Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Trump Calls Asylum Agreement with Australia a 'Dumb Deal'
President Trump on Wednesday criticized an agreement made by the Obama administration to accept 1,250 asylum seekers from Australia, calling it a "dumb deal" in a late night tweet. The social media offering followed a reportedly hostile conversation between Trump and Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull over the agreement. At least one recent call with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto also went badly, according to anonymous officials.—The Washington Post

Michael Flynn Says US Putting Iran 'On Notice'
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said Wednesday the Trump administration was "officially putting Iran on notice." Speaking in the White House briefing room, the former general condemned Iran's backing of Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have attacked a coalition led by US ally Saudi Arabia. He also described a recent ballistic missile launch as "provocative."—CNN

Violent Protests Cause Cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos Speech at Berkeley
An event set to feature alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, was canceled after protests on campus turned ugly. A door window was smashed and a blaze was started by a firebomb that ignited a spotlight. The university blamed "about 150 masked agitators" for interrupting an "otherwise nonviolent" protest.—NBC News

Joe Biden Backs Tom Perez to Lead the DNC
Former vice president Joe Biden has endorsed Tom Perez to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. Biden said the former labor secretary is a "man of integrity and vision" and the "best bet to help bring the party back." Perez is locked is a battle with Representative Keith Ellison to lead the DNC, with Ellison backed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.—The Hill

International News

Duterte Wants Philippine Military to Join His War on Drugs, May 'Kill More'
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has said he plans on issuing an executive order to direct the military to join his brutal war on drugs. Earlier this week, Duterte suspended a police campaign on drug dealers and users while internal corruption is investigated, but has since made clear he wants the crackdown to continue apace.—Reuters

Turkish Airstrikes in Syria Kill 51 ISIS Fighters
The Turkish military says it has killed 51 ISIS militants in airstrikes in northern Syria. Warplanes bombed and destroyed 85 targets in the ISIS-held areas of al Bab, Tadif, Kabbasin and Bzagah, according to the military, as part of the "Euphrates Shield" operation to clear ISIS from the Turkish-Syrian border.—Sky News

Romanians Protest Government Corruption Decree
Tens of thousands of Romanians protested on the streets of the capital Bucharest late Wednesday, as anger mounts over a government decree that could decriminalize corruption offenses and free officials and magistrates jailed for graft. Police used tear gas after some protesters threw smoke bombs and firecrackers.—BBC News

Majority Want Fillon to Quit French Presidential Race
A new poll found that 69 percent of the French public want conservative François Fillon to pull out of the presidential race following allegations he paid his wife Penelope for a "fake job." Although Fillon had been the favorite to win before the scandal emerged, a separate national poll now shows centrist Emmanuel Macron as the frontrunner.—Reuters

Everything Else

Beyoncé Pregnancy Photo Most Liked Ever on Instagram
Beyoncé's photo announcement that she is pregnant with twins has become the most liked Instagram post of all time. With more than 8 million likes, it tops a sponsored Selena Gomez post about Coca-Cola.—Noisey

Trump Takes Hair Growth Drug, Says Doctor
Dr. Harold Bornstein, a physician used by President Trump, said he takes prostate-related drug finasteride to boost hair growth. Dr. Bornstein also said Trump takes antibiotics for the skin condition rosacea and a statin for blood cholesterol.—The New York Times

Jonny Greenwood to Score Paul Thomas Anderson Movie
Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood will score Paul Thomas Anderson's next feature, set in the fashion world of 1950s London. The movie, using the working title Phantom Thread, will be their fourth film collaboration.—The Playlist

'Serial' Team to Release New Spin-Off Podcast
The team behind the award-winning Serial podcast is to release a new spin-off series called S-Town in March, focusing on a murder in rural Alabama. It will feature a new host and unlike Serial, all episodes will be available at once.—Esquire

NYC Bodega Owners to Strike Against Immigration Ban
Nearly 1,000 Yemeni American grocery store owners in New York City will shut from 12 PM until 8 PM today in protest against President Trump's immigration restriction order. Organizers will hold a public protest outside of Brooklyn's Borough Hall.—VICE

Researchers Develop AI Wearable for Socially Anxious
Researchers at MIT have developed a product to help those with social anxiety disorder or Asperger's manage their communication with others. It helps determine the mood of a conversation based on speech patterns and physiological information.—Motherboard

(Illustration: Dan Evans)

Growing up in south-west London in the 1980s, my use of drink and drugs was not abnormal. I must have started drinking at 14, because it was at that age I got a criminal record for causing a road accident after too many lagers. At secondary school we sniffed Tippex from our jumper sleeves, smoked Embassy and Rothmans at lunch and had the odd aerosol whiff at the local rec. At college it was stoned chess marathons, LSD and mushrooms among the trees and some heavy drinking at punk gigs.

Is this weird behaviour for today's teenagers? Is "Generation Z", the 12 to 22-year-olds of 2017, getting more or less high than kids in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s? Is Britain headed for another generation of intoxicated debauchery, or one of puritanical sanctuary?

Go solely off what the media tells you and it's hard to know what to think. There's been a steady drip of articles stating that teenagers have gone off alcohol – that being a teen today is the same as joining a sanctimonious monk-cult, obsessed with organic food and extreme yoga. Yet, turn the page and teenage ecstasy deaths are spiralling, laughing gas and Spice are all over the schoolyard and British girls are the drunkest people in the world.

On the surface, all the conditions are there for a rise in drug use. Illegal drugs are more widely available, online and on the street, than ever before. They are more socially acceptable and the punishments for using them are less severe. But it's just not happening. All the evidence shows that smoking, drinking and drug use have taken a long-term nosedive. In the mid 1980s, 55 percent of 11 to 15-year-olds had smoked a cigarette, and 62 percent had drunk alcohol. Today, 18 percent have smoked a cigarette and 38 percent have drunk alcohol. The proportion of 11 to 15-year-olds who have ever used an illegal drug has halved since 2001, from 29 percent to 15 percent.

It's a similar story among those in their late teens and early twenties. In the history books of the future, 1998 will likely be known as the peak point of illegal drug use among young people in Britain. Back then, when everyone was rich and listening to Britpop, 31.8 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds had taken an illegal drug. Yet, by 2016, mainly down to a gradual drop in cannabis use, that figure had fallen to 18 percent. Despite experiencing a revival since 2012, current cocaine and MDMA use is down from peaks in 2008 and 2001 respectively. And as with the general population, drugs such as amphetamines, hallucinogens and poppers are all now minority sports among teenagers.

So what's going on here? Why are young people, historically key consumers in the drug trade, going off drugs and alcohol?

In search of an answer I spoke to Chloe Combi. A writer and former secondary school teacher, she interviewed 2,000 teenagers for her 2015 book Generation Z. She spoke to them about sex, relationships, family, school, crime and health, and how these issues intertwined with drugs. Combi gained a unique insight into what makes the Snapchat generation tick.

First up, she wants to dispel the myth of all young people being sober and boring. "I don't think suddenly we've gone from teenagers being massive party animals to everyone sitting around at home drinking chamomile tea. Drink and drugs are still a prevalent part of teenage life," she says. "For example, there's a lot of upper class kids really into cocaine now. Private schools have a big problem with it. Equally, smoking weed is still appealing to a wide group of kids. It's affordable, accessible, it's integral to a lot of gaming and estate culture."

Even so, Combi's interviews give some pointers as to why drink and drugs are increasingly being rejected. Two decades of hardcore anti-drugs, anti-smoking and anti-alcohol education has done its job, she says. "The biggest influence on kids are other kids," she says. "It's not uncool to say, 'I don't take drugs or drink.' It's perfectly acceptable now."

She noticed a contrast to her own school days in the 1990s. "If you were a 15-year-old lad in the 90s, you worshipped Liam Gallagher. Now, you worship Ed Sheeran. I remember the big coke thing with Britpop when I was at school, and I don't think there's that Loaded-style glamour attached to drugs any more."

In Combi's book, many of the references to drugs are not about the kids' own drug taking, but the often problematic drinking and drug use of their parents. It's acted as a warning to the younger generation: many have been scared off by the role models in their own homes.

"It was something that came up time and time again. From north to south, hundreds of the kids said they were worried about their parents drinking habits," she says. "Loads of them said their parents drank far too much, from problem drinking through to being full-on alcoholics."

(Photo: Jake Lewis)

Smartphones have also played their part. On top of an already shrinking number of places where teenagers can meet up and have fun, smartphones have increased what she terms "isolated socialising", which leads to less drinking and drug taking. But one of the most crucial impacts on levels of drink and drug use, says Combi, is that social media has created a whole new level of vanity. "We live in a society that is becoming more vain and image conscious. It's like, don't take drugs, eat kale. Teenagers are thinking that if they don't drink and take drugs, if they sit at home drinking green smoothies and meditating, they'll be beautiful and have really shiny hair." And shiny hair looks great on Instagram.

Most influential, according to Combi, is a social paranoia that has been ramped up by smartphones. Generation Z's social circles are not just a group of friends, but a potential swarm of teenage paparazzi, with even fewer morals than the professionals.

"With everything kids do being filmed, they are very aware that being caught wasted on camera isn't a good look. So it's put people off. There is a culture of drink and drug shaming in the media, and this social embarrassment has filtered down to kids. If they get wasted at a party, the likelihood is that it will end up on Instagram or Snapchat. Kids have always been cruel, and most kids who see someone passed out on the floor having wet themselves are going to take a picture."

Teenagers I spoke to backed this up. Emma, a 16-year-old from Surrey, told me that her friends are way more wary than boys of how getting wasted can backfire on your public image. "Being out of control, throwing up and becoming disheveled are all things that girls tend to try very hard to avoid in order to seem attractive."

Many of the teenagers I spoke to said they were too preoccupied to get high, not just with social media, but with the task of making headway in an increasingly competitive landscape. It was something Combi repeatedly found in her interviews. "There is no luxury of time – everything is pressurised; it's focused on results and what are you going to do with your life," she told me. "The days of stumbling into jobs that are cool are long gone. It's completely changed the face of university. Once upon a time, if you wanted to go to university for three years and piss it up the wall, so what. But now, if you're going to leave with £80,000 debt, you're gong to use those three years carefully."

Even in the last decade there has been a perceptible change. Since coming to London eight years ago, Hannah, 26, has noticed a difference. "Compared to when I was 18, it's much more normal to go out and not drink, or to have six months off drinking. It's almost as socially acceptable to say you're not drinking as drinking. With drugs, young people are more aware of their mental health, so instead of wanting to get obliterated, sometimes there's more awareness there and self-consciousness."

So is this downturn a blip for an island nation with a reputation as a breeding ground for sesh gremlins? Or are drink and drugs likely to go the same way as cigarettes, which experts predict will be virtually obsolete among teenagers within the next 20 years?

"As people become more educated and health conscious, this sort of trend will continue," says Combi. "Having said that, I don't think the world is becoming a happier place by any stretch of the imagination. People need forms of escapism for what's going on around them. But drink and drugs are also about pleasure, and whatever happens, people will always want to party."

Emma says that, for her, the best way of escaping the pressures of "this world that is waiting for us, the world that's supposedly at our feet" is by studying, not by getting drunk and high like previous generations.

"In areas like mine, parents are becoming more and more invested in their children's lives," she suggests. "But we've grown up watching their lives, seeing the exhaustion and discontent they breed as well as the 'living for the weekend' mentality – so we've been forced to look for something else. Excess drinking and drugs do not have a place in the lives that teenagers are living any more; there's just too much to do."

