With more than 53 million subscribers, PewDiePie is far and away the most popular personality on YouTube. But after a series of videos featuring anti-Semitic jokes and Nazi imagery were compiled by The Wall Street Journal and brought to the attention of Disney, the parent company of the PewDiePie-associated Maker Studios, the studio dropped him. Not long after, Variety reported that YouTube had cancelled a second season of his YouTube Red program, Scare PewDiePie, where he explored real-life sets loosely based on horror games he'd played.

The video, which includes clips of videos since taken down, features PewDiePie using an online service to pay poor people to hold up a sign saying "Death to All Jews" and deploying Nazi imagery, including clips from speeches by Adolf Hitler.

Read more on Waypoint

The first time you actually had sex you were maybe 17, you were maybe in a basement of someone's parents house, and it was definitely not the best sex of your life. Maybe you did it in complete silence. Or maybe you had some music playing in the background that when you look back, makes the whole memory weirder. Since it's Valentine's Day, we asked a bunch of Noisey staffers and other VICE employees to tell us what song was playing when they gave up the ol' v-card. What follows are some things that you're never going to be able to un-read:

John Mayer - Some Song Off Heavier Things

My first girlfriend loved John Mayer. I'm not gonna front, either. I did too. (And still do! You ever seen that dude play guitar?) Anyway, one of our first dates was a trip to a John Mayer concert in Omaha, Nebraska. This was a pretty great experience because 1) neither one of us were old enough to drive so we had to ride with my parents and 2) once again, Mayer slays live. After the concert, we traveled back to my small hometown in western Iowa and we dropped my girlfriend off at her house. Later that night, after my parents went to sleep because they were exhausted by all the shredding guitar we'd witnessed earlier in the evening, I snuck out of the house to go back to my girlfriend's. I stopped at a Kum 'n' Go (which, as real midwest kids know, is a gas station), crossed my fingers as I bought some condoms, and went to her house. I slipped inside (heh) the back door (heh again) and up into her room—which was in the attic—and we immediately started to make some sweet, sweet awkward teenage love. Of course, before things got too hot and heavy, we turned on Heavier Things, the iconic second studio record from Mr. Mayer. Then at some point we fucked. I don't remember what song was playing.

—Eric Sundermann, Editor-In-Chief, Noisey

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In November, after learning Donald Trump had won the election, I impulsively bought a roundtrip ticket to London, leaving in January. I wanted to be far away from home while that man was inaugurated.

I had never been to London. My friend Hanno said I could have his apartment while he stayed with his boyfriend, and that was all the justification I needed.

I went alone, and friends asked me why I wasn't taking my husband, Alex, and boyfriend, Jon, with me, as if I was violating some sacred contract. While the idea of showing up in a foreign city all by myself was intimidating, I knew that I needed a grand adventure that was all mine.

I spent my first afternoon wandering the city alone, staring at the expanse of the Thames, the London Eye, and Big Ben. I crossed the Millennium Bridge, the sun breaking through the gray, darkening clouds, and wandered aimlessly through the Tate Modern, searching for Giorgio de Chirico's The Uncertainty of the Poet and Paul Klee's A Young Lady's Adventure. The faded, muted light and color of those paintings captured my mood perfectly—they felt like longing, golden, and hopeful beauty.

I had tentative plans to meet up with a guy, Noah. Months earlier, he had "woofed" at me on Growlr, a gay-dating app for bears, and we began a months-long conversation. He was originally from Berlin, an architect now living in London.

I remember the moment he walked out of the bar where we agreed to meet. He was so handsome, shrouded in fog and city lights; I wanted to touch and kiss him right then and there. I have no idea what we talked about; I just remember feeling like I wanted to tell him everything as fast as I could.

I walked him home. Standing outside his building on Hoxton Street, he said, "I just want to invite you up to cuddle. I want to fall asleep with you." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say, so I stood there, quietly trying to mask my uncertainty with bravado. Finally, he punctured the tension: "Will you come up?" I fell asleep lying on top of him in the middle of a kiss.

I write about my relationship a lot, and the comments I receive often sound like this: "Relationships take work. They're built around boundaries and limits, sacrifice and compromise. You can't just run around doing whatever you want. You want to have your cake and eat it, too."

But why the fuck can't I eat my cake? What else would I do with cake? I want to eat my cake and everyone else's cake. I want all the cake.

When Alex, Jon, and I first decided to open up our triad, we set up all kinds of rules and boundaries for one another. But the thing about rules is that people break them. If I trust Alex and Jon, why did I need to restrict them? Why couldn't I just love them and let them be who they are? The restrictions I put on others are all about my own fears, like my fear of being abandoned, of not being enough, of losing love. So we decided to try something different—to trust one another.

The idea that one of us might meet someone else seemed unlikely, anyway. Alex already had a boyfriend outside our relationship, and I had my own boyfriend, Conor. Jorja, our family therapist, always talks about resources: how much energy, time, and money can you give to someone outside your primary relationship before there's no more left to give? But one thing I've learned in this strange experiment is that the quality and quantity of the love we get to experience in our lives is only limited by the restrictions we place on it.

Trying to define our triad, Alex recently put it simply: "We are a family." That resonates, feels true. And maybe, as we go on, the family is meant to grow, and our ideas of who we are in this thing will grow. Alex and Jon, Conor—they are my family. Mine.

After Noah went to work the next morning, I went to a cafe in Shoreditch. Everywhere I turned was news of Trump: walls that would be built, restrictions placed, freedoms limited.

That night, Noah and I went to a party for bears and bearded guys. I remember the moment his fingers brushed up against mine, and I felt it: This one is mine. And I am his.

In the morning, he took me for an English breakfast at a cafe hidden in a courtyard down an old, labyrinthine alley. We drank flat whites, and I tried black pudding, something I probably won't try again. Noah was excited to show me the Barbican and Denys Lasdun's National Theatre, one of London's most controversial Brutalist buildings.

Standing there with Noah, looking up at the beautiful, almost shocking structure of the National Theatre, I became lost in his excitement as he discussed the dynamics of space in philosophical terms. I felt overwhelmed by the strangeness of the building.

At the Barbican, another Brutalist utopia, we wandered a complex of concrete surfaces and elevated gardens, with Noah pointing out the way the estate represented an ideal of urban living, how private and public worlds intermingle to create community.

