The Elysian Fields were the ancient Greek's answer to heaven. This found photo series from photographer Jordan Madge takes the same name, but the whole "heavenly" thing isn't really there.

Instead, Jordan's Elysian Fields are pretty unsettling. He made the series from two old photographs of an entire town dressed in their Sunday best, they looked a lot like those whole-class portraits you had to take on photo day. He found them an country op-shop, and once he took them home he started to pull his favourite faces from the crowd. It was around then he realised that everyone in the photos was probably dead.

We spoke to him about whether that's a problem, and what this nameless, ownerless collection of photos means to him.

VICE: Hi Jordan. Can you tell me some more about the photos and where they came from?
Jordan Madge: I found them in an op shop in Inglewood, up near Bendigo. They were two long photos of an entire town. I sat with them for three or four months and eventually scanned in every single face—there were probably about 80 faces. I got a bit attached to them, and definitely had favourites who'd I make up stories about in my head, but they never left there. I didn't write much about this actually though. I think people can see that as a bit of a cop-out, especially with found work. Maybe they expect mounds of research to go along with it.

Do you worry about that, people thinking you've appropriated a bunch of photos from history?
I've thought about that, sure, but I don't think that it's a cop-out at all. Curating this work used the same eye as taking original photographs. I made changes to images too, enhanced them I suppose. That helped me feel as if it was my own work, because that tension [around appropriation] is always going to be there. But when you create a brand new story from a photograph, a story that it didn't tell originally, you become an author. You're the author of that work, and that's not a cop-out. Sometimes that doesn't happen: you play around with found images and try to find the narrative but there isn't enough there to make it your own. With Elysian Fields, there was.

Is this your most successful experiment with appropriation?
My last three bodies of work have used appropriation to some degree, but there's been original photographs in there too. It's interesting to now only use appropriated or found material and still try to tell a story or convey a mood. It's actually more freeing. It feels much easier to chop and change because you don't have that attachment you do to your own photographs. It's a bit more fun really.

I suppose it's also much simpler.
Yeah, Elysian Fields probably cost me $10, you know? Other projects cost hundreds, and that's just to get the film developed. It's another grand if you want to make 15 copies of a book. Appropriated works are so inexpensive, it's a really accessible way to make something. You can play around with things much more when you know they're not driving you broke.

Aesthetically, how does Elysian Fields differ to the work that came before it?
Elysian Fields definitely doesn't look like the pictures I used to take, but now I've found my own work moving toward that aesthetic: getter darker, a bit creepier. I'm chasing that.

Creepy is a good word for it.
Yeah, I found it kind of interesting that a lot of these people would be dead now. That's where the title comes from, Elysian Fields is a paradise for the soul, but I've painted a picture of them in a really eerie way. So this is paradise but it looks like hell. That's something I don't usually think about much — souls and all that.

Sure. You don't seem like a particularly morbid person.
I'm not really, but I do have my moments.

What does freak you out?
The internet can be scary. I mean, not deeply, but it creates a pressure that isn't really there. Instagram can be a killer, because you'll see people posting work all the time and get to thinking "well, what am I doing?" I tend to sit on work for quite a while. In the long run, though, people don't expect you to bring out a project every year. And in the meantime the internet is fucking scary.

Follow Jordan to the places he finds scary: Instagram and www.jordanmadge.com.

The Oregon Trail is synonymous with "edutainment"—that beloved genre of games that makes learning fun. The game, a simulation of a 19th century family's westward trek to Oregon, is famous to the point of parody. Every American school student of the past 30 years has fond (traumatic?) memories of oxen dying, wagons catching fire, loved ones drowning in the Green River, and hunters shooting 1,200 pounds of food but only carrying 100 pounds back to the wagon.

Three Minnesotan public school teachers created The Oregon Trail in 1971. At the time, computers were new to education; there were no monitors, and students played the first version of the game on a teletypewriter—an electromechanical typewriter that could communicate, via phone line, with a large, mainframe computer. The game was text-based and paper-based; a student would type out his or her commands on a roll of paper, and the computer would respond by typing back status updates.

Motherboard tracked down all three original creators—Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger—to learn about the humble beginnings of their iconic game. Here is the origin story of The Oregon Trail, in their own words.

Read more on Motherboard

I was born in the last week of 1990 in Plainfield, Vermont, a town where everybody used the same midwife, Judy Luce, and considered chickenpox to be a healthy, natural way to build a child's immune system. The general consensus was that it was fine to go the hospital if you'd been in a car crash, but in terms of disease? Western medicine would probably just make whatever it was worse.

Around that same time, someone in the community passed my mom a copy of A Shot In The Dark by Harris Coulter, a doctor who specialized in homeopathic and alternative medicine. It bounced between junk science that portrayed vaccines as dangerous time-bombs pushed by the government and horrifying anecdotes from parents. It took particular aim at the vaccine for pertussis—the 'P' in the DPT combo shot, which also inoculates against diphtheria and tetanus—which it claimed could cause neurological damage.

"That book was definitely making the rounds," my mom tells me. "It had a serious impact on everybody in Plainfield. It opened with this god-awful scene, a registered nurse talking about her baby dying in her arms after getting vaccinated … everybody in this little town of fairly well-educated people where everybody used echinacea, we were totally ripe for that kind of book."

Read more on Tonic

There was no denying it. The day simply felt different. There was a palpable electricity in the air. Every first Tuesday of the month it pulsed. The kids talked louder in the hallways, where they'd gather waiting for class to begin. It was Taco Tuesday! Finally a reason to get excited about school hot lunch.

This was rare. School-cafeteria lunches were usually mundane, and the ones they served at Burns Park Elementary in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were no different. There were the occasional good days: pizza and burgers. Sloppy Joes, maybe. But mostly we'd suffer through the slog, knowing that Taco Tuesday was getting closer and closer with each passing day. We stoically choked down whatever meals they passed off on us in the meantime. And waited for that sacred holiday to arrive once more.

I love tacos. In fact, I've never met anyone who doesn't. Even in Ann Arbor, where they weren't what anyone would confuse with authentic, the school tacos were sublime. My favorite. Hard shell. Beef. Cheese. That was it. We kids went wild for them. (I actually think they simply served the leftover Sloppy Joe meat in taco shells, which I readily admit sounds unappetizing. It wasn't.) We would dream about them.