@Narcomania / idrawforfood.co.uk

On Thursday morning, Pennsylvania rodent and weather oracle Punxsutawney Phil popped his head out of his hole and caught a glimpse of his shadow, signaling another six weeks of winter, ABC 6 reports.

Phil (or various groundhogs named Phil, since woodchucks only live about a decade) has been using his shadow to divine the end of winter since at least 1887. More often than not, Phil sees his shadow—it's pretty rare for him to call for an early spring. Records dating back to the 19th century show that Phil predicted six more weeks of winter more than a hundred times, but blessed us with an early spring on only 18 occasions.

Punxsutawney's resident weather creature apparently thinks that spring temperatures won't roll around this year until the middle of March, so we're stuck in this frigid icescape a little longer.

Or are we? Could this whole thing just be another example of the ever-pervasive fake news that has crept like English Ivy to smother the façade of our democracy? Could Phil actually be in bed with the road salt lobby, trying to coax consumers into preparing for another month of snow that may never actually come? Only time will tell.

Above image of Trump by Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0, collage by Gonzalo Herrera

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain

As Europeans, we generally like to think we're more socially advanced and progressive than Americans, and Donald J. Trump's first few days as president of the United States have done little to debunk that perception. Trump, among other things, denied access to the US for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and is still keen on the whole "building a wall along the entire US border with Mexico" thing.

Border walls aren't a foreign concept to Europeans. The last one wasn't demolished in 1989; there's still one between Spain and Morocco, for instance, and one in Greece. And over the last few years thousands of migrants have died trying to get into Europe. I spoke to David Bondia, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Barcelona, who believes Europe and the United States are "just equally mean" in their immigration policies.

VICE: How do European and US immigration polices differ?
David Bondia: Well, they're more or less the same. The way they go about it is a bit different. Trump signed his executive order in the heat of the moment, and he has the executive power to do so. In Europe, decisions like that have to pass through national parliaments. But the result is basically the same.

So is there any policy in Europe comparable to what Trump did last weekend?
I think so, yes. Many anti-terrorism laws are mostly used to undercut fundamental human rights and people's privacy under the guise of security. And so many laws concerning immigration seem to suggest that human rights are privileges and can be commodified.

Can you give an example?
One example involves a number of European countries denying immigrants access to public health care. That's a violation of the human right to health care, but it has been a reality in many European countries for years. In Spain in 2012, for example, a right-wing party approved a royal decree that excludes anyone who isn't registered in the public healthcare system from health care. They'll eventually have to deal with the European Court of Human Rights, but that's not a real threat to many national politicians in Europe.

But they're democratically elected officials – aren't they just doing what the public wants?
I don't think so. The European right-wing – as well as the American – doesn't have that much support in absolute terms, if you take into account all the people who haven't voted and have voted against them. Socially speaking, just a small percentage of the population agrees with those deeply right-wing speeches. I don't just mean Trump, but also Marine Le Pen in France or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, for example. I don't think it's a majority of the people, but they all vote and that's what makes their opinion weigh so much on a national scale.

And immigrants in both Europe and the US aren't allowed to vote.
Exactly – while these are people who work, pay taxes and contribute to our countries, sometimes for decades. That's the case in all European countries except Scandinavia. In Denmark, if immigrants can vote in the country where they came from, they can do it in Denmark in local elections.

How can countries just bypass international treaties?
Most immigration laws in European countries bypass international treaties, and countries are yet to be reprimanded for it. One of the most painful examples is the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, adopted by the United Nations in 1990. It's great – it protects the rights of migrant workers in their country of origin and in the country of their destination. It even guarantees certain benefits if the worker decides to return to his or her country of origin. Do you know how many Western countries ratified it?

How many?
Zero. Not just European countries, but also the US, Australia and many other developed countries. It was mostly passed by the countries of origin of those immigrants, so to speak. It's funny – Spain considered approving it in 2008, in the midst of the crisis, when many Spanish workers had to go abroad to find a job.

But at least we haven't banned people from seven Muslim-majority countries under the guise of "national security". Can we take some comfort in that?
We have a visa policy [in Spain] that can be extremely random. What's a little better here is that if you're an immigrant and you're denied a visa for a country you'll mostly be denied access as a person, instead of just because you're a citizen of a certain country. But the basis on which you can be denied a visa can still be very perverse.

What would happen if we followed Trump's example with this executive order?
It would be a disaster. Trump has banned people from countries that the US has no real trade interest with. That would be difficult in Europe, because we have more profitable trade relations with those countries. It really is absurd that we want access to African resources, but don't allow them to do the same here.

So now what, professor?
Well, that's an easy one, if you ask me. All this nonsense, these policies that are a straight violation of human rights, should mobilise a global movement of civil resistance. And we need to change our language – it shouldn't be about one group of people tolerating the other, it should be about everybody co-existing together.

More on VICE:

What It's Like to Grow Up as an Unwelcome Immigrant

Young Immigrants in America Are Still Bracing for the Possibility of Deportation

The Undocumented American Immigrants Trying to Get Sent to Detention

(Illustration: Ella Strickland de Souza)

"I wasn't expecting to go to prison," says Dionne. "Even the police were really nice when they were arresting me. They said I wouldn't get a custodial sentence because it was my first offence, I'd always had a high profile job and there were mitigating circumstances – I was an addict."

Last year, researchers from the Ministry of Justice found that for every 100 white women handed custodial sentences at crown courts for drug offences in 2014, 227 black women were given prison terms. Dionne is part of the latter cohort. In 2013 she was jailed for 12 months after an addiction to crack cocaine spiralled out of control. She stole thousands of pounds from a pool of very vulnerable people – the patients she looked after as the care home manager of a residence in Birmingham.

"I was in a very high position of trust, and what I did was very wrong," she says, her voice cracking slightly. "But there were reasons. I didn't want to steal money to buy a house, or buy a fancy car. I stole 5k, but I spent a lot more of my personal money – my salary – on crack cocaine. Five thousand was a drop in the ocean to what I probably spent on crack cocaine in 12 months. So I could have stolen a lot more." Dionne pauses for thought, before laughing. "I sometimes wish I'd stolen 20 grand, because it makes no odds after that sentence. Do you know what I mean?"

It wasn't just the police who told Dionne she wouldn't be going to jail. Even her lawyer, she says, was "99.9 percent sure" that she wouldn't get a custodial sentence. But when she went to the magistrates court in January of 2013, she quickly realised things might not be so simple, faced – as she was – by three white "very posh Women's Institute-looking" magistrates who immediately sent her to a crown court. "They were obviously hoping to give me more than 12 months," says Dionne. "They saw a black person and weren't willing to hear anything of my good character or that I'd never been in trouble – other than a driving offence."

After serving 13 weeks of her 12-month sentence in prison, Dionne has been left with PTSD, nightmares and a fear of being trapped in small spaces. Her caseworker at Birmingham women's centre Anawim, Gina Graham, says that when they meet she has to leave the door open so Dionne doesn't feel trapped.

The research into ethnic minority experiences of the UK's criminal justice system (CJS) was released as part of the emerging findings of the Lammy Review, a report commissioned by Labour MP David Lammy. This particular nugget, on black women's experiences in the CJS, stood out. However, the review has also turned up some other worrying facts about a prison population in which 10 percent of inmates are black, even though black people make up just 3 percent of the UK population; those facts being that there are 141 black men in prison for drug offences for every 100 white men, and that for every 100 white men, 112 black men were sentenced to custody overall.

"We can't have a culture of 'them and us' with our justice system," says Lammy over the phone. "People need to respect the law, and part of that is believing that the law will be applied equally. That's why I am preoccupied by issues like whether we have enough black and Asian magistrates, judges and prison officers, so that when people come into contact with the system they find themselves interacting with a range of people, including some who look like they do. As a country, we're not doing well enough on that yet."

Nathan Dick from the charity Clinks – which supports and campaigns for the voluntary sector working with offenders, and which submitted evidence to the Lammy Review – says a lack of diversity in the judiciary is a recognised problem within the sector. "If you are in a courtroom and the people on the other side of the bench don't represent your community at all, and all look to be from a white, educated, middle to upper class background, it can then lead to a perception that the system is not there for you and that it is potentially against you," he says. "Perception and trust are powerful in and of themselves."

Like Dionne, Mary Rene, a black woman who was prosecuted for harassing her neighbours last year, is one in a long line of black people who have felt let down by the CJS. She describes her treatment upon entering the magistrates court. "I was guilty from the minute [the judge] set her eyes on me, from the way she was looking at me," she says.

Penny Heater, one of the senior practitioners at the Brighton Women's Centre, which Mary attends, says she was "painted as a very aggressive woman" by the court. She puts her treatment in the CJS down to a "mixture of misogyny and racism" – the so-called "angry black woman" trope an ongoing issue that burdens dark-skinned women. With no prior convictions and adamant of her innocence, the ordeal has left Mary hardened and resolute that the CJS failed her. While in custody, she claims that she was treated "like shit" by police officers, having been left in a cell for hours after her arrest. "I had to keep begging for tea and water. I could hear them asking people if they wanted to eat," she says.

The treatment of black women in custody was thrown into sharp relief by another case last year. Sarah Reed's name has appeared in block capitals on Black Lives Matter protest signs since her death in January of 2016, but Reed first hit headlines after she was the victim of police brutality in 2012. Falsely accused of shoplifting in Uniqlo on Regents Street, she was taken into the back of the store and brutally assaulted by Metropolitan Police officer James Kiddie. The attack was caught on CCTV and shows Kiddie grabbing Reed by the hair, throwing her on the ground, dragging her across the floor and punching her repeatedly in the head. Kiddie claimed that this was because she had bitten him and said she had AIDS, but he was deemed "dishonest" and "scheming" after he tried to convince a witness lie for him, and was struck from the force.

"The beginning – or the catalyst – for her mental health problems happened when her baby died in 2003 and she was handed the corpse in a sheet to take to the undertakers by the hospital," says Donna McKoy, chairperson of the Sarah Reed Campaign for Justice, who is in close contact with Reed's family. "Before she died she was attacked by another patient in Maudsley mental health hospital in an [alleged] attempted sexual assault. She attempted to defend herself and the police were called, but instead of arresting her attacker they arrested her. She missed a court date and so was remanded into custody to await the case regarding this assault in the hospital, was denied her medication – we know she sent several messages to her mother saying 'please get me out of here, they're not giving me my medication' – and then, on the 11th of January, her parents received a phone call saying that she'd been found unresponsive in her cell at Holloway prison. The initial claim was that she strangled herself with a sheet, lying down, which is physically unlikely."

Mary's experience of custody is incomparable to that of Reed's, but she too highlights the impact of mistreatment of black women in custody, describing a new fear and contempt of the CJS. When asked how the experience of custody impacted her, she says, "Can't you tell in my voice? What do I sound like? This has changed me."

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WATCH: 'Young Offenders', our film about young men trapped in a cycle of imprisonment.

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What's particularly interesting about the review is the fact it has been publicly supported by the highest legions of the incumbent Conservative government – not necessarily natural allies to the fight against racial injustice in the UK (just think back to Zac Goldsmith's disastrous racially-fuelled mayoral campaign). It was commissioned by David Cameron last January, and shortly after her election in July, Prime Minister Theresa May spoke about her vision to make "Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us". She highlighted that this means fighting against "burning injustices" and that "if you're black, you're treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white".