That evening, we went to the Dalston Superstore, a nightclub where DJs play in the basement late into the night. I am always in awe of the kindness of people and the generosity I can find in the world. We danced and kissed in that club, and people seemed to move with us all the while, dancing and kissing and laughing. Something about that night gave me hope for the world, and for the possibility of who we all might become.

I spent my last day in London in bed with Noah. The smell of him, the way he tasted, the sound of his voice, the way he built ideas out of words, the way he constructed meaning—he became family.

When I returned to LA, I told Jon and Alex about Noah. We have learned to encourage and support one another, even when it feels scary. And I bought tickets to go see Noah again.

I think of Jorja, and I think about when I might feel that there are no more resources left to give. But I sometimes wonder if it's the opposite—that the more of us there are, and the larger my family grows, the more I will gain. Maybe expansion doesn't have to mean depletion. It's all a grand adventure, and we're just at the beginning.

But I wouldn't change any of this. All the fucking cake.

Follow Jeff Leavell on Twitter.

An Ontario court has ruled in favour of thousands of Indigenous people who were stripped of their cultural identities when they were taken from their homes on reserves by child protection workers and placed with white families.

Survivors of a period known as the Sixties Scoop are now waiting to hear how much the Ontario Superior Court orders the federal government to pay in damages following an eight-year legal battle.

"After so many years, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my heart. Our voices were finally heard and listened to. Our pain was acknowledged," lead plaintiff Marcia Brown Martel said in a media release.

The plaintiffs are seeking about $1.3 billion in damages, or $85,000 for each of the 16,000 people represented in the lawsuit.

Read more on VICE News.

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes.

Superman was an alien, Batman was a weird rich guy with a victim complex outfitted in a fancy cape, and Shane Spencer is a man in a bikini braving a blizzard on a quad.

Like all good heroes, we didn't know we needed Spencer until he was here.

As a blizzard bore down on the Maritimes Monday, Spencer—this is speculation—looked longingly out of his window in Minto, New Brunswick, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

No, he whispered, not today.

Spencer then went to his dresser and pulled out the Crusher, his bikini, and took a moment to prepare himself for what he had to do for his town. After slipping on the Crusher, Spencer walked slowly to his garage and loaded up onto his faithful steed—his quad.

It was time to start plowing.

Here is where the video of our good hero picks up. As the snow falls to the ground Spencer pulls into the frame, shoveling the road clear for the citizens of Minto to be free. When he gets close to the camera Spencer stops, turns off the quad and turns to address the viewers directly—to let them know they'll be OK.

"As you can see ladies and gentleman the government isn't doing their job," says an unmistakable eastern drawl.

"Your local weatherman [his superhero name] Shane Spencer is live on location here, coming to you here from the post road. Doesn't matter the road conditions or weather conditions, I'm here doing a great job."

You sure are Shane.

The hero at work. Photo via screenshot

The video of the New Brunswicker's heroics has been seen by almost 250,000 people within 24 hours. Spencer told Global News that he made the video to clear the side streets and make a few people smile.

"The person will go watch me and get a good chuckle, see a chubby guy in a Speedo, why can't you laugh when you see that?" he said. "It's something like a car wreck, you can't look away."

You're right Mr. Spencer, we can't look away because you're a goddamn hero.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

We all have that one ex who was a terrible human being, the one that cheated, lied, broke promises, ghosted or hurt us in other ways. Kim Horne, a painter and decorator from London, is all too familiar with this, "My girlfriend—or fiancé at the time—cheated on me. I found out on her sister's wedding day and I found out it was with someone I knew."

Sometimes this sort of thing can, understandably, get stuck in our craw for a few months, a year, or maybe even five. But there comes a time when forgiveness seems like a better option than keying their car.

Forgiveness is hard to define. Sure, it's in the dictionary, but psychologists have written entire books on exactly what forgiveness is. Some say it's an emotion or internal attitude, others think it's an attitude that needs to be expressed outwardly, or even an action. Some think of it as a process, like Plato thought of love.

Professor Kathy Belicki, a psychologist who specializes in forgiveness, noticed that the unique act is hard to define. She and a colleague set about asking a lot of people what they all thought forgiveness was. "We found many, many, many different definitions—the point is that it is what people live it out as," she says.

Read more on Broadly

Wolfgang Tillmans is wearing a plain red T–shirt, builder jeans and decidedly unfashionable trainers. He's tall, but unimposing. Sometimes you have to finish his sentences for him because, despite more than 25 years in the UK, the native German's vocabulary can falter.

He walks me around his new solo show at the Tate Modern, "Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017", and the first thing that hits me is how hugely broad in scope his work has become over the past 14 years (the earliest piece in this show was made in 2003). There's portraiture, still life, magazine work, video, abstract photography, audio and collage. Subject-wise, he deals in intimacy, modernity, post-truth politics, globalisation and even the gentrification of London. It's so eclectic it could almost be a group exhibition.

Actually, all that is the second thing that hits me. The first is a huge photograph of a scrotum hanging on the wall. "Sexuality is still really important to me," says Tillmans, smiling, as we sit beneath his giant pair of balls. "One should actually talk about it and not stop talking about it – we're in a very prudish time, things are getting more prudish by the years. The world is totally sexualised, but only for marketing purposes. Free sexuality, free of charge and free of control is seen as very dangerous. I think one has to treat sexuality with honesty, and acknowledge its importance. We wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the sex drive."

Collum 2011

Male sexuality is one of the few visible trademarks from Tillmans' early work that endures in the new show. Close-up shots of the arcs of men's necks, a candid portrait of Frank Ocean in the shower and a video of Tillmans himself dancing in a hotel room all speak directly to the photography that he used to shoot for magazines like i-D in the 1990s, when he was living as a young artist in London. These were editorial images, capturing subcultures and people with no apparent place to be. Despite this work, and despite fast becoming the most fashionable photo artist to namedrop at the time, Tillmans was never too interested in the fashion world; he aspired towards the institution, and in 2000, when he was 32, he successfully crossed over, becoming the first photographer to win the Turner Prize.

