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London Rental Opportunity of the Week: In Which the Pop Artist Drake Is Watching You Shit

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What is it? It's a flat, with a toilet in it.
Where is it? Oval, one of those awkward-to-get-to places south of the river where if someone attractive invites you back to theirs for what you're pretty sure from the eyebrow wiggles they are making is an offer of sexual intercourse, you are thinking about it three, maybe four times then ultimately saying no. Who… who could be a good example here. Rita Ora, right? We all agree – everyone agrees! – that Rita Ora is a stone-cold babe. Every person of every sexual denomination fancies Rita Ora. So the situation is that you meet Rita Ora, at an adidas party or something. You're dancing, the two of you. Flirting. Light arm touching. That electricity. It's Rita Ora. And then she arches one perfect eyebrow, Rita Ora, and says "Back to mine?" And you go "Sure. Where's that?" And she says "Oval," and you go: thank you for your time, Rita Ora, but I'm going to go McDonalds for some Chicken Selects before I get a night bus with them instead. It's just not worth it;
What is there to do locally? Have your entire life taken over every three weeks during summer by Every Single Dad In The World, on day-release from their marriage, drunk on Fosters and singing ancient cricket songs and flapping little bits of cardboard that say "4" on them through the air. Literally nothing else;
Alright, how much are they asking? £1,101 per calendar month. Yes: £1,101. The estate agent begging this around really could not round down that pound, there. They really went with £1,101.

Listen, no judgment on your life – this is a judgment-free zone, my people! Kink away until your dirty little heart's content! – but nobody has ever watched me shit and I have never watched another person shit. For pleasure. I'm sure my parents watched me shit a few times when I was a kid, just to make sure I was doing it right. Soft guidance. Like glancing under a train. "Yep, that's all fine," I imagine every parent has said, at one point, while watching their child shit. "I will never check you are doing this right or wrong for the rest of your life. I'm going to really let you take the lead on this one, little buddy. You have my trust." But other than that – other than the last time my parents watched me shit, which I cannot recall, so I'm assuming it's a fair while ago – nobody has watched me shit, ever.

I am saying if you want to watch people shit or you want to have people watch you shit, and this is a boner thing for you, then I am OK with that, as long as I do not have to be one of the people involved.

The thing – I have always supposed, with watching people shit – is the issue of consent. If I am going to watch someone shit, I'm going to take time and care about it. I'm going to set the mood. Light some candles. I'm going to knock softly on the bathroom door. And then, once I'm in there, I'm going to pop into an appreciative crouch, and I'm going to watch that thing happen, and enjoy it in whatever way I can. I do not want to watch the shit happen from my bed, where I'm trying to read Glamour. Like: it's Saturday, 11AM. I've got a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich on the go. And:

(Photo via Rightmove)

This is your view while you do

I have demonstrated exactly how this is bad with photographs of your two favourite celebrities, for scale and for reference. In the situation below, popular Toronto-born rapper Drake has entered into a serious relationship with TOWIE's Gemma Collins, and they are staying in Oval for a year to save money while they get their deposit together (Gemma's mum has also vowed to "help them out", although quite what that means yet is unclear). And it was all going well, until three hours into their first day at the house, and:

Imagine what Gemma Collins is saying, in the above photo. "No, Drake!" or something. "Please, hunni!" This is like one of those romantic trips you plan, to Amsterdam or something, but when you book it the whole website is in Dutch or whatever, and you get a room for two but for some reason the hotel deigns it romantic to have glass walls between the bed area and the bathroom area, so you are stuck with this weird reality, where essentially you are left lying on the bed watching bizarre Dutch daytime TV while your partner thoroughly cleans their body maybe four, five feet away from you… only you live there now. And also they watch you sleep while they pee.

This is the rest of the flat, in its entirety

I want to be clear here: I have looked at the floor plans, and the only possible place to shit and/or piss in this flat is while facing the bed, in the illustrated toilet. There are no other options. This room is billed as an en-suite, but it isn't, really, is it. That is the only option. £1,101 a month.

Do I have to say this is bad? Alright, I'll say it: this is bad. For £1,101 per calendar month I want privacy when I shit, piss and vomit. Just a weird quirk I have. Call me quirky. Just a weird quirk. But this is what keeps happening in London, and we've seen it before: basic housing necessities tagged on as an afterthought, with whoever's left living there – in Oval, remember! – left dealing forever with the reality of it. If a developer built a flat entirely and only remembered maybe half a day before completion that it didn't have a toilet in it – so, oh yeah, let's put it here – that raises the question: how long, then, before London rental opportunities are reduced to simple, unadorned rooms, no toilet no sink, no hob no window, just a little white box with a bed in it, in Oval, with Gemma Collins spread over the top of it, asking if you can light a match or something if you're going to use the potty again, fucking hell Drake, we're not going to that Turkish place again. And my prediction is: three to eight months.

@joelgolby

More from this series:

Have You Ever Stayed In A Horsebox Before? No? Well Now's Your Chance!

The 'What Could You Get In Hackney For £36,000' Special!

A 'Luxury' Apartment Filled with Shit Coffee Tables For You to Try and Afford


Memories from the Early Days of Rave

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(Top photo: Moss Side Carnival, 1989. All photos by Matt Smith)

On May Day in 1994, Mattko (AKA Matthew Smith) and his friends drove 10k of sound system from Bristol to London to play in Trafalgar Square as part of a mass demonstration against the Criminal Justice Act. The impending legislation was designed, in part, to quash the increasingly uncontrollable rave scene which had seduced half the nation's youth.

"It was a life changing moment," says Mattko. "It illustrated the power of dance music to unite and create community."

This May Day, Mattko will release Exist to Resist, a book of photographs and essays documenting the parties and protests which took place between 1989 and 1997. It's a scene he lived and breathed. "My intention was to bear witness to this culture and to provide a personal truth to counter mass media and political representation," he says. "Skint and mostly on the dole, I travelled the country during these times doing exactly that."

Since launching this month, Mattko's Kickstarter has raised more than £13,000, so the book will happen. Here's what its creator had to say.

The Criminal Justice Act protest in 1994

VICE: It's hard to imagine a time when there weren't cameras everywhere, but you point out that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was much more unusual.
Mattko: The scene had existed for quite a few years before I discovered it, and during those years it had consistently been persecuted by authority and the media. Cameras, especially 35mm cameras, were generally distrusted, as were people using them. You could either be press or undercover.

Do you have key memories from the free party scene that really capture what it was like?
We got invited to do a party in Wales once. When we got there the venue was completely unsuitable; it was way too close to houses and had no parking. So some local lads told us about another party in some woods not far away in the Black Mountains and suggested we go and hook up with them. One of them got in the truck and played navigator for us. During the journey we just seemed to pick up more and more people until there was a massive convoy behind. I remember thinking, 'I hope we don't attract undue attention' as we snaked our way down dual carriageways across the Welsh countryside at 50mph.

Finally, in the middle of the night, we spied lights through the trees in a forest. There was a track and, at the end, what we thought was the entrance to the party. I pulled up at the gate and a bloke ran up to the window shouting and gesticulating wildly, so I turned off the engine, gave him a big smile and said, "Hello, we've come to join the party." He was totally red in the face and furiously shouting "What are you doing? You can't park there! What the fuck are you up to?" It turned out that the event was the first Big Chill that we'd accidentally gatecrashed. It took at least another hour to back everyone out of that lane, and we ended up on the side of Hay Bluff, which was just up the road, partying for the next two days.

A 1995 festival in Somerset

How would you describe the link between partying and political resistance?
Partying only became overtly political when it was criminalised. The government made it that way by creating legislation to outlaw it. In a way it made the culture all the more attractive. In order to rebel, there has to be something to rebel against. Making such a positive experience, that so many people had shared, into a criminal activity was never going to be a legislative decision that promoted a feeling of inclusion in the general population, especially when that legislation granted the industries of policing and government the right to intrude into the lives of ordinary people in ways they had never had before.

Is getting off your head an act of resistance?
Thinking and feeling independently – and acting on those thoughts and beliefs to stand up for something that's worthwhile – is resistance. There's no act of resistance in hoovering so much K up your schnozz that you can't talk, dance or communicate.

