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Is There Really a ‘Secret Drink’ You Can Order to Get Out of a Bad Date at a Bar?

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In a dating environment defined by right-swipes and slides into the DMs, the chances of sidling up to the bar and into an uncomfortable—or downright dangerous—situation are high.

Recently, the internet became abuzz over the alleged existence of the "Angel Shot," a potentially lifesaving (or at least night-saving) piece of covert bar jargon, which guarantees customers on foul first dates a quick, under-the-radar escape from their unwanted advancer. A boozy deus ex machina for the online dating set, if you will.

An image of a sign posted in the women's bathroom of The Iberian Rooster— a "colonial Portuguese fusion" restaurant in Florida—went viral, and drew praise from many for creating a crafty means of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their female patrons.

"Are you on a date that isn't going well?" it asks, urging those who "feel unsafe, or even just a bit weird" to order an Angel Shot, a secret menu item designed to subtly indicate to the bartender that you need to GTFO of there. Per the sign, the shot can be ordered neat, with ice, or with lime, depending on the urgency of the situation and the patron's escape method of choice—being walked to their own vehicle or hailing a ride-sharing service.

Read the rest of this article on Munchies.

Top image by Pixabay user kaicho20.


Neil Gorsuch Is Donald's Pick for the Supreme Court

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On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump made one of the most anticipated and important decisions of his administration so far, announcing that he was nominating Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant for nearly a year after the death of conservative legal hero Antonin Scalia.

Gorsuch, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford who rose to become a judge at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, comes from a conservative political family and has made rulings that side with the religious right. Most notably, in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, the Coloradan sided with private companies to not provide contraception to their employees if they have religious objections. Gorsuch is also only 49, meaning he could serve on the court for as long as the next four decades.

Trump called his deliberations "the most transparent selection process in history," pointing to his widely circulated list of potential nominees that was vetted by conservative groups. "Millions of voters said this was the single most important issue to them when they voted for me for president," Trump added.

In his brief remarks after Trump's announcement, Gorsuch called Scalia "a lion of the law" and emphasized that it was the duty of the Supreme Court to interpret laws passed by Congress rather than make policy itself.

Some Democrats in the Senate have signaled that they're preparing to filibuster Trump's selection in retaliation for Republicans' blocking Barack Obama's nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland. It's highly unlikely that that effort will succeed in doing anything more than briefly delaying his confirmation.

Meet the Justin Bieber of K-Pop

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On an all new episode of NOISEY, we go inside the K-Pop training academies where teenagers give their all to be the next big thing and meet the Justin Bieber of K-Pop, Taeyang from BIGBANG.

NOISEY airs Tuesdays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

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

How to Actually Curb Your Drinking for the Rest of the Year

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(Top photo: VICE)

If a doctor draws a breath slowly and audibly just after you've told them something, it's usually not a good sign.

I'm on the phone to Adam Winstock, a consultant psychiatrist, addiction medicine specialist and founder of the Global Drug Survey. Fifteen minutes ago I had a go on Drinks Meter, a free app Adam helped design, which was devised so people could anonymously analyse their alcohol intake and habits, and get advice on the damage it might be doing to their body and wallet. The app gives you a score out of 40, which it garners from assessing your drinking in a variety of ways, including using the World Health Organisation's Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. I got 18, which is quite bad, and was what piqued Adam's clear concern. For context: under eight is good. Over eight is a worry. Over 15 a big worry. Over 20 is suggestive of being dependent.

Of course, the reality is that I know I drink too much but had never really flagged it as potentially problematic. Plus, I like drinking! I'm good at it! It's fun! I don't booze at home much, but it's true that pretty much my entire social life revolves around drinking-friendly activities. So at the turn of the year I – for the first time ever – vowed to cut down before I had to give up. And I wanted it to be for good, not just another Dry-ish January stint. So I called up Adam – for the second time in a week – to find out how to do that.

VICE: When I first read my score, I basically thought, 'Fuck, that's not good.'
Dr Adam Winstock: I think your response is probably appropriate, but it's good that you're thinking like that.

I didn't consider my drinking that abnormal. Basically everyone I know is a big drinker.
There are certain universal fairytales that we tell ourselves. One is: "I just do what everyone else does; I'm just like my mates, and they're fine." You try to prove to yourself that you have elevated levels of invulnerability. If you think you're special, then of course you don't need to take precautions against yourself. Plus, naturally, you gravitate towards people with similar interests as you.

So should I, and other people who want to cut down, just avoid people we drink with?
No. You can't aways say no, and if you do your life will become miserable. Be honest. Say, "I'm just trying to ease off a bit, so I'm letting you know that over the next few months I'm going to be trying to drink less when we go out." Avoid the really big nights; skip the round of shots when they come out. Instead of going out at 8PM, go out at 9.30PM. Don't buy any drugs because that increases the effect of everything. It's common sense strategies. Friends should have your back. I actually think this can be very helpful in starting to shift the norms among your peer group.

Some research last year said that how pissed you feel isn't so much related to how much you absolutely drink, but more to do with how much other people around you are drinking. For example: if you go out and drink five pints, and you're with ten mates, but you drank the second least amount out of everyone – you would actually feel relatively sober. If, however, you went out and drank five pints but you drank more than everyone else you'd feel a bit pissed. So that says a group can have as much fun as they normally would if they nudge their drinking down a bit.

That's interesting. One problem, though, is that it's all very well saying "just drink less", but isn't it sometimes about more than willpower?
Well, people with alcohol dependence are the least treated group of people with psychiatric problems in the world. Around 10 to 15 percent of people with alcohol dependence are treated, but the majority of people with alcohol dependence are floating out there in the community. Something else we did a couple of years ago is look at whether or not people drinking at dependent levels thought they were doing anything unusual. In the UK, one in three people who were at risk of alcohol dependence thought their drinking was average or less than average. It comes back to the whole idea of thinking you're just like everyone else.

So am I alcohol dependent?
Well, I don't know you other than the conversations we've had, but at the level you are talking about, with my doctor's hat on, it might be harder [to cut down] than you think.

(Photo: Bruno Bayley)

It's strange having this conversation, because work is going better than ever.
You work in a high risk industry. The media, journalism, entertainment, hospitality and construction industries are all high risk. People are more likely to see this sort of behaviour as normal, so there might be a Friday night culture of going out and getting lashed. Or, if you were in advertising, you might have a job where you were expected to take clients on boozy lunches twice a week. These things are normalised. You think you're not doing anything out of the ordinary. But you are.

I mostly love my job, but what about people who are really stressed in theirs and rely on drinking at night to unwind?
I had one patient – a single professional in her early thirties – who was a successful businesswoman but would drink three big glasses of wine at home most week nights, then go out on a Friday, then have a boozy lunch on Sunday. She loved cooking, so most of her drinking was done in conjunction with food, and she was a pretty functioning human being, but was drinking four times the recommended amount a week.

