like Your Rights in the Workplace. In those states—like Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Arizona—people who have prescriptions can't get fired for failing a drug test. But those states are in the minority, and no states with recreational marijuana laws offer similar protections.

Other states—like California, Colorado, and New York—have stronger protections for employees' rights to do what they want when they're off the clock. In California, for example, your boss can't fire you just because you're dating an executive from your company's main competitor. (That actually happened.) But the question of marijuana use is still tricky. Barreiro pointed out that Colorado has some of the strongest protections for employees' off-duty behavior, and even there, the state Supreme Court ruled in Coats's case that employees who use marijuana aren't protected. A number of other medical marijuana patients in other states have sued for wrongful termination, and every single one of them has lost.

Edward Yost with the Society for Human Resource Management, an association for HR professionals, told me that individual employers can make exceptions to their own drug policies or nix drug tests altogether, but it's unlikely for employers to do so unless they're legally obligated. Part of the reason is that employers generally get a discount on their workers' comp insurance premiums for having a drug-free workplace policy. In many cases, employers can also reject claims for employees who fail a drug test, like the tree trimmer in Tennessee who fell ten feet out of a tree and was denied any workers' comp payout because a urine test indicated marijuana use.

"You're going to experience fewer claims if you're prohibiting that sort of behavior in the workplace, so there's almost immediate payback just for implementing the policies," Yost told me.

Legal weed or not, a sea change in how employers drug test their employees probably won't happen anytime soon. Maltby has been writing about the problems with drug tests since the 1980s, pointing out that they're expensive, ineffective, and really easy to cheat. But not much has changed over the years. There's less random drug testing now, but pre-employment drug testing is still the norm for most companies and the legalization of marijuana hasn't changed that.

"Part of this is just politics," Maltby told me. "Nobody wants to be the company that doesn't drug test because they think it will look bad."

If you do find yourself asked to take a drug test in a state that's legalized weed, Maltby said you're "essentially out of luck"—but it's worth talking to your employer about your drug use before taking the test, just in case.

"Pre-employment drug testing is sort of a joke," Maltby told me. "We all go through this ritual where recreational pot smokers switch to martinis when they're doing a job search, and when they get the new job, they go right back to marijuana. Employers know it. They aren't stupid. So there are probably some who will hire people who fail a drug test."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Shūsaku Endo's 1966 novel Silence has been a long time coming, but it looks like it was worth the wait. The trailer, which dropped Tuesday night, is beautiful and meticulous, and sets the film up as a strong awards contender once it's released in December.

The movie follows two Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century—played by Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield—who take a dangerous journey through Japan to spread the word of God and search for their mentor (Liam Neeson).

Scorsese, who originally considered becoming a priest before getting into filmmaking, has been wanting to adapt Endo's book for decades.

"The subject matter presented by Shusaku Endo was in my life since I was very, very young," the director said during a 2015 press conference. "I was very much involved in religion, I was raised in a strong Catholic family... so ultimately this book drew my attention when it was given to me in 1988."

Silence will hit theaters December 23.

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

As a 20-something black Brooklynite, I am the last person you'd expect to compete in the Iowa State Fair's hog-calling contest, let alone win it. But in the summer of 2015, as part of a national road trip for the TV show VICE Does America, I found myself in a scene out of Twin Peaks. My hog-calling competitors were geriatric midwesterners, dressed like Eustace and Muriel Bagge from Courage the Cowardly Dog, who'd mastered the art of communicating with swine long before I was born. Some cried out the traditional "sooie," while others impressed the stoic judges with high-pitched squalls.

When it was my time to hog call, I relied on my love of hip-hop and employed call-and-response. I clapped my hands and stomped my feet on beat, and chanted, "Hey piggy, piggy, pig, pig! Come here!" And the crowd called back, "Come here!" By the end, the whole audience was on their feet. Not only did I win the contest and get this nifty blue ribbon, I was featured on the local news.

I'm told that even though only a few thousand people may have seen my hog call, every one of those farmers is using my "hey, piggy, piggy, pig, pig" in their animal husbandry.

—Wilbert L. Cooper, VICELAND

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

Photo of the Dalai Lama in 2007 via Flickr user Jan Beck

The Dalai Lama, who has a long history of buddying up with sitting US presidents, said Wednesday during a trip to Mongolia that he has "no worries" about Donald Trump winning the presidential election, the Associated Press reports.

Despite the president-elect's derogatory comments towards minority groups throughout his campaign, the 81-year-old spiritual leader believes that once Trump is actually in the Oval Office, he'll reign in some of the vitriol.