Notting Hill Carnival, 1989

To what extent did sound system culture unite people from different social groups? Maybe that's the strength of partying as resistance?
People were united in the crime of having a good time. The legislation affected everyone from football fans to Morris dancers and, in doing so, the legislation impacted on the civil liberties of the entire UK population. Raves and festivals brought people from different races and different style subcultures together in the same way that the great Afro-Caribbean carnivals of the time brought people together in music and celebration. In terms of public protest, having large mobile sound systems present was a revelation, because it meant everyone had a focus on the entertainment, which made protest a lot more fun in the process.

People are still having parties and mass public protest is hugely visible again. Do you see parallels and, with the benefit of three decades worth of experience, in what direction would you like to see things go?
The modern festival industry is one of the saving graces of modern life in this country. I heard on the radio the other day that 5 percent of the population registered for Glastonbury tickets this year. Five percent! That's a huge number of people. And huge numbers of people can have a direct effect on democracy and create a will for political change. The people of this country can change its political direction through their cultural choices. Culture is far more powerful that any political management consultancy. That's one of the reasons the government has sought to enclose and control it. In my short lifetime, traditional notions of right, left and centre politics have become redundant. A smokescreen used to divide, rule and control. We need to re-evaluate the nature of our democracy and leadership structures and come up with something new that's actually fit for purpose. But you can say all this in just three words: exist to resist.

Mattko's Kickstarter is here. There are still a number of books available at lower prices and music downloads for supporters. More funding means a show and film will happen, too. Join Mattko's Thunderclap here.

This Government Agency Wants to Prevent Another Obamacare Web Meltdown

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

In 2014, the Obama administration announced that tech startups would work more closely with the government. A little bit of Silicon Valley was entering the bureaucracy of Washington, DC, and the goal of tech workers was to make sure that digital disasters like Healthcare.gov, the glitchy Obamacare website, would be a thing of the past.

One of these companies, 18F, operates like its own business within the government. Other government agencies are its clients, and they pay 18F to streamline their notoriously clunky websites—making obscure information and open-sourced data more accessible for the everyday citizen. Since its launch, the nearly 200-person group of designers, developers, and researchers has taken on projects like revamping the Federal Election Commission website and data banks, or designing college scorecards for the Department of Education.

Hillary Hartley, deputy executive director and co-founder of 18F, was tapped to help shape and launch the company after scoring the prestigious Presidential Innovation Fellowship. Here, the bicoastal leader explains the importance of digital strategy in government and how 18F will fare as Donald Trump starts his presidency.

Read more on Motherboard

An Interview with Bob Mortimer, the Serious Surrealist

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(Photos: Chris Bethell)

"This is the tale of Murray Sterling…" sings Bob Mortimer in a faux-Scottish accent that's one part Mel Gibson in Braveheart and three parts Groundskeeper Willie. "His 18th birthday was fast approaching, and he knew he must escape the clutches of the island before that date, or he'd be forced to spend the rest of his adult life in the caves 'neath the island, digging for precious stones to adorn the Laird's numerous ceremonial capes and bongos."

I'm listening to Athletico Mince, a podcast co-created and co-hosted by Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson, which from episode one (it's now on episode 38) derailed immediately from its intended topic of football, and has since become a bizarre and engrossing world of idle chat, improvised tales and sketches that often prolapse mid-joke. In this odd world, the former England manager Steve McLaren operates as a carpet salesman, drives a clown car and owns a sensitive yellow snake called Casper who vomits everywhere. In another story, Michael Owen tries to open a restaurant called ISIS. At the end of each episode, Mortimer finishes by singing a "Scottish song" about life on a strange and magical island that does not seem dissimilar from The Wicker Man's Summerisle. The show has already amassed 4.4 million listens and counting.

This is not strange territory for Mortimer – or, at least, strange territory is where he feels most at home. To some extent, he and his life-long writing partner Vic Reeves kickstarted a golden age of British television comedy, which started with the birth of their flagship show, Big Night Out, in 1990 and ended shortly after Ricky Gervais' The Office. They were nonsensical, irreverent and intensely northern at all times. Their surreal sketches ranged from turning the pop star Morrissey into a monkey who reviewed electrical appliances, to making Masterchef's Lloyd Grossman a floating Frankenstein with cutlery for fingers.

Their quiz show Shooting Stars, which at its peak pulled in over six million viewers a week, once blessed a mainstream television audience with the sight of a confused Larry Hagman from Dallas being presented a "Fartridge" (it's half fart, half partridge). If other comedians of their generation held up a mirror to society, then Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves held up a watercolour painting of Sylvester Stallone staring at a potato.

While Vic Reeves has gone on to present documentaries, stage art exhibitions and written books, Mortimer remains something of an enigma. Apart from a few panel show appearances and some writing work, he hasn't really sought solo fame. Even getting this interview took six months of him wondering why the hell anyone would want to speak only to him. Not many people know much about his life, and yet, 30 years since he first graced our screens, his creativity is still quietly pumping like an understated garden fountain.

It's a sunny September morning when I first meet him at his manager's office in Fitzrovia, London. Bob is late, and when he arrives he does so in apologetic fashion. He's been trying to buy football tickets for the next Middlesbrough away game. There's a cheeky boyish look in his eye, even at 57 years old, like he's come from putting cling film over a toilet or pulling someone's trousers down. He shakes my hand with the hand not holding a Costa coffee and sits down. He whips out a vape, takes a long, deep inhale, and begins talking.

"That's the thing, you see," he says, "we were never good enough to write proper punchlines. Non sequiturs and that, we can write all fucking day. But bringing things to a conclusion is not easy." Non sequiturs flow out of Bob Mortimer like tea bags from a courthouse. It's very easy to write them. It's completely impossible to write them funny. Here's a tweet he posted last August, which has over 1,000 likes: "Just back from 2k run... top hat fell off twice but was easily recovered using my dancing cane. #sweetcorn."

You will never know why it's funny; you cannot deconstruct it or imitate it, and it often does not make sense, but deep down you know that it is, somehow, very and extremely funny. And you can see why – in this current age of anger, despair and the proliferation of politics and seriousness through almost every realm of life – comedy with an otherworldly nonsense to it would remain popular.

Bob was born the youngest of four in Acklam, a suburb of the northern industrial town of Middlesborough. His father was a biscuit salesman who died in a car crash when Mortimer was very young, and they were all brought up by their mother, Eunice. Middlesborough in the early 70s was a proper no-bullshit northern town. The type you'd expect to see depicted in a Ken Loach film or an Alan Sillitoe novel; the type southerners still think all northern towns are like, even though most now have a Slug & Lettuce and a European capital of culture bid.

"The more cynical commentators on our careers would say that the northern accent has been the basis of our success," says Bob. "There's a certain authenticity to the voice – which isn't to my credit; I was just born there. Whenever I go back to Middlesbrough now, it always hits me immediately how fucking obsessed people are at making you laugh up there. Obsessed so much it can get on your tits. I think there is something in that, in being from the north. It's a real currency. I think the people in the north are genuinely lovely. I know amongst them there are Brexiters and twats and violent people, but in a very general way, I think they are lovely. You can take the piss out of a Geordie and he's absolutely fine with it."

After graduating from the University of Sussex with a law degree, he had no idea what his next step might be. Leaving the comfort of the north for three years had exposed him to challenges he hadn't quite expected. He suffered bouts of depression and began to suffer from crippling social anxiety. "It was just, like… fucking awful," he says. "It's like you're walking in a cloud, and life is just shit. I came back from university, and shyness had basically fucked my life. I'd realised I don't work out there in the real world."

Mortimer moved back home to Middlesborough and got a job as a bin man. On his first day, he found himself working his local neighbourhood with a man he describes as "the hardest man in Middlesborough, a fucking beast he was, hell of a size! I remember once a dog bit him under a gate when we were getting the bins. He grabbed the dog, kicked seven shades of shit out of it, put it in the bin and turned it upside down on the front step. I have no idea whether that dog was alive or dead."

As he emptied the bins, Mortimer would need to scream out the name of the truck driver, Archie, to come get the bags he'd collected. "You had to fucking do it," he explains. "You had to, in public, scream 'ARCHIE!' There was a rhythm to it. The first time, I remember sweating, thinking: it's gonna be me next that needs to shout 'Archie'. But you've got to do it. And so I finally screamed it… 'ARCHIE!' And it was fine. My world didn't crumble down, my life didn't fall apart, nobody had a go at me; it was just incidental. That was so liberating for me. From that moment on, I could shout 'Archie!' all over Middlesborough."