We devised a strategy where she didn't give up entirely, but instead had four alcohol-free days. She went to gym classes two nights and did activities with another friend who didn't want to drink. She got down to two bottles a week, which is still a bit much but a huge improvement. It's actually only a few minor tweaks, but the effect on her life has been huge.

What about the effect of relationships on drinking habits? I feel like dating and Tinder-ing lends itself to drinking.
We haven't got any data, but I think you are probably right. If you're not out with your girl you're probably out with your mates. There's less nights getting cuddly on the sofa. But then, of course, there are people whose relationship is based around taking drugs and getting drunk. Or conversely, if you're in a terrible relationship, maybe that will lead you to drink.

Is it all a matter of happiness or peace with one's self?
Well, people who develop drinking problems are much more likely to have underlying mental health conditions. If you're in an unhappy relationship or you're drinking too much at work, you can justify drinking too much as a way of dealing with that. But there's also the truth that as you drink more there's the chance of you developing depression, anxiety and impaired relationships. But then I see a lot of patients who say they're drinking because they're depressed, but give up for a few weeks and improve immeasurably because they're brighter, they sleep better, they look better, they lose weight. But I also think Drinks Meter has huge value. It makes you sit back, take notice, maybe for the first time, like you have. Also: it's not asking you to quit. It knows you like drinking and it still wants you to enjoy drinking, but just challenges those fairytales you tell yourself.

Agreed. Cheers Adam!

@Gobshout

How to Make a Pickle Pipe

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On this episode of 'Smokeables,' our resident weed expert Abdullah Saeed is back to show you how to make a pickle pipe.

How Much Money Do Canadian Rappers Make?

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Noisey contributor Devin Pacholik surveyed 109 rappers and hip-hop workers in Canada to find out how much money they really make.

How To Make a Korean Shaved Milk Sundae To Feed Your Munchies

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Chef Deuki Hong joins Bong Appétit host Abdullah Saeed in the Munchies Kitchen to make a super-simple Korean shaved milk sundae.

The Cannibalism and Controversy Of Adventure Writer William Seabrook

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Joe Ollmann, the author behind a new graphic novel 'The Abominable Mr. Seabrook', shares the tale of adventure writer William Seabrook.

The International Students Who Feel Trapped by Trump's Travel Ban

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Navid Yousefian was almost 8,000 miles away from the University of California, Santa Barbara campus when he heard the news. The PhD student had returned to his hometown of Tehran on a leave of absence from his research in the UCSB political sciences department. But on Friday, when Yousefian saw that Donald Trump had signed an executive order banning citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States, he realized he might not make it back this year, or maybe at all.

"I think I lost a PhD degree today," he wrote on Facebook, posting a screenshot of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's advisory for affected students to not leave the US, as they likely wouldn't be let back in.

Though Yousefian's situation may be more dire than most, the executive order is a major disruption in the lives of the 17,000 international students in the United States who come from the seven countries listed in the ban.

After Trump signed the executive order, dozens of people were detained at airports across the country, including Narges Bayani, an Iranian PhD student at New York University, and Vahideh Rasekhi, an Iranian PhD student at Stony Brook University. Even as the initial detainees have been released after a weekend of protest and legal challenges, Yousefian isn't sure if he'll be able to return to UCSB. He'd interpreted the executive order to mean that his student visa will be void at least for the next 90 days, but possibly longer, which could mean scrapping years of research and the chance to complete his doctorate.

Those fears aren't unfounded. Niki Mossafer Rahmati, an engineering undergrad at MIT, was stopped from boarding a US-bound flight on Saturday. She'd been back in Tehran for winter break and changed her flight in the hopes that she'd make it back on US soil before the executive order went into effect, and in time to start the new semester. Instead, when she reached her layover in Qatar, gate agents told her she wouldn't be able to board the flight to Boston due to her nationality. She was sent on the next flight back to Iran.

"Overnight, because of my ethnic origin, I found out that I might not be able to exit the country. It's a horrifying experience."

For students who are already on campus, the question is more complex. Are their student visas still valid? Are they safe as long as they don't leave the country and try to reenter? What about students with green cards?

Many universities have issued statements expressing solidarity with their international students and offering legal resources to those who need them. Campus officials have also advised students who are affected by the ban to stay put, avoiding travel outside the country in order to avoid being turned away upon return.

Saphe Shamoun, a Syrian student in his senior year at Columbia University, told me he wouldn't risk leaving the country at this point. Getting to an American university was hard enough: He was denied a student visa three times—in 2004, 2005, and 2009—and it took nine years before family members in the United States managed to secure a green card, which allowed him to finally enroll at Columbia. He still has family in Aleppo, and the thought of having to choose between seeing them again and finishing his degree makes him choke up.

"Even if he takes the [executive order] back, I can't leave the country with this anxiety," Shamoun told me. "What if something happens when I'm away? Passing borders for me will always be a nightmare."

Shamoun's green card means he's a legal permanent resident, but he says the events of the past few days have thrown into question the meaning of that status. Last weekend Nisrin Elamin, a PhD student at Stanfordwho is originally from Sudan, was handcuffed detained for several hours at New York's JFK Airport. Elamin has lived in the United States for years and, like Shamoun, has a green card, which under normal circumstances generally allows non-citizens to travel to and from the US freely as long as they maintain their status as residents. But after the ban, Shamoun feels he's been reduced to being a "second-class citizen." (After some confusion, government officials said on Sunday that green card holders would be allowed back into the US, though they would be subject to additional screening.)

Universities have also struggled to provide answers to dual citizens like "Samira Abbasi," who holds both a British passport and Iranian citizenship due to her parentage. (She asked that I use a pseudonym, so as not to jeopardize her ability to travel using her British passport.) Abbasi, a PhD student at Columbia, has never even lived in Iran and says her Iranian passport is expired, but was advised by university officials not to leave the country, especially since State Department officials announced on Saturday that dual citizens would not be exempt from the travel restrictions. As of Monday, that statement appears to have been reversed—but Abbasi still isn't sure where she stands.

"Overnight, because of my ethnic origin, I found out that I might not be able to exit the country," she told me. "It's a horrifying experience.

Abbasi has struggled especially hard with the question of whether or not she can leave and safely return to campus because her PhD research requires her to complete field work this year in Sudan—another one of the countries listed on the executive order.

"I have a flight booked for the 20th of February. It's a big relief that I hadn't already left the country, [because I would have] been stuck outside the US," she said. "But what does that mean for my research? Can I go to Sudan at this point and expect to come back? I've had to put my entire PhD on hold because of this travel ban."

Another fourth-year PhD student from Iran (who asked that I not publish his real name) told me the travel ban would similarly jeopardize his research, which involves studying manuscripts located in archives outside the United States. If he leaves the country, he forfeits his ability to return to campus; if he stays in the United States, he can't properly conduct his research. "In a way," he told me, "it disables me to finish my degree."

But for him, concerns about finishing his academic research are dwarfed by the concerns about what else may happen to immigrants under a Trump administration.

