The New York City subway is the lifeblood of the city, outgoing MTA chairman Thomas Prendergast said the other night—that is, the sort of circulatory system that people tend to move through, drift through like blood cells (5,650,610 each weekday, to be precise), not a place they move to. On New Year's Eve, it was the opposite: six stories down was the figurative height of urban accomplishment, a gleaming destination unto itself. The crazy idea of launching the Second Avenue Subway at a New Year's Eve party inside a subway station—of launching the subway at all, on deadline—was Governor Cuomo's, said the governor, who was standing on a dais above a crowd of well-dressed revelers and not far from a black sign hanging on the wall that said, miraculously, in white Helvetica letters, "72 STREET. 24 HOUR BOOTH."

"I said to my family, I said, 'You know how about this for an idea? We have a New Year's Eve party in the new subway station.' And they gave me that look, like you know, 'There's crazy Dad again!' But, I said, 'This is unlike any subway station you've ever seen. You look at this mezzanine level, which subway stations normally don't have. It's open, it's airy. You look at the public art that is in all these stations, it is amazing." Here, the walls were decorated with amusing, live-size mosaic portraits of everyday New Yorkers by artist Vic Muniz, including one of a couple of bulky, bearded Brooklynites holding hands. Cuomo did not mention that, nor did he acknowledge another obvious amazement: the station was litter-free, with not a rat in sight.

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On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that president-elect Donald Trump was apparently working with advisors to restructure the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), according to a source close to the transition.

In order to revamp the ODNI—the head US intelligence office that focuses on how the different spy agencies coordinate—Trump supposedly wanted to cut down jobs at the CIA headquarters in Virginia and send more agents out into the field. The president-elect was said to be working with his new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Mike Pompeo, who he tapped as incoming CIA director, on the plan.

"The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized," the source told the Journal. "The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact."

Trump has continually mocked and criticized the US intelligence community in response to the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security's assessments that Russia was behind the hacks that interfered with the US election and attempted to sway it in Trump's favor.

Following the Journal's report, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer immediately refuted the claim, telling Politico, "There is no truth to this idea of restructuring the intelligence community infrastructure... It is 100 percent false."

Trump also appeared to respond to the report on Twitter, reminding the American public that he is actually "a big fan" of the intelligence community.

The CIA, Flynn, and Pompeo have yet to comment on the alleged plans to restructure. Trump is set to receive a full report on the election hacks from the CIA, FBI, and Director of National Intelligence on Friday.

This post has been updated to include Sean Spicer's comments.

I'm not ashamed to say that—as a buck toothed, chubby and nervous 13 year old kid—Limp Bizkit were my life. While other hormonal teenagers found solace in writing diary entries or booting footballs against brick walls, my pursuit of choice led me toward moshpits helmed by Fred Durst. In accordance with his vision, I started wearing reverse Red Yankees hats to family dinners and re-labelled the sex I wasn't having yet as "nookie." One time, somewhere around the year 2000, I met Durst backstage at Reading Festival. He signed my t-shirt, and I have never come close to being as happy in a singular moment since.

The millennium was a strange time for music and in general. The world was in a deep juju of the Tony Blair years; before Afghanistan, 9/11, and the start of George W. Bush's presidency. Everything was not fine, obviously, but the cloudburst of imminent doom that gathers with every tweet about the world now was easier to avoid back then. Optimism, camo print, and wallet chains were deployed without a single whiff of irony. Perhaps it was these conditions—the only possible conditions—that allowed a group of four guys from Florida, one of whom only appeared inexplicably in full body paint, to earnestly combine rap and rock to become the biggest band on the planet. As memories of me attending a house party in enormous jeans will attest, it was a time when we were all much less crippled by the cyclical paranoia of self-awareness.

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FXX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia begins its 12th season on Thursday, an impressive feat for a sitcom, especially one in the current cancelation-happy era. Last April, the show was renewed for both a 13th and 14th season, which would tie it with The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–1966) for longest-running live-action sitcom. It helps that the seasons run short—between seven and 15 episodes, most often only ten—which keeps the series from overstaying its welcome each season, and maybe also allowing the writers to put ideas on hold for next year.

It's clear that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has staying power. Sunny and You're the Worst are the only shows that are still around after being moved from FX to FXX, a spin-off channel that was less availablethan the original in most cable packages. Totally Biased, Legit, and Wilfred were all canceled after moving to the newer network. (The League—which bears some thematic similarities to Sunny—had three seasons left in it.) But the question isn't so much whether Sunny can sustain a big enough audience to keep chugging along, but how relevant the show is to 2017. From the get-go, Sunny mined comedy from terrible people doing terrible things while avoiding being actually offensive itself—but how does that formula hold up now, when we seem more aware than ever of real-life terrible people doing terrible things?

The 12th season premiere, "The Gang Turns Black," is perhaps most indicative of the uncomfortableness of watching such a gloriously offensive show. It's a cringe-worthy setup: The gang, which has never shown to be accepting of other races (the pilot, after all, was titled "The Gang Gets Racist," and it still holds up on re-watch more than a decade later), are electrocuted while watching The Wiz and wake up to find themselves trapped in a musical—and black.

Still, I was cautiously optimistic about this episode because It's Always Sunny has always been one of my favorite comedies, even during some of the more uneven later seasons, and it's usually astute at taking these sort of storylines and flipping them into something that catches you off guard. But it's an episode that comes off as boringly, lazily offensive instead of one that's clever and funny underneath a gleefully off-putting and crude surface.

What Sunny does best is use its cleverness to find humor in shitty, anti-PC, asshole characters who are to be pitied and hated, not loved. The exception is Charlie, who is often surprisingly sweet and pure, mostly due to being too dumb to really know what's going on. This is at play in "The Gang Turns Black," too, in the scene where Charlie plainly (but through song) explains his fucked-up life to police officers without ever realizing how alarming it is to an outsider. But it's a joke that falls flat because we're expected to also find humor in the fact that the officers aren't seeing an adult white man singing this, but instead a black child. This would be iffy in most cases, but this particular episode is especially uncomfortable in our current climate. (Spoiler: The musical-within-the-episode ends with Charlie, still being seen by others as the black boy, getting shot by police.) I guess this is Sunny's effort at trying to do something elaborate and ambitious, "boldly" tackling race, and to start the season off with a (literal) bang, but it just doesn't translate—maybe Sunny is best when it goes smaller.

That all said, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia hasn't lost what made it great in the first place. The premiere may have been messy, but the other eight episodes screened for critics are a wonderful mixed bag, and some remain as rude and charming as the previous seasons. That's been the case with Sunny lately: For every two good episodes, there's often one not-so-good one that you mentally mark as skippable during the next binge. At this point, it's a hit-or-miss show, but the fact that the hits still outnumber the misses at this point is pretty impressive.