Tillmans received a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2003, showing all his work to date. Now 48 years old, he's having his second Tate solo show. What has he done to deserve another retrospective so soon, I ask. Tillmans is humble: "As an artist, this is one of the most important things that can happen to you in your life – they don't come much bigger," he says. "The premise of the exhibition was to reflect all the different media I use and language I employ now. That was really the reason why [curator] Chris Dercon proposed a second show at Tate after just 14 years. There had been so much new development we thought it would be interesting to reflect, to show that art-making is of course not bound to traditional 2D or 3D media."

Iguazu by Wolfgang Tillmans

The show plays with technology; there's the super-high res blown up social documentary work, the abstract manipulations of analogue photo development and the "Playback Room", which invites visitors to sit and listen to pop music on proper audio equipment, at the same quality you'd expect from a professional studio. The sweeping 14 room gallery show is just one part of the programme, though; Tillmans will also be curating a series of sound performances in the Tate Tanks this spring. One is a sound dissection of the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin", with Tillmans playing the record layer by layer (there are 48 tracks in total) over the course of a few hours.

The "2017" show was always about doing something experimental, the artist explains. "That was a huge liberation from the start – that, no, this doesn't have to be a retrospective, there is no Concorde here." Although he loves the 90s work "dearly", "2017" is about "what you cannot see in the world – in the net or in books – which is the experience of being in front of individual prints but also being in these spaces". He describes the show as an installation, almost: "What I look at when I install is the sound, the many different frequencies in the room." He also explains that the show really doesn't have much to do with the year 2017. "Calling it 2017 at the beginning of the year is of course a contradiction, because you would assume there was something of 2017 in the show, but there can't be. And the catalogue people were of course worried – they thought, 'Oh, we can't sell the catalogue in 2018,'" he laughs.

If, as he approaches 50, Tillmans is still playful, still a contrarian and his work still successfully captures the essence of youth culture (I mean, what could be more zeitgeisty than Frank Ocean in the shower?) he admits he's done a lot of growing up, too. Last year he became the art-world poster boy for the Brexit Remain Campaign, designing T-shirts with stay slogans, and speaking publicly about his grief over the result.

"I think it was definitely the biggest thing that I have experienced in my life, as a moment in history," he reflects. "Of course the fall of the Berlin Wall was a total historic sea change, but if you think about the Western world, post-war, what is going on now is the biggest upheaval. Our free, liberal way of life is under full on attack at the moment, and I feel extremely worried. There are forces all working together, even if they seem opposed; Islamists hate gays and are anti-women, Putin wants the woman back at home and hates gays, far-right Americans hate gays and they hate Hillary because she's a woman. It's a vengeful tide," he says solemnly.

Shit buildings going up left, right and centre, 2014 by Wolfgang Tillmans

Tillman's "Truth Study Centre" – part of the new Tate exhibition – reflects on how he's feeling about politics right now, which is that there's a desperate need to cut through the noise. Made up of cabinets with newspaper clippings and other ephemera, it looks to juxtapose different fallacies and absolutist claims about current affairs through collage. "I started that in 2005, and at the time I called it 'Truth Study Centre', with a pinch of salt – the name is big and grand," he says. "It's not ironic, but it is aware of the impossibility."

Twelve years later, we need a Truth Study Centre more than ever, says Tillmans. "I feel like, at this point, we have to move forwards. We can't just say, 'Oh, isn't it crazy, this world, this post-truth world?' We have to go beyond this quickly now. How can we fix the backfire effect?" Posting something online is not enough, he says: "One has to join parties and movements and groups and be present at votes."

The "Truth Study Centre" might be about uncertainty, but it's still hard to believe Tillmans is the artist who once said the unifying thread in all his work is doubt, while in person he seems unerring in his beliefs, unabashed about sexuality, passionate about politics. Has he in fact gained the gift of certain certainties, I ask, as we walk out the exhibition on the day before it opens to the public. "If I say 'yes' it's already defeating the question, because it would mean I know the answer," he replies. "Doubt can only be genuine when it's not theatrical doubt."

That's not an answer, I point out. "The danger [of this exhibition] is of course huge," he concedes. "The feeling that I have to be complete, that I have to show my best work, that all the big hitters have to be here – it could leave me like a rabbit in the headlights. But I have to trust that after almost 30 years of practice I know what I'm doing. I have to trust it's not complete rubbish."

@MillyAbraham

Watch out, everybody: A new study says that America's roadways are besieged by a plague of distracted, reckless youths with sweaty fingers mashing out texts on their touchscreens when they should be at ten and two.

According to USA Today, a report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that 88.4 percent of millennial drivers between the ages of 19 and 24 copped to driving dangerously in the past month, from texting while driving to running reds and speeding.

Almost half of the millennial drivers surveyed said they had run a red light recently, despite being able to stop safely, and another 12 percent said it was fine to go ten over in a school zone. Less surprisingly, almost 60 percent of millennials admitted to sending a text or email while driving, compared to 31 percent of all other drivers.

"Alarmingly, some of the drivers ages 19 to 24 believe that their dangerous driving behavior is acceptable," the foundation's executive director, David Yang, told USA Today.

Sure, the AAA study may have found that drivers in their early 20s were most likely to drive poorly, but over two-thirds of drivers across all age groups admitted to being distracted and dangerous behind the wheel.

Traffic deaths are becoming increasingly more common, and distracted or dangerous driving obviously play a role. There were more than 35,000 car-related deaths in 2015, up 7 percent from 2014. According to USA Today, that increase is the "largest one-year jump in five decades." Drunk driving numbers are down, at least, but that doesn't necessarily mean more people are driving sober, because more people are driving while on drugs.

The age of driverless cars can't come fast enough—though that comes with its own unique share of problems, too.

When Leny* first arrived at Capanne prison, a women's facility in Perugia, central Italy, she was sulky and withdrawn. She paced the yard alone, head bowed and shoulders hunched. This was not unusual for a transfer. Each prison is its own delicate ecosystem. Being uprooted and replanted, often without warning, is a frightening experience. I noticed her immediately: petite, with a paunchy belly and short, dark hair. I made Leny for the kind of prisoner who'd only lash out if cornered—so not a threat to me.

Between 2007 and 2011, I was imprisoned for a murder I didn't commit. By the time Leny entered the picture, I had already served three of those years. I didn't talk to her. I didn't talk to most people. Generally, I kept to myself.

