Shortly after midnight one night in late February, outside of the grimly palatial Trump Tower in Manhattan, a Trump supporter was screaming at a small group of anti-Trump protesters clustered on the sidewalk. In some ways, the confrontation was fairly typical: "You only like democracy when it works in your favor!" the Trump supporter, an ardent, bespectacled woman with her hair in a ponytail, bellowed at one point.

By most measures, however, the scene was unusual. The protesters were sitting beside a makeshift altar, brandishing candles and a tarot card, and had just finished casting a spell on the US president. Their lone detractor, who later described herself as a "Christian mystic," was aggressively wielding a small, round mirror, shrieking repeatedly that she was reflecting their magical intentions back on them.

"I hope to protect Donald Trump," she said.

Across the country, according to reports, something similar was taking place: Countless witches and other occult enthusiasts had pledged to partake in a simultaneous mass ritual at midnight on February 24 in order to "Bind Donald Trump and All Those Who Abet Him." (The point in performing a binding spell, as the spell instructions carefully noted, is not to harm an individual, but rather to prevent them from harming others. "This is not the equivalent of magically punching a Nazi," the Medium post containing the ritual incantation stressed. "Rather, it is ripping the bullhorn from his hands, smashing his phone so he can't tweet, tying him up, and throwing him in a dark basement where he can't hurt anyone.")

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Search the hashtag #ganjagirls on Instagram and you'll get more than a million hits featuring photo after photo of women posing provocatively with weed.

These posts run the full gamut from nude photos (save for a couple of strategically placed marijuana leaves) to videos of bong hits and dabs set to house music. Some of the models are promoting their own businesses and products like glassware or edibles, while others are just straight up getting high—and attempting to look seductive while they're at it.

Personally, I've never really thought of weed as being "sexy." I know its effects are meant to increase the libido, but in a literal sense, giant bags of marijuana aren't something I would expect to be included in a boudoir photo shoot. So I reached out to a bunch of Instagram's "ganja girls" to get a better sense of this strange, potentially erotic world.

Sarah Jain. Photos via Instagram

Sarah Jain, 33, San Francisco
@sarahjain420
33.8K followers

VICE: When did you start smoking weed?
Sarah Jain: Oh god, probably out of the womb. My mom said she caught my dad and his friends passing a joint to me several times when I was very, very young. But I actually started smoking myself probably at about 11 years old.

Wow.
My dad refused to admit he would smoke. So I would go and take three quarters of his sack because you can't be mad at something—you have to admit that it's there. So my whole youth was them finding creative ways to punish me. Then later he apologized and we started smoking together.

So how did you get started in weed modelling?
This all started almost 10 years ago. I was married, I was living in shitty ass Texas, there wasn't even Instagram there was Myspace. I created a very, very cannabis-friendly Myspace portfolio. It also was the time the economy went to shit and I kind of lost my normal job. I started pursuing modeling, I always wanted to do cannabis modeling, but there was no such thing at the time. When I first got started and moved to LA, I got very very lucky. I started doing erotic modeling, I never did full porn, I did a lot of fetish stuff. I would at every single photo shoot bring weed with me. I would make them take photos of me with weed smoking it. And of course it's California, everybody loved it. Cannabis stuff has come to be about half of my income now.

What do you think it is about the combination of weed and women that people find so appealing? 
I think it's just beauty. Things that people like, things that make them happy. People like to envision their idea of utopia, of paradise, and if people like weed and people like women that just mixes.

Do you ever get creepy messages from guys?
There are so many creepy comments, so many things I have to deal with. Sometimes guys will straight up say 'Send nudes, send nudes,' so I googled dick pics, found one of a bloody penis.  Every time, 'Here you go dude.' They never learn unless you fight fire with fire.

Do you get free weed?
Yes, I get free weed and hash. Sometimes I even get recognized in public and then am gifted hash or weed. But I do make a point to pay for things from companies that are friends or that I like, although I do get a really good deal. I don't make a point of expecting things for free because I don't work for free and I don't expect other people should either.