There are episodes in season 12 that are both great and relevant. In one that involves Boko Haram and reaches new levels of insanity, perpetually put-upon Dee scrolls through social media on her phone and remarks on howit's made up of "people calling me a bitch—a flat-chested bitch. Pretty much everybody wants to rape me." It's comical within context, and it's relatable to any woman who's spent any time on the internet. One of the standouts of the season is a parody mixture of Making a Murderer and The Jinx. It's bent to fit into the Sunny world, and it's laugh-out-loud funny, but it's also deft at reflecting back both why we are obsessed with dark true crime series and the ways they can feel gross and exploitative. Another highlight revolves around one character yelling out a slur while saving another's life; it's aptly titled "Hero or Hate Crime?" There are conversations about slurs and free speech and problematic words, all topics that have become more prominent since the show began all those years ago. It's Always Sunny is no longer at the top of its game, but it's comforting to know that the more the world changes, the more the gang stays the same.

2016 was a fucked year—in many ways, you could say we fucked ourselves. This is especially true if you take that sentence literally, and, even more so, depressing if you see the overlap between real-world phenomena like Donald Trump and the amount of people actually beating their meat to him and Boris Johnson. (No seriously)

If you're thinking "WTF" about that last sentence, just know that this is all according to the most recent data released by PornHub from their 2016 Year in Review. From virtual reality to Overwatch; Kim K to Ivanka Trump, here's our breakdown of the most surprising and disturbing things people wanked to in 2016.

Virtual Reality

From Black Mirror to Her, pop culture has largely painted the idea of virtual sex as something taboo—a concept generally devoid of humanity that leaves the participant depressed, drained, and lonely after having climaxed with a non-human entity.

But according to the data the world doesn't agree with that assertion at all. In fact, across the board, searches for virtual reality porn skyrocketed like no other category. With just 1,800 videos available, PornHub has clocked in over 38 million searches in the nine months since they first launched the service, and searches for "VR" rank as the highest-trending search in a number of countries.

"With respect to enjoying the VR content on Pornhub, it seems Asian countries are the ones most interested in VR porn," PornHub said in their report, noting the lack of Western countries that have caught onto the trend.

"China, Thailand and Hong Kong are the top three countries where VR is most searched (proportionate to their total searches) while countries a little over to the west like Egypt and Chile round up the top 10."

Fantasy VS Fiction

Similarly, the introduction of massively-successful multiplayer games like Overwatch and Pokémon Go yielded a sharp increase in the amount of searches for items related to their content. Tracer (a character in Overwatch) was rivaled only by the timeless sexual objectification of Lara Croft—Croft leading Tracer by a mere 77,000 searches overall.

Take out the competition between video game characters and pit them against real life, however, and the story changes. Overwatch, for example, was searched for more frequently than the all-popular, everlasting category of "anal."

"It appears that the trend is moving more toward fantasy than reality. 'Generic' porn is being replaced with fantasy specific or scenario specific scenes. Is this as a result of boredom or curiosity? One thing is certain; the typical 'in-out, in-out' no longer satisfies the masses, who are clearly looking for something different," says Dr. Laurie Betito, a sex therapist quoted in the PornHub report.

On that end, Harley Quinn—after the release of the 'meh' Suicide Squad—was another popular fictional character to wank to this year. In countries like Italy and Russia, Quinn was one of the most frequently searched and quickest-growing terms, and ended up being the most highly-searched movie character all year (almost 7 million searches more than Batman).

Pop Culture and Trump-ism

When it comes to real people, it wasn't porn stars who dominated PornHub's search engines in 2016. Nope. It was celebrities. Kim Kardashian—despite having only released a single sex tape almost a decade ago—was the third-most searched term all year, and her sex tape remains the most-searched PornHub item of all time. The Kardashian empire—including Kylie Jenner—also netted huge search numbers on this front.

Of course, this wouldn't be a 2016 list without Trump. Among all celebrity searches, Donald Trump ranked 4th. Just below Kim K, Kylie Jenner, and Angelina Jolie, and towering above the rest of his family—including his wife Melania and his daughter Ivanka. Interestingly, despite the sexual fascination the internet has for Ivanka, it was her sister Tiffany that got the most attention. Since her father's presidential win, searches for Tiffany Trump increased 2548 percent.

If you go a little bit lower, you'll find Hillary Clinton, Boris Johnson, and Theresa May also in the top 20. Why people want to see old, decrepit politicians (or, more accurately, their pornstar doppelgangers) fuck each other is beyond us, but, hey, we're not judging.

Who's Watching?

Well, for starters, millennials (obviously) are watching the most porn. Viewers aged 18—34 make up 60 percent of PornHub's viewership, while those who are 65+ make up just 4 percent. Is anyone actually surprised? Also worth noting is the fact that people are watching more frequently on mobile phones than ever before. PornHub says their usage of mobile devices from 2010 is up 1424 percent, which means less spolooge on keyboards, more on touchscreens.

Unsurprisingly, the US makes up the biggest chunk of PornHub's viewership—40 percent of all views go to them. The UK comes second, Canada comes third despite its relatively small population, and India is fourth. Japan—well-known for being pioneers of taboo sex culture and strange dongles for our Johns—jumped up to fifth place this year.

At the very bottom is South Africa, Belgium, Argentina, and Sweden. Why do these countries not watch as much porn? No idea. Maybe they value their socks more than Canadians.

The Gender Gap—What Do Women Watch?

This is where things get slightly *thinking emoji*. Apparently, Brazilian and Filipino women are more open to watching porn than the rest of the top 20—35 percent of PornHub's Brazilian and Philippine viewers are reportedly women. But, more interestingly, Jamaica—not actually in the top 20 list for porn viewership—had the highest rate of female viewers of any country, sitting at the near gender parity of 46 percent.

PornHub also notes that countries like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia—typically at the top of the porn consumption food chain—were ranked among the lowest for sporting female viewers.  

But How Long Do They Last?

For some reason that is beyond us, Philippines has been (and was able to remain) the top-ranked country for amount of time spent per session on the site for over a year now. Exactly as they were in 2015, the average session for a Philippine PornHub viewer is user  12 minutes and 45 seconds. This number is crazy for the simple fact that no one even gets close. The next country on the list is South Africa, who bumped their average viewing time up from 10 minutes 34 seconds in 2015, to 10 minutes 45 seconds in 2016. South Africa is followed closely by the US (10:15), Canada (9:49), and Australia (9:44).

Cuba and Mongolia stayed lowkey by continuing their trend of getting on and getting off in under 5 minutes (impressive!). Bolivia clocked in just a bit higher, at 6:41.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

When it was released in 1999, Fight Club was seen by many critics as a damning statement about consumerist culture, the de-humanizing roles forced on men by American capitalism, and the excesses of masculinity. In fact, Empire described the movie adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel as possessing "a great deal of sick humor at the expense of masculinist ideals and white-collar society." Its director, David Fincher, was largely lauded for having captured the zeitgeist.

But the legacy of Fight Club may end up being quite different. In the decade and a half or so after its release and reception as a cult classic, Fight Club has been embraced by the loose collection of radical online male communities (known as the "manosphere") as a kind of gospel text.

Members of these groups, who congregate around sites like Return of Kings, Masculine Empire, and The Red Pill subreddit, attribute the ills of Western society to the decline of traditional gender roles. All of them—pick up artists and men's rights activists alike—share a deeply ingrained hostility towards women, and more importantly, feminism. Think articles titled "Five reasons you should date a girl with an eating disorder".