"To be honest, I'm less scared that I won't be able to finish my degree because I don't have access to my research material. I'm more scared that I won't be able to finish my degree because they're going to round us up and put us all in camps," he told me. "At this point, I'm just wondering: What more could he do?"

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

February's Best Books, Gadgets, and VR Systems

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This story appeared in the February Issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

TO BE A MACHINE
Mark O'Connell
Doubleday

The central question posed by transhumanism, the scientific and philosophical movement entertainingly explored by Mark O'Connell in his new book, To Be a Machine, is "Do you want to live forever?" As in: Do you want to make use of technology to extend your natural life, either in your current body or in some other form? It's a practical question, but it's also a philosophical one. To answer it, you need to take a stand on what life, or consciousness, even entails, and whether that sense of life holds true absent death. It's even, frankly, a religious question—it is, after all, a bargain offered by both Jesus and Satan.

In O'Connell's book, it's asked by Roen Horn, a long-haired young documentarian who, in late 2015, accompanied transhumanist presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan on a cross-country trip inside an RV built to look like a coffin. Horn dislikes the idea of death. ("I can't think of anything that would suck more than being dead," he tells O'Connell.) This isn't so odd, but where most of us accept death as a given, and address our distaste for it through healthy diets, seatbelts, and regular anxiety attacks, Horn and his fellow transhumanists look toward science and engineering to either put death off or eliminate it entirely. "I just want to have fun forever," says Horn, a strict vegetarian who abstains from alcohol. "I'm actually a total hedonist."

Believe it or not, Horn isn't the only eccentric in the small but well-funded transhumanist movement, and O'Connell's book is at its best when he's rendering funny and sympathetic portraits of the would-be immortals and other quasi-religious oddballs he met and spent time with in the US and Europe. There's Max More, a musclebound redhead and early transhumanist who now runs Alcor, a cryopreservation facility in Scottsdale (sample lobby reading: "an illustrated children's book called Death Is Wrong") that contains the remains of his wife's ex-boyfriend (to read more about Alcor, see page 44). In Berkeley, O'Connell meets with Nate Soares, who left a cushy job at Google for Berkeley's Machine Intelligence Research Institute, to address what he calls out-of-control, potentially genocidal artificial intelligence. Soares, wearing a "Nate the Great" T-shirt, tells O'Connell that he is confident that "this"—that is, murderous superintelligence—"is the shit that's gonna kill me," so he's—well, it's not exactly clear what he does, but it seems to involve lots of giving apocalyptic quotes to reporters. And there's Horn and Istvan, whose road trip, which O'Connell joined between Las Cruces and Austin, forms the book's hugely enjoyable climax. ("What do you say to people who accuse you of trying to play God?" a local news anchor asks Istvan. "I would agree that we are, in fact, trying to play God," says Istvan.)

The concerns transhumanists are attempting to address—the frailty of the body and the terror of death—are as old as humanity itself.

O'Connell, a columnist for Slate, is a charming, funny tour guide. Writing on transhumanism often gets swept away by the inherent drama of its adherents' promises, but O'Connell's eye for small human details—the pistachio dropped down a smug businessman's shirt, "open to the ideally entrepreneurial three-to-four buttons"—keeps the narrative grounded in a way that rigorous scientific debunking wouldn't.

It's good that transhumanists are so interesting, because their ideas usually aren't. Transhumanist "solutions" or concepts—cryogenic freezing, mind uploading, cybernetic implants—often feel, not unsurprisingly, like a bland mixture of classic sci-fi, Silicon Valley positivism, and one too many message-board arguments. Take the millenarian prophets of AI omnicide (and its charitable corollary, "effective altruism"), which convinces the rich and silly that donating money toward the prevention of a hypothetical and unlikely future AI apocalypse is more valuable than helping actual living people. And it's hard to take monstrously bearded life-extension huckster Aubrey de Grey seriously when he exclaims, "For every day that I bring forward the defeat of aging, I'm saving a hundred thousand fucking lives! That's 30 September 11ths every week!"

That so much of transhumanism has the scent of a grift (freeze your dead body at Alcor for only $200,000! Special $80,000 deal for decapitated heads!) is unsurprising. Many of the characters, dependent on private funding or business for their scientific research, ultimately sound less like visionaries than like salesmen. Transhumanism, considered broadly, is an increasingly big business; there are links to defense research and, of course, tech-industry wealth. If I have a complaint about O'Connell's book, it's that it doesn't turn its eye often enough toward money.

Two names come up over and over in To Be a Machine: Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Peter Thiel, the Facebook investor. Both are billionaires and generous donors to the various transhumanist sects, and without their munificence, it seems unlikely the movement's priests would be so richly appointed. But neither Musk nor Thiel is given much more than a nod as a quiet, behind-the-scenes moneyman. It seems significant that a fringe movement has such wealthy and prominent backers, and worth exploring the philosophical and political precepts that led Musk and Thiel to transhumanism. As O'Connell writes, the concerns transhumanists are attempting to address—the frailty of the body and the terror of death—are as old as humanity itself. What's new here is the arrangement of capital that gives rise to this specific crusade, and these particular solutions. Since at least Gilgamesh, the human race has been trying to end suffering and solve death. We have the money to undertake the former. So why is it being spent on the impossible dream of the latter? —MAX READ

***

EO2
Electric Objects

Chances are, if you're reading this, the closest you'll ever come to owning art is framing a poster. Here to save you from the banalities of the cheap water lilies that have been hanging on your wall since college is Electric Objects, a startup that produces the EO2, a high-definition 21-by-12-inch screen encased in simple wood frames that can hang on your wall or sit on a stand and, via a subscription service, display art from all corners of Earth and the internet. Thanks to a matte finish and a light sensor that imperceptibly dims and lightens the screen to match its surroundings, it all somehow looks intimate and lovely, and not—as one might fear—cheesy and horrible. Once you sign up for "Art Club" (free for this first month, $9.99 a month afterward), you can choose from thousands of images—you can even put artworks on a "playlist." Of course, there's a "social" aspect as well—you have a profile that looks like a mix of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But like a Spotify for art, this is much more about the access you suddenly have in the privacy of your home. Paintings and photographs from the Getty, LACMA, the National Gallery, the NYPL, and the Rijksmuseum are at your fingertips, but there are also works by new artists, commissioned specifically for Electric Objects, including pieces that take true advantage of the medium, like Hannah Perrine Mode's Landmarks, a series of blue, circular cutouts of watercolors depicting natural landscapes that turn against a white background, like dials moved by a mysterious wind or spun by an invisible finger. Another mesmerizing group is the Space Is the Place collection, a series of images collected from high-definition NASA telescopes and enhanced by the artist Adam Ferriss.

Though it might seem like the video or animated art is the whole appeal here, on gray, winter days, I favored a cropped scene (if there's a major issue with this format, it's that due to the screen size being fixed, if an artwork does not fit the dimensions, you only get a piece of it) from Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp, a Dutch painting from about 1608 that shows a canal freezing over, with children playing an early version of hockey, everyone going about their business, wrapped in dark coats, a warmth in the sky depicted by light traces of peach in the gray clouds. Because it literally is in this case, the painting seems lit from within, and with excuses to Walter Benjamin, though it is the ur of mechanical reproduction, it contains an unmistakable aura. —SOFIA GROOPMAN

What's the Best VR System?