Clara Barber. Photos via Instagram

Clara Barber, 27, Grand Junction, Colorado 
@qeenbee66
10.9K followers

VICE: What does your handle mean?
Clara Barber: The idea of queen bee came from when I was a beekeeper. That whole idea has been a metaphor to me and a mindset that I'm trying to empower women by. The two came together last year, May 19 was my first Instagram picture. I was in my head shop trying to advertise pictures and I started to feel good about myself, posting those pictures I was like 'This feeling is something I could really empower other people by' because when I started out I never had ever thought of myself as a model. To be able to showcase cannabis, which I love and it's beautiful, or like a piece of glass art that someone has taken time to blow. It's such a wonderful industry and so in order for me to feel like it was connected to me and I just wasn't another girl, it had to be something more personal for me, so empowerment and the queen bee it just all came together.

What message are you trying to send?
I go live almost everyday and do a show and get high and take and make fun of myself and laugh. I talk to people every day, I don't care how many followers they have, I don't care if they're following me, if they like me, I just wanna have an effect. As a business owner and a girl you can be put into categories really quickly and I didn't want to put myself in anything. There's a stigma of how stoners are. Now it's like I can be a stoner, I'm a mom, I have two five year olds, I have a business, I have a fiance, I have a life outside of cannabis and I smoke weed all day.

How much weed do you smoke daily? 
I wake up in the morning,  I'll give the kids breakfast, I'll come up to into my office and smoke a bowl, check my emails, or maybe I'll smoke a joint or a blunt it's really just what i'm in the mood for. I'm a medical patient. I do smoke cannabis for anxiety, I smoke it for my back, I have slight scoliosis and I had a car accident. It's pain, it's nerves, it's my well being, and my attitude.

What types of photos get the best response?
I've noticed unfortunately if I'm showing more skin, more people are going to like it, but everybody does that, so what am I trying to show? That I'm like everybody else because I want all the attention? I like feeling sexy, it's natural for me to be a tease it's just in my personality but I don't want to get caught up in just promoting sex. For my own Instagram page there needs to be a balance of Clara, the funny, goofy, not perfect looking girl and the sexy. I still want to be taken seriously.

Courtney Weis. Photos via Instagram

Courtney Weis, 21, Pueblo, Colorado 
@misscannabiscourtney
25.5K followers

VICE: How did this all get started?
Courtney Weis: I was living in Wisconsin, that's where I'm from, born and raised, and I wanted to take pictures of my weed or weed products or me smoking, but being in an illegal state, people don't really care to see that kinda stuff. So I made a separate Instagram account and I was going to keep it private so I could post my weed pictures there. Ended up getting kinda sick of it so I closed that account down. I moved back to Washington and popped it back up, moved from Washington to Colorado and when I got to Colorado it just took off.

Why do you do it?
Basically I want to prove the world wrong. I want everyone to know the medicinal value of cannabis, people shouldn't be denied their medicine just because of the state they live in, it's extremely unfair. I've seen firsthand what cannabis can do as a medicine. I also want to break that stigma of the stoner stigma, unproductive, unsuccessful. And I want to do it in a professional, classy manner. I just started posting continuously every day and eventually people started asking if they could send me stuff. Here I am six months later, I have 25,000 followers.

What was your personal experience with cannabis? 
Three years ago I got into one of the scariest car accidents of my life. Me and some of my friends were going to Florida for Spring Break. We got into a car accident and I was ejected and landed on the yellow line. I was airlifted to a hospital in Alabama, I spent 18 days there. For the first 14 days, I laid on my bed and did not move. I have a fractured vertebrae and two braces in my back. I actually didn't smoke weed at the time and I had some friends talk me into smoking weed again because they said it would help my back and it did. I smoked one day and my back I couldn't even feel my back, I was so blown away. They had me on morphine, they had me on oxycontin, so many pain pills.

I've noticed your photos tend to be more scenic than some other accounts.
I'm actually a photographer as well, so I'm kinda on both ends of the camera. I started out doing nature pictures. Me and boyfriend spent six months last year travelling, we travelled 25 out of the 50 states. But yeah, mostly that's where it comes from, I have a connection with mother nature.

What's been your most liked post?
I was up in the mountains in a place called Royal Gorge, it was beautiful. I was smoking Shine papers, they make 24-karat gold papers and blunts and stuff, it's pretty high class. I was up in a really gorgeous area, I had my little sweater hanging off one shoulder. It was kinda sexy but it wasn't too revealing. I want to be sexy and whatnot but I'm not about taking my clothes off and showing the world that side of me. But yeah, I think that was probably one of my most liked ones, it had 1,600 likes.

Makena Pederson. Photos via Instagram

Makena Pederson, 18, Maui
@ganjjagoddesss
2.7K followers

VICE: What's with the name?
Makena Pederson: I came up with the name ganjjagoddesss when my friend used to refer to the hits I would take as "goddess hits" so I started called myself ganjjagoddesss on Instagram because it seemed fitting.