Eventually, Mortimer found his way to London, where he spent nine years working as – what he calls – a "shit solicitor" for Southwark council. One night, a friend took him out for a pint to a pub that was then The Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross. In a tiny room upstairs, a drunk Mortimer found Jim Moir (an art student at the time, and known by his comic name Vic Reeves) performing something. He was wearing a Bryan Ferry mask and tap dancing with planks attached to his feet, in front of an audience of only four or five people, all of whom he knew personally. Bob was in awe: "I'd never seen anything like it."

Mortimer recalls one night when Reeves slowly ate a yoghurt onstage and kept saying "Mmm, lovely yoghurt" until a heckler finally told them to fuck off.

He went back the following week. Each night, Reeves would let anyone volunteer to stand up and do something during the performance. One night, he asked Bob to come up at the end of a joke and present him with a dinner table-sized cheque for £8 million for "ill kids". At the age of 31, this was Mortimer's first ever experience of comedy performance. Within days they were writing together.

I say writing; there was little writing involved. Their work relied on ad-libbing. Each week they performed up to two-and-a-half hours of comedy together on a Thursday night in the pub, most of which was written between the hours of 5 to 7PM that day. Their comedy was abstract in form. It barely had any structure and never really had punchlines. Notes were bare and would consist of things like "Man with stick, wolf" – the rest happened in the moment. Sketches would begin, peak and then simply drift off and stop. In one sketch, the pair would wear Sean Connery and Jimmy Hill masks and toss talcum powder around to a soundtrack of trad jazz. But something about it worked. Mortimer recalls one night when Reeves slowly ate a yoghurt onstage and kept saying, "Mmm, lovely yoghurt" until a heckler finally told them to fuck off.

Anyone who witnessed it immediately brought more friends the next week. Their audience doubled and then tripled. Upstairs in the pub became downstairs in the pub, and downstairs in the pub became a nearby theatre. Jonathan Ross, Jools Holland, Paul Whitehouse, BBC commissioner Alan Yentob and Channel 4 chief executive Michael Grade became regular punters. Unbeknownst to Reeves and Mortimer, they were auditioning for their future. Within 16 live shows, Vic and Bob were commissioned for national television.

Their reign over TV is now part of British comic legend. Where most comedians would create one or two cult classics in their lifetime, Reeves and Mortimer created a whole library of them: The Weekenders; Catterick; The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer; Bang, Bang, It's Reeves and Mortimer; Shooting Stars; Monkey Trousers; and House of Fools all became some of the weirdest programmes each broadcaster would ever air. Much like Mortimer still does on Athletico Mince, their characters and comedy were completely detached from reality, except for the occasional celebrity they chose to poke. Reality bored them. "We were just fucking kids desperately trying to cling onto our childhood," laughs Mortimer. They'd rather write about a world where everyone is on skis and people have "massive fucking ears"; where all Geordies wear bras and get aggressive when you point it out.

"I've wanted that world since I was six years old," he explains, smiling at a bit of wall just above my actual eye line. "I mean, imagine if there was at least a little comfortable place you could go to now and then, where everyone is sat around in big pointy shoes, talking in high pitched voices and saying, 'How are you today? Lovely to see you, have a cup of tea.' It would just be a lovely place to go to."

In 1998, the pair were given a primetime slot on BBC1 on a Saturday evening; the type of slot that now goes to Ant and Dec or The X Factor. The millions of families who tuned in for the first episode witnessed this scene: a boy of around 15 years old, in a Reebok tracksuit and boxing gloves, punching a garden shed. The camera pans and a studio audience cheers, supporting him frantically. Reeves and Mortimer, in ill-fitting suits, leap between the punches of the boy and the sways of the shed, shouting that he must punch the shed until it was below the height of an average Alsatian. The boy punches and kicks and hooks and haymakers the shed, and it sways and begins to fall apart. Then the camera pans to a seated jury made up of male horse jockeys, who cast a quick vote on whether or not the challenge was successfully completed.

"We had millions watching a young lad box a shed… I hope you can understand our sense of how amazing that was," smiles Bob. The show was called Families at War and it was not renewed for a second season, but, in a way, it remains a visionary gameshow comedy: art (of sorts) without any compromise.

I ask Bob what his life would be like if he hadn't met Jim Moir that night in New Cross. "I wonder that occasionally, when I'm on a bus or something. I sit and think, 'Fuck, if I hadn't have gone to that club. Fuck…' Because Jim's a genius. A lot of comedians aren't. They are incredibly clever, incredibly hard working, really gifted or incredible mimics, incredible wordsmiths, but Jim is a fucking genius. Not being boastful, but I've met loads of people in this industry and occasionally you meet a genius, and he is a genius. It is extraordinary, the content in his head."

In October of 2015, just months before he and Reeves were to go on their anniversary tour together, Mortimer lay still but conscious on a hospital bed in intensive care and strongly considered the possibility that he was about to die. He'd just come out of a triple heart bypass, and was recovering badly. The doctors had deflated a lung to access his heart during the operation, and the subsequent re-inflation had loosened 43 years worth of tar from smoking. That tar was now slowly oozing out of his mouth as an endless and gelatinous black slug, blocking the passage of air as it slithered and dripped down his chin. Helpless, he fixed his gaze on a tiny television at the other end of the hospital ward, where Middlesborough were in a penalty shootout with a superior Manchester United team, to decide who would progress to the next round of the English League Cup. 'I've got to fucking hang on,' he thought, '… to see if Grant Leadbitter scores this penalty.'

Thankfully he recovered, and the tour was resumed later in the year. When I ask if his near-death experience had any profound effects on him – whether it made him think more seriously about life or his legacy as a comedian – he quickly shakes his head. What made him upset wasn't the fact life was rapidly evacuating him like sand through a sieve. What made him sad were the things he ignored on a daily basis: his loyal egg cup, stood proudly on the shelf; the tea towel that hangs resolutely from his oven. "These were the things that really mattered to me, that I really had a connection with," he tells me. "You know? Good honest connections." When his wife was out, he would whisper "I'm really going to miss you" gently to the tea towel.

"For one minute," Bob says, "I couldn't give a flying fuck about life or work or legacy or any of that…" His face straightens, he looks me right in the eye and, for just a second, his jocular demeanour looks like it might slip for the first time in our two-hour conversation to reveal a deeply serious Bob Mortimer. It's uncomfortable, like seeing your dad get upset for the first time. But then it's over.

"Although, I do see the tea towel now," he says, cracking a school-boy smile which looks like the dam holding back full-on laughter, "and I'm beginning to ignore it again."

@joe_zadeh / @CBethell_photo

The Definitive Analysis of ‘The Handshake’ Between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau

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Donald Trump stands ominously at the door of the White House, flanked by some roided out Marines. He extends his hand as Justin Trudeau opens the car door.

Imagine the scene as you open that door. Outside your car is Donald fucking Trump and he wants to shake your hand.

Of course you know this is no ordinary handshake. The Trump handshake is the opening salvo of a silent, bloodless war. It is free-form arm wrestling. It is an attempt to demonstrate The Donald's hyperpotence over and against all the effeminate detritus of the world's elite politicians. All these soft men from soft countries with their soft hands and their soft feelings and their soft policies on radical Islam.

Donald Trump is a real man. He's a hard man with hard bodied women and a hardnosed drive for success. The Donald crushes the hands of lesser men in his extremely powerful and definitely not-small mitts. He pulls them into his orbit like a magnificent star, pulling their arm out of their sockets, breathing an ancient silent message down their necks: I am the boss. I am your boss. You will bend to me as all men must bend to me, one of the giants whose blood alone turns the wheel of history to crush lesser creatures beneath us.

This is a handshake buried under the weight of its own meaninglessness, a black hole of metacommentary in a world where sense sloshes chaotically across a flat surface of signifiers unmoored from any attachment to truth or reason or even an orderly presentation of images. Donald Trump's handshake is a signed statement on the failure of language here at the end of the world.