Virtual reality has been in the realm of science fiction for decades, but in the last year or so, that's changed. Right this second, you can buy a headset that makes VR part of your living room. Whether you want to fly a spaceship to another planet, run through a haunted mansion, or simply watch a movie in your own private theater, VR is within reach for the average person.

The biggest problem is choosing which headset to buy. Sony, HTC, and Oculus have all released headsets with their own strengths, weaknesses, and differences in price. That last one is a big one, too. Fortunately, they're all pretty good. (If you're interested in VR movies, though, the nicer-looking headsets on PC are your best bet.)

The fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to jump into VR is Sony's PlayStation VR setup ($400), which requires a PlayStation 4 ($300) or a PlayStation 4 Pro ($400).

That being said, pricing on PS VR gets complicated. If you don't own a PlayStation Camera, required to use the headset, that's another $60. And if you want to play with motion controls, rather than the standard controller, it'll set you back another $100. It is worth paying the extra money for them, as motion controls are where VR games really shine. Save a few bucks and buy them used. PATRICK KLEPEK

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Immigrant Fashion Designers Respond to Trump's Travel Ban

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Twice a year designers from around the world come together to showcase their latest collections during New York Fashion Week. While last-minute alterations and seating arrangements are some of their most pressing concerns, for some designers this season it is President Donald Trump's controversial executive actions that are weighing heavily on their minds. This is especially true of US fashion's immigrant and international designers, who are feeling uncertain about their future in light of Trump's actions and contentious rhetoric.

The most striking move of Trump's first two weeks is the executive order that froze the US refugee program for 120 days, suspended refugees from Syria indefinitely, and implemented a 90-day travel ban into the US for citizens ofIran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. All of these targeted countries are predominantly Muslim, and many seen the ban as being a form of religious discrimination.

"This industry is an international industry and President Trump doing the ban affects it so much," said New York-based designer Linda Abdalla, who has worked for labels like Proenza Schouler and Alexander Wang. "It even affects the tailors and the seamstresses and some of the best ones come from countries that are on the banned list."

Abdalla was born in Ireland, raised in Ohio, and became a US citizen last year. "The process for us being Muslim and Sudanese was a lot harder. It normally doesn't take 18 years [to become a US citizen]," she said, reflecting on what it would be like to become a citizen under Trump. "But I can't even imagine if we had waited one more year, I don't even know if I would have a passport. My parents definitely wouldn't because [Sudan] is where they were born.

Photo courtesy of Linda Abdalla

"I think that people of the Muslim faith should never feel unsafe, stereotyped, misunderstood or attacked, in a country that is supposed to represent freedom in this world," said Dana Arbib, the founder of the New York-based brand A Peace Treaty. Arbib was born in Tel Aviv and is heavily influenced by her father who was a Jewish Libyan refugee.

"Since A Peace Treaty's inception, we have employed countless artisans that are of the Muslim faith, and whose artistic talents have resonated with customers in the United States and around the world," she said. "The Muslim world, like any other culture, is a wonderful source of talent, artistic traditions, history, and inspiration that should be respected and honored."

Photo courtesy of Dana Arbib

While award-winning menswear designer Robert Geller isn't from one of the banned countries, even he fears his status as a non-citizen could put him at risk under Trump. Geller came to New York City from Germany over 15 years ago to pursue his career in fashion. This year will mark the tenth anniversary of his namesake label, but the current political climate has put worries over his latest collection on the back burner.

"We are having a fashion show, but it's not the first thing on my mind," he told me over the phone. Having moved to New York just three weeks before 9/11, Geller is no stranger to political turmoil in the US, but he has become increasingly apprehensive about the current administration and how it will affect him and his business.

"Who knows what the next step is. I have a green card, I am not an American citizen," Geller said. "I am an immigrant, most people here are immigrants. We have to stand together."

Designer Robert Geller at his NYFW: Men's show on January 31, 2017. Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images

To this point, he used his most recent collection to show support for those facing the brunt of Trump's recent executive orders. His show on January 31 at NYFW: Men's featured gear fit for a political insurgency: There were militaristic epaulets, camouflage prints, and a face mask that could come in handy during a protest. And when Geller did his customary wave to the crowd at the close of the show, he came out in a T-shirt with the word "immigrant" printed across it as a sign of solidarity.

Opening Ceremony designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, who are both second-generation immigrants, also made a statement on immigration this season. The duo presented their spring/summer 2017 collection this week with a ballet titled The Times Are Racing that specifically celebrated immigrants and aimed to empower through garments emblazoned with the words "Act," "Defy," "Protest," "Shout," and "Change."

"The fashion industry has always been a reflection of what America is all about... inclusion and diversity," Belgian-born designer and CFDA chairwoman Diane von Furstenberg told Business of Fashion in response to the Muslim ban. "I am personally horrified to see what is going on."

Members of the Council of Fashion Designers Association, which is behind New York Fashion Week, reportedly met last week to discuss how immigration policies could better benefit the fashion industry, but it's hard to say how welcoming Trump's America will be towards foreign talent.

"Having designers and artists coming from those countries, having this ban on people coming to visit, or study, or work for these brands is a big deal," said Abdalla. "I just started meeting more African designers that are coming to the states, but this is just another block."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer caused an uproar when he hinted that a controversial tax on any goods coming into the US from Mexico could be used to pay for Trump's border wall. (He later said that was only "one idea.") That tax, if adopted would have a huge effect on the fashion industry, which relies on factories and mills abroad. For large, fast-fashion brands, this overseas production is comprised of ethically questionable cheap and unregulated labor. But luxury designers like Geller who show during NYFW, they employ high-skilled craftspeople across the globe to make their high-priced garments. According to The New York Times, 97 percent of clothing and footwear is constructed in other countries before it is imported to US for sales.

"Who can afford 20 to 50 percent taxation on imports? It doesn't work. For me as a designer, I would have to rethink my strategy, it could kill my business," Geller explained.

Arbib shared similar concern, especially since many of her products are homemade and artisans often set the price. "President Trump's views on commerce, including the renegotiation of trade agreements that are essential to the global economy, as well as the threat of a tax surge on imported goods, has the potential to impact the whole structure of my business to say the least," she said.

The duo behind the brand Namilia, who will present at NYFW next month, shared a similar sentiment. Although they are based in Berlin, the bulk of their sales happen in the US and a tariff could be detrimental. "Most of our sales are going to America, if this administration decides to put huge taxes on international import goods that would definitely affect us and American customers," Namilia co-founder Nan Li told me over the phone.

As the New York Times points out, the additional tax would leave many in the industry with three options: They can close up shop, try to move their production to the States (if they can afford it), or pass the extra cost to the customers.