"I feel during the election, the candidate has more freedom to express. Now once they reality," The Dalai Lama said, according to AP. "So I have no worries."

The exiled Tibetan leader went so far as to say he'd love to meet up with the president-elect after his inauguration on January 20, though it wasn't clear if a meeting was actually being scheduled.

Stephan (center) with friends at the Venus Expo in Berlin. Photo by Grey Hutton

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I met Stephan Blendinger at an erotic fair in Berlin, while we were both taking a guided tour for blind people. I was there because I wanted to find out how blind people experience an erotic fair, he was there because he has been severely visually impaired since birth and wanted to experience an erotic fair. Stephan is 35, has a one-year-old daughter, and writes and makes podcasts about life with a visual impairment.

In the US, over 7 million people have a visual disability. During the guided tour I realized that I hardly knew anything about what daily life is like for blind people. Stephan was so gracious to answer my most banal questions, like how he uses Facebook (with a voice output or a connectable braille display) and if he ever goes to the cinema (yes, the app Greta describes to him exactly what's going on on the screen).

Stephan had some questions for me too. How can I see in so much detail without the impressions confusing my brain? How can I look at the road and the speedometer at the same time when I drive? After the tour, we sat down so I could ask him some more questions I really wanted answers to.

VICE: Are you turned on by different things compared to people who can see?
Stephan Blendinger: I don't know what it's like for them, but I can't imagine it's that much different—touch, taste, smell. The audio track in porn is usually of pretty low quality, so porn sounds don't interest me much. All that moaning does nothing for me. But if you're watching a video on PornHub, there's a function where a (usually) female voice will explain to you what's going on. And I like listening to audiobooks of erotic literature. Plus: I have two hands that function well and a healthy imagination. Instead of visualizing sex, I just imagine touch and the movement of my body. Smells don't conjure up in your imagination in the same way, though.

You've never seen your girlfriend. Would you want to know if people who can see think she's beautiful—or would you rather not?
You can tell me, but I wouldn't care. I think she's beautiful. She feels good, has a great voice, and does the right things at the right moment. And I have seen her—just with my hands and not my eyes.

Would you want to be able to see yourself, or do you think life is easier when you don't?
I feel pretty attractive. I know I have a bit of a belly, but I don't think there's any point in being bothered by it. Being worried about such things would just ruin your self-confidence and then other people would find you less attractive too.

Blind people can be really racist. Racism is absurd, and it's definitely not just based on what we actually perceive.

Doesn't dating in Berlin suck without Tinder?
There's no Tinder for blind people, but I met my girlfriend in a WhatsApp group for blind people. Those groups are much better organized than groups for people that aren't blind, by the way. Someone once read a chat history of seeing people to me from an iPhone—it was total chaos. Everyone just talks at the same time.

The group where I met my girlfriend was about new technology but there are also other groups—platforms and mailing lists that function as dating sites for people with impaired vision. Most blind people go on normal dating platforms and have everything read out to them over the voice output.

Are blind people less shallow because they won't judge someone based on their looks?
God, no! We're just as shallow but in a different way. I can be shallow about someone's touch or smell. And I can find someone's voice very erotic—I often tell strangers that they have an amazing voice. I've even heard of blind people who only date blonde women—though they won't be able to tell. Shallowness is a character flaw. Vision has nothing to do with it.

Stephan makes sure to look sharp at all times because even though he can't see himself, he knows the majority of the world can

And are blind people less racist?
No, blind people can be really racist. Some might not see skin color, but do use the n-word. Racism is absurd, and it's definitely not just based on what we actually perceive.

What's using alcohol or drugs like for you?
Not too different to people who can see. Marijuana relaxes me while alcohol messes with my orientation. I start staggering and I run into things. I don't drink much though because alcohol makes me sleepy. I have never tried anything like LSD.

Is traveling boring for you?
Well, I'm obviously not the kind of guy who spends a lot of time sightseeing when I'm on holiday. But if there's a historic landmark I could climb into while someone tells me a story about it, I'd be interested in going. I like vacations where I can feel something. Going on a wellness trip to Finland for example, or on an adventure holiday in a canoe down a river. And I like the climate in southern Europe.

Is it painful to think that your one-year-old will soon be better at orientating herself in the world than you?
No, it's not like she'd have to guide me all the time. I have a guide dog and a cleaner who comes in once a week. Of course I tidy up myself too, but ever since I've had my daughter my cleaner comes in to make sure I haven't missed anything. Everything takes longer for me but I change my daughter's diapers and feed her like any other parent. In general, I don't feel the need to be able to see at all—I'm a happy guy. But if I were allowed to see one thing, even if only for a couple of seconds, I'd want to see my daughter.