Something about the light in my eyes on those first Tuesdays must've been obvious to my mother, who inevitably asked what was up. When I told her, we began having taco nights at home, too. I was sort of amazed how easy they were to make, that you could buy the pre-packaged shells at the store all ready to be filled. My mom would cook the meat and add a packet of taco seasoning, which, when it hit the pan, filled the kitchen with a zesty and intoxicating aroma—if they made cologne out of the stuff, I'd wear it. On taco nights at home, we'd add lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and black olives, which I know offends some foodies, but I thought added a cool kick.

Through my humble first experiences making tacos, I came to realize they were the perfect food. They were so utilitarian. They contained all of the major food groups and could fit easily in your hand. Come to think of it, that's also an apt description of a sandwich, too, but I like tacos better for one reason: texture.

It's a genuine high. I can honestly say anytime I'm eating a taco, there's nothing else I would rather be doing.

With hard-shell tacos, the pleasure is in that first bite, turning your head sideways (or not), the whole thing falling apart right in front of you, but not caring at all. The shell is brittle, and the meat is hot and tender. The cheese is a little bit melted, and the lettuce and tomatoes are still cool. It's a genuine high. A real, true case of food-borne happiness. I can honestly say anytime I'm eating a taco, there's nothing else I would rather be doing. I get taco tunnel vision. There's nothing else I could improve about those precious moments, except adding more tacos.

There's not much you can do to mess them up. The ingredients of the standard taco I had growing up are so straightforward, and even in the (very rare) bad taco experience, you still find consistency, a symmetry.

Now, I should mention here (though it's fairly obvious) that I'm talking about the kind of basic three-to-six ingredient taco hard-shell taco I found in the Midwest of my youth. I, of course, have had incredible tacos that barely resembled these in my lifetime, be it tender, juicy carne asada with raw onions and chopped cilantro and a squeeze of lime served on delicate, buttery flour tortillas from a truck in Los Angeles or potato-and-egg breakfast tacos with salsa verde in Texas that brought a tear to my eye. "Real" tacos, for lack of a better term, are their own world, and I wouldn't want anyone to think I was confusing these handcrafted, labor intensive works of food art with their rich and complex flavors with the basic foodstuff I've described above. I love them all.

But the ones I truly fell for, the ones that stuck with me, are the kind that I got so excited about early on. The kind you can find on any menu at Taco Bell, which serves the best tacos I've ever had. Some may cringe when they hear that (and many do), but you love what you love, and much of what makes us feel good are the things that left a deep impression on us on first encounter, and that you learn you can rely on time and again.

Beyond taco Tuesday in school or taco night at my home, Taco Bell was where it was really at. When I was growing up, fast-food places all offered basically the same things. They were all burger joints. Which is what made Taco Bell seem like a heaven-sent anomaly. They served the stuff we'd come to love, made it better than everyone else, and sold it cheaper. Growing up, I could get a hard-shell taco at Taco Bell for $.49 cents. And it packaged them in a way that encouraged you to get as many as you possibly could, tightly packed into a neat row, individually wrapped. I could eat a dozen without even noticing.

My love for tacos culminated a few years ago, when out of the blue, I received a personal invitation to take a private tour of the Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, California. While there, I got to learn about the entire history of the company—from its first walk-up restaurant that opened up the street in Downey in 1962 to the 6,000 location global enterprise it has become—preview its upcoming new concepts and promotions, and best of all, taste test every new item coming to its menu. I actually got to try the Doritos Locos taco before it hit the restaurants. And if that wasn't enough, I was given full, unrestricted access to the test kitchen (along with a hair net and gloves). It was one of the greatest days of my life.

Tacos, like music and kittens, are one of the simple joys in life that prove the world isn't an entirely bad place. It's a challenging place. It's intense. But it's also a delicious place. Just thinking about tacos helps me maintain a more optimistic outlook. And anything that can do that is magical.

Follow Andrew W.K. on Twitter.

We're all going to remember where we were the day Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President. In LA on Friday January 20, 2017, there was an apocalyptic downpour. Ryan Adams was in his own Pax-Am Studios behind the legendary Sunset Sounds in Hollywood, ordering a ton of weed with his assistant and band member "Charlie" [Stavish]. Pax-Am is unashamedly rock 'n' roll: it's littered with trinkets like the inside of a comic book store, its walls are covered in leopard print fabric. "Welcome to nerd headquarters!" announces Adams, offering a hug. Every day, Charlie and Adams hang here from 4PM until whenever. Adams sheepishly asks if Charlie might be free later for a jam before work mode kicks in (Adams was about to leave for an 11-day promo tour in Europe). "We could make fun shit, get blazed."

"I'm in," replies Charlie.

"Bring the vape pen!" shouts Adams. Charlie offers it to Adams before he leaves. "No this interview will end up being about dub music! Besides, I have the bowl." He drums up a shopping list for the weed dispensary. "Get me $300 worth of Space Travel," says Adams, pulling out his wallet and filling Charlie's hands up with $100 bills. "Ooh will there be edibles, too? Make that $400." Charlie's confused. "So you're saying, 'Get as much as this will allow?'" His eyes water at the hard cash. "Dude, they're going to think I'm a dealer!"

Later, Adams is scheduled to drive to Pasadena to soundcheck for a Women's March-related benefit he's playing the following day. There are mudslides en route and it's a Friday afternoon. In LA this means contending with three hours of roundtrip traffic just to walk onstage, strap on an acoustic guitar, and check his mic for two songs. He's not having it.

Read more on Noisey

A mob of white middle-aged fans swells behind a black rope divider outside the kitchen. It's a little after 1 PM in the weeds of the lunchtime rush. Despite the scene, line cooks crank through service like it's any other day.

"Have you ever had trashcan nachos?"