How did you get into weed modelling?
Growing up my dad was a photographer so I had my picture taken all the time and when I started smoking it just seemed natural because I was used to being in front of a camera. I just figured I'd put my own twist on my pictures to make them more unique.

Do you think smoking weed is sexy?
I don't think the aspect of smoking weed is necessarily the sexy part, to me the sexy part of smoking weed would be having the confidence to be who you are and to do what you love even if that's just smoking a little weed.

You're pretty young—do you worry at all about being branded as a stoner and having that reputation follow you around?
I am very young but I'm not worried about being branded a stoner or anything because this is who I am and my mom always raised me to be proud of who I am and of the things I like to do.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length. 

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

A Nova Scotia cabbie was acquitted for sexual assault on Wednesday and women's rights advocates are calling for the judge who made the decision—he also oversaw the Rehtaeh Parsons case—to be reprimanded.

In May of 2015, police found Halifax taxi driver Bassam Al-Rawi sitting with his pants undone, trying to stuff a woman's underwear and pants between his seat and the driver's console, with her passed out in the back of his taxi. Her legs were propped up on the backs of the front seats; her black wedge sandals were near al Rawi's seat. It was 1:20 in the morning. She was so drunk that she urinated herself. Later, results from a forensics lab would show that he had her DNA on his mouth.

Al-Rawi's defense attorney said in trial that al Rawi probably unbuttoned his pants so he could be comfortable, and that the DNA results could have been innocuous. In his decision, Justice Greg Lenehan said he believed that Al-Rawi took the pants off the woman and pulled them over her legs, "but I do not know if he removed [her] pants …  at her request, with her consent, without her consent — I don't know."

Lenehan said while it was true that the woman had passed out, he didn't know when she passed out and whether she consented to sexual activity before going unconscious, so he didn't know if any nonconsensual activity actually took place. And because Al-Rawi was not seen by police touching the woman when she was unconscious, any evidence was only circumstantial.

"Clearly a drunk can consent," Lenehan said, responding to prosecutors who said that the complainant was too intoxicated to agree to sexual contact. Lenehan went on to paraphrase an alcohol specialist who spoke during the trial, saying that alcohol reduces "inhibitions" and "increases risk-taking behaviour."

"This often leads to people agreeing or in some cases initiating sexual encounters," he added, "only to regret them later."

Read More: 'Keep Your Knees Together' Judge Needs to Go

The statement has caused an uproar with advocates who say sexual assault isn't taken seriously.

"It sickened me, honestly," says Glen Canning, who became an advocate to stop sexual violence after his daughter, Rehtaeh Parsons, took her own life. "Now the woman can be unconscious and you can say, 'She was just awake a second ago?' That's beyond fucked up."

Parsons, who was a high school student in a Halifax suburb, committed suicide after months of harassment. The abuse started when a photo circulated of a teen, giving a thumbs up to the camera, pressing his groin into her body at party—both were naked from the waist down, say reports—while she vomited out a window.

Justice Lenehan sentenced two males involved in Parsons' case, too. The boy in the photo and the boy who took the photo can't be named as they were juveniles at the time. The former pled guilty to distributing child pornography; the latter pled guilty to making child pornography. The Crown never prosecuted the men for sexual assault.

In line with the recommendations of prosecutors, and pointing to the Youth Criminal Justice Act which focuses on rehabilitation, Lenehan gave out no jail time to either man. One got a conditional discharge, and the other got a year of probation.

Canning told VICE that at the time, the sentences felt just. He knew that prosecutors hadn't pressed for more serious charges, and he was vindicated to hear the men admit their guilt.

"People hand you a dandelion, you pretend it's a rose. You're just happy to get something out of this whole mess at least," he said.  

Nonetheless, in response to the acquittal this week, Canning says he wants to see Lenehan's conduct looked into.

"I've always wondered — if there were charges for sexual assault laid in Rehtaeh's case — what the outcome would have been," says Canning. "Now I know. Because Rehtaeh was intoxicated too. God, that hurts."

An online petition for a "formal inquiry into" Justice Lenehan has 750 signatures. The petition also notes that once, Lenehan told a woman to stop breastfeeding in his courtroom.

"I want a Robin Camp situation," Ottawa activist Julie LaLonde told VICE.

