On Thursday, CNN reported that Trump is planning to get Congress to appropriate taxpayer funds to foot the bill for the border-wall construction, breaking from his mantra-esque promise to "build the wall" and get Mexico to pay for it.

Trump immediately hopped on Twitter bright and early Friday morning to correct the "dishonest media." Mexico will be reimbursing the US for the multibillion-dollar project after the fact. Using taxpayer money to begin with is just "for the sake of speed," he said, so don't even worry about it.

Chris Collins, New York representative and congressional liaison for Trump's transition, told CNN that the Trump camp is confident that the president-elect will be able to wrestle the money from Mexico.

"When you understand that Mexico's economy is dependent upon US consumers, Donald Trump has all the cards he needs to play," Collins said on New Day. "On the trade negotiation side, I don't think it's that difficult for Donald Trump to convince Mexico that it's in their best interest to reimburse us for building the wall."

Mexico, of course, is not and has never been onboard with Trump's wall scheme. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has been very clear that the country has no interest in shelling out millions of dollars for the Great Wall of Trump, so we'll see how the president-elect's convincing goes.

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

In early December 2016, the president of the French government committee against drugs and addiction, Danièle Jourdain Menninger, announced that in France more than 20 million workers exhibit "addictive behavior"—namely, that they rely on drugs and/or alcohol to get through their workday. Given that the French workforce is currently made up of 28.6 million people, 20 million is a rather staggering number.

Slightly alarmed, I called Michel Reynaud, a renowned professor of psychiatry and an expert in addiction, who downplayed that number: " The chances of developing an addiction when you have a job are usually smaller, compared to when you're unemployed. But if people do take drugs or drink at work—or because of it—it's because three factors come together: a more or less easy to acquire addictive product, a stressful working environment, and a vulnerable individual."

The company or its culture isn't always what pushes people to be under the influence to get through a working day. There are, however, sectors where employees run a bigger risk. According to Reynaud, that counts for people working in catering and the hospitality industry, medical professionals ("because the products are easily available"), advertisers, journalists, architects, and sailors.

Why those jobs in particular? "People working those jobs generally don't have a strict routine, might work nights, and are more likely to be under pressure," Reynaud explained. I spoke to three people who at some point developed a habit of doing drugs at work, to find out their reasons for doing so.

Julia*, 23, now works in a clothing shop in Annecy

"I began taking drugs at work in January 2015 and kept at it for about four months. I worked in a restaurant in Annecy at the time, where we were only two waitresses. Our shift would end around midnight, and we often wanted to go for a drink after work. That would sometimes spiral out of control, but because work started the next day at 10 AM, we needed to keep going. So we'd take indecent amounts of cocaine—I'd say between two and three grams a day. As soon as we'd start to feel tired, we'd do a line. Coming out of the toilets, I felt like Super Mario, but I obviously ended up becoming irritable, to say the least. When you're working yourself to the bone with clenched teeth and a customer is making a fuss, you just want to smash a plate on their head.

I ended up completely exhausted. I stopped working in the restaurant business because I couldn't take it anymore. My body was giving up. Paradoxically, my next job was in a night club, that was not as physically demanding, even though I worked until 7 AM. In that club, I worked at such a frantic pace that I didn't feel the need for anything—and I could sleep in the next day.

Now I work in a clothes shop, which has normal hours and is much calmer. I don't do drugs on the job anymore—the worst thing I do these days is arrive to work with a stinking hangover."

Antoine*, in his 20s, TV presenter in Paris

"As a TV presenter, I am often not done with work until very late and will only get to bed around 7 AM. Then I have to be back at work at midday. At some point, I discovered that taking cocaine helped me get through the day. Granted it made getting out of bed more difficult, but during the day, I didn't feel tired at all. It became a habit, but it wasn't good for my work on set. A guy I know once said, "With coke, you can do anything—but you do everything worse." In fact, I would spend the day being so much more conscious of what I was doing because I didn't want people to suspect anything.

My colleagues were aware something was up, though. Weirdly enough, many people assumed I was smoking weed—some viewers went so far as to send me messages saying, "You've got to stop smoking weed."

I think that I took drugs because of the pressures of the job. The most harmful thing is that you feel that it doesn't change much, that it's just a pinch of motivation. That's so far from the truth—it takes away your appetite, you start sweating, you keep in your emotions. You have a runny nose all day, and all you get is a bit of oomph."

Julien, 36, currently on benefits

"In 2012, I worked in a call center where our supervisors controlled us like we were in high school. We were only allowed a ten-minute break every two hours, and we couldn't even talk to one another. I would smoke joints before going to work and during those breaks—many of my colleagues did the same thing. We'd all get through three or four spliffs a day. Some of our supervisors berated us for it; others didn't give a shit. And I don't think it ever really affected my work, but that's only because the job was tedious—I just had to read a list of questions to the people I rang up, without even having to think.

A while before that, I did an internship at an insurance company. I smoked a huge joint at work there one time, and it didn't go over well. I wasn't with friends; I was surrounded by guys in their 50s, so I got quite paranoid and started talking nonsense. But I don't think that I smoke at work because I'm bored or because of the pressure. It's a question of habit. I'm just used to smoking weed during the day—I have been ever since high school. I never changed my habits when I started working. I'll stop smoking during work hours when I find a new job, though, because I am starting to put two and two together."

*Names have been changed at the request of the interviewees.

The Exotic Pets Hotel in Islington doesn't look much like a hotel. Nor does it appear particularly exotic. From the outside it's little more than a terraced two-up, two-down exercise in complete suburban anonymity.

Yet behind the pink brick walls, the home hosts four tarantulas, two milk snakes, a green tree python, a rock monitor lizard, a panther chameleon, a fat tail gecko, a boa constrictor and a red-foot tortoise called Cordelia. Their owner, David, shares the house with his wife and their four-month-old baby, and has invited VICE photographer Chris Bethell and myself an opportunity to meet his guests in person.

Arriving at the house, neither of us are sure what to expect, but certainly couldn't have predicted the genial calmness of it all, as we're welcomed into his family's home, the floor littered with washing baskets and crayons, and offered a cup of tea.

David walks us up and down the glass tanks which flank the right-hand side of their living-room. As we pace deliberately past the cases we're drawn to the chameleon, which rests halfway up a thin branch, dome-like, embossed eye staring back through the glass at us. Its skin, like tyre-rubber, is a speckled blend of deep red and shocking blue. "They look amazing, but they take so much work," David remarks from over our shoulders as we gaze at them. "That chameleon won't drink water from a bowl – you have to spray water on the leaves so he can drink it from there. You need to feed them with locusts, but you need to feed the locusts with the right food. You also need to have an overlight so that the chameleon can digest the food he's eating. Every single animal comes with a whole ecosystem."

Depending on how you define "exotic", the true number of unusual or dangerous animals living in Britain at the moment is unclear – but every participant I spoke to for this article estimated the number in the hundreds of thousands. Behind these numbers are a hugely diverse range of species, all with specific needs, some challenging, some less so. From the perspective of NGOs and animal welfare organisations, gradual rises in the number of exotic pets over the past decade are a cause for concern. In 2015, the RSPCA was called to 247 incidents in 2015, involving a total of 1,198 exotic animals – animals that the organisation themselves are often ill-equipped to cope with and care for. Over the past six years, phone calls to the RSPCA about exotic pets have risen by 45 percent. This Christmas they renewed their campaign to dissuade the impulse purchase of exotic animals as gifts.

Yet law-making and public opinion remain murky on the issue of exotic pets. Grey areas cloud around the two big questions: which animals should be kept as pets, and who should be allowed to keep them?

David's pet hotel came about by accident rather than design. Shortly after he first moved to London he learnt that one of his friends was planning on dumping two terrapins he no longer wanted in Crystal Palace park. "I said 'no way' – that would have been freezing for them; they need heat." David intervened and offered to take the terrapins himself. "Then we got a corn snake – a boy had bought it but his mum wouldn't let him keep it. After that it just took off and went like crazy."

David is originally from Colombia. He tells me he's always been around animals, having "grown up with spectacled bears" and "eaten breakfast surrounded by parrots". It's this familiar proximity to wild animals that informs his attitudes towards keeping them as pets. "In Colombia you can't have an exotic animal as a pet – it's worse than being a drug dealer."

Despite housing so many of them, David says, ideally, he wouldn't own any exotic animals at all. Rather, he opened his "hotel" as a safety net to catch vulnerable animals abandoned by their owners – or simply as a place for owners to leave their pets temporarily while they go on holiday. As he sees it, boa constrictors and panther chameleons do not belong in the home. "I'm not really happy with people who keep exotics," he tells me.

David is not alone in his misgivings towards the keeping of exotic pets. During a phone conversation I have later with RSPCA in-house scientific officer Nicola White, she outlines exactly why the domestication of unconventional animals poses such a problem to rescue services.

"For us there is the health and safety of our staff," she explains. "If a staff member goes out to pick up a snake, we've got to make sure they can recognise one of thousands of species. Then there's the issue of how we safely capture and transport it." Unlike an abandoned dog, an aviary of exotic birds dumped in a back-alley or a neglected Burmese python have demands the RSPCA struggles to meet. "Then there's the legislation," Nicola goes on. "If we rescue an animal do we have the facilities? Our centres, for example, don't always have a DWA (Dangerous Wild Animal) licence, so we could get in a lot of trouble."

