This morning, the nominations for the 89th Academy Awards were announced via a livestream that went by faster than you could say "Dustin Lance Black." For such a masturbatory spectacle, the efficiency of the livestream was actually pretty impressive. Sure, there were plenty of ruminatory meditations from past Oscar winners that just stopped short of Adam Sandler's infamous Oscar night "tell the truth" mini-monologue, but the presenters—a range of stars that included Black, Terrence Howard, and Gabourey Sidibe—kept things economical and wrapped up all the noms within a half hour's time. Thanks, Hollywoo(d)!

But I'm not here to jaw on about a livestream that you couldn't be bothered to get out of bed for—this is where we're going to break down the surprises, the not-so-surprises, the snubs, and everything else when it comes to the 2017 Oscar nominations. Just to be clear, this isn't about predictions—we'll get to those closer to the ceremony—but a little handy guide to shed some light on the conversations surrounding this year's nominees.

What were some surprising nominations?

If you see more than five movies a year, every round of Oscar nominations are at least somewhat predictable, but the Academy still possesses the capacity to surprise. For starters, Lion—a worldly drama with faint buzz over the past several months—picked up an impressive six nominations, including Best Picture. I find this impressive because I do not know a single person who has seen Lion for any reason other than professional obligations. I guess it's time to see Lion now!

The excellent period dramedy Hidden Figures also picked up three nominations, including a Best Picture nod and a Supporting Actress slot for Octavia Spencer. (In a way, Hidden Figures was snubbed as well—but we'll get to that later.) Even though Manchester by the Sea has been a constant (and deserving!) presence on the awards circuit, it was a nice surprise to see Lucas Hedges pick up a Supporting Actor nom for his no-nonsense performance as bereaved son Patrick Chandler. Then there's the continued awards-show streak for Isabelle Huppert's role in Paul Verhoeven's controversial (and, in this writer's opinion, utterly ridiculous) Elle. Even if Huppert doesn't win (smart money's on Emma Stone taking the gold), it's cool to see the legendary Huppert get her due in some form.

Also: The Lobster! For Best Original Screenplay! Yorgos Lanthimos's confrontational, bleakly funny sci-fi satire about love, death, and turning into a dog was undoubtedly one of the year's best films, but it's rare that the Oscars recognize such a small, spiny movie at all.

What wasn't surprising?

Uh, La La Land? Love it or hate it (I'm in the former camp), Damien Chazelle's fantastical musical about love, regret, and the hopelessness of dreaming is poised to sweep the Oscars this year. It grabbed an astounding 14 nominations, tying the record previously set by both Titanic and All About Eve. How many it'll win is anyone's guess, but it definitely won't go home empty-handed.

After last year's #OscarsSoWhite movement, there was a renewed promise to focus on diversity. With significant nods toward films like Fences, Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and Lion, there were expected steps toward progress. The push for more diversity spread to the technical categories, too: Arrival cinematographer Bradford Young is only the second black person in Oscar history to receive a nomination in his category, serving as a reminder that even though the Academy is trying to make up for lost time when it comes to diversity, there's a lot of time for them to make up for.

Who got snubbed?

Let's start with Amy Adams. Her performance in Denis Villenueve's sci-fi flick Arrival was one of the year's best in an amazing film that conveyed a surprising message of empathy while also functioning as a cracking pretzel-twister of a popcorn flick. So why wasn't she nominated, even as Arrival racked up a nothing-to-sneeze-at eight noms? Who knows! With five nominations under her belt and zero wins to show for it, Adams is turning into the modern-day Oscar equivalent of Susan Lucci, the legendary All My Children actress who was nominated a whopping 18 times at the Daytime Emmys before finally winning in 1999. Hopefully it won't take Adams that long to get her statue.

One more on the acting tip: Taraji P. Henson, who was absolutely mesmerizing in Hidden Figures—but not enough, apparently, to snag her a second nom. (Her first was for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008; Henson is better—and sees more screen time—in Hidden Figures. A shame.)

Zooming out a bit to focus on which films were snubbed: Pixar takes a rare year off after its Finding Dory gets, well, lost; while Ezra Edelman's titanic undertaking O.J. Made in America is all but guaranteed to take home Best Documentary Feature, it was surprising to see Wiener, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg's astounding and riotously funny document of former US congressman Anthony Wiener's public downfall, get left out of a category it so deserved to be included in.

And then there's Silence, Martin Scorsese's brutal, nearly three-hour-long passion project about the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan. It received not a single nomination, and if you've followed the buzz over the past few months, you could see this coming—Silence is a hard sell, even by prestige standards. But given the film's beautiful photography and engrossing performance from Andrew Garfield, you'd think it would've picked up at least one or two nominations. Which brings us to…

What's everyone pissed off about?

I haven't seen Hacksaw Ridge—which Andrew Garfield did receive a nomination for. But if I do, I plan on trying to make sure I do so in a way that requires I not help give any money to the person who made it. That's because the person who made Hacksaw Ridge is Mel Gibson, whose reputation and character (or lack thereof) is certainly well-known at this point.

Hacksaw Ridge received six nominations—as many as Lion, for those keeping track—including nods for Best Picture and Gibson himself in Best Director. It also received nominations, but no wins, at this year's Golden Globes. Conventional wisdom says that, after years of career exile following truly hateful and execrable remarks about Jewish people, as well as high-profile allegations of misogyny and verbal abuse, this is the moment where Hollywood is willing to extend an olive branch of forgiveness in Gibson's way.

My short response to this is "Fuck that." In an attempt at nuance, though, it's worth thinking about what type of behavior, specifically, Hollywood is willing to forgive—and if there are certain people it's more willing to forgive than others. Obviously, Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation, which had its Oscar campaign routed into the ground after rape allegations against Parker resurfaced, comes to mind. That said, in addition to the allegations and Parker's spectacularly poor handling of talking about them publicly, The Birth of a Nation was at best a mediocre film that might not have made it too far in awards season anyway.

On the other end is Casey Affleck, whose truly spectacular turn in Manchester by the Sea is a crowning jewel in an already impressive career. Affleck also had past allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct resurface early in awards season, but they didn't stick the way Parker's did. Why that is—and why Gibson's been given the go-ahead on the comeback trail—are questions worth asking, even if the answer is as simple as the color of their skin. Maybe someone will ask them during the ceremony this year—if they do, it'll at least make for interesting TV—but even after the furor that surrounded last year's ceremony, it's clear that the issues plaguing the Academy and Hollywood at-large are far from fixed.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.

The Trump administration has banned Environmental Protection Agency staff from posting to the department's social media accounts, updating its blogs, or speaking with the press, the Hill reports.

This media blackout decree was issued on the same day President Donald Trump signed two executive actions allowing for the construction on the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines.

According to the Associated Press, EPA employees received an email from the Trump administration on Tuesday afternoon laying out the terms of the media blackout. The email also enacted a contract freeze, prohibiting staff from awarding new grants or contracts, as well as continuing work assignments. The halt on EPA activities is likely to affect numerous projects around the country, like removing hazardous waste or testing drinking water.

Trump's EPA transition leader, Myron Ebell, told ProPublica that the move might be a "wider than some previous administrations," but was a normal part of any White House transition. "They're trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don't want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first," Ebell said of the incoming administration.

There were also reports of other government employees, from the US Department of Agriculture to the Department of Health and Human Services, being issued similar restrictions on outside communication.

It should go without saying that the EPA did not respond to VICE's phone calls requesting comment on the matter.

Nineteen-year-old Eva* gets a lot of requests when she's camming, most of which she ignores. On principle she says no to anal, fisting, or any ask for her to dance.

"I'm a bad dancer, and I feel really embarrassed," she told VICE. "I'm cool with vibrators and dildos and requests like, 'Can I see your feet?' That's all fine by me. I can't squirt, but if I could, I'd be totally fine with that, too."

For some young women who are just trying to live in Vancouver, masturbating for a virtual audience is just one way to be "resourceful" when minimum wage doesn't meet the cost of living. Eva is part of a cohort of friends and former roommates who see various shades of sex work—from escorting and stripping to camming and sugar dating—as an extra boost to break even in Canada's most expensive city.

Camming wasn't Eva's first Vancouver gig. After moving here from her eastern BC hometown just over a year ago, she found a barista job that had little hope of covering her bills. Her shifts were only three or four hours at a time, and tips were minimal.

"I was definitely living paycheque to paycheque," she recalled of those first few months, living in a teardown with half a dozen friends and an ex-boyfriend. When their $3,000+ rent was split seven (or more) ways, depending on the month, they were at least paying much less than average. But most of the electric outlets didn't work, the plumbing was iffy, and the city eventually condemned the building this past December.

Read More: Meet the Bouncers of Camgirl Chatrooms

Even when she hated her job and her house was falling apart, Eva says she never felt desperate. There was always food in the fridge, but some days she found herself skimping on things like bus fare, and by the end of each month, she'd start to see a gap between what she wanted to have and what she could afford.

