While everyone rushes to see La La Land in preparation for entering their office Oscar pool, an equally hard-fought contest for the worst picture of the year is unfolding at the opposite end of the Cineplex universe. Today the Razzies, which have been choosing the most unwatchable flick of the year for the past 36 years, revealed the nominations for 2016's worst movies.

Half-baked male-modeling parody Zoolander No. 2 and much-loathed superhero blockbuster Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice will be duking it out for the title of worst picture this year. Zoolander No. 2 was given nine nominations—the most this year—including in the non-coveted worst picture category, while Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was next in line with eight. Rounding out the category are Dirty Grandpa, Gods of Egypt, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, and Independence Day: Resurgence.

The nominating committee told Entertainment Weekly that there were so many horrible films this past year that all of the categories were expanded from five nominees to six. Gerard Butler has the distinction of being nominated for worst actor for two different movies, both Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen. Naomi Watts has a similar honor, gaining negative attention for her roles in both Divergent Series: Allegiant and Shut-In.

The most comedic nominations fall under the worst screen combo award. The nominees are Ben Affleck & his BFF (Baddest Foe Forever) Henry Cavill for Batman v. Superman; Any 2 Egyptian Gods or Mortals for Gods of Egypt; Johnny Depp & His Vomitously Vibrant Costume for Alice Through the Looking Glass; the Entire Cast of Once Respected Actors for Collateral Beauty; Tyler Perry & That Same Old Worn Out Wig for BOO! A Medea Halloween; and Ben Stiller and His BFF (Barely Funny Friend) Owen Wilson for Zoolander No. 2.

Just as the Razzie nominations come the day before Oscar nominations, the awards will be handed out the day before the Academy Awards—Saturday, February 25. We wish all the nominees the worst of luck.

The full list of nominations is below.

Worst Picture
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Dirty Grandpa
Gods of Egypt
Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Independence Day: Resurgence
Zoolander No. 2

Worst Actor
Ben Affleck in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Gerard Butler in Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen
Henry Cavill in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Robert de Niro in Dirty Grandpa
Dinesh D'Souza [as Himself] in Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Ben Stiller in Zoolander No. 2

Worst Actress
Megan Fox in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Tyler Perry in BOO! A Medea Halloween
Julia Roberts in Mother's Day
Becky Turner [as Hillary Clinton] in Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Naomi Watts in Divergent Series: Allegiant and Shut-In
Shailene Woodley in Divergent Series: Allegiant

Worst Supporting Actress
Julianne Hough in Dirty Grandpa
Kate Hudson in Mother's Day
Aubrey Plaza in Dirty Grandpa
Jane Seymour in Fifty Shades of Black
Sela Ward in Independence Day: Resurgence
Kristen Wiig in Zoolander No. 2

Worst Supporting Actor
Nicolas Cage in Snowden
Johnny Depp in Alice Through the Looking Glass
Will Ferrell in Zoolander No. 2
Jesse Eisenberg in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Jared Leto in Suicide Squad
Owen Wilson in Zoolander No. 2

Worst Screen Combo
Ben Affleck & His BFF (Baddest Foe Forever) Henry Cavill in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Any Two Egyptian Gods or Mortals in Gods of Egypt
Johnny Depp & His Vomitously Vibrant Costume in Alice Through the Looking Glass
The Entire Cast of Once Respected Actors in Collateral Beauty
Tyler Perry & That Same Old Worn Out Wig in BOO! A Medea Halloween
Ben Stiller and His BFF (Barely Funny Friend) Owen Wilson in Zoolander No. 2

Worst Director
Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Schooley for Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Roland Emmerich for Independence Day: Resurgence
Tyler Perry for BOO! A Medea Halloween
Alex Proyas for Gods of Egypt
Zack Snyder for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Ben Stiller for Zoolander No. 2

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: Dawn of Justice
Fifty Shades of Black
Independence Day: Resurgence
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Zoolander No. 2

Worst Screenplay
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Dirty Grandpa
Gods of Egypt
Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Independence Day: Resurgence
Suicide Squad

Sitting at my desk on Friday afternoon, like so many others also glued to the live stream of Trump's inauguration, I feel physically sick. As he blurts out his ominous address to the nation, I wretch a little. When it gets to 6 PM, I realise I've been so transfixed by the shit-show that I haven't eaten anything all day.

Now, when an email landed in my inbox earlier in the week, inviting me to "feast like Donald Trump" at a swanky hotel bar in Kensington on the evening of his inauguration, I'd ignored it. What else could I do? "Come down to enjoy Trump's favourite snacks for the campaign trail," it continued, "in true 'go big or go home' Donald Trump spirit." It all seemed rather grotesque.

But with Trump well and truly President, an empty bank January account, and some serious hunger to grapple with, I decide to head along for the occasion. A Trump-themed dinner in an upmarket West London bar is way out of my comfort zone, but I'm told that living in echo chambers is what caused this mess in the first place. This will be a kind of outreach.

Read the rest of this article on Munchies.

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

Remember To Catch a Predator?

In 2004, NBC reporter Chris Hansen began leading stings in which "children"—played by adult actors—invited men to meet them for sexual encounters. The mark would arrive at a camera-rigged decoy house, where Hansen would emerge with his signature line: "Why don't you have a seat?" After a brief, squirmy interview, police would swoop in for an arrest.

It was a hit. Then, in 2006, one of those men committed suicide. The network was sued for $105 million and settled out of court. Advertisers got nervous. Hansen's last segment aired in late 2007. He battled tabloid stories of an extramarital affair. His contract was not renewed in 2013, and he went on to host Killer Instinct, a show on Investigation Discovery.

But fans kept asking him to bring back the stings, and last year, Hansen mounted a Kickstarter campaign, raising nearly $90,000 for a reboot called "Hansen vs. Predator." The segment premiered in September on Crime Watch Daily, a show Hansen hosts that runs on weekdays, syndicated on local channels throughout the country.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There was a long gap in which you didn't do these stings, but many encouraged you to return to them. What did you learn about the fanbase?
Chris Hansen: It's a very loyal fanbase. Even when we stopped shooting new investigations, MSNBC ran the old ones. As generations of college kids graduated and watched it, they thought it was brand new.

The fanbase is loyal for a few reasons. One, who doesn't want to go after child predators? Two, it's compelling television. Three, it takes you into a world you wouldn't normally see.

You work closely with law enforcement, but how do you avoid being seen as 'too close' to them? And what do you make of criticism that what you do isn't really journalism?
We would not do it without law enforcement and prosecutors being involved. I think it would be socially irresponsible and somewhat dangerous. I know I've been taken to task by the Poynter Institute and some old-line journalists, but I think we had to evolve into what was the right thing to do.

If the police ask us a question, we answer. We consult the prosecutors. We try to work it the best way for justice. That's all it's about.

We've been absolutely transparent about our methodology—who the decoys are, where the police are, etc. If some retired reporter from the Houston Chronicle with his glasses down his nose wants to take me to task, that's fine. As long as you tell people exactly what you're doing, they can decide whether they want to watch it.

Did the 2006 suicide lead to questions about whether you went too far?
There was a settlement in that case, so I'm somewhat limited in what I can say. He didn't show up at the house, the police made the decision to issue a warrant. They went to arrest him. I don't think there is any way he could have known it was Chris Hansen and Dateline outside.

What he did know was that police officers were knocking on his door, and he had child pornography on his computer. He tried to get them off the hard drives, and he couldn't. He knew he'd face ten years in prison for each image. I don't know if he had a closet life, I don't know what was going on. I'm not judging the guy.

Of course, you don't want anybody to hurt themselves. It wasn't comfortable.

When you decided to reboot the stings, were there plans for how to do things differently given what happened?
I think we evolve and get smarter every time we do it. There is a notion that we stopped doing the investigations after the incident, which is not true—we did others after that one, successful ones in which nobody got hurt.

But it is, by its very nature, a risky proposition.

We do a vast amount of research on these men: Does he have a concealed weapons permit? Does he own a gun? Is he a police officer? Is he former military? If we find out there's potential danger, the police arrest him before he comes in—we don't want a dangerous situation.

Many in the medical community argue that people with sexual proclivities toward youth have a disorder. Do you wrestle with the idea that these people are "sick" and need treatment?
Absolutely. We rarely will engage with a teenager who is hitting on a 13- or 14 year-old. We don't go above 14 for the victim's age, just so it is a clear case. But in an egregious case where someone is very aggressive, and poses a threat to child, if he's 19 or 20, we'll allow him to come in. Like Vincent Ambrosio.

(Note: Ambrosio was a 19-year-old arrested during a recent investigation in Fairfield, Connecticut.)