Guy Fieri is standing at the pass inside the kitchen at his Las Vegas restaurant, Guy Fieri's Vegas Kitchen & Bar, a restaurant that in its prime can average 1,800 covers a day. His bleached blond frosted tips are glistening; his garish gold metal jewelry twinkles beneath the fluorescent lights. His wraparound shades, however, are nowhere to be found. He's holding a hollowed-out metal pitcher to one eye. "Like from a trash can?" I ask. Fieri lets out a guttural chuckle, shaking his head. "Sister… you have no idea," he says smiling as he's handed his distressed denim chef's coat, adorned with a leather collar and silver star buttons that look like they might belong to Ozzy Osbourne. I'm struggling to keep up with his fierce energy as I tuck my long hair inside a red and black Guy Fieri baseball cap, which also exhibits an intentional scuffed-up brim.

"You're in Vegas, the land of indulgence. People wear feathers on their heads and dance around on stage here, and people pay to see it… so this is far better than that," he says with a raised eyebrow. "You ready?" He quickly motions me over to the flat top grill while I tie the strings of my black apron—embroidered with a heart ensconced in flames—and put on latex gloves fit for a man. I didn't come here to learn how to make Fieri's Original Ringer Burger or the recipe for his Showgirls rendition of nachos, but it seems he has his own agenda. I've come to Sin City to spend some time with the Food Network star, hoping to meet the person who lives underneath the persona of the cartoonish hair, the flaming bowling shirts, the red '68 Camaro, and the sleeve tattoos and learn why this character as President of Flavortown has become an American icon.

Read more on MUNCHIES

Dear god, the debate over this Liberal motion condemning Islamophobia is driving people insane.

Apparently Jordan Peterson is now reciting amateur slam poetry about the Prophet Mohamed, The Rebel is rambling on about Sharia law, and Kellie Leitch's campaign has casually photoshopped an image of the Parliament Hill shooting into an ad for her petition against M-103.

All this right-wing hand-wringing seems pretty over-the-top, considering the motion itself asks to "recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear, condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism," and "collect data to contextualize hate crime reports."

This seems to have spawned somewhat of a game among media and pundits: who can spot the most racist/dumb dog whistle?

As fun and terrifying as this may be, one of these ensuing controversies brought up by iPolitics earlier today may not be worth getting upset about. The story questions whether the Leitch campaign changed the eye colour of a model with "M-103" duct tape over her mouth.

"Most versions of the stock image available online… appear to show a young girl with brown eyes," reads the story. "It's not clear whether Leitch's people were the ones to change the model's eye colour or whether they used a [sic] image that was already altered."

Sure, a close inspection of Leitch's image shows the eye colour is an obvious Photoshop job. The colour filter leaves a tiny crescent of brown along the bottom edge of the left eye, and there's a few strands of hair in front of it which have also been turned blue.

Yep, that's some blue hair.

On Twitter, some people have asked Leitch why the eye colour has been changed. Could it be a salute to her Aryan-race-loving followers?

I reached out to the Leitch campaign, and so far haven't heard back. But I think I can put most of this mystery to rest on my own.

A reverse image search on TinEye brings back over 900 versions of this image. Hundreds of them have been edited with different colours, backgrounds, text over the mouth, lens flare, makeup, and yes, different eye colours.

A version of the photo on a Spanish stock photo site from last year appears to have the same eye filter as the one applied to the Leitch image. Several dozen more versions seem to have the exact same filter applied, stretching back to 2013.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the eye filter was probably added long before Leitch's design team ever got their hands on it. But that Parliament Hill shooting in the background? That's still on them.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Donald Trump has reportedly offered the job of national security adviser to Vice Admiral Robert Harward, according to two US officials, Reuters reports.

Harward, a retired Navy SEAL who has served as the deputy commander of the US Central Command, reportedly told Trump he needed a few days to think it over, according to Foreign Policy. The Rhode Island native previously worked on the National Security Council under former president George W. Bush and would likely bring in his own experienced team should he accept the job.

Harward has already served under Trump's defense secretary James Mattis, when Mattis was head of Central Command. According to Foreign Policy, the defense secretary has urged Harward to take the job.

The position opened up after Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, resigned just three weeks into the job after it was revealed that he had discussed Russian sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, before he was officially in the new administration. Although Trump and his administration said Flynn was asked to resign because he "misled" the vice president, reports show that Trump was warned about the call nearly two weeks before Mike Pence was briefed.

Earlier this month, we reported on the Yemeni-American bodega strike that saw thousands of NYC deli owners and workers shut down their businesses for a day of prayer and protest. Now, following last week's nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, in which more than 600 people across 11 states were arrested, reports are emerging that numerous Washington, DC-based restaurants are preparing for a "Day Without Immigrants" strike to take place this Thursday.

The strike would be part of a movement that appears to be spreading across the US, and may culminate in a nationwide strike planned for April 28, organized by a group called A Day Without Immigrants. The strikes call on Latinos and immigrants to stay home from work in protest of President Trump's increasingly polarizing stance on immigrants.

Information about Thursday's DC strike has spread through Facebook, Spanish-language flyers, and word of mouth. The plan is for immigrants to stay home from work and to stay out of stores, restaurants, gas stations, and schools—all in an effort to reveal the economic impact of an America without immigrants. "Mr. President, without us and without our contribution this country is paralyzed," says one flyer.

Read more on MUNCHIES

Buck Flogging wants you to quit your job.

For a small fee, Flogging will even walk you through the process, showing you how to squirrel away a few months' worth of savings and line up a secondary source of income, until you can finally march into your boss's office, announce your intentions to move on, flip the desk, and get the hell out of there for good.

OK, so maybe it doesn't usually happen like that, but Flogging isn't joking when he says most people would benefit from quitting their jobs. The 39-year-old has spent much of his own career writing books like Quit Your Job in Six Months, coaching other people to ditch the nine-to-five life for less conventional, more entrepreneurial lines of work. When we spoke on the phone, he told me his mission in life is "to serve the unhappily employed, to help them find another way to live their life."

Flogging may be a one-man unemployment evangelist, but his target audience is surprisingly big. A 2016 global survey by accounting firm Deloitte found that almost 44 percent of millennials would leave their job in the next two years, if given the choice. And to be sure, 2 million Americans actually do leave their jobs every year. Could they actually be healthier, happier, and living better lives than those of us who still show up to work every day?

Watch: How To Quit Your Job

It should be stated that there are a lot of good reasons to have a job: It makes us feel useful, it puts food on the table, it gives people a way to define themselves. Aristotle even had a concept that the root of human happiness was not dicking around and relaxing all day, but working toward a clearly defined goal—basically, some iteration of having a job. That's why even super rich people like Bill Gates show up to work on a regular basis instead of spending every day drinking martinis by a swimming pool.