To close that gap, Eva turned to Chaturbate, one of the world's most popular cam sites. "I always thought it was a reasonable way to make money," Eva told VICE. "I think I've always had a pretty casual outlook on sex."

Along with other friends, she also tried WhatsYourPrice.com, a site that lets you choose a rate to go on an in-person date with a stranger. Not to be confused with an escort service, agreeing to a date usually means going out for dinner or drinks with someone 25 or more years older.

"I've definitely gone on dates for like $300 to $500," she said. "Now that I'm a little more stable, I don't need to do that anymore. It's pretty uncomfortable… I don't want to be around people like that at all."

At first Eva was adding anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a month to her income by having sex on camera—sometimes by herself, sometimes with her boyfriend of the time. She used a camming cheque to buy a new phone when she lost her old one.

Usually the money comes easy, given in the form of online "tokens," but Eva says it's not a guarantee. "Some nights I make $300 or $500 in an hour, and sometimes I do it for two hours and make like $75, which can be discouraging and frustrating, because people can still be active and talking to you and saying rude things while you're not making any money."

Though she hasn't always had a positive experience with camming, Eva found it a comforting alternative to the minimum wage grind that was burning out some of her friends. Its greatest attraction: "more money for less time spent."

Vancouver's real estate prices finally began to cool off in December, but so far the rental market hasn't seen the same drop. According to one rental report, the average one bedroom went for $1,820 in December, with the average two bedroom costing $3,030. January could see renters fall even further behind, as landlords are allowed to raise rent by 3.7 percent this year.

After a long and stressful search through curtained-off living rooms and tiny basements, Eva and friends settled on another temporary teardown for the next few months.

For one of Eva's former roommates, Tamara*, the end of the month—when rent is due and funds are generally lower—is usually when escorting pops into the back of her mind. "I have some clients that I go see. I'll call them up, sometimes."

Through a friend, the 21-year-old was able to access an apartment for sex workers, and she set up her own online ad. For a few hundred dollars, she met with a handful of clients for sex over a few months in the fall.  

Though she hasn't escorted in the last month or two, the extra cash helped her cover rent and buy a laptop. She also keeps an eye on her SeekingArrangement.com account for potential sugar daddies. "But that might be more emotional labour than it's worth," she said.

Tamara says she feels a bit of a generational divide between rich boomers and screwed-over milliennials, but also points out a gender split. She says women don't have the same options when it comes to making cash quickly. "If men want to make absurd amounts of money in a short time they can go into construction," Tamara told VICE. "Labour work is more profitable."

Though not as physically draining, Tamara says sex work does start to take an emotional toll. She adds it's only possible for her because her family lives far away. "It's this secret you have, and it does sort of stick with you. You don't realize how much it's going to affect you."

Eva and Tamara say they've never considered any kind of sex-related work for a full-time job. The easily accessible technology and their generation's more open attitude toward sex makes it easier for women like them to step in and out of the industry just to keep afloat. In the summer, Eva found herself a new restaurant gig that has better hours—a job that has allowed her to save and will even start covering medical benefits in May.

Still, Eva keeps camming an occasional part of her life—usually once or twice a month for some extra spending cash. "I like camming because it's a very consensual experience for me," she told VICE. "I feel really cute when I cam. I dress up really nice, I do my makeup, and I have a really comfortable environment for myself in my home."

But for Eva's next financial hurdle, she may need to turn to something else. Right now her laptop doesn't work and needs a $700 repair, which means she can't use camming to make up the difference. "It's definitely been something kind of in the back of my mind. I'm stressing a little."

Though friends' moms have expressed fear over these womens' choices, Eva says it's not a desperate situation at all—just part of being resourceful in an economy that doesn't help young renters. With camming she can afford to treat herself sometimes, to clothes, makeup, art and house plants. One thing she'd like to be able to afford one day is school.

"I think if I was in school I would be camming a lot more, because I don't think I'd be able to work and live in Vancouver," she told VICE. "It's definitely not something I want to be doing forever, but I could see myself doing it for the next few years."

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Shortly after President Donald Trump's inauguration speech on Friday, some people noted that a portion of it bore an uncanny resemblance to a speech delivered by the Batman villain Bane in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.

But that wasn't where the unsettling similarities of the day ended. By now, you may have heard that later that evening, a large, towering cake that Trump and Vice President Pence cut with a saber at the Our Armed Services Ball left no room for debate—it looked exactly like the cake made for Obama's 2013 Commander in Chief's Ball.

Baltimore's Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes fame made the original cake for Obama's inauguration, and pointed out the copy on Twitter.

It's not a great look to seemingly rip off one of America's most famous bakers, and a social media cake controversy ensued.

Read more on MUNCHIES

Check out Julia Ploch's website and Instagram.

I had never seen a 10x surge price before this past Saturday. That's the first thing one should know about the Park City Women's March, which, over the course of a few hours, went from a quietly side-eyed punchline to a substantial happening. There were three kinds of people who made it to Main Street: people who either rode the bus for up to two hours, hiking through the unshoveled ankle-deep slush of Park City; people who had the prime Main-adjacent real estate; or people who paid an Uber driver $100. I missed the march itself, stuck in the crawling traffic; I suspect many would-be supporters missed the whole thing. I arrived too late for the opinings of Chelsea Handler, who for some inexplicable reason was the celebrity speaker billed as the "leader" of the march. But I got there just in time for Daily Show alum and The Incredible Jessica James star Jessica Williams to take the podium. She shared a lesson from her mother, that when you're a black woman, you don't have the privilege of merely being average. At one point Williams reflected on the journey that brought her to this rally, "talking to all you white people in Uggs," while Parks and Rec's Nick Offerman wandered around the crowd in his Pussy Hat, taking pictures with fans. It takes a (celebrity-filled ski resort) village.

Partly serendipitously, and partly by choice, my Saturday was dedicated to the work of female filmmakers. To the festival's credit, there is a comparative wealth of female-directed films this year at Sundance, but two of the most hyped were showing that day. After getting shut out the day before, I finally made it into Landline, Gillian Robespierre's follow up to 2014's Obvious Child. It's a chatty family dramedy set in 1995 in New York City, centering on the loves, infidelity, and rebellions of a mother (Edie Falco) and her two daughters (Jenny Slate and Abby Quinn). Counterintuitively, it has a very timely appeal, in that all anyone wants right now is to time travel back to idyllic, pre-9/11 America. (Hillary Clinton makes an appearance via newscast, which inspired a few rueful chuckles at my screening. Ha ha.) The New York of Landline is abundantly chill, a world of playwrights, Paper magazine, upstate country homes, and performance artists taking a vow of silence.

It's also the perfect example of a film that gets talked up and absolutely mobbed despite being simply… fine. I'm not sure what Landline's larger purpose is, other than being a showcase for its three great, idiosyncratic female leads (John Turturro also stars as the father of the film's chaotic house.) Near the end, after all the bombshells have been dropped and the tears shed, teenage Ali (Quinn) remarks about their family's drama: "It's not even that bad." I couldn't have said it better myself.

A still from 'Landline.' Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival

The one thing Sundance loves almost as much as a coming-of-age story is a family drama. The mother of all of them arrived Saturday night with the premiere of Dee Rees's Mudbound. Based on the novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan, it follows two families, one black and one white, working the same seemingly cursed piece of land in the Mississippi Delta. Epic in scope, it plays out as a kind of Southern Game of Thrones, where history piles layer upon layer of insult and injury between the McAllans and the Jacksons. But the film distinguishes itself through its bridging of seemingly untraversable cultural divides, specifically with the imbalanced but empathetic bonds between Laura (Carrie Mulligan) and Florence (Mary J. Blige) and fellow WWII veterans Ronsel (Straight Outta Compton's Jason Mitchell) and Jamie (Garrett Hedlund). Through these interactions, Rees is able to reflect on shared trauma, privilege, and the ever-present burden of emotional labor in a way that always shows, never tells.

A still from 'Mudbound.' Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival

In the post-film Q&A, Rees addressed the pitfalls of setting out to do a "message" movie, emphasizing that the best way to reach an audience and open up their perspective is through strong characters, not an agenda. In other words, don't talk about it, be about it—which Rees backed up by enlisting a female cinematographer (Rachel Morrison) and editor (Mako Kamitsuna), whose work is indispensable in weaving together the film's many moving parts.

The film received a passionate standing ovation, though not the now-mythical, entire-credits applause of last year's Birth of a Nation. The ugly fallout of that film over the past year after its record-breaking Sundance christening was the elephant in Eccles Saturday night. Rees was not so lucky as to premiere her film at the height of Hollywood's panicked response to #OscarsSoBlack. Or maybe she dodged a bullet—perhaps great-while-still-reasonable expectations will be what ensures the film's post-festival success. It's almost as if, for some directors, it's harder to get away with being average. But Mudbound is anything but.

Mudbound distinguishes itself through its bridging of seemingly untraversable cultural divides.