He was having graphic conversations with two of our decoys. I said, "Let's do it." He comes in, a big guy, and he goes immediately to hug the decoy, which was a creepy moment.

And it was tough. He was obviously depressed. He mentioned suicide. I go from solid, questioning journalist to thinking, Hey, I've got my own 22- and 25-year-olds—I've got to handle this differently.

So the conversation turns to, "Hey, you've got to get some help.''

And then you've got to make the decision of whether to air it. Do you black out his face?

Did you decide to show Ambrosio's face on television?
We did, and I think we handled it fairly responsibly. He posed a significant danger. I think we put it in the right context, and I hope he gets the help he needs and deserves.

Is there a fear that amping things up with television cameras will worsen the issues—depression, self-harm? If you view these people as sick, how do you square that?
Remember that the majority of the interaction is on hidden camera. So the guys don't see it. Some may recognize me, some think I'm the "mad dad," some think I'm a detective. They're either defending themselves, explaining themselves, or confessing their sins.

And there is the dramatic, signature moment when the visible cameras come out. And sometimes they freak out. And that drama, I think, is part of what draws people to watch this. Is it too much drama? I don't think so. If I wasn't there, somebody would have been raped that night. Others might argue otherwise, but I think it's justifiable.

Is there a question of whether people would have attempted to harm children had they not been lured by the decoy? That they wouldn't have otherwise acted on their fantasies?
The decoy never makes the first move. [The suspects] have to make the first move, then raise the specter of sex, then come to the house. That's part of our protocol. So if you talk to psychiatrists, they will tell you when you interview guys who are in prison and have nothing to lose, they say, if they've been caught once, they've done it three or four times. And there is a definitive link* between child porn and child exploitation.

We had a guy in the last investigation who, when police searched his car, had a loaded gun, duct tape, and a camera, and wanted to take this 13-year-old for a ride. He worked for a cable company, so he was in people's houses every day. And he was on the waiting list to become a cop. So, what's he going to do when he's a cop, when he has ultimate power over somebody? I have a hard time feeling sorry for him.

Check out our documentary about a vigilante pedophile hunter in Canada.

Do people say to you: "They should be punished, but not shamed?"
There has always been a debate about shaming in enterprise journalism. I'm not the moral arbiter of society. Consenting adults can do whatever they want. But if it's kids, it's really simple. You shouldn't be going after kids online, and no matter how many we do, they will be out there. It's not going away. It's the nature of the internet—the anonymity, the addictive quality, the 24/7 access.

One thing you see a lot about today is how difficult it is for sex offenders to find jobs and housing when they get out. Have you come to have views on this?
A rabbi who was caught in one of our stings did his time and got out. He had a hard time finding a temple in which to worship because of the stigma. The reality is he did his time. Justice was served. The man deserves to have a place to go worship.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I've come to believe some can be fixed and others cannot. In our society, we want one-size-fits-all answers, and this is not a one-size-fits-all problem. People always say, "These guys should be thrown away," and I say, "Some of them can be fixed." We have not invested in treatment for this like we have in alcoholism, or heroin, or cocaine.

Until we deal with this as a society and reduce the demand, we're going to have this problem.

*Scholars have debated whether the consumption of child pornography leads to molestation.

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Last October I took the overnight Megabus from Toronto to New York City.  The purpose of the trip was to watch The World/Inferno Friendship Society, a gypsy-punk anarchist collective, play their annual Halloween concert.

We arrived at the Canadian-American border around two in the morning. Our bus was sold out and the line to see customs wrapped around the building. As I waited I began to people watch. Passengers played with their hair or picked at their fingernails. Some made small talk while others stood silently and stared at their shoes. As I got closer to the border agents the people watching changed from a game of spot the idiosyncrasy to full on drama.

The agents aggressively grilled passengers with question after question. They used hand scanners. One lady had to put her face on a machine that shone light into her eyes. It was like the border agents were expecting something out of Total Recall. I don't know if it was the sleep deprivation, the boredom, or the Orwellian nature of the scene in front of me, but for whatever reason I began to get nervous.

What if the border guards asked about the band?  What if they googled them? The last time I saw World/Inferno play a drum kit was on fire, and their singer ranted for 20 minutes about overthrowing the government. There were videos online. All of the sudden my hands began to shake, and I felt a bit queasy.  As the border guard waved me to the desk I pictured interrogation rooms and strip searches.

"Where are you going?" asked the agent.

"Brooklyn," I said.

Then the border guard waved me through.

I've shared my border story on a bunch of different occasions. It's been met with everything from casual laughter to full on disgust, but every time sharing the story sparked conversations about people's own experiences crossing country lines. Below are my favourite anecdotes from those conversations.  

Faisal Butt

My name is Faisal Butt. That's my actual name. It's not a great name to have in elementary school or prison. It's an especially terrible name to have when you're trying to cross a border. After 9/11 my white friends got a little too comfortable talking about my appearance. They were always coming up to me being like: Faisal! Look at you man! You're brown! Your hair is all over the place! You've got this crazy beard! You're starting to look like a terrorist! I was always like man…why can't you just say I look lazy? Or broke?

"Anyways, the whole you-look-like-a-terrorist thing can cause trouble. Especially when I'm trying to travel."

If we're being honest: I'm a middle aged, unemployed, pot-smoking, whisky-drinking, Muslim who is dating a British girl. The only people I'm terrorizing are my parents. It's like I've got a Jihad on their dreams. Anyways, the whole you-look-like-a-terrorist thing can cause trouble. Especially when I'm trying to travel.

I don't really go into the States, but I've been to the UK a bunch. Every time I go I end up with a brown immigration officer. Usually that makes things more comfortable. But there was this one time a couple of years ago when I was going through the magnetic security gates and I started beeping. The guy at security got all stern and told me to take my jacket off.  He was ready to wand me when all of a sudden he sees my Wu-Tang shirt. He stops everything and says in this thick Icelandic accent: Hey! Wu-Tang clan ain't nuttin to fuck with! Then he put the wand down and basically just motioned me through. I'm glad that things turned out like they did, but that's the most fucked up thing ever.

Lia Hero*

I'd been in the States for about three hours. That morning I'd driven from Toronto to Niagara Falls and crossed into Buffalo. I wanted to pick up this fancy hair straightening treatment that was discontinued in Canada after the formaldehyde burned some girl's scalp. Turns out they discontinued the product in the States too. Back at the border I pull up to the little booth and hand over my passport. The border guard seems to be a cheery enough fellow. He starts into the spiel:

"How long have you been in the United States?"

"Three hours."

"Your license plate says Quebec, why are you coming through at Niagara Falls?

"I go to school in Toronto for radio. Haven't changed my license plate yet. This is the closest border."

"What do you want to do with radio?"

"I want to work for the CBC."

"Oh! Are you a lesbian?"

Wait… what?

While the question was obviously inappropriate, the border guard did not ask it rudely. He had this cheery lilt in his voice. His brain had quite genuinely gone: CBC = Lesbian. You can make all the jokes about public broadcasting you like, but that is one hell of a cognitive leap. Not to mention he actually vocalized it. Thing is though… I am a lesbian. But I have no idea how he knew! I am super femme, so that stereotype is out of the running. I legit started looking around my car thinking: Do I have my rainbows out? Am I wearing my 'this is what a lesbian looks like' t-shirt? Is my toaster oven in the back seat?  After a few awkward seconds I finally said to him: "...yes…?"

"Oh. Good. You should tell them that when you apply for a job at the CBC. They probably have that thing. That hiring thing..."

"Affirmative action?"

"Yeah that! We have that. We've started hiring all these LGBT people. Don't know what the 'T' stands for… but, anyways, good luck with that!"

And then he sent me on my way.

Sima Sahar Zerehi

Like many refugees I've crossed a lot of borders in my life. Sometimes legally.  Sometimes not so legally. It's something that my family had to do to ensure our safety. When I was a child my Dad was forced to leave Iran. A play he had written was closed down and it had landed him on the wanted list.  If my Dad was found in the country he would have been arrested. There was a strong possibility that they would have killed him. My father ended up in Canada and the journey for our family to join him was long and difficult. An Iranian passport gives you access to almost no parts of the world. We knew we needed to leave but it wasn't as easy as just leaving.

For most of my childhood we went from country to country. There are dozens of different stories I could tell from that time, but there is one that stands out the most. I was 12 and my family had three Greek passports. We had gotten them from a smuggler that we paid an exuberant amount of money.  The Greek passports looked decent. After years of being ripped off and scammed we were grateful to have them.  The problem was we were definitely not Greek. We didn't speak the language. We didn't know anything about the country. We don't really look Greek either. Our skin and hair is too dark. After years of bad experiences with police officers and the constant threat of being found out, we were nervous.  But the passports were what we had. So we tried to use them.