LaLonde is referring to the Alberta judge who, while presiding over a rape trial, asked a woman, "Why couldn't you keep your knees together?" Camp also repeatedly referred to her as "the accused" when she was the complainant. As of late February, the Canadian Judicial Council was deliberating over whether to recommend Camp be removed from the bench because of his remarks.

Legal experts say it's very rare for judges to be removed—and that's seen as a good thing for the justice system.

"Judges can't be fearful if they make an unpopular decision," says Jennifer Llewelyn, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. "There are significant protections … so they can't fear removal."

Judges aren't subject to complaints over the legal basis of their decisions themselves—those have to be dealt with in an appeal. But they can face complaints over their conduct "if they're concerned there has been some breach of judicial ethics."

The process for removing a provincial judge in Nova Scotia starts with a complaint to the province's Chief Justice. She can dismiss the complaint if it is "vexatious, frivolous, or questions the decision of the judge." Or, she can resolve the complaint or pass it on to the provincial judicial council—made up of top judges and lawyers, and two other people—for investigation, who can decide whether to recommend sanctions, education, or removal from the bench.

Follow Katie Toth on Twitter .

Lede image via WIkimedia Commons.

Update: A spokesperson for the Chief Justice says she won't be hearing complaints in this case, but if there is a complaint another judge will be appointed in her stead. 

When was the last time you ran into someone with a fedora? Do you remember what it was like? At any point in your conversation with them (or possibly while eavesdropping on them) did you detect questionable moral opinions and/or a bad taste in music? If you said no to any of the above, it's because you didn't run into a person with a fedora—that was a pork pie hat, and they might have secretly been a high school-teacher-turned-meth-cook.

The reason I know this is because dudes (and yes, it's pretty much only white dudes like myself) who wear fedoras are, in the worst possible way, painfully hard to forget. (OK, yes, hating on fedoras is an easy, cliche thing to do at this point—I'm not taking much of a sociopolitical risk here.) It's why the Twitter of Joe Warmington, a newspaper columnist at the Toronto Sun best known for being Rob Ford's personal word butler, is both unbearably boring in its banal trolling, and yet, somehow, by the grace of Don Draper in a trilby, fascinatingly terrible at the same time.

Warmington, who is pretty much a Toronto heritage moment at this point among the city's media-types, has become an unignorable presence recently due to his incessant praise for the rise of Trump's America and his continuous, privilege-dripping critiques of the Donald's opponents (like, refugees, for example). Ol' Joe embodies all the classic prowess and know-it-all-ness that has been—through no fault of the hat's actual design—bestowed upon the fedora in today's internet-age meme culture.

Toronto writer John Semley tied Warmington's relationship with fedoras into a NOW piece called "What happened to Joe Warmington's hat?", in which Warmington was interviewed about why he decided to start wearing a fedora. Warmington explains that, while the hat was "a caricature" of a "40s-style" reporter look for his tongue-in-cheek alter-ego "Night Scrawler," he eventually began assuming the lifestyle of this battle-weathered noir reporter as his own.

"I definitely lived the life as the Scrawler at the time. I had a downtown condo, and I lived it. I don't have that any more. I've settled down. I have a son that's seven months old. But I definitely feel like an old time reporter," he told Semley.

"I started in 1984, so I am a bit of a throwback for today's game, in terms of the BlackBerry and all that. I didn't touch a computer until I was 20 years old. I identify with that character. I'm not ready to walk away from it. I'm going to have a discussion about it, and see if I stick with it. Some people want me to stick with it. And some people think it's moronic and juvenile."

"Moronic and juvenile" is a pretty apt description for some of Warmington's behaviour: both online and in his work, Warmington is overly righteous about trivial issues (here is his column on Drake and fellow Toronto rapper Pressa, where he expresses probably genuine shock at a rapper having criminal charges), he seems to be inept at social etiquette (he posted up in the Starbucks below the Toronto Star just days after one of the company's reporters committed suicide—hoping to secure interviews with fellow employees, one of whom offered to "rip [his] fucking throat out]"), and, as a middle-aged man caught in the technoverse, he is deeply out of touch with all things d i g i t a l.

This is all of little surprise to me—from Grade 7 to Grade 9, I wore a fedora. Yes, indeed, I purchased it from the retail chain Lids while two employees glared disgustingly at me. At the time, I was a "strict atheist" who liked to call out "the bullshit of religion" (I specifically remember taunting and making fun of all of my classmates who happened to go to church, which, obviously, made me very well liked), I ran a blog where I made posts such as "Why Feminism Is Bullshit," (I now know it is not) and, like Warmington, I had an obsession with talking incessantly about issues that were of little to no concern to me.