They dichotomize men into two types: 'alpha' and 'beta.' Alpha males are dominant, tough, brutish, and have regular sex with attractive women; betas are weak, emasculated, and sympathize with social justice warriors. (Unsurprisingly, many are fans of Donald Trump, and some men's rights activists have also flocked to join the so-called alt right.)

If you're one of the few who hasn't seen Fight Club, the plot is relatively straightforward: Anomic 30-something Jack (Edward Norton) creates an alter ego, the macho and anarchic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Durden creates a movement which sees disenfranchised men meeting up to physically beat the shit out of each other, eventually forming a group called Project Mayhem. His ultimate goal: Destroy the pillars of corporatism so men will once again regain their importance and purpose.

Read more on Broadly

Fire marshals woke Que Pequeno and his four roommates up on the morning of December 5 with orders for them to vacate their home within an hour while his seven other roommates were out for the day. A Facebook Live video by one of Que's roommates shows tenants' belongings lined up against the building wall later that afternoon as they go back and forth with police and city officials. In the video, police officers and tenants argue about how much time they were given to round up their things, with officers insisting that tenants had four hours. "They gave us one hour—well they said it was one hour—it was actually 20 minutes," Que tells me over the phone hours after the eviction. The same was said to police by his roommate who broadcasted the eviction. "They gave us 20 minutes to get everything we could. And they boarded up the doors."

The space they occupied in Central Baltimore was the Bell Foundry—a warehouse-like studio space where artists have lived for the past seven years. Que had been operating out of a studio at the Bell Foundry since April, and has made it his mission to organize music events in the building's basement to give black artists of the city's DIY community a platform to perform. Since the closing of The Bell Foundry, spaces in Denver, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Dallas, and other cities are currently in danger of being shut down as well, if they haven't already. This has forced and motivated the national DIY community to unite to help fight off a potential mass-closing by maneuvering through digital and physical barricades for solutions.

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A torture scene captured on video and broadcast on Facebook Live has resulted in grave criminal charges—including a hate crime—for four people in Chicago alleged to have victimized a man in the extreme while denigrating him for being white.

The video shows an unnamed man—an 18-year-old with "special needs," according to CNN—bound, gagged, and cowering as his black assailants repeatedly beat and insult him, cut apart his clothes, and slash his scalp with a razor. In the video, they can be heard shouting "fuck white people," "fuck Donald Trump," and forcing their victim to say, "I love black people," while crawling on his hands and knees.

Now, police say 18-year-olds Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, and Brittany Covington who posted the video, along with 24-year-old Tanishia Covington, will be prosecuted for kidnapping, unlawful restraint, battery with a deadly weapon, and burglary, in addition to their hate-crime charge.

Wednesday, before the announcement of charges, Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson called the event "sickening" and said, "It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that?"

The video circulated online earlier this week, provoking a debate about whether this was a hate crime. Democratic strategist and CNN commentator Symone Sanders argued against the hate-crime charge Wednesday, saying it was more of a political crime. "Hate crimes are because of a person's racial ethnicity, their religion, gender, disability—not political leanings because someone doesn't like your political leanings so they do something bad to you, that is not a hate crime," Sanders told CNN.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told the press Thursday afternoon that he had not yet spoken to President Obama about the event. But Earnest was confident that he "would be angered by the images that are depicted on that video."

With a new year comes new beginnings, one that's free of all that came to define 2016: the early death of every musician you ever loved, escalating violence in the middle east, and the election of a generously proportioned tangerine-colored womp rat who's currently plotting to take away your grandmother's insurance.

It might also be time to free yourself from the clutches of the booze habit that so generously helped you survive such a disastrous year. No doubt you have your reasons to quit drinking—you want to lose weight, sleep better, save cash, stop embarrassing yourself at karaoke, and so forth. Respectable. But the challenge won't be easy. Here's how to get started:

Enlist a friend or spouse. Misery loves company. That's why support groups work: Everything's easier when you're part of a team. It'll kind of be like that study that found that rowers could muster more muscle power when they were rowing with teammates instead of alone. Plus, it's just good to have a sober friend. When other people are out partying, you can explore the new frontiers of sober fun.

Read more on Tonic

The never ending revolving-door that is mortality stops for no human.

This is a lesson we only learned in the last year apparently. There were many reasons that 2016 was a shit year but the most cited one was, hands down, losing so many beloved entertainers.

We lost David Bowie, Prince, Glenn Frey (unlike everyone else, I haven't forgotten about you bud), Carrie Fisher, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Harper Lee, Merle Haggard, Chyna, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yelchin—look, I can't list them all which kind of illustrates my point.

Perhaps the reason that some of these hurt so bad was we weren't expecting them, their deaths just came out of the blue. Due to the fact that some of our most beloved people are getting up there in the world (the boomers fucked a lot of things up but they produced some tremendous entertainers) the deaths are just going to keep coming.

So, in order to protect you, dear readers, I reached out to a psychic to ask who we should expect to lose in 2017.

Goddamnit 2016... goddamnit. Image via Facebook

Psychic Deborah Louise Levin agreed to talk to me but informed me there were some ground rules. The first was that I had to ask about the person, she couldn't just come out and tell me who was going to the great beyond and, because of rules that she must follow as a psychic, she couldn't outright say if they were going to die but just tell me what she felt and I could interpret the results myself.

So, with that in mind and armed with a list I put together in a very scientific manner (read, very randomly), I started asking her who we would lose:

Donald Trump:

"I feel that he'll be with us for a long time. I think he has an extended longevity. I think he has a freakish longevity and we'll be talking about him even ten or twenty years from now."

Verdict: Alive as fuck.

Hillary Clinton:

"I feel that she will have to devote a lot of energy to her own self-care. This election has taken a toll on her for sure but will she be leaving us this year? She's not going to be the healthiest but she will be with us."

Verdict: Alive but rattled.

Elizabeth Windsor:

"I feel that honestly that she's with us for a good portion of this next year but there will be a serious concern with her next fall. Christmas may be a sad time."

Verdict: Hanging out with that great corgi in the sky. (Sorry UK)

Well, honestly, she had a good run. Photo via Twitter

Elton John (look, if the Queen dies we need someone to sing about it):

"This is an interesting one. It seems to me that he's going to get a hell of a lot of incentive this year to manage his health. He feels like he needs a whole wellness entourage to prop him up... there might be concern with a little sickness or he'll lose someone and just go crazy. It's interesting... very interesting, who am I to judge?"

Verdict: Alive but a hypochondriac?

Paul McCartney:

"He's got the financial means to stick around. I feel that he has the means to continue his longevity and I feel we will be speaking about him long term."

Verdict: Live and let Live

Keith Richards:

"Here is somebody that is the kind of person that can come back from the dead. I think this year something might give him another health caution but he'll just giggle and continue to live life to the fullest. I think he'll dodge a bullet this year but still be with us."

Verdict: Alive (was there ever any doubt?)

He will outlive us all. Photo via Facebook

Bob Dylan:

"I really feel a chest infection or a cold, I feel that this year will be really rough this year. I think so much so that he will have to watch it. When you're 75-years-old frequent bouts of pneumonia aren't good. I'm not convinced that he has extended longevity. He's in rough shape."

Verdict: Blowing in the wind.