Justin Trudeau is prepared for this. He has spent hours of watching videos of foreign dignitaries having their knucks busted by Diamond Donnie. He and a crack team of advisors have been studying them and analyzing every move. He has been overclocking it at the gym to get his forearms swole. Anytime he is off camera he is clenching and unclenching a gripmaster. He is endlessly clenching and unclenching his anus to build focus. Shaking hands with Donald Trump is really a contest of wills and Justin Trudeau will not fail. He is an aristocrat and he was bred by his father in all the fine arts of modern statecraft like clasping claws with thugs. Donald Trump is a trumped up peasant and Justin Trudeau is the heir and defender of the North American dream. This was the only thing discussed in that motorcade to the White House. Forget softwood lumber and dairy supply management and the attempt to leverage Ivanka for a roundtable on women in the workplace that sounds like a summit they would have held back in the silent era of film.

The whole trip was all handshake game plan. Every possible move, every possible contingency, from proper foot stance to recognizing Trump's sloppy attempts at any one of 32 possible Masonic hand ciphers.

The car door opens. This is it. It's go time. Trudeau steps out of the car and glides into Trump's outstretched hand. He quickly braces himself on the president's shoulder, establishing an indomitable centre of gravity. He is going fucking Super Saiyan on this handshake. But Trump will not be deterred. He ratchets up the pressure and tries to pull this punk kid in. There is a tug of war. Trudeau is not moving. His hand is too strong. Their forearms are jerking around with electrical power and neither of them were ready for this to happen.

He can barely believe it himself and he has to look down at his own hands to make sure that this is really happening that, yes, he is not broken. He raises his head again to meet Trump's gaze with blazing eyes that scream SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS but also AINSI TOUJOURS AUX TYRANS because bilingualism. Utterly destroyed but wanting to be cool about it, Trump gestures at the cameras before leading Justin into his den of lies. He cannot hide the look of absolute mystification on his face.

Exactly how we thought it would go down. Photo via REX/Shutterstock

Inside the Oval Office, Trudeau basks in his own self-satisfied glow. Trump, hunched and scowling, flits his eyes across the room. He refuses to be cucked by this Disney prince in his own goddamned house. "I think they might want a handshake," he leers at Trudeau. This will be the one for the sizzle reel. He's going to break this French Fuck's hand.

Trudeau is ready. He's high on the heady hormonal cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins that only comes when you absolutely slay your #brand in the full glare of an international media spectacle. This is the most powerful he has ever felt in his life. It takes all of his power not to scream and rip his shirt off and fuck something. But he clenches his anus and comes back to reality. Focus. Focus.

"Sure," he fires back and goes in for the kill. The grasp is firm. There are a few more tugs but neither man yields. Trump can't believe it and goes back to grimly slumping forward. Trudeau puts on another shit-eating grin.

In telepathic union, both men sigh. Christ, what an asshole. This is going to be a long day.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

Love Is a Hoax

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In Robert Burton's lifework, "The Anatomy of Melancholy," the 17th century author details the many forms of melancholy and our futile attempts to cure it. Within his collection of life's human ailments and existential tonics, he details love's many symptoms: "But the symptoms of the mind of lovers are almost infinite, and so diverse that no art can comprehend them; though they be merry sometimes, and rapt beyond themselves for joy, yet most part, love is a plague, a torture, an hell, a bitter-sweet passion at last..."

Love, both an agent of melancholy and its long-practiced treatment, is still studied as such a sickness; some psychologists look at love as a temporary insanity, largely driven by a complex cocktail of hormones, neurobiological processes, and social conditioning.

Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, researches romantic love and its impact on the brain. According to her work, the neurobiological effects of being in love are not dissimilar to the experience of being on cocaine. "It can be hard to sleep, it can be hard to eat. You're very focused, you're very motivated," she previously told Broadly. Fisher conducted brain-imaging studies on hundreds of people in various stages of romantic entanglement and found that both love and cocaine activate a dopamine production system in the brain's ventral tegmental area (VTA), which is strongly tied to addiction. "With cocaine, it wears off after a few hours," Fisher said. "With love, it can last weeks, months, years."

Read more on Broadly

A Private Prison CEO Is Actually Testifying About a Brutal Assault in His Facility

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In May 2012, an Aryan gang jumped eight inmates in an Idaho private prison, stabbing and slashing them with long metal shanks. One man was stabbed 18 times in the head, face, and hands.

Now, after more than four years of litigation, the victims of the attack are hoping to get justice—not against the gang that attacked them, but by suing the private company that ran their prison.

In a trial starting Monday, the inmates are arguing that CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America), one of the largest private prison companies in the country, cut staff to dangerously low levels in order to maximize their profits. Their prison, the Idaho Correctional Center, was so understaffed at the time of the attack, the inmates say, that guards essentially let violent gangs take over sections of the facility. Prison officials would even ask gang leaders' permission before moving inmates between cells, they allege.

The vast majority of lawsuits against private prison companies are dismissed or settled behind closed doors, so the Idaho trial offers a rare window into the workings of the typically opaque private prison industry—as well as what critics say are the fundamental flaws in for-profit corrections. And it's going to trial just as advocates fear President Trump is launching deportations that would likely require several new private detention centers run by companies like CoreCivic.

"Lawsuits going to trial are one of the few ways to get transparency in this industry," said Alex Friedmann, associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center, a prisoners' advocacy group. "This litigation is just a small way for the public to get a glimpse of the problems and deficiencies of private prisons."

Most surprisingly, the judge in the trial has ordered CoreCivic's CEO, Damon Hininger, to fly up to Boise and testify during the trial. It's very unusual for a private prison CEO to have to testify in open court about violence in his own prison, Friedmann noted.

The Idaho Correctional Center, which opened in 2000 as the first private prison in Idaho, was embroiled in controversy for years over a lack of adequate staffing. In 2013, the Associated Press first reported a "ghost worker" scheme at the prison involving employees falsifying staffing logs, making it appear like more guards were on duty than actually were. Idaho Governor C. L. "Butch" Otter ordered state officials to take over the prison in 2014, ending CoreCivic's $29 million annual contract. The company eventually paid the state a $1 million settlement over understaffing issues.

Anthony Shallat, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in the upcoming lawsuit, said he would argue in court that the understaffing was simply the result of the company's attempts to squeeze a profit out of the prison.

"The warden was under constant pressure to try to meet his budget, and given direction from upper management that the primary levers to manipulate the ICC budget was salary and wages," Shallat told VICE.

The plaintiffs are arguing that the chronic understaffing came to a violent climax on May 5, 2012, when a gang called the Aryan Knights attacked the group of eight inmates, several of whom had been refusing to join the gang. (Only six of the victims are now plaintiffs in the trial; the other two had their claims dismissed by the judge because they failed to complete the prison's grievance procedure.) Security camera videos obtained by the plaintiffs' attorneys show the gang members jump out from a janitor's closet that should have been locked. While two corrections officers responded quickly, they were outnumbered and unable to stop the assault on their own, Shallat said.

Now, all of the victims are facing physical or psychological problems, including forms of PTSD, their attorneys say. Three of the plaintiffs are still being held in other prisons, while three are free. The six are expected to testify about their experiences.

During the trial, they'll be attempting to draw a causal line between CoreCivic's drive to boost profits and the violent attack. A key point will be evidence that managers at the prison got bonuses for cutting staffing costs—evidence that they say strikes at the core of whether corrections should be for-profit at all.

CoreCivic's lawyers fought the plaintiffs' efforts to call Hininger to testify, arguing in court documents that he didn't have anything to do with the Idaho attack. A judge rejected those arguments earlier this month and ordered the CEO to appear. Hininger is now expected to testify this Thursday or Friday, and will likely be asked about the company's financial position and statements he made during investor conference calls.

"We respect the judge's decision and Mr. Hininger looks forward to presenting his testimony," CoreCivic spokesperson Jonathan Burns said in an email. "The safety and security of our facilities is a top priority. The Idaho Correctional Center was in compliance with the staffing pattern contractually approved by the Idaho Department of Correction during the period of time in question."

The company has also argued in court documents that the attack wasn't caused by understaffing but by low-level officers failing to follow procedures.

The trial is expected to take about a week and a half. If the jury finds in the plaintiffs' favor, they could award them damages reaching up to the millions of dollars.

"It's a miracle that they survived, that they're able to walk and talk and speak about it today," Shallat said. "They're eager for justice, and they want their case to be heard at trial."

The trial comes at a big moment for the private prison industry as a whole. Under President Obama, the federal Department of Justice announced it would phase out all of its private prison contracts, putting companies like CoreCivic in jeopardy of big losses.