Photo of Namilia.

Beyond the taxes, some see Trump's pledge to "buy American and hire American" during his inaugural address as another problematic issue for an industry that relies heavily on resources outside the US. Many US designers use factories overseas as a way to keep labor costs low, something Trump knows first-hand, since he was producing pieces from his own clothing line in China and Bangladesh. If designers are forced to bring their production to the states, prices will increase significantly. This is an issue for large brands who rely on unregulated labor to produce fast fashion. But those who would be most negatively impacted are the brands who produce a much smaller number of expensive goods by skilled workers in countries like Japan and Italy, and subsequently have a much lower profit margin.

But prices aren't the only issue with the idea of buying American. As historian Dana Frank recently wrote in the Washington Post, historically the slogan "buy American" has encouraged racism and even violence by framing immigrants and overseas labor as the reason for the nation's economicproblems.

"Many of the countries that are being excluded right now, or marked as 'terrorist states' have skilled artisans who know how to make beautiful handmade items that the world has and wants to see," explained Arbib. "When trade agreements or certain people or countries are being threatened, the beauty that we try to highlight of these family passed down arts have little or no room to survive."

Luckily, many of the immigrant designers in the US are committed to fighting back.

"When something like this happens it's similar to movements like punk—it could make art and fashion stronger," said Abdalla. "It is about resisting and using our voice through our craft."

Top image: Robert Geller Fall/Winter 2017 Collection during NYFW: Men's. Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images

Follow Erica Euse on Twitter.

Why a Community of Punks Chose to Infect Themselves with HIV in Castro's Cuba

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Generally speaking, punk rock is a tool wielded by those on the lowest rungs of society to express dissent—and nowhere was dissent more reactionary than in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Socialism breeds homogeneity, and in a socialist nation, punks can't help but become unmistakably conspicuous. But more than conspicuous, Los Frikis—a community of Cuban punks who came together throughout the late 1980s and 90s, resembling punks of freer nations in style and taste—came to be viewed as pariahs by everyone but their own.

Meet the Cuban Punks Who Infected Themselves with HIV in Protest in this VICE documentary about Los Frikis:

At the time, Castro's government attempted to maintain order by force, and police cracked down on vagrants and social outliers. The Frikis were one such target, because they looked different, shirked the norms of life under Castro socialism, and spent much of their time on the streets in run-down areas. They were often harassed, arrested, imprisoned, or forced to do manual labor. And as a result, some Frikis took up a form of protest that still manages to shock: They infected themselves with HIV, by injecting blood from their HIV-positive Friki friends into their own veins.

It's a mind-boggling act to consider today, but a number of factors aligned to create the social conditions that drove those Frikis to self-infect. The Soviet Union long supported Cuba's economy, but as the world power spun toward dissolution at the end of the 1980s, that support dried up, and Cuba was left to fend for itself. Castro called what followed the "Special Period," an ironic euphemism for massive food and fuel shortages and a rationing so drastic that it physically altered the Cuban people forever.

Around the same time, the AIDS crisis began to worsen, and nations around the world scrambled to control the virus's spread. Cuba's controversial approach involved aggressively testing its sexually active adult population and sending HIV-infected people to live in quarantined sanitariums. In that policy, some Frikis saw an escape from a society trying to squeeze out dissidents like them.

"He knew that by infecting himself he would be sent to the sanitarium," Niurka Fuentes told me about her late husband, a Friki named Papo La Bala (or Papo the Bullet). "He knew that he would meet other people like him in there, the police would leave him alone, and he would be able to live his life in peace."

Rather than continue living on the streets and in areas where they would be harassed and persecuted, these self-infected Frikis found a place where they would be provided with food, shelter, and medicine. And once enough of them were sent to the sanitariums, they knew the sanitariums, in turn, would become a punk haven.

"You could hear rock 'n' roll and heavy metal coming from every house," said Yoandra Cardoso, a longtime Friki who continues to live on the grounds of a former sanitarium. "When the sanatorium first opened, it was 100 percent Frikis... we were all here together."

In 1989, the military handed over control of the sanitariums to the Ministry of Public Health, and under their progressive methodology, patients were allowed to listen to and play music, dress how they choose, and socialize with others both in and out of the sanitarium. They were far better accommodations than an average Cuban could afford at the time, let alone a Friki. "We created our own world in there," Fuentes told me.

A sanitarium in Pinar del Rio, where both Fuentes and Cardoso were housed as patients since the early 90s, closed in 2006. Today, all but one of Cuba's sanitariums are closed, with the last, in Santiago de Las Vegas, now operating as an outpatient facility. Though many of its original patients have been lost to the virus—Cardoso told me only three from her sanitarium are still alive—survivors are kept alive by domestically produced antiretroviral drugs that are distributed through its socialized healthcare program. Cuba still boasts one of the lowest HIV-prevalence rates in the world, and was even celebrated for eliminating mother-to-child transmission last year (though HIV-infection rates in the country have also been rising over the past decade).

The Frikis, suffice it to say, found themselves in a compromising position for a punk community. Though even grave hardship wouldn't seem to justify their acts of self-infection, at that particular moment in history, in a place where punk ideology was grounds for persecution, the Frikis still found themselves choosing to commit an otherwise unspeakable act.

Follow Abdullah Saeed on Twitter.

Indonesian Islamic Council Set to Issue a Ruling Against Fake News

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Indonesia's highest Muslim clerical council said Wednesday it was preparing to issue a fatwa (a religious ruling) in an attempt to curb the spread of fake news which is being used to fuel ethnic and religious tensions in the country and threatens to influence an upcoming election.

The fatwa will decree the spreading of slander and lies as haram, or forbidden. However fatwas are not legally binding and the council is not an officially elected government body, meaning the impact of the ruling could be limited.

The government is also attempting to stop the spread of fake news, with the Communications Ministry last month blocking 11 websites it claimed were spreading hatred and misinformation, following a similar step in November.

"We will issue [the fatwa] as soon as possible, because the situation is worrying," said Maaruf Amin, chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council. "Hopefully, at least Muslims won't be involved anymore in hoaxes." Amin added that the council had consulted the government first before issuing its decision "so that our approach will not be in opposition to government policy."

Read more on VICE News

Black Panther Activist Jamal Joseph Recounts His Time at Rikers and Growing Up in the Bronx

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In 1969, 21 Black Panther members were indicted on charges of attempted bombings and attacks. They soon became known as the Panther 21. One of them was the then-teenage Jamal Joseph, an activist, writer, and screenwriter, who spent his time both during and after his incarceration fighting for civil rights by using art, education, and community building.

In anticipation of Joseph's upcoming film Chapters & Verse, Joseph visited Desus & Mero to discuss myriad topics—from dealing with racism while growing up in the Bronx, to putting on plays at Rikers Island, to how people can use art instead of firearms to make change.