Are there certain things you're happy about not being able to see?
Yes, there are times I'm happy I don't have to see the suffering in the world, the images of war on the news. I also heard that people in Berlin run around town with a grumpy look on their faces. I don't mind not noticing that, either.

In its continued crackdown on all things fun/probably bad for you, Health Canada is looking to regulate vaping and e-cigarettes, the CBC reports.

Vancouver chef Mike Robbins has poured his heart, soul, and vision into his restaurant AnnaLena (named in tribute to his two grandmothers). In this episode of Connected we follow Mike around Vancouver to meet the artists and designers he draws inspiration from.

Presented by The Chevrolet Spark

Dave Archambault II in August. (AP Photo/James MacPherson, File)

Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has been fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline for over two years, long before it was a national cause celebre. He's led litigation in federal court, met with President Barack Obama, and has called on the Department of Justice to investigate what he calls "the overall militarization of law enforcement response" to peaceful protests at Standing Rock. "To many people," he wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch last month, "the military tactics being used in North Dakota are reminiscent of the tactics used against protesters during the civil rights movement some 50 years ago."

We sat down with Archambault on Sunday in his home in Cannonball, North Dakota, to talk about the camps at Standing Rock, the #noDAPL movement, and protecting the water from contamination. This conversation took place a few miles away from, and about an hour before, activists (who refer to themselves as "water protectors") reported that authorities used rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons against them.

VICE: The camps at Standing Rock have grown from a handful of people to thousands. How do you build a sustainable movement? Can you talk a little about the phenomenon and how the movement has evolved?
Dave Archambault II: I don't think anybody really built this movement. It wasn't me individually or the tribe. What we did was stood up for something that's dear to us, something that's precious—and that's water. Something that we believe is necessary for all life, and we definitely don't want it to be threatened. So when you stand up for something that simple, that basic, it's easy for people to join in. People come from all over, and this movement has taken on a life of its own.

You'll hear about police brutality, or security using dogs—pipeline security's been using dogs on water protectors, different distractions. When you focus on water, it's easy for other interests to come and join in because it is concerning the environment, making sure the environment is protected.

Our whole intention is water. As this grows and it gets bigger and bigger, and as it evolves, the interest isn't really for water anymore. It's more about a conflict between law enforcement and the water protectors and trying to hold ground or trying to advance and that's not what this is about. We're doing everything we can to try to stop this from happening and I don't have any guarantees that it will. But we're putting the best effort forward. All the other issues, all the other distractions, don't help.

How do you stay on message?
I don't think you can keep it on that message. Because it's forever evolving now.

It's easy for different environmentalists, different people to come, and they have their own agendas. There's no way that we can keep everybody focused on the same thing. It's all about being prayerful and peaceful. It's not about a confrontation. We started this to protect our water. We were told by our youth, by our elders, and by the spirits that if you fight this with prayer and peace you will defeat it. But if you use violence, natural law's going to take over and it's going to go underneath this river, and it's going to threaten the water.

Is there a certain patience that's required for that?
I think people come here expecting something to happen and they want to do something, they want to take part in something, so it's easy to get caught up in trying to go to the front line. And we don't always know what is going to happen when they reach that front line. The law enforcement has militarized themselves and they put people at risk, they put lives at risk.

We're not going to go to war. If we do, we're definitely not going to win. We don't have weapons, we don't have a military. So when people come and they say, "We're not doing anything and I feel like my hands are tied like this [ he puts his palms together and holds his hands up ], like they're in prayer"—they don't need to be here. They don't need to be here if they're not willing to stand down and let the Creator do his work. The more violence we create, the more it hurts our cause in fighting this pipeline. We're trying to stop this pipeline. We've been doing really good. If you think about it, this pipeline should have been done. But the work that we've set forth and we continue to do, gives us hope. There's a little bit of hope. But people don't know that, people don't understand that. They think that the camp is the reason why. That's not the reason why. We've been working hard at this for two years. It's not just the last 100 days.

What does the future hold?
The Corps of Engineers did not issue an easement. So they [Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline] don't have the right to cross Corps of Engineers' federal lands.

We've had experts on pipelines weigh in and say this is not the safest thing to do, when we look at all the pipeline breaks across this country.