And yet what about those notorious coming-of-age tales? On Sunday morning, I checked out a screening of Dayveon, mostly because it was the film that was showing then that I knew the least about. The film is the first feature by 27-year-old Amman Abbasi, an Arkansas-raised Pakistani composer turned director. Abbasi sets his first feature (which has the blessings of producers David Gordon Green and Jody Hill) in his native state, but opts to tell a story of the titular 14-year-old boy who is drawn into small-town gang activity, despite—or because of—having lost his older brother to a gang shooting. Along the way he must grapple with some familiar-feeling conflicts between family and adulthood, loyalty and responsibility. It's shot in that lush, sun-dappled Malick-lite style that's so in vogue now; its interludes of rural wandering take some cues from Andrea Arnold's American Honey, as well as that film's unusual 4:3 aspect ratio.

A still from 'Davyeon.' Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival

I am not sure I know who Dayveon is for. Despite some visual poetry (and some very odd editorial flourishes here and there), I'm unclear what new insight the film has on gang life in black communities. That shallowness creates an inescapable sense of poverty porn that Dayveon never quite shakes. Abbasi used non-professional actors in all roles but the leads, but doesn't seem to have bothered to explore those real-life gangsters' personalities, as Arnold did with her ensemble of real-life wanderers.

It's certainly impressive that Abbasi set out to create an intimate portrait of a walk of life that's different, if geographically close to his; in most cases, I would say that "write what you know" is a limiting edict. But it's very apparent when a director's attachment to their material is more intellectual than emotional. In any case, it's probably good to make sure you really learn what you write.

Dayveon was part of the NEXT lineup, which has traditionally been the ripest ground for the kind of challenging discoveries that makes Sundance so fun. I had been a little disappointed that the films I had enjoyed so far at the festival were in the Premieres section, whose films are all but guaranteed distribution if they don't have it already. I wanted a film I could champion, or at least hate enough to get in a fight with someone about. So I dipped back into NEXT, and headed to the premiere screening of David Lowery's A Ghost Story.

Lowery is a certified Sundance darling; in addition to having a film in the program, he was on the short film jury, and I found that he continually popped up giving soundbites in Sundance reports I read over the weekend. In A Ghost Story, he reunites with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, who starred in his 2013 film Ain't Them Bodies Saints. He also casts the latter as a ghost who wears a sheet with two eyes cut out for the majority of the film's runtime.

I have to admire A Ghost Story just for being so willfully itself, and inspiring so many overheard sputtering debates as I left the theater.

Tone, of course, is everything, and Lowery mostly does this ghost bit with a completely straight face. There's some self-aware tragicomedy in the subtitled silent exchanges between Sheet Ghost Casey and another spirit in the house next door, but for the most part A Ghost Story maintains a methodically paced, somber feel. At one point he holds onto Mara's character for what feels like about five minutes, as she sad-eats an entire pie. While this charmed some critics on Twitter, I found it to be beyond tedious. But overall, the effect of the image of Sheet Ghost Casey is both goofy and deeply unsettling. And that image has a constantly evolving emotional affect as the ghost plods through the years.

I left unsure of whether I loved or hated A Ghost Story. I ultimately think it's too clever by half, a kind of manipulative little machine of a plot that feels like a Pixar short stretched to fill a feature runtime. (I understand that may sound like an endorsement to people unfamiliar with my stance on the cynical, Silicon-Valley engineered plots of most Pixar films, which I will happily explain for you in a shouty voice after one and a half glasses of wine.) But I also have to admire it just for being so willfully itself, and inspiring so many overheard sputtering debates as I left the theater. A Ghost Story represented a piece of the Sundance picture I'd been missing: a good, strange thing to fight about.

Follow Emily Yoshida on Twitter.

"You may be surprised to learn how many people are seeking bigger loads of semen," reads the front page of biggerloads.com, a website dedicated to delivering on the promise offered in its URL. "People of all ages—both men and women—have their own reasons for wanting more male ejaculate."

Those reasons—more intense orgasms, makin' babies—are all pretty predictable. So too is the existence of a site like bigger loads. Over the years, we've seen an increasing preoccupation—due, perhaps, to the evolution and proliferation of cum-focused porn or supplement marketing—among men with the size, force, and consistency of their jizz.

It can be hard to know if the common advice you'll find floating around the internet is reliable. But doctors who study human ejaculate for fertility purposes and porn stars tasked with creating the biggest loads possible for visual effect have tons of insights on the dynamics of cum. And they seem to agree that there are a few means through which a man can "improve" his ejaculation, both in size and even taste.

For the latter, the blogosphere puts a lot of stock in the idea that eating certain foods like red meat or dairy, smoking, and drinking alcohol make your cum taste foul, while eating citrus and greens will make it taste sweeter. "If you are treating your body poorly, the last thing it cares about is producing high-quality cum!" says Johnny Sins, a performer active since 2006.

Sexologists like Carol Queen and some female porn performers have supported the idea that eating certain foods can help or hurt the taste of semen. Sins says female performers often complain that men who smoke have "chunky" cum. However, he doubts any single food will have a huge impact on semen's flavor, while other medical experts suspect you'd have to consume them in huge amounts to have any effect.

Additionally, there are a host of supplements with names like Sugar Cum and Sweeten 69 on the market that promise candy-quality jizz, with little to support those claims. (There are also gel strips that, likewise dubiously, claim to neutralize the taste of cum on the tongue.) But plain ol' pineapple juice seems to be the super fruit taster's choice for many self-professed sexperts. Still, Dr. Abraham Morgentaler believes, ultimately, we just haven't done enough study on what influences cum's taste, so most of this "is pure conjecture."

Morgentaler is the director of Men's Health Boston and an associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School, and points out why that kind of data is hard to come by. "You can imagine the difficulty of doing a study on that," he says. "Not only do you need the guys, but you need willing partners to actually taste it."

While there's no hard medical data on what might influence the taste of semen, Morgentaler acknowledges that he's heard anecdotes from patients about the effects of diet and disease, and says there's no reason to rule out the possibility that there could be some mechanism at work there. If there is an effect, though, it's probably not from consuming one or two super foods, but from a holistic shift to a healthy lifestyle. "If your partner doesn't like the way something tastes," says Morgentaler, "by all means, go ahead and experiment with dietary stuff, whether it's fruit juices or whatever."

To that point, several porn stars have told me over the years that teetotaling, non-smoking vegetarians and vegans have the most tasty (or tolerable) cum. And Sins believes his cum gets good reviews from the women he works with because of his overall healthy lifestyle. He doesn't smoke or do drugs, avoids drinking to excess, and maintains a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. He also drinks plenty of water.

Still, on the topic of taste, go in knowing this stuff is only anecdotal, and results may vary.

On the other hand, when it comes to size and force of ejaculate, medical science can offer some tangible evidence of improvements. Morgentaler says that alcohol consumption not only lowers sperm count, but also the amount of ejaculate. How turned on you are during sex has an effect on the size and force of a cumshot as well. Age often reduces force—and perhaps the amount of fluid—in an ejaculation as well. Sins supports this from practical experience.

But on one point, the two disagree slightly. Morgentaler says doctors have long known that sustained periods of abstinence between ejaculation leads to a stronger, larger dynamic. Sins thinks that varies case by case. "Everyone's different, but for me, 24 hours in between gives me the biggest, most powerful cumshots," he says. "You would think that the longer you wait the better it would be, but that isn't always true. After waiting a few days, I have a little more cum built up, but the power of the shot isn't as powerful as I'd like or expect. The cum just plops out, for lack of a better word."

Other things Sins has done in the past to improve the "power of the shot" and guard against the dreaded "plops" is take zinc supplements and ZMA, which is popular among athletes and bodybuilders. Though both underwhelmed, "I could never really tell the difference," he says.

Point is, if you want a strong and forceful load, give your prostate a rest here and there—but maybe not too long. Don't look for supplements or quick fixes. Instead, just treat your body well, and accept that physical limitations like age might put a damper on your ambitions—although a few Kegel exercises might help too.

Lastly, it's also worth recognizing that no matter how much you try, you're probably never going to pop off a porn load. "Most of the 'cumshot' pictures you see… aren't cum," says Sins. "Producers use various types of lotions, soaps, etc. to mimic cum. Most go overboard and use large amounts, way more than any guy could physically cum."

Learn to love your load, even if it's just the average teaspoon worth. At least maybe now it'll taste better.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

In an apparent microaggression in President Trump's "running war" with the media, he has decided he's going to hang a new addition to the West Wing's press area—a panoramic photo of his inauguration, according to Politico.

Trump tweeted about his new photo on Tuesday, after he and his press secretary Sean Spicer threw around some "alternative facts" on Saturday regarding the number of people who attended the inauguration ceremony. Trump said he'd put the photo in the upper and lower press halls, which are designated for White House communications staff and open to reporters.