Still, the Aristotelian view is an awfully romanticized version of what it means to actually have a job. Most people do not wake up every morning thinking, How can I achieve my full human potential on this conference call today? Work is often, at best, a source of boredom; at worst, one of misery and dread.

"Most people identify work as their number one source of stress," Heidi Hanna, executive director of the American Institute of Stress, told me. "It's chronic, ongoing stress."

Gallup's State of the American Workplace survey found that a whopping 70 percent of people reported feeling so stressed out that they had actively disengaged from their work. Employees who fell into this category were more likely to report physical pain from their job-related misery, along with higher cortisol levels, higher blood pressure, and double the risk of depression. In other words, work is literally killing people.

"Experiencing stress, we know, is correlated with anywhere between 75 and 90 percent of all [primary care] visits. It triggers a systemwide response: increases inflammation, heart rate, decreases our ability to sleep, changes our metabolism," Hanna said. "It hijacks the way our system operates."

So leaving your job can be an instant (if temporary) reprieve from that stress. As one job-quitter put it to me, there was a twinge of guilt after giving his two week's notice, but "nothing felt as good as walking out of that office knowing I wouldn't have to come back." And there's good reason to believe that quitting a soul-sucking job can lead to better outcomes in the long run—just look at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards, who spent ten years building up the nerve to quit his day job to self-produce his debut movie.

Related: We Asked People in Their 30s If They Hate Their Jobs

But in leaving behind all of that work-related stress, quitters also leave behind a paycheck, purpose, and the relative ease in knowing what you're supposed to do day in and day out. That can bring on its own kind of stress—like, How the hell am I going to pay the rent this month stress. That's what Tess Vigeland found when she interviewed 80 job-quitters for her book Leap: Leaving a Job With No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. "At first, they are relieved not to be where they were. There's a palpable sense of relief; like a boulder was lifted off them," she said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "That euphoria lasts until they look at their bank account and say: 'I don't know when my next paycheck is coming.'"

Unemployment can be embarrassing, nerve-wracking, and is associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, even the risk of suicide. Having a job sucks, but not having a job can suck even more.

To Flogging, those aren't real risks as long as you quit on your own terms and in pursuit of something better. Whether you quit with or without another job lined up, he said, you'll be fine as long as you start spending your time doing something more fulfilling than what you were doing before.

"I think whether you make more money or less money [after you quit], whether you spend more hours working or fewer, it doesn't matter if you're enjoying what you're doing in that time more," Flogging told me. "If you quit your job and you instantly shift from doing something you didn't like to something you do like, you're already solving one of the greatest problems in life."

But not everyone sees it that way. Take it from James Krause, who left his cushy job at the University of California, Davis, to follow his dream of opening an aquarium store. He knew it seemed crazy, but he was 29, tired of making money for someone else, and figured if he was ever going to make the leap to working for himself, it had to be now or never.

"After I quit, I was pretty apprehensive," he told me. "I had just taken steps toward either crushing defeat or completing my dream."

It turned out that owning your own business, however fulfilling, can be way more stressful than any job where you clock in, clock out, and take home a paycheck. "I always knew it would be difficult, but I was not prepared," Krause said. "I used to never get sick; now I get sick three or four times a year. I have extra gray hair from the stress. It's tough. If you quit your job to start your own business and think there is going to be less stress, you are sorely mistaken."

Hanna, too, underscored that quitting your job isn't a panacea. "The worst thing that can happen is that you throw a tantrum, you flip a table, you storm out the room, and you end up in the same exact type of situation because you weren't clear about what wasn't working," she told me. "It can feel like, 'anything would be better than this,' but be careful."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

What is it? A studio apartment, which is a clever phrase estate agents use to say "a very small, entirely featureless apartment";
Where is it? Ealing Broadway, a sort of middle class enclave that still has the odd stabbing to keep its edge alive;
What is there to do locally? Same shit you can do anywhere in London: go to Bill's for breakfast, Pret or EAT for lunch and Franco Manca for dinner. Honestly, this city is just the same three streets, copy and pasted over the space of 607 square miles;
Alright, how much are they asking? £650pcm

(Photos via Haart)

Let's see if you can spot it. I believe in you to spot this. Approach this advert like you would a crossword, or a mind puzzle. Keep your thoughts supple and ready to jump. Hey: what's missing from this picture?

"A stunning newly refurbished one bedroom apartment that has been completed to the highest professional standard. The property offers a huge open plan bedroom/living area with beautifuly crafted fitted wardrobes. The property also benefits from a modern walk in shower suite and is presented in excellent decortive order. The property is located a stones-throw from Ealing Broadway Station (Central and District Line, British Rail and Heathrow Express) as well as offering excellent road links via the nearby A406."

No: don't get distracted by the two typos in 78 words (an astonishingly high hit rate, even for an estate agent!) (estate agents literally have to take a photo of the room that isn't in portrait mode and describe it without fucking up the spelling! That's all they have to do to earn their 10 percent commission! And they cannot fucking do that!). I'll give you another clue: here's the floorplan:

You got it yet? I'll take you out of your misery: there is no kitchen. There is no kitchen at all. Can you sleep there? You can sleep there. Can you shit and piss there? You can shit and piss there, with incredible proximity to the sink and the shower. Can you cook even a single boiled egg there? You cannot cook a single boiled egg there. You can't even make a Pot Noodle, unless you're willing to keep a kettle, always, resting next to the nearest plug socket to the floor, filling it with sink water from the bathroom. You cannot make a steak. Imagine yourself, sitting here on the bed (you could sit on the sofa, directly facing the bed, but you are – when you sign a rent agreement here – essentially committing to a Travelodge life, just a mini-fridge and some single-serving Glen's bottles for company, so when you eat – and sit, and ponder, and read, and do anything, basically – you are going to slump into that same hotel space, mentally, and you are going to eat exclusively on the bed) imagine yourself, on that bed, just eating from the crust inwards (you have gone so insane here you are eating sandwiches back to front), and every breakfast, lunch and dinner is the same: a Tesco Cheese Triple Sandwich. Six hundred and fifty pounds a month.