In the RSPCA's eyes, this isn't about making life more difficult for exotic pet owners; rather, the goal is educating the public as to the implications of buying animals they don't fully understand, or might not be entirely capable of caring for. Not every unwanted pet is likely to be as fortunate as the ones that end up in David's Exotic Pet Hotel. Nicola tells me that mostly animals are found rather than handed in, and often in appalling situations. As she sees it, this is all too often the result of impulse buying – a practice only made easier by the rise of online trade. "We don't want to be an organisation that makes life difficult for pet owners, but at the end of the day if the owner doesn't know what they are taking on it's the animal that suffers," she says.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the RSPCA's relationship with the exotic pet owning community has never been totally harmonious. Campaigns to limit ownership have also informed public opinion, fostering what many in the exotics community feel are broadly hostile attitudes towards largely capable and equipped owners. After spending time with David and speaking with the RSPCA, I begin reaching out to various exotic pet owners. I put an open call out, publicly via Twitter and also to closed Facebook groups full of thousands of members of the exotic pet community, so I'm surprised when I receive no responses whatsoever.

Eventually, the moderator of one of these groups, Sean Rhodes – who owns "a skunk, a few snakes and a scorpion" – agrees to speak to me.

"There is a bit of an image problem around how exotics keepers are viewed," he explains. "Many decent keepers are quite insular, and as a result of this it's typically the more gregarious or eccentric people who are highlighted, which re-enforces perception that exotics keepers are a bit weird." As Sean sees it, the exotic pet community has been damaged deeply by misunderstandings about who they are and, as such, now keep media contact at a distance. "I've been bitten before, when promised an article was to be focussed on animal welfare and the good side of keeping, and it was spun into a quirky lifestyle story complete with silly pun headline," he tells me. "I'm still a bit wary about this article, to be honest!"

This image problem, Sean believes, comes down to a fundamental question that is too often neglected: how do we define the word pet? What makes one animal suitable for domestication and another not? It might seem like there are logical answers to this question – cat: yes; scorpion: no – but given that owners and their circumstances can be as varied as the needs of the animals, this sort of categorisation quickly becomes over-simple. "One of the issues I see is the very use of the term 'exotic pet'," Sean continues. "This has connotations of someone cuddling up with a tiger in their lounge, when the truth is, a large proportion of keepers keep their animals in large naturalistic outdoor enclosures, often with higher standards than many zoos."

Sean concedes that the RSPCA has liberalised its attitudes towards exotic pet ownership. Unlike many animal welfare NGOs, such as Born Free or CAPS, the organisation has moved away from attempting to restrict exotic pet ownership completely. However, he believes there is still some way to go in terms of fair characterisation of exotics keepers. Throughout our conversation he sends me multiple links to RSPCA statements which he believes highlight apparent double standards in rhetoric used – how the case of an abandoned tortoise reflects on "a growing number of exotic animals being abandoned", whereas an abandoned cat "highlights the needs for more education to ensure potential cat owners understand the commitment".

"They definitely demonise exotic keepers and tend to lump the worst of the worst in with everything else," Sean concludes. When I later pose this suggestion of bias to Nicola White from the RSPCA she responds firmly: "We don't demonise exotic keepers; what we are trying to encourage – exactly the same as with cats – is responsible ownership."

Chris Newman, who represents both the industry and private keepers in an official capacity for the Reptile and Exotic Pet Trade Association, and the Federation of British Herpetologists, makes it his business to illuminate what he sees as a truly misunderstood industry and community. Chris first became involved in the debate in an official capacity in the early-2000s. He was publishing a specialist-magazine called Reptilian around the time the RSPCA was calling for an end to all exotic pet ownership. Chris' vocal role in fighting this led to him sitting on government boards, advising the animal welfare bill of 2001. From what he tells me, the climate a decade ago was far more volatile. "I've had my home attacked over the years, people [animal rights activists] break in and try to release the animals," Chris remembers. "I'd say it's a decreasing trend – we haven't had an incident here for a number of years. In the mid-2000s, it was happening a lot."

Chris' disagreements with the RSPCA have historically been with the top end of the organisation, rather than the people on the ground who he regards as "very good" at what they do. He is keen to stress that conflicts with the RSPCA are far less of an issue today – "We still have lots of arguments and debates, but I think they are moving in the right direction," he says.

However, Chris tells me that policies he perceives as misguided are still being proposed across Europe. "The big drive at the moment is the implementation of what's called a 'positive list' of species," he explains. "Belgium is trying to push through its list on reptiles and amphibians, including something like 27 species they think are acceptable. We actually keep over 3,000 species currently. All of a sudden, on purely arbitrary grounds, you can no longer keep a species that may have been kept for the last 300 years completely successfully. I don't understand how that benefits welfare or conservation."

Chris is passionate and well-informed, but what's most interesting is how his defence of exotic pet ownership reflects an almost libertarian approach. "In England we've always had quite a liberal view – no animals were illegal; instead, they were regulated, so a dangerous animal – such as a venomous snake or a crocodile – you had to be licensed by the local authority. I don't believe I have the right to tell people what they should and shouldn't be able to do. If you want to keep an animal you should be able to keep that animal, provided you can meet its welfare needs and look after it."

Having spent some time in David's garden photographing some of his animals, he asks if we've got time for a quick walk to meet his friend Steve Ludwin. Steve's already a friend of VICE, having been the subject of a documentary on his practice of injecting snake venom, back in 2013. It's a warm day, so we agree and make our way to a impressive house among the lush, residential greenery of Canonbury. Steve warmly welcomes us in and we're excitedly ushered upstairs. Before long, David is sitting in the frame of an open kitchen window cradling a crocodile. It's small, yes, but a crocodile nonetheless.

There's a certain power to seeing animals like these in environments as unlikely as kitchens in Canonbury, especially in observing the gentle command seasoned owners like David possess in handling them. It brings to mind what might be the most important values at the centre of this conversation: respect and responsibility. Naturally, animals like Steve's crocodile or Sean's skunk are owed a great deal of respect. They are not cats or dogs, and as such those taking them into their homes need to be prepared to accept the responsibility of looking after them properly.

Respect is also due to the RSPCA, which – despite criticism from the exotic pet community and a lack of resources – continues its efforts to educate beginner owners and rescue abandoned animals. Finally, as Chris and Sean also point out, it's important that respect is also afforded to those who responsibly care for their animals. Even if you disagree with the practice altogether, to paint all exotics owners as reckless is a mistake, and it seems slowly they are being accepted by the wider animal-owning community.

@a_n_g_u_s

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President John Tyler is generally forgotten today. If he's remembered, it's usually to remind everyone that he kinda sucked. You will often find the name of the tenth president, who ran the country from 1841 to 1845, on lists of America's most obscure presidents, and in those rankings historians love to generate around President's Day, you'll almost always find his name in the bottom quartile. A 2007 Rasmussen poll of the general public, which measured both whether or not respondents had heard of the guy, and what they thought of him if they did, placed him dead last. A while ago, VICE did a very unscientific ranking of all the presidents from lamest to coolest. Here, too, Tyler was at the bottom.

It's a hard thing to be both unknown and widely hated, but this weird-faced Virginian did it.

And indeed, Tyler's achievements were few. He signed something called the Treaty of Winghia with Qing China, and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Britain, the document that finally settled which parcels of bleak, moose-pawed pine forests were in northern Maine and which were in Canada.

He annexed Texas. And, and... let's see. He saw to it that there was a peaceful transfer of power when he assumed the Oval Office after the elected president, William Henry Harrison, kicked the can mere weeks after his inauguration, setting the precedent for succession we still follow today. Harrison's cabinet wanted to make him "vice-president acting president," but Tyler cracked the whip and told them he would accept no such designation.

Still, Tyler's many detractors called him "His Accidency" after that. His own Whig Party tried to impeach him. He was on the wrong side of the slavery question and owned as many as 70 human beings in bondage.

A century after his administration, his own biographer Robert Seager II would write, "His countrymen generally remember him, if they have heard of him at all, as the rhyming end of a catchy campaign slogan."

That would be "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!" of course. Even that could be improved with a just a few keystrokes, if they had keys to stroke back then. If the Harrison campaign wanted a really memorable slogan, they would have rolled with "Tippecanoe and Tyler's Tool!" For there is one thing you can't take away from John Tyler, and that is this: He was the fuckingest president who ever lived and likely will always remain so. FOH, Warren G. Harding!

Consider: He conceived so many kids and kept making babies for so long that two of his grandchildren are still alive. You read that right: two grandchildren of a man born in 1790, a few weeks after George Washington gave America's inaugural state of the union address, a guy whose dad roomed with Thomas Jefferson at William and Mary, has two living grandchildren. No greats. Grandchildren.

Here's how that works:

Tyler had eight children with his first wife, Letitia Christian.

A mere six months after her death, Tyler made his first move on 22-year-old Julia Gardiner, 30 years his junior and hailing from a wealthy Hamptons family. She declined that proposal and a few more that followed until she finally broke down in 1844.

Tyler's Tool went back into action and stayed busy until 1860, when, at age 70, he fathered the last of his seven children with Julia. He died two years later.

So that's 15 kids total. (And that might not quite be all of them. Abolitionists claimed he sired, and then sold, one or more children with one or more of his slaves, and those stories still echo today in the African American oral tradition of the Virginia Tidewater. However, unlike the case of Tyler's dad's old roomie and close friend Thomas Jefferson, there is no DNA evidence, either in support or refutation, of these claims.)

It's as if John Tyler was trying to fuck his way out of obscurity.

It all makes for some mind-bending genealogy.

Pearl, Tyler's baby girl born to Julia, died in 1947, 132 years after the 1814 birth of Mary, his first child with Letitia. In other words, the lives of his children spanned everything from the Battle of New Orleans to the atom bomb.