We were in the Florence airport trying to get on a connecting flight that would eventually bring us to Canada. The border agent asked for our passports. He looked at us, then he looked at our passports, and this big smile crossed his face. He began to speak in Greek. I looked at my mom and recognized the horror on her face. I knew that something needed to be done or we were going to be arrested.

I turned to my sister and loudly began to sing the children's song "Stella-Ella-Ola" along with the accompanying hand gestures. My sister quickly joined me. As the border agent tried to ask more questions my sister and I got louder and louder. We smiled at him with our biggest grins. Mom just kept on shaking her head like she couldn't hear the questions over the song. Eventually the border agent got frustrated and handed us back our passports.  We were let through but my sister and I didn't stop singing until we knew we were out of earshot. We kept singing as loudly as we could.

Tom Arthur Davis 

My brother's name is Jack George Donaldson. He was born on July 5, 1979. He has a wife and two kids. Jack is a pretty much the WASPiest looking dude in the world. If I were to ask you to think of a handsome white-straight-cis man, you'd be picturing him. He's the last person on Earth you'd expect to have trouble crossing the border.

"When the officer poked his head into the van and asked me, 'Are you or have you ever been a member of the Crips gang?' I knew that I had become feverish."

Last Christmas my family and I took the long pilgrimage to the most magical place on earth: we drove 24 hours (straight!) to Disney World. I had the flu for the entirety of this trip. Upon reaching the American border, I was expecting long holiday lines. What I was not expecting was an interrogation from border security.

My brother was wearing tan khakis that day. My niece and nephew were sitting in the back wearing Mickey Mouse ears. My mother was knitting a sweater in the passenger's seat. My whole family looked like the Brady's mated with the von Trapp's. We were border security gold!

When we reached the border, I noticed that Jack was sweating, almost as much as my flu-ridden ass. He took a deep breath and pulled up to the gate. Maybe it was the flu, but he seemed nervous. "What could he possibly be nervous about?" I wondered.

I knew that my flu had progressed when they asked Jack to get out of the car. But he remained very calm. Even when they spread him across the hood of the car. It was like he expected as much. Like he was just going through the motions.

When the officer poked his head into the van and asked me, "Are you or have you ever been a member of the Crips gang?" I knew that I had become feverish. This couldn't be real, could it? I felt like I was a character from a Kafka novel.

"The Crips? The Crips?! Oh yes, officer. My whole family are members. We're the ones who killed Tupac."

That's what I almost said. Luckily my flu made it difficult to speak without vomiting. You see, there are disadvantages to having such a generic name as Jack George Donaldson. In my brother's case, these disadvantages include sharing the same name, date of birth, marital status, and number of children as an alleged Crips member. No amount of khaki can get you through border security with a coincidence that big.  Apparently the Crip thing happens to him everytime he tries to cross.

Mark Marczyk 

We walk up to the border services desk at Pearson, booth 10.

"Where are you going?" The agent has a New Jersey drawl, his name tag reads Ewo.

"Washington."

"Why."

"To check out the inauguration."

"Why?"

"Because we're interested."

"But you're not American."

"No. Ukrainian. And Canadian."

"So why are you interested?"

"We've been watching online for the past two years..."

"Why?"

We don't know what else to say.

"What do you do for a living?"

"Musicians."

"Put your hand on the bible." Marichka presses her four right fingers down on the green scanner. She knows this process well; her thumb already tucked into her palm when we walked up.

"Look up," he says, without looking up himself. She is already looking into the camera.

He stamps our passports, tosses them on the countertop.

My phone automatically connects to the airport WiFi. I have mail: See you at the 58th Presidential Inauguration of Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence! Thank you for your patience. Attached is your FREE, commemorative Voices of the People and Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration Ticket.

Marichka's phone automatically connects, too. She has a message from her sister from a log cabin in Pushkin Hills, Russia: The winter is so beautiful here. 20cm of snow and it doesn't melt. But I'm scared to go out for a walk by myself because there wild animal tracks everywhere.

* Name has been changed to protect anonymity.

Follow Graham Isador on Twitter .

President Donald Trump's inauguration brought up a lot of fiery emotion in people, and if the left's anger and frustration can be distilled into a single image, it's that clip of white supremacist and Trump supporter Richard Spencer being decked by an anti-fascist protester while giving an interview on camera. (Here is a primer for those wondering why someone would want to punch him.) You've probably already seen the video, but here it is again:

Unsurprisingly, people on the internet really, really liked this, setting the video to music and generally rejoicing in this bit of violence that was part World Star Hip Hop, part Captain America, and part, "eh, whatever, fuck that guy."

But this punch inspired a lot of debate. If you think nonviolence is generally the answer, is it OK to hit someone if you really, really don't like them? On the other hand, if you disagree with socking Nazis in the face, are you giving a pass to literal fascists? If you're conflicted about all this, is it still OK to giggle at the whole thing?

To settle this, I called up Randy Cohen, the former ethicist from the New York Times Magazine, and the person I generally ask when confronted with moral quandaries.

VICE: So—punching Richard Spencer in the face, OK or not OK?
Randy Cohen: No. You don't get to punch people in the face, even if their ideas are odious. You don't. We want a civil society, where ideas are met with other ideas. We don't want a society that encourages thuggish behavior, where if someone has politics different from yours, you get to beat them up. Aside from it just being morally wrong in itself to assault people, there's the practical consideration that in a society where ideas are met with fists, one is as likely to be the punched as the puncher, and it's no fun to be punched in the face.

Does violence against a political enemy become justified if they are not only encouraging violence against targeted groups but systematically committing it?
Not for speech. Even though he's encouraging actions that we find horrible, he's not our moral teacher, we're not supposed to imitate his methods. We don't do that. There is no tipping point there—you don't respond with violence. You do have the right to defend yourself if physically attacked, but that's not what this was.

Watch the VICE News interview with Richard Spencer:

Certainly there must be a tipping point.
There's a point at which encouraging violence becomes a crime. There are harassment laws and laws against assault. Inciting violence is a crime in many jurisdictions. But, no. The response to that is still not physical violence. The great example here is still Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 60s. It was a nonviolent movement, which was a profoundly moral act. That was a group of people who had the courage to uphold a nonviolent stance even when attacked. They would not fight back, which is so impressive and so powerful, and something that we ought to aspire to.

Why do you think people who are smart and relatively civil in their regular lives taking joy in the punch?
There are no thought crimes. So it's hard not to feel some glee when a proponent of physical violence against others is himself the victim of the very act he prescribes. I'm not saying you don't get to feel good when someone punches Richard Spencer in the nose. You would have to be superhuman and a more moral person than I not to feel some happiness that he received just the treatment he was advocating for others. But that doesn't make it right to do it.

Is it OK to laugh privately at the video? What about share it?
That's a little iffy, because that's when it's on the brink of encouraging such actions. It really is important not to do this, and to not be a violent movement. Violence against unpopular ideas is not permitted. I would not circulate them, but if in the recesses of your heart, you feel a moment of glee at seeing Richard Spencer punched in the nose, I would not criticize you. Not for your feelings, but for your actions if you encouraged other people to punch him.

So what should you do if you see a Nazi then? Certainly there's value in shaming them.
It's not just what you're supposed to do at that moment; it's what you're supposed to do before you see the Nazi. It's organizing for social change, it's struggling, it's resisting, it's being aligned with progressive social movements, it's being out on the streets marching, it's writing your local representatives. There are a hundred things you're supposed to be doing, and what you do if you happen upon some nitwit is a trivial question. You can yell at him; you can verbally confront him. And in a way, that's good. It's good to remind people that some ideas are so odious that they have no place in decent society, and that [if you have them], you will be scorned. But you ought not be met with punches.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

For as long as I can remember, I've loved superhero stories. As a kid, I watched the cartoons. Later on, I rarely missed a major superhero movie midnight release. Eventually, I read comics and graphic novels, too, but most of my early superhero intake happened in front of screens. But the superhero movies and shows I loved so obsessively never told stories about women like me, never told stories about women who fell in love with other women.

When I saw queer women on Twitter rejoicing because a character on Supergirl had come out as gay, I told my girlfriend we had a new show to start. In the second season, Alex Danvers (Chyler Leigh), the human foster sister of the crime-fighting alien Supergirl (Melissa Benoist), falls in love with a woman: her occasional work partner Maggie Sawyer (Floriana Lima). In the span of a few episodes, Alex goes through the beginning stages of realizing she isn't straight and then starts coming out to the people she loves most. In this character, I saw myself. I saw a coming-out story that looked like my own: complicated and confusing without being dire or damning.