Be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

Inside China's Biggest Live-Streaming Superstar Factory

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I was told to expect skimpy outfits, but not an overweight man in a pink wig, red lipstick, and a sparkly mermaid tail and bra. But there he was, on stage, blowing kisses at the video camera and sporadically saying "Thank you!" in a girly voice, like a character from some kind of twisted version of The Little Mermaid.

I hoped that he was getting serious coin for making such a spectacle of himself. Thankfully he probably was, as he was being broadcast live to thousands of viewers on an internet show, the title of which roughly translates to I Am Your Hawaii Girl, in the Beijing headquarters of REDO Media. The firm claims to be China's biggest live-streaming star agency.

I Am Your Hawaii Girl was being shown on the live-streaming app Lai Feng. Behind the cameras the producers, staring at screens showing the footage unfolding, nodded their heads as virtual gifts such as flower and banana emojis streamed in. "Thank you!" Mr Sparkly Mermaid cooed again as digital roses—each representing a one yuan (15 cents) gift—piled up on screen.

Read more on Motherboard


The Couples That Use a Sibling as a Sperm or Egg Donor

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(Top photo of a baby who has nothing to do with this article, and was not – to our knowledge – conceived by someone using their partner's sibling's sperm or eggs, by Pixabay user adtkedia)

Andrea and her wife Mari bought a sperm insemination kit online. It cost €20. They found a volunteer sperm donor online, too. He would come round to their house with a sample, which he provided for free, then he'd leave and they would inseminate Mari. If you've heard any of the old wives' tales about turkey basters, the reality isn't much more glamourous.

The couple tried with the donor's sperm three times, without any luck. On the fourth attempt, Mari did fall pregnant, but she miscarried. They began to feel hopeless.

When Andrea's younger brother heard about Mari and his sister's difficulties with the sperm donor, he did something most people would never even think of. He knew they longed for a baby who was related to both of them. He loved his sister, and he wanted to be the donor. "We were super thankful," said Andrea. The brother only lived five minutes away, so they'd text him when Mari was ovulating. He'd come round with a sample and give it to Andrea.

"That was a little awkward," says Andrea, putting it mildly. The first couple of times, Andrea tried to undo the weirdness of her brother popping round with a vile of his own semen by trying to make the insemination romantic, with candles and foreplay. But the couple soon gave up and just got on with it. After the fourth time, Mari fell pregnant. The couple were scared at first, afraid things would go wrong again, but after two months it seemed as though everything was going to plan. Last week, Mari had a beautiful, healthy baby girl.

Clinics say sibling sperm and egg donation is growing in popularity for same-sex partners and couples with fertility issues in the UK, particularly since TV presenter Mary Portas and her girlfriend decided to use sibling sperm last year. The UK is also experiencing a sperm shortage because there aren't enough voluntary donors, which can make sperm donation from a family member seem more appealing.

"I think what my brother has done is beautiful. My parents felt the same. He will be the uncle."

For many, however, it remains taboo; the proximity of the donor seems too complicated. As Dr Geetha Venkat of the Harley Street Fertility Clinic told the Telegraph last year, she'd seen couples decide to go down this route, only for their wider families to object and the procedures to fall through.

Andrea says she has no apprehensions: "A few colleagues think it's complicated because if my brother is with our child he might get father feelings. Although I can understand those worries, we don't have them. I think what my brother has done is beautiful. My parents felt the same. He told us he wanted to help us, and that he will be the uncle. I know him so well; he won't get too involved."

Andrea and Mari's baby is just a week old, but they can take comfort from other couples who have already experienced what it's like to raise a child with this unusual family structure. Jerry and his husband Drew, an LA couple, decided to use Drew's sister Susie's eggs seven years ago, when using sibling donors was pretty unheard of. He tells me that, at the time, his story made the tabloid press. "There were a couple of stories like 'I Had My Sister's Baby'," he recalls. "All I can say is... that would be illegal and probably quite dangerous."

At first, Jerry and Drew had gone to a family planning specialist who talked them through their many donor options. Initially, they looked for egg donors online, a process Jerry compares to internet dating. "You watch videos and look at pictures of the women. It felt very awkward, maybe because the women were so young – some as young as 19." During this process, Drew's sister Susie got in touch and offered her eggs. She was 28, Drew and Jerry were both 37.

"We had big questions and hesitations, but we also like the idea of being able to tell our kid, 'This is your aunt Susie who you've known your whole life, and she did this really great thing for us,' rather than showing them a video of a woman online," says Drew.

Susie flew from New York to California, and the three of them met with a therapist. "We were concerned about her," says Jerry, "because she was unmarried and wanted kids of her own. We thought: 'What if she has kids with us and regrets it – would she feel some sense of abandonment?' There are a lot of issues like that we wanted to talk through with a therapist. But Susie had a good attitude about it. She basically said: 'They're just eggs, I want them to have a baby, I'll walk away.'"

However, once they actually started the process medically, the three met some difficulties. Susie's egg count had been abnormally low. Still, they harvested Susie's first round of eggs at a clinic, transferred them to the surrogate they had chosen and none of them took. "We were devastated," Jerry says. They tried again six months later, and this time the eggs took. The surrogate fell pregnant with twins.

"For the most part people are over the top nice. There's confusion sometimes, but we don't feel we have to explain."

Looking back, Jerry says the hardest part of the process was dealing with Susie's low fertility. He was worried that they were going to have the only kids Susie would be able to conceive. "She was so happy for us, though," he says. "She's such a giving person, we truly felt that she didn't feel bad – she wasn't ready to have kids of her own. It was just more our own guilt."

Now, Susie is "more than an aunt but less than a mum to our twins", says Jerry. "We don't use the term 'mum' because we feel that would be confusing for them. The head of the surrogacy agency said we need to be clear about that: a mother is the person who raises you. We tell our kids: you have two dads and no mom. Our family is atypical and we need to embrace that, which is why we use the term egg donor and surrogate with the kids. We also celebrate egg donor and surrogate day the day after Mothers' Day every year."

Susie came out of the whole thing well, too; after concern about her own fertility levels (concern that drove her to actually freeze her eggs), two-and-a-half years after she donated to Jerry and Drew, Susie fell pregnant herself. Now she has a daughter, and the two families are extremely close.

Apprehension about sibling donorship ultimately stems from social stigma, but the realities, once you sit down and discuss them, are a lot more practical. The fact is, this isn't incest and it isn't creepy.

It's taken a while, says Jerry, but they are now open about discussing their donor option with friends. They say the only negative reactions they've had are online. "For the most part people are over the top nice," he explains. "There's confusion sometimes, but we don't feel we have to explain."

Andrea and Mari expressed a similar experience, although it's much earlier days for them. "Not everybody knows my brother is the donor," says Andrea. "The people we want to know know. They haven't said anything to my face, although you don't know what they say behind my back."

And as for telling the children? "Our kids feel really lucky and really special," says Jerry, "There might be times when they miss having a mom, but for the most part they think, 'Wow, we have this really cool story about four people who loved us enough to bring us into the world.' My daughter loves telling people about it."