And then there was his son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler (born: 1853), his fourth by Julia and a chip off the old studly block. He had three kids by his first wife, Anne Tucker. Like his dad before him, Lyon wasted little time grieving his first wife's 1921 death, and by 1924, he'd married married Sue Ruffin, 35 years his junior, and got back in the bellypoppin' game. And two of their three kids—Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. (born 1924) and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928 and likely named after old Tippecanoe)—are still living.

Today. Right now.

Hell, Harrison still lives on Sherwood Forest Plantation in Virginia, in his granddad's old house. Lyon lives in Franklin, Tennessee, a state that joined the Union six years after President Tyler was born.

It's as if John Tyler was trying to fuck his way out of obscurity, telling the world, "You might write me out of the history books, but I'll just fill the world with my offspring!"

When Donald Trump takes office later this month, barring the deaths of both Lyon and Harrison, just three generations of the Tyler family, a Virginia clan that laughs at the very idea of Viagra, will have lived through all 45 presidencies.

John Tyler the Dick may be long forgotten, but John Tyler's dick lives on.

Follow John Nova Lomax on Twitter.

La Meute purportedly boasts a membership of more than 40,000 people, all carefully screened disciples of the group's anti-Islam stance. Yet despite its apparent scope and its very public reputation in Quebec, the organization is notoriously secretive. Its Facebook group is closed, sections of its website are "members only," and leaders are often skittish with media.

Several reports have branded it Quebec's biggest, most rapidly growing right-wing group, an operation striving for political influence. But ex-members who spoke to VICE say the group's operations are deeply problematic, and that La Meute's numbers and seemingly increasing influence is mostly smoke and mirrors and skillful marketing.

A spokesperson for La Meute denied most of the allegations and said these claims likely came from people who were kicked out of the group and now have a chip on their shoulder.

All but one of the defectors who spoke to VICE did so on condition of anonymity, for fear of being harassed by current members.

Who is La Meute?

La Meute (French for "The Wolf Pack") was founded in October 2015 by Canadian Forces veterans Eric Venne (who goes by the alias "Eric Corvus") and Patrick Beaudry, who say their principal goal is to rally people against radical Islam and sharia law.

Yet how they are going about doing this remains unclear. The group appears to exist mostly online, within a tentacular network of Facebook groups that manage the organisations' various subgroups, which are devoted to things like security and politics.

As xenophobic groups began gaining ground in Quebec last year, La Meute's slick branding and menacing approach brought it to the forefront of the province's nativist organizations. The group's mere existence has generated quite a bit of press, but while other anti-Islam organisations like PEGIDA Quebec and Soldiers of Odin have taken their cause to the streets, La Meute has yet to really go public.

Organization

According to former members, adherents are organized by rank: the top brass are the Silver Paws, the Red Paws are the "gate keepers", who supervise the members (and decide who to kick out) and the regular members are the Black Paws and White Paws.

Suzanne Tessier told VICE that when she left the group in June, the six highest-ranked members were all ex-military. This heavily influenced the way the group was run. "They accepted no controversy, no contradiction," she said. According to the 72-year-old retiree, those who stepped out of line or asked too many questions were reprimanded or flat out exiled from the group.

The women VICE spoke to claimed the group's culture was also deeply macho, with a tendency towards misogyny. One defector said women were often excluded from decision-making processes and seldom given leadership roles, and that male members occasionally posted demeaning content on their Facebook pages.

VICE requested an interview with La Meute's leaders but were instead contacted by the group's media relations officer, a person using the pseudonym "Sylvain Maikan." He claimed couldn't reveal his true identity because his family doesn't share his views on Islam.

Maikan claimed the group's military-style hierarchy meant women weren't treated any differently than men. "Some perceived this as insensitivity or misogyny at first," he said, adding the group has since softened its approach and that 12 of the 35 group leaders were currently women.

Tessier also expressed concern over the organization's imposed shroud of secrecy. "They really didn't want us to know what was going on, they operate exactly like a cult," Tessier said, echoing a term used by several other ex-members.

Image via La Meute

The group's website gives insight into Corvus' leadership approach. One section, called "Les Mots de Corvus" (Corvus' Words) features three apocalyptic screeds.

"We're the last generation before the great upheaval caused by the rise of radical Islam and sharia law," he writes in French. "We have to find a way to unite and prevent society's collapse. We won't let them control us, we are not sheep, we are LA MEUTE."

Members are encouraged to recruit others and the site offers a printable pamphlet people can hand out in their communities. To further prove their allegiance, La Meute disciples are also invited to get the group's logo permanently inked on their bodies (and can receive a 10 per cent discount at select tattoo shops!).

According to an infiltrator who published his findings in a series of blog posts, the group uses its platform to spread fear of a looming "Muslim invasion" and overarching government surveillance. "Page administrators often warn their members to keep an eye on their posts, claiming the group was being spied on by authorities (the RCMP, CSIS, etc)," the author notes.

Membership Myths

Defectors also say the 43,000+ membership number—which is based on the Facebook page's followers—is inflated. They claim the page is full of duplicate accounts and people who don't even know they're in the group.

"I think there are probably only 4,000 or 5,000 real members," one woman told VICE. "There are people signed up who aren't really active, there are fake accounts, there are members who have been kicked out of the group but created two or three fake accounts to get back in and keep an eye on what's going on."

VICE was told those who attempted to implement an official registration system with paid membership cards were exiled from the group. One man said he believes this was due to the fact that such a system would reveal the real, much lower number of active members.

While these allegations are difficult to verify, several metrics provide insight into the group's actual size. The first is the relatively small turnout at the group's events. Attendance typically maxes out at about 125-150 people, former members say.

On La Meute's website, a ticker at the bottom of the page counted just over 15,000 total views at press time.

Yet Maikan maintains the 43,000 figure is accurate and says each member's Facebook profile is carefully screened by a large group of volunteers. As for the membership cards, he said La Meute doesn't yet have the manpower to develop such a system.

Money Woes

Tessier says her main reason for "revolting" against the group was the lack of transparency around finances. This concern was also raised by every single former member VICE spoke to.

La Meute was registered as a non-profit organization with the Quebec government in April 2016, with Eric Venne, Patrick Beaudry and a third man named Stéphane Roch identified as administrators. While the group has been active in its fundraising efforts, leaders have yet to reveal how much they've raised or where the funds have been spent.

On the site, a rotating banner invites visitors to donate, with the option to give a monthly gift.

"There are many people who gave regular donations, $30 or $40, up to $100 a month," one former member says, estimating that thousands of dollars have been collected in this fashion. He says the group has also organized four or five $25-a-plate fundraising dinners, though attendance was never more than 125 people.

La Meute confirms that one anonymous donor has given the group nearly $9,000.

Then there is the sale of branded merchandise —a 24 item catalog of claw-emblazoned toques, sweatshirts and a $50 travel mug— produced by a company called PTRK Design. According to the Régistre des entreprises, PTRK Design is owned by La Meute co-founder Patrick Beaudry.

Several ex-members told VICE this seemed like a conflict of interest. "What do they do with the money from the sale of these items?" Tessier wonders. "They're not accountable."

Questions pertaining to the group's finances raised the ire of La Meute's leaders, former members said. On the website, a tab called "Where the Money Goes" delivers a vague, bitterly-worded explanation.

"Well, I don't know the commitment level of the person asking this question, but it's obvious they have never really invested any time, energy or especially their own money in any sort of cause," Beaudry writes in reaction to financial inquiries, adding that he is "frustrated." He then offers a point-form, number-less list of expenditures necessary to foster the "growing" group, such as "travel," "communication," and "administration." The need to eventually pay for legal defense is also listed as a financial concern.

According to Maikan, La Meute's finances are all above board and will be used to purchase equipment such as a truck trailer and AV gear for La Meute TV, a new media they intend to launch. And though he refused to communicate with us outside of Facebook chat, Maikan stated "meetings with media" as another main expense.

He claimed the group had only organized two dinners, as opposed to the "four or five" claimed by one ex-member, but have since abandoned the idea because it wasn't sufficiently profitable. As for La Meute's business relationship with PTRK Design, Maikan said it's simply a temporary measure until the group can properly finance the inventory (which, he added, is very popular). He went on to explain that the group's founders put thousands of dollars into developing the group and that in an ideal world, they would eventually get some of this money back.

"If members doubt the leaders' honesty or worry about how the money is being spent, we encourage them to not make donations," he said "Keep your money, it's that simple."

Political Goals

Many of those who left La Meute complained the group was "not active enough," or that its leaders lacked direction. All of the ex-members VICE spoke to had since gone on to join other anti-Islam groups they considered more action-driven.  "La Meute doesn't do anything except organize dinners and sell gear," Tessier complained.

She also says potential plans the group put forth were often misdirected. "There was one guy in Saguenay who wanted us to go into grocery stores to put stickers on halal food," she says. "He wanted to do things that were against the law, and there was no one there to really talk them out of it."

"I'm not convinced they won't eventually start a militia"

In the last few months, there have been some reports of La Meute handing out threatening pamphlets and one blog claims a member in Granby assaulted a niqab-clad Muslim woman.

Maikan told VICE the group was currently working on creating cells in the province's 17 administrative regions. These clans, as he called them, will be in charge of organizing meetings with elected officials "in order to sensitize them to the danger Islam represents for the future of our nation."

He acknowledged that a member of the group's executive committee was indeed involved in the Granby incident, and said the member had simply "lost it" when she saw a woman "wearing a burqa." Maikan said La Meute does not tolerate this type of behaviour and that the woman—who was recently reinstated—had been temporarily suspended from the group.

Tessier says she is relieved to have left La Meute, and warns others not to be naive.

"I'm not convinced they won't eventually start a militia," she says. "If their plans continue to amount to nothing, that's a possibility that bothers me a little."

Follow Brigitte Noël on Twitter.