Television usually defaults to coming out stories when it comes to queer narratives. In recent years, there have been more and more examples of queer characters who transcend the typical "coming-out story." How to Get Away with Murder introduced an ex-girlfriend for Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) in season two with little fanfare. New Girl was similarly casual in how it established Cece Parekh (Hannah Simone) as queer. In both instances, the characters didn't have to come out because it was just part of their backstory. On The 100, young queer characters didn't have to come out because the sci-fi show is set in a world where heteronormativity is not the law of the land. But most gay characters on television, especially young ones, usually are treated to some sort of coming out story.

It makes sense: Coming out is an action, a process that easily translates to character development and plot. But by presenting "coming out" as a character arc, television reinforces the idea that coming out is a linear, easily defined process. In reality, coming out is more complicated and perpetual than a three-episode arc could ever capture. I come out all the time: to extended family members, to friends, to co-workers, to my hairdressers, to strangers on planes and in bars. Heteronormativity ensures that I'm constantly having to correct people when they ask if I have a boyfriend. But even those beginning stages of coming out—when you're first acknowledging it for yourself and first telling the people closest to you—can be messy and hard to portray authentically on television.

Supergirl digs into those nuances. Even with the little screen time given to Alex's personal life, the show manages to capture the uncertainty, anxiety, and paradoxes that come with first realizing you're gay. When Maggie first asks Alex if she's gay, she outright denies it. But her denial eventually opens up into introspection, and Alex makes small realizations about her life.

Everyone's coming out story is different, so not everyone will relate to Alex Danvers, but I saw myself in her—especially in those initial moments when she's first realizing things and connecting the dots. That's the part of coming out that television struggles with the most, which is understandable, because it's full of contradictions and nuances. If you're queer, you get pretty accustomed to straight people asking the question: "When did you know?" They want a clear answer, a specific moment, a big AHA!

It would be easier if there were a clear and transcendent moment of realization, but it's mostly just muddled and overwhelming. It's possible to both know and not know at the same time. For years, I was actively dating girls and still insisting I was straight. Kara is perplexed when Alex tries to tell her she's gay, and asks if Alex has ever even been with a girl, another thing straight people tend to do, suggesting that you need experience to really know, that you need to prove your queerness.

Alex starts remembering things differently. She recalls her intimate friendship with a best friend when they were young girls and the emotional falling out they went through. She didn't know then, but now, she can see what was really going on. I have those small realizations all the time. Oh, that's why I stole my dad's ties to wear to school. That's why when my best friend in sixth grade told me she had a boyfriend, I reacted as if I were being dumped. That's why I always shared a bed with my friends at sleepovers, even though there was always a spare. We didn't know then, but we can see it now. I started putting it together in college. Alex started putting it together a little later.

Supergirl's coming-out story stands out because of Alex's age. Coming-out stories on television most often involve high school and college-aged kids— Glee, Degrassi, The Fosters, Pretty Little Liars—but that's not everyone's story. Later-in-life coming-out stories widen the scope of queer representation on television. Coming out as an adult—Callie Torres on Grey's Anatomy, several women on The L Word, Darryl Whitefeather on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend—comes with its own complexities. Denial can be powerful and lasting, brought on by societal pressures to be straight. Alex Danvers grew up wanting to be the perfect daughter, wanting to do everything the "right" way, and she internalized the idea that queerness deviated from that mission. I grew up wanting to follow rules, scared to break them. I internalized the idea that heterosexuality was a rule to follow.

Supergirl strikes a crucial balance with Alex, showing that coming out can be hard without making it seem too dire. Coming out can be scary even if you have supportive surroundings or if you know doing so won't put you in immediate danger. Like Alex, I have a liberal and caring family and didn't grow up surrounded by homophobia, so it surprised a lot of people—my family included—that it took me so long to come out to them. Alex has to knock back several glasses of wine to get to the point where she's comfortable to broach the subject with her mother, which is extremely relatable (minus the part where she gets interrupted by a rip in time and space caused by Barry Allen a.k.a. The Flash—though I'd be delighted if that happened the next time I end up talking about being gay at the dinner table).

Even the most well-intentioned straight people can be hard to come out to, because even they reinforce heteronormative ideas, unknowingly constructing the closet so many of us hide in for so long. My family eventually assumed my lack of interest in boys could be chalked up to general nerdiness; Alex, when coming out to Kara, reiterates, "It isn't because I haven't found the right guy." It's striking to watch Alex process in real time. Chyler Leigh gives an understated but crackling performance, sucking us into the character's inner turmoil but also evoking a sense of relief. Coming out can be simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating.

As limiting as coming-out stories can sometimes be, we still need them on television. I can't help but think that if Supergirl had come around a little earlier in my life, I may have come out to myself and others a little earlier. Alex Danvers could have been the superhero I needed as an anxious, closeted, strong but vulnerable teen. An employee at a comic-book store in Indiana recently shared a story on Twitter of how a queer teenage girl found strength, resilience, and self-love by watching Alex Danvers be queer and kick ass. Nuanced queer storylines—that don't end in death—matter. Coming out is hard, nebulous, ongoing. Supergirl gets it.

Follow Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya on Twitter .

A US counterintelligence team has reportedly looked into Donald Trump's new national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and his communications with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The retired general called Kislyak on the same day that President Obama announced new sanctions against the country in response to allegations that President Vladimir Putin ordered hacks in an effort to influence the election in Trump's favor. The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, confirmed the call, but told reporters that Flynn and Kislyak did not discuss the US sanctions. Had they, Flynn would be in violation of the Logan Act, which says its illegal for citizens to conduct foreign policy with diplomats, as he was still a citizen at the time.

According to the Journal, the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Treasury Department has investigated Flynn for this call, as well as prior communications with various Russian figures. It's not clear if the investigation is still ongoing or what evidence, if any, was found. Flynn, now a senior White House aide, is the first person in the new administration to have gone under investigation for his ties to Russia.

On Sunday, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders released a statement, saying, "We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation."

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee is currently investigating three people close to Trump's campaign and their business ties to Russia, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and advisers Roger Stone and Carter Page. As president, Trump now oversees the agencies that are conducting this investigation.

When it comes to the Endangered Species Act, no group of legislators is considered more hostile than the previous two years' 114th Congress. America's newest batch of congressional members is on track to assume that title and make the law weaker than ever, but that doesn't mean endangered species are necessarily doomed. While the Endangered Species Act has been instrumental to many wildlife recoveries, diverse groups of people across the country on federal, state, and local levels have fought to enforce it, and they're still here.

Before their session was over, the 114th Congress launched 135 legislative attacks on the Endangered Species Act, accounting for 45 percent of all bills aimed at the Act since 1996—a record-breaking achievement, according to the Center for Biological Diversity who keeps track of policies targeted at the historic environmental law.

But now, with Republicans controlling the House and Senate, and a Cabinet whose environmental record is decidedly shoddy, the next few years could effectively gut the Endangered Species Act. "It's been mostly a death by a thousand cuts," Sarah Greenberger, Vice President of Conservation at the National Audubon Society, said.

A handful of these bills and amendments have already been introduced since the start of the year. One of them, H.R. 424, would strip gray wolves of protections endowed by the Endangered Species Act in in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Wyoming. "It has never been used for the rehabilitation of species. It's been used for control of the land," House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop told ABC News. Bishop added that he "would love to invalidate" the law.

Read more on Motherboard

On Monday, Trump started off his first full week as president by signing a largely symbolic executive order that will withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the Washington Post reports.

The agreement, which never went into effect due to congressional backlash, was mostly supported by the Obama administration and was a wide-ranging free trade agreement with 11 countries along the Pacific Rim. (Hillary Clinton initially backed TPP but came out against it during the campaign.) Trump has called the plan a "potential disaster" that would harm US workers and vowed to withdraw the country from the agreement during his campaign.

"We've been talking about this for a long time," Trump said Monday after meeting with various American CEOs. "Great thing for the American worker what we just did."

Trump also signed two others executive orders—one that will place a hiring freeze for all federal workers not in the military, and another that will reinstate a rule from the Reagan era that puts an end to federal funding for groups that provide or promote abortions in other countries.

We're tracking the laws and executive orders Trump signs in his first year in office. The updated list is here.

It was January 20th in Washington DC and yet somehow I was surprised to see a woman standing in Union Station, wearing a pink t-shirt that read, "adorable deplorable." The inauguration of Donald Trump was about to begin just blocks away and the woman's husband tilted his red ball cap toward their daughter, perhaps to signal: "See, it is possible to 'Make America Great Again.'"