But that all changed on election day. Trump has lauded the privatization of prisons, and some estimates suggest his stated intentions of deporting two to three million undocumented immigrants could lead to the construction of over 100,000 new beds in privately run detention centers. Stocks for the CoreCivic surged on the day after the election, and have continued to increase since.

CoreCivic and another company, the GEO Group, command the majority of the market for both private prisons and detention centers. So if you want to know what could happen in the detention centers where the immigrants Trump wants to deport will be held, it might be a good idea to pay attention to the trial in Idaho.

"This is one way they generate profit, through reducing payroll," Friedmann said. "Even if that makes the facilities less safe."

Follow Casey Tolan on Twitter.

LIVE: Watch Trump and Justin Trudeau's Joint White House Press Conference

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On Monday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau met with Donald Trump at the White House and tried to start off on the right foot with the new US president, CNN reports.

The president has already soured relations with Australia and Mexico after spats over the phone and on social media, but Trudeau—whose stance on refugees and trade stand in stark contrast to Trump—is under pressure to stay on good terms with the president since Trump's threat to renegotiate NAFTA could potentially hurt Canada's economy.

According to the Associated Press, the two reportedly discussed trade, jobs, and women in the workforce. Earlier Monday afternoon, Trump and Trudeau held a roundtable discussion with some of the countries' top female business executives to lay the groundwork for a new task force called the United States Canada Council for the Advancement of Women Business Leaders-Female Entrepreneurs. Trump's daughter Ivanka—who recently had her merchandise pulled from Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and TJ Maxx—was reportedly in charge of recruiting the business leaders for the discussion.

At around 2 PM, the North American leaders will hold a joint press conference at the White House and answer questions from reporters regarding their meetings. Let's just hope they both make it through the day without a cringeworthy handshake, like the one Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe had to suffer last week.

Watch the joint press conference at 2 PM via the livestream below.


Hmm, Could Australia's Recent Apocalyptic Weather Be a Sign of Climate Change?

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How about that weather, hey? Summer has been a doozy so far. In Western Australia, towns have been evacuated and roads closed due to flash flooding—a result of the second wettest February in 25 years. Meanwhile, the eastern states have succumbed to a heat wave that has seen firefighters struggle to contain scores bushfires in New South Wales. In recent days, the forecast has been so dire the Bureau of Meteorology's temperature maps looked apocalyptic—much of the country rendered black because bright red wasn't enough for how hot it was.

Sure, Australian summers tend to be hot. But these recent weather events are at the extreme of both ends of the spectrum. Within the same week, Australians were evacuated from their homes to escape both flooding and bushfire. If only scientists could've predicted this kind of extreme weather would happen this summer. Oh wait, they did. They totally did.

On February 8, the Australian Climate Commission released a report titled Cranking Up The Intensity: Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events. It predicted that extreme heat would increase across the entire continent, with significant increases in the length, intensity and frequency of heat waves in many regions. It also predicted that extreme rainfall events would increase across most of Australia. Southern and eastern Australia, it reads, "are projected to experience harsher fire weather."

How come? You know the answer to this already. The report finds that climate change is influencing extreme weather across Australia. It notes that while the links between climate change and bush fires and heat waves have also been well-established, the evidence linking climate change to storms and heavy rainfall is also growing.

The report sure seems relevant in light of the weather over the past couple of weeks. One of its authors, climate scientist Dr Will Steffen, agrees. Speaking to VICE this morning, he didn't mince words.

"Yes, the recent weather in Australia is a symptom of climate change," Steffen said. "We can see this best by comparing recent extreme weather events to those 50 or more years ago. Recent extreme events have become more frequent and more intense, and this is a result of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels."

The summer of 2017 will no doubt make it into future Climate Commission reports, because weather data is of great assistance to scientists painstakingly trying to communicate the obvious link between climate change and worsening weather conditions.

Thanks to weather data, Steffen said, in some cases we can now be precise in quantifying the influence of climate change. "For example, Australia's record hot year of 2013 was virtually impossible without climate change. And the extensive and severe bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef last year was made 175 times more likely because of climate change."

The report warns that across Australia, extreme weather events are projected to worsen as the climate warms further, and the only way to curb these effects is to dramatically decrease the burning of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Australian government is going to do address this issue anytime soon. In fact, it was revealed in federal parliament this morning that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull deliberately misled the public with regards to the role of wind turbines in the South Australian power blackout last year. Turns out, the government happily blamed the blackouts on wind power, despite knowing the entire time that they were not.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the weather around the country will be comparatively bearable this week. But in the long term, you should probably brace yourself for more discomfort.

Follow Kat on Twitter

Trump Talked About National Security Issues in a Crowded Golf Resort

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Donald Trump decided to handle sensitive national security issues right at the dinner table at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Saturday, surrounded by paying private members, CNN reports.

Trump and Melania were eating dinner with Japanese prime minster Shinzō Abeand his wife, Akie, when the president reportedly took a phone call on a mobile device about the North Korea missile test as club-goers looked on—simultaneously displaying terrible restaurant manners and brutally lax national security conduct.

CNN reports that the call, which focused on North Korea's allegedly successful launch of a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, came in while Trump and Abe were about to start their salad course. The dinner then "quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners," who ended up snapping a few photos of the whole thing.

The idea that the president would discuss sensitive national security matters in a semi-public space is mind-bendingly reckless, and the Washington Post points out that the sloppiness didn't end there. After the call, aides brought documents and phones over to Trump and Abe, as Melania and Akie continued to speak through a translator and waiters delivered the main course. Because the dining area was dimly lit, the aides reportedly "used the camera lights on their phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents." It's not clear that all the phones were secure, which makes them vulnerable to a potential hack.

Trump has already been sloppy with security practices, but the Mar-a-Lago session is up there as one of the worst. The United Nations Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the North Korea missile test, and let's hope Trump doesn't accidentally pocket-dial anyone in the midst of it or whatever.

Bob Odenkirk’s New Film ‘Girlfriends Day’ is the Perfect Valentine’s Day Antidote

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When was the last time you bought a greeting card? Was it a last-minute rush to hide the fact that you forgot your mom's birthday again? An overpriced, fancy paper stock, "indie greeting card" to show your friends that you have good taste while simultaneously disguising that you were too broke to get a gift to go with it? They may seem obsolete, a physical relic of Hallmark's past, but greeting cards continue to be a multi-billion dollar industry.  And a new movie starring Bob Odenkirk goes deep into the world of card hacks to paint a grim, murderous picture of life on the inside. A noir, hilarious take on card writers, romance and a journey to beat the ultimate writer's block, Girlfriends Day is the perfect antidote to the sugary cinema you'd otherwise be subjected to on Valentine's Day, when it premieres on Netflix.

I chatted with co-writer and star Odenkirk and director Michael Stephenson about the weird world of greeting writers, the freedom of streaming and overcoming perfection.

VICE: Why greeting cards? Do people even think about greeting cards anymore?
Bob Odenkirk: That little factoid at the beginning of the movie, about it being a three billion dollar industry, that's true.

I don't know why that surprises me so much.
Odenkirk: I know! Listen, I"ll tell you something, the script was originally written by Eric Hoffman and Phil Zlotorynski. Eric was a writer on Mr. Show and he gave me the script as we were wrapping up that show so this script is 18 years old. We rewrote it over the years because I always loved it, and returned to it because it always made me laugh. It was always a surprising thing, it had all these funny lines and scenarios in it. It never stopped being entertaining and it's as entertaining today as it was when I first saw that rough version of it.

My first thought is who gives greeting cards anymore? Well everybody does, I mean it's a huge industry. You'd think the internet or something would've killed it, but it's actually been growing for years. In the end we need these cards because you can't use an email to say "I love you," and people don't write letters anymore, so you need a card writer to say anything heavy.

It's also a quirky industry—I've never met anyone that knows or who writes cards. It's a great scenario for mystery because it's real and yet no one knows how it works. And it is a huge industry. The character Stacy Keach plays—somebody somewhere in the world owns a big mansion from writing greeting cards. There's probably like four or five guys and they know each other. You know Michael says there's actually greeting card awards, did you know that?

I did not know that!
Michael Stephenson: The Louie Awards!

Odenkirk: What's it called?

Stephenson: The Louies. They have their own greeting card association. For me it was fun because there are so many stories about writers but I had never ever once considered that there is somebody behind those words.