@MillyAbraham

More on VICE:

I Tried Being Pregnant to See If I Really Do Need to Give Up My Precious Seat

Palestinian Families Are Smuggling Semen from Israeli Prisons to Continue Their Blood Lines

Why Some Pregnant Women Get High Despite Doctors' Orders

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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US News

Trump Weighing Up New Immigration Restrictions
President Trump is reportedly considering using an executive order to deny immigrants entry if they are likely to require welfare, according to a draft memo circulating among administration officials. The draft order would also ask agencies to determine "whether an alien is deportable... for having become a public charge within five years of entry." A separate executive order drafted by Trump officials aims to eliminate the "jobs magnet" by restricting foreign worker visa programs.—The Washington Post

Conservatives Back Trump's Supreme Court Nominee
Conservatives have backed President Trump's selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch as his nominee for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. The National Rifle Association called the nomination "outstanding," but even as some Democrats praised Gorsuch—announced on TV in primetime Tuesday—others in the party hinted at trying to block him by any means necessary.—VICE News

Army Corps Ordered to Approve Pipeline, Says North Dakota Senator
The Army Corp of Engineers has been ordered to allow construction of a disputed section of the Dakota Access pipeline, according to North Dakota US senator John Hoeven. He said acting secretary of the army Robert Speer told the Army Corps to "proceed" with approval for the section under the Missouri River crossing near the Sioux's Standing Rock reservation.—AP

Fourteen Jewish Centers Targeted with Bomb Threats
The JCC Association of North America said 14 Jewish centers across ten US states received and reported bomb threats on Tuesday. It was the third day in January that multiple centers had experienced bomb threats. "We are concerned about the anti-Semitism behind these threats," said David Posner, one of the associations' directors.—USA Today

International News

Israel Announces 3,000 More Settler Homes for West Bank
The Israeli government has granted approval for another 3,000 homes in the West Bank. Although settlement in occupied Palestinian territory is considered illegal by the international community, several major construction projects have been given the go-ahead since President Trump took office.—Al Jazeera

Armed Cop Threatens Suicide in Istanbul
An armed police officer receiving treatment at a psychiatric hospital in Istanbul has barricaded himself in a room and has threatened to kill himself, according to Turkish media reports. Initial accounts suggested the man had taken medical staff hostage, but that was later denied by a hospital spokesman.—AP

Ban Ki-moon Gives Up On Presidential Run in South Korean
Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has announced he will not be running for the South Korean presidency, as had been expected by some observers. Ban revealed talks with leaders of his country's conservative parties had not gone well. "With all kinds of fake news, my intention for political change was nowhere to be seen and all that was left was grave scars to my family and myself, and to the honor of the UN, where I spent the past ten years," he said.—Reuters

French Far-Right Leader Refuses to Repay Funding
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has refused to return some $321,000 to the European Parliament, despite the institution insisting she misused funds. The parliament claims Le Pen incorrectly spent cash on an aide working for her National Front Party in Paris. Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing. "I will not submit to the persecution," she said, though she risks losing some salary and other benefits.—BBC News

Everything Else

Sally Yates Nominated for Profile in Courage Award
Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, has nominated former acting attorney general Sally Yates for a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Speier said she had put forward Yates, who refused to defend President's Trump executive order on immigration, "4 standing 4 the public good."—The Huffington Post

Dylan Announces Triple Album
Bob Dylan has announced a new triple album called Triplicate, which will feature some songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. Dylan also released new track I Could Have Told You, a Carl Sigman and James Van Heusen-penned cut Sinatra dropped in 1959.—Noisey

Terrence Malick Movie to Open SXSW Film Festival
The South by Southwest Film Festival has announced the 125 feature films that will run during the 2017 season. Terrence Malick's Song to Song will open the nine-day festival in Austin, Texas, on March 10.—The Hollywood Reporter

Texas Mayor Comes Out as Transgender
The mayor of New Hope, a small town in Texas, has come out as transgender. Jess Herbst wrote an open letter on the town's website entitled "I am Transgender," explaining that she began hormone replacement therapy two years ago.—The Dallas Observer

Canada Condemns Fox News Tweets
A spokesman for Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau condemned FOX News for false, now deleted, tweets regarding the identity of the man allegedly involved in the shooting at the Quebec mosque. His spokesman said the tweets "dishonour the memory of the six victims."—VICE

The Guilt of the Oldest Brother

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For the longest time, my mom had a picture hanging on her fridge. It was taken on my brother Kris' ninth birthday. He, myself, and my two other brothers Chase and Luke had just returned from the movies where we had seen the film adaption of Lynne Reid Banks' undoubtedly racist Indian In The Cupboard. My brothers are all grinning madly in the picture, happy and energized by youth and birthday vibes. I am standing slightly apart from them, arms crossed, displaying an obnoxious and overacted pout. You see, despite it being my brother's birthday, I had been pulling for us to go see Mortal Kombat (an aesthetic choice I still stand behind) and when my request denied I flung into a full-blown, sullen temper tantrum.

The picture haunts because I worry it captures the essence of what kind of oldest brother I am. There's also a home video that exists of my brother and I (four and five years old) in a bathtub. I'm demanding my mom to, "Look at me, look at me!" I had just figured out how to wet my hair by bending over, avoiding the dreaded lying back into the bath and this innovation demanded capturing for posterity's sake. So my mom films me triumphantly wetting my hair in this new way, but on my rise, I accidently smash my soft head on the tub's tap resulting in traumatized waterworks from me and bemused confusion from my brother. In both cases, I see my failings as an older brother. I see a whiny narcissist of a child, self-obsessed, constantly demanding attention to the detriment of my brother's own airtime (parental attention).

My brothers and I were all born very close to one another: Myself, in 1986, Kris in 1987, Chase in 88, and Luke bringing up the rear in 90. Our personalities developed off of one another: I am an attention seeker, Kris is cool as a cucumber, a chef and a great musician who likes and is like funk music; Chase is the serious one, quiet, contemplative, a tradesman who works through his emotions with his hands; and Luke is of course the baby, loved and coddled, and perhaps the least fearful of us or at the very least the only one who snowboards.

There is an ideal of a big brother I have in my head that I never measure up to. The ideal is of the magnanimously cooler brother who gets his licence first and sneakily drops his siblings off at parties, introduces them to awesome music and, most importantly, serves as their silent protector, watching over them in the halls of high schools and home. I also picture bandanas being a key part of this dream older brother's wardrobe.

Perhaps because our closeness of age, I never resembled this older brother. I got my licence after Kris, and Chase and was decidedly not cooler. The first time I ever had a taste of alcohol, I had just started high school, and my brother Kris and a friend were sneaking sips from a mickey of rum in our fridge. Suffering from a bout of pre-pubescent FOMO, I wedged my way into the proceedings. Before taking a nip, I remember my brother's friend saying, "I thought you said your brother wouldn't drink." I would have been offended by this assumption of squareness, but I was too busy chugging water to erase all evidence of the demon booze and how bad of a boy I was.