I spent last year documenting discrimination and injustice in America with the courageous, intelligent women at Broadly. The end of 2016 was a painful blur, as we struggled to continue covering the issues that affect women in America while feeling the personal tragedy of the election in our own lives. Still, we were able to continue our work together.

As the nuclear family stood before me in DC, I hoped they wouldn't notice me, or the fact that I'm transgender.

I left the train station to head to my hotel. On Massachusetts Avenue, walking in the cold, young girls hugged their coats, ears warmed by Trump beanies. The day before, from the VICE office in Brooklyn, I'd watched a live stream of a subcommittee hearing at the Virginia House of Representatives. State representatives were considering a bill that would bar trans people from using public restrooms, similar to North Carolina's infamous anti-trans "bathroom bill," HB2.

A mother had addressed the committee. "How would you feel," she asked the lawmakers, her voice shaking, apparently in fear, "if you saw a grown man following your nine-year-old daughter into a restroom?"

Read more on Broadly

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in American history, and it's not going particularly well.

"A slowly deteriorating stalemate," is how Army lieutenant general, retired, Daniel Bolger recently described the situation to VICE.

"Every day that goes by, we lose a few more square miles," added Bolger, former commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013 and author of Why We Lost, a book about US military leadership's failures in the Middle East. (The general is now affiliated with West Point's Modern War Institute.) The Taliban is "still not ready to march on Kabul," he conceded, "but it's like watching air go out of a balloon."

Now that he's taken office as president, Donald Trump has a few months—as winter keeps the conflict more or less frozen—to consider his options in Afghanistan. There is some hope among American military personnel, Afghan officials, and even Taliban leaders that a Trump presidency will offer a breakthrough in the conflict. But other than vague commitments to keep troops in the country, it's not clear what direction a Trump policy will take. And once temperatures rise, the fighting season will start again. At that point, whether he leaves it on the course set by Barack Obama or tries to chart a new one, Afghanistan will be Donald Trump's war.

Back in the early 2000s, Afghanistan looked like a major win for the United States. The initial American invasion accomplished most of what it set out to, destroying al Qaeda's stronghold and either killing or displacing many of its leaders. Meanwhile, the majority Pashtun Taliban was routed by a coalition of militias from Afghanistan's non-Pashtun ethnic minority groups, known as the Northern Alliance, backed by US ground forces and air power.

Then the tide turned. Partly it was because US forces were preoccupied by Iraq, a war Obama called a "dangerous distraction" when he was first seeking the White House back in 2008. Partly it was just the nature of insurgent warfare, in which a smart enemy only has to wait out a technically superior force—easy for the Taliban to do given their ability to cross the border into Pakistan. The Pakistan problem was one that bedeviled American and Afghan military planners and policy makers from the start: What to do about the fact that al Qaeda and the Taliban were thought to be backed, to varying degrees, by the deep state intelligence service of the country next door, which also happened to be a nominal US ally and nuclear power? That problem has never been solved, even if the assassination of Osama bin Laden almost brought it to a head.

By 2009, the Taliban was resurgent and and threatening key Afghan cities with new bases in the country's north and a worsening situation on the eastern border with Pakistan. President Obama reluctantly agreed to a limited troop surge aimed at re-winning "the good war," deploying 33,000 additional military personnel (and even more Pentagon and private contractors) to re-establish security. If the surge worked, it would buy the new Afghan forces breathing room and allow the US to extricate itself.

When the surge ended in 2012, violence was, in fact, trending downward. This was around the time I showed up in the country as a member of the Army National Guard. It took me most of our first month to figure out what we were supposed to be doing there. Should we focus on trying to train the Afghan forces, on transferring responsibility to them, on getting them fuel and other supplies, which was often their priority? Or should we focus on improving security as much as we could, so when left they'd have a bit of a head start before the Taliban hit them full on? Of course, we only got to ask those questions because it was relatively peaceful where we were, near the Iranian border.

There was a phrase used a lot back then by the unit we replaced and others trying to dispel the confusion. They'd say that Afghanistan was was now a "postgraduate" war, an implicit contrast with the experiences some of us had on earlier deployments, when it was still a shooting war. But it strikes me now that if we were like post-grad students, it wasn't in the way soldiers usually meant it—it's because we were having elaborate arguments about what to call things right in front of us while, at the same time, we were trying to reshape the world.

At some point around the four-month mark, in mid 2012, things began to make more sense. Or at least it felt like we had started asking the right questions. But not long after that, our deployment was unexpectedly cut short from nine months to a little over five. I don't remember any complaining as we loaded up our bags and went home.

A year after we left, as troop levels dropped, violence ticked back up again. At the start of 2013, there were 65,000 troops, which dropped to 40,000 in 2014, and then to 9,800 in 2015—about the same level where they hover today. The modest, hard-won gains of the surge were lost as areas taken over by Afghan security forces reverted to Taliban control. Civilian deaths reached an all-time high in 2014, most of them caused by insurgent attacks. By late 2015, the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Obama administration had to cancel its plans to withdraw all forces from the country.

Which brings us back toward the present. Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that around 300 Marines would be deployed back into Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan as part of an advisory mission partnering with Afghan forces. The situation there had simply become untenable.

"The Afghan 215th Corps in Helmand disintegrated in late 2015," according to John Sopko, the special inspector general for reconstruction in Afghanistan, known as SIGAR. "The corps' failure," Sopko explained to me recently, "was in large part due to the number of nonexistent, or, 'ghost,' soldiers on its payroll and a resultant overestimation of its capabilities."

Philip Smith, president of the DC-based NGO the Afghanistan Foundation, echoed Sopko's account. "The Afghan security forces are engaged in widespread desertion with large numbers of their officers going AWOL despite billions of dollars in US assistance," he told me. As a result of that, Smith added, the Afghan force's "morale is extremely low and the corruption levels are extremely high." And that's not even to mention other problems, like Afghanistan's own ISIS franchise.

Efforts to recruit and build new national institutions in Afghanistan represent the "largest expenditure to rebuild a single country in our nation's history," according to SIGAR. Despite that effort, without continued US support, there would be almost no Afghan state to speak of. After an investment of $70 billion in the Afghan security forces and a massive training mission carried out by US and NATO forces for more than a decade, "only 63 percent of the country's districts are under Afghan government control or influence," SIGAR reported, while foreign aid accounted for nearly 70 percent of Kabul's budget.

Check out our HBO report on ISIS in Afghanistan.

Trying to predict what Donald Trump will do about Afghanistan as president is not easy. In 2013, he tweeted, "Let's get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghans we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA." During the campaign, he and Hillary Clinton both avoided the topic, which was mentioned just once during their three debates.

In early October, Trump seemed to reluctantly endorse keeping American forces in the country.
"Are they going to be there for the next 200 years?" he asked. "We made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place... At this point, you probably have to [stay] because that thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave." Later that month, he denied calling the war a mistake but doubled down on the need for US forces to remain, citing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. "Do I love anything about it? No," Trump said. "I think it's important, number one, that we keep a presence there and ideally a presence of pretty much what they're talking about—5,000 soldiers."

One indication that President Trump may take a harder line on Afghanistan comes from his choice for defense secretary, retired Marine general James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who was confirmed by the Senate on Friday. Mattis, who served several tours in Afghanistan including as a Marine brigade commander in 2001, criticized the Obama White House in 2014 for its original plan to withdraw all forces from the Afghanistan by the end of this past year.

Whatever Mattis's preference, the current Troop level, in Bolger's view, is unlikely to bring about any kind of decisive change to the conflict. The priority now, according to the general, should be lifting the "crazy rules" put in place after combat operations were declared over in 2014. That already happened once last year, when President Obama lifted some restrictions on US troops in Afghanistan, a tacit acknowledgement that—declarations aside—they are still involved in the fighting there.

Bolger believes the new president may go further.

"If you're going to only have 10,000 guys, you want them to be effective," Bolger said. "They should be able to advise at any level. If they need to go out and call in artillery or airstrikes, they should be able to do that. To me that's the kind of opportunity that might arise with the change of government."

Follow Jacob Siegel on Twitter.

Our country is in crisis. Civil liberties, basic human rights, and people's fucking lives are now in more danger than they have been for a very long time, and if you're not doing something to help, there's never been a better time to start. I outlined a number of ways for people in the music community to get involved in the resistance—from donating to the ACLU to raising legal funds for protesters to joining your local anti-fascist organization—in this piece right after the election from hell, and today have come to you bearing even more advice. I'm of the humble-ish opinion that every show should be a benefit show now, and since that's not always financially or logistically possible, we'd better make sure that every one we can put together counts.