In the process of researching this world, did you meet any actual greeting card writers?Odenkirk: No, I leave that to VICE. Instead of sending somebody to Iraq next week, send someone deep into the bowels of the greeting card industry.

I mean that's actually a great idea. Or go to the awards show I'm sure crazy things happen there. In terms of the noir setting, had that always been the vibe you were going for?
Odenkirk: The script had always invoked the movie Chinatown, which if you know the movie there are parts of the script that are nearly parody, it's certainly homage anyway for that movie. All the tonal stuff was in the original draft. The character goes from a hapless guy who just has to write a romance card, and who you can't imagine having any feel for romance, he becomes obsessed with needing to find out who killed this guy and why, what's behind all this is what he becomes obsessed with.

Working with a company like Netflix, do you find you have more freedom?
Odenkirk: Absolutely. Netflix is an amazing outlet because there's no time constraints—our movie's 65 minutes because that's what works for us. We didn't need to make it longer. Our little film here has no genre it doesn't belong in any genre, it couldn't exist anywhere else and you want it to be in a place where ppl can find it in their own time in their own space. Maybe they find it on the day it premieres, which is Valentine's Day, or maybe somebody, two years from now, comes home and goes, "I've never seen that." I think that's how it's going to be most appreciated—when you discover it on your own time, so Netflix is a perfect fit.

Stephenson: Working with Netflix means working with somebody who has the stomach to take risks on weird, strange, small films, they don't have to do what everybody else is doing. It's one of the reasons why they're gaining [a bigger] audience is because people recognize that they are trying to offer something different than the same five movies that are in the multiplex every weekend.

It's fun to know you can go into a project like this and know that we're not beholden to box office, we're not beholden to advertisers, we're not beholden to length or any of these things. Instead, let's just make something fun and memorable. Like Bob said, I don't think this movie would have been made without Netflix, so I'm incredibly grateful for them.

Still via 'Girlfriends Day'

In terms of Ray's struggle with writer's block at the beginning, I'm curious about how you yourself deal with writer's block.
Odenkirk: I like David Carr's approach, which is that the solution to writer's block is to start typing. Writer's block is just the fear of not being perfect. You sit down to write an idea and think, "My first idea or first sentence isn't the best thing I've ever wrote yet, so I'm going to sit here until I've got the best thing ever. Full stop." To me, the core of that issue is you need to do the best work of your life every time you sit down [to write], and it's just not going to happen. You've got to relax that desire, and you have to write what comes [to you in the moment.] Y'know, you can set it aside and come back to it two days later, but start by writing stuff.

Now Ray—he has resentment. He's really just a guy who can't let go of the worst thing that ever happened to him, which is his wife leaving him, and we can imagine, justifiably so. He's a sour dude, and he had a hayday. In that first scene, you see that Ray was one of the best, and when you're one of the best for a year, or two, or three, that can make things go downhill, because, I mean, how much higher can you get? How can you sustain that? It comes down to letting go of that desire for perfection, because you were—according to your awards on the wall—perfect, once or twice, so now it becomes even harder to do work that isn't outstandly perfect.

Interestingly, the backstory of these characters and the mechanism of our plot is fairly well thought out. For instance, with Ray, we start with a scene where people are reminding us he was the greatest, and he's revelling in the fact that he used to be the greatest, yet that's exactly what's keeping him from writing anything. That will kill you. You gotta stop thinking about the good work you did at some point, start thinking about what rights in front of you, and what's still to come.

For sure. You also don't want to fall into the trap of replicating your great work, instead of challenging yourself to create new things.
Odenkirk: Right. Absolutely.

What about Valentine's Day—how do you guys feel about this sacred holiday?
Odenkirk: *laughs* You go to Church, right?

Every year on Valentine's Day.
Odenkirk: Of course! We need holidays, because we need the weights to come upon us [as a society] to evoke any sentiment. We want to hear, "I love you," as a national movement, and if you don't say that, you're an asshole. That's how we get men to say, "I love you."

That's dark, I don't know if it's true. I hope not.
Odenkirk: I don't think it is. I mean, Valentine's Day is great, I have no issue with it.

I love the cast in the film. It's amazing, the collaborative performances that you were able to get out of everyone, Michael. As a director, tell me what it's like to work with Bob and this cast.
Stephenson: Oh boy. Look, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine making a narrative about a failed greeting card writer that starred Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach, Amber Tamblyn. Y'know, it was fun casting for this movie because, as Bob and I went through casting different roles, we knew we needed to strike a balance to where we had people who understood comedy, some people who wouldn't dismiss it as just a joke. I will say that it's incredibly intimidating. I've looked up to Bob for years, and I did the dumb thing years ago where you, like, write down your goals, your dreams. My wife was like, Let's write down what we want in life! She wrote down all positive things like, "Let's get out of debt, let's buy a house," and I wrote down, I kid you not, "I want to work with Bob Odenkirk."

Odenkirk: *laughing*

Stephenson: Strangely, it evolved into this thing. When I look up to somebody like Bob, it's intimidating, because I'm like, Wow, I have to be perfect! Bob encouraged that idea about perfection—y'know, like, Hey, try something! If it doesn't work, who cares? We'll try something else. For a first time director, to have that sort of support and direction, that was incredibly freeing creatively, especially coming from somebody you looked up to for years. Everyday, I wanted to sit down with Bob and say, Why do you trust me with this thing? I shouldn't be here doing this thing with you! It's a dream really.

Odenkirk: I appreciate it, really, but what's great about Michael is that, on the page, this is a really silly script. If you played it like a normal comedy all the way through, you'd just run out of steam a quarter way through. I really believe this thing picks up its impact as it goes. By the time you get to Shelby and David as the two ex-racists, it's really hit its stride, and it just keeps getting stronger, and that's because we played it with utter seriousness. When we get to silly dialogue and scenarios, there's a lot of people who would push that too far to where it would break any strand of reality. Michael, he wanted that to be the reality, and he did it. He did it. It's got a strong sense of where it is and it's fixed to that. Do you agree?

I do agree actually. I think it's very funny, but it's got a poignancy, and a sense of drama that's really wonderful. I think you guys did a great job, so thank you for it.
Stephenson and Odenkirk: No, thank you!

Follow Amil on Twitter.

Sex, Drugs and Music Are all Related in Your Brain’s Chemical System: Researchers

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We all know that drugs and music have a close connection. Getting high has been both muse and lubricant for countless songwriters over the centuries, and will be for as long as people keep ingesting products that will alter your reality. They are so closely intertwined that HBO made a bad TV show about them. Throw in sex and you've got the hedonist's trifecta: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But how well do we understand that connection scientifically?

A little bit better now, actually, thanks to new research coming out of McGill University.

In a study published last week in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers found that the chemical system that mediates feelings of pleasure from sex, drugs and food also affects the brain's response to music.

These findings are built on top of previous research conducted at McGill and elsewhere that measured how music affected our brains using neuroimaging, but it's the first to demonstrate that opioids produced in the brain are related to feelings of musical pleasure.

The study was conducted in Daniel Levitin's Laboratory for Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise at McGill, which shouldn't come as that big a surprise: cognitive psychologist Levitin is a giant in his field. His books The World In Six Songs and This Is Your Brain on Music are bestsellers.

Read More: How Your Low-Key Cocaine Habit Actually Affects Your Body

What Levitin and his colleagues did was temporarily block the opioid receptors in participants' brains and then measured their responses to music. They found that without those receptors working, they took no pleasure from music they claimed to love.

According to the study's lead author, PhD candidate Adiel Mallik, 17 participants came in on two different days one week apart. On one day they were given 50 mg capsule of naltrexone (NTX), an opioid receptor-blocker that is widely prescribed for addiction treatment, and on the other they were given a placebo.

This was a double-blind study, meaning neither the tester nor the subject knew what was being administered on either day.

"On both days participants listened to the music while we recorded activity of the zygomatic (activated when smiling) and corrugator (activated when frowning) facial muscles," writes Mallik in an email to VICE. "Participants also reported their musical pleasure in real-time while they were listening to the music…. We wanted to see whether the opioid system in the brain mediates musical pleasure and emotional response (happy and sad) to music."

Neuroimaging was not used in the self-reported study.