The 2017 Death Pool list:

(Kirk Douglas, Bill Clinton, Hugh Hefner, Billy Graham, Dick Van Dyke, Bob Barker, Doris Day, Jimmy Carter, Charlie Sheen, Larry King)

"The one that that caught my attention was the evangelist, Billy Graham. He's who I'm curious about. Hugh Hefner is going to live forever. Of that list it's [Graham] that jumps out, the rest not really."

Verdict: All money on Graham.

OJ Simpson:

"From what I'm feeling he is not strong. I would say this individual is predisposed to not being able to fight an illness should it really start to turn into something serious. He does not have the strength that the other people you have asked about have, he feels very weary to me, very beaten down. He does not have that fight anymore so if something happens he might just let it take him."

Verdict: The Juice will not be on the loose in 2018

Kanye West:

"That's a strange one. Wow. Has he joined a cult? There is so much strangeness here. I don't think a lot of people will understand the direction he will take. It's not musically, it's a lifestyle, he also has longevity but could just choose to disappear."

Verdict: Alive but living in a Costa Rican paradise where he leads his most loyal followers with an iron fist.

Drake:

"He's fine. He has nothing wrong with him. He'll have a hangnail maybe. "

Verdict: Alive and leading the 6ix into the future.

Me:

"You're going to be around for awhile. Are you planning to contribute to a screenplay or a web series something like that? I feel little scripts or something for you, they're short. It's something funny and being filmed. You'll really enjoy that. I don't think it will pay well but it will be fun."

Verdict: Alive (Yo SNL, give me a call.)

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter .

On December 30, the White House quietly released its Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy, a 25-page document outlining the United States' plans in the event that a giant asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth. Among the priorities outlined by the strategy are improving Near-Earth Object (NEO) detection, developing methods for deflecting asteroids, and developing interagency emergency procedures in the event of an NEO impact.

"If we were to be faced with a serious asteroid impact hazard, it's going to take more than just NASA to try to do something about it in space," Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, told Motherboard in a phone call. "If there's not enough time to do something about the asteroid in space, it's going to take efforts by a lot of agencies to prepare to take the hit. This is really the first time we've tried to pull together an all-government preparedness strategy for dealing with this very serious natural disaster."

Near-Earth Objects are asteroids or comets whose orbits around the Sun un intersect with or come near Earth's orbit. Several thousand NEOs have been discovered, ranging in size from a few dozen meters to several kilometers in diameter. Every day the Earth gets hit with dozens of these space rocks, but most are so small that they burn up in the atmosphere before ever reaching the surface. Inevitably, however, one of the larger asteroids will hit Earth and the results could be catastrophic.

Read more on Motherboard

President-elect Donald Trump will likely name former Indiana senator Dan Coats as the director of national intelligence Thursday, the New York Times reports.

Coats, a Republican, began his political career in the House of Representatives in 1981, and later moved on to serve as a state senator for Indiana in 1989 for ten years, and then again in 2011. Between his two stints in the Senate, Coats was the US ambassador to Germany under George W. Bush until 2005.

Coats doesn't have much experience working within the intelligence community, but he did sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring in 2015. He met with Trump on November 30 to reportedly offer advice to the president-elect.

"I was invited here just to sit down and discuss a number of issues that the president would be facing, and I gave him some of my years of experience in terms of what I thought they would be dealing with and made some suggestions," Coats told reporters after the meeting.

As the director of national intelligence, Coats will oversee 16 different intelligence agencies and serve as an advisor to the president on matters of national security and counterterrorism. Pending congressional approval, Coats will be the head of the US intelligence community, which Trump was reportedly planning on restructuring, according to the Wall Street Journal, though Trump's camp claims otherwise.

Three US officials confirmed this week that the intelligence community had conclusive evidence after the election that Russian cybercriminals provided WikiLeaks with hacked information from the DNC, Reuters reports.

Although the US intelligence community was "confident" the Russians were responsible for the hack back in October, it wasn't clear how the hackers controlled or disseminated the information. The new evidence apparently shows that Russia gave damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the DNC hack to WikiLeaks through a third party, resulting in the sanctions President Obama placed on the country last week.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump criticized the intelligence community, saying the "careless" DNC was responsible for the hack and quoted WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who said that a "14-year-old could have hacked Podesta" during his Tuesday appearance on FOX News with Sean Hannity. Assange also told Hannity that he did not receive the leaked information from a "state party," but technically did not deny he received the information from a third party.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also blamed Russian hackers for launching a "multifaceted campaign" of cyberattacks, of which the DNC hacks were just one phase. On Thursday, Clapper addressed a Senate hearing and claimed that the Russians allegedly helped disseminate fake news and propaganda during the 2016 election and continue to do so.

"I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case," Clapper said Thursday.

Thumbnail image via Flickr user Christiaan Colen

As a gay man, it's sometimes hard not to see my whole life through a political lens. Everything from who I love to how I love them and how many of them I love, who and how I fuck, the number of men I have sex with—all the ways I live my life have suddenly become politicized. Maybe it was always this way, but now, weeks before Trump's inauguration and on the eve of our new Congress, it all feels so unavoidable.

I am an HIV-positive, polyamorous-oriented gay man in an open triad relationship. And that feels normal to me. It's surreal to know these things that feel integral to the man I am are antithetical to the newly emboldened political and religious institutions out to demonize people who live lives like mine.

I often find myself under attack for the choices I have made, as if my life is somehow inherently wrong. It doesn't just come from right-wing fanatics, either—I see plenty of hatred from gay men, who call me greedy and selfish, amoral, a danger to the fight for gay equality. They tell me that my life stands as proof of every ridiculous fantasy conservatives have advanced about the queer community. It fascinates me, because all along, all I've been trying to show people is that it's OK to be who you are, to live the life you want and love who you want. It's OK to fall in love as much and as often as possible, to fuck who you want as often as you want, to be OK with your HIV status and how you look and act and all the other ways people will try to stigmatize your body in this world. It's OK to be who you are, and if that's not "queer," I don't know what is.

I have a friend in his early 20s from a conservative, religious, Trump-supporting family in rural America. He recently went home for the holidays, and before he left LA, we had discussed his plans for finally telling his family that he's gay. But the first night back home, he texted me: "I can't do this. My father is saying 'who cares about George Michael dying, he was just a faggot with AIDS.' How do I tell them about me?"

I recently went Christmas gift shopping with another friend, buying presents for his brothers and sisters, and I was struck by how carefully he tiptoed around buying anything that could be perceived as anti-Christian—nothing Harry Potter–oriented, nothing that had anything to do with magic or science fiction. He told me he's not allowed to talk about being gay to his family if he wants to spend time around his siblings.

I've been lucky to live my life in a bubble of progressive liberal values and tolerance. After my husband, my father was the second person I told I was HIV-positive. I remember exactly what he said to me: "I love you. Go to the doctor, get on meds, and live your life. This is just the beginning of something new. It isn't the end."

The idea that a parent's love could be conditional on something like who their child loves is foreign to me, to put it lightly.