What I am asking them to do is to reroute, to move the pipeline away from here. They'll say that this is the least impactful route, that's why they chose this route. Whether it's the least impactful or not there's still tribal lands and tribal interest. Indigenous people have a right—and we never were afforded that right—to express our concerns. They knew that we were opposed to this pipeline from the onset. But they were still going to push it through no matter what. When they had alternative routes north of Bismarck they still choose this route.

What is the historical context for what is happening in Standing Rock right now?
Our fight is because we don't want it to happen again. When I say "again," this is history repeating itself. In 1851, we had a treaty. We identified lands that were important to us and that had sacred places to us. No sooner than we signed that, there were encroachments coming and happening by Westerners and Europeans and so the federal government said, "We need to re-negotiate this land." So they took more land. And then in 1877, there was gold discovered in the Black Hills. Gold was used for national security, to back our currency in the United States. For national security reasons, they said they needed to reduce these lands, so in 1889 our lands were reduced even more—millions and millions of acres. Each time these things happen, it creates trauma for the people.

If you look at the ten poorest counties in this nation, five of them come from the Great Sioux Nation. That's because of all of the wrongs. When I said, I opposed this (pipeline), and I told the Corps of Engineers this pipeline can't go here, the response is, "It has to go here because it's national security, if we get our oil extracted from our own lands we don't have to buy from OPEC; it's for economic development and it's for energy independence." National security, economic development, energy independence. Three things in the history (that) were used so this great nation was built off of our backs. It continues to encroach on our rights and our people. What little we have left is this water. The little land that we have left is still there. So we should have a say, we should have a right to it. Whenever that's the excuse, economic development, energy independence, national security, then do it somewhere else. Stop doing it to us. We're saying, don't do it again.

Is there anything that you're not seeing in the coverage of Standing Rock, whether it's misinformation, or something you'd like to see being talked about?
When we stand up for something like this, something as simple as water, it also elevates the whole discussion to what is happening to water around the world. It looks like there's a lot of water out there, but around the world there are people fighting for water. There will be a time when we won't be going to war over oil, but we'll be going to wars over water.

We've seen a big community pop up over there (the camps at Standing Rock). I go down there and I look at the waste. There's a lot of waste. It's a distraction from the water. If we're about this environment, we would be protecting Mother Earth. We wouldn't be hurting her. And yet, we're punching holes all over down there (pitching tents), in Mother Earth. That's a sacred place. But there's no regard. It's about instant gratification. When I look at that camp, I always think: What's going to happen when this is over? Who's going to clean that up? Who's going to put that land back to its natural state? Before this entire movement started, that was some of the most beautiful land around. There was a place down there where eagles, over 100 eagles would come and land. There were game down there—deer, pheasants, elk, geese. Now, it's occupied by people. And when masses of people come to one place, we don't take care of it.

So how do we make it better? I heard that they're digging pits down there for their human waste. That's a flood zone. So when the floodwaters come up, that waste is going to be contaminating the water. We're no different than the oil company, if we're fighting for water. What's going to happen when people leave? Who has to clean it up? Who has to refurbish it? It's going to be us, the people who live here. Not only that, but there are relationships that are being damaged because of unlawful actions, violent actions, violent behavior against law enforcement. Law enforcement lives here. And we live here. The water protectors are going to be gone. When this is all done, I have to go up and clean that up. We have to reestablish our relationships then. So this is a good thing and I welcome everybody because we're all standing up for our water, but are we really mindful of what we're doing? Because, what's going to happen when this is done.

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

There are lots of problems with turning 30. But a big one is talking about turning 30, which has been reduced to cooing tweeness by the Time Out Taliban: the guy in your office wearing a Thundercats T-shirt who's flirting with the girl who thinks silent discos are great while the IT manager tries desperately to chip in about his love of immersive theatre.

Various bits of conversational hot air – stuff like "My hangovers are getting worse!" or "Remember cassettes? Man we're getting old!" – belie the weird anxieties, insecurities and questions that start to creep into your peripheral consciousness as your fourth decade approaches.

Therefore, it's probably worth having a sober discussion about a few ideas, behaviours and situations you might engage in or experience once you're three years too late to join the 27 Club. So let's go: here's a guide to turning 30 for men.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOW A PLACE FOR QUIET DIGNITY

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

I mean, it always was and always should be – your opinions are terrible and your personal life is boring – but now more than ever, the urge to post a passive aggressive tweet aimed at a recent ex ("Glad to be rid of excess baggage lol #helloladies") or a caps lock rage-status about something minor ("JONOTHON ROSS GET OFF MY TV YOU FUCKING MUG CUNT!!!!1!") should be resisted.