Because food, sex and music all use the same reward system in the brain, and rely in part on endogenous opioids—that means opioids that are generated within the system—it was believed that reversing the effects of the opioids by administering NTX would affect how participants responded to their favourite songs. And they were right.

"We had participants select two of their favourite songs from their own music collection, which they found the most pleasurable. We also selected two neutral songs that they listened to as well," writes Mallik. The songs spanned genres, from the Black Keys' "Lonely Boy" to Radiohead's "Creep" to "Turn Me On" by David Guetta feat. Nicki Minaj to the overture from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

The results were what the team anticipated, but the responses they got from the participants were eye-opening. The subjects knew they should be responding a certain way emotionally to their favourite songs, but they weren't. The songs weren't really affecting them one way or the other. "We were fascinated by their high level of emotional awareness to recognize that in the words of one participant: 'I know this is my favourite song but it doesn't feel like it usually does,'" writes Mallik.

"The pattern was relatively uniform: participants when treated with naltrexone had significantly decreased musical pleasure and emotional response (happy and sad) to music compared to when treated with the placebo."

Mallik is hoping to continue studying the relationship between opioids and musical pleasure. We will be watching out for that.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. 

Lede image via Wikimedia.

Five Things We Learned At the Trudeau/Trump Press Conference

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On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Donald Trump finally met in person. It was the first in-person meeting for the pair since Trump became president and anticipation was high (though, likely a lot higher in Canada).

Would Trump shake Trudeau's hand for 19 minutes straight? Would Trudeau give Trump the Love Actually treatment and shatter the most important relationship Canada has? Would Trump go off on Canada's pretty boy like he did on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull?

Well, no, none of that happened unfortunately.

From the get go it was pretty clear that we didn't get fun, exciting Trump but the boring, lethargic one who was obviously going through the paces. Both leaders rambled on, at length, about how much Canada and the US love each other and have died in battle together. They spoke about a roundtable they held with female business leaders and talked about how they are going to address the roadblocks women in the workplace face without offering any solutions, and then they took mostly softball questions.

However, it wasn't a total wash. Here are the five things we learned from the Trump Trudeau meeting:

1. Trump is not gonna burn every partner

The second question of the press conference was a doozy: is Trump confident in Canada's border security and Trudeau's refugee huggin' ways?

In his answer, Trump launched into a long rambling answer that included his "very, very large electoral college win." However, he declined to say whether he was nervous about the border and didn't criticize Trudeau's stance on Syrian refugees.

Trump shit on North Korea but not Canada, which is pretty much as good as it gets for Trudeau on this.

2. Trump likes Canada more than Mexico

When asked about NAFTA, Trump pretty much admitted that his rants about the trade agreement are mostly about Mexico, not Canada.

"We have a very outstanding trade relationship with Canada. We'll be tweaking it and doing certain things that will benefit both of our countries," said Trump. "It's a much less severe situation than what has taken place on the southern border.

"On the southern border, for many, many years the transaction was not fair to the United States."

So Canadians, you're not completely fine yet, but breathe a little easier—Mexicans, uh, you know, we're sorry.

3. Trump's got no time for that French talk

When Trump's speech about how much we love each other and are each other's boo 4ever and ever finished up, Trudeau was handed the baton. Canada's leader immediately started going off in English and Trump seemed fine with letting him talk, if maybe a little bored. But then Trudeau started to speak in what must have sounded to Trump like gibberish (aka French).

"The president and myself had a very productive first meeting today, we had the opportunity to get to know each other together," Trudeau said in French.

Trump did not look too happy with this.  Sporting the face of a six grader forced to watch a Ken Burns documentary, Trump awkwardly put in in his in-ear translator and scowled.

4. Canada is not going to lecture other countries about how to govern

When asked about the security justification for President Trump's much derided "Muslim ban," Trudeau responded by dodging the question like a champion.

"The last thing that Canadians expect is for me to come down and lecture another country on how they choose to govern themselves," said Trudeau. "My role, our responsibility, is to continue to govern in such a way that reflects Canadians approach and be a positive example in the world."

Translated: "We don't criticize nuclear powers."

5. Nothing

Seriously, we learned pretty much nothing from this press conference other than Canada and the United States are next to each other.

At least we got a handshake out of it.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

America’s Tallest Dam’s 'Imminent Failure' Leads to Evacuation of 180,000 People

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More than 180,000 people have been asked to evacuate the area downstream of the Oroville Dam in California, after officials warned of an "imminent failure" as a result of a hole in the crumbling structure.

At 770 feet, Oroville is the tallest dam in the United States. Residents of eight cities in the dam's vicinity were told to evacuate shortly before 5 PM local time on Sunday.

Lake Oroville was inundated by unusual amounts of rainfall as a result of three atmospheric river storms—a type of storm associated with major flooding events—in the area during January and February. Once Lake Oroville reached capacity, officials from California's Department of Water Resources began utilizing the dam's spillway—a structure that provides the controlled release of water.

Cracks began to appear around the spillway last week, according to the declaration of emergency from Gov. Jerry Brown's office. On Saturday, officials began relying on the backup auxiliary spillway, which had never been used since the dam's construction in 1968, but soon determined that that structure was also at risk of failing.

Read more on VICE News

Does 'Valentine's Day' Actually Suck?

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Does It Suck? takes a deeper look at pop cultural artifacts previously adored, unjustly hated, or altogether forgotten, reopening the book on topics that time left behind.

We may have lost director Garry Marshall in 2016, but we'll always have New Year's Eve, Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day—his films, not the holidays. (We'll always have the holidays, too, though not thanks to Garry Marshall.) These three films, the final three in Marshall's long and delightful career (Beaches, Pretty Woman, The Other Sister), were iconic for their simple yet declarative statement: I am a sappy movie made specifically to represent the base elements of a sappy holiday.

New Year's Eve was all about finding New Year's Eve kisses, Mother's Day was all about discovering motherhood, and Valentine's Day... well, to be honest, I had forgotten what Valentine's Day was even about. Until I re-watched it recently, it had only stuck in my mind as the "One Taylor Swift Was in When She Was Dating Taylor Lautner." It's also further proof that Marshall's later films were nothing if not a marathon of actors and actresses paying their dues to the lovable icon. From Kathy Bates to Queen Latifah to Jessica Alba, Valentine's Day is the elementary school mom's phone tree of a film; everyone calls a pal and asks them if they wouldn't mind doing a 15-minute-or-so stint in the latest Garry Marshall flick. "I mean, it's Garry Marshall for God's sake and what else could you be doing?"

This casting is a tribute to the guy who casted many of these same actors in the first place: Julia Roberts, Héctor Elizondo, Kathleen Marshall, and Larry Miller in 1990's Pretty Woman, the same group—but with Anne Hathaway swapping in for Roberts—in 2001's The Princess Diaries. Valentine's Day also plays with television casts: It's a That 70's Show reunion with Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace, and also features Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane who were at the time co-starring on Grey's Anatomy. Watching Valentine's Day is like watching something you've already seen before. It manages to feel overly familiar, even after the first watch.

A lineup of heavy hitters (Jamie Foxx, Shirley MacLaine, etc.) are paired alongside a lineup of not-so-heavy hitters (Alba, Jessica Biel, Lautner) in a movie that weaves together storylines featuring rose bouquets, giant teddy bears, an annual "I Hate Valentine's Day" party (the holiday, not the film), and an M. Night Shyamalan–quality reveal. Who knew a film so deeply based on heterosexual norms could think ever-so-slightly outside the box?

But before we get to outing Bradley Cooper's character, I have to admit that there is actually something slightly charming about these matchups. Valentine's Day almost feels like a celebrity summer camp where Garry Marshall is the counselor tasked with pairing together famous people for some sort of three-legged race. I mean, who wouldn't want to see Foxx make out with Biel? Or Kutcher with Jennifer Garner?

In case you forgot, here are some of the bizarrely charming pairings: Perpetually single Biel meets second-string sports reporter Foxx. Secret phone-sex operator Hathaway meets Grace. High schooler Emma Roberts wants to lose her virginity to boyfriend Carter Jenkins, while Swift harasses her real-life (at the time!) boyfriend, Lautner. MacLaine reveals to her longtime love Héctor Elizondo that she had an affair with one of his business partners. Asshole doctor Dempsey cheats on cheery elementary school teacher Garner… before Garner's idiot BFF, Kutcher, is left by his fiancé, Alba, and realizes he loves Garner instead. And finally, army captain Roberts meets Cooper on a plane—who is heading home to see his boyfriend, sports man Dane (who has recently made headlines by coming out of the closet). There's your big reveal, world.