I was lucky. Thanks to the support of my friends and family, I didn't need relationships in prison as much as other inmates did. Factors that contribute to social isolation―poverty, mental illness, a history of neglect and abuse―are often all tied together, and are disproportionately suffered by people who enter the prison system. Fifty percent of all inmates have a mental illness, compared to 11 percent of the general population—and social isolation can exacerbate underlying mental health issues. Meanwhile, women entering prison are more likely than men to have suffered abuse. And what familial ties inmates have are often strained and weakened by incarceration.

In Capanne, most of the inmates belonged to established social groups, largely drawn down racial lines, mainly Italian, Nigerian, and Roma. As an American, I didn't belong, but I floated amidst them and observed how they were structured. They were hierarchical, like extended families. Nigerians called each other "mama" or "daughter," while Roma called each other "cousin." And within these families, it was common for two inmates to form an intimate partnership.

Read more on Broadly

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

US News

Trump Aides Repeatedly Spoke to Russian Intelligence During Campaign, Reports Say
Members of Donald Trump's campaign team and other associates had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials in the months prior to the presidential election, according to both current and former US officials. Former campaign manager Paul Manafort is one of those allegedly involved in calls intercepted by US intelligence agencies, though there's said to still be no evidence of collaboration in hacking Democrats. Calling the allegations "absurd," Manafort told the paper, "I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers."—The New York Times

Vice President Not Informed of Flynn Warnings Until February
Vice President Mike Pence was reportedly told of Justice Department warnings about the nature of former national security advisor Michael Flynn's phone calls with a Russian ambassador nearly two weeks after other White House officials, like President Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said an investigation into Flynn's action was "highly likely," though whether it will be an independent one remains to be seen.—NBC News / The Washington Post

Trump Welcomes Netanyahu to the White House
President Trump will meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House Wednesday. According to press secretary Sean Spicer, talks will focus on Iran, Syria, ISIS, US-Israeli relations, and the peace process between Israel and Palestine. "The way forward toward that goal will also be discussed," he said.—CNN

Senate Moves to Repeal Obama Gun Restriction
Republicans in the Senate were expected Wednesday to push forward with a plan to repeal an Obama administration regulation preventing some people with mental health conditions from buying guns. A vote to formally disapprove the 2016 restriction will take place in the Senate and, if passed, go to the White House for President Trump's signature.—CBS News

International News

Woman Suspected of Killing Kim Jong-un's Half-Brother Arrested
Malaysian police have arrested a woman suspected of taking part in the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. South Korea's intelligence agency believes that North Korean agents likely poisoned Kim Jong Nam at the airport. Local police are looking for a "few" other foreign nationals suspected of involvement.—Reuters

UAE Wants to Build Settlement on Mars by 2117
The United Arab Emirates has announced its intention to create a human colony on Mars by 2117. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president of the UAE, said he wanted his country to "spearhead international efforts to make this dream a reality." The UAE plans to work with research teams from around the world.—Al Jazeera

Australia Offers Asylum Seekers Cash to Return Home
Officials at Australia's immigration center on Papua New Guinea have offered detainees cash payments to return home, according to people trying to claim refugee status there. Asylum seekers from Bangladesh and Nepal said they had been offered payments of up to $25,000 to leave.—Reuters

Russia Violates Missile Treaty, Say US Officials
Russia has deployed a new kind of cruise missile despite warnings it would violate a long-standing treaty, according to US administration officials. The officials said Russia had made a missile system operational that's prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.—The New York Times

Everything Else

Harrison Ford Involved in Near Miss at California Airport
Harrison Ford flew his small private plane directly over the top of a Boeing 737 at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, after a reported mixup over runways. The incident is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.—NBC News

Millennial Drivers Are the Worst, Report Says
Millennial drivers are the riskiest drivers on the road, according to a new report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The survey found 88.4 percent of 19- to 24-year-old drivers copped to risky practices like texting while driving or running red lights.—USA Today

Apple to Fight 'Right to Repair' Legislation, Says Source
Apple is planning to fight a proposed "Right to Repair" legislation being considered by Nebraska, according to a source within the state legislature. The bill would require electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent stores.—Motherboard

Ontario Court Rules in Favor of Indigenous Survivors
An Ontario court has ruled in favor of indigenous people taken from their homes and placed with white families by child-protection workers. Survivors of the so-called Sixties Scoop period are waiting to hear how much they will receive in damages.—VICE News

Who among us has not secretly wished to do all the drugs with zero of the addictive consequences? 

Wait, maybe don't answer that. Because that's not exactly what scientists at the University of British Columbia set out to do when they genetically engineered mice that show no signs of addiction, even after repeated injections of cocaine.

In fact, lead researcher Shernaz Bamji told VICE her team was aiming to create the opposite—a mouse brain with amplified addiction tendencies. Yet Bamji ended up with a bunch of party-hardened rodents that apparently don't get thirsty for their next hit. 

The UBC study, published this week in Nature Neuroscience, shines new light on what part of addiction is learned, and what is genetic. It also adds to a long and storied history of getting mice fucked up in the name of science.

For the purposes of this article, let's say that "learning" is an unequivocally bad thing. The only skill we're talking about learning here is how to become a sad and broken character from Requiem for a Dream. Bamji explains why: "Researchers nowadays think addiction is just learning gone haywire in a particular part of the brain," she told VICE.

Part of that "learning" has to do with a group of proteins called cadherins. Bamji says cadherin acts like glue, strengthening connections between brain cells.

"To learn something you have to strengthen these synaptic connections. When you add more glue to the synapse, you cause it to get stronger," she said.

Read more: Sex, Drugs and Music Are All Related in Your Brain

Past research has shown that people with addiction issues tend to have genetic mutations that produce extra "glue" in the brain's addiction-associated reward circuitry. This is the area where certain kinds of wiring can make people act like assholes, or even lose the ability to function in search of one more dopamine boost.

Again, Bamji wanted to encourage bad habits in some mice. "We genetically engineered animals to have lots of cadherin glue at these synapses. We thought more glue, stronger synapses, more learning, more addiction. But we saw exactly the opposite."

All of the mice were injected with coke and saline on alternating days. The narcotics were consistently delivered in part of a cage with recognizable setting markers. Then the mice were left to roam as they please.