On Saturday, Sean Spicer accused the media of intentionally framing certain aerial photos of Trump's inauguration ceremony "to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall." Trump also estimated that there were between 1 million and 1.5 million people at his inauguration, a number that seems very high compared to photos from Barack Obama's 2009 ceremony, which an estimated 1.8 million people attended.

At his first White House press briefing on Monday, Spicer seemed to change his tone while addressing the press, but insisted that he still believes Trump's inauguration was the "largest watched inauguration ever," when factoring in TV ratings and the estimated number of people who viewed it online.

In addition to a large crowd spilling over the margins, the photograph includes a caption running along the bottom that reads: "Swearing-in Ceremony of President Donald J. Trump - January 21st, 2017, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C." even though Trump was sworn in on Friday, January 20, 2017.

Artist Sadie Barnette's first solo exhibition, Do Not Destroy, illuminates what government surveillance look like when the state declares you an enemy: It is invasive, indiscriminately thorough, and ruthlessly unjust. This much is clear when you walk into the Baxter St. gallery at the Camera Club of New York and are visually assaulted by the dearth of documents—culled from the files the FBI maintained on Barnette's father Rodney, who was the founder of the Black Panther Compton chapter—barely readable, covering the long, main wall.

From 1966 to 1977, the FBI surveilled the elder Barnette because of his work in the racial justice movement after he came home from the Vietnam War. His 500-page FBI docket covers the years he was active in the Black Panthers from 1968 to 1969 and also includes reports by informants on his banal day-to-day activities at the post office, where he worked at the time, and even interviews with his childhood teachers and neighbors. This was part of a larger surveillance operation on black political organizers, wherein the goal was to destroy the lives of civil rights organizers and by extension the entire movement. As a result, Black Panther Party activists like Fred Hampton were killed, others were jailed, and many more lived constantly under those threats.

Read more on Broadly

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, American fashion advertising came to be overtaken by a new, more ribald kind of sexuality. From a scandalously young Brooke Shields's declaration in 1980 that nothing comes between her and her Calvin Klein jeans, to Abercrombie & Fitch's A&F Quarterly, a catalog-cum-magazine that included sex tips from porn stars among its scantily clad young men and women, the ad world began to sell sex like never before.

The man behind "the ad world's sex revolution," as the New York Post had it, is Sam Shahid, the art director who pioneered some of the most-talked-about fashion photography of the late-20th century. Shahid, who is gay, moved to New York from Atlanta in 1969 to get into the industry; that was also the year he first bought a camera, and the decades to follow nurtured a love of photography that developed alongside the gay liberation movement of the 70s and 80s.

Shahid happened to live at its epicenter, and he was prescient enough to document those years, from New York City's gay pride parades to summers spent on Fire Island—and keep documenting gay culture through the present day. In a recently launched Kickstarter for a book of photos from his archives, titled And the Band Was Playing a Gay Tune, we get to see gay New York for the first time through his eyes. He sat with VICE to discuss his work, LGBTQ politics, and what he thinks is yet to come amid a tumultuous time for gay culture.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Provincetown, Massachusetts, 2015. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

New York, New York, 1976. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

VICE: You've been shooting for the past 40 years. Looking back, what made it so important to put this project out now?
Sam Shahid: I've shown these photos to a lot of people, some of whom I don't know that well, and they all said, "God, this needs to be seen." There's a celebration, there's a pride. That's what's great about it; there's no shame. [In New York during these years,] you were able to express yourself any way you wanted to. I think there was just a celebration of ourselves, basically.

I thought what was really good though is at the beginning, when my friends would call me up [to photograph them]—they felt so free to perform for me and the camera. We would scream and shout. They were just fantastic. I had one friend who would love to dress up. He would take things around the house, like a shower curtain, and make a gown and a crown and all that sort of stuff. Then, every Friday, we would put on a slideshow and play Donna Summer and look at all the photos. Everyone would shout, and what was really great is that we felt so comfortable when we were together. There was no question about what we were doing, there were no doubts. It was just, "I know who I am, and I love it, so let's have a good time!"

A Sunday afternoon with a friend in New York City, 1976. Says Shahid, "He found a bra in the dryer and called me over with my camera." Photos courtesy of Sam Shahid

New York City Pride Parade, 2015. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

How does that play into the current political climate?
I had some friends who looked at this and said, "We need this now." You know, let them see us. I think that's important, because even though we've come a long way in places like New York and LA, when you go outside of there, it's not like we'd like it to be.

That's like with Trump. A lot of people [on the coasts], when they went out to do the polls, you would ask, "Who are you voting for?" and they would say Clinton in denial. They didn't want people to know that they were voting for Trump, but secretly they were. I think the same thing happens in regards to the gay community. In New York, yes, we're "accepted," but underneath it all there are a lot of people out there who I think don't accept us. They do so publicly because it's the thing to do right now, but underneath, I think there's still a disgust with the gay community. I can hear it sometimes when you're talking to someone, and they don't realize you're gay.

Visiting with friends in Fire Island Pines, 1978. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

Was there a pivotal moment to you in the past four decades that changed how gays are thought about in America?
When Anita Bryant came against the gays, that's really when you saw the big turning point in New York. The pride parades before that—you used to go to Central Park, and it was very small. It was getting a little bigger and a little bigger, but when Anita Bryant came against the gays, you really saw New Yorkers and the gay community show themselves in force. After that, it still even kept getting bigger and bigger. It was great, because all your life you feel like you're not accepted, and it's a completely different world you have to try to fit into. You feel like no one understood you and accepted you. This showed that that wasn't true. This was the first time the community really came together and said "enough."

Gay Pride March, New York City, 1977. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

Photographer Stewart Shining in Water Mill, New York, 2013. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

Did any of this play into your advertising work with Abercrombie and Calvin Klein?
No. I say no because I think it's just part of me. I've been very lucky that I've been able to work with people like Bruce [Weber] and Herb [Ritts] and other photographers. We connected, and we had clients that connected. I think who I am is [in these issues] and it's [in my advertising work], but I don't think one influenced the other. It's all just one continuation.

An 80s themed Carnival in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 2016. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

New York City Pride Parade, 2005. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

You mentioned how things have changed over the 40 years. What's to come?
Hopefully things are going to get better, especially when you think about same-sex marriage and the fact that kids are involved now. I think it'll all change once we have a gay president. I have known people who would tell me "no gay man or woman could ever hold a political office"—women and straight guys, they would make jokes of it. This was back in the 70s and 80s. Look what's happened.

I remember when AIDS came about. It wasn't called AIDS at the time, but it seemed so distant from us. But then, I was at Calvin Klein, and I ran the in-house advertising, and you just didn't talk about it. If someone in your office—I had two guys in my office, that were friends of mine—had AIDS, you just didn't talk about it. I couldn't tell Calvin that. I made sure they had a car to get to the hospital and all of that and kept it quiet, but we did not talk about it. In those days, there was such a stigma, the idea that the fashion industry wouldn't buy our clothes.

I remember how people would go to the funeral of their boyfriend or their lover and then go right back to work and not mention any of it. So we've come a long way. When I look at Anita Bryant and the things she said, no one could do that today. Yes, Mike Pence can be against same-sex marriage and that kind of thing, and yet we can demonstrate in front of his house and be safe doing that. Also, I think people really question when you say homophobic things now; it's like, "really?" But I believe when we have a gay president it's going to be divine. I hope I can live long enough to see that happen.

From a Candyland-themed Carnival in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 2015. Photo courtesy of Sam Shahid

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Not so fast Ajit.

Public interest groups, political organizers and free speech advocates expressed anger and alarm on Monday about President Trump's decision to elevate Ajit Pai, a right-wing opponent of net neutrality, to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Pai, a 44-year-old Republican and former Verizon lawyer who has served as a FCC commissioner since 2012, has repeatedly opposed the agency's recent pro-consumer free speech reforms. Last month, Pai vowed to take a "weed whacker" to the FCC's policy protecting net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible to consumers.

"Ajit Pai has been on the wrong side of just about every major issue that has come before the FCC during his tenure," Craig Aaron, President and CEO of DC-based public interest group Free Press, said in a statement. "Pai has been an effective obstructionist who has always been eager to push out what the new presidential administration might call alternative facts in defense of the corporate interests he used to represent in the private sector."

In addition to net neutrality, Pai has opposed FCC initiatives to advance broadband privacy protections, to increase competition in the cable "set-top box" market, and to make it easier for local municipalities to develop affordable, high-speed public broadband networks. He's also been a vocal booster for telecom industry consolidation—Pai actually voted against the Charter-Time Warner Cable mergerbecause he considered the FCC's conditions too onerous.

Read more on Motherboard

Since Donald Trump began threatening to deport millions of immigrants in America, those who live here without papers have lived in a state of uncertainty and fear. He's softened his stance on deportation since his initial hardline statements, but many immigrants—including the undocumented youth who qualified for legal work permits and deportation relief under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—are still holding their breath. Will they have to leave the schools and jobs made available to them through the program? Even worse, will they have to leave the country?