And in a world where we're gunned down and targeted based on that fact, one where fighting for our basic right to express our partnerships and unions became a hellish political battle, and one where our transgender and gender nonconforming peers are routinely denied basic human dignities, being lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer is without a doubt a political act. We are at the outset of what looks to be a monumental political battle

The question, then, is this: Do we have an obligation as members of that community to behave in certain ways? To be aware of how conservative or straight people perceive our lives and lifestyles? Do I, as many of those who read my work seem to imply, have an obligation to behave in a certain way?

In response to my writing, I've been told that open relationships aren't "real" relationships. That I clearly don't love my husband; why else would I need not one but two boyfriends? I was once told that I "deserve AIDS" for being such a slut, and that I should "drink bleach and die" because my lifestyle was a direct attack on morality. I have been told that I am the problem with gay men.

The obligation I think I have is to live my life in the opposite manner that my attackers would seem to believe I should. It's an obligation to be the truest self I possibly can be. I believe, in my heart, that I need to be as gay and proud as possible in my life and writing for all those who can't. I believe I should fuck and love and enjoy my life as much as possible, and that in the face of hatred, the only logical response is to fall madly in love and find happiness—to be as greedy as possible, because I want every fucking thing that life has to offer. And I want queer people everywhere to know that they can live the life they want, too. Because even if their lives aren't like the one I've chosen, they deserve to live them however they want.

Why should any of us be obligated to live our lives according to someone else's idea of how that life should look? If I want to be the sluttiest, piggiest, faggot in the world, why the hell can't I, without fear of persecution or judgment? As long as you're true to who you are, then live the life you want. And if you can, live it as big and as loud as possible. Live it in the face of persecution and hate.

Friends of mine aren't shy with their frustration on how to make meaning of the election—how to react and behave. But I think that if our sexuality and gender are political, we have an obligation to throw it in the faces of those who would rather see us die and show them that we will not back down to their rules and constraints on our lives.

The only obligation I have is to honor who I am, and that means being the gayest fag in America. It's an obligation to treat those I fuck with respect, to hold those closest to me as tightly as possible, and to scream their names as loud as I can, to let the whole world know that in the face of hatred I choose love. Because who I love is radical and who I fuck is political. I suppose I'm condemned to hell, so fuck it. Let's make the most of it while we can.

In happier times, this Earth was a place where birds sang and rivers ran. There were caverns measureless to man (because man did not exist). Then that man arrived and with him he did bring other men.

Fear grew, at first because no one knew what was going on outside their village (dragons?), and then because it was exploited and unleashed by powerful forces to the point where now, as our world hurtles toward all-consuming war, investing in a network of secure underground bunkers and thousands of cans of beans has never looked like a better idea.

With that in mind, here's our annual Global Fear League – a consistently 100 percent correct guide to which countries everyone should be afraid of this year.

People in London come together in a candle vigil at Trafalgar Square, central London, to condemn the killings of civilians in Aleppo, Syria (Picture by Isabel Infantes EMPICS Entertainment)

SYRIA

The situation: A regular in this guide since 2012, the situation in Syria has deteriorated year on year, with Bashar al-Assad's dictatorial regime backed to the hilt by Russia and Iran, and looking newly confident in its chances for survival. Outgoing US president Barack Obama has been accused of withdrawing American power from the region to the point where the far more evil (at least in the eyes of the West) Russia now has carte blanch to help Assad plumb the debts of war. The head of Médecins Sans Frontiers has said of Syria and Russia's behaviour: "The conduct of war today is ever boundless. It is a race to the bottom."

Danger rating: Fighting in Aleppo has stopped and there is now a ceasefire, supported by the UN and led by Russia and Turkey. In most of the country, it holds. Assad and his regime are derided even by his allies, but remain in place.

With the main international players – not to mention rebel groups, organisations, activists, journalists and bystanders – looking to claim strategic, economic and moral riches, the road ahead still looks long and covered in massive potholes.

A protest against Putin and for LGBTQ rights in London in 2013 (Photo by Matt Francey)

RUSSIA

The situation: The great angry bear is on the loose, sticking its paws in all the honey pots and kicking over all the cups of tea at the picnic. An emboldened Russia, having been pegged back for many years by NATO, is now the major international player in Syria and is casting its eyes toward the Baltic states. Obama, who could barely shake Putin's hand without imagining the elegantly withering anecdote he'd use to cut him down to size on Between Two Ferns, is about to be replaced by Donald Trump, who thinks V. Putin is v. smart.

Danger rating: Is anyone ever not afraid of the Russians? They're distressingly good at chess. They voluntarily eat cake made out of herring.

UNITED STATES

The situation: Donald Trump.

Danger rating: Sing it with Hillary: "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." And yet, perhaps the dark visions of Donald angrily reacting to a Saturday Night Live sketch by nuking Alec Baldwin's mansion are misguided. Maybe a president who has said it would be "nice" to make friends with Russia wouldn't be so bad; someone who can stop all the hawks in Washington from turning their Cold War fantasies into Hot War realities. Trump says he doesn't want America to be the policeman of the world any more, and given that the world has had several LAPD-style beatings inflicted on it by Officer Yank over the years, that could be a sweet relief. But then, Trump says a lot of things. And some of them are the kind of violent fantasies that a president could put into terrifying reality.

Marine Le Pen (Photo: Rémi Noyon)

FRANCE

The situation: Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has heard all about Theresa May's "red, white and blue Brexit" and decided that, since those are the colours of the French flag, she'll get one of them for France.

Danger rating: With an election on its way and suspicion, Le Pen is the front-runner alongside François Fillon, who wants to be the Margaret Thatcher his country never had. Good luck with that.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, left, Vice President of Zimbabwe stands next to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe after the swearing in ceremony at State House in Harare, Friday, Dec, 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

ZIMBABWE

The situation: In power for over 30 years, the 92-year-old Robert Mugabe has been written off time and again, but as his mysterious medical trips to Singapore, mid-meeting naps and on-camera falls grow ever more frequent, so the feeling that this year will be his last grows. The economy is in free fall and his vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa is at the head of a long queue of potential successors.

Danger rating: Known as "the crocodile" – his followers are called "Team Lacoste" – Mnangagwa was Minister of State Security during the Gukurahundi massacres, when more than 20,000 civilians were killed by Mugabe's feared fifth brigade. So he wouldn't exactly represent a break from the brutal past.

ISRAEL

The situation: Swaddled in an enormous Israeli flag, Benjamin Netanyahu is throwing his state of the art toys out of his annexed pram. He believes that the UN's resolution against the building of illegal settlements is a "declaration of war" and is furious with the Obama administration for not vetoing it. His ministers are promising further incursions into Palestinian territories and Donald Trump has taken on the role of drunken absentee parent, telling Israel to "stay strong" until he comes to power.

Danger rating: With the world still fixated on Syria, it seems like Israel is yesterday's man. This isn't a Pavement reunion show, Israel; you have to keep it fresh! Maybe that freshness is here in the form of exciting new guitarist, Donald J. Trump.

CHINA

The situation: On the campaign trail, Donald Trump couldn't get through a speech without blaming China for stealing away the happiness of millions of Americans – or, to use his technical term, "raping" – with cheap imports and non-existent labour laws. Now he's set to become president, he's talking about starting a trade war.