The normie mice had zero chill and made a beeline for the spot where they last picked up. "Normal animals, when you let them walk around, they'll always gravitate to the chamber where they receive the drug, which indicates they're looking for that high," Bamji said.

The mice with extra cadherin, meanwhile, didn't seem to get the memo. This was a significant and surprise finding, according to Bamji.

The researchers ultimately found that too much glue actually stopped new brain connections from forming. "It's kind of like a traffic jam. Basically, you can't get the right kind of neurotransmitter receptors to the membrane, so you don't get learning—no synapse strengthening, no learning, no addiction."

Of course, it's not yet clear whether the mutant mice were actually feeling the effects of the drug, or if they were genetically engineered to be pleasure-hating squares.

"We can't interview the animals to determine which it is," Bamji told VICE. "Either it's just not learning that this is the place where I got that yummy high, or the animal is really not feeling that high—we're not totally sure."

What we can say is that our genes may have more to do with our drug habits than previously thought. Down the road, we may be able to test for genetic markers in humans that are prone to addiction.

But Bamji says we shouldn't rule out personal choices or environmental factors, either. Besides, she's not going to be engineering an addiction-resistant human brain anytime soon.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

In the early 90s until about the mid 2000s ravers, goths, and the unemployable once wore extra wide leg pants as a fashion statement. The bigger the pant leg, the bigger the statement. JNCO jeans were one of the earliest and most infamous of the novelty pants brands. I wanted JNCO jeans when I was a kid. I went through a death metal, skateboarding, Anarchist Cookbook-reading phase, and JNCO jeans would have completed my uniform. But my mother loved me and forbid them in our home. Now, as an adult, I can put on whatever pants I want, so I bought some JNCO jeans, and wore them for seven days to see how my life could be different.

Getting into the JNCO "culture" turned out to be way more expensive than I thought. I assumed I could find a used pair from at a thrift shop, online, or wherever huffing supplies are sold. Turns out vintage JNCO jeans are collectors' items, with the dopest, widest leg versions selling for as much as $300 USD on eBay. I don't hate myself that much, so I went to thrift shops in my home city of Regina, Saskatchewan, and none of them carried the monstrous pantaloons I desired.

In the end, I ordered a pair of brand new, 50-inch-wide-leg "Crime Scenes" directly from JNCO headquarters in Los Angeles. The total cost after converting to Canadian money set me back $186.81. The pants arrived at my house in a tight bundle, which I didn't open for a few days as the dust of change settled onto my world. On January 20, 2017—the day Donald Trump took the oath of office as the President of the United States—I put my JNCO jeans on for the first time. Throughout my journey I interviewed as many people as I could, asking them, "Do you like these pants, yes or no?" I tallied the results to get an approval rating. Comments were gathered; shame was felt.

Day 1: Public speaking
In order to experience JNCO life to the fullest, I scheduled a number of events over the span of about two weeks. The first day, I was invited to perform at Grown Ups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, a podcast, which is self-explanatory. On day one with the pants I imagined the experience would be whimsical, but the moment the tent-like fabric hit my skin I knew I fucked up. As I dragged the heavy material through the snow, anxiety struck. The pockets were too deep. I immediately lost my phone and car keys in them, sealing my isolation. I arrived at the Artisan theatre to face a sold-out crowd of roughly 200 people to share a personal childhood moment while wearing two Jon Snows worth of pants. I paired my JNCO jeans with a red cardigan and white t-shirt combo on top.

Public feedback
14 people interviewed
50 percent approval rating

"Brave, bold. Reminds me of my raver days. Where is your candy? You're definitely missing that."

"Unnecessary leg design. I feel like pants are 80 percent function, 20 percent fashion. Those jeans fail at both. Sorry."

"Do you tuck them in your socks for biking?"

Day 2: The symphony
Classical music and fancy clothes go together like peanut butter and jelly. Incidentally, classical music and JNCO jeans go together like peanut butter and anaphylactic shock. I went to Per Sonatori Baroque Ensemble's Viola da Gamba. The viol (pronounced "vile") is a stringed instrument played with a bow dating back to the 1600s. Viola da gamba, a cello-sized version of the instrument, translates from Italian to mean something like "viol of the legs." Speaking of vile legs, I was the only person wearing JNCO jeans at the symphony. I sat in the balcony of Regina's prestigious Knox-Metropolitan Church listening to the music of intellectuals. I felt enlightened. I brought my wife. She did not sit with me.

Public feedback
10 people interviewed
40 percent approval rating

"It's kind of jarring."

"Nü metal to the extreme."

"I thought you were wearing a skirt."

Day 3: A walk downtown
Downtown Regina is essentially designed after JNCO jeans: a shock to the senses and mostly empty. This was the toughest day. I was frozen with anxiety standing at the entrance of the Cornwall Centre, Regina's aptly named central mall. It took me 20 minutes to convince myself to approach people to ask them about my pants. And then tragedy struck. I saw someone I knew from high school. He is a police officer now, and he was dressed in a crisp uniform and escorting a youth in handcuffs. As they walked by, recognition flashed in the cop's eyes. He scanned my lower half cloaked in JNCO mysteries. I can honestly say, my old friend looked more concerned for me and my pants than for the kid he had in handcuffs. Even that troubled youngster shook his head in disapproval. Best I could manage to say was, "It's for a thing," as the two passed.

Public feedback
20 people interviewed
25 percent approval rating

"I'd be worried about going on an escalator."

"I love them. I have the same ones."

"You look like you're going to kill me."

Day 4: Hanging out with friends
At this point, my pants had already gathered a lot of grime. Everyone talks about how deadly you'll look in JNCOs, but they fail to mention that you become a walking garbage zamboni. My pants brought me to a gathering with my best friends for a Super Mario Strikers tournament. This was the closest I could come to actual physical activity in pants. This was the easiest JNCO experience because my friends accept me for who I am on the inside. They saw through my "Crime Scenes," with their cavernous pockets and ice salt stained hems. My Strikers team, The Christ Punchers, placed second in the tournament, all while I was swaddled in a JNCO blanket. I ate cheese dips and moshed to Linkin Park. These were the pants of my youth, the pants of my soul.

Public feedback
12 people interviewed
60 percent approval rating

"I love that you're wearing them. If you said, 'Nik, what would it take for you to wear these pants?' A death threat, probably. I would have to fear for my life."