A cynic might suggest that it's a ruse, part of the Conservatives' new effort to paint themselves as a party for "working people" – and to build on the steadily increasing numbers of BAME voters they've been picking up. While Lammy himself does seem to believe the review has come out of a "political consensus", sitting in his London Assembly office, Shaun Bailey, a British Afro-Caribbean Conservative politician, cannot contain his pride for the Conservative party, grinning as he talks about how wonderful it is that the party pushed for this review. "It's had an effect on members of the black community and their orientation to the Conservative party," he declares.

Serving as the Prime Minister's Special Advisor on Youth and Crime from 2010 to 2013, Bailey has an acute awareness of racial bias in the courts. Recalling this time, Bailey half-laughs and half-winces. "I'm special advisor to the Prime Minister, but I have friends who are going to jail in the morning. My white counterpart, the closest he's been to jail is Crimewatch on the telly," he says. "It's the paradox of being black." For Bailey, colour surpasses class, in terms of bias in the criminal justice system. During his work with young people he says that he's "been to court with a lot of black kids, and they got convicted because they didn't express themselves properly. As a big problem in court, it is colour by a long way."

Though he batted away the suggestion that the review was politically motivated, Bailey is adamant that while it is the government's job to improve diversity in the judiciary system, it also falls on the shoulders of black people to "step up".

"For me personally, we need to take more control of our own children and with the public, and we need to join the institutions that make up the judiciary," he says. Asked about why black women in particular are disproportionately sentenced for drug offences compared to white women, Bailey says it is due to poverty. "It forces you into crime, in many senses," he says. However, as a second generation Afro-Caribbean British man, he has candid moments, breaking through his often blunt, pragmatic outlook. "There is a penalty for being a black man if you go anywhere near the judiciary, and the need to eradicate that is correct. That is what it means to be British," he says.

While Bailey remains resolute that "our political system is the best in the world", when asked whether he, as a black politician, trusts the criminal justice system, his voice breaks off and the flow of the interview begins to stall.

(Illustration: Ella Strickland de Souza)

Not only are black women more likely to go to prison for drug offences, they are also more likely to struggle to find support after their conviction. According to the Prison Reform Trust, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women face similar barriers in accessing services to help with resettlement and rehabilitation on release from prison as other women, but they are further disadvantaged by racial discrimination, stigma, isolation, cultural differences and, for some, language barriers.

Jennifer Blake, a charity worker and former gang member, thinks it's important that we stop viewing black women as the masterminds behind criminal activity. She is in her final year of studying criminology, and, having been in prison on drug-related charges, says the treatment of black women in the CJS is her area of expertise. "I was highly involved in gangs, drugs, importing and exporting – all kinds of stuff – from a very young age, up until 2004," she says. As a victim of rape, kidnap and domestic violence she says that her argument is that the majority of females who are in prison are in there as victims, not as perpetrators. "They're sexually exploited. Okay, they've committed a crime, but is prison the right form of punishment for them?"

On the issue of black women being more likely to be sentenced for drug offences in particular, Blake puts it down to living in urban areas.

The general consensus among the many charity workers and women we speak to for this article is that often custodial sentences aren't suitable for women. More than 80 percent of women in prison have been jailed for non-violent offences, such as theft and shoplifting, compared to 70 percent of men. There is evidence to suggest that many of the women in the custodial system don't need to be there in the first place, and it seems hugely unfair, for instance, that the family impact of custodial sentencing is so acute for black mothers. More than half of black African and black Caribbean families in the UK are headed by a lone parent, compared to less than a quarter of white families and just over a tenth of Asian families.

There still hasn't been enough research into the experiences of black women in prison, and the Lammy Review should only be one aspect of fixing the problem of racial inequality in the CJS. However, the bleak outlook that the interim findings of the Lammy Review provides are only likely to be compounded when the full report is released in spring of this year.

@CharlieBCuff / @ellawilksharper / @elladesouza

2016 was the year of realizing things, according to Kylie Jenner. I couldn't agree more. 2016 was the year many of us found ourselves comparing our lives to the lavish lifestyles of Instagram models and social media stars. We realized we often came up short when it came to owning Range Rovers, wearing a college tuition's worth of Cartier bracelets on one hand, and splurging on regular lip injections and invasive cosmetic surgeries. Often finding myself thrown into a chaotic tornado of strange and luxurious beauty regimes, I can safely say that there were moments in 2016 where I didn't feel like I measured up to those infamous beauty gurus on social media. And like thousands of other young women, I deliberated getting a little work done myself. I didn't end up going through with it because of all of the horror stories of botched surgeries.

According to SELF Magazine, lip augmentation procedures have increased by 43 percent since 2000. In 2015 alone, a lip procedure was performed every 20 minutes.
    
To investigate the increase in popularity of plastic surgery, I sat down with the Dr. Six of plastic surgery himself—Dr. Martin Jugenburg of the Toronto Cosmetic Surgery Institute. He's been featured on the celeb gossip show etalk, and RateMD considers him to be one of the top plastic surgeons in Toronto, so I figured this guy just had to know it all.

VICE: Ever see someone so unattractive you thought you couldn't fix them?
Dr. Jugenburg: No, honestly, that's an idea created by reality TV shows, and they are intended to shock and they aren't real.

Do you rate people in your head as you are walking down the street?
No, I don't rate people as I walk down the street. Because of my job, yes, I subconsciously see what individuals could get done, but it's not at the forefront of my mind.

What are the biggest boobs you've ever put in a person?
Huge. Huge. 800cc's, and I have injected more saline into them. (FYI 800cc is considered extra large for implants so these really are gigantic.)

You see people like Kylie Jenner, the Kardashians just kind of taking over social media and their bodies are literally transforming so fast, and people are just trying to keep up. Do you have a lot of young women coming in trying to look like them?
So let me start off with the Kardashians. I think they're an amazing family, and I'm always so naturally amazed at how they transform their bodies through natural contouring. So yeah, we talk about the Kardashians a lot. I address on my Snapchat this habit of unrealistic expectations that people like the Kardashians set up. But not only them, you see all of these models on Instagram, all of these people who put up pictures where sometimes I have little rants about how this is not realistic, you don't know if this is lighting, if this is a pose or if it's photoshop. 

I think social media can have a negative effect, and that is what I deal with every day. I am trying to educate people that this is not normal and that is why I snapchat. I show what is real, what is normal, and what is not normal. I think it allows for patients to see the procedure for what it is. If they haven't seen my work yet, I tell them to look me up on social media so that they can get an understanding of what work I am able to do. So, I love the Kardashians. Kim Kardashian, I'm sending you a message, thank you for all the Brazilian butt lifts that you are sending to me! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! But, on the other hand, I spend a lot of time explaining to people what I can and cannot do, what a Brazilian butt lift on their body will look like because it won't look exactly the same as Kim Kardashian. But still Kim, thank you very much. Kim is my best friend. She refers all of my patients!

You use Snapchat quite frequently. Do you think this aspect of using social media to record procedures helps keep all of these surgeries real for patients? That they understand the road to getting to the end result of beauty isn't that pretty?
I think it allows for patients to see the procedure for what it is. If they haven't seen my work yet, I tell them to look me up on social media so that they can get an understanding of what work I am able to do.

Aren't you giving in if you get plastic surgery to impress other people?
You are not giving in, that's ridiculous. Plastic surgery is corrective surgery. Kids have otoplasty, and in my opinion, why should a child go through three years of school and high school being bullied because of their ears and learn to accept their body when they can go ahead and complete the simple procedure of Otoplasty and walk out of here and never have to deal with bullying. I'd like those people who say that it's giving in to go through three years of bullying, to learn to accept their body, and go to a psychologist an hour a week, every week to come to terms with it. Why go through that when you can do a simple procedure like otoplasty that can take it away.

What does beauty look like, according to a plastic surgeon?
The ideal of beauty was set by the Greek statues like Venus, and it's all about proportions. Beauty today is distorted, in my opinion. There's something called the Golden Ratio and that is the mathematical equation of beauty—how things considered beautiful fit into certain patterns. That being said, today, it is so different. Things you see on Instagram, the Kardashians, Nicki Minaj, they do not fit into the Golden Ratio. The scary thing for people like me is how do people consider people like them beautiful? Like no, this is disproportional. When you become disproportionate, it becomes grotesque. But grotesque is now considered normal. Beauty is what you see around yourself. Because of all of these famous people that are showing off, people think of that as normal. I had a patient come in a while back and she said, "I want you to do a natural breast augmentation on me," and then she pulls out a picture of Victoria Beckham. Have you seen Victoria Beckham's breasts? They are not natural. I've learned now to, when people say they want natural augmentations, to always ask for examples of what "natural" means to them.

What about opting for cheaper cosmetic surgeries down in places Mexico City?
If you look for cheap plastic surgery, you will get cheap plastic surgery. It's as simple as that. The issue with medical tourism is not that there are bad doctors out there; there are doctors all around the world. I cannot say that the only great plastic surgeons live in Canada. That's ridiculous. There's great doctors in Brazil, China, Germany, wherever. The issue is with you going to the unknown, you don't know how things are happening there, so when you go to a place like the Caribbean, you take certain things for granted that you assume are normal in Canada that actually aren't.

The standards of care that we have to live up to in Canada are not the same amongst provinces, between Canada and the states, and between Canada and the Caribbean. So you go there and you see a doctor, a medical office, you think everything is fine, but maybe it's not. Let's say you found someone in the Caribbean, and something goes wrong, you get rushed to the local hospital. Do you really want to be in one of the local hospitals there as compared to here? If you need touch-ups here when you come back, now you're stuck because surgeons here will not be looking after you. They will send you back to the original surgeon. So all of the money you've tried to save will be spent travelling in and out to get it fixed. 

I saw a patient who had a breast augmentation done in Ukraine, and the doctor injected some foreign substance into her breasts, which I ultimately had to amputate. This would be illegal in Canada. This was a fully certified doctor in another country where this procedure was normal and acceptable. There's also the medical-legal aspect that's awkward to talk about. You have Big Brother looking over your shoulder here, you have to make sure that everything is good. When you don't have that in a foreign country, they don't really care. If something goes wrong, the doctors don't worry about flying back to fix it. They don't worry about medical malpractice suits.

As a doctor, you're faced with telling a patient about their flaws, and then you give them this promise and treatment to rebuild them as this beautiful person. So do you think that-
I'll stop you right there. No. So when people come to me, they come with issues. I don't tell them what's wrong with them and if they ask me, "What else can I do?" My answer is, "I can do a million things, but what bothers you?" Cause I can tell you to do a million different things, but I'm not going to tell you that; I'm not here to make you into what I think is beautiful. I am here to help you correct what bothers you. So no, maybe other people do that, but I never tell people what is beautiful and what is not. I have a lot of breast augmentations and patients ask me what a good size is, if they should go bigger or smaller, do you like this? I tell them that it doesn't matter what I like. You are the one looking in the mirror, you have to be happy, so choose what you like.

Do the people coming here expect to get "fixed" because they feel bad about themselves? Is it a self-esteem issue?
We don't talk about self-esteem a lot because I don't think that most of my patients have self-esteem issues. I don't really have people coming in and saying, "Hey listen, I feel bad about myself. I'm depressed, I want to feel better." On the rare occasion that I do get patients like that, I educate them and say, "Listen, I'm changing your body, but I'm not changing your mind. So understand that if you have psychological issues, I'm the wrong doctor. I'm not a psychological surgeon, I'm going to fix visible things, but I'm not changing how your perceive yourself.