There has been a groundswell, in regards to recent LROTWs, where people will seek me out on Twitter in response to a story I have written – me going on and on and getting frothy mouthed about the lack of a sink, or toilet access, or no lights or something mad like that; it's a cupboard, it's literally advertised as a cupboard, and I scramble up upon my high horse and yell about it; "THIS IS A CUPBOARD!" I say, always, "LONDON IS BROKEN" – and, without fail, someone will find me and go: it's not that bad. I could live there.

Which is very noble, but also wrong and bad. That's what London has taught us to believe. It has bent and frayed our logic and made us think that this is OK. London has strapped us to the radiator (the room comes with a radiator!) and beaten us with a belt (belt not included in the rent!) and we have come out of this torture room altered, and changed, and we think it's sort of OK, maybe, to live in a studio apartment with no kitchen. I mean, how often do you cook anyway? You're out drinking most nights. Normally get a pub burger or a kebab on the way home. Out for brunch on the weekends. Takeaway at night. When was the last time you cooked? Really, really cooked? You could get a nice little Itsu on the way home, at the end of the day, when they slash the prices. Sit in bed and have a lovely half-price Itsu. Hey, maybe it'll be good: you've been meaning to try more restaurants! Yeah. Cooking food – creating sustenance to continue human life – is overrated anyway. There's nothing that can't stop you going to the petrol station and having two Pepperami, a Ginster's and a Curly Wurly for dinner. If you mum calls and asks you if you're eating healthily just hang up. Problem solved! Problem fucking solved!

(I would also like to point out that this flat, which you will never eat an omelette in ever in your life, is a shit-hole regardless of the no kitchen situation, and that spending even one second in there while wearing a pair of socks – every surface of this flat is slippery polished wood – would result in you immediately falling over, shattering your spine and dying, alone and in agony, surrounded by old takeaway tins that still have an old, room temperature pakora in it. Do not rent this flat.)

London is broken!

@joelgolby (h/t @Gabby_L_M)

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Samuel Park faced a difficult proposition on Election Day last November. The Democratic nominee for the 101st District in Georgia's House of Representatives was up against Valerie Clark, a three-term Republican legislator hoping to lock down a fourth by night's end. Park might have knocked on more than 5,000 doors, but Clark had the incumbent advantage on her side. Nevertheless, the newcomer emerged victorious, unseating Clark with 52 percent of the vote. Georgia as a whole might have swung red for Donald Trump, but Gwinnett County went blue for the first time since Jimmy Carter—and the 101st followed suit.

Incumbent advantage and the greater county's GOP-voting precedent aside, there was another reason why one might not have expected to see Sam Park win. The 31-year-old attorney is openly gay, not to mention the son of Korean American immigrants, and campaigned in a state that nearly signed an anti-LGBTQ "religious freedom" bill into law only eight months before. Still, Park said that he wasn't surprised by the results.

"I [ran as] an American first. I [ran as] a Georgian first. I focused on the values that we shared, the issues that affected all of us in the district," said Park. "Georgia has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation. That, coupled with what my family went through after my mother was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, compelled me to run. LGBTQ rights were a part of the issues that I ran on, but I couched them in broader terms since it's not just the LGBTQ community that faces discrimination and hostility in the state legislature."

Park's platform focused on commonalities, but it did so in order to speak to a broad coalition of groups—one that understood deportation as a matter of gay rights and trans people's access to public restrooms as a feminist issue. The fact that Park was able to successfully unseat a Republican incumbent on this somewhat intersectional platform makes his campaign all the more intriguing. It provides a model for how an LGBTQ person might seek public office at the state or local level in a conservative-leaning district—something that will only become more important as the federal government shifts further away from the queer and trans community's best interests. But what lessons can other LGBTQ candidates in traditionally red areas learn from Park's strategy?

"Every district is different. Every candidate is different," said Aisha Moodie-Mills, CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports LGBTQ candidates. "All politics are local… Whether you're [running for office] in a more moderate or a more conservative district, at the end of the day, it's about connecting with your community. Our folks get elected because they represent their communities best."

One hundred and ninety-one openly LGBTQ candidates ran for office in 2016; the Victory Fund endorsed 135 of them, and 87 ultimately won their races. There are only two policy requirements for gaining the support of the Victory Fund—a candidate must be pro-choice, and they must support pro-LGBTQ legislation—both of which fall squarely into Democratic territory. As a result, most Victory Fund-backed candidates are Democrats (as are most openly LGBTQ candidates who seek office, period). But an LGBTQ candidate does not need to support historically liberal social views in order to get elected, at least not if they're running in an historically conservative area.

Take Jason Elliott, for example. Elliott represents South Carolina's 22nd District in the state's house of representatives. He is gay and a Republican, and his candidacy last year definitely toed the party line. During the campaign, Elliott advocated for relaxed gun control, a "life begins at conception" stance on abortion, and protections for religious freedom—protections that, in a number of states, have opened the door for de facto discrimination against queer and trans people. He told me that his sexual orientation was not an issue with his constituents. In fact, he said, the people who seemed most interested in bringing it up were journalists.

"I'm tired of hearing about it," said Elliott. "Infrastructure, jobs, the economy, and education. When constituents ask me about the issues, those are the issues they talk and care the most about."

Homophobia did present a minor obstacle for Daniel Hernandez, Jr., of Arizona. The 26-year-old representative hails from the state's Second District, a region with strong, socially conservative influences by way of its Catholic communities, despite being Democrat-leaning on the whole. Hernandez said that he regularly received hateful messages in his campaign's email inbox last year, ranging from comments like "we don't need any of your kind" and "dirty faggot" to threats that "if you ever come to my door, I've got my 2nd Amendment right and I know how to use it." But Hernandez, who began his career in public service at the age of 21, is no longer fazed by the threats and slurs.

"You have to have the hide of a rhinoceros to be in public service," Hernandez said, referencing Eleanor Roosevelt's famous piece of advice for women entering public life. "If you're always getting hate mail, you must be doing something right."