You see, even though it's actually not – it's still totally gross and people are still embarrassed for you – acting out dramas and emotions in a public forum in your early twenties seems kind of OK; the passion of youth has taken hold and you're living it – you're Blake and Amy fighting in the street, you're Christian Slater telling it like it is in Pump Up the Volume, you're Robbie Williams when he quit Take That and bleached his hair.

However, things change pretty quick: throw a barney or make a scene in front of other people at 30 and I'm afraid you're Courtney Love flashing her crotch at an awards ceremony. You might not quite be rid of your infantile inclinations yet, but you at least have to start not broadcasting them to your friends and colleagues, because stoicism and discretion are qualities you really should have developed by now.

READ: Things You Learn When a Long-Term Relationship Collapses in Your Twenties

MOVIE REMAKES AREN'T RUINING YOUR CHILDHOOD, YOU FUCKING BABY

Finding out that your grandfather murdered sex workers and threw their bodies into the lake you used to fish in together would ruin your childhood memories. Jurassic World is just another movie you can choose to ignore. You're 30 years old; don't you have more important things to worry about than the production of a film for children, based loosely on another movie for children that you sometimes watch when you're hungover? Why are you even talking about this nonsense out loud?

YOUR BODY ISN'T WHAT IT WAS

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

By now, Facebook's "Memories" thing should have made you well aware that you are not the bright-eyed, snake-hipped young thing that took 2006 by the balls. The unceasing march of time – along with 10+ years of lager, bad food, no exercise and cheap drugs – means that compared to any photo of your 20-year-old self you now look like Orson Welles' bloated corpse, and that can definitely get a guy down. But never fear: there are a couple of ways around this, and both are addressed in the AA serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

That is to say: if you're going bald, suck it up and shave your head; and if you're getting fat, stop eating burritos every day for lunch, drink less alcohol and do some exercise. Your metabolism isn't the robust young princeling it once was.

WEDDINGS SEEM TO BE HAPPENING A LOT

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

At this point, it's probably clear that this article is for the benefit of man-children, rather than those of you with your life together – the assumptions being that you're childless and unmarried at the very least, and most probably single, living in a large metropolitan area and engaging in an extended adolescence because you are, frankly, not really a proper person yet. You are my people, and even now I am a married man, you are still my people.

Anyway. Do you own a suit? Maybe you should get a suit. If you've been even marginally personable in the last three decades, then the next few years will require your attendance at a number of weddings

Weddings are almost always super fun: expect to jostle and nudge your friends through the ceremony to the ire of an older attendee; expect to do cocaine in portaloos; expect to explain what a social media manager is to an interested elderly relative of the one half of the couple you don't know very well; expect to shudder through the bride's father being unaccustomed to public speaking or even reading aloud; expect to flirt with someone and then realise they're there with someone else; expect to have a relatively involved conversation with a priest when you're six pints deep; expect to dance with a fun child who thinks you're cool; expect to thoroughly enjoy the wedding band's version of "Tainted Love"; expect to spill dessert on your suit and put it away without cleaning it the next day and be annoyed at yourself when you get it out again months later; expect to be woken up by someone knocking on your hotel room door telling you there's five minutes 'til checkout.

Sounds fun, right? It's definitely not ideal that people keep getting married on weekdays these days, but it's often worth taking the holiday day for.

ALSO, BABIES SEEM TO BE HAPPENING A LOT

You're going to lose some friends to parenting in the immediate future, and you're not allowed to gripe and moan about it, because complaining about someone giving up doing drugs on a Wednesday night to raise a child is absolutely a ridiculous and morally terrible thing to do.

Here are some tips for dealing with your friends' babies:

– To avoid confusion, don't comment on the weight or facial features of a baby directly; you're bound to offend because you're not used to being earnest and sincere, and you're going to make people feel weird. Just say it's beautiful or say "wow" a lot.

– Always support their head and don't act too nervous because it makes you look like you're not a human being.

– Try not to be very drunk or on cocaine around the baby if you can help it. People, for some reason, get very protective around their own children and don't like erratic behaviour to be going on around them. Even if you don't do anything weird, the parents will still hate you for being reckless and keep you away from their child forever and you'll have lost two friends.

WATCH: 'High Society: Inside the UK's Ecstasy Underworld'

YOUR 30TH BIRTHDAY PARTY ISN'T A BIG DEAL

You know how when you were at school and you had it drummed into you that exam results were the be-all and end-all of your existence and if you didn't knock it out the park you'd die, and then when you got out of school you realised that was total nonsense? It's the same with your 30th birthday party. You'll be fine whatever happens.