Now that Trump has taken office, their futures are no less uncertain. Either way, the so-called Dreamers in the program, better known as DACA, are preparing for the worst. That's partly thanks to the release of a Department of Homeland Security memo showing the Trump transition team had asked the federal agency about its handling of the database. The database, which contains information including names, addresses, and in some cases fingerprints of 750,000 Dreamers, is now fully in Trump's tiny hands.

It's not entirely clear what a Trump administration would do with that database, if anything. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in his first official press conference that Trump's immigration priorities were "building the wall and making sure that we address people who are in this country illegally." When someone asked if Trump had ruled out the plan to shut down the DACA program entirely, which he'd previously made a centerpiece of his immigration plan, Spicer rebuffed the question, saying he didn't "have anything further on the executive action front."

At the same time, House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week that mass deportations for DACA recipients and other immigrants were absolutely "not happening", and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus even suggested on Sunday that the president would work with a bi-partisan group of lawmakers who have introduced a bill called the BRIDGE Act that would extend DACA protections for a few more years.

So which is it? An executive order that immediately rescinds DACA, which has been in place since 2012 and effectively created 750,000 legal citizens? Or some temporary extension of the program that would require Trump's approval? Either way, Dreamers are preparing to potentially have to slink back into the shadows—ironically creating more immigrants working under the table, the very thing Trump has complained about for months.

"DACA gave people the opportunity to come forward, and there is a benefit to the country and to the federal government by having these people come forward because it gives you records about the population that is here," said Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "If the program is extinguished or people are afraid of coming forward for fear of deportation, we'll simply return to the status quo of people being undocumented."

Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the sponsors of the bill extending DACA protections that was introduced in December, echoed that sentiment the same month.

"I do not believe we should pull the rug out and push these young men and women—who came out of the shadows and registered with the federal government—back into the darkness," Graham said in a statement, according to Politico.

Related: Deporting Young Immigrants Only Hurts America

In his briefing Monday, Spicer announced that no matter how Trump goes after DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants in the country, his "priority" will be on those with criminal records.

But Leon Fresco, a former assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation, pointed out that some of those people could be young people with minor criminal records—like getting caught with weed. Those Dreamers might be included in another database of undocumented immigrants who qualify for deportation proceedings, but who aren't deemed an immediate threat and therefore aren't targeted, according to Virginia Raymond, an immigration attorney based in Austin.

These are called "unexecuted orders of removal," and Trump could choose at any moment to begin executing all of them. That means Trump wouldn't have to sign an executive order or wait to veto the bi-partisan bill extending DACA protections before deportation proceedings can begin.

If that does happen, Trump could use the database of DACA recipients for exactly what immigration advocates fear: targeting the young people who outed themselves as undocumented in exchange for protection from the government under Obama. "The final stake in the heart is that he could then deploy his Immigrations Customs and Enforcement officials to go to their homes and initiate deportation proceedings," said Chen.

Even if DACA recipients aren't deported—which seems likely, since immigration courts are already backed up until 2019 with deportation cases, according to Raymond—the possibility of losing legal work status is devastating. Judith Jimenez, a 35-year-old DACA recipient in Arizona, told USA Today Obama's policies had enabled her to find a job and get a mortgage on a house. Now, she's worried she could lose everything.

"It would definitely put a stop to our dreams, for now," Jimenez told USA Today, referring to the possibility of dismantling DACA. "But I guess we would do what all immigrants have done throughout history, which is try to survive."

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A new video shows Toronto police tasering a seemingly motionless man who is already lying on the ground and then aggressively intimidating a bystander who was filming the incident.  

In the video, which was released by City News today, a man lays in the street surrounded by three Toronto Police officers. "I dunno man, I just saw this cop kick this guy in the head," a voice off camera says.

Then the unmistakable sound of a Taser going off is heard.

"He's down and they tased him," the man filming says. The cop with a Taser in his hand points a finger at him and yells at him to move back if he wants to be a witness. The man filming appears to be about a dozen metres away from where police have surrounded the man on the ground.

"I'm not obstructing your arrest," the man says back to police. "I'm not getting involved."

Another officer walks over to tell the witness to "let them do what they need to do." The officer with the Taser then proceeds to stomp on the arrested man's legs and yells "stop resisting."

The same officer points at the man filming and says "get that man out of my face, please." Again, the guy filming appears to be at least a dozen metres away.

The man filming is then approached by two cops telling him to move back and stop filming.

"He's going to spit in your face, you're going to get AIDS," says one of the police officers, though it's unclear who he is talking about.

"Stop recording or I'm going to seize your phone as evidence and then you're going to lose your phone."

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash told VICE that the officers were called to Seaton House for reports of a man spitting on a staff member at the homeless shelter. When they arrived the man reportedly hit a female police officer in the face and knocked her to the ground. Several construction workers came to help and one was apparently bitten during the fracas. Police then managed to get the man in the back of a police car where he kicked out the back window. Pugash said police attempted to taser the man but it had no effect because of his heavy clothing. They then got him out of the car which is where the video picks up from.

"We got him out, he was on the ground, my understanding is that he still was in the process of biting one of the police officers and they subdued him," Pugash told VICE.

But Ottawa-based criminal lawyer Michael Spratt said the video is "a depiction of the worst of Toronto police."

"There are no words to describe the impropriety of what this officer did. It's fucking crazy," he told VICE.

"At every level, from the officers' actions, to the officers' first attempts to cover this up, to the officers' interfering with a member of the public who is acting completely within his rights, everything that is depicted in this video is shocking behaviour."

The officer who told the man filming that he had to stop or they would seize his camera (photo via City News video screenshot)

Pugash said officers are aware that people have every right to film police interactions as long as they aren't obstructing an arrest.

"Several officers talked about seizing the man's camera, or phone," Pugash said. "They have no authority to do that. From what I can see from the video is that the man was not obstructing, not impeding the police officers in any way."

Pugash said that the TPS Professional Standards Unit is looking into the incident and "if any further action is necessary, it will be taken."  

Pugash said the TPS is in favour of body worn cameras as this video only showed the last moments of the arrest and the body cameras would have shown the full account.

This isn't the first time that TPS officers have been accused of intimidating people with cameras. In October of 2015, Toronto police officers intimidating a bystander who recorded what he believed was a racially-motivated street check.

Spratt said anyone is allowed to film a police officer and witness public police actions provided they are not interfering with the officers. Witnesses are under "no obligation to turn off a video camera or to shut his eyes to obvious injustices happening before them," he added.

"The police have no right to interfere, especially in this case with an individual standing a far distance away, (who) is not involved whatsoever and is doing a public service in capturing some gross violations perpetrated by the police."

In order to obstruct an arrest, Spratt said an individual would have to be much closer to the officer or getting between an officer and the suspect and preventing them from performing their duty. Someone causing a disturbance by yelling or committing a criminal offence themselves could also be accused of obstructing police.

"This individual has done everything correctly," Spratt said. "Under these circumstances it's perfectly justifiable to film police officers as long as you're not breaking the law or interfering with their investigation."

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

President Trump's words and actions since taking office—including scrubbing the entire concept off the White House website—have made it abundantly clear that he opposes climate change. After his administration banned the EPA and Department of the Interior staff from going on social media on Tuesday, a federal account under the National Park Service appeared to go rogue and started tweeting out climate change facts and other goofball shit:

The Badlands National Park, a 242,756-acre preserve in South Dakota that boasts eye-popping, castle-like rock structures created by millions of years of erosion, suddenly felt the need to tweet out objectively true facts about the connection between climate and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It noted that the CO2 concentration is "higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years," for instance.

It also posted a photo of two goats at a sort of are-they-fucking-or-not angle, and prompted the reader to caption it:

While it's unclear who was behind the tweets, the National Park Service seemed to thumb its nose similarly at Trump when its official account retweeted a comment on the size of his inauguration crowd on Friday. Shortly after that, the Department of the Interior announced that all accounts under its aegis were no longer allowed to tweet until Monday, citing concern that one of its accounts was hacked.

On Tuesday, a memo to the Environmental Protection Agency (along with the Department of Agriculture) placed the organization under a total media blackout—which includes Twitter. Although these kinds of gags are not unusual during a change in leadership, they could signal significant change for federal environmental organizations, considering Scott Pruitt, a noted climate change denier, is Trump's pick to lead the EPA.

Badlands National Park's climate tweets did not comment directly on Trump administration policies, nor have they made a connection between the raw, numerical values and the need to act on climate change. Since they were posted this afternoon, the statements have been removed from Twitter.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

When starting a band, it's necessary to ask two important questions:

1. Why?

2. Specifically, why a band?

These questions are not jokes. Music is good. Music is fun. Music is perhaps the oldest human art form and the most accessible. Despite what they'll tell you, everyone can sing. Our culture often treats being a musician as something you do as a route to getting rich and famous, but that is, at best, an exciting potential side effect. Art is worthwhile, both for what it does for the soul and for a viable society. And making it with other people can multiply those effects.