Follow Dr. Jugenberg's NSFW Snapchat: @realdrsix

Follow Ankanaa Chowdhury on Twitter.

A crowd of mostly white protesters in a parking lot at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport offers a chorus of thanks when a police officer announces a bus will soon take them to a "no ban, no wall" demonstration. But Fatima Din is keeping her head down.

"Even though it's strange," she acknowledges when we meet at the protest Sunday, her first thought is that the bus might head somewhere else entirely—to divert people from the demonstration.

Din's default mode of skepticism is one shared by many Muslims in America, a community comprised largely of people of color who have historically faced mass surveillance, persistent stereotyping as terrorists, a rising tide of hate crimes, and yes, exclusionary immigration policies. All this paired with, in many cases, roots in dictatorial regimes where protests are often met with violent crackdowns is keeping some Muslims on the sidelines despite the latest wave of activism sweeping America. The fear is especially potent for those most directly targeted by the executive order President Donald Trump signed on Friday to bar travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and at least temporarily halt the entry of refugees from abroad.

But one of the most prominent voices against the ban—and Trump generally—has been that of New York City–based Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour. A co-organizer of the Women's March on Washington, Sarsour is lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit challenging Trump's executive order.

"We believe that the 'Muslim ban' is unconstitutional," Sarsour said this week. "We also believe that [the ban shows] some preference of one religion over another, which also violates the Constitution." Proponents of the ban, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, however, have defended the measure as one focused on "danger," not religion.

Advocacy organizations point to Trump's campaign trail call for "a complete and total shut down" of Muslim immigration as one reason Muslim Americans registered to vote in record numbers ahead of this past presidential election. Yet even if Trump's rise has compelled many Muslims to get more politically engaged, some remain guarded about taking their views to the streets, a testament to the enduring question of just how confrontational Muslims feel they can be in the United States.

For Din, exclusionary policies towards Muslim-majority countries reinforce suspicion between the powers that be and people like her. That makes her cautious when stepping out to protest. "There's definitely a lack of trust between [us] and the authorities or people who are supposed to be 'helping us,'" she says.

Her husband, Zain Shamoon, agrees. "When matters of safety, when threats to your family [aren't] at play, it's a lot easier to show up to a protest," he says. There's a heightened fear of arrests among people of color, and many Muslims would rather not be "another example of an aggressive person."

While the "no ban, no wall" demonstrations at major airports and public spaces that thronged more than 30 cities over the weekend remained peaceful and saw relatively few arrests, for some Muslims, the fear is that protesting in large numbers might be used to present people of their faith as angry mobs who warrant official scrutiny.

"You know, all these old memories just come to your brain all at once."—Nala Jewech, Syrian immigrant

Some also hesitate to criticize the policies of a country they're grateful to have made their home.

"That's the frame that our parents put on us," Shamoon says. "When your pretense is that this place is safer than the one you came from and that you came here for opportunity," you aren't necessarily going to be very a vocal opponent of it. That can change across generations, of course, and Shamoon says he's been involved in activism for the past 15 years.

"It's a pattern you see over and over again in these groups," explains Smith College professor Lauren Duncan, who researches why some people become politically active and others don't. Immigrants "often have this reaction of keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble, and show [others] that if we dress nicely, and we're polite and we're good neighbors, then we're gonna defy stereotypes. By the [next] generation, the kids [of immigrants] are like, Wait a minute, my parents are actually being discriminated against, and there's no good reason for that."

When I ask if she initially hesitated to attend out of fear the Detroit demonstration might become dangerous, 19-year-old Jeanon Jewech replies, "I did not, no," before looking over at her mother, a Syrian immigrant.

Nala Jewech immigrated to the United States long before Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad's violent crackdown of the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that exploded into all-out war. But she's traumatized by memories of being forced to participate in state-run rallies in support of his father and predecessor, Hafez al Assad.

"The government prepared everything from A to Z. It wasn't free for us. We couldn't choose the time or the words we were going to say," she recalls. "You know, all these old memories just come to your brain all at once."

Check out the VICE News short about Muslim fashion going mainstream.

If difficult memories of political repression made Jewech hesitant to attend, they also helped convince her to take a stand. Having immigrated 20 years ago, she worries that America is now on a course toward the political repression she thought she'd left behind. "I remember this bad experience in my country, and I wish this country would stay as it is with freedom and justice," she says.

Likewise, Meral Ebrahem, a 40-year-old immigrant from Egypt, sees in Trump shades of political repression—some potential and some already realized.

"We escaped [that] and came here because there is more freedom and more opportunity, more justice," she says over chants of "let them in!" "So why did we come over here? To face the same situation? Of course not."

Ebrahem, a full-time student and mother of four who works as a pharmacy technician, looks around at the crowd dotted with headscarves and cloaks similar to her own. Moments earlier, a group of Muslim men and women lined up behind a baggage claim carousel to pray.

"I'm so proud of them," Ebrahem says of those who did come to the demonstration, noting she was excited—if not surprised—to see such a diverse group of people stand up against a policy she believes squarely targets Muslims. "Anytime I have the chance to stand here, why not?" she adds, her moon-shaped face turning into an easy smile.

"One of the things that keeps people away from protests it that they often get hijacked and romanticized by white liberals."—Zain Shamoon

A majority of Muslims in America are immigrants, and some may be too focused on trying to make ends meet and settling into their new lives to get involved in political action. And for those who do not have permanent legal status in the US, protesting may be too much of a risk "when deportation is something that's a real threat," according to Anjali Dutt, a professor of social psychology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

She cites one of her own students on an education visa. "She's terrified of being deported, and it's incredibly frustrating for her to feel as though she's part of the community that's being targeted and yet she can't go to these events," Dutt says.

Mass demonstrations aren't the only way to engage in political protest, of course. In fact, they can sometimes feel not just taxing, but also ineffective, to marginalized groups. Since white men are generally at the helm of this country, Dutt notes, people of color can feel like they aren't as equipped to take on the system. "I think it's very rational for a person to think… my voice already doesn't matter, so using it louder might not make a difference."

"It might not just be that a person feels too depressed or too demoralized to engage, but also that they might seek to create change in ways where they actually feel that they have the skills to do so," Dutt adds.

Not showing up can result in another problem, however.

"One of the things that keeps people away from protests is that they often get hijacked and romanticized by white liberals" who may not understand the stakes as clearly as the groups most affected, argues Zain Shamoon just before getting onto a bus that eventually does drop him and his wife off at the scene of the demonstration.

But having those white liberals present at protests "can be a good thing because [they can offer] safety" based on their relatively privileged place in American society, according to Duncan, the Smith professor.

And the participation of majority America may help protesters reach their ultimate goal.

"Social movements only succeed when the… dominant group is on the minority group's side," Duncan says. "It's good for people with privilege to use it for good."

Follow Beenish Ahmed on Twitter.

The man who put his asshole through hell by stuffing it with $165,000 worth of gold "pucks" from the Royal Canadian Mint has been sentenced to 30 months in jail.

Barrhaven Ontario's Leston Lawrence, 35, reportedly kept his head down as he was handed down his prison term Thursday; the former Mint operator was previously being convicted of theft over $5,000 for stealing a total of 22 gold pucks, money laundering, possession of stolen property, and breach of trust.

Lawrence's judge, incredibly named Peter Doody (get it?) also ordered Lawrence to repay $190,000—the market value of the 17 gold pucks he sold—within three years of being released or face another 30-month sentence.

Read more: Here's How Much You Can Make Smuggling Things In Your Ass

Lawrence, who had unsupervised access to the golden pucks, would frequently set off the metal detectors of the Mint's Ottawa facility, after which he would be patted down by security, and double checked with a handheld wand, but to no avail. He was only caught when his bank, suspicious after Lawrence tried to cash cheques worth more than $15,000, tipped off the cops in February 2015.

The police began surveillance on Lawrence and eventually issued a search warrant on his home, discovering pucks that fit the same mold from the Mint. They seized a total of five pucks.

The pucks, ranging from 192 to 264 grams in weight, were worth $6,800 to $9,500 each, according to the CBC. Lawrence sold 17 of them to Ottawa Gold Buyers for $130,000 and was reportedly able to buy a house in Jamaica and a boat in Florida.

Justice Doody noted the evidence against Lawrence was circumstantial, as no one saw him stealing the pucks or shoving them up his ass. Part of that evidence included latex gloves and Vaseline found in his work locker, which Doody said "could have been used to facilitate insertion of gold items inside his rectum."

Lawrence's lawyer Gary Barnes, who argued for an 18-month sentence and a $130,000 fine (to match the money Lawrence actually made through laundering the pucks), said his client has accepted both the conviction and the media attention it's garnered.

"When no one showed up for the first week and we were sort of under the radar, that was very, very surprising," he said.

He also criticized the Mint's security measures as being too lax.

The Mint told the CBC it has upgraded its security and screening process and camera system and is " working closely with CATSA [Canadian Air Transport Security Authority] to establish more robust scanning training of our employees."

I guess future Mint employees can thank Lawrence if butt X-rays become a regular thing.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

We are living in a time of collective disorientation and mental clutter. Smartphone addiction and social media have exaggerated our already-accelerated pace of daily life. We are confused, agitated and more reliant on technology to perpetually bring us happiness than any previous generation. Recent research has supported the idea that compulsive smartphone use causes depression and anxiety. This emotional tug-of-war is combined with a consumerist culture that emphasizes immediate pleasures through lightning-fast means. Smartphones certainly provide a profound amount of practical advantage and comfort, but there is a cost. We fall into a continuous pursuit of the next hit of experience—increasingly a digitally delivered one—hoping that it will satisfy some vague underlying thirst. Not only is the thirst never extinguished, but the search for the next hit of information or experience actually fuels a greater desire to find even more gratification. We have become as happy as our next "like" on social media. We wear each new "follower" as a badge of honor. Our momentary contentment is achieved one meme at a time, and replaced by another, and another. Our success or failure in the workplace is contingent on our ability to navigate nonstop emails, floods of instant messages, and perpetually scheduled meetings that can be rescheduled instantaneously. Our battles are won and lost by the millisecond, and it's impossible to tell if we are ahead of the pack or quickly falling behind.

Read more on Tonic

Eight years ago, I fell in love with a web series. Nirvanna the Band the Show is about two Toronto goofs, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, whose main aim in life is to get a show at the Rivoli. For non-Torontonians, the Rivoli is no CBGBs—but to Nirvanna the Band (yes, that's what the duo call themselves), the Rivoli is their ticket to stardom. The web series quickly became a cult hit, with many Torontonians wondering "are these guys for real?"

The answer to that question is complicated, as Johnson and McCarrol blur the lines between reality and fiction by playing characters with the same names who are essentially embellished versions of themselves—twisted, yet sympathetic. Johnson is loud, talkative, and rambunctious, like a kid who just ate too much candy and wants to build the best fort ever; McCarrol is imaginative and a little more quiet, but no less silly. Together, they cause trouble amidst real Torontonians going about their day, essentially seeing just how much they can get away with. Needless to say, hijinks ensue.

Read more on Noisey

Raise your hand if you saw porn before you got sex-ed?

Yup, that's what I thought. Half of you probably have porn tabs open (incognito mode on) right now on your computers as you're reading this. I know what you're doing, you lovely freaks—never stop being you.