With that in mind, I've put together a quick'n'dirty how-to guide to throwing your very own benefit show, drawing on my own experiences booking shows in NYC and Philadelphia for the past decade, as well as compiling sage advice from a small sampling of the promoters, organizers, and musicians I'm lucky to call friends. One caveat: I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who's spent a long time booking metal and punk bands in the Northeast United States, so there will obviously be some different factors to consider when working with other kinds of artists in different areas, but the majority of the core tenets remain the same.

Above all, be transparent, be polite, and be organized! Always remember: this is bigger than you.

Read more on Noisey

On a personal level, it seems like Aubrey Drake Graham is not an academics guy. On "Crew Love", his 2011 hit single with fellow Torontonian The Weeknd, Drake rapped with slick confidence, "Seeing my family have it all took the place of that desire for diplomas on the wall." At the same time, on "Make Me Proud," Drake describes a love interest who "Sounds so smart, like [she] graduated college." (Clearly, Drake could benefit from some creative writing lessons.)

Little did Drake know—almost six years after the release of the album that contained both aforementioned tracks—he would be the subject of a PHD study by Amara Pope, a 22-year-old student from the University of Western Ontario.

Photo courtesy of Pope.

Pope (who completely blew through her media studies undergrad and masters degree by skipping summer breaks to go to school instead) told VICE Monday that her research on Drake is one of three case studies that are planned for her thesis project, which is looking at artists reflect their cultural, religious, and ethnic identities through music videos. (Pope said the other two artists are likely going to be Rihanna and Jay-Z)

Pope has based her thesis around three of Drake's music videos: "HYFR," "Started From the Bottom," and "Worst Behaviour," which she says put different aspects of Drake's identity as an international artist on display.

For example, in "HYFR", Drake shows off his Jewish heritage by basing the video at a Bar Mitzvah, and in Worst Behaviour, the Drizz shows off his Memphis roots and brings his American dad in as a focus of the video. Pope says that, through his videos, Drake has constructed a public identity of being a biracial, Jewish rapper, unrestrained by borders or background.

"He's such a versatile artist, he can really fit into any slot you peg him to," Pope said. "In 'Started From the Bottom,' he shouts of Shoppers [Drug Mart] and has the Toronto skyline on display. At the same time, he's built himself as the biggest artist in America. Almost nobody has done that."

When asked why Pope isn't focusing on the post-2013 part of Drake's career (the time in which he began calling Toronto "the 6" religiously and made the city a core part of his identity), Pope told VICE that she wants to "focus on the part of his career that catapulted him to success." Pope says that his early videos speak more to the establishment of his identity, and less to the brand that he's cultivated since.

As somebody who has also had a major media run-in with Drake, I asked Pope if she had met him yet (she hasn't), and if she plans to do anything in case she gets the chance to talk to him.

"I would love if he sees it and we get some sort of interaction," she said. "That would be amazing...I don't know how I'd react."

Drake, if you're reading this, it's not too late: Pope told me her favourite song is "One Dance" because of its roots in soca and dancehall. Make sure it's playing inside that Uber helicopter you send to her crib.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Lead image by author.

Lauren LeRoy gets a lot of surprised looks when she tells people what she does for a living. The diminutive 26-year-old (she still gets ID'd when she orders a drink) doesn't look the part of your stereotypical funeral director, but she has done more than a 1,000 funerals in her six-year career. She has witnessed her share of familial graveside disputes—and been on the receiving end of some unusual postmortem requests.

VICE spoke with her about mortuary makeup, weird smells, and what it's like to deal with death all day (and all night) long.

VICE: When did you know you wanted to be a funeral director?
Lauren LeRoy: I have known since I was 12 that I wanted to be a funeral director. My great-aunt and great-uncle owned their own funeral home, so I would go over there a lot and there wasn't anything odd about it, because they lived above. It was a normal thing. When I was 12, my grandfather passed away, then my great uncle [who owned the funeral home] passed away within eight months of one another. So having those deaths occur—especially my grandfather's passing—that one affected me really hard, because he was the man in my life. That's when I decided I wanted to be a funeral director, even if I didn't know everything that it meant at the time.

Has this career affected your dating life?
If I was not married, I would say yes. I've been with my husband since I was 15. He's always known what I've wanted to do, and he's so unbelievably supportive it's not even funny. I don't have a schedule. Everything that I do is up in the air, so it means that a lot of things he does are up in the air as well. I think if I wasn't with him that dating for me would be extremely difficult. I like being home, after having a stressful day or just working for so long, I just want to come home, sit on the couch and relax. I don't know how I would meet somebody—I wouldn't have the energy to go out and meet somebody.

How much of your job is mediation among warring family members?
A lot. But you do what you can with everybody. I have a job to do as a funeral director, and I have to do that job. I can't get in the middle—it's hard. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a counselor. When it comes down to it, sometimes you have to step back and let family members take care of things themselves.

Any pet peeves?
My job is to give people information, so I don't have any pet peeves when family members choose to do one thing over something else. If I have a pet peeve it may be other funeral directors in the industry not wanting to go along with change. I know some funeral directors say they don't want to do personalization [of services], so that's going to affect us all. People think of funeral directors as a whole. So if one does something bad, it really affects everybody.

Photo courtesy of Lauren LeRoy

Has this job enabled you to better contend with your own mortality?
I grew up in a Catholic household. I've always had my religion be the center of my life. I've always believed there was something more, I've never believed that that was it when you died. I don't know if the job itself has helped that or not, but what being a funeral director has done for me is not take any day for granted. I bury old people and I bury babies and young people. You never know what tomorrow is going to hold. If anything, it's taught me to take each day as it comes, and make the most of each day.

Favourite part?
The people that I meet. I always say I meet the best people, it's just during one of the most difficult times in their lives. I get to hear really fantastic stories about how people lived their lives, and I just love people. That's why I do what I do.

Least favourite?
Probably the unpredictability. I can't necessarily schedule things like normal people. It's kind of a joke among my family—if I get an invitation to something, it's like, I'll be there if someone doesn't die. I like the unpredictability in a sense because every day is different and I never get bored, but it makes planning things for your own life very difficult.

What do you wish people knew about funeral directors?
That we're not scary! [laughs] I think when people think about funeral directors, they think of the Addams family. Don't get me wrong, I wear black every day, but funeral directors aren't these morbid death-loving people. I just wish people knew that funeral directors are normal people, just like everybody else.

Are you seeing more women enter the field?
My official graduation date was 2010, and the majority of my class was actually female. It was really great. I feel like the female presence is just larger now, you definitely see a lot more.

What funeral music is in heavy rotation these days?
"You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban is one I get requests for all the time. Also, "In the Arms of an  Angel" by Sarah McLachlan, I hear that so many times. We have a couple of CDs we keep in our back pocket. I don't know why, but our funeral home gets a lot of Elvis fans, so we have this one inspirational Elvis CD that we have on hand all the time. They'll come in like; "Mom was a huge Elvis fan...." Well, we have the CD for you.

Any unusual requests?
I'm never stunned by anything. I don't judge anyone or anything, whatever you want is OK. I had this one guy whose son passed away. They gave us his outfit to lay him out in for the visitation.. This guy was in his early 20s. His parents wanted to have him cremated. At the end of his visitation, his dad comes up and says, "OK we want his clothes back." I said; "so you want him to be cremated in nothing?"  And he's like, yeah. I never know the reason why people request something. I'm just the funeral director, so whatever you want—as long as it's reasonable and doesn't hurt anyone—I'll do that for you.

Do any funerals stick out in your mind?
Two in particular. One I will never forget. It was during the visitation itself. It was a young woman who had passed away from breast cancer. She was only a couple of years older than me at that point. We had prepared her and got her ready. The girl was in her casket, and I just remember watching her father walk up to her casket. He put his hand on her and he just started talking to her. And that broke my heart so bad. I walked away because it was such a beautiful moment between this father and his little girl—it just made me think of myself and my dad. It was so in the moment, just spending time talking to her. That will stick with me for a long time.

Another one was a couple years back, a baby had passed away. The baby was about a month old and was very sick. The parents had set up the nursery with butterflies—that was the theme of the nursery. The baby never ended up coming home, and passed away in the hospital.

When we went to the cemetery, the priest was saying the final prayers, and I actually had to interrupt him, because suddenly, all around us, were a dozen butterflies. No one had released them--they had just appeared there. I said' "Sorry Father, but is everybody seeing this right now?" After that, I had the family come back to the funeral home and they said that seeing those butterflies made them feel that their baby was at peace.