Danger rating: If the Trump administration puts tariffs on Chinese imports, China can have its way with the $1 trillion+ American debt it holds, and the much-trumpeted "economic recovery" barely any of us have actually felt will go to shit.

TURKEY

The situation: At the border of Europe but unloved by that continent; ruled by an increasingly authoritarian leader who was the subject of an attempted coup; and victim of terrorist attack after terrorist attack. Turkey has moved much closer to Russia and is considering upping the stakes in its beef with the EU by letting hundreds hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees across its border, just at a time when the European far-right is on the march. Its democracy is unravelling and because of its position it plays host to a whole array of militant groups.

Danger rating: It's time to honour the dream of a young Boris Johnson: let Turkey into the EU and "unite the two halves of the Roman Empire". This was, in fact, the approach outlined by current foreign Secretary Boris Johnson when he visited Ankara in September, in defiance of that nay-saying Brexit buffoon a couple of months earlier in the referendum campaign, Boris Johnson.

NORTH KOREA

The situation: Something, something – impenetrable quasi-Soviet state – something, something – Kim Jong-un – something, something – H BOMB H BOMB H BOMB H BOMB!

Danger rating: North Korea has just released a calendar of its sexy air hostesses in short skirts. This may be to promote tourism, which sounds like the sort of industry you wouldn't promote if you were about to start a nuclear war. Then again, they need those tourist dollars so badly because of sanctions imposed on the economy due its nuclear weapons programme.

EVERYWHERE

The situation: Most of us just want to hang out and live in peace. And yet, here we are, with war and famine and terrorism and massive economic inequality and YouTube personalities. Also, the environment is fucked. No longer will we be able to look down on the animals and plants and triumphantly sing, "We are the Champions." In 2017, we should all be very fearful of everything.

@osarrickettnow

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I, like many others who went far too hard on the rum and eggnogs in December, will be ringing in 2017 with Dryuary, aka Drynuary, the annual tradition Urban Dictionary describes as "the art of not drinking alcohol for the entire month of January." And it's an art indeed.

This is my third year doing Dry January, and it hasn't gotten any easier, particularly when going out. I wouldn't say I'm a big-time drinker, but I am a big-time extrovert, so not going out is not really an option for me. Plus, people have birthdays in January, and I'd be a shitty friend if I ditched them for a night of Netflix on the couch.

So I've tried to continue going out during my sober month, contrary to what some Dryuary observers suggest. But for anyone who hasn't gone to a club or a bar without any intoxicants, I'll tell you that it can be straight up horrifying. You notice things that you wouldn't when you're wasted. Like, your once delightful female friend now has makeup smeared all over her face and is moving around like one of those air dancers at a car dealership. Your buddy is making you deaf in one ear and spilling his drink.

Even in dive bars where drunk you usually digs the décor, sober you needs to plug your nose from the pungent stink and wonders how long that chewed up piece of gum has been there.

But do you know what the worst part about Dryuary is? You can act like a judgmental asshole, as I just sounded above. Now that I realize how much of a prick I was, I wondered what other ways I might come off as an asshole on Dryuary, so I asked around for some advice for how not to be an asshole while being temporarily sober.

Treat your bartender well.

Sabrina Martin has been doing Dryuary for six or seven years and she doesn't have the option of just staying in because she works in a bar.

"Serving drinks all night, being in that atmosphere... you can't avoid it like most people do when they do a dry month," Martin told me.

The nine-year bartender says her clients don't take too kindly when she tells them she's doing a sober month.

"The hardest part is when people offer me drinks and insist all evening. If I say no, they really get upset if I don't drink with them even after I explain. It's like they see it as a challenge to make me drink."

But, that's exactly the reason she does it.

"[I don't do it] so much for the detox but for the personal challenge. To see that I can do whatever I want and that alcohol doesn't control my life even though I am surrounded by it all the time."

If you're going out to the bar sober, Martin's advice is to still order something. For her, sometimes it's a non-alcoholic beer, which helps you avoid the whole Dryuary conversation. Otherwise, a Sprite or a Coke with lime can fool anybody that you're drunk like the rest of the hot mess around you.

"I always do free refills for DDs (designated drivers) and people that don't drink if they explain it and are nice to me, but I definitely get annoyed if you order nothing at all," said Martin. "Just get a bottle honestly. You are still taking up my seat and I still have to make sales or my managers get mad at me."

Whatever you do, make sure you tip your bartender, whether you're drinking booze or not.

Do other stuff.

Twenty-four-year-old Gabe Gilker is doing Dryuary this year and has some experience since she did six-months sober a few years back [full disclosure: she used to write for VICE Canada]. Gilker told me that sobriety never stopped her from going out, but it was tough.

"I was definitely more conscious about my own body and how it was positioned," she said. "I found it really hard to appear comfortable in the bar when I was sober. I also started to notice that all my cutie bar crushes might have been slightly influenced by beer goggles. It was slightly horrifying."

But Gilker says she has found other things to do instead of getting wasted and actually decreased her FOMO.

"The fear of missing out begins to subside when you go to bars sober and realize that the same thing happens every night. And instead I found myself having productive and awesome hangs at my house which ended up being way more beneficial for my health."

When I asked her about how not to be an asshole during Dryuary, she said the warning should be sent to people who aren't doing it instead.

"Personally, I tend to think that it's the drunk people that are being assholes towards the sober people, constantly asking them 'why' or 'what the fuck?' or even outright calling them 'pussies' or something else ridiculous," she said.

So the advice I take from Gilker is to go have a board game night, go skating or out for a walk—there's other shit to do besides turning into a drunk zombie. And most of all, ignore your douchey friends who try to peer pressure you.

Don't be a lazy dater.

Your cuffing season partner is probably gone by now because you realized you can't actually stand each other, so you're probably back to swiping. As a matter of fact, January 8th, is the most popular day of the year to swipe, according to Tinder.

So what do you do on a first date if you can't go to your favorite dive bar and drink some liquid courage?

"Believe it or not, there are alcohol-free environments out there; escape rooms, which are bundles of fun, for example," said Laura Bilotta, a Toronto-based dating coach who has been helping people hook up for 13 years.

Bilotta also recommends tourist attractions, museums, haunted tours if your city has one and plain old cafes.

"It's not where you go or what you do that concerns you, it's how you can manage to be yourself and appear interesting when you don't have that liquid courage to quell your inhibitions," she said. "Realize that everybody has some form of dating anxiety and that your sober self would be 'exposed' eventually, if you get past the first date."

Be creative, Dryuary shouldn't make your dates dry, too.

Don't be preachy.

So you're taking a month off drinking—good for you. Dryuary is not really better for your health. Just like a diet, you'll probably just return to binge drinking three nights a week like you did before. A better idea is probably to just cut down on the nights you get shitfaced.

And how much do people like it when vegans and fitness nuts preach their healthy life gospel? Yeah, that's what I thought.

On the flip side, Dryuary haters need to give it a rest, too. Even if it's better to give up drinking, or drink less, obviously taking a month off is something of a feat. People that do Dryuary are definitely going to save some money and might even shed a few pounds. Heck, they're challenging themselves to step outside their comfort zone and that's cool in and of itself.

And those dad jokes about drinking "dry" gin/beer/wine instead of doing the sober month? Just don't.