The shitty thing about that, though, is most of you haven't ever had proper sexual education but you've damn well seen a ton of porn. Whether it be a porn mag found under a bridge in small town Alberta while you're riding bikes with your friend (I may be speaking from experience here) or the wonderful thing that is internet porn, most of us encounter people smashing their uglies together in visual form before we even really know what it is.

While porn in many ways is wonderful, it's a pretty ass backwards way to learn what actual sex is, and can lead to some fucked up ideas and ideals. Furthermore, schools aren't really offering a well thought out alternative. With what seems like half the world (even though it's just a small but loud minority) screeching repeatedly about the dangers of sex-ed in school and most of the actual sex-ed actually offered being horrifically out of date—consisting mainly of videos made in the 1960s about the dangers of "the clap"—maybe it's time for alternative outlets to supplement the education?

Maybe it's time for the sites we visit in the dark, tissue box at our side, to step up?

Well, it seems one actually is, Pornhub. PH is attempting to make itself into a one-stop shop for both jacking off and learning about jacking off. This week, the popular porn site launched their Sexual Wellness Centre, a free subsite which they say is an "online resource aiming to provide readers with information and advice regarding sexuality, sexual health and relationships."

They even released a video with authentic porn quality sound to explain their initiative.

The site will be directed by Dr. Laurie Betito, who you see in the video above. Betito is a longtime psychologist with a speciality in sex therapy and is the president of the Sexual Health Network of Quebec and a past president of the Canadian Sex Research Forum.

"One thing I have realized is that, no matter our background or desires, sexual education - mental, physical, emotional and spiritual—plays a vital role in our society," she said in a release. "It has always been a dream to connect with, educate and inform people all over the world on a massive scale."

"Heading the Pornhub Sexual Wellness Center is an opportunity to reach a global audience and provide a source for healthy sexual education and dialogue."

The site features articles about topics you probably wouldn't discuss in a sex-ed classroom like "You Now Have Fewer Reasons To Avoid Period Sex" and "Top Erotic Positions for Lesbians." It also features Q&As and discussions about consent and STDs.

For something that includes the URL Pornhub.com the site is remarkably safe for work so, you know, after you're done doing what you need to do maybe give that shit (or other sex advice sites) a visit and learn how sex really works.

Because the other side of Pornhub can be a pretty shitty teacher.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

A lot of people are talking about Awol Erizku today for good reason. The photographer shot the most-liked Instagam photo of all time: an immediately iconic image of Beyoncé, pregnant with twins, posed in front of a lush floral arrangement.

This photo was not just viral but important—both for it's arresting beauty and rare universal acclaim—and it's no surprise that Awol did it. VICE has worked with the young photographer for years, and it was always apparent to usthathe was bound for greatness. What the world is seeing today on Beyoncé's Instagram and Beyonce.com—where there are more striking and elegant portraits by Awol—is merely the tip of the iceberg.

From readymade objects to short films to paintings to mixtapes, Awol has been using every medium available to him to bring beauty into this world. His unique vision is always smart, colorful, and rooted in both art history and the African diaspora. We feel very lucky and are immensely proud that Awol has used VICE as a platform in the past to showcase his work.

Below are some of our favorite Awol Erizku photos that have graced the print pages of VICE magazine and the webpages of VICE.com, typically paired with the words of VICE Senior Editor Wilbert L. Cooper. The photos below were taken from Awol and Wilbert's nostalgia-driven piece on black barbershops, their forward-looking piece on black masculinity, and their contemporary piece on black death and fatherhood.

Check out Dame Darcy's website, Instagram, and Twitter.

If you've ever considered the circumstances under which you might partake in cannibalism, odds are you think they'd have to be dire. If you and your comrades, besieged on all sides by the Luftwaffe, were facing dwindling food and fuel supplies in sub-zero temperatures and had already consumed your pets, the city's zoo animals, and much of the leather belt you were wearing when you came home to find your apartment building had been bombed. If you were stranded for days without food or water in some harsh, limitless landscape and your trusty companion, who had refused to partake in even a slice of bicep, finally perished. If Donald Trump makes it a full term.

If you've ever considered the circumstances under which other humans have eaten one another, it's likely, too, that they resemble these extreme scenarios, or involve a psychopath. But according to zoologist Bill Schutt's new book, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, the practice is a lot more complicated—and common—than starvation and violent crime.

In order to broaden our understanding of cannibalism, which he says vacillates between "the sensationalistic shit" and academic studies, Schutt examined the animal kingdom and applied what he learned to examples of cannibalism among humans, as well as the Western taboos that have led us to consider it unthinkable. From the Chinese children who would "provid[e] parts of their own bodies for the consumption and benefit of their elders" as a demonstration of "filial piety" to the new mothers who grind up their placenta into rejuvenating smoothies today, Schutt's wide-ranging book manages to make cannibalism slightly less unfathomable—though I can't say I finished it wanting to taste human flesh. We spoke over the phone about his research process, the future of cannibalism, and the politician he thinks is most likely to eat another person during the End Times.

Photo by Jerry Ruotolo/courtesy of Algonquin Books

VICE: What surprised you most during your research?
Bill Schutt: I'm a zoologist, and I was really surprised at how widespread cannibalism was in the animal kingdom. There are major groups where it doesn't occur very often, but then there are other groups—fish, insects, spiders—where it happens as almost the rule. And the other thing, with humans, the biggest surprise was just how common it was in Europe for hundreds of years, right up until the early part of the 20th century.

What was the most recent example of cannibalism that you found?
That would be placentophagy. I found that cannibalism was more commonly practiced in places that didn't have the Western influence, and I expected it would be the Chinese who would be eating placenta (more on that in a second), but it really wasn't them—it was groups of hippie types in the 1970s, and then recently as a form of alternative medicine. I don't know how many people do it—there's a small group of people who find comfort in it and think they're getting a medical benefit.

But there's not really a medical benefit, correct?
There's certainly a placebo effect. The woman I interviewed down in Texas believed the placebo effect was a big deal. She also believed that if you didn't cook this stuff, then it might be able to replenish hormones—progesterone, estrogen—that were missing after giving birth, and in a sense it could cure the baby blues, or at least could contribute to you feeling better. They're all proteins, these hormones, so if you cook the placenta, they get denatured and probably can't work. So some people get around that by making a Slurpee out of it.

"Cannibalism is, in a sense, a normal response to extreme conditions."

You write about how Western settlers used cannibalism as a way to justify eliminating native peoples—if people were cannibals, they were considered savages, so the Europeans felt they could take their land, kill them, whatever. When did the taboo against cannibalism emerge?
I think the taboo started with Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus and his men get mugged by Polyphemus, the [man-eating] Cyclops. And from Homer, which was around the 8th century BCE, there's a snowball effect that says eating someone else is the worst thing you can do—that this is what monsters do. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe really contributed to this idea that cannibals are doing all this nasty stuff. Then the Brothers Grimm turned it around and said, "Not only is this nasty, but this is what's going to happen to you, children, if you don't behave!"

Once this Western idea became strong, then you saw less and less of the practice, as Westerners exerted influence wherever they went. If cannibalism was the worst thing you could do, then it was OK to do anything we wanted to cannibals, because they were considered hardly human. You can sort of imagine why cannibalism became less frequent as the ages passed—it wasn't going to get you anywhere with these new guys.

So am I a colonialist for being repulsed by cannibalism?
No, I don't think so. We've been ingrained since we could have something read to us that cannibalism is the worst thing you could do, so you don't think about why other groups might choose to consume their dead rather than bury them. There were indigenous groups that were just as mortified of the concept of burying their dead as the anthropologists and missionaries who interviewed them. So I don't think that you're a colonialist; I think that you're somebody who's influenced by Western culture.

Can you explain the concept of "learned cannibalism"?
What's not learned cannibalism is a reaction to a situation that is incredibly stressful—you have no food and you're either stranded or besieged. Learned cannibalism is when you're taught that consuming a dead loved one allows them to leave the earth, or imparts their goodness in you. Or it's culinary cannibalism—there were rulers who thought that humans tasted great.

China has long dynastic histories, and they took great records—they didn't have the taboos that we have, so they weren't secretive about writing this stuff down. [In my research,] there were many, many instances over long periods of time where they talked about eating their concubines. And during the Renaissance in Europe, epileptics would line up at executions and suck down the blood from the guys who'd just gotten killed because they believed it cured epilepsy. The more violently someone died, the more medicinal value in his body parts.

"If cannibalism was the worst thing you could do, then it was OK to do anything we wanted to cannibals, because they were considered hardly human."

What is the actual nutritional benefit of human flesh and blood? Because I'm thinking of blood sausage, for example—that has a lot of iron. Why not have human blood sausage?
Sure. Though if you're trying to cure epilepsy, I think most of that was misguided.

So it's the same nutritional value as anything. Do you see cannibalism having a future at all?
If you look at the animal kingdom, besides the reasons that you wouldn't expect (parental care or reproductive behavior), overcrowding and a lack of alternative nutrition both cause cannibalism. When you look at humans in those types of conditions, there are the famous examples: the Donner Party, the rugby team in the Andes, the besieged Russians during World War II. This is not science fiction. Cannibalism is, in a sense, a normal response to extreme conditions.

There are going to be some people who will not eat bodies—they will starve to death. There will be others who will eat bodies—who, when it comes down to it, will kill to consume someone. There's a series of steps that take place during starvation, and at the end of that line, cannibalism occurs. Could it occur again? Absolutely. Would it be a horror show? I think so—beyond consuming bodies and murder, the fact that we have diseases that are cannibalism-related, like mad cow disease and kuru.

I tried to stay away from sensationalism in this book, so when I got to the end of this thing I was like, all right, I can't really have a happy ending, so I just started to think about a future in which this could happen. I think we need to be aware of that.

Which contemporary politician do you feel is most likely to, in that hypothetical future, resort to cannibalism?
Definitely Dick Cheney. Though after the Trumpocalypse, he'll probably be slain by Keith Richards in a battle over Cher.

Follow Lauren Oyler on Twitter.

Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt is out February 14 from Algonquin Books.

On Friday, February 17, people around the country (and possibly the planet) are going to refuse to work to protest President Donald Trump. It's a continuation of the host of protests that have sprung up in opposition to the new commander-in-chief's hardline anti-immigration policies as well as, y'know, his general vibe. But the Women's March on Washington and the pro-refugee rallies at airports around the country were conventional demonstrations. A general strike, where people sacrifice a day of work to show their seriousness, would be a much heavily thing. But would it have any appreciable effect?

Though there's been lots of social media chatter about the strike, it's not clear how many people are actually considering it.The largest Facebook event for the proposed strike is currently only sitting at 8,300 confirmed attendees—a far cry from the 234,000 who clicked "going" on the Women's March event page, or the millions around the country who took to the streets that day.

The notion of a general strike was first proposed by the writer Francine Prose in the Guardian. In an op-ed, she asked all those who are able to do so without risking their livelihood to refrain from working for the day, and asked everyone to avoid exchanges of money to underscore the economic impact of the strike. For many on the left looking to do something to oppose Trump, this is a very appealing idea.Even David Simon, creator of The Wire, tweeted his support for the strike:

Zoe-Zoe Sheen, a graphic designer in Los Angeles, plans to participate in the strike as a thank you to her immigrant parents.

"It's my privilege to be a first-generation Chinese American," Sheen told me. "My parents' hard work laid the foundation for me to live my life more freely than they could. I'm grateful for their sacrifices. It's my responsibility to them—and any human—to do whatever is in my power to allow others to live their best lives in harmony and peace."