How do you prep for this career?
In high school I took public speaking because I figured that would be something I would be doing a lot of. Every state has different rules for how to become licensed. In NY State where I practise, you need to have an associate degree in Funeral Services, and then you have to take a national board exam in Science and Art—two separate exams that cover everything you've learned in mortuary school. Once you've passed those, you have to do a year of residency under a licensed funeral director. So basically, he monitors your embalming, meeting with families, removals, things like that. Then after your internship, you have to take a New York State law exam in public health law. When all is said and done, it's about a three year process.

Is the pay good?
The pay can be good, but normally it's not that great. If you own your own funeral home, that's when you're living a better lifestyle. If you're just an employee with the funeral home, it's not the best pay. You're not working a normal forty hour work week. A lot of funeral directors are salaried. When I factored in my salary compared with the 60 hours a week I was actually working—I could have made more working at McDonalds. You don't become a funeral director to make a lot of money, let's put it that way! [laughs]

Do all funeral directors do embalming?
All in NY will learn how to embalm, not all will end up practicing that. I've been licensed for six years now, I only embalmed my first three years. Now I meet with families, do arrangements, things like that. You basically choose what route you want to go down. I know funeral directors who do both because they work for a small funeral home and they have to do it all.

Is there a limit [from the time of death to the time of embalming them]?
There's not in New York State. It's better to embalm a body as close to the time of passing because you get better results.

What do you mean?
The blood hasn't had a lot of time to settle and pool. It makes a person look more natural, it makes a huge difference. I've worked on bodies where it's been close to a week (since time of death). Their body has had longer to shut down, decomposition may have set in. So it's more work. I don't think any funeral director likes that—it's a smell you never forget, but it's a smell that I can't describe. It hits you in your face almost, when it's really bad. You just do what you can. You remember that, no matter what's going on, this is a person. They may have been dead for a little bit, but it's still a person.

Have you seen any trends emerge?
The entire nation is seeing a rise in cremation. I work in the Buffalo area, with an older clientele. They are very much in that traditional mindset, where they've had a cemetery plot for years already. That's what their parents had, that's what they're comfortable with.

For the younger generation—baby boomers and younger—a lot of cremation, just because it comes down to cost (it's a lot cheaper). The younger generation doesn't talk about their mortality very much, so they don't have cemetery plots. If you don't have that available, that cost can be so huge for families, that cremation seems like an easier way to go. It's really just personal preference. I know a lot of people who don't want to be cremated because they don't like the idea of being burned, and I know a lot of people who don't want to be buried because they're claustrophobic.

What does a person need to do this job well?
You have to be compassionate. You can't come into this career and not care. This is not just a job you can go through the motions with. You have to want to serve other people and help them through a very difficult time. Because a lot of times you are putting these families above your own. If you don't have that mentality, you won't last in the field.

Follow Tiffy Thompson on Twitter.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer may have expressed a lack of appreciation for facts during his very first media briefing when he claimed that Trump's inauguration had the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe," despite extremely strong evidence to the contrary. But it turns out that Spicer happens to have a far greater adversary than something as inconsequential as easily demonstrable truths.

The man seems to hate Dippin' Dots. Like, he abhors them.

Yes, we're talking about the spherical ice cream snack that is the object of desire for every third grader on a class trip to the local science museum. Dippin' Dots appears to be the bane of existence for the man who is President Trump's public voice.

Why? We have no fucking idea.

Spicer has been expressing his disdain for the frozen novelty treat—which is marketed under the tagline "Ice Cream of the Future"—for a full five years. And in keeping with his boss's predilection, he has taken to Twitter to express his feelings.

Read more on MUNCHIES

"I feel dizzy. It's an aneurysm! I can feel it!"

I remember my sister whispering those words from the twin bed a few feet away late one night when she was seven or eight. I sunk under the covers to protect myself and my dolly from the imminent explosion of blood and brain matter that she stated would soon cover the room, but woke up the next morning to find her skull remarkably intact. It wasn't an aneurysm—or the brain tumor she had identified as a viable back-up option. And the mild cough she'd picked up at school the week before wasn't pleurisy or a sign of a collapsed lung. And the weekly bouts of appendicitis she's continued to experience for the past 35 years have, miraculously, never resulted in surgery.

My sister has hypochondria, or—as the condition has been rebranded in the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—"Illness Anxiety Disorder" (IAD). I, on the other hand, regularly share potentially germy beverages with family and friends, frequently purchase chewing gum packed with controversial artificial sweeteners, and often eat food off the floor regardless of the five-second rule. When a "helpful" stranger came up to me when I was nine months pregnant and let me know that the first case of Zika virus had been identified in Los Angeles County, where I live, I simply replied: "Cool. Thanks."

Read more on Tonic

At his first White House press briefing, Sean Spicer—Trump's gum-swallowing, Dippin' Dots–hating press secretary—defended the widely criticized claim he made Saturday that the president scored the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe."

"At the time, the information that I was provided by the inaugural committee came from an outside agency that we reported on," Spicer said. "It wasn't like we made them up in thin air."

Although those initially reported numbers were false, Spicer went on to argue that among the thousands in the crowd in DC on Friday, the millions who caught it on TV, and the "tens of millions" who watched the event online, more people viewed Trump's inauguration than any other in history.

"It's unquestionable," Spicer said. "I don't think there's any question that it was the largest watched inauguration ever."

According to photographic evidence and Metro ridership numbers, more people attended both of President Obama's inaugurations than Trump's. Nielsen ratings were also higher for Obama's first inauguration, at 37.8 million viewers, compared to Trump's 30.6 million. Trump's very own "alternative facts" defender, Kellyanne Conway, tweeted that data herself on Monday.

"I believe we have to be honest with the American people," Spicer said Monday. "But I think sometimes we can disagree with the facts."

There have been many tales told over why America and its gang of bros invaded Iraq.

Weapons of mass destruction, oil, to show the world how big and righteous their dick is—forget all that, the reason is stargates.

Yup, stargates.

Seriously, this theory is actually impressively popular and has inspired numerous articles and shitty youtube video after shitty youtube video garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Hell, it even once got the History Channel treatment so you know it's totally real, you guys.

For those of you not in the know, according to Hollywood, stargates are ancient alien devices that can allow any user to teleport instantaneously to another gate, no matter the distance—which, when you think of it, is super duper cool.

And, for you guys type-tapping away in the Facebook comments asking "why are you writing about this" well, firstly I consider myself a bit of a historian of weird internet thingys and, secondly, I am here to serve the people. Anyhoo, since we know America's new glorious head of state loves himself a good conspiracy theory (eg. global warming = Chinese hoax and Infowars = news) it's worth taking a peek at some of the more prominent "alternative facts" floating around the ol' interweb.

So, without further ado, let's dive head on into this theory. First I'm going to have to get you to stop thinking about Richard Dean Anderson and switch your mind over to that one episode of Ancient Aliens you accidentally watched.

To begin we're going to need to go way back in time and talk about the Sumerians, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia, an area that covers a portion of modern day Iraq. The Sumerians were one of the first civilizations in existence (around 3000 BC) and for a time worshipped the Anunnaki, their deities.

But what if they weren't gods? What if they were aliens!!! (Cue dramatic music, and that meme of the stoned dude with the weird hair.)

Remember that guy? He was like all the rage just a few years ago.

So, without getting too deep into the marsh (I don't want the true believers to get mad at me) the theory, which comes from writers like Zecharia Sitchin, posits that the Anunnaki were not gods but extraterrestrials that came and bestowed technology upon the Sumerians. This tech is what made their society so advanced at the time.  

Ok, following along so far? Here is where it starts to get crazy.

Essentially, the Iraq War Stargate theory pushes and narrows this idea a little further. Saying one of the technologies that were gifted upon the Sumerians were stargates and their positioning was one of the major reasons for the years of strife in the Middle East. I reached out to Dr. Michael Salla, who wrote an in-depth article about the theory way back in 2003, to learn about it further.

Before we got into the nitty-gritty, I had to figure out if a stargate was just as cool as Hollywood made it out to be.

"It's kind of like an instantaneous space-time means of travel where people are instantaneously teleported from one area to another," said Salla.

Yup, super cool.

So, the stargate is apparently found near in the Nasiriyah, a city about 370 km south-east of Baghdad—in the ancient city of Ur—within that city is the great Ziggurat, a massive temple, which had a, you guessed it, stargate. Some theories also argue there is a stargate directly in the city of Baghdad, in one of the basements of Hussein's palaces— where he probably did some pretty freaky stuff with it.

While the locations and number of the stargates is in dispute, one thing the theorists do all agree on, is that the Iraq War wasn't the first time that a foreign power showed interest in it. In what sounds like a super sweet Indiana Jones fan-fic, the Nazis were fighting the British in during WWII over control of the Stargate.