It's worth noting that fedoras, by and large, have done nothing wrong to the world. Back in 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and up until some point in the 60s, it was actually pretty cool to wear a fedora. Detectives wore them; businesspeople wore them; that wise old man who became the mentor of all your favourite childhood book characters wore them. But as time progressed, and western style evolved, fedoras (unless atop the scalp of Leonard Cohen, Stevie Wonder or Indiana Jones) began to mutate into an academic "FUCK YOU" to people enjoying their lives.

The author, pictured from 2010 to 2017, no longer wears a fedora.

Let's pull no punches: Fedoras objectively breed bad opinions (or at least attract people who have them). The association that fedoras have with the alt-right, and online trolling in general, is not unwarranted. Wearing a fedora in 2017 is to dream about a time before "SJWs"—to an era where you could call women "M'lady," drive down the freeway with no seatbelt, and smoke cigarettes in your office while typing your sexist poetry books.

The truth here is that most men don't have the need or ability to live through the lens of stoic masculinity anymore. Fedoras give the false reassurance that, despite the fact everyone has moved onto better things, these intellectual warriors have risen among the filth of the masses. In reality, they're just finding a crux for their own insecurities.

Take Warmington's column on Black Lives Matter—a group that he says needs to be "banished" (gotta love that fixation on using ancient-y, Mordor-esque words to assert intellectual dominance over others) from activist culture. In the column, Warmington—who is an open Trump supporter (obvi)—directs ire at one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) for calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a "white supremacist."

*Gasp* Warmington, a guy who takes literally every chance he can to shit on black culture and black music, considers this shocking language. This is the same guy who has made absolutely no attempt to address the mudslide of racist propaganda and xenophobic dribble being produced by the people he follows, retweets, and works for. Even putting away how glaringly obvious it is that Warmington is an old white dude so out of touch with modern culture that he feels his only lifeline is to appeal to similarly boring people/racists, the fact that he produced a 1994 biography of Billy Ray Cyrus (no, seriously) should speak volumes about his character as a human being.

Putting all of Warmington aside for a moment to come back to the poor hat caught in the middle of this, the achilles heel of fedoras can be neatly summed up in a 2013 Reddit thread entitled, "Why Do People Hate Fedoras," in which Redditor digitalskyfire unpacked the identity of a modern fedora-wearer perfectly.

"Improperly wearing [a fedora] shows a lack of self-awareness. It has a (formerly) classy reputation because it's meant to be worn with a suit...Now we turn to the modern neck beard: he wears the fedora in order to get some of that, 'class'" we talked about. Thing is, it was never that the fedora made anybody look classy, it was that well-dressed people just happened to wear them at one time or another. If you wear cargo shorts and a Naruto graphic button-up, a fedora isn't going to save that outfit. It just makes the wearer look like a dope."

During my few years of wearing a fedora, I felt like I needed to tell anyone and everyone my shitty, awful, unwanted views on society. Got rejected by a girl? It was because they were too brainwashed by the trappings of modern popular culture, and I was a lone warrior there to liberate tainted minds. Suggesting Obama is a good president? Let me cut you off immediately and remind you that, Hey, Obama uses drones to kill people , which makes him the shittiest president of all time, OK? Hip-hop? Disgusting. I only listen to conscious rap— Lupe Fiasco is the only real one left . All of this comes from the same desire that I had to raise my hand in every social studies class to say, "Well, actually..."

Now that I'm on the other side, I can see it clear as day: wearing a fedora is pretentiousness condensed into a fashion statement. But it's OK, really! Most of us grow out of it. The danger is when you adapt or hold onto those insecurities into your adult years—because while Warmington is ultimately just a troll (and a bad, boring one at that), the real victim here is him.  As he continues to rant and go on lonely reporting crusades that no one really cares about, we're all too busy looking at his classy crown of thorns.

Follow Jake on Twitter.

On the morning that I committed to finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—which launches alongside Nintendo's new Switch console tomorrow, and which is also available for the Wii U—I set out from a small stable in one of Hyrule's most picturesque regions, a forested stretch of hills up against the eastern sea, caught in a permanent autumn. My goal was to find a few final secrets before heading towards the center of the continent where I'd find the ruined and corroded skeleton of Hyrule Castle, and face the game's ultimate challenge.