In recent years we've faced unprecedented changes to the simple ways we interact with each other. We've watched local, real world communities flounder even as digital ones flourish. As it becomes easier to live behind screens, assuming that everyone is living in a bubble except us, it's good to remember the enormous value of square but super important notions like civic involvement, participating in the world around us, and engaging with one's fellow bags of bones. Getting involved in a local music scene—DIY punk, country, jam, wedding cover band, whatever—builds community, the bedrock of civic life, and it happens to also be a good way to kill time before we all die in nuclear hellfire, in addition to being pretty fun. Even if you're not very good at it. Some people will tell you "it's all about the music, man" but, like, why? And who made them the "what really matters" cops anyhow? Play music. Make friends or at least enemies worth your time.

Read more on Noisey

(Top image: Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta in 'Goodfellas'. All images copyright Warner Brothers)

Goodfellas is among the best gangster films ever made. Maybe the best. A recent, and very comprehensive, list ranking Martin Scorsese's films put Goodfellas in the top spot. It also topped this list made by an anonymous – and therefore completely reliable – IMDB user. Plus, it was nominated for six Academy Awards, it was sampled in no less than two Shy FX songs and it features Joe Pesci being absolutely terrifying throughout, but mainly during that scene where he repeatedly stabs a blood-gargling man who's been stuffed in the boot of a car.

Driving the car with the bloody body in the trunk was Ray Liotta's character, Henry Hill, the protagonist. Hill was a real life mobster turned-FBI informant and the subject of Nicholas Pillegi's 1986 book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Pillegi wrote the screenplay for Goodfellas (as well as Scorsese's 1995 film, Casino), and here he talks about a lifetime spent reporting on the mob and the making of the film as it returns to UK cinemas as past of "the Scorsese season".

Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta

VICE: Hi Nicholas. When did your interest in the Mafia begin?
Nicholas Pileggi: I grew up in mostly a first generation Italian-American neighbourhood. We lived in what you would look back on now and call a ghetto, and organised crime guys were very common – they were part of the local social structure. So I grew up knowing that world, being fascinated by it. Then when I became a journalist I started covering it, so got even more interested in it. I then slowly developed a knowledge in it as well as getting an instinct to talk to people who were from that world.

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" is the famous opening line from the film. Was that an aspiration you ever shared growing up in the neighbourhood?
No, not even remotely. I'd never heard that in my life, so when I was interviewing Henry and he told me that I just wrote it down and underlined it; I knew that was going to be the opening line of a chapter or something. His dream was to be a gangster, mine wasn't. I made it very clear that I didn't like the violence; I couldn't deal with those guys. He loved it. He started out as a little kid – my parents would never let me near a thing like that. Our lives began very differently. His life was very unique – very few youngsters of his age would be allowed to do what he did – and he saw these guys as like his baseball heroes; they were everything he dreamed of. It was totally sincere.

What was your approach to covering the Mafia as a journalist?
I never used a personal pronoun in my stories. It was never an "I" – I kept my eye on the story and as a result I think I wasn't really judgmental of any of them. The gangster was never the loathsome individual or the slime ball that you quite often read in copy. I never did that. I never demeaned them; I tried to cover it like an anthropologist. I was fascinated by them as a criminal subculture. I kept endless notes and files on anyone who got arrested, and anyone I knew. I updated them constantly. I would have little tags if someone was involved in a murder or somebody was involved in illegitimate business. It was more as an anthropologist than as an investigative reporter.

Robert De Niro

Was there an element of fear that crept in for you at any point?
No, never. People were concerned, the FBI were concerned and a cop friend of mine gave me a bulletproof vest, but I never wore it.

Why not?
I don't know. Even as a reporter I was only beaten up once or twice, and never badly. They don't go after journalists, and I was never an investigative reporter – I never exposed anything. I was the clean-up man. I came in after all the bodies had gone to the funeral parlour. When doing the Henry Hill book, his sworn enemy was Jimmy Burke. I still called Burke's wife and she was extraordinarily nice to me, and my reputation was good. It was all very... I don't want to say jolly, but friendly. I had no fear of anything. I wasn't participating in anything in that world; they would have been wasting a bullet on me. I was of no value alive or dead.

What was the response from the Mafia community when the film was announced?
A lot of them got into it. They liked my book. When the book came out I had guys from that world who liked it and introduced me to mob bosses who liked it – I even autographed copies. They liked the book because it portrayed their lives, which most of those books don't. There was a human element to the way they all lived, and they got a kick out of it. When we were going to cast, Marty [Scorsese] asked me to speak with people in the world, and I asked if anyone wanted to be in the movie, and a bunch of them who could be – a lot of them couldn't because they were either wanted or made members – but a lot of the associates said "sure". A lot of the guys you see in Goodfellas are certified mobsters who were cast out of a restaurant.

Ray Liotta and Henry Hill and Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill

After knowing the guy personally, who did you envision as being the perfect casting for Henry Hill?
I never thought who it could be. I just didn't go to many movies or know that many actors, I didn't have that resource. I was totally delighted when they came up with Ray Liotta. He is perfect. The casting was superb: Lorraine Bracco as Karen – because I knew Karen – she just caught that so brilliantly.

Would you consider yourself friends with some of these mob people during that period?
Henry and I became very chummy. We'd spend weekends together; I would go and meet him in secret places that the FBI didn't know about. We weren't supposed to do that. They said very plainly, if they find Henry they're going to kill him, and I was sitting next to him. Those meetings were the basis of the book.

How did that film impact on your life and what sort of response was there from the mob?
Most of the people depicted in the film had died – they were murdered. I had stayed in touch with Karen and Henry, and also distantly with the Burke family. A lot of the tangential people from the film I remained friendly with. Then I went on to move onto another story, which turned out to be Casino, so I began to pay more attention to Las Vegas and those characters. It's a trilogy, really. Mean Streets was about gangsters trying to get their foot out, trying to look like big shots. Like the idiots learning. Goodfellas was they were now gangsters, they knew how to make money, they could rob $460,000 (£370,000) from Air France and they would kill people – they were gangsters, but street gangsters; thugs. With Casino that was the gangster world at the very top – you can't do better in the gangster world than run Las Vegas, which is what they did, and then screwed it up, which is so classic gangster world. They had the dream they always dreamed and they fuck it all up – they can't leave the gangster behind; it follows them.

Ray Liotta and Paul Sorvino

How did you feel on a personal level when Henry Hill passed away?
It was sad. I felt he was so committed to his drugs that he could never really be sober again, no matter how hard he tried. The real sadness with Henry was that in order to save his life he had to become an informant. That was worse [for him] than putting Henry in jail. Henry in jail would have gone right back to running dope deals and eating well, but Henry outside of that environment was one he couldn't stand. But of course he wouldn't have been able to stay in jail for long – he would have been killed.

Is there still an active mob in New York?
There are active mobs still going on in gambling and the labour unions and construction, but it's so limited compared to the power it once had. I think one more generation and it's gone altogether. They have no bench – nobody to take over and nothing to take over. Illegal gambling was the big thing, and now states have multi-million dollar lotteries. You don't need to go see Angelo on the corner and give him your number; you can go and scratch off a card right there and get money in the drug store. The state realised there was a fortune to be made in gambling, so they legalised it. It's the same numbers scam that the mob guys ran for years, but now it's legal. The only thing left to have a real hand in illegal activity is narcotics, but that comes with heavy sentences if you get caught, and people tend to inform. From 1910, when it started, to 1965 or so there hadn't been one real informant for organised crime because the sentences were so small that guys would happily do the time because they had friends in there and they would know and bribe the guards; it was a get together and [a chance] to play cards all day. There were no complaints. The minute narcotics came in and they got caught they were facing 25 years with no parole – that's different. All of a sudden everyone started to inform. It changed and weakened the culture enormously, and it's on its last legs.

Goodfellas is showing at selected cinemas UK-wide and at BFI Southbank as part of the Martin Scorsese season. Details and venues are available here.

@DanielDylanWray

Iowa representative Steve King addressed his controversial "heartbeat bill" at a press conference on Tuesday, which will be introduced to Congress this year and calls for a nationwide ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected—roughly just six weeks into a woman's pregnancy, BuzzFeed reports.

If passed, the bill would make nearly all abortions illegal as most women do not know they're pregnant until after their second missed period. It also has no exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest, or who might have fetal abnormalities. The bill is one of the strictest abortion bills since the Roe v. Wade case and violates the constitutional clause that 1973 decision put in place.

But apparently King is banking on Trump appointing a pro-life Supreme Court justice who could reverse the historic ruling and give the bill a chance.

"By the time we march this thing down to the Supreme Court, the faces on the bench will be different," King said Tuesday outside the Capitol building in DC. "I'm not sure how different, but I'm hopeful."

While the bill will likely not get the votes it needs to move past the House, it signals a wave of anti-abortion "heartbeat bills" making their way around various state legislatures. A similar bill, co-authored by the same anti-abortion activist that wrote King's, passed Ohio's legislature back in December before governor John Kasich vetoed it, concerned about its constitutionality.