It's not really important what you do or don't do, what people bring you or even who turns up: it's not your last night of freedom before a 10-stretch, so just arrange to have a nice time with some nice people without worrying about the minutiae and it'll be a blast. If it's not, that's not a big deal either – you should just laugh about it and move on, because Jesus Christ you're 30 years old.

YOUR BAND MIGHT NOT HAPPEN, SORRY

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

This only really applies to "band" guys who want to be rock stars – you completely get a pass if you're making some kind of weird metal or you produce off-beat electronic music, or whatever. In that case, keep plugging away forever; there are lots of genres that don't care about bald patches, boring clothes or beer guts, but if arena tours and MTV Awards are your plan, strap in, because this is going to sting a little:

As you hit 30, the concern should be that despite what the note that accompanies your demo says, you may not actually have a bold, fresh take on indie rock, and in fact you may be in possession of a dated, uninspired take on indie rock. If that thought hasn't at least crossed your mind, then you're conflating self belief with a total lack of realism and self awareness, and you need to buck up.

There's a couple of reasons why stuff might not have happened for you yet. One is that if you've been doing the same stuff since 2007 and no one's gone for it in eight years, maybe you're the problem? The other is that there's a chance you might be out of touch with what the kids want. Be really honest with yourself about this stuff, and then take the appropriate action (stop, manage your own expectations or change things up), because remember how lame you thought the old guys in the support band were when you were 22? You're those guys now. "Elder statesmen of the scene" isn't really a thing; everyone thinks you're just kind of gross and old.

(And stop sending demo CDs to music magazines, granddad, they've got enough to worry about and laptops don't have CD drives any more.)

SOME PEOPLE'S RELATIONSHIPS ARE GETTING SERIOUS AND SOME AREN'T

People are getting married and having babies and buying houses and that's fine, and some people aren't doing any of those things and are watching a lot of old episodes of Bottom on YouTube – and that's fine, too. Have you noticed that the only times you'll have someone telling you that you need to worry about your relationship seriousness levels are when you visit weird websites that need to fill content quotas and when you visit weird retired relatives who need to fill time before they die? Just be you, kiddo – if they don't like it they can get fucked.

YOUR PARENTS ARE GETTING ON A BIT

Yeah, watch out for that. They're not as sprightly as they once were. They're tired a lot and they talk over each other on speakerphone about the garden in an increasingly befuddled way every time you call them. Bury the hatchet on any post-adolescent nonsense disagreements you might have with them, because unless they're religious weirdos who hate you for being gay, they're probably OK at their core, and their generation didn't have a name for passive aggression when they were growing up, so they still think it's a super clever way of getting you to do stuff – but just ignore it and be their pal.

You like the same football team as your dad, and you and your mum both enjoy watching Midsomer Murders. If those are the only things you've got, just focus on them and the rest of the stuff will probably come with time, because imagine if they died and you were essentially still mad at them for making you take out your nose ring for school when you were 15.

NO MORE HI-TOP TRAINERS, TIGHT SHIRTS AND TIGHT JEANS

(Photo: robertfosterrobertfoster.tumblr.com)

The time has come to behave with a little dignity. As always, do whatever you want, but these are irrefutable facts: hi-top trainers (Jordans, et al) look best on alert, energetic young hustlers, like how you were when you were 22. Tight shirts look best on gaunt, barely-there, elegantly-wasted amphetamine enthusiasts, like how you were when you were 22. And tight jeans look best on young, lythe and sexually adventurous androgynes, like you were when you were 22.

Not a single one of these things look good on a pudgy lager-fiend with receding hair and no jawline. You look like a grape with two toothpicks stuck in it, so maybe call time on this stuff garments and switch things up.

IF YOU'RE SAD ABOUT GETTING OLDER, IT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE HAD A GOOD TIME

If this list of admonishments and cold hard truths about the passage of time has depressed you, be reassured that being miserable about the end of one's youth only really happens to people who were young in the first place. If you didn't engage with youth culture and got a straight job and only listened to Drivetime radio and never did drugs and never had dramas and never stayed up all night and never wore weird clothes, never got in fights or fought the power in any way, then 30 is the same as the other 29 years, so be thankful that you had the youth you had, and use it to inform your adulthood.

@bobfoster83

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Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and check out the Michael book!

Delete your account. Screenshot via Instagram

Update: Serpentine has since removed the ads and issued an apology.