"They remind me of times past. Simpler times. Angrier times. Mixed emotions."

"These are literally the worst things I've ever seen."

"They're fucked."

Day 5: Date night
My wife, Jill, was not looking forward to this day. I took her to Nest, a swanky piano lounge. Upon realizing it's a seat-yourself venue, Jill rushed me to a back booth. I distinctly heard someone say, "that guy's pants," as we dashed by a table. I ordered a steak sandwich because I earned it. Jill drank beer. Service was great, and I got the waitress to take a photo of my lady, me, and the pants. The waitress snapped the photo as if this were a regular request at Nest, which should be commended for normalizing the JNCO lifestyle.

Public feedback
Wife
0 percent approval rating

"It was very embarrassing. Never have I walked so quickly from the entrance to my seat. The only highlight is we saw no one that we knew. You owe me."

Date night.

Day 6: Construction work
During this journey of self-discovery, we found mold damage in a section of our basement, which had to be gutted. This project has cost us thousands of dollars and I am just thankful I was able to buy my JNCO jeans before we desperately needed the money. It was time to paint walls, so I put on my pants and got to work.

The pants quickly amassed several paint stains and knocked over a few things in their path. My wife made me stop, so I played video games instead. Thank you, JNCO jeans.

Public feedback
Wife
0 percent approval rating

"Don't."

Day 7: University lecture
I was invited to the University of Regina English Department to speak to students about my life as an important pants wearing person. The title of my lecture was It's All In the Pants: How to be a Famous Freelance Writer. I was expecting a full lecture hall at my alma mater, but only about 10 people showed up in a small classroom to check out my body swathed by the skin of 40 dead ravers. I talked to them about the importance of being bold in life and work, gesturing to the train of denim flowing from my lower half. The class had no questions about my JNCO jeans, likely because they are self-explanatory.

Public feedback
3 people by show of hands
33 percent approval rating

"They're big."

Devin Pacholik is on Twitter.

Civil rights lawyers have filed a lawsuit challenging the detention of a 23-year-old Mexican man who was picked up by Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last Friday, even though he's reportedly allowed to work in the US under the Obama administration's DACA act, the Seattle Times reports.

Lawyers for Daniel Ramirez Medina—who is currently being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, after ICE agents raided his father's house—say that this is the first time since Trump's election that someone protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act has been taken into immigration custody. The DACA act, put in place by Obama, protects children who were brought into the US illegally as children.

During the raid, agents reportedly asked Medina, who has been in the country since he was seven, if he was here in the country illegally, to which Medina responded that he had a work permit under DACA. He was then taken to a processing center and detained. However, an ICE spokeswoman says that Medina was taken into custody as a "self-admitted gang member."

"ICE officers took Mr. Ramirez into custody based on his admitted gang affiliation and risk to public safety," Rose Richeson said in a statement.

One of Medina's lawyers, Ethan Dettmer, denies that claim, arguing that Medina was pressured by ICE agents "to falsely admit affiliation." According to Reuters, the Obama administration recommended immigrants suspected of gang activity should only become deportation priorities if they have been convicted of a crime in connection to a gang. According to his court papers, Medina has no prior criminal record.

Donald Trump's hardline stance on immigration has many wondering how he plans to handle the roughly 750,000 young people currently in the country under the DACA program. When asked about it in an ABC interview, he responded, "They are here illegally. They shouldn't be very worried. I do have a big heart. We're going to take care of everybody. We're going to have a very strong border."

Ramirez's lawsuit, which he filed in Seattle federal court Monday, argues that the government violated his constitutional rights and seeks his immediate release. He is also seeking an injunction that would keep ICE from arresting him again. His hearing is scheduled for Friday.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Indonesia instituted a nationwide ban on the sale of beer at minimarts in 2015, ending a culture of late-night convenience store drinking seemingly overnight in a move that critics called a poorly thought out olive branch to conservative Islamic political parties.

Now, more than two years later, reports are showing that the ban has done more harm than good. By making beer harder to get, some Indonesian drinkers have shifted their consumption to dangerous and unregulated alcohol available on the black market, according to a report by the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies (CIPS).

The report found that the prevalence of black market alcohol stores had increased by 75 percent since 2010—back when beer was available for purchase at most minimarts. More than 58 percent of Indonesians who purchased unregulated, and often deadly, miras oplosan on the black market said they chose the drink because it was cheap and easy to find.

"Our research in six Indonesian cities confirmed that, instead of curbing the desire for intoxication, prohibition facilitates the growth of black markets, a case especially evident in areas with partial prohibition that limits the distribution of alcohol to particular zones," the report found.

Black market alcohol is a deadly brew in Indonesia. In February of last year, 26 people, mostly students, died in a spate of alcohol related deaths in Central Java. All had consumed illegal black market alcohol. Nationwide, 487 people died from illegal alcohol poisoning between 2013 and 2016—a 226 percent increase over figures from 2008 to 2012.

"There will always be a substantial demand for alcoholic beverages, and when you cut something that's legal and could be regulated, they're going to make their own booze, even though some people don't care at all about beer," said Ade Putri, the co-founder of Beergembira, a beer enthusiast and education group. "They'll want to make spiked drinks because it's cheap and it's an easier method for some."

Now, as the nation mulls a wider ban on the consumption of alcoholic beverages, some are questioning why this pluralistic nation has become so obsessed with outlawing alcohol.

The beer ban, as it became known, was instituted in early 2015 by then trade minister Rachmat Gobel. Rachmat ratified a law banning the sale of beer and other "Class A alcoholic beverages" from small retailers. The reasoning, he said, was to prevent the corruption of the youth, arguing that it was too easy for underage students to get their hands on beer.

"That day, we found out from officials of the Ministry of Trade that the reasoning behind it was trivial, it was because they received SMS messages saying that people who drink [in mini markets] were disturbing the peace," said Ade Putri. "They never went to the places the people who complained came from, it was only based on text messages and emails that came in, [and they still] chose to cut the whole supply."

The regulation was an expansion of a 2013 presidential decree that allowed the sale of alcohol in convenience stores, but also let local governments pass stricter regulations that could limit its sale. Rachmat's regulations at the Ministry of Trade narrowed the law, allowing for a nationwide ban.