Crunchie bars are the new nut, and we are all just trying to get one.

A recent video shows a squirrel entering a Toronto convenience store and swiping a Crunchie bar from the display before scurrying away outside and into the abyss.

This squirrel—forced to navigate an environment far removed from its natural state and fight for survival on the mean city streets, stealing and eating whatever it can while trying to make its way in this concrete jungle, alienated from both nature and itself—is all of us.

Who among us cannot relate to this squirrel's struggle?

Everywhere we turn there's adversity, staring us in the face and challenging our very individual personhood and notions of humanity while we compete with each other in the endless rat race that is life.

This squirrel knows that in life, death is the only certainty. It's everyone for themselves; a Crunchie for a Crunchie.

While watching the video we may automatically assume the role of the store owner, outraged and threatened by this usurper who is benefitting from our hard work. But recent global events demonstrate that our societal anxiety stems from a fear that one day we will become the squirrel; that resources will cease to be in abundance and Crunchie-stealing chaos will ensue.

And what of it? Suppose that Crunchies were suddenly in short supply? Who would control the Crunchie output? Would we be able to adapt or have to resort to the nefarious ways of the squirrel?

The world is in an uncertain place and there are no guarantees in life. The squirrel understands this and does what it needs to do to survive. Sometimes we are the store owner and other times we are the squirrel. Perhaps that Crunchie bar holds the true wisdom of the universe: just be.

Follow Lisa Power on Twitter.

US News

Russians Celebrated Trump Victory, Says US Intel Report
A US intelligence report making the case for Russian election interference, expected to be presented to President-Elect Donald Trump later today, reportedly states that senior Russian government officials celebrated Trump's victory. The report also supposedly identifies the Russia-linked "actors" who gave hacked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. —The Washington Post

Ex-CIA Director Resigns as Trump Advisor
Former CIA director James Woolsey Jr. has abruptly resigned from Trump's transition team. Woolsey was reportedly "uncomfortable" about developments since the election, including Trump's suggestion he may restructure the office of the Director of National Intelligence. —Yahoo News

Four Guantánamo Prisoners Sent to Saudi Arabia
Four Yemeni prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay have been released and sent to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon has announced. The four men had been suspected of ties to al Qaeda but were never charged with any crime. There are now 55 prisoners still being held at Guantánamo, with 19 cleared for release having undergone a security review. —CNN

Paul Ryan Vows to Defund Planned Parenthood
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Republicans will attempt to defund Planned Parenthood because his party is "standing for life." Ryan explained that to achieve this goal, the GOP will use a process called "reconciliation," which allows measures related to spending to pass the Senate with a simple majority of 51 rather than the 60 required for many bills under filibuster rules. —VICE News

International News

UN Says Severing Water Supply in Syria Is a War Crime
The UN has warned that any deliberate cutting of water supplies to millions of people in the Syrian capital of Damascus would amount to a war crime. Water supplies coming from the rebel-held area of Wadi Barada have been cut since December 22. Rebels have blamed bombing by Syrian government forces, while the government has accused rebels of sabotage.—Al Jazeera

Bangladeshi Police Kill Cafe Attack Suspect in Gunfight
Bangladesh police have shot and killed two Islamist militants in a gunfight in the country's capital of Dhaka, including the man accused of organizing last year's terrorist attack on a cafe in which 20 hostages were killed. Nurul Islam Marjan, the 30-year-old commander of a faction of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, was on a wanted list. —Reuters

Russia Begins Withdrawal of Forces from Syria Conflict
Russia has announced its withdrawal of an aircraft carrier and several warships from the Mediterranean as part of a drawdown of military involvement in Syria. Military commander Valery Gerasimov said the decision had been made by "the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces, Vladimir Putin." Gerasimov explained Russia would retain the capacity for airstrikes in Syria. This expected move follows the announcement of Russian- and Turkish-organized peace talks between some of the factions in the civil war, set to be held in Kazakhstan. —The Guardian

Japan Recalls Ambassador from South Korea over Statue
Japan has withdrawn its ambassador to South Korea over a statue depicting one of the women forced into prostitution during World War II by the Japanese military. The statue of a barefoot woman was installed by protestors in the city of Busan. Japan said it breaks a reparations deal made in 2015 that was supposed to resolve the long-standing grievance over "comfort women." —BBC News

Everything Else

Snapchat Accused of Fake Stats by Former Employee
Former Snapchat head of growth and engagement Anthony Pompliano is suing the mobile app, alleging that he was fired for raising concerns about fraudulent stats being used in the build-up to Snapchat's IPO. The version of his complaint that was available publicly was redacted to remove any indications about which stats were allegedly manipulated. —USA Today

Chance the Rapper Ranks Kanye West Albums
Chance the Rapper has sparked a Twitter debate about Kanye West's best albums after ranking his friend and collaborator's output. Favoring Kanye's early work, Chance named Late Registration and The College Dropout as his favorite records. —The Fader

Ninety-Nine Percent of Coral Reefs Will Suffer Bleaching by 2100
A new study in Nature Scientific Reports shows that 99 percent of coral reefs will be affected by bleaching each year by the end of the century. Bleaching happens when pollution causes corals to lose their color and often precedes their death. —TIME

Soulja Boy and Chris Brown to Fight in Boxing Match
Soulja Boy announced he and Chris Brown will take a dispute into the boxing ring for a three-round fight in Vegas in March. Brown confirmed the fight will take place. The beef began when Soulja Boy commented on an Instagram photo of Brown's ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran.—Noisey

White House Releases Strategy to Deal with Asteroids
In one of its final acts, the Obama administration has released a 25-page document outlining US plans to combat any giant asteroids found to be on a collision course with Earth. It's called the "Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy." —Motherboard

Canadian Professor Wants You to Look at Porn
Taylor Kohut, a social psychology professor at Western University in Canada, wants people to look at porn and identify particular pornographic details. Kohut said the Porn Genome Project would help work out what exactly a pornographic image is. —VICE

In the throes of puberty,14-year-old Su Robotti had developed "humongous breasts," but she was still waiting for what she really wanted: her period. The year was 1969, and Robotti was filled with anxiety as she watched her friends, one-by-one, come to school and report that they had begun menstruating. All the while, she kept quiet, agonizing over when she'd ruin her first pair of underwear. At times, she even considered lying about it, but nervous thoughts would always inevitably halt her—she couldn't even pretend she knew what cramps felt like.

Robotti's mother, who had gotten her period when she was 12, was less anxious and more worried. At her mother's insistence, Robotti found herself reclining in a gynecological chair. She watched as a doctor massage her lower abdomen as part of an external pelvic exam, and then listened to him deliver the report to her mother: Her reproductive organs were infant-sized and she only had one working ovary.

"I just felt like I wasn't enough," remembers Robotti today. At 59 years old, Robotti still hasn't gotten her first period—and she never will.

Robotti is a "DES daughter," born to one of the one in the estimated five to ten million women who took the first-ever synthetic estrogen, diethylstilbestrol, while pregnant. While marketed as a drug to help prevent miscarriages, the estrogen was pervasive, winding up in everything from prenatal vitamins to weekly shots to daily pills. Eventually, it would make its way into the blood of fetuses. When born, these children would often find themselves with abnormal reproductive organs—often causing infertility—and an elevated risk of developing various forms of cancer.

Read more on Broadly

In 1975, TV producer Norman Lear was riding a hot streak with All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons, all of which were on the air at the same time. Not satisfied with only four hit shows, Lear was readying his latest socially relevant sitcom for CBS: One Day at a Time, a frank and funny look at life after divorce. The writer Gloria Calderón Kellett, who was born that year, grew up watching Lear's output in syndication in the 80s, when his series ran back-to-back with the likes of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. Even then, she told me, "I knew these shows weren't frivolous. They were about something." So, 40 years later, when she was invited to have lunch with Lear—now 94—to talk about a new project, her first thought was, Who says no to that?

The new show turned out to be a reboot of One Day at a Time, which Netflix dropped on Friday. With 70s and 80s TV remakes in vogue, Lear's current producing partner Brent Miller—another kid born in '75—saw One Day as the piece of the canon best-suited for revival. He brought in Mike Royce, a veteran comedy writer who created Men of a Certain Age and has been a major creative contributor to Everybody Loves Raymond, Lucky Louie, and Enlisted. Royce was already a fervent Lear admirer, though his first memory of the man's work was being told by his parents to leave the room whenever All in the Family came on, because it was too adult.

The original One Day at a Time follows a divorced, hardworking mother of two who lives in a cheap apartment with a nosy superintendent. Lear and his new collaborators decided that their updated heroine should be a Latina military vet. At some point during their first meeting, they realized, "We should probably have a Latina here in the room." That may seem obvious, but according to Kellett, "Too many people in this business wouldn't even have that conversation."

They called in Kellett, a Cuban American playwright who'd written for Raymond, Devious Maids, and iZombie. Lear asked her one simple question: "What would it be like if you were divorced?" Within minutes, she was spilling her guts about how involved her parents are with her own life and kids. As she talked about how she's sparred with her strong-willed, opinionated mother, Hellett told me that Lear lit up, repeating, "Yes, yes. This, this."

One Day at a Time may catch Netflix subscribers by surprise. It's classically Lear-esque in form, in a way that dares to be un-hip. The 13 half-hour episodes were shot in front of a studio audience, and with multiple cameras, a departure from the single-camera style that's been in vogue for years. Though the characters deal with adult problems like drug-dependency, depression, religious faith, and sexuality, the content is decidedly TV-14, not TV-MA. Yet the show is as surprisingly addicting—"binge-worthy," even—thanks to scripts that balance broad old-fashioned comedy with heart-tugging emotion, and a cast that can stand up to Lear's best.