When George Okoronkwo saw the email blast from Toronto clothing boutique The Serpentine, promoting its Black Friday Sale, his first thought was, "WTF? This can't be real. Nobody is that stupid."

That's because The Serpentine, located in the affluent Yorkville neighbourhood, has appropriated #BlackLivesMatter to sell its high end men's clothing.

An email from the shop uses the subject line "#BLACKFRIDAYSMATTER."

"All Sales Can't Matter Until Black Friday Sales Matter," it continues, and then features a large black and white image of what appears to be a civil rights protest, with the aforementioned hashtag superimposed in red all-caps.

The wording about the sale also uses activist-type language i.e. "mobilize locally; support globally; 20-40% in store only; Friday Nov. 25th to Sunday Nov. 27th." In fine print, it says "This message is brought to you and approved by Black Stephen."

The store's Instagram profile also features three images of the civil rights protest photos with the hashtag.

However there appears to be no link to an actual civil rights cause.

Reached by phone Wednesday, a man who described himself as " management" (but would not provide his name), became defensive when VICE questioned him about appropriating a Black Lives Matter slogan.

"What's the problem with that?" he demanded, seeming incredulous at the idea that the slogan is specific to Black Lives Matter. "How is it specific?"

When asked if the sale was connected to Black Lives Matter he said, "no, not at all actually."

He noted that past Black Friday campaigns by Serpentine have "always been very racy and controversial." (Their spring and summer collections appear to feature dead children and gagged women.)

Spring and summer 2016. Screenshot via Instagram

When VICE called back for further comment, a man who identified himself as Paul, an owner, said he is white and the other owner, Stephen, is black.

"We're not going to address something so stupid. It's not any kind of ploy to sell clothing. We sell the highest end brands in the city and we have great customers, black, white, Chinese, Indian, every culture," he said.

Paul dismissed the critics as "people that don't shop at our store, people that are always trying to find the worst angle in everything."

"All of our campaigns, if you knew anything about our store, have always been plays of words... But now people are deciding to find a problem with it." Responding to the backlash on Instagram, the shop noted, "the colour palette of our product assortment is dark in nature and predominantly black."

Okoronkwo, who is black, told VICE the marketing scheme is insulting and the fact that one of the owners is black "just makes it more sad."

"The Black Lives Matter movement is already fighting an uphill battle to getting themselves to be taken seriously, which in itself is mind boggling, but when things like this come up it shows that companies like The Serpentine are missing the point or that they really just don't care about black lives."

Several Instagram comments posted Wednesday morning denounced the campaign as "tasteless," "tone deaf," and "a disgusting appropriation of people's struggle to sell clothes."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Jeff Sessions endorses Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president during a campaign rally at Madison City Schools Stadium in Madison, Alabama, February 28, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

As part of an endless flood of post-mortem election analysis, journalists and researchers recently began noticing a striking correlation between high local rates of opioid overdose deaths (and other indicators of despair and poor health) and a shift in swing state voters from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. Which makes it bitterly ironic that these voters may ultimately prove responsible for unleashing the greatest threat to drug policy reform in recent history. While it remains far from clear where, exactly, the Trump administration will take us, the era of slow but real progress away from absolute criminalization of drugs has likely come to a halt.

During the Obama years, a surprisingly bipartisan consensus on drug policy began to take shape, rejecting first the rhetoric and then key components of the actual drug war of the 80s and 90s. Politicians and even police chiefs began to accept that harsh mandatory minimums fill prisons rather than fighting drugs. Across the country and the political divide, many took to repeating the mantra that there's no way to " arrest our way out of" drug problems.

Increased access to medication treatment for opioids is actually one of the few potential bright spots for drug policy in the near future

In recent years, at least 32 states have passed Good Samaritan laws to protect people who save the lives of overdose victims from prosecution for minor drug crimes. The federal ban on funding for needle exchange finally toppled, and state, local and federal efforts have dramatically increased the availability of the overdose reversal drug, naloxone.

At least 21 cities or other localities are setting up or actually running programs to stop arresting low-level drug suspects and offer them voluntary access to services like housing and treatment. And this year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which has never previously backed off on efforts to ban substances, did so (at least temporarily) in the face of intense opposition to its attempt to prohibit kratom, an herb that many people take for pain or to treat opioid addiction.

Meanwhile, 28 states have now legalized medical marijuana and eight states and DC have legalized recreational use, with the feds taking a hands-off approach even though the drug remains schedule I. Indeed, starting with California's landmark medical marijuana initiative in 1996, the US has seemed to be on a slow but clear path to more realistic and humane ways of dealing with drug issues for two decades now.