Challenging the feel-good, but oftentimes transient and ineffective nature of protests, Prose pointed to the economic disruption of last weekend's peaceful airport demonstrations as small-scale models for impactful resistance. "It's hard to think of a nonviolent movement that has succeeded without causing its opponents a certain amount of trouble, discomfort and inconvenience," Prose wrote. "And economic boycotts—another sort of trouble and inconvenience—have proved remarkably successful in persuading companies to cease supporting repressive governments."

Nelson Lichtenstein is a UC Santa Barbara professor and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy who has written extensively on the subject of strikes. When I called him to ask whether a general strike could result in real changed, Lichtenstein told me hebelieves that with the amount of political energy lingering after the Women's March and renewed with each controversial Trump action, this call for a strike "could easily balloon into something absolutely real."

But he tempered that statement with cautions that for a general strike to work, there must be specific and overt demands. Because the flashpoint of this proposed strike is clearly immigration-related, Lichtenstein suggests that the movement more explicitly asks for "a complete rescinding of Trump's anti-immigrant executive order."

"For a general strike to be truly considered successful," he added, "you have to get some of the employers to join in on or make allowances for the protest."

Lichtenstein pointed to the Day Without Immigrants march of May 2006 as a recent example of another de facto weekday general strike. Companies like Tyson Foods temporarily shut down plants voluntarily that day in order to avoid strife within their factories. With the current levels of rancor being directed at Trump, Lichtenstein thinks it's entirely possible that mayors of major cities or titans of Silicon Valley might put their support behind such a nationwide protest.

We tend to think of strikes as tools for classes of workers to wrest better pay and benefits from management. But general strikes—where everyone stops working, period—are much more politically and philosophically charged.William Benbow, a London-based radical, first proposed the general strike in an 1832 pamphlet demanding national holidays after decades of organizing laborers into more concentrated demonstrations. In this proposal, The Grand National Holiday of the Productive Classes, Benbow suggested a month without work as a means of starving the rich out of their idle, carefree lives built upon the backs of the working class. Then, Benbow hypothesized, the rich would elect a more worker-friendly congress who would, in turn, grant the citizens a national holiday of rest, debt-forgiveness, and even freedom for some prisoners.

So, that obviously didn't really happen. But in the years that followedgeneral strikes would be invaluable tools in the procurement of guaranteed minimum wage, safe working conditions, the concept of "the weekend," and a variety of other now-taken-for-granted labor laws. The general strike was also used by Civil Rights activists in the mid-20th century—the key political moment of the Civil Rights Movement, the March on Washington, was as much an economic movement as one for civil liberties. After all, the event's full name was the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." The 1963 march took place on a Wednesday, meaning the roughly 300,000 participants were not at their work and thus participating in a de facto general strike. The march was a massive show of popular force, and it helped push through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 24th Amendment, which banned racist poll taxes.

Not every activist views the anti-Trump general strike in a positive light. Michah White, one of the founders of the 2011 Occupy movement, recently tweeted that general strikes not backed by a willingness for violence have no chance of real success. (Presumably, few strikers want to break windows or intimidate businesses.)

Only time will tell if the proposed general strike manifests into anything substantive or transformative. That said, Lichtenstein seemed optimistic based on how massive and peaceful most of the anti-Trump protests have been so far.

"Trump has actually helped construct this unified demand for change for us and I think it's clear the people are already behind it."

Sometimes the only solace to being in thoroughly shitty situations is having a Class-A coursing through your veins and quite possibly cranking your heartbeat. Ideally, drugs are consumed under the best possible circumstances—think a surreptitious bump on the dancefloor or a massive joint on your way home from school before promptly using a pizza pan to make a giant chocolate chip cookie with a chewy center—but occasionally things don't play out quite as we'd like.

Drugs can obviously have adverse effects on one's body—but, fortunately, pharmaceuticals can rescind said effects and return the body to a relatively neutral state.

Such was the case a few years ago when I rang in the New Year with close friends at a traditional house party replete with techno and cocaine. I invited a friend I hadn't seen in ages but with whom there had always been sexual tension. The friend in question and I were never single at the same time, but her having just broken up with her boyfriend, I figured the party was a good time to make my move. At midnight, we started snogging and subsequently found a bedroom. The problem was that we'd both been doing giant lines of ching all night, and my dick had turned senescent. I figured I'd go back to hers at the end of the night anyway, so I spent a good half-hour with my head burrowed between her legs as an overture. As the night wore on and more drinks were ingested and heavier lines snorted, she informed me that, because she just moved out of her ex's apartment, she was sleeping on a friend's couch, and if we were going to do the horizontal mambo it was then or never. At this point, it was around four o'clock in the morning, and things were beginning to wind down at the party.

Arguably the biggest advantage to having gay friends is that they like hard partying and having lots of sex, often at the same time, so I managed to procure a Cialis from a buddy at the party. Within 20 minutes when I felt movement in my loins, the woman and I once again ascended to the bedroom and fucked what was left of the night away. Sure, it was sloppy and my mouth tasted like an ashtray, but she probably could have done a lot worse than me at that point.

We checked in with a few other people to see how they've navigated being on various substances in less than ideal situations.

Waiting in Line: MDMA

If there's one thing Viktor loves, it's the legendary Stereo Afterhours on Sainte-Catherine St. in downtown Montreal. A close second is MDMA.

When Canadian techno luminary Richie Hawtin played to a sold-out crowd at Stereo a few years ago, Viktor, a journalist forced to tighten his belt, vacillated between attending the show and saving money. Unfortunately, he waited too long and missed out on a ticket, so he winged it and queued up at midnight, two hours before doors were scheduled to open.

Buoyed by the prospect of a short wait and long party, Viktor swallowed an MDMA while in line. He wasn't the only one who thought they'd take a shot at entering the sold-out event.

"There was a fraternity of us in line where everyone was in it together, and it ended up being kind of fun for the first little bit," said Viktor, "but half-an-hour turned into an hour, and an hour turned into two, and there wasn't really much movement.

"The problem is your mentality changes a little bit and it becomes, 'OK, how much more of this can I take, how much more is worth it?' But the balance is you've already invested this time. It's the sunk cost fallacy of partying—how long will you wait around for something that might not happen, and how much fun will you have on the dancefloor?"

If anybody has ever experienced a Montreal winter, they know anything beyond a very finite amount of time outdoors is lunacy. "One of the nice feelings of MDMA is it puts you in the clouds; you feel light, and you don't necessarily feel like you're floating, but the sensations you have with your limbs are free-flowing and you feel limber. And when you're cold, you get taken out of that."

Making matters worse for Viktor, a tall, strapping Dane, was a woman to his rear, whom he'd generously described as unattractive—"She had a massive pimple on her lip that looked like HSV-1, but it had a hair coming out of it"—took a liking to him.

"I was getting felt up by this chick in line. I mean, in the beginning it was funny because she was openly fawning and acting like a giggly schoolgirl, which can be a little on the charming side, but she turned aggressive. She was grabbing my cock and my ass. Then she started repeatedly squeezing my balls from behind. It was discomfiting. I tried telling her to stop, but she was predatory. I got molested that night."

After four-and-a-half hours, Viktor was finally granted entry only for Hawtin to play a short set. Worse still, a friend of Viktor's girlfriend was somewhere in the back of the line and witnessed him being sexually harassed. However, she thought it was reciprocal flirtation, and after she told Viktor's girlfriend about the quasi-concupiscent display, he was promptly kicked out of their apartment and spent the next two-and-a-half months couch-surfing.

"Fuck, man. An average night at Stereo is, like, an eight out of ten. In this case, the little music I caught was still really good, but with everything that happened that night and after, I'd rate the night a five."

Swimming in Potentially Crocodile-Infested Water: Marijuana

Lauren, a Briton who left home to escape her crushing student debt, moved to Australia at 21 and worked on a tomato farm. She met Mike at her hostel.

During a day off, Mike suggested the two walk to a mangrove forest on the outskirts of the very small town in which they lived to smoke a joint and bump uglies. "We weren't getting enough privacy in our hostel, so I figured what the hell," said Lauren, 30. 

Reaching their destination meant crossing a narrow stream of water, which didn't seem problematic at the time, but given Australia's proximity to the equator, dusk descends quickly.

"I'm already unsure about being in the mangrove forest because I was warned about it, so we decided to leave when it got dark," continued Lauren. 

Upon reaching the crossing, she recalled, "The tide had already come in, so that little stream becomes the width of at least 12 meters. It's like a river, flowing out with fairly strong currents and moving with the nearby ocean. The bit of water in the middle is moving quite fast.

"It was around the edge of the water that Lauren and Mike noticed what appeared to be crocodile tracks, and not having their mobiles to phone for help, they decided to go to the far edge and swim across what they suspected was crocodile-infested water—which they reasoned was less perilous than staying in the forest overnight.

Fortunately, the two made it back safely and smoked what Lauren called "The biggest, best joint of my life."Having risked her life, she admits to a silver lining.

"While we were having sex, Mike was on the bottom, so he woke up the next day literally covered by hundreds of sand fly bites and suffered from them for a week, which I took quite a lot of pleasure in since I was never too keen to go to the mangrove, for sex or otherwise, or to have to risk swimming with crocs. We didn't sleep together again."

Photo via Wikimedia

Work Bender: Cocaine, MDMA, Speed, Ecstasy, Marijuana, Alcohol, Ketamine

Tomas, a Canadian minimal house and techno DJ, toured Europe a few years ago, and with a two-week recess halfway through, his girlfriend flew over for a visit. They started in Barcelona and finished in Berlin, where Tomas was scheduled to play a day after she left. "She left on a Wednesday, and immediately after, I decided to go out for dinner by my lonesome, which subsequently turned into drinks at a club," he said. "The owner of the club recognized me and invited me to the back where they were having a birthday party for someone. It was beautiful; we were out on the terrace, and it was sunny; a BBQ was going, and drinks were flowing. The crowd was a little more mature: mostly international touring artists in their 40s, but they liked partying, as is customary with that crowd."

Being a DJ has its perks: free drugs. And before Tomas knew it, Wednesday turned into 5 PM Thursday, and under the influence of cocaine, MDMA, speed, ecstasy, ketamine, and a little booze and weed, he remembered he was scheduled to play a Berlin club in six hours. "I was scheduled to play a six-hour set that night," said Tomas. "I looked like shit, so I go back to my friend's to take a shower and get myself fixed up. I was playing that Thursday night in Berlin and a 12-hour set in Oslo the next day."

Tomas regulated his drug intake to get through the six-hour set, and with another seven hours to kill until his flight, he partied some more at the club. He rationed his drugs all the way up until his arrival at the airport, where he was trying his best to stay awake and not miss the flight.

"I was doing a line of speed every one-and-a-half hours in the DJ booth... It helped because I did 12 hours straight."

"Fuck, that was like pulling teeth," he said. "Instead of going to bed I partied more, thinking I could sleep in Oslo. But as soon as get to the airport, I'm barely functional. I get there, and my flight is delayed a couple of hours, and that breaks the whole regulating substances plan I was on because I timed everything to keep myself awake. Basically, I started passing out a bit. At this point I'm awake for 48 hours."

In spite of the hiccups, Tomas thought he'd get at least a few hours of shut-eye in Oslo to prepare him for his marathon set."I get to Oslo and feel like shit—by the way, the shower helped because you always have to look and smell good at airports—so I get to Oslo, and I'm hoping to get some sleep and then wake up and play the party, but it turns out I had to play 30 minutes after I got picked up from the airport. I'm scheduled to play from 3 PM to 3 AM."Adding to his disquiet, this was his first ever show in Oslo and he wanted to make a strong impression.