But cities designated as "tourism zones" were still allowed to sell beer in mini markets if they pleased. So today, thirsty consumers can find bottles of Bintang in Indomaret in Bali, but not in Jakarta. Now, with three different levels of the government each having its own regulation on the sale of alcohol in convenience stores, there is no simple answer as to whether it's legal to sell beer at a 7-11.

"From a policy perspective it was very unusual and unwarranted," said Rofi Uddarojat, researcher from the CIPS. "Because it [the Class A alcohol ban] wasn't evidence-based and it didn't go through a process of proper policy planning. In 2014 they already had a new regulation that made licensing even more strict."

These contradictions are behind erroneous reports that the beer ban was coming to an end in Jakarta. The ban is, by most accounts, still in effect regardless of any changes to the Ministry of Trade's regulations.

"Indonesian Law has many contradictions, doesn't it?" Rofi remarked.

Herpes infects more people worldwide than any other sexually transmitted infection—and it spreads through a simple equation: One partner has the virus. Another partner doesn't. Any sexual contact between the two can infect the uninfected.

Anal, vaginal, oral, fingering—it doesn't matter; you can still share the bug. "It all depends on what's coming into contact with what," says Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease specialist and spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The virus most easily enters the body through a break in the skin, Glatt says—say, an abrasion from rough sex, a cut in your mouth, or a sore from another condition. (Having any one STI increases your risk for acquiring a second.) However, herpes can also slip through the body's normal defenses, especially through mucus membranes in the mouth, eyes, genitals, or rectum.

There's no cure for herpes—and though your risk of spreading it tends to decrease over the years, it's still possible for you to infect a partner. Here's what you need to know to avoid sharing more than you bargained for.

Read more on Tonic

On Wednesday morning, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped by the White House to meet with President Trump. Following their first sit-down together since Trump's election, the pair will host a joint press conference starting around noon EST.

According to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, the leaders will focus on Iran, Syria, ISIS, and the relationship between the two countries after an eight-year strain under President Obama. Trump was vocal about his support for Israel during his campaign, but his recent statements in an Israeli newspaper suggest he's potentially backpedaling on his broad show of support.

With mixed signals coming from Washington, Wednesday's face-to-face meeting will likely be important in setting the tone for Trump and Netanyahu's political relationship moving forward.

Watch a livestream of their 12 PM EST press conference below.

Mexican drug traffickers have gotten pretty creative with their drug smuggling schemes to move product up into the US. They've dressed marijuana up as fruits and vegetables, tried to shoot contraband across using air-powered potato guns, flown it over with drones, and even tried to drive a car full of drugs over the border fence.

And now, apparently, they've constructed a giant catapult to launch weed over the border like some kind of Angry Birds spinoff game.

According to a press release from US Customs and Border Protection, agents in Douglas, Arizona, were patrolling along the US-Mexico border last week when they noticed a crowd of people on the other side start running away as they approached. As they got closer, the agents realized the crowd had been huddled around a large, wooden catapult mounted on the southern side of the border fence.

When the agents swept the surrounding area, they found two bags of marijuana that had allegedly been launched across the border, weighing in at just over 47 pounds. The agents subsequently seized the weed and dismantled the medieval-style catapult, handing it off to Mexican authorities for an investigation.

Even if Trump ends up building his "great wall," it's safe to say that drugs will manage to find a way over, under, and around it.

The first gay parents I ever saw on television were Bette Porter and Tina Kennard. In comparison to the soap-opera hijinks of most of the characters on The L Word, their relationship—as partners, then separated co-parents, then partners again—was the show's most grounded, and one of the few I can look back on today without cringing. I didn't see my queer reality in The L Word's funhouse-mirror fantasy of lesbian life, but I could imagine that one day I might marry a hot art curator and raise an adorable child like Angelica.

Today, married and raising a child with my spouse, my legal standing is far less precarious than Bette and Tina's, but it's just as hard to find characters I relate to as it was a decade ago. It's true that LGBTQ people raising children are becoming a more common feature of the pop-culture landscape. From film's The Kids Are All Right to television's The Fosters, Modern Family, and Grey's Anatomy to even the pages of Highlights magazine, same-sex couples raising children are ever more visible and less controversial. It's refreshing and important to see representations of families that differ from the standard heteronormative narrative. But there still aren't any LGBTQ parents on television who remind me of myself or the people I hang out with.

As our cultural understanding of parenthood and family evolves, we need new archetypes that reflect the world we live in. Archetypes aren't clichés. They're just categories, lenses through which we see ourselves and one another. An archetype gives us a broad-strokes sense of a character that we can then enjoy seeing a specific person play into or against—think of how Amy Poehler in Mean Girls embodies the characteristically clueless "cool mom."

But we don't have cultural archetypes for queer parents. There are so few pop-culture avatars for LGBTQ parenthood that the only way to talk about them is to lump them into one category: Bette and Tina, Stef and Lena, Mitchell and Cameron—they're all the "gay parents." They have to be the stand-ins for all of us, because there aren't enough of them to showcase more complexity.

We don't see nuance or diversity in representations of queer parenting because none of these fictional families has a crew. Few LGBTQ parents in pop culture ever so much as interact with another same-sex parenting couple. Bette and Tina hung out with nobody but lesbians for years, but they were the only people in their friend group with kids. I think Stef and Lena know one other lesbian couple with a kid. Out here in the real world, my social life is like 80 percent other LGBTQ parents. I went to a birthday party for one of my daughter's friends, and there were more queer parents in that building than I've seen on television in my entire life. Did Nic and Jules ever vent to their friends at Lesbian Moms' Knitting Circle? Did Mitchell and Cameron drop in on a book club for gay dads? If One Big Happy hadn't been canceled, would we have seen Lizzy befriending a contingent of queer folks from her Baby & Me yoga class? Nope, nope, and I really doubt it.

This is the difference between "diversity" and real representation. To be lauded as diverse, a piece of media simply has to represent the broadest possible spectrum of identities and experiences. Diversity treats people like check boxes: one pair of lesbian moms, one family of color, one person with a disability. Not only does this tend to erase intersectionality—queer disabled parents of color exist, but you'd be hard pressed to find one on the small screen—but it flattens the reality of our lives and communities to make them more approachable to mainstream audiences.