I also wasn't much of a protector, more in need of protection than anything else. The big brother part of our relationship only extends to age, all of my brothers are much larger than me, with muscles and stuff compared to my hollow-boned, scrawny frame. This became clear in my last year at home. My brother Chase and I had gotten into a brotherly tussle. Very quickly it became clear that fighting my brothers was no longer a viable option for me, as Chase threw me to the ground and, howlingly mad, mounted me with the intention to pound me to dust. I was only rescued from the beating by Kris, who swooped in and knocked Chase off me.

Like most siblings, intense fights were not uncommon throughout our childhood. Sometimes though, the violence had a sharper, more unhinged edge to it that hinted at a deeper turmoil. Once Kris had to go to the hospital because Chase had stabbed him right in the ear with an action figure sword (which, as far as kid fights go, is pretty awesome). I remember Luke snapping during a road hockey game, viciously swinging his hockey stick at anybody foolish enough to come near him. I remember, driven by a dark fury, attacking Kris while he slept.

It's weird. I can't remember what slights caused these outbursts. What teasings or mockings led to us losing our temper, just the violent flash of anger is what remains. There is another memory of violence that I think is related. In one of his crazed bids for discipline, my father spanked all of us with a thin piece of wood. The spanking was not the worst part. The worst part was that we had to line up and were struck one at a time. I was at the back of the line and watched it happen to my brothers while I stood compliant, soaked in dread of being hit.

It is here where my feelings of failing my brothers are rooted. I never protected them from dad. My father is a cokehead and parented as such. He would disappear for days, he would deliver manic monologues to us about goals and dreams we should have, such as attempting to motivate us to form an all-brother boy band—which I describe as peak-cocaine daddying. And he would rage at us, randomly bellowing at us for our failings and mistakes.

I never stood up to my father. Instead I remained in that spanking line, compliant, obeying his commands and his madness while silently watching my brothers suffer. And worse than that I left. Physically, I left to university when I was nineteen but even before that I left emotionally. My brothers and I had been close throughout our childhood. Kris and I shared a bedroom and we would hang out with my friends and make comic books together. All of us would play together. Once high school started I withdrew from them and my family all together. Spending all my time with friends and avoiding home as much as I could. I left them to fend for themselves, removing myself into my own anxieties and solipsism.

I've been told that none of this is uncommon. Slightly older friends have told me of similar experiences with their siblings, a separation that is gradually repaired as adolescence drifts further in the rear-view. My therapist tells me I have nothing to be ashamed about in leaving home and forging a new life. And I think these folks are right, my brothers and I chat more now than we have in a decade and the gulfs between us are closing but still a gnawing guilt remains.

I can feel it when we talk to each other, in how difficult and awkward it is when we say 'I love you' to one another. When it is said it is halting, awkward like attempting a complicated handshake that none of us know the moves to. It's not because we don't love one another but it's because that disciplined silence is so entrenched. Our ability to bring up our feelings and what is bothering us was seriously hobbled by the abuse and resulting self-preservation. So we glide on the surface of our feelings with small talk, occasionally breaking through with the help of a few beers to talk about how fucked-up things were for us.

Still we try. Still I try. Kris reminds my unorganized ass to get down to see him and his new boys. Chase and I go to the AGO and haltingly talk about our hopes and fears. And in each of these moments I discover with relief that the trails leading back to one another are not erased, are not lost but merely overgrown and that while clearing them requires work, walking on them, even in silence, is always a worthwhile trip. And on those trips I'm learning that when it comes to family, guilt is a useless emotion. It is the lingering detritus of a past that you had no control over and that as long as we are all breathing being a good big brother is never out of reach.

And so I say to my brothers, Kris, Chase and Luke I love you now and forever.  

Follow Jordan Foisy on Twitter.

Lede image courtesy of author.

On Their New Album, Japandroids Stop Dreaming About Living, and Start Living the Dream

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Brian King of Japandroids is often stereotyped as a Talking Ken doll filled with AC/DC quotes—push his buttons and you're getting, in some combination: Whoa! Yeah! Alright! Girls! Drinking! An unintended upside is that there's little room in his vocabulary for the thinnest and most frequently used word in the indie rock lexicon: "I" appears on their beloved 2012 album Celebration Rock only twice. And it takes nearly a half-hour for its grand entrance, in the context of the greatest boast of post-break-up survival skills of the 21st century: "You're not mine to die for anymore, so I must live!" It's defiant but respectful, a version of the Bruce Springsteen cameo in High Fidelitythat's aged much, much better.

Granted, most Japandroids songs use first-person pronouns, frequently in the plural—blazing down Fire's Highway is even better when your best friend calls shotgun. But while King—white t-shirt, jeans, leather jacket, tousled hair, tall and conventionally masculine—looks like an appropriate emissary for the tall tales told in Japandroids songs, at no point does the listener ever have to think of them as having happened to Brian King; none of these stories really belong to him, nor should they because almost none of it is based in tangible reality. If King claimed them as his own, he'd be deemed full of shit, or at least ironic. Or Japandroids are just viewed somewhere between the Darkness and Diarrhea Planet rather than the Replacements and Guns 'n Roses. But by taking himself out of the frame, Celebration Rock read like public domain, belonging to no one and thus big enough to include everyone.

Every single review of Japandroids' new album Near to the Wild Heart of Life will undoubtedly kill a few paragraphs reiterating what you already know from the interviews: the production values are higher, the tempos are slower, there's more breathing room for everything that would otherwise be heard as narcing on the past proceedings; acoustic guitars, synths, girlfriends. Those matter, but they're not important. The only real difference between Near to the Wild Heart and Celebration Rock is that King uses his first "I" within the first verse of the first song. Four and a half years after making the best rock record of the decade, Japandroids feel finally secure enough to write autobiography. It's the best thing they could've possibly done.

Read more on Noisey

Harley-Davidson Cancelled Trump's Visit Because of Protest Fears

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Donald Trump will apparently no longer visit a Milwaukee Harley-Davidson factory this week after the motorcycle company called it off due to planned protests, CNN reports.

A source from the Trump administration told CNN that Trump planned to visit the factory on Thursday and sign another executive order there. Trump staffers were already on the ground in Wisconsin prepping for the president's arrival when Harley-Davidson allegedly got cold feet and called the whole thing off.

The enormous groundswell of protests erupting during Trump's first week in office apparently spooked the motorcycle company, specifically surrounding the controversial executive order he signed Friday barring refugees and people from seven countries admission to the US. But Harley played it pretty even-handed in a statement released Tuesday night.

"We are proud to have hosted presidential visits at our facilities. Three of the last five presidents—Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton—have visited us at our facilities," Maripat Blankenheim, Harley-Davidson's director of corporate communication, said. "These visits are a testament to the pride and passion of our employees and their great work building Harley-Davidson motorcycles. We look forward to hosting the president in the future."

A canceled factory tour isn't exactly the large-scale change that protestors are working toward, but it's a small reminder that they can actually shake things up. It's a start.

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