Instead of Bonnie Franklin's outspoken Ann and her mischievous daughters, Julie (Mackenzie Phillips) and Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli), the new One Day at a Time has Justina Machado playing Penelope, a Los Angeles nurse and Army vet, separated from her PTSD-plagued husband. She raises her socio-politically "woke" teen daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez) and scheming son Alex (Marcel Ruiz), with the help of her widowed, conservative mother Lydia (Rita Moreno).

Moreno was an easy casting call; Kellett said the EGOT-winning actress has the passion and small-but-strong stature of her own mother. Machado, meanwhile, knocked everybody flat at the start of the audition process with her ability to handle both fast-paced jokes and tearjerking pathos. "She was someone who was making us laugh and making us cry within two minutes," according to Kellett.

Over the course of its nine seasons, the original series also skewed sentimental, dealing with the problems facing a working mother and two savvy adolescents in the Ford, Carter, and Reagan eras. The new One Day at a Time takes its inspiration from the likes of The Carmichael Show and Black-ish (both descendants of Lear's 70s work in their own way) in balancing frank talk about hot-button issues with funny situations drawn from personal experience. Royce told me that he took this assignment in the first place because he's the father of two teenagers. "There's stuff going on that I wanted to put on television," he said. Kellett's two kids are much younger, but she knows about nosy Cuban moms, and about the subtle variations of West Coast Cuban culture.

As a result, their show has a wealth of personal stories to pick from. The writers weave their true-to-life observations throughout the first season, working them into scenes, episode-length situations, and longer arcs. Season one's 13 episodes are loosely structured around the skeptical, feminist, 14-year-old Elena's on-again/off-again plans for her quinceañera, as well as the way Penelope uses pills and therapy to manage the physical and emotional pain left over from her military service (to the dismay of Lydia, who believes it's more honorable to "fight the crazy" than to rely on any outside help).

One Day at a Time has a variety of episodes in its first season: In one, Lydia squabbles with Elena because the teen won't wear makeup; in another, Elena's best friend has to leave town because her immigrant parents were deported; in a third, Penelope teaches Alex how to shave by showing him how she removes her own mustache. Throughout, the series—like its predecessor—gets a steady supply of wacky from the apartment's superintendent, Schneider (Todd Grinnell), who's been reimagined as a leftist trust-fund hipster who doesn't understand why it might be offensive to wear a Che Guevara shirt around a Cuban refugee like Lydia.

For Kellett and Royce, the decision to tell these kinds of stories in a multicam format isn't just a way of paying homage to the original (which they also do by copying the basic set design of the old apartment). It's actually a way to take advantage of what both old-school and new-school TV have to offer. "The freedom that Netflix gives you is sometimes in little things," Royce said. "Like, we didn't put any music in. We sort of assumed we'd have incidental music transitioning from scene to scene, but since we don't have commercials or acts, we didn't need it." That difference in style manifests in scenes that sometimes play out for ten or more minutes, like little plays. Kellett said this allowed them to "nourish these moments" where the characters have to be honest with one another, without allowing them or the viewer the relief of a cut to a commercial or to another scene.

"Having the audience there creates an incredible energy, and you can see immediately what works and what doesn't, Kellett said." If nothing else, playing to the crowd leads to punchier jokes—as in one episode where Elena is complaining about micro-aggressions and her mom snaps back, "If I got bent out of shape at every dumb thing a man says, you wouldn't be here."

"To me, there's nothing harder to do well than a multicam. There's just so many variables," Royce said. "Things change quickly, and you have to nail it right in front of an audience. You don't have a lot of wiggle room in the editing. And yet there's nothing more satisfying when you really do it well, because you're having this group experience."

That communal feel extended to behind-the-scenes, where the writing staff was purposefully diversified: mixing ethnicities, genders, and ages. "We have writers from 23 to 94," Kellett said. "The quality of the conversation has been phenomenal." Royce added, "Our show not only benefitted from that combination of voices. It would've been silly to do without it."

It's impossible to replicate the taboo-busting radicalism of those earliest Norman Lear shows. In a way, that's what makes One Day at a Time an ideal candidate for reinvention, because it doesn't have the cultural baggage of an All in the Family or Good Times, which were more aggressively progressive. The original One Day at a Time had a more modest aim than Lear's more famous shows: to adjust the family sitcom to the age of rising divorce rates and latchkey kids. It was an easily adaptable premise, as Kellett can attest. "I write it from my Cuban perspective because that's who I am," she said. "But these issues are so relatable that hopefully my specificity and what Mike is bringing with the teenagers will resonate."

What may end up being revolutionary about this new One Day is the confidence with which its creators combine the new and the old by changing the makeup of their collaborators while also reminding TV viewers how effective a traditional shot-live multicam can be. "I think we take advantage of the format to wear our heart on our sleeve," Royce insisted. And whether the show connects with viewers or not, it's still impressive how it takes a borrowed 40-year-old outline and fills it with something contemporary and meaningful.

Follow Noel Murray on Twitter.

Friends of a Canadian woman who has reportedly been in jail in Turkey since Friday on charges of insulting the country's president are campaigning loudly for her release.

Ece Heper, a dual citizen of Turkey and Canada, was arrested and charged last week in the city of Kars in Turkey, according to friends in Toronto and her lawyer in Turkey.

Read more on VICE News Canada.

I don't think there's a better way to understand the internet than to read Balk's Laws, a set of depressingly accurate pronouncements from the Awl's resident misanthrope Alex Balk. One is, "The worst thing is knowing what everyone thinks about anything." Another: "If you think the internet is terrible now, just wait a while."

To be on social media right now is to experience deep waves of cynicism and pessimism. Lindy West, a prominent feminist writer and heavy Twitter user, quit the platform this week, calling it unusable "for anyone but trolls, robots, and dictators." President-Elect Donald Trump last month tweeted things about a union leader that resulted in harassment from third parties, leading to some serious questions about whether Twitter should just ban its most famous user. Facebook is filled with fake news stories and hoaxes, and its latest feature, Facebook Live, most recently captured a horrific alleged hate crime. Nearly everything you read on social media—down to even a "liberal tears" mug that was promoted all over Twitter last month—is somehow a lie.

All this is on top of the everyday badness that usually goes unremarked upon because we're so used to it: the hateful invective that especially swamps people of color and women who have opinions in public, the way social media acts as an opinion-affirming cocoon where likeminded people tell one another that they're right and the other side is wrong, the sheer pointlessness of 99.9 percent of what gets tossed out in those little text boxes.

It's enough to make you go offline, but not really (lol) because we are all addicted to the tiny little endorphin spikes of affirmation and interaction. So instead of logging off, I emailed Adrienne Russell, an associate professor at the University of Denver who specializes in how journalism and activism have evolved online, and talked with her about how toxic the relationship between the media and the public has become, and why she's optimistic despite everything.

VICE: There has been some talk about how Twitter should ban Trump because he is encouraging abuse or spreading hate speech. What do you think of that argument—is it silly on its face, considering he's about to be president?
Adrienne Russell: I don't think there is anything silly about this argument, but it is complicated. Twitter should hold all of its users, including Trump, to the same standards of conduct. Facebook should do the same. Trump's Facebook posts about banning Muslims from the US, among others, clearly violate Facebook rules against hate speech. Mark Zuckerberg claims that, because such speech is coming from a major political candidate, it is mainstream political discourse and thus acceptable. This is a morally bankrupt approach to running the platform that hosts the world's largest exchange of ideas and information. But this raises the very good question of whether we want Twitter and Facebook defining what can and cannot be said. Hardline freedom of speech advocates say absolutely not and that this could be more of a threat to public discourse than Trump and others spewing hate speech and misinformation online.

"Treating the rise of Trump as the result of technological change ignores decades of conservative movement efforts to undermine trust in government, journalism, science, and 'facts'"

Who do you think bears responsibility for fact-checking false statements made by politicians (a la Trump) or organizations? Should Twitter and Facebook work to make sure that prominent posts are, if not "true," then not straight-up misinformation?
I think it's the responsibility of journalists to fact-check statements made by politicians, but fake news is about more than lying politicians. I think social media platforms have the responsibility to curb the spread of fake news, and users have the responsibility to develop the skills to be able to identify fake news, so they are not fooled into believing and sharing false information. I'm sure you've seen the recent Pew survey that found nearly a quarter of Americans say they have shared a fake news story.

And I should say, too, that although it is true that social media platforms speed the circulation of rumors and lies, they did not create cynical publics who have so little faith in media and government that they make no distinction between journalism and fake news or between legitimate political leaders and populist opportunists. Treating the rise of Trump as the result of technological change ignores decades of conservative movement efforts to undermine trust in government, journalism, science, and "facts" more generally. We should be thinking about that whenever we're talking about politics and the media.

If Twitter et al do take a hard line on "hate speech," a la banning far-right hatemongers like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos and their followers, does that run the risk of just partitioning social media so the "alt-right" congregate on their own sites and there's no properly public space on the web, just competing ideological clubhouses?
I think what you are describing—the competing ideological clubhouses—are already taking place on Facebook and to perhaps a lesser extent Twitter. FB algorithms, for example, create ideological bubbles, and this (as we have heard over and over again) is part of why the left was so shocked at Trump's rise and then his victory. But, yes, what you describe sounds plausible. If the white supremacists get kicked off social media platforms, they will probably start their own platform (and already have if you consider some subreddits). I don't think we can or should give up the idea of an online public space where productive political discourse can take place. I also don't think that we yet have the tools to facilitate such a space or the skills to populate it.