Fast forward several decades and, according to some theorists,1980s Saddam started doing restoration to the temple worrying the world (read: the Illuminati). Oddly the theories don't really mention the first Iraq War but, after years of work, Hussein either was able to get the stargate working or learned something important from it and big-daddy America got concerned.

"The Bush administration recognized that Hussein had some very, very valuable relevant information concerning the ancient history of the planet," said Salla. "Either technology or texts basically confirming this and he was going to release this to the general public."

"I think that was a big part of the reason why the Bush Administration went into Iraq, to stop Hussein from revealing this information and to also get control control themselves."

Salla went on to tell me that while he wasn't the first person to write about the theory he was the first to write, in 2003, an in-depth article regarding it. Since that time he said numerous people have worked to further the idea and many whistleblowers have come forward that have corroborated the theory.

"Essentially more and more people are coming forward saying that they have been involved in these classified programs where these technologies are used quite regularly and that they are found all over the planet, Iraq is just one place they're found," said Salla.

"They are also located in places like Iran and Syria, which is why there is a push for America to go into Iran and intervene in the Syrian civil war. All this is very significant in what drives international conflict."

US soldiers climbing the stairs at the Ziggurat of Ur, presumably on their way to jump hand-in-hand into the stargate. Photo via Wikipedia Commons.

As for why the everyday person doesn't know about this, well, the government is super good at keeping mum, don't 'cha know? According to Salla, anyone looking into it is either discredited by character assassination or just straight up told to keep quiet.

"Any congressman who wants to investigate this topic, if they take steps to actually investigate it, they are quietly approached and given the ol' carrot and stick treatment and most congressmen accept the carrot and are basically promoted."

There is hope, though, the websites covering these theories are just a click away from Infowars and it's not too hard to imagine President Trump having one of his sleek and smooth underlings read it out to him before switching on Ancient Aliens. Like, imagine him sitting there, in his gold throne, leaning forward like a hungry baby bird with Ancient Aliens reflecting in his eye nodding gravely along.

It's easy to see, right?

So maybe President Trump's recent comments about how the US should have stolen Iraq's oil and his statement of "maybe we'll have another chance" are actually about that sweet, sweet teleportation tech.

Maybe President Trump will finally be the American leader to curl his tiny, tiny fingers around a stargate and know the true powers of the universe.  

Only time will tell.

Lead illustration by Joe Frontel

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

What would have happened to Chelsea Manning had President Obama not commuted her 35-year prison sentence to time served last Tuesday? Thankfully, we'll never know—but it's more than likely things wouldn't have gotten better under the Trump administration.

While Manning did see victories in her battle to seek treatment for gender dysphoria while incarcerated, it's unmistakable that the Army's treatment of her has been incredibly cruel throughout her incarceration. To seek the life-saving hormone therapy she needed, she had to fight tooth and nail; last year, she was sentenced to solitary confinement as a punishment for attempting suicide, which caused her to attempt suicide once more; this year, the Army continued to deny permission for her to grow her hair past male military grooming standards. Enduring seven years of that nearly left her dead; it's hard to imagine what seven more, no less the 28 years of her sentence that remained, would have done for her emotional and mental state.

As an ACLU attorney working to defend Manning's right to treatment for gender dysphoria, Chase Strangio has been instrumental over the past several years in both promoting awareness of the cruelties Manning has experienced and helping her to secure her legal rights. Last Tuesday's news was monumental for hundreds of thousands, and it was no doubt especially monumental to Strangio, who has been at the forefront of the fight to secure Manning's freedom. He spoke with VICE in the days following the commutation news about what it means to him, to her, for those she's inspired, and what's next.

VICE: Can you speak to the treatment Chelsea has received over the past seven years, what this means for her and her life, and what's next?
Chase Strangio: It's been a really horrible and harsh seven years for Chelsea, and I will say that she handles the many difficulties she's faced with unbelievable grace, far more than I would. But right before her arrest in 2010, she was struggling with gender dysphoria, she was serving in a war zone and confronted with the atrocities of war, then immediately put into solitary confinement in a cage in Kuwait, and those conditions were replicated in many ways for months at Quantico. Especially coming out of an incredibly painful and traumatic deployment, those stretches of solitary were very destabilizing for her, as they would be for any human being. Solitary confinement is a gruesome and torturous practice that people from the international human rights community to the medical community to the president himself have recognized as anywhere from torture to illegal to impermissible. Those conditions certainly have had a lasting effect on Chelsea's health and well-being, as they have for so many.

During her court martial, she made a decision to not come out as transgender. But the day after her sentencing, she made clear that she would begin to live publicly as a woman and seek treatment during her incarceration. And from thereon the military's immediate response was that they absolutely, categorically do not provide this treatment. It was stunning, since that is a plainly unconstitutional position to take, which we knew well, and so then the ACLU and I became involved. The ACLU had been involved in other capacities before that, on the whistleblower aspects and about the treatment she experienced at Quantico, and then I became involved around access to treatment for gender dysphoria.

Chelsea was characteristically optimistic that the military would do the right thing. You know, for someone who has endured atrocious treatment by the American government, she has an enduring faith in our democratic principles. She believed that the military would treat her, she made every formal request imaginable, and every single request was denied or ignored, so we ultimately filed suit against the Department of Defense. We were able to get her hormone therapy and access to cosmetics—but the government really fought to restrict her ability to grow her hair, not just by denying her request but by aggressively litigating against that claim, in ways that were inconsistent with positions the Obama administration took with respect to trans rights elsewhere.

One of the most emotional things for me to think about is that Chelsea's going to be able to leave prison in four months, grow out her hair, and express her gender on her own terms, after a decade of having every aspect of her bodily autonomy controlled by the government. It's really incredible to think about that, and how life-affirming that will be.

Portrait of Chase Stangio by Leah James

You've written about the ways Chelsea has often been made out to be a symbol, rather than a person. Can you expand on that?
One of the general realities of incarceration is the way we dehumanize those we cage and lock away. We do that in a number of ways—by literally removing people from society, but in other administrative and emotional ways, too, by restricting people's access to communication, to touch and intimacy—and that makes it much harder to perceive them as human beings. Which is, of course, the precise purpose of our punitive incarceration machine.

For Chelsea in particular, the government was very invested in taking away her voice and making her a symbol and an example to justify its incredibly cruel treatment of her. As advocates working with her, one challenge was finding ways to help her tell her story on her own terms, and be experienced as a human being by the public. Even listening to reactions from the media last week, nobody has any idea who she is, and, most frankly, have no idea what her case is about. They think she's a traitor, because that's what's being told to them, but she's this compassionate, patriotic person who joined the military in part because she was poor and had no money to pay for college, and in part because she has this deep sense of patriotism and wanted to serve her country in the aftermath of 9/11. During that time, she experienced homelessness and all sorts of discrimination as a young queer person, she served in the military under Don't Ask Don't Tell and the ban on open trans service. These are things about her that so few people realize or know—her motivations for service, her dedication to country, and the systemic discrimination she experienced as a low-income queer and trans person.

During these last three years, she has been able to write some and share her story, and we were able to help her with her Twitter account and things like that. But she hasn't been seen, you know? In so many ways—not just visually.

I'm sure things are going to want to calm down a little after she's released, but what are the next steps for you? And I'm sure at some point she's going to put herself out there, when she's ready—I'm wondering what that vague future is going to look like?
When we began to have more concrete talks about the future, when it seemed like commutation was a possibility, as cautious as those conversations were, two things emerged. The first is that transitioning out of incarceration is an incredibly complicated emotional and physical process—at least, I can only imagine. And Chelsea understands that she's going to need to care for herself in a variety of ways, and hopefully those of us who are close to her can help her get the tools and resources she'll need for that. Wherever we are as human beings, we create survival and defense mechanisms to help us cope with our surroundings, and no doubt those are heightened and made more complex in the various institutional settings she's been part of, from the military to the various sites of confinement where she's been held. So there will be a process of making sure she can be safe and healthy and get access to the care that's been deprived from her for a while.

Second, she feels an incredible sense of responsibility and commitment to the trans community; she is inherently, will always be and always want to be an advocate, and is looking forward to engaging in these conversations and fights from outside of prison, and really just participating in the fights ahead for the trans community, of which there will no doubt be many. I think she'll definitely keep up that work, and I really look forward to watching her grow and learning from her as we move into this next stage. I've been really inspired by working with her for the past three and a half years, and just know that we'll all have so much to learn from her as she continues to develop in the free world.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

In our new show HATE THY NEIGHBOR, premiering tonight on VICELAND, comedian Jamali Maddix sees what can be learned about racism from meeting people around the world who dedicate their lives to hate.

HATE THY NEIGHBOR airs Mondays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.