In real life, people who experience marginalization come from—and create—communities who share their experiences. To transplant "diverse" characters into a predominantly white, straight world is to exchange real diversity for tokenization. Yet when Marvel's Luke Cage depicted a true-to-life Harlem where white people were rarely seen, many white viewers took offense. A white audience, it seems, can relate to a black protagonist, but they still want him to inhabit the world they're familiar with. When asked to immerse themselves in that character's world, they balk.

Likewise, straight audiences are becoming comfortable with the idea that queer people are part of their world, but they're still not ready to engage with the world as we create it for ourselves. When LGBTQ characters show up in media, it's usually as emissaries to the straight world rather than as part of a fully realized, dynamic LGBTQ community. This often comes with a moralizing storyline concluding that LGBTQ people are "just like" straight cis people—an argument that minimizes instead of celebrating our differences.

I think the time to normalize LGBTQ families by depicting us as fundamentally the same as straight families is through. As a queer mom, I want to see fictional characters I can relate to, not just because our marriages are superficially similar, but in terms of how they see the world and live their lives. I want to see archetypes of queer parenting that acknowledge the ways we aren't just like straight people, that value us for our whole complex histories and selves.

I want a sitcom about a bunch of queer moms who are all at different places in their lives, relationships, careers, but they get together every week for a pot-luck picnic and support and love one another while their kids run around in the park. I want a TV show that understands there are lots of different ways to be a gay parent, just like there are lots of different ways to be a straight one. And, ideally, I'd like it to star Samira Wiley. But until television sees fit to deliver, I'm just going to hole up and watch The Birdcage over and over again, like I've been doing up until now. Sure, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane don't belong to a gay dads' play group, but at least they were surrounded by fellow gay men who celebrated their queerness instead of downplaying it. I wish we could see more pop culture doing the same.

Follow Lindsay King-Miller on Twitter.

A toilet block, a seaside clifftop, a lamp-lit street. The scenes photographed by Sean Coyle don't immediately give away signs of a dark past. But all are the sites of horrifying violence, inflicted on gay men in Australia and New Zealand since the 1970s.

Many of the locations have had their violent histories erased or forgotten, but Sean's new exhibition, Cruising Wonderland, acts as a memorial to the notorious sites of homophobic hate crimes across Australasia. We spoke to Sean about the project and, his work and hopes for the future.

VICE: Can you tell us a little about the "Wonderland" that lends the title this latest body of work?
Sean Coyle: I was looking at the history of New South Wales in Australia, which has a horrific history of homophobic violence, especially in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. I was looking at where that had happened, and the cliffs of Bondi were one of the significant sites. A number of men were thrown off the cliffs, and it was ignored by police or just treated as a suicide. Multiple men this happened to and they didn't think to connect the dots. It was a particularly tough time in New Zealand and Australian history because in the height of the AIDS epidemic and the panic about AIDS by society, and that sort of fuelled these groups of youths that took it upon themselves to dish out violence to men and treat it as a sport, "poofter bashing". Anyway, in looking at this particular site, Bondi, I did a bit of research about the surrounding area and discovered that for about five years an early colonial theme park had existed there called Wonderland. I felt, having done the research about the site it was quite a poignant historic reference: Wonderland.

Bondi Cliffs, Sean Coyle

And some of the other locations that appear in your photographs, are they each historically significant for acts of violence? What are their stories?
Yeah the different places are. I photographed this toilet block in Hamilton, where a man was stabbed in the back by another man. The attacker also stabbed another man in a different toilet block as well. In court he said he wanted to rid the world of homosexuals. And the other photo is Inverlochy Place, which is a Wellington Street where the 14-year-old Jeff Whittington was bashed and left for dead there a number of years ago, because he was wearing nail polish on his way home one night. [Note: Whittington died from his injuries].

They are really dark and heavy subjects to be dealing with, how's it been for you, the experience of making the work and engaging with the stories as well?
The work is dark and it's dark on purpose. Not just thematically dark but the works are actually dark to see—so that they sort of just appear out of darkness and I think that's really important for the work and in thinking about it. For me, lightness means clarity, and because I don't have that much clarity on the reasons behind why these things happen, the darkness is a really important aspect of it. Highlighting the dark history for me, in particular the queer dark history in Australasia, I think is important.They become memorials and it's important for us to remember. To remember our histories and move forward.

I imagine that these locations aren't memorialised in other more formal ways, like the cliffs at Bondi and so on, is this a way for you to begin that?
Yeah it is. The tricky thing is trying ways to memorialise without sensationalising as well. The work is sombre and reflective in content and actual material surface as well. Most of the work you see, they're printed on metal so it's an incredibly glossy surface: when you are looking at the work you're also seeing yourself in the work reflected into it. They're self reflective and the sombre nature of the content does allow for us to think and remember.

You're exhibiting as part of Pride Festival. Do you have any particular hopes with how people react with the work? Or what they take away from it?
I hope that people see beyond the images and are aware of the history and the place that it comes from. In the writing surrounding it I hope that I've been clear about that. It is an opportunity to reflect on some of the dark history that queer people in New Zealand and Australia have been subjected to, and continue to be around the world, so while it's dark I hope that people leave with some sense of hope as well of where we're moving to, and there are some works in the exhibition that do speak of hope and are not hopeless.

Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Cruising Wonderland is on until April 2 at TSB Wallace Arts Centre in Auckland as part of Pride Festival.

A little over a week ago, former Cincinnati Reds outfielder and NFL Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders accused Tony Dungy of stealing signals during NFL games. These comments came just after the New England Patriots—who had once been punished for videotaping another team's practices—won their fifth championship.

Dungy didn't deny the claims. Rather, he pointed to the subjectivity of cheating, and also brought up the fact that baseball players were stealing signs back in the 1800s. He has a point. Baseball is no stranger to these kinds of accusations. Cheating is cheating, it's wrong, but it's also part of the game. Think of the performance-enhancing drug scandal that rocked the sport in the last decade—and all the people who looked beyond it, or even encouraged it. Think of corked barrels and doctored baseballs and the pine tar on George Brett's bat.

Those all seem fairly black and white, but cheating in baseball is also in the eye of the beholder. There is plenty of behavior in the sport that is considered cheating by some and not by others. I spoke to seven people—four players, two scouts, and a National League executive, to get a sense of where they stood on subjects like stealing signs, leaning into pitches, and balky pickoff moves.

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