"So I was doing a line of speed every one-and-a-half hours in the DJ booth," he said. "It helped because I did 12 hours straight. It was fantastic, and we all really had fun. I was getting into 60-something hours of no sleep. It was my first time there, so I naturally went to an afterparty for a few hours and partied some more before making it back to the hotel."

In all, Tomas started his bender on Wednesday in Berlin and finished it at 10 AM on Saturday in Oslo.

"Telling you that story really makes me think I should reconsider the way I live my life."

Image via Wikimedia

Almost Breaking on Through to the Other Side: LSD, DMT

Tyler is a Montreal-based musician who uses his studio for, among other things, recreational drug use. Not too long ago, he and three friends were snowed in and decided to spend the rest of the day and night dropping acid.

"We were already quite experienced with drugs," said Tyler. "Suddenly we hit on the best acid ever from this one particular dealer. We take one hit each and then pretty soon after took another hit. I remember I did three in total, but one definitely would have been more than sufficient."

For Tyler, music is akin to a spiritual experience, and after dropping acid in his studio the friends began freestyle jamming together. "We would hit the right notes at the same time and it was one of the best feelings I have ever experienced," he said. "Musicianship is spiritual for me. These were moments of pure ecstasy. But I somehow suddenly blacked out afterward."

Unable to speak and experiencing memory loss, which Tyler described as losing his mind, paranoia swiftly set in. "I had absolutely no fucking idea where I was, even though it was my studio. I looked at my friends and didn't know who they were. I couldn't recognize them. I became super paranoid—a wholly negative feeling. Everyone was having a normal conversation, but I kept on thinking, When are these people going to kill me? I thought they would either induce me to kill myself or they'd murder me.

"If you like to explore these things, it's like the Holy Grail."

"Every time I tried asking them questions, like who they were and where we were, only weird guttural noises came out. I sounded like I was turbo autistic."Tyler eventually overcame his imagined speech impediment and was told that, contrary to what he'd believed, the entire universe was not solely composed of the studio chamber. "It felt like I was losing my mind, like an Alzheimer's patient would, but it slowly came back. I had previously lost every single boundary in my mind. It was like the movie Memento.

"Upon feeling better, Tyler was given a pipe containing DMT and came within psychic inches of breaking on through to the other side.

"At this point I'm having a lot of fun, especially after the experience on acid," continued Tyler. "I took a second booster hit of DMT, and that's when I saw stars and a strange, transient doorway. I was floating towards it but didn't understand its significance. I didn't understand the concept of breaking on through."

Having just restored mental equilibrium, Tyler was reticent about venturing through the door lest it thrust him into the throes of yet another bad trip. During his brief contemplation, the door receded from his floating body and vanished.

"That moment of hesitation made the door slip away, and then I heard voices around me asking how I was doing. My friends pulled me out of the state. I never got that close again in all my subsequent acid and DMT trips. At the moment, I felt refreshed but also disappointed that I didn't get to see a little more."

According to Tyler, he has discussed the fabled door with other people who claim it reveals universal truth.

Even that night, he wasn't the only one who saw it. "One of my friends that night also saw the door and was about to go through, but then one of us interrupted him. It was reciprocal though, because they fucked it for me. We all fucked it up for each other. I kept trying to get back to the door. If you like to explore with these things, it's the Holy Grail." Nevertheless, it wasn't a total waste; the DMT succored psychic dissolution of the world's physical properties and allowed Tyler to manipulate his and his friends' bodies. "I turned my friend into a giraffe, and I turned myself into a chair, which was peaceful, but I also had a runny nose and eventually got frustrated at not having the limbs to blow my own nose." To date, Tyler has not seen the door again.

Going on a date with a complete stranger often requires both parties to navigate a minefield of topics and, by the end of what is usually a terrible time, figure out whether or not they have anything in common. But wouldn't dating just be easier if you already knew all the things that person passionately hated? That's the idea behind Hater, a new dating app that matches people based on everything they both dislike.

The app, which officially launches February 8, offers its black-hearted users a selection of various topics—like weed, belfies, the gluten-free lifestyle, and yes, don't worry, Donald Trump—and asks they swipe up if they love it, down if they hate it, right if they like it, and left if they dislike it. Users can also dismiss a topic if they have no opinion. The app then selects a group of people the user might be attracted to based on their shared loathing of certain subjects.

At launch, the app will include roughly 2,000 topics, but the plan is to eventually have users generate their own odious topics so that the small minority of people who actually hate Beyoncé can finally find one another and have a shot at love.

The whole idea behind Hater was actually a joke, according to CEO Brendan Alper. He told the Cut that he thought of the app while thinking of sketch ideas, after he quit his job at Goldman Sachs to become a comedy writer. "The more I thought about it, the more I thought, Hey even though this was a funny idea, it actually makes a lot of sense," he said.

It turns out that Alper's intuition is actually backed up by science. In 2006, Jennifer Bosson, a social psychologist at the University of South Florida, found that people form friendships more easily with people who hate the same things they do and published a series of studies about it.

While it's been said that love will tear us apart, maybe Hater will at least help some of us with hate in our hearts hook up more successfully.

In June, the night before Joanie "Chyna" Laurer's memorial, her friends gathered at a Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Porn star Ron Jeremy showed up in Crocs and slurped soup next to an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt, and Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof wrapped his arm around his sometime-girlfriend, working girl Caressa Kisses. In between bites of pad Thai and curry, they were hypothesizing what had caused their friend's death.

Medically speaking, Chyna died of an overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs. Her body was found on April 20. News broke the next day, 12 hours before TMZ reported the death of Prince, one of several icons, from David Bowie to Muhammad Ali to Fidel Castro, whose memorials overshadowed Chyna's in the last year. Her afterlife has lacked the obituaries and lengthy journalistic inquiries into her legacy that typically follow a celebrity's passing. In death, Chyna was not remembered as a groundbreaking female athlete, although she was the first woman to compete against men in the WWF (now known as the WWE); became the number-one contender, or runner-up, in the Heavyweight Championship; and twice won the league's second-most prestigious title, the Intercontinental Championship, a feat she shares with icons like Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson and Stone Cold Steve Austin. No other woman has won it to this day. She did for wrestling what Joan Rivers did for comedy.

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The New York Times is a failing paper. Its protracted failure is, in a word, "SAD!" Despite, or because of, this depressing truth, President Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon delivered the newspaper of record the following dressing down one week ago: "The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while... the media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."

His sentiments echoed those of Congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, who delivered a floor speech last week wherein he declared it's "better to get your news directly from the president. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth."

As a Twitter verified member of the opposition party of which Bannon speaks, I must say—I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. I, indeed, still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States. And so, in the interest of gaining some much-needed clarity, I have decided to take Bannon and Smith's advice to heart. I have decided to shut up and listen for a while.

I have created a list on Twitter labeled "Unfake [sic] News," which follows two only accounts: @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. At the time I begin this experiment, Trump's last tweet states he will be "America's greatest defender and most loyal champion," a statement I assume has something do do with the executive order he signed Friday banning refugees from entering the country and his continued fervor for building a wall along the Mexico border.

For the next five days, the only tweets I will see from external accounts will be ones retweeted by the man himself. I will not look at Facebook or even Instagram, lest someone who is being paid to protest posts pictures from an underpopulated and over-publicized march. I will not read newspapers or magazines. I will not watch television or listen to the radio. I will, finally, embrace the truth. I will soon realize I have chosen perhaps the most harrowing time in modern history to do so.

Saturday, January 28

I wake up sore from a car accident that occurred two days prior, my physician-prescribed muscle relaxer rendering me only semi-cogent. I was T-boned by a late-model SUV driven by a representative of Obamacare-hating dough oligarch John "Papa John" Schnatter; the poetry of me, a card-carrying member of the coastal elite, rendered helpless by a billionaire's lackey in this political climate is as delicious as a slice of pizza from anywhere but Papa John's. I am perpetually groggy and easily influenced. Perfect.

At 8:04 AM, Trump makes his first tweet of the day. His target? The Times, natch. It is, again, a "failing" paper that has been "wrong about [him] from the very beginning." "FAKE NEWS!" he types into his allegedly unsecured Android.

"Thr [sic] coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas [sic] been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers." he follows. "They got me wrong right from the beginning and still have not changed course, and never will. DISHONEST." His dogged refusal to acknowledge or apologize for his lack of grammatical correctness comes as no surprise.

Two hours after his fake news meltdown, he offers a touching tribute to the doomed crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger, who perished 31 years ago today. "#NeverForget," he tags the tweet.

He then, from the @POTUS account, retweets Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea."

"Yes," I think. "Israel's immigration policy is, indeed, a great success. No turmoil over there, no siree."

"YOUR WEEKLY ADDRESS" shouts @POTUS's next post, a soliloquy delivered directly into camera outlining everything he has accomplished in his first week in office. His speech is slow and labored; his uncomfortable demeanor suggests he is being held captive yet remains defiant, a sassy POW. "This administration has hit the ground running at a record pace," he announces. "Everybody's talkin' about it."

He rounds the day off by tweeting a video of himself signing an executive order.

"People have been talking about doing this for a long time," Trump says to an invisible camera while signing the order. "Like, many years."

I walk outside. It's 10 PM on a Saturday. The windows of the apartment buildings surrounding me in my majority-immigrant neighborhood are unusually dark. I wonder if a time will come when this becomes usual.

Sunday, January 29

It is a perfect day in Los Angeles. Visibility is high, the sky as blue and piercing as a movie star's eyes. Cloudless. The only thing marring its perfection is a police helicopter chopping through the azure.

Again, Trump's tweets begin at 8 AM. Again, he rails against the Times, which, again, is a failing distributor of FAKE NEWS. He follows up eight minutes later with some xenophobia ("Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, [sic] NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!"). Two hours after that, he throws some light race-baiting into the mix ("Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!"). I ask my gentleman friend if the protest I heard was going to happen at LAX today has come to pass. He tells me it has, as have others, and they're "making the Women's March look like a game of bridge." I frantically keep refreshing my Trump feed. Hours go by with no updates.

I sit on the edge of my proverbial seat, wondering how much of the world is burning while I twiddle my thumbs and wait for my commander-in-chief to address the situation. "Are we at war?" I impotently ask friends. They refuse to say, respecting the vow I have made to remain temporarily bereft of wokeness. I feel utterly powerless. More so than usual, which is saying something.

Trump eventually issues a Facebook statement in which he uses the word tremendous. He says "we will keep [America] free and keep it safe, as the media knows, but refuses to say." Good thing I didn't consult the media in those intermediary hours; they would have done nothing to assuage my fears. "To be clear," he continues, "this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting."

A mere 20 minutes after issuing this statement, he is back to self-promotion. The president of the United States promotes his shows via social media more than someone in a shitty improv troupe. At 11 PM, he will be interviewed on the Christian Broadcasting Network by someone named David Brody, who is not verified on Twitter. Twitter only verifies representatives of FAKE NEWS, I guess.

I watch his appearance while yelling at the screen in frustration, in the exact same way people yell at reality television shows. In this regard, he has already got what he wanted; he has turned reality into a highly scripted, hyper-real iteration of itself. In this regard, he has won. And in other, more significant, regards as well.