So Dryuary people, here's my last piece of advice to you. Pretend like you're drunk or do whatever you have to do and enjoy the fact that you're saving money for the month.

Now good luck, you'll need it to drink the rest of the year.

This story was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

On the evening of June 18, 2002, in the quiet town of Mt. Shasta, California, a man named Gabriel John Pippin waited outside the home of his ex-girlfriend, Sacha Ann Marino. Their infant son, Caleb, was also inside, along with Marino's grandparents and sister.

When Marino and her new boyfriend walked out the front door, Pippin shot them both at point-blank range, and continued shooting as he came into the house.

Pippin is now serving life in prison for the double murder at the Sierra Conservation Center, a low- to medium-security facility where inmates are trained to fight California's wildfires.

Meanwhile, Sacha Marino's mother, Lisa, has been raising Caleb, who is now 15. They have since moved to Oregon, and the boy's way of understanding that he is the son of a murderer, but also of the murderer's victim, has changed over the years.

Below, in her own words, Lisa Marino describes what it's like to raise her murdered daughter's son—and why she believes that people like Pippin do not deserve a second chance.

When he was little, I always told Caleb simply that his momma was dead. I'd take him out to the cemetery, in Mt. Shasta—the town that before all of this I thought was beautiful, perched on a mountain; we'd moved there from LA to get away from the crime—to see her grave. He would play next to her headstone, stare at the picture of her that was on it.

Then he got a bit older, and he'd sit down and talk to her gravestone, sit on my lap, kiss her picture. He would always say, in the same way, There was a bad man who killed my mom and dad.

But it embarrasses Caleb now to go there and talk to her. We don't go much anyway because we had to move away from that place, an hour and a half away to Oregon. (When someone says Where are you from, I feel like I can't answer.)

At age four, the victim's advocates interviewed Caleb on camera for their "impact statement," asking what he would like to happen to the bad man.

I thought maybe when he got older, we could send it to the bad man. To me, it would feel so good to say, I hate you, I hate you.

Caleb went into counseling—"play therapy," it was called. They had him bring in some pictures of people who love him, and some who don't. At one point I'd showed him a picture from the newspaper of the bad man (I'd gotten rid of all the other pictures), and he brought it into therapy to crumple up and destroy.

They told me that when Caleb turned seven, he would start asking real questions. And sure enough, three years later, he said, "Mom (that's what he's always called me), who killed my mom?"

I'd always told him the truth, but he didn't know what biological parents were, so I had to explain: It was your biological father, the man who was there with your momma when you were made.

It was devastating, the look on his face. He could kind of understand that I was talking about his real dad. And he asked, "Did he love me?"

What could I tell him, the story? That his momma had had no contact with his biological daddy for awhile and was dating other people?

And that his dad, Gabriel, had found out about this, and called her constantly, for months, asking, "Who are you seeing, tell me right now!" And that she said, "Leave me alone, we're moving on"?

Or should I tell Caleb that his mom got a restraining order, but it did no good?

Our whole family was home, my other daughter back from college, and everyone was putting a puzzle together, on a weeknight. My dad was watching TV in the back room and my mom was asleep, and my daughter's new boyfriend was about to go home because he had work the next day.

My daughter put baby Caleb down on the floor to crawl around, because she was going to walk her boyfriend out.

But Gabriel was waiting out in the street.

From inside, my other daughter could hear the pops. She walked into the living room, picked up the baby, opened the door.

She saw that her sister and her sister's boyfriend were running back into the house and Gabriel was shooting at them from behind.

He shot them both in the back as they tried to get back in, and my other daughter saw him with the gun staring at them, not crazed, just angry, she said. And she ran back inside with baby, thinking, He's going to kill us all, and was trying to keep the baby from crying.

They climbed into the bathtub. My mom was calling 911 and my dad was trying to get his gun, but he couldn't load it, so instead he called me, and said in a monotone voice, He's killing them, he's killing them, and I could hear screaming in the background—I guess it was my other daughter, screaming like you could never imagine. She didn't even realize she was screaming.

He shot Caleb's mother two times in the face while she was lying down, and her boyfriend twice in the back of the head after he was already dead. My living daughter saw her sister's brains coming out.

This man had looked at his own baby, and after that had shot the baby's mother twice in the face.

Should I have told Caleb that?

At ten, Caleb totally lost it, kicked walls, screamed. If anyone was in his life but then wasn't anymore, he would take it so hard. We had some good friends who took care of him, and they ended up moving away; we also lost our dog. When they left and when that dog died, he cried for weeks straight, saying, Why did she have to die?

When my son (Caleb's uncle) moved to Alaska, which he said was best for his career, Caleb took that extremely hard, too. He started saying things like, I really want to be with my momma, I don't want to be here. It was suicide talk—but in the way a ten-year-old would do it.

He knows his own father would have shot him, a baby in the first months of his life, that night, and it would have meant nothing.

So I stay up to date on where Gabriel is, and express my opinions about him to the people who have him in custody.

This destroyed my family. It has definitely destroyed me.

How much suffering we do, people don't realize that. Sure, there shouldn't be 700 people on death row in California. But there should be a few, and they should be like Gabriel, and the state should follow through with it.

When marijuana activist Dana Larsen first started writing his pot-themed fan fiction, he just thought it would be fun for other cannabis users to read. But after years of selling thousands of copies of his parody children's stories like Green Buds and Hash and Hairy Pothead and the Marijuana Stone, Larsen realized they could be more: a tool in his campaign for legalization.

In Canada, where Larsen lives, a nationwide legalization policy probably isn't far off. Possessing and selling weed is still illegal across the country, but this spring, the Canadian government will propose new laws that could make it the first major country to legalize marijuana across the board. Marijuana activists hope that this shift in regulation up north will trickle down to the United States—and eventually the rest of the world—in a major victory against the war on drugs.

That's where Larsen believes his books come in. And he's not the only one: An emerging collection of books—from It's Just a Plant to If a Peacock Finds a Pot Leaf—are looking to make marijuana part of children's literature. We talked to Larsen about how he believes his children's book parodies can open up new dialogues about cannabis and can help usher in a new era of legalized, normalized weed.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: So how did this all start?
Dana Larsen: Well, I wrote the Hairy Pothead book quite a few years ago. It came out in 2008, and it's been re-published a couple of times since then. I read the Harry Potter books to my daughter and thought they were quite good. When I was reading them, I could just see this whole parallel world of it all being cannabis related. I just wrote it all down, and people liked it. I've got a sequel to that coming out, but it's taking a bit. I'm hoping to put out Hairy Pothead and the 420 Code next year sometime. I wrote the Green Buds and Hash poem quite a few years ago, and I just posted it online. It picked up a lot of traction, and I thought, Well, this should be a book.

Are these books meant to be for children?
I didn't really write them for kids. I write them because they amuse me, and I enjoy them. What actually struck me—especially with the Green Buds and Hash book—is how many parents do read it to their kids, and often it's because either the parent or the child is a medical-marijuana user. It's a way for them to have this dialogue in a nonjudgmental way with their kid. There are plenty of children who I know that who have epilepsy and use cannabis medicinally or their parents do, and I've had some kids send me drawings of characters from the book that say, "My daddy's medicine," or something. That's not what I expected when I wrote it. I don't really write these for kids, but I don't see any harm in anybody of any age reading a story or thinking about these ideas. I don't think that an eight-year-old is going to read this book and start lighting up a joint or whatever.