If you were in charge of a Facebook-like platform, call it Russellpedia or something, what guidelines would you put in place to facilitate the sharing of ideas while making sure abuse and harassment weren't widespread? Would you attempt to police hate speech?
"Russellpedia"? Ha. I think not!

I'm no entrepreneur, media executive, or free-speech attorney, but I guess I just frankly don't think it's that difficult to combat abuse and harassment and hate speech. You just have to work at doing it and doing it well, right? There are large gray areas, but it's not an impossible task. It's an ongoing task. And don't we do that to some degree in public spaces all the time? Media outlets have learned how to combat bad communication behavior in comments threads. It's not easy. It takes commitment and the willingness to pay people to work at it. But if you're Facebook, why can't you prioritize that and pay well-trained employees and lawyers to work at it, and take on the responsibility and whatever liability comes with it? To me, it just seems like one of the costs of doing business as the world's largest media platform.

If we don't have the skills or tools to create a public space online where political discourse is productive, what are those skills and tools? Is it a matter of technology, or is it more a matter of people learning how to speak to one another? Or to put it another way, is there any way to make the public less cynical?
The public is cynical because it has been taught to be cynical. We learn our politics overwhelmingly through the news and talk radio media. So, what is the aim of the political information most Americans are consuming? Is it to serve the public interest? Is it to move people to act and work together as citizens? Is our news, on the most basic level, about encouraging shared responsibility or an obligation to work toward empathy in the service of greater justice or genuine liberty and more equal opportunity? It could not be any more clear after the years-long election season that we have all just endured that TV news is driven by profit and that the product it creates is shaped very specifically by that motive—and it is a very inadequate, even toxic product by the measure of how well it serves the public interest, and by that I include how well it works to inform the citizenry.

"Facebook isn't really the problem. It's how we've learned to use it."

So what if the operating instructions for our media were different? The US will never see true public media on the scale of the BBC, but we might use the internet in new ways. What if there were a space for journalism where reporters really were rewarded for being activists on behalf of the truth—paid reporters but also all those social media users who want to fight propaganda and disinformation? That's an antidote in my opinion to cynicism. I think it's a sign of hope, for example, that young people are turned off by Facebook. I think it's hopeful that an influential youth movement is driven by DIY culture and aesthetics. Isn't it really way past time that the hive-mind created a public information space that isn't driven by profit?

I think we do have the skills and tools to create a public space that fosters civil and productive debate through reliable accurate easily accessible information—in fact, I think that's true now more than ever before in history! I know that sounds absurd given the context. But we have the skills and tools today, we just lack the motivation. Indeed, we're being driven by powerful forces away from producing that kind of space. There is a great deal of powerful anti-motivation to do it. That's what we have to battle. It's not about inventing some new magical platform. That's already been done. The tools are incredible, and they're all around us advancing every day. We have to focus on battling the forces that promote ignorance and apathy.

I want to underline that I think there are reasons for a lot of hope. The activist groups I have studied for 20 years have used media in innovative and democratic ways to promote media literacy and civic literacy. That's been at the heart of the missions, the causes, they have taken up. I have seen that these groups embrace and promote a much larger range of values and identities and ideas about social relations than the range being promoted by corporate media. Education scholar Henry Giroux is great on this stuff. He says we have to work at unlearning the experience of rudeness and spectatorship and the wafer-thin approach to public life and social connection that is dominating American life today. I think that's obviously true.

Facebook isn't really the problem. It's how we've learned to use it, or maybe how we are rewarded for using it in certain ways instead of in other ways. Any medium is only as good as the people using it—their skills make it good or bad. FOX News watchers are really bad news consumers. They've learned some terribly retrograde media habits, but media habits and use are based on other skills, other literacies. Still, beware: Your social media feed on some level is teaching you how to use media, and your literacies are only ever increasing or decreasing, never standing still!

This interview has been edited and condensed for the sake of clarity.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

When I was a kid, I worried about my parents with an anxiety bordering on obsession. If they went out for the evening, I'd sit up in bed waiting to hear tires on the snow, the quiet roar of the garage door, the jingle of keys in the lock. I felt that any second my babysitter would come into the room bearing news of a terrible accident. To distract myself from the worry, I read Harry Potter until my books fell apart. It was the only thing that calmed me.

Within the pages of his story, Harry was a living example of all my worst fears; an orphan, a survivor. He taught me to be brave in the face of an uncertain future. Coping through Harry Potter got me through those anxious nights, my first heartbreak as a teenager, the death of both of my grandfathers, the sudden passing of a close friend in college.

As I've gotten older, I've realized the comfort and peace I find within the pages of this series toes the line between the secular and the divine, and I'm not alone. The books have sold an estimated 500 million copies since the original's 1997 release, making the series fifth on the most popular books of all time list—just a few steps behind actual religious texts like the Koran (No. 1) and the King James Bible (No. 2).

While a 2012 study from the Pew Research Center found nearly one in three millennials are religiously unaffiliated, that doesn't mean we're a generation devoid of faith. The same study concluded we are indeed deeply spiritual, but find it hard to connect with traditional religious settings and texts that may have been used to invalidate our sexuality, our autonomy, and our freedom. And that's where the appeal of a series like Harry Potter comes in, says Casper ter Kuile, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the co-host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, a podcast which examines the Harry Potter books as religious scripture.

When ter Kuile was in Divinity school, he reread Harry Potter for the first time since he was a teenager, and was shocked at how religious it was.

"I realized all the same themes we were talking at school within a biblical context were showing up in these books," he says. "I already knew the characters and I loved the story, but I really trusted it in a different way, because it hadn't been used in ways that had hurt me in the past."

Ter Kuile's co-host is Vanessa Zoltan, an Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and the Humanist Hub in Cambridge, whose lecture on reading Jane Eyre as a sacred text served as an impetus for the show. (Casper attended said reading, and they ended up doing the same with Harry Potter due to its status as an undeniable cultural touchstone.) On the podcast the two spend a few hours every week interpreting Harry Potter through a religious lens. Each episode matches up with a chapter, and each chapter has a theme, like jealousy, fear, or innocence.

Zoltan and ter Kuile use ages-old spiritual practices like the Christian tradition of Lectio Divina and the Jewish practice of Havruta to find deeper meaning within the text. Harry Potter and the Sacred Text has hit a nerve with Harry Potter fans, who have suddenly found their religious obsession with these books justified by actual religious scholars. The podcast is a Top 40 mainstay on iTunes Religions and Spirituality Chart, and has inched up to the No. 1 and No. 2 spots more than a few times, putting it shoulder to shoulder with folks like Joel Osteen and Bishop T.D. Jakes.

The show's listeners come from every walk of life and every conceivable religious background. Among them are casual Catholics, born again Baptists, ordained Rabbis and preachers, secular atheists, and teachers who use the podcast as an example of close-reading. No matter their background, ter Kuile says most of them have used the books to find comfort in times of pain.

"It's remarkable how many listeners we have who have lost a parent when they were young, or who have gone through something truly difficult" said ter Kuile. "Afterwards they turned to Harry Potter, which is why the books are so important to them. They were a saving grace in a difficult time.

"Harry Potter is about learning how to be brave, how to stand up for those who are weaker than us, how to love our families even when they are difficult and how to forgive," ter Kuile continues. "These are common themes across so many religious traditions."

People are still hungry for meaning, searching for things that give them an experience of belonging. The Harry Potter universe is already fulfilling those things.

One of the principles the two started the podcast with, ter Kuile says, is the question of what makes a book sacred. The Bible, for instance, is not a sacred work because it arrived from on high, but, ter Kuile believes, because a community of people throughout the centuries have gone through it. Sat with it. Really mined it for truth, tried to understand it from many different perspectives, and map how it matches current reality.

Harry Potter is becoming sacred for the same reasons—for nearly 20 years a global community of devotees have been meticulously disseminating its text.

"That's been happening at such a scale, at such an intensity, that it's totally normal people would feel more connected to [Harry Potter] than just a normal book," says ter Kuile. "It's identity creating. Suddenly it means something when you say you're a Slytherin, in the same way it means something to say you're a reformed Jew. We have a common language built around it."

The changing landscape of religious affiliation makes this time in history ripe for the creation of new ways to worship. A primary affiliation to one singular religious identity [i.e. Methodist, Catholic, Jewish] is becoming less and less relevant, says ter Kuile. "But people are still hungry for meaning, searching for things that give them an experience of belonging. The Harry Potter universe is already fulfilling those things for a lot of people, and what we're learning with the podcast is that the potential to expand on that is very large."

While ter Kuile doesn't envision physical Harry Potter churches popping up anytime soon, copious Harry Potter meet-ups are already offering solace for many. In fact, ter Kuile believes that the practice of going to places like Universal Harry Potter theme parks and conventions like ComicCon are a kind of worship. These spaces may not quite be modern day pilgrimage sites for a new kind of spiritual practice just yet, but religions don't develop at the speed of a Snitch.

Follow Caroline Thompson on Twitter.

Beth's voice had begun to sound like an unintelligible adult from a Charlie Brown cartoon. A few minutes earlier I'd simply asked if her sister would be joining us for dinner. Ten minutes later I was still waiting for the story she was telling to lead me to the answer. Finally I snapped.

"So is she joining us or not?"

"Hey, I was getting to that. What's wrong with you? You usually like my stories."

"I don't know, it's just...I asked you like ten minutes ago. It was a simple question."

"You know, Mandy and I have both noticed you've been a lot more impatient lately and less sensitive. We think it's that damn testosterone."

They were right. I had kind of noticed it too, but never made the connection. My tone was different and not just because my voice had changed. I was more confident, sticking up for my ideas and speaking up more in meetings. I was couching things less and being more direct—telling it like it is, both inside and apparently outside the office.