These storylines all intersect in various ways that make you say "Ooh!" or "Ah!" or "Is this over yet?" But if you're into seeing any of these famous people kiss any of these other famous people, you're in luck. That is the essence of Valentine's Day. Well, that and when Foreigner's "Feels Like the First Time" plays right before Roberts and her boyfriend fail at having sex for the first time.

But the most important thing that Valentine's Day accomplishes is make you really think about love. Like a greeting card or an E.E. Cummings's poem, the movie reminds viewers that love is as universally basic as it is ultimately indescribable. "Love is the only shocking act left on the planet," says Kutcher, a line that becomes more quotable the less you think about it. Love brings people together, says Valentine's Day. We're really all just bit actors in an ensemble comedy, waiting to find our predetermined hand-casted match, and nothing is perfect. In Valentine's Day, the romantic ideal is how learning you're being cheated on by your hot doctor boyfriend turns into the perfect opportunity to figure out your best friend is in love with you (and you, him).

Unfortunately, the film remains as popular and generic as Valentine's Day itself. At $53 million, Valentine's Day had the second-biggest opening ever for a romantic comedy—right below Sex and the City 2.

And if you're still confused on whether Valentine's Day sucks (again, the movie not the holiday—which clearly sucks), I'm here to tell you that, definitively, it sucked the first time I saw, it and it still sucks. Sure, I would love to take my usual stance as Trash Lover, defending all levels of lowbrow camp, but as deep as I soul search, there's no way I can stand by Valentine's Day.

I'm sorry, Garry, but I'll be celebrating with Love & Basketball this year.

Follow Lindsey Weber on Twitter.


Jerry Sandusky's Son Has Been Arrested on Child Sex Charges

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The adopted son of disgraced former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been arrested on multiple child sex charges, NBC News reports.

According to court records, Jeffrey Sandusky, 41, has been charged with a litany of felonies that include statutory sexual assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. NBC reports that he was suspended from his job at a Rockview State Correctional Facility and, after being arraigned Monday, was being held on $200,000 bail.

Pennsylvania State Police apparently began to look into the younger Sandusky back in November 2016 after they received a complaint from a teenager's father that the 41-year-old had requested illicit photos via text. Sandusky is also accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with a second child in 2013, who was under the age of 16 at the time, USA Today reports.

Jeffrey, one of Jerry and Dottie Sandusky's six adoptive children, stood by his father throughout the ex-coach's trial for sex crimes. The younger Sandusky defended his father even after his brother, Matthew, accused his father of sexually molesting him for years. In 2012, Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of sexual abuse after molesting at least ten boys over 15 years, and is currently serving 30 to 60 years behind bars.

"He should not see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of his life if these allegations are true," Matthew Sandusky told NBC News of the new allegations against his brother. "These people need to be stopped. Human beings need to rise up and say, 'Enough is enough.'"

Inside the Lehava, a Group Trying to Keep Jews and Arabs from Marrying

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On an all new episode of HATE THY NEIGHBOR, comedian Jamali Maddix takes a trip to the Holy Land to meet the Lehava, an anti-assimilation group trying to prevent Arabs and Jews from marrying.

HATE THY NEIGHBOR airs Mondays at 10 PM on VICELAND

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

What Swearing Off Sex Does to Your Brain

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"We should be fucking," the David Banner song "Fucking" says. But is it true? Reminders of sex are certainly common in our society, from the advertisements on the subway to the attractive people on the subway who make us think about sex. Sometimes sex—the physical wants, the search for the right partner(s), the fear that everyone else is having more frequent and better choreographed intercourse than you—can feel like an oppressive force in our lives. Beyond this, there's a perception—especially prevalent among men who frequent online forums—that sex (or even self-achieved orgasms) causes the comer to lose energy that could be otherwise put towards building a better life.

For some people, these complications are too much to take. They've gone ahead and forsworn intercourse (and, in some cases, masturbation). Sometimes this is a temporary decision, a realignment of sorts, like a more literal Dry January. For other people, like the voluntary celibates of Reddit, this is a long-term project, with message boards forming an AA-like support group. These "volcels," as they're known (in contrast to involuntary celibates, or "incels"), swear that their white-knuckle lifestyle gives them courage, confidence, calmness, creativity, and other benefits that don't start with c.

Read more on Broadly

A Guide to All the People on the Grammys That You've Never Heard Of

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Last night's Grammys really had us scratching our head. To be fair, most things do when you're the hosts of Who? Weekly, a semi-popular podcast based on the conceit that people are either Them— I know them!—or Whos— Who are they?Our goal is to shed light onto the various people you see in the tabloids while you wait in the supermarket check-out aisle, sure, but we're finding that the Who dilemma extends beyond tabloids and into all facets of pop culture. Especiallymusic.

Music changes quick—artists come out of nowhere to win big awards, genres create bubbles in which stars become famous in their own circles (see: much of country music), and the Best New Artist award is often awarded to someone who isn't really "new" at all. It's weird! And sometimes it's a silly! But that doesn't mean we can't dig in and decipher some of these truly confounding Grammys notables, some of which you already know, and others that you don't. But if you did find yourself asking "who?" last night, we're here to (hopefully) make some sense of things. Because obviously recognizing celebrities and garden variety famous people is very important business.

Read more on Noisey

UBC Decides Students Probably Shouldn’t Judge Sex Assault Cases

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After more than a decade of pressure from women and student groups, the University of British Columbia has decided to stop allowing a panel of students decide whether or not a sexual assault has occurred.

A revised draft of the university's sex assault policy reviewed by VICE says that "individual, highly-trained, trauma-informed investigators" will now handle all sex assault complaints against students, staff, and faculty.

The policy change marks a departure from the way many Canadian universities deal with campus assault. The new plan is up for discussion in a board of governors meeting tomorrow.

As recently as August 2016, sexual assault complaints against UBC students were handled under the school's non-academic misconduct process, which critics say is primarily designed for in-residence infractions like graffiti or theft.

Advocates say students are not equipped to judge the sexual misconduct of their peers, because duh. Young people are generally prone to making bad decisions in their own lives, why would we put potentially criminal assault cases in their hands, too?

For student Stephanie Hale, who says she was raped in a UBC dorm in 2013, this process was "the most damaging part of this entire experience." On a Go Fund Me page to cover legal fees, Hale said she refused to participate in the flawed system.

"I would be put on the stand and questioned by my peers, a group of students without any training whatsoever in the matters of sexual assault," she wrote. "I would not be given the outcome of the hearing."

The trial went on without Hale as a witness in November 2016. UBC has not released the decision.

The Canadian Federation of Students has been saying this is a bad idea for just over a decade. CFS president Bilan Arte told VICE that internal investigations judged by peers can be "extremely traumatizing" for complainants. "Since 2006 we've had a stance against internal processes, in particular those that set up internal committees—like this one made of peers—in favour of third-party investigators."

Read More: Sexual Assault Victims Are Having Their Social Media Feeds Used Against Them in Court

Arte says it's important to have investigators that can act independently of the institution, and are trained in sexual violence. "For the most part institutions try to keep these things internal, which in a lot of ways creates a culture of silence."

Arte says internal investigations like these show administrators value the institution's reputation over the safety of students. Complainants are often put on the spot to tell their side of the story in front of classmates and people they know socially, sometimes with perpetrators present.

UBC's complaint process can take anywhere from six months to two years, and critics say results have been inconsistent and often favour perpetrators.

In a submission to university counsel last fall, UBC's student union found there were zero expulsions for sexual assault between 2004 and 2014. For comparison, there were 257 students expelled for plagiarism over the same period, and 53 over the 2013-14 school year alone.

Glynnis Kirchmeier, a former UBC student who has filed a human rights complaint over the handling of her sexual assault case, says that criticism of the non-academic misconduct process stretch as far back as 1990. In one case, students joked about the amount of disciplinary points student panels might assign for rape and murder.

Advocates told VICE even though this kind of change has been a long time in the making,  universities still have a long way to go. BC's provincial government has required all schools bring in a stand-alone sexual assault policy by May of this year.

Photo of Stephanie Hale via Go Fund Me.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

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