Are you hoping your market shifts towards more children in the future?
I have had many parents tell me they read my books to their kids, or that they're buying them for their kids to read. But usually those kids are teenagers or older, and not children. If I had written Green Buds and Hash for children, I wouldn't have had lines like, "Do you suffer from sclerosis, epilepsy or neurosis?" I doubt many pre-teens know what those words mean. However, that book does get read to some young children and it does please me to know that some parents are using my books—and that one especially—as a way of talking to their kids and teaching them about marijuana medicine. Especially when parent or child is a medical cannabis user themselves.

I don't think reading Hairy Pothead will make someone start smoking pot, any more than reading Harry Potter will make them start practicing witchcraft. Right now, I have four books and I do see an age progression in them. Green Buds and Hash is the early reader; The Pie Eyed Piper is for elementary school age. Hairy Pothead and the Marijuana Stone is for teens and the Cannabis in Canada history book is for young adults and up.

If children are reading these books, how does that help normalize weed?
Much of the information that we get about cannabis is government and corporate propaganda against it. Cannabis and cannabis users are regularly demonized and mocked in the mainstream media. Even pro-cannabis media often portray cannabis users as dopey, lazy, and ignorant. In my stories, cannabis users are usually a little smarter than non-users—like they're part of a secret group that has extra insight and wisdom. My stories portray cannabis as a magical substance with many uses and transformative powers, which I think is a valid assessment. Although the stories are fantastical, the cannabis information is accurate and the stories can be educational.

The first Hairy Pothead book is 242 pages long—that's close to the same length as the original. How long did that take you to do?
It took me about a year to write it. The sequel has been taking me a while because it should be about double the length. I'm also working on a new series coming out next year called, The Hash-tastic Voyages of Sinbad the Strain Hunter. He goes around finding giant cannabis plants that are hundreds of feet tall or finding little, tiny microscopic ones or other crazy adventures that sort of parallel all those stories from The Arabian Nights. I've got Jack and the Hemp Stalk and Little Green Riding Hood. I'm hoping to put out some of those stories next year as well.

Are you smoking pot every time you sit down to write?
Yeah. I smoke pot all day, every day, pretty much. I'm a very chronic cannabis user and have been for the last 20 years or so. I run dispensaries in Vancouver and do a lot of political activism work, so writing is not really my main focus. Most of my work is more like, I led a big referendum campaign in 2013 to collect signatures to try to force a vote here. We didn't hit the signature target because it's brutally hard in British Columbia compared to any American state. I work with the New Democratic Party; I do a lot of political stuff and I'm a big part of the dispensary movement here in Canada.

What are your goals for legalization and how do you see it playing out?
I think that legalizing cannabis is going to be the first step in a bigger shift to ending the whole global war on drugs. I think it's going to take many years for all of this to play out, but to me, the war on drugs is really a war on the world's best, most medicinal and culturally relevant plants—opium, poppy, coco, mushrooms, peyote, cactus, cannabis flowers, etc. These are things that are safest and most beneficial in their natural forms and it's really prohibition that makes them dangerous. My work has been focused on cannabis because although users of other drugs might have it worse in some ways, most of the policing, most of the enforcement, most of the money in the war on drugs goes against cannabis users because there's more of us. I think that comes out in my fiction a lot, where a lot of my fairy tales end up in a transformative kind of way where everything changes because the metaphor of prohibition in that story is eliminated in some way.

It's really a testament that Canada [could be] the first major country [to legalize marijuana nationally]. People will look to Canada and see what we do here and it will definitely have an influence around the world with what other models come out there. Canada will hopefully be an example and we'll keep pushing here. Once it starts to happen, it's going to happen everywhere.

Do you think educational tools like your books will help transform the overall perspective on pot over time?
Yeah. These things can be dangerous and risky, but they can also be wonderful and positive. I think a thing to compare that to, in a way, is sex. You want to be honest with your kids about sex and want them to understand how it works. We have sex education classes in school. You might tell your children that abstinence is better and you'd prefer them to be abstinent, but if you're going to have sex, it's better in a loving relationship and it's better if you use condoms or birth control. I don't see any dichotomy or contradiction between those things, between encouraging abstinence and also saying, "If you're going to do it, here's a way to not kill yourself and to be safer." With cannabis and drug use, that message can be there too. You might not want your kid taking anything, but if you're going to use something, cannabis is a lot safer than other substances.

I hope that my books and stories help normalize cannabis, because cannabis is normal. Especially in the Hairy Pothead book, as Hairy goes through his time at Hempwards School of Herbcraft and Weedery, you learn along with him. You learn a lot about hemp and cannabis and extracts and all the different classes. I sneak in a lot of learning and information in there. If people learn a little bit while they're laughing and enjoying my stories, that is exactly what I want.

Follow Sean Neumann on Twitter.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte visited a Russian warship docked in Manila on Friday, signaling his desire to strengthen the country's relationship with Russia.

"We welcome our Russian friends. Anytime you want to dock here for anything, for play, for replenish supplies, or maybe our ally to protect us," Duterte said, as he greeted Rear Admiral Eduard Mikhailov, head of the Flotilla of the Russian Navy Pacific Fleet.

This is the first time the Russian and Philippines navies have officially come into contact, but for Duterte it is just the latest posturing as Philippines relations with the U.S. continue to weaken.

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While studios increasingly drop the word "diversity" into their pre-release PR blitzes, it's still rare that that word adds up to much in the grand scheme of big budget films. Canadian director April Mullen is overhauling that. Her new film Below Her Mouth was written, shot, and produced by an all-female crew. VICE has the exclusive trailer below.

Below Her Mouth

One of my dearest friends didn't realize she was gay until she went to a clown party and met her future wife painted up like Pennywise. Now she has a cabin and makes candles, so this premise seems legit. Woman goes to gay club by accident. Meets beautiful DJ. Falls in love. Ends her engagement. Takes a bath. It's a tale as old as time. Below Her Mouth opens in theatres across Canada on February 10. Solid Valentine's Day movie to take your boyfriend to.

Trespass Against Us

Brendan Gleeson is the terrifying patriarch using his criminal legacy to keep his son in the robbery game in Trespass Against Us. Michael Fassbender is the reluctant son desperate to get out of the family business in Adam Smith's first feature set in gritty, rural Ireland and it looks gripping. This movie's had mixed reviews on the festival circuit but it's hard to deny Fassbender's electric presence in this Irish twist on a classic cat-and-mouse thriller.

Dying Laughing

I can't help it, I love documentaries about stand-up. Maybe because it's such an impenetrable art, that the nature of comedy is so quixotic the search for truth in a joke can literally be endless. It's also endlessly fascinating to see people at the top of their field dissect their craft. Either way, more Jamie Foxx in 2017!

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

I'm not crying, YOU'RE CRYING!

Tommy's Honour

Dear god no. This movie is my own personal hell, and the only golf movie I'll ever watch is Happy Gilmore.

Follow Amil Niazi on Twitter.