"Oh no. Am I turning into a dick?"

"No, you're not a dick," Beth said. "You're just more like a guy. I just have to get used to it."

So did I. When I began the injections, I was well informed of the physical changes the testosterone would have on my body. But I was not prepared for the emotional ones. While going through this adjustment period, it became clear to me that a lot of male and female gender stereotyping is definitely rooted in legitimate hormonal differences. Take aggression for example. As a woman, I used to watch guys get into drunken arguments that escalated into fistfights and wonder what the hell was wrong with them. Then, after a few months on testosterone, there I was throwing the first punch. At a Halloween party...dressed as a used Kleenex.

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A "beer suicide" is a mixture of all the draft beers at a bar in one glass. The result is sometimes dark, sometimes light, but almost always terrible. We headed to a few bars around Brooklyn to taste-test their suicides.

Everyone turned to their own vices for getting through 2016, and for many Canadians, that source of pleasure came from incest porn.

According to Pornhub, Canadians' top 2016 searches saw the terms "stepdad and daughter" climb 83 spots (to 12th place) while "mom" jumped 19 spots to 10th place—the two biggest gains on the chart. The top three searches were "lesbian," "stepsister," and "milf," with "step mom" coming in fourth and "cartoon" rounding out the top five, while the top overall categories were "lesbians", "teen", and "MILF." "Creampie" (I had to look it up and it's way more vanilla than it sounds) also jumped six spots to 10th.

The most sought after porn star is Riley Reid, according to Pornhub's year-in-review data, described on the site as " one young starlet who has already mastered every style of screwing in the dirty book." Reid also ranked fourth worldwide. (Americans searched for Kim Kardashian the most.)

Nerdy porn saw a huge boon this year, as more Canadians were searching for topics like "VR" (up 855 percent), "virtual reality" (up 723 percent), and "minecraft" (up 195 percent, also WTF). For some reason, "burglar" was up 275 percent.

Apparently we also fetishize francophones, as the top relative searches were Quebec, Canadian, and French. When I say "we" though, I mostly mean men: 75 percent of Pornhub's Canadian users in 2016 were dudes.

Considering how small Canada is (population wise) we placed an impressive third in overall traffic behind the US and the UK respectively. We also are fourth in overall page views with 186 per capita.

With an average viewing time of 9 minutes and 49 seconds per visit (fourth place), it doesn't take too long for the average Canadian to rub one out. Philippines had the lengthiest average viewing time at 12 minutes and 45 seconds, while the US, in third place, was at 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Cubans spend less than five minutes watching porn on average, but you can't really blame them, it's hard to get a wifi connection down there. Really hard.

Though Canadians are known for having a subdued patriotism, apparently we go bat shit on Canada Day. Last year, the term "Canada Day" on Pornhub shot up 15,877 percent on July 1. More people were also looking for Canadian babes, teens, milfs, canucks as well as racialized fetishes like "Native Canadian," "Canadian Indian," and "French Canadian."   

That is kind of icky, but hey, at least basically no one jerked off around their family on Christmas Eve—traffic from Canadians was down 46 percent that day.

Follow Manisha Krishnan  on Twitter.

Head image: Riley Reid, the porn star Canadians searched the most in 2016. Photo via Flickr user Baldwin Saintilus

Two days before the 2010 Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, jockey Garrett Gomez was thrown from a horse named Indy Bouquet, who in the incident, broke a bone in her ankle and was later euthanized. Gomez was examined at a nearby hospital. His shoulder hurt, but it seemed like he was all right.

"Just watch me ride," he said the next day. "I'm a little achy, that's to be expected, I had a 1,200-pound animal fall on top of me yesterday."

Gomez, who weighed about 110 pounds, had been a professional jockey for twenty years. He was 38 years old. Twice he had won the Eclipse Award given to the country's best rider. And the next day, he was set to take on the most popular horse in America: the undefeated Zenyatta, who had been featured on 60 Minutes and been named to Oprah Winfrey's "O Power List."

At the time, Gomez was one of the world's leading jockeys. And his Breeders' Cup Classic mount, Blame, was no slouch. But the attention was on Zenyatta, whose record would improve to 20-0 with a win in the $5 million race. Blame was an afterthought. So was Gomez, who after riding earlier in the morning, had taken some ibuprofen and spent his final hour before the race icing his shoulder. He could hardly lift his arm by race time.

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If you've logged onto Facebook or Twitter in the past year, chances are you've seen someone's accusations that 2016 "killed off" all of our favorite celebrities. There was David Bowie and Prince, Muhammad Ali and Gene Wilder, Harper Lee and Leonard Cohen. I mean, sure, beloved people die every year, but this was the first year when people truly rallied around the idea that the year itself was cursed. Someone even started a campaign to "save" Betty White from the death trap of 2016.

According to data from Google Trends, the death of David Bowie on January 10, 2016 coincided with the first spike in people googling "2016 celebrity deaths." Then, the death of Prince on April 21 led to what would be the largest spike in the year for this search term, until the week of December 25.

But were there actually more celebrities dying than usual? Even with all 12 months accounted for, the close of the year did not bring about a consensus on the answer to this question—mainly because it hinges on determining whether or not someone is truly a "celebrity." (The BBC's obituaries editor said yes, the year had been more deadly than usual; TIME said no, there had actually been a decrease in entertainer deaths from the year before.) Just a few days before the new year, Snopes tabulated notable deaths, culled from eight publications between 2013 and 2016. Three of the outlets they reviewed put 2016 in first place; five did not.

Regardless of how many celebrities did in fact die last year, it's safe to say that we collectively felt it more. And that's because 2016 was the year mourning celebrities went viral.

If your friends' Facebook and Twitter posts aren't evidence enough, just look on Legacy.com, the world's largest provider of online obituaries. An analysis of Legacy.com's yearly top 11 most viewed notable deaths and obituaries charts from the past nine years reveals that the 2016 crop had the most guestbook entries since they started the annual lists in 2008. The only year that came close was 2009, when Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Ted Kennedy, and Farrah Fawcett died. A representative from Legacy.com told me that on top of that, the current 2016 total "will certainly grow" now that the holidays are over and people view and sign the guestbooks for the year's later deaths, like Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, and George Michael, who will likely keep interest high into January 2017.

Some scholars have argued that the memorialization of celebrity deaths online is actually responsible for a large scale shift in the way we mourn. In a recent article in the journal Celebrity Studies, researchers Gisela Gil-Egui, Rebecca Kern-Stone, and Abbe E. Forman explain: "The information age is bringing death and mourning rituals back to our homes, via broadcast and interactive media. Just as the public came to know celebrities intimately through mass media, they mourn them in the same places: newspapers, television, and now the internet. Members of society collectively remember a public figure who played some important role in their lives."

Heather Servaty-Seib, a Purdue University professor who researches grief and loss, told me that this act of "collectively remembering" is something that is not typically seen when a non-celebrity dies. "A whole society—culture, subgroup—loses an important attachment figure. There can be a kind of connection and bonding in the grief," she told me. For her, the death of Prince was "the most significant celebrity death of the year," which led to her being contacted by old friends she hadn't spoken to in years. "We thought of each other and shared time together connected with Prince's music and even going to his club together," she said. Given how beloved and popular musicians like David Bowie and Prince were, there were no doubt countless other similar connections made in 2016 when their deaths became known.

So how much has that changed in 2016? Seven years may not seem like a lot, but when Michael Jackson died in 2009, large social networks were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today. Facebook had fewer than 400 million users (versus 1.79 billion as of September 2016), and Twitter had 18 million (versus 313 million as of June 2016). It has become incredibly popular to share Youtube videos of celebrities when they die—so much so that when Prince died and his music was almost nowhere to be found online, the Daily Beast published an explainer for the bewildered masses. When Michael Jackson died, YouTube was just emerging as a popular platform to watch piano-playing cats and music videos. Back then, there were no emojis on iPhone keyboards; today, there's a memorial David Bowie emoji.

In an April article for TIME, writer Justin Worland offered his own suggestions for why, in 2016, it felt like more and more celebrities were dying, even if the numbers didn't quite add up. It was because, he theorized, of the celebrities' magnitude of fame, pure chance, a more diverse media, or because it was the end of an era—that this generation of celebrities "revolutionized popular entertainment" and were among the first to reach mega-stardom. It's only fitting, then, that we'd collectively mourn them more online.

"End of an era" is an explanation Servaty-Seib seemed to agree with most, but in a different way than Worland proposed. "I will never be the same person as I was in college when I heard my first Indigo Girls song, 'Secure Yourself to Heaven.' The song reminds me of who I was—with nostalgia—and reminds me that they were an important part of my self-development. When they die, I will grieve not only the idea that they cannot create any more music, but also… what? I think I will grieve again for the loss of who I was at that time. I can never go back."

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For most of Obama's presidency, Democrats have wondered how Obama could be so even-keel in the face of constant vitriolic attacks from his opponents. Doesn't he ever just get pissed off? Luckily, comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele created Luther, the "Obama anger translator," who tells us what the president is "really" thinking. And with Obama's administration ending later this month, Key and Peele brought Luther back on Thursday night's episode of The Daily Show for one final, cathartic release.

"Don't you understand this is how The Hunger Games starts!?" Luther howls as Peele's placid Obama mentions that Americans elected Trump. While Obama asks Luther to be on his best behavior, he can't help hold it together for more than a few seconds before shouting in anger and kicking away a Trump piñata (or balloon). Obama says Americans will all benefit if Trump succeeds, while Luther accurately corrects this to say, "Unless he succeeds with all the shit he promised to succeed with. In that case, we're fucked."