Follow Catherine Pears on Twitter.

Maria lost her parents at the age of seven. Until she was 80 years old, she and her siblings provided for the family by working from dawn until dusk on their corn plantation near the city of Itabaianinha in the Brazilian state of Sergipe. Maria never grew taller than three feet.

Itabaianinha, Brazilian photographer Luisa Dorr explains, is sometimes called "the city of dwarfs" because of its unusually large population of adults under 1.45 meters (4'9") tall. The city of 40,000 is home to a estimated 70 to 150 dwarfs—they prefer that term over little person—meaning as many as one in 266 residents are short-statured. (For comparison's sake, the rest of Brazil has one dwarf to every 10,000 average-sized people.)

The photojournalist, who spent three days meeting the dwarfs of Itabaianinha, initially had trouble explaining her intentions to the community. Many assumed she, like so many before her, was just another producer trying to break into the comedy television circuit. Some requested money to sit for photographs; Dorr, though not morally opposed to paying subjects, chose not to do so.

The photographer was able to form connections within hours of her arrival. She bonded with one dwarf by purchasing a hot dog from his snack bar and striking up a conversation. She found a man named Sergio on Facebook, and he and his friends showed her around and invited her to attend a local dwarf soccer game.

Itabaianinha is sweltering in March, when the photographer visited. She limited shooting mostly to the hours when the sun wasn't directly overhead, but she gained a real understanding of the hard work of some of these families. Though they might adjust their houses and cars to suit their size, the dwarfs work the same jobs as everyone else.

The type of dwarfism most people in Itabaianinha have is not the most common type found elsewhere in the world; they share a genetic mutation that causes them to be shorter, with the same proportions as average-height people.

The photographer met dwarfs who felt secure and home at their current height. Maria was one of them. She was confident at the size she was, and she didn't wish to be like average-sized people. Still, the dwarf population in Itabaianinha is decreasing, probably due to the increased prevalence of marriages with average-sized people. Most of the remaining dwarfs fall into an older age bracket.

When Dorr visited, she made a point of sharing her pictures with those she met along the way. "It's a poor area in Brazil," she says, "Many of these people never had their photographs printed."

Dorr got news a few months ago that Maria had passed away, at the age of 101. Looking back on the day she spent at Maria's plantation, the photographer writes, "It's a simple family with a beautiful story. Even though they worked so hard their entire life, they were all happy and thankful."

Valerio Fonseca Melo, 65, is retired now but used to be a farmer and soccer player.

Beatriz Nascimento da Cruz, 75, owns a poplar market in Itabaianinha where she sell sweets, ice cream, water, and so on. Her brother, Joao Nascimento da Cruz, 71, had a bar but has since retired. Beatriz is a virgin—she said she never had a boyfriend and that in her day dwarfs did not marry; she continues the tradition to this day.

Fransico Jose dos Santos, known as Dodinha, is 91, the oldest dwarf in Itabaianinha. Dodinha had a bad fall two years ago while trying to mount his horse and almost died. His passion for horses has not diminished, however.

Juvencia Maria de Melo, 65, worked on a farm until the age of 62, picking lemons and oranges.

Soccer players from Itabaianinha.

Manuel, 18

Maria das Piaba, 101 in this photo, passed away last year. She lost her parents very early, at the age of seven, and their house was built thanks to small donations from local residents. They grow beans on their family farm.

Cruz Juárez, 52, has struggled with alcoholism and stopped drinking three months ago after he had an accident that left him in a coma for three days.

Joaldo 26, and his girlfriend.

Aldileide Francisaca da de Santana, 30

Aninha, 86

Clecio Ribeiro, 35, works at Supermarket Prado Vasconcelos. In his free time, he likes to play music with his brother.

All photographs by Luisa Dorr. You can follow her work here.

When the Baltimore riots erupted in April 2015 after Freddie Gray's death in police custody, James "Brick" Feeney and Willie "Wax" Harris*, two tech-savvy teenagers with ties to Maryland's Black Guerrilla Family, saw opportunity. Using the chaos as cover, they managed to steal at least a million doses of prescription drugs and heroin from city pharmacies and rival dealers. But even if their caper was essentially an old-school, smash-and-grab style theft, the teens had plans to sell the drugs in a more sophisticated manner: via the Dark Web, where pills went for upwards of $100 each.

Leaning on location-based technology and encrypted messaging software, Brick envisioned their operation as an "Uber of drug dealing."

As the looted drugs were shipped up and down the East Coast, a spike in opiate overdoses in African-American communities raised eyebrows, and the DEA and FBI eventually took notice. In his forthcoming book Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire, veteran crime reporter Kevin Deutsch profiles the the teens' massively profitable scheme, which he contends had (distant) ties to El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel.

Deutsch enjoyed incredible access to the two teens and some 300 other dealers, addicts, gang bangers, police and drug treatment specialists for the book. A reporter who prefers to work with his "feet on the ground," Deutsch saw the vicious effects of America's opioid epidemic in an urban setting. VICE talked to the journalist about how he wrapped his head around the technology in play, how opiates were never just a middle-class white problem, and where Brick and Wax are at now.

VICE: The first thing that struck me about the challenge of writing this book is the technology involved. Your background's in crime reporting, not tech journalism, so how did you make sense of that stuff?
Kevin Deutsch: When I first heard Brick and Wax were using digital encryption to sell product, I began learning everything I could about that technology. That meant attending crypto parties, online forums where web security experts share tricks of the trade, and reading books about hacking and programming. And I wrote a number of stories for Newsday about Dark Web drug markets like Silk Road, cultivating relationships with several high-level law enforcement officials who would later provide crucial guidance for the book.

I was also able to conduct numerous interviews with the two teenage dealers themselves—conversations that often focused on their use of technology. Their motivation for speaking with me was pretty straightforward, I think: They sought notoriety and fame, both wanting their legacy in the Baltimore underworld to be a positive one long after they were gone. The only way they could ensure that outcome, they said, was to talk to a journalist. "They only write about gangsters who get caught," Brick once told me. "But we're not going to [get caught]."

The book leans on the chaos of the Freddie Gray protests as a key moment. Do you think the looting of the pharmacies was just a spur of the moment thing, or was it a more concerted effort to capitalize on the chaos for profit?
Some of it was spur of the moment crimes borne of opportunity, anger, and desperation. But my reporting showed that dozens of those who took part in the pharmacy looting did so as part of a well-developed plan crafted in anticipation of the riots. At the time of Freddie Gray's arrest, Brick and Wax were already working on launching an encrypted Dark Web drug market, and said they saw the expected rioting in Baltimore—gang members online were already calling the anticipated unrest "The Purge"—as a business opportunity.

The teens felt that targeting pharmacies while police were occupied with rioting elsewhere in Baltimore would be the easiest way for them to secure inventory. If looting drugstores seems like a perilous way to get into the drug dealing game, Brick and Wax thought it preferable to the alternative—another year spent in a failing, violence-plagued school, and another year of watching as Wax's mom worked the streets as a heroin-addicted prostitute. To them, the drug-looting seemed a risk worth taking. And through their partnership with the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF), Baltimore's most powerful gang—of which Brick's cousin was a high-ranking member—the teens were able to bring their plan to fruition.

How did they steal $100 million worth of prescription opioids in a day, and where did they stash all the drugs?
It wasn't just prescription opioids they stole. Much of the product the Pill City organization obtained in April 2015 was heroin and other illicit opiates—drugs their BGF partners stole from rival dealers and stash houses across the city. Collectively, the street value of all of Pill City's stolen drugs was a little over $100 million, according to records kept by Brick and Wax. They stored their inventory in stash houses across Baltimore, making sure the drugs were spread around in case one or more of those locations was sniffed out by law enforcement.

I think Americans, right now, often see prescription drugs as a rural or suburban problem. But this was squarely in the city of Baltimore. Can you talk about that?
Despite the glut of media coverage focusing almost exclusively on white opiate addicts, painkiller and heroin abuse is also a problem in many African American communities. The rate of heroin overdose deaths increased 213 percent among African Americans between 2000 and 2014, the largest increase ever in that category, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015 and 2016, amid the epidemic's second wave, things have gotten worse: While blacks represent about 13 percent of the US population, they now account for approximately half of all overdoses caused by illegally purchased opiates, my reporting showed.

In blighted urban areas—West Baltimore and elsewhere—it's nearly impossible to find a block untouched by the epidemic.

The operation has been compared—at least by one of the teens behind it—to Uber, and one detective said it was genius from a criminal perspective. What made the scheme these kids ran so unique?
Listening to the teens discuss their business, it was easy to forget they were operating a sprawling, illegal drug network rather than a legitimate startup. Even the handwritten notes taped to their walls at the time contain Silicon Valley-esque mottos like "Make Ideas Happen" and "Move Fast and Break Things"—reminders, they said, of the "disruptive" philosophy they had applied to the drug game.