Last week, the Surgeon General released what was intended to be a landmark report on addiction, calling for a public health approach that emphasizes treatment and even harm reduction programs. Although in my view, it didn't go nearly far enough— a true public health approach cannot involve criminalization of any drug possession and requires radical reform to drug treatment—it may now stand as a sad reminder of where America was once headed.

Tom McLellan, board chair of the Treatment Research Institute and former deputy drug czar in the Obama administration, was a science editor of that report. He says it offers sound guidance for the next president. "Of the issues that are facing the US, one that is serious and agreed on by both parties is substance use disorders, and so I cannot imagine any responsible administration failing to address it," he tells me.

Sarah Wakeman, MD, medical director for substance use disorders at Massachusetts General hospital, adds, "The best thing about this report is how it addresses head-on the false notion that treating opioid use disorder with methadone or buprenorphine is a substitution or that treated individuals are 'addicted' to methadone. More broadly, the report's focus on evidence-based treatment and how it presents the information using research rather than opinion or belief is crucial."

Increased access to medication treatment for opioids is actually one of the few potential bright spots for drug policy in the near future. Trump has said he supports better access to maintenance drugs and wants to lift the cap that allows doctors to see only 275 patients for such treatment with buprenorphine. Here, he may be guided by his buddy Newt Gingrich, who, along with Patrick Kennedy and Van Jones, has started an organization to promote increased use of medication treatment.

Unfortunately, Trump's reported nomination of Alabama's Jeff Sessions to be attorney general bodes ill for evidence-based drug policy on other fronts. One of the many reasons Sessions was rejected by the Senate for a judgeship in 1986 was his "joke" that he thought the KKK was OK until he learned some of its members smoke marijuana. He said as recently as this past April that "good people don't smoke marijuana," and has been one of the biggest obstacles to bipartisan efforts to reduce harsh federal sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

Check out our Daily VICE segment on the military vets guarding legal weed (and the cash it produces) in Colorado.

While Trump has said he will respect states' rights and continue to allow those that have legalized both medical and recreational use of the drug in spite of federal law to do so, Sessions could undo these efforts with the stroke of a pen. "One can imagine he might try to more aggressively enforce federal law even in states that have legalized, and he has the authority to do it," says Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard and at the conservative Cato Institute.

"Sessions is a drug warrior," adds Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at New York University. "They could shut down the non-medical parts of the legal industry just by getting injunctions. They can't do that to the medical folks because of the appropriations rider," a past congressional move that bans use of federal money for such enforcement.

"The end results are the same. We are fucked." —Carl Hart

Other experts think a total reversal is unlikely, at least when it comes to weed policy at the state level. Carl Hart, who chairs the psychology department at Columbia University (and, full disclosure, with whom I worked on a book project several years ago), suspects that the marijuana states will be left alone. "Sessions isn't going to go after marijuana states because of all the state's rights rhetoric," Hart says. "He isn't stupid, nor is Trump. Too many well placed white folks care deeply about marijuana."

But new reforms now seem to be in limbo. Trump's "law and order" rhetoric and Sessions' support for draconian drug sentences make further federal movement on mandatory minimum sentencing tougher to envision. I, for one, had hoped America's growing rejection of incarceration as a way to deal with marijuana use would lead to reconsideration of locking people up for any type of drug possession. I had also hoped that the more treatment and harm-reduction focused policies that have emerged in response to the opioid epidemic might be allowed to grow. (A request for comment from President-elect Trump's transition team was not returned prior to publication.)

For now, those of us who care about helping people with addiction and using science to guide more humane approaches to drugs should be bracing for a tough fight ahead. As Hart puts it, "I predict that drug policy will continue to be used as a tool to further marginalize the poor and specific racial groups (e.g. blacks). This quietly happened during the Obama years, but under Trump it will be explicit, loud and celebrated. The end results are the same. We are fucked."

I hope he's wrong, but fear he's right.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

The Boys. Photo via Facebook.

Ah, the Trailer Park Boys.

For years Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles have been the voice of Canada's lost and stoned generation. Since 1999, the holy trinity of Canadian dope smokers has been giving us Rickyisms and teaching us valuable lessons.

Now, it seems that life is imitating art as the trio just signed a deal that will see them bring TBS branded weed to the public.

It doesn't take rocket appliances to know that it's probably a good move. I mean, who out there who hasn't wanted to smoke some of that driveway hash or hopefully grab a bag of weed entitled "Green Bastard" or "Steve French?"