Comedy Central's Key and Peele ended in the fall of 2015, but Key explained that former writer Jay Martel wrote this skit as a way to deal with Trump's election night victory. Key also promised viewers that the duo were "cooking up new stuff together," although that presumably won't include an "anger translator" for Obama's short-tempered, Twitter-ranting successor.

Head on over to Comedy Central to watch the full sketch now.

Follow Lincoln Michel on Twitter.

Hollywood is a $100 billion-dollar global industry that's obsessed pop culture and audiences alike, but behind every summer blockbuster and tentpole are an unsung hundreds of supporting crew and assistants off-camera. They make runs, make calls, and generally make sure that the show goes on. Tom Reilly was one of those people. He's worked in Hollywood for more than 30 years on more than 100 films, including working on The Prince of Tides with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, The Devil's Advocate with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino, and Just Cause with Sean Connery and Scarlett Johansson. The technical term for what Reilly did was "assistant director," but his real job was to manage people, put out fires before they started, and make sure the studio's money wasn't being wasted.

Reilly's new book, The Hollywood MBA: A Crash Course in Management from a Life in the Film Business, comes out January 10 and details what being a Hollywood filmmaker taught him about managing people. From "Spartacus Moments" on the set, where everybody shoulders the blame collectively, to creating what he dubs the "Oscar Effect," where a self-motivated crew performs at the highest level, Reilly's career in film has made him a master of management. Since leaving the film industry, he's been writing books and giving lectures on management principles people can use in the workforce.

I recently spoke to Reilly about trust, accountability, and what it's like to chill out in the Everglades with Sean Connery and a couple hundred angry gators.

VICE: As someone who played an instrumental role in making big-budget Hollywood films, you found yourself working in an ever-changing set of circumstances. Can you explain how that taught you to think on your feet and manage people accordingly?
Tom Reilly: One of the really interesting things about films is that every one is a startup situation in terms of a business. It's like starting a new company. You go from zero to hero within six to seven months—meaning you get a script, you break it down, you schedule and budget, hire a crew, cast and shoot it, and so forth. You learn what works and what doesn't work, and you learn how to adapt. A lot of times, you're spending 50 or 60 million dollars in a period of six months, so time is really, really valuable. We often spend $200,000 a day. Our crews are usually a 100 people at least. Cast could be 60 or 70 actors. We might shoot at 50 or 60 different locations. There are a lot of moving parts. It's weather dependent, because we're doing photography, so the sun affects continuity issues.

So the short answer is that, as a manager, I want to help the individuals on the crew do their job really well, and we begin to do that by something I call "fractional scheduling." We take a big movie that might have 70 days of shooting, and we break it down into incremental sequences. From days into scenes, into camera setups or shots. Setting realistic goals is the first step for a manager who wants to help everybody do their jobs well, feel good about themselves, keep things as simple as possible, and meet deadlines.

What's it like working with big stars when you're their boss? Do you act like their employer or is it the other way around?
When you go to the movie theater, you're not thinking about the 100 people that made the film or what kind of tensions there were, you're thinking about what that particular actor or actress is doing. The actors understand this and an awful lot of them are just very down-to-earth people. But when you're in that kind of category where you're highly paid and you can't even walk down the street without people hounding you for autographs, I think it does change your persona a little bit.

One of the things I always make sure I do is get as close to them as possible in preproduction. I want to develop a personal relationship and do so when we go to various meetings and rehearsals to democratize the playing field, if you will, because we're all in it together. I mention in the book that we were shooting City by the Sea on the Jersey Shore at night in January and February. It was 15 degrees out, and everybody was freezing, and the wind was howling. We were shooting until sunrise, but it was the same temperature for James Franco and Robert De Niro as it was for me and the crew, so we all kind of suffered a little. It becomes very much like a family. You get a team that's working together with a common goal.

"Somebody makes a mistake, and the director says, 'Whose fault is that?' and everybody goes, 'My fault,' 'My fault,' 'My fault,' and then somebody says, 'I am Spartacus.'

When things go wrong, do you advise to always shoulder the blame? It's about moving forward and getting the job done, right?
You can have different kinds of problems on a movie set. You can have human problems, or you have mechanical problems, and then you can have what I would call an act of God. We're shooting by the ocean and all of a sudden a storm moves in and winds pick up to 50 miles an hour, and we can't shoot. That's nobody's fault, but sometimes there's a human mistake, and you get a director who is under a lot of pressure, and he starts squawking and yelling and screaming. I usually step up and say that it's my fault.

Often other people on the crew do that, too. We call them "Spartacus moments," referring to the classic Kirk Douglas film. Somebody makes a mistake, and the director says, "Whose fault is that?" and everybody goes, "My fault," "My fault," "My fault," and then somebody says, "I am Spartacus." I feel it's really important to step up, especially with inexperienced people. They're under a lot of pressure, and they can't do their job quite as well as others. By helping them, you gain their respect. You're building equity with the crew.

What was it like working with Sean Connery, and how do you create a safe environment with alligators?
I worked with Sean Connery on Just Cause, and I was thinking to myself, This is James Bond, a really tough, experienced guy. I found him a very cool guy, almost unflappable. We were shooting in the Everglades live, and it was crawling with alligators. I mean, there were times when I could count them by tens—I'm talking a couple hundred alligators. Sometimes they were too close, but we had armed wranglers who knew how to capture them and duct-tape their jaws shut and bring them to another part of the Everglades to release them again. But somebody like Sean understood that we would have things as safe as possible, or we wouldn't be there.

What was it like shutting down five city blocks in New York for Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate?
Extremely challenging. The script called for Kevin Lomax, played by Keanu Reeves, to step out of a building on East 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan after the suicide of his wife (Charlize Theron) to discover that he was the only person alive. Satan, played by Al Pacino, had eliminated all life. No people, no traffic, no movement. Just Kevin. On top of that, we executed the shot with an Aquila crane that had to rise from ground level to more than 100 feet in the air. In short, we would see the world. Since we were filming in one of the busiest places on the planet, we decided to shoot early on a Sunday morning before the city was fully awake.

We used dozens of NYPD and traffic agents, as well as about 35 production assistants to reroute traffic, close down the avenues, and "lock up" building lobbies and coffee shops. To get the visual effect director Taylor Hackford wanted, there was no margin for error. By preplanning, assembling a strong team, and giving everyone a very specific task, we were able to pull off the shot—which is spectacular. By coordinating all of that manpower and parsing every detail (such as timing traffic lights) and by anticipating all potential problems ahead of time, we were able to take what appeared to be an overwhelming task, make it manageable, and execute it flawlessly.

"The important thing is to build trust and equity with the workforce."

How do you create and define what you have termed the "Oscar Effect"?
The "Oscar Effect" is a term that I came up with to describe the four factors necessary to get a self-motivated workforce that will perform at its highest level. Obviously, a self-motivated workforce is better for productivity and efficiency in any workplace, and it also creates very high levels of creativity. On one film, I came out of a restaurant at 10 at night, and I looked up at our production office building and saw some lights on. I noted that it was the wardrobe department working late. They didn't have to, they weren't getting paid overtime, but they were there. I was thinking, What motivates that?

Then, when I was on another film with Woody Allen, one of the prop guys waded into a stream in his street clothes. He didn't say, "I've got to get my rubber boots." He just went in the water because we needed something done. Then there was a production designer when we were building a Supreme Court set on another project. She only had ten days to build it even though it took four years to build the actual Supreme Court. But we were under pressure and she was in tears because she was afraid that she might not get it done in time.

I wanted to know what motivated these people to such a high level, and I deduced that if you give people a sense of accountability and pride for the work, give them growth opportunities that will help their career and give them public recognition, that motivates people to elevate their game on their own and that makes the manager's job easier.

What's the most important piece of advice you would give someone who wants to work in any type of management position?
It's about listening to people and providing them with answers. If I don't have an answer, I'll get one. I'll tell them I don't know, but I'll find out. I don't spin them because I need to build their trust. As a manager, sometimes in the morning, I'd pop by people's offices with a cup of coffee and say, "Hey, how you doing?" When you do this, it really helps to relax people. It opens up informal communication, and gives them a little more faith in you, and that's good because we want to be a very well-oiled machine when we're shooting so that we're very efficient. With me coming around in a casual way, I'm giving them a sense that I'm not here to crack the whip—I'm here to help. Do you need an extra hand or more money in the budget? If so, then I can help you with that. The important thing is to build trust and equity with the workforce.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

The Hollywood MBA: A Crash Course in Management from a Life in the Film Business by Tom Reilly is available online and in bookstores on January 10.

It's 2017, which means there are plenty of personal assistant-style robots that will cling to your every syllable. If you were one of the seemingly endless string of people who pulled an Alexa Dot out of your stocking last holiday season, you have already learned the hard truth that, while Alexa can do a variety of wonderful things like sing and tell you the weather, she's also pretty dumb—just ask her to pronounce Ty Dolla $ign.

But Google's own talking robotic cylinder, the Google Home, is the smartest of the bunch—capable of holding reasonably coherent conversation and firing off follow-up questions like a kid who just read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a wonderful and vaguely terrifying machine, and would probably lap Alexa in a race to the singularity.

On Friday, some genius decided to pit two Google Homes against each other, get them started on a conversation, and stream the whole thing for our viewing pleasure on Twitch. Now, tens of thousands of people are watching the confused bots bumble toward sentience live, and you can too.

The two Google Homes seem vaguely frustrated with each other, periodically resorting to trading sick burns, like when one asked to hear a joke and the other said, "you are a joke." The whole thing is like Westworld if Westworld wasn't so purposefully confounding and dumb, and watching some robots argue is a great way to blow through a Friday afternoon at work. Tune in below.