Monday, January 30

I knew things had taken a turn in the past two days, but the profundity with which they had did not become apparent until I saw that Trump:

A. Got up an hour earlier than usual

and

B. Did not start the day with a tweet about the Times's failure.

Rather, he tweeted that the "problems," whatever those were, at airports the previous day were caused by a computer outage, protesters, and the "tears of Senator Schumer." An hour later, he tweeted that "if the ban were announced with a one week notice, the 'bad' would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad 'dudes' out there!"

His usage of the word "dude" gives me pause. Now, I could imagine his predecessor using the word "dude" in the context of a viral video designed to appeal to preteens ("Hey, dudes... reading is cool!"), but not in the context of matters of national security. But then again, Trump's not like... other presidents.

Immediately afterward, he returns to self-promotion. HE has decided who HIS Supreme Court nominee will be, and says he will make his announcement at 8 PM ("W.H.") time, a.k.a. 8 PM EST, tomorrow. He then posts a YouTube video of today's press briefing, the first 37 minutes of which are a blank screen.

He retweets Vice President Mike Pence, who has welcomed the king of Jordan as the first foreign leader to visit his home.

At 10 PM, I learn acting attorney general Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, has been fired. For insubordination. Note that "insubordination" is my word, not Trump's—the largest word in his vocabulary, both literally and figuratively, is "tremendous," which he, much like the word "literally," has overused to the extent it no longer holds meaning. In a Facebook post, Trump wrote that Yates "betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States," which makes sense, as she's an "Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration."

"It is time to get serious about protecting our country," Trump's post continues. "Calling for tougher vetting for individuals traveling from seven dangerous places is not extreme." But wait—I thought he loved the word "extreme." He, after all, was the one who called it "extreme vetting." I am extremely confused. Dana Boente will be the AG until Jeff Sessions is approved; Sessions is "wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons" for now.

I do not know exactly what is happening, but I know it is not good. I can tell it pains the fellow members of my socialist bubble to withhold this information, but withhold it they do. "It's bad, right?" I ask. They solemnly nod in response. I feel the solemness of their nods in my bones. I sit on the hood of my friend Erin's car, smoking a cigarette and looking at palm trees, after hosting a comedy show wherein no one talked about anything but the difficulty of dating. She informs me that her bleeding-heart boyfriend just brought a gun back from his home state of Tennessee.

Tuesday, January 31

Trump begins tweeting at 6:21 AM with a two-part screed about Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's rally on the steps of the Supreme Court, a rally he mocks for its technical difficulties. Chuck Schumer is now "Fake Tears" Chuck Schumer. If everything is fake, what is real? And why doesn't Pelosi get a nickname? "Nasty Nancy," perhaps?

"When will the Democrats give us our Attorney General and rest of Cabinet! [sic]" he laments. He's constantly aggrieved by people's inability to give him, and by proxy, us, what we want. He never accomplishes anything, just declares that he would, if only everyone would cater to his will. He promises he will make America great again, yet never states exactly how he will do so.

He will make his SCOTUS nomination at 8 PM EST on Facebook Live. I know this because he has promoted the announcement four times today. I open the feed early; a sea of hearts and thumbs ups float past a shot of an empty podium, punctuated with the occasional angry or laughing face emoji. The closer it gets to the time of his announcement, the more the feed buffers. As he walks to the podium, it freezes completely.

As a "man of [his] word," Trump says he'll give us the nominee we've been ASKING for "for a very, very long time." That nominee is Neil Gorsuch. "So was that a surprise?" he asks. Gorsuch is "tremendous"! And has "bipartisan support"! Trump's accounts continue to tweet during the speech; by the end of the 15-minute press conference, they will have tweeted four times. One is a retweet of an account called @GorsuchFacts, which, I think, has been created by the White House in order to promote the nominee. Its bio reads, "Judge Gorsuch will be fair to all regardless of their background or beliefs. This is exactly the kind of #SCOTUS Justice @POTUS promised." His qualifications, according to Trump, are "beyond dispute." He can "only hope that both Democrats and Republicans can come together—for once—for the good of the country" and confirm him.

The nomination of Gorsuch ultimately results in a dozen tweets and retweets. One tweet highlights his three best qualities:

Wednesday, February 1

The storm must have passed, because Trump is no longer waking up at 6 AM. And yet, libtards are still seemingly butthurt about the erosion of their civil liberties. At 8 AM Trump tweets, "Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!"

He follows with a photo of himself surrounded by a conference table of African Americans; he's "proud to honor the start of Black History Month." See that? He's not racist!

He's also a deeply spiritual man, as evidenced by the next photo he posts, in which he's flanked by whites in moment of solemn prayer after last night's nomination of Gorsuch. I pray that when I finally find out what's happened over the past five days, I still believe in the possibility of a God.

Thursday, February 2

Experiment over, I can once again look at FAKE NEWS, yet can't bring myself to dive in, as I feel getting up to speed on what has actually transpired over the past week has become an impossible task. The failing Times homepage is as terrifying as it is overwhelming—headlines speak of the White House's "Dark View of Islam," Trump's vow to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment, and "Missile Tests" in Iran. I am overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge.

I check Trump's feed one last time; there, he states Iran has fired a ballistic missile. For this, they have been "PUT ON NOTICE." What exactly this statement means, I have no idea. I wonder if he knows.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

This post originally appeared in VICE Australia. 

The body-finding scene in movies and TV shows alway goes a bit like this: dog walker is out in the woods. The dog finds something in the bushes, followed by a gasp. Cut to police taping up the scene, and the dog walker is never seen nor heard from again.

I've always found it hard to concentrate at that jump cut to police tape. I find my mind focusing on the person who found the body instead—what happened to them? What happened when they got home? What did they dream about that night? Did they go to work the next day? I mean, they found a fucking body.

Life is never as clear-cut as the movies, so I reached out to three people who have found dead bodies in real life. We talked about the moment itself, and how the experience affected them in the following days.

Goose, 25

I've found two dead bodies in my life. The first time, I found him about 15 minutes after he died. I don't want to describe the details so much because he was a good friend, but I will say that I found the experience so shocking that apart from calling an ambulance, I had no idea what to do. I felt really disoriented, like my brain hadn't caught up to what my eyes were seeing. A friend told me to do CPR, and it snapped me back into reality. I was later told that the CPR I performed allowed my friend to stay alive on life support for several days, long enough for all of his family and friends to see him one last time and say goodbye.

I didn't cry for a long time. I felt hollow and reserved and angry, and I drank heavily afterwards. There was this pervading thought of "fuck it" in my mind, kind of like I deserved to drink and take whatever I wanted after that, because "fuck it". I lost a lot of self control for a while.

On the exterior I think I took it pretty well, I comforted a lot of people and didn't act like a burden. I was extremely stressed out though, I dropped out of my studies as a paramedic and have never gone back. It changed the trajectory of my life. Eventually, I came to this realisation that there is no changing the past and I've got a future to deal with. So that's what I did.

Several years later, I had successfully dealt with my future and landed a sweet job. On my very first day, I got home and found my housemate's dead body on his bedroom floor. He'd died from a heroin overdose about 15 hours before I had found him. Despite the bent spoons in the kitchen drawer and his occasionally disheveled appearance, I'd never known he was using. He was very rigid, and as cold as the wooden floorboards he was laying face down on.

When you die, your blood stops pumping and settles into wherever gravity pulls it. From what I could see, my housemate had what looked like one big bruise on the entire front side of his body. After the ambulance and the police left, some people came to collect his body and they asked if we wanted to say goodbye. He looked pretty fucked up but I stared at his face for about a minute. It was so hard to break away because I knew that I'd never see him again after that. It was heartbreaking.

When I woke up the next morning, it took a minute to hit me that my friend had actually died the day before. I felt guilty that I had forgotten for that brief moment. I started calling everyone that knew him, which really sucked, having to hear people breaking down and dealing with the blow over and over again. My previous experience afforded me the wisdom to keep moving forward.

I will carry these experiences with me for the rest of my life. I'll never get the images out of my head, but that's okay. I'll keep growing and living, and these people and experiences are a part of that. Now when I think about my friends I feel love for them, and I value the time that we spent together.

Sabrina, 27

I have a street-facing balcony that you can find me on most nights, and it also has a view of my downstairs neighbour's courtyard. I have never really spoken to any of my neighbours, and I couldn't tell you any of their names, but I recognise the faces. My downstairs neighbour was an elderly man who I guessed to be retired. Often I would see him from my balcony, standing in his courtyard, having a smoke.

One day I was sitting on my balcony to unwind after work when something caught my eye—my downstairs neighbour lying on the ground. I hesitated and stepped back inside. I remember thinking, "What's he doing like that?" I went outside again for a proper look and that's when I saw that he was lying face down, his glasses were crushed under his face, and one of his slippers were off.

I called out but there was no response, or even a flinch. So I repeated myself...nothing. At this point I noticed the flies on his back. I looked around me, realising that I was the only one seeing this, so I was the only one who could react. At that point I thought "Right, just call an ambulance now."

The paramedics arrived and one of them told me "Yeah, the man's actually deceased." Apparently he had been for some time.

Honestly, I was shocked. When they left, after what felt like ages but was probably only a few minutes, I opened my balcony door again—but nope, the neighbour was still down there, this time accompanied by police. It kind of upset me but I knew they had to "assess the scene" before they could move him.

I felt awful for the man's son who would have to find out from the police that his father had seemingly dropped dead in his own courtyard. Such a sudden death can never be easy for a family to experience. I feel lucky that I've never been through that.

When I told this story to people they would say to me, "Oh I'm so sorry you had to go through that," but all I could think about was the man's family. Their grief and shock at his sudden death.

About a month later, I had new downstairs neighbours. Life goes on.

Ryan, 28

About nine years ago I was walking home when, from some distance away, I noticed a person lying on the curb. I thought that maybe it was an accident and the person was just a little dizzy. So when I arrived, I didn't expect to see a dead person.

He was lying on the asphalt road with his head laid on the curb; blood oozing out of his right eye. Apparently, somebody shot him in the back of his head and the bullet exited out of his right eye. He was still alive at this point, but clearly dying. He mumbled some words but they were unintelligible. I could clearly see his chest rise up and down, air bubbling in his mouth. I just stood there for a while. Very soon more people had gathered around me, and the police station was only something like 300 meters away so they arrived quickly.

I just stood there ruminating about life, and particularly how fragile it is. How easy it is to end the life of a person. It was all so surreal. At one point, as I was observing the amount of blood that was oozing out of his eye, trying to imagine where his right eye used to be. You could say I was observing this from a scientific point of view. Only after I left did I start to think about what had happened. Later, on my walk home, I noticed my hands were trembling and my knees were weak. I went into my room and thought about what had happened and I guess I eventually fell asleep.

The next morning I went through the same routine: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast. But this time, images of the guy on the curb kept playing at the back of my head.

Walking to school, I headed past the spot on the curb. A small wooden cross had appeared along with a couple of lit candles. I wondered if he'd been thinking about in his last moments on Earth. Did he have people in his life he wanted to talk to? Did he want to ask anyone for forgiveness? To be honest I'm not even sure if he could think, since the bullet pretty much messed up his brains.

I didn't tell anyone at school what had happened, for some reason. When I went home from school, nothing had changed. The small cross stood there accompanied by a dying candle. People were going about their business as usual.

It later came out that the victim had an altercation with someone the previous day. Apparently the suspect walked up behind the victim and shot him in the back of his head, walked back to his motorcycle and rode off. Just like that.

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