Kathy Kozanchenko got more than just hate mail when she ran for Ann Arbor City Council in the mid 1970s—her campaign office was shot up. But Kozanchenko persevered, and, in 1974, she became the first openly LGBTQ elected official in the United States, a legacy carried on other trailblazers like Althea Garrison, Harvey Milk, Elaine Noble, Park Cannon, and Kate Brown. These days, there are around 500 or so openly LGBTQ politicians in office, according to Moodie-Mills, fighting for the needs of their communities—all of their communities—at every level of government. That number will need to increase, especially at the state and local level, if these lawmakers hope to adequately defend the constituents who elected them. And with any hope, those politicians can trickle up to more prominent positions, where they'll help add LGBTQ diversity to the federal Senate and House, where Tammy Baldwin remains the only gay Senator and only six Representatives are openly gay or lesbian.

And as LGBTQ Americans continue to be accepted within their communities, running as an LGBTQ candidate no longer means campaigning with the presupposition that voters will be unable to look past one's sexuality to see who they are as a citizen and community member. Non-normative sexuality and gender identity are still markers of difference within our society, but as the success of these and other LGBTQ civil servants shows, it's one that may be shrinking by the year. And for politics on the whole, that's a good thing.

"We need you in the building, fighting on these issues for your community," said Leslie Herod, who represents Colorado's Eighth District. "Run. We need your voice."

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A clip of Toronto Mayor John Tory defending the practice of blackface surfaced on YouTube today, and man does he sound like an out of touch clown.

Like wow. I have heard white people defend blackface before, but Tory really took all the cliches and ran with them. This audio, from 2012 when Tory was hosting a radio talkshow, is hot garbage right from the start.

Tory was inviting his guests and listeners to debate whether or not it was wrong that Maple Leafs center Tyler Bozak had dressed in blackface to portray Michael Jackson for Halloween.

"I looked up what racism and racists are and it didn't seem to fit that, that if you're going in a costume as a black celebrity and you are a white person and you made your face black to be part of that, that didn't seem to fit into the definition of racism," he opens. "But I stand to be corrected."

Dunno about you, but I love getting hot takes about racism from people who are so removed from racism that they have to look it up in the dictionary and then feel entitled enough to share their thoughts on a massive platform.

Moving on, Tory's guest, using the "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" logic, says she doesn't understand why dressing up like one of your black heroes, complete with darkened skin, is an issue. Tory replies, "I don't get why it's an issue at all," and points out that there are lots of Barack Obama masks available at Halloween.

His other guest chips in with this insight: "I think Michael Jackson is one of the only black guys out there that a white guy can go as without needing any makeup." Everyone chuckles. But to his credit, this guy at least says he thinks blackface is "stupid" and that "we need to accept that people should not do blackface."

It's never OK. Photo via Flickr

VICE has asked Newstalk 1010 for the guests' identities but has not yet heard back.

Tory, determined to degrade the already shitty level of discourse, then asks, "what about Barack Obama he's going to dress up as Mitt Romney and making his face white. Is that racist?" He also keeps bringing up the fact that Michael Jackson "seemed to be trying to make his skin white" as if that is in any way relevant.

In case it bears repeating: blackface has deeply offensive roots that stem from minstrel shows in which white actors painted their faces black to mock black people, often using awful caricatures of black features.

Tory, seemingly oblivious to this until a caller mentions it later, says being called a racist is the last thing anyone wants to be accused of, but "in this day and age I really believe there are fewer and fewer racists out there. I think most younger people are either colour blind and blind to things like sexual orientation and religion as well they should be."

Did he get that idea from the dictionary as well? Because I highly doubt people from those communities, who deal with hatred and systemic discrimination on a daily basis, are ready to declare the fight over.

Tory then adds that he thinks society has gone overboard with "political correctness" and blackface is an example of that.

Tory muses, "I started asking myself, well if I wanted to go to a costume party as Muhammad Ali or Barack Obama and blackened my face to do so, because they happen to have black skin, is that racist? And rather than rely on some Twitter definition of racism or a text message from a listener or whatever, I looked up racism in the dictionary."

Good to know that Tory would rather read about racism in the dictionary than listen to actual people "or whatever" who might have a valid point of view. (Then again, this is the same guy who denied white privilege was a thing.)

Tory sent a statement to VICE today saying he now understands "blackface under any circumstance is racist and never okay."

Read more: Why the Dutch Holiday Tradition of Blackface Won't Go Away

"Comments I made on the radio five years ago about a hockey player dressed as Michael Jackson for Halloween were posted on the Internet today. At the time, I was leading a conversation on the topic as a radio host and did not think such an action was racist if the individual didn't intend to be derogatory. I was corrected at the time by a caller who phoned into the radio show that day, and have since learned that my thinking on the subject was wrong."

He said any form of cultural appropriation is unacceptable and that he's fully supportive of the city's Anti-Black Racism Community Conversations, "which are identifying actions we can take to address the systemic barriers that exist across Toronto."

Sounds like an initiative he could've used back in 2012.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Stuart McLean, the host of one of the most iconic Canadian radio shows in history, has died.

McLean was the host of the exceedingly popular radio show Vinyl Cafe for the last 23 years. The 68-year-old took a break from the show in December of last year to deal with his diagnosis of melanoma. He passed away on Feb. 15, 2017.

"Stuart connected us—to our country and to each other. He entertained us, he made us think, he made us smile. Occasionally he made us cry. And, through all of that, he reminded us that life is made up of small moments," reads a statement on the Vinyl Cafe website.

"We never know which ones will be forgotten and which ones will stay with us forever. "

Born and raised in Montreal, McLean started working in radio in the 1970s making documentaries for the CBC Radio program Sunday Morning. In 1994, as a summer replacement show, McLean created the Vinyl Cafe and the rest is, well, folksy well-told history.  

Photo via Facebook

McLean and the show were known for their tales of Canadiana pulled from sources across the country that one wouldn't typically tap. Fans of the man with the distinctive voice and quirky tales took to Twitter to express their sadness of his passing.

When McLean took leave from his show in December he wrote a statement to fans addressing his cancer and treatment.

"I don't want you to worry about me. A year ago I told you that I expected this to be just a bump in the road, not the end of the road," it read. "I still believe that to be true. I hope we will meet up again—on the radio or in theatres. We'll make sure to tell you before that happens."