The uniqueness of their business model lay in the fact they'd created this Dark Web drug marketplace focused on inner cities, and that they had hundreds of street-dealing gang members across the country working with them, using this software to blanket racially isolated neighborhoods with drugs. As far as I know, nothing like that had been attempted before. Advances in technology have made it possible for most any dealer with a smartphone to do what Brick and Wax did in their own backyards.

When in their lives did the two teens decide to adapt programming and encrypting to criminal ventures?
Both were enamored with computers from a very young age, wowed by the sleek design of the new iPhone and MacBooks, as well as the speeds at which they processed information. Librarians, teachers, and friends let them use digital devices of all kinds. By their 12th birthdays, there was no task Brick and Wax couldn't perform: Coding, software design, and rudimentary hacking all had a place in their repertoires. And what they couldn't glean on their own, they learned from more experienced tech geeks online. Before founding Pill City, they'd also learned a great deal about traditional corner dealing, having spent their childhoods in the care of heroin-addicted mothers, even copping drugs for the women on occasion. Then they built a system to overtake the corner-dealing model that had kept their mothers high, letting software do the heavy lifting once required of drug kingpins.

Is opioid addiction underreported in African American communities, and if so, why?
Part of it is the cultural stigma of addiction, which transcends racial lines and demographics. Part of it is that there are simply more journalists, researchers, and public health workers gathering data in whiter neighborhoods than there are in blacker ones. Still another part of it is the fact that some opiate overdoses are not officially counted because of non-standardized reporting procedures and a lack of post-mortem testing in some impoverished communities.

The book alludes to Brick and Wax's operation having a relationship with El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel. Did they know him?
They didn't have a relationship with El Chapo himself. Rather, one of their partners in the BGF had a relationship with a trafficker who was a cog in the wheel of El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel. Pill City was able to obtain large orders of heroin through this supplier. In that way, they were no different from any other inner-city drug-dealing organization that has contacts with cartel-connected middlemen and suppliers. If it wasn't someone with Sinaloa connections, I imagine they'd have found another high-volume seller to work with. Where there is money and desire, heroin can usually be found.

OK, so people want to know: What happened to Brick and Wax—where are they now?
I don't want to spoil the story for readers. But I will say that Wax managed to parlay his tech skills into a very lucrative position not at all connected to the drug game. There's more on that subject in the book. In my mind, it's one of the most heartening developments to come out of this tragedy.

There are so many amazing, heartbreaking crime stories we don't ever hear about because arrests aren't made in most cases. Brick and Wax wanted their story to be known no matter what—freedom, incarceration, or whatever else was in store for them.

Learn more about Pill City, which drops January 31, here.

*The author changed some names to protect sources.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

I spoke with Paul Scheer just after attending the Women's March in Park City, Utah. The streets were packed with protesters making it difficult to walk the few blocks up Main Street. When I arrived at our meeting place, bedraggled and snow-coated, Scheer politely commiserated with me: "It's crazy out there. I love that the protest is happening, but I also worry that people are looking at us like, 'Fuck these people.'"

Scheer's expression of the discomfort that can accompany activism from the extremely privileged is reflected in the thematic core of Playdates, which premiered this week in Sundance's Independent Pilot Showcase, a platform for new shows currently without a home at a network. It stars Scheer (The League, Fresh Off the Boat) and Carla Gallo (Bones, Burning Love) as married couple Bennett and Julie, who relocate from the Midwest after the former is fired. They move their two children to the white, wealthy, and elitist culture of Southern California's Silicon Beach, where they're forced to attend playdates as part of a vetting process for the school they want their children to attend. Taking the kids to these playdates largely falls to Bennett as Julie assumes the new role of breadwinner for the family.

There are reasons to be skeptical of this premise. For starters, parenthood is typically poorly-depicted in film and TV, with fear-mongering montages of exhausted, lust-free couples being peed on by their terrible offspring. I initially recoiled at the synopsis, which warned me that Bennett's new role as a stay-at-home dad would test his masculinity and self-worth as he navigates the zany world of rich, beautiful white people.

But my fears were quickly dispelled by the excellent pilot—and by Scheer's performance. Through heavy collaboration with the show's creators, he brings his own experience as a husband and parent to Playdates, shaping it into a show that's as funny as it is politically relevant.

Paul Scheer. Courtesy of Paul Scheer

VICE: Playdates takes aim at Silicon Beach. How would you describe that specific community?
Paul Scheer: It's similar to Silicon Valley in that they're rich nerds who are into technology. It's also a community that's open and liberal in many ways. As someone who is considered a "coastal elite," there's something to be mined from mocking that culture, because there's so much absurdity that comes with excessive wealth. That can be a fun world to explore, and the show can highlight the absurdity of what's presented as normal in this world.

In the recent election, we saw a lot of attention being paid to political activists who are also arguably disconnected from the lived experience of people they often advocate for. What does the show hope to gain from examining this type of community?
Lately, you see all these celebrities who are like, "I'm going to tell you who to vote for and how to feel," and I hate that. I like that people have passion, and I'm one of those people, but I hate being preached at by anyone. It feels weird. My wife [actress June Diane Raphael] and I are working together on a campaign called the Big Hundred, and the idea is just this: Let's take the politics out of the discussion for a minute and let's just look at the country and try to do concrete actions that promote good by choosing one positive action a day. This is the kind of "activism" that I like because I feel like it's more effective.

"I've seen a lot of single-cam shows that come from a rich, white point of view but fail to comment on it. That's something Playdates wants to undercut."

Certainly, questions around the usefulness of celebrity activism have come up quite a bit since the Meryl Streep Golden Globes speech.
Yes! And I loved what Meryl Streep said, and I thought it was beautiful—until she said the thing about people who watch football and MMA, because that's a dividing a line that doesn't need to be drawn. There are too many voices saying, "You're on this side and I'm on that side and there are no gray areas," and I hate that. Playdates both humanizes and pokes fun at the "West Coast elite" life. I've seen a lot of single-cam shows that come from a rich white point of view but fail to comment on it, as if to say, "This is just the norm, right? We can all identify with this." That's something Playdates wants to undercut.

Do you think there's a danger in comically representing these kinds of communities—that they could be caricatured into a sort of unreality that allows us to laugh at them while also letting them off the hook?
Yes, but a sign of good comedy in general is when people aren't presented as parodies. There's a scene in the pilot where a character carelessly adopts a kid from Africa and acts like, "Hey, cool, I've got this Sonos and I got this kid from Africa." Which is ridiculous, but we also want to ground these people and show many sides of them. It's a fine line to walk. I don't want to be laughing, like, "Oh these people on the left are idiots," but I also don't think people are poking fun at the left as much as they can be. We're not just taking shots in one direction.

"Playdates can have smaller and more subtle jokes because we know the viewing experience is more intimate and personal for the audience."

You've previously mentioned the increased intimacy of TV, now that so many of us are watching alone on our laptops or phones. Does this change the way that you think TV needs to be written? Does TV have different goals now?
I think people are becoming their own network. You're picking your programing, when you want to watch it, and how you want to watch it. You can binge-watch a show that's been off the air for seven years, or you can watch a new show week-to-week. You have the power. The problem for writers now is: How do we get above the surface? There are so many shows. Every year [FX president] John Landgraf comes out and says, "950 shows this year," and we're all like, "Oh, shit." How do you get people to watch?

I watched all of [Amazon's] Fleabag on my phone and iPad, and I fucking loved it. I was crying alone at times, and watching it that way made me feel like I had a blanket over my head—that I was in my own little world. I feel more connected to the show because I watched in such an intimate way. The big benefit for writers now is that you have the power to tell more quiet, personal stories. Playdates can have smaller and more subtle jokes because we know the viewing experience is more intimate and personal for the audience.

You're a father. What perspective on parenting did you want to bring to the show, and what kind of stereotypes were you wanting to avoid?
I have two kids, and I worked on this script with [co-creators and writers Dan Marshall and Giles Andrew] and I brought the desire to see a show on TV that feels current and is a single-camera show about a husband and wife who love each other and are best friends. I think of Julie and Bennett like Abby and Ilana on Broad City. They're best friends, and that's how I feel about my wife. I love my wife. I'd go anywhere with her. She's awesome. That's what I want to capture. The original script depicted the marriage as a bit more disgruntled, but I was, like, "I've seen that."

One thing I want to do for an episode: My wife and I were driving back from the funeral, alone in the car with no kids, and we looked at each other and said, "This is nice." It was terrible because we'd been at funeral, but it was great because we'd managed to get some alone time. The guys who wrote the show aren't married and don't have kids, so I bring that perspective to it. There's a scene in the pilot where Bennett and Julie are about to have sex, but something happens and they don't. Bennett isn't like, "Ah, man, my wife won't fuck me," because that happens sometimes. Sex gets interrupted. It's life, and I'm really interested in showing the realer moments.

Follow Chloé Cooper Jones on Twitter.