"In the meantime, look after yourselves and each other. And know that this isn't goodbye. It's just … so long for now."

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On an all new episode of BONG APPÉTIT, Abdullah takes his buddy ZeShan to Joshua Tree for an outdoor cookout with chef Jake Francis, who prepares a multitude of infused pork dishes over an open flame.

BONG APPÉTIT airs Wednesdays at 10:30 PM on VICELAND

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

Political views aside, there's something that people on all sides of the aisle can agree on: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is an objectively attractive man. And it looks like Trump's favorite daughter, Ivanka, agrees. Take a look at the way the First Daughter hungrily eyes Trudeau during his recent visit to the White House.

Tuesday night on Desus & Mero's very special Valentine's Day episode, Kid Mero and Desus Nice talked about Ivanka's unapologetic puppy love and how the Donald needs to look out—not only has Justin Trudeau outsmarted Trump's weird handshake power play move, but now he's moving in on his daughter (or she on him, at least).

You can watch last night's Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

On Monday night, the Trump administration lost a staffer to scandal for the first time when Michael Flynn resigned as national security advisor. The former general has not been charged with any crimes, but he did lie to (or at least mislead) Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador about sanctions against Vladimir Putin's government. Besides the not telling the truth part—reportedly the reason he was sacked—there are questions about whether Flynn conducted illegal diplomacy when he talked to the ambassador, since the call in question occurred before Donald Trump became president.

Members of Congress from both parties were already making noise about investigating Flynn's ties to Russia—as well as Russian interference in the election—when, less than 24 hours later, multiple prominent outlets reported that people in Trump's orbit met repeatedly with Russian intelligence officials before the election. According to the New York Times, some of America's spies are, well, spooked that around the same time Trump's people had those contacts with Russian spies and government officials, the candidate publicly praised Putin.

Tom Clancy–style theorizing about ties between Russia and Donald Trump have been a national parlor game since at least July. That's when critical reports about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's pro-Russia dealings in eastern Europe raised new questions about Trump's curiously Putin-friendly foreign policy. A widely circulated dossier has since alleged all kinds of actually unbelievable stuff, like Trump being filmed by Russian intelligence while watching prostitutes pee on a hotel bed where Barack Obama once slept. But the news that Trump's people were allegedly speaking to Russians connected to a state intelligence agency significantly raises the stakes for an administration that has been facing calls for criminal prosecution and impeachment from day one.

Now that members of Congress are throwing words like "treason" around and tabloids like the New York Daily News have taken to randomly publishing the presidential order of succession, I decided to call up Carlton F.W. Larson, an expert on constitutional law in general and treason in particular, at the University of California-Davis. We talked about whether any of the alleged communications between Team Trump and Moscow could be criminal—and what a prosecution might look like.

VICE: First of all, it's not all that unusual for candidates or their staffs to talk to foreign officials during presidential campaigns, right?
Carlton F.W. Larson: That's right. Obama speaking in Germany in 2008—that surely involved some coordination with the German government, I would think.

And there are often meetings between American presidential candidates and foreign heads of state, like the Israeli prime minister.
Exactly. Or even Trump's visit down to Mexico, I don't think there's anything problematic with that.

I guess what's unusual is that it's now being alleged that there were contacts between people in Trump's orbit—not the candidate himself—and foreign intelligence officials. Which strikes me as a somewhat bigger deal.
Yes, I think that's right. I don't know that they've specifically alleged that Trump people knew they were talking to intelligence officers. Sometimes Russians can be pretty good at this—having their intelligence officers look like people who are just sort of anybody. But knowingly talking to a Russian intelligence officer is a potentially bigger problem. And I think it also depends what you say to them, too. If it's just general chitchat, it's probably fine. I don't know that just a conversation, per se, is any problem.

And legal questions have been raised about this in the past—Richard Nixon seems to have helped scuttle the Vietnam peace talks ahead of his 1968 win, and the Reagan administration has been rumored to have had backchannel dialogue with the Iranians in 1980. The relevant law—please correct me if I'm wrong—is the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from messing with diplomatic relations abroad. But nothing ever really came out of those past cases criminally, right?
Nobody's ever been prosecuted successfully under the Logan Act, and it's been around since the 1790s. It comes up all the time, but it's hard to see that as a viable grounds for a prosecution.

So how could the alleged contacts between Trump people and the Russian government go from being unusual or untoward to outright criminal?
The conversation itself would have to violate some other statute. Like, you revealed American classified information. Our intelligence officers, I assume, talk to foreign intelligence officers all the time, sometimes deliberately giving them misinformation. So if Michael Flynn was talking to Russian intelligence, maybe that could be part of his job—that he's trying to get something from them. Where it crosses the line is when he would be actually revealing classified information, which would violate an independent statute against government officers doing so.

And even if we establish that we think there's reason for criminal allegations to be made against people in the government, it strikes me that it's very difficult to go from that theoretical possibility to the machinery of the federal legal apparatus taking action.
Exactly, because any of these things would be federal crimes—they wouldn't be subject to state jurisdiction. So probably the FBI would have to investigate, it would have to be referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, and then the Justice Department would have to decide to go forward with it, convene a grand jury, conclude that the benefits of prosecution outweigh the risks (because you may have to disclose classified information as part of the prosecution), and then actually get a conviction from a unanimous jury in presumably DC, where these things happened.

And then you have the question: Would a Justice Department headed by Jeff Sessions want to bring these cases? And I don't know he would have any great enthusiasm for doing that.

Right. But couldn't a federal prosecutor, independently of the AG, decide to issue an indictment?
For something that significant, I think you'd have to involve the higher-ups. You just would not want regular US attorneys to have free reign to bring those kinds of cases. I mean, one thing Sessions could do is appoint a special prosecutor in order to remove this concern of taint or political involvement or things like that. I don't think he will do that.

Just because of what you know about him and his record?
Right. I mean, he seems to be sort of a full-fledged Trump guy all the way. And there's no real benefit to doing this from his perspective, unless the political heat is very, very strong. It may get there, but at the moment, it's not. And he can also say, Hey, look, if congressional committees are looking at it, maybe we can piggyback on whatever they find, but until then I'm not going to do anything.

A special prosecutor can only be appointed by the attorney general?
We no longer have the independent counsel law that we had post-Watergate, where we got Ken Starr [who investigated Bill Clinton] and all of that. Reagan people hated it when it happened to them, and Clinton hated it when it happened to him. So they were happy to get rid of it.

So to the extent there would be a special prosecutor, it would simply be the attorney general makes the appointment, and would remain free to fire the special prosecutor. That person would be an employee of the Justice Department, ultimately working for the AG.

OK, so acknowledging that the odds of prosecution are low, let's talk more about possible crimes. What is the history of people being charged with treason?
There were some treason prosecutions after World War II, in the late 40s. And there was an indictment [in 2006] of this guy Adam Gadahn, who was an American-born al Qaeda leader. I think that's the most recent federal treason indictment. They never caught him, so there's no trial on him.

But in theory treason is a capital offense that could come into play here, right?
It remains technically a capital crime. Historically, all the federal ones that have been convicted have been pardons. There's actually never been an execution for treason under the US Constitution—for federal treason.

At the state level, there were a handful during the American Revolution, and a few [after], I guess John Brown would be the most prominent example: After the Harper's Ferry raid, he was tried for treason against the State of Virginia.

So does it make sense to even be talking about treason at this point—how much bearing do anti-treason laws have on the kind of offenses we seem to be learning about here?
To be treason, it has to be aid to an enemy of the United States, and Russia isn't an enemy. To be an enemy, it has to be a nation that is essentially at open war with the United States. And we're technically at peace with Russia. Therefore, any aid to Russia can't be deemed aiding an enemy.

So it's impossible to commit an act of treason in favor of Russia, at least right now?
It'd be impossible, yeah, exactly. You could do far more generous things to Russia than have been alleged, and it wouldn't be treason. Now, it would be impeachable, I think—it would be proactive disloyalty and a high crime or misdemeanor, but it's not treason.

When it comes to treason and related crimes involving foreign governments, how much does intent matter here? It seems like some of this may have just been bumbling communications by people who weren't thinking things through rather than malice.
There is some case law on this point, but there's been disagreement about it. On the one hand, you could imagine an obvious example where someone tells you, "Go deliver this to this person," and it turns out that the person you're giving it to is a foreign agent, and [the package] is secret intelligence. But you didn't know that—you didn't know what you were delivering was intelligence, and you didn't know the person was an agent. The act of it is identical, but I think your state of mind matters. You didn't intend to commit that crime; you just didn't know what you were doing. Still, intent could be formed on the spot—I don't know you have to have had a plan ahead of time.

The last thing I wanted to ask about is the proximity to the president. None of the reports so far have directly implicated the president so much as people in his orbit. Does it matter how close to the president someone is for him to potentially be implicated? How difficult is it to draw that line of legal responsibility back to the Oval Office?
It's hard. And it would require a Justice Department that was really energetically pursuing it—and probably trying to flip people. If you think back to Watergate, people like John Dean flipped and gave all this testimony. So you would need someone who's really willing to put pressure on Michael Flynn to, say, give up Donald Trump. And, at the moment, I don't see the Justice Department doing that. That's not to say it might not happen—but it's not just going to happen organically, I don't think, unless there's like a massive leak of information. And Nixon was dumb enough to tape himself committing the crime. Trump loves the cameras, but I don't think he's recording everything he says.

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The report does however highlight an increase in the overall number of US hate groups. In total, there are now 917 such groups, about 100 shy of the all-time record, set in 2011. It's a significant—though not shocking—increase from last year's count of 892.

"There's no doubt at all that these numbers understate—and probably dramatically—the real state of the radical right," the report's author, Mark Potok, told journalists in a conference call Wednesday. But as his report notes, since many of the people who hold radical views are just the readers of alt-right websites, they "may be less visible than before because they are not affiliated with actual groups."

"While the overall level of hate groups remained fairly steady, the period saw a noticeable drop in real-world extremist activities like rallies and violence," the report says.

"It's true that we're struggling with this," Potok said during the call. He pointed to the example of Dylann Roof, who massacred nine black people in a church in 2015, but never went to any Klan meetings or became an official member of a white nationalist organization before plotting his horrific hate crime. Instead, Roof was radicalized—like many young men—by going down the rabbit hole of racist websites. "It's clear that more and more of these people are operating exclusively on the internet, except when the moment comes to start shooting," Potok said.

In other words, the number of hate groups in the US has little to do with the breadth or depth of the hatred brewing in the US.

"We never had the illusion that counting groups was the best way," Potok added.

That said, the report does identify some important players on the far-right fringe. Four of the new racist groups on the SPLC's radar for the year rose to prominence essentially as what Potok called "cheerleaders" for the Trump campaign. Two of the newly designated hate groups, the Daily Stormer and the Right Stuff, are basically alt-right blogs and forums. The other two, Identity Evropa, and American Vanguard, look a little more active. They both appear to send members out into the IRL world decked out in the Richard Spencer–influenced dapper Nazi look, talking to college students and flyering neighborhoods with white nationalist propaganda.

Potok also argued that, to some extent, high-profile events like Trump's political rallies made actual hate group memberships redundant. When there's plenty of "anti-government vitriol" coming from the mouth of a presidential candidate—who is now the president—why look for a special anti-government club? There's some historical basis for this: Extremist groups like Arizona's Minutemen, vigilantes who patrolled the border because they thought the government was being insufficiently tough on undocumented immigrants, declined in numbers as state politicians enacted harsh crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.

Significantly, Potok found a 197 percent increase in the number of anti-Muslim hate groups, from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016. "The most important factor has been Donald Trump and his campaign," Potok argued, and criticized the president for promoting the "entirely false idea that 25 percent of Muslims believe in jihad." (This idea comes from a deeply flawed poll from a hawkish think tank.)

The FBI's most recent hate crime data comes from 2015, not 2016, but that year—during which Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States"—saw a 67 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

But tracking hate groups in the era of the alt-right is tougher than ever. Potok explained that in order to make it into the report, a group has to meet the SPLC hate group criteria, meaning it must "have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics." And there must be a record that the group was active on the ground in the past year, which means doing things like "accepting members and selling literature," Potok told reporters.

But even though new forms of bigotry have been tough to quantify, the report calls 2016, "a banner year for hate."

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