Instead, as I pulled my horse over a ridge westward, my eye caught something on the top of a low mountain across a valley. There was movement I hadn't seen before. I checked my map, and found an oddly shaped pond marked on the flat top of the summit, and something about the shape resonated with me. Maybe a short detour?

My curiosity was rewarded—as soon as I reached the peak and saw what was there, I realized that the shape of that pond sounded familiar to me because a dozen hours earlier, in a town on the other side of Hyrule, another character mentioned her desire to come to this exact place. And now there were two people here, staring at each other from across the water, and it was my job to… well, I'm trying to avoid spoilers.

Read more on Waypoint

In 2008, Robert Suttle's life was calm. He was 29 years old and happy with his job as an assistant clerk at the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeals. He had good friends and enjoyed his social life. One night, he went home from a bar with a guy named Joe*. According to Suttle, he told Joe that he was HIV-positive. Neither of them had a condom, so they waited until their next date to have sex. They slept together a few more times before Suttle ended the relationship. Shortly thereafter, he received a phone call that would wreck his life: Joe and their mutual friend were on the line together, accusing Suttle of sleeping with Joe without disclosing his HIV status. (To Suttle's knowledge, Joe's status remained negative.)

That was the first of many menacing phone calls. "He kept telling me he was going to press charges," Suttle says. "I kept trying to reason with him. But reasoning didn't work." Eventually, Joe made good on his threats. The police showed up at the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeals and arrested Suttle in front of his colleagues. With no hard evidence, the case became "he said/he said" and landed, as it usually does, in favor of the HIV-negative party. Suttle's conviction—intentionally exposing Joe to AIDS—meant six months in prison and a spot on the sex-offender registry. This was his first run-in with the criminal justice system, but suddenly, it seemed, Suttle had no future: What would become of a black, gay, HIV-positive sex offender and felon? Who would ever give him a chance?

Read more on Tonic

USB sticks and encrypted hard drives containing top-secret slides stolen from the NSA littered a room in the Mira luxury hotel in Hong Kong. Edward Snowden was joined by two journalists from The Guardian and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras with her camera. He prepared everything so well.

When Snowden gave a face and a name to the revelations of mass NSA surveillance in June 2013, he didn't spare a detail, except: where would he go now, and how would he get there?

Snowden's face was flickering over screens around the globe when Hong Kong-based human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo rang in the early hours of the morning. Snowden, the man on all channels, was stuck in his hotel, hunted by everybody. Tibbo did not think for long. There was only one place where he could hide him.

A race against time began, like something out of a spy novel. Despite the prominence of the Snowden case, the locations where he sought refuge immediately following his famous video interview would remain secret for over three years, until being unmasked in the National Post in September 2016.

Read more on Motherboard

On Thursday, the Senate voted to confirm former Texas governor Rick Perry as the next energy secretary, where he'll run an agency he famously wanted to get rid of, in a role he initially might not have understood, Politico reports.

Perry humbly went back on his call to scrap the Energy Department—a pledge he made during his 2012 presidential bid—in his confirmation hearing, which ultimately helped him solidify a large majority of votes during Thursday's vote. The former governor secured votes from all 52 Republicans, as well as ten Democrats, bringing the totally tally to 62–37.

The animal-science enthusiast will now take over for former MIT physics chairman, Ernest J. Moniz, and handle energy research and regulation, as well as oversee the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons under a president who has called for the US to "expand its nuclear capability."

Republicans will also be eager to see if Perry will be able to reform the department that has focused on clean energy under President Obama. Although, Perry seemed to change his tune after years of climate change skepticism, telling the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, "I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of it is naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by man-made activity."

Maybe you, like much of America, started your day by checking social media and discovering that Twitter user @TheReal_JDavis had stumbled upon what seems to be a scene from the unreleased sequel to The Witch. In his video, about 20 plump turkeys are holding some sort of vigil by walking in a circle around a freshly-killed cat, right in the middle of an idyllic residential street.

@TheReal_JDavis guesses that the turkeys are trying to "give this cat its 10th life." I can see why. The turkeys are moving at a deliberate-but-not-quick-pace, just right for some kind of Eyes Wide Shut ceremony. And why hold a ceremony around a dead cat, unless it's a resurrection ceremony? "Bro, this is wild," he says in the video.

So what the hell are they actually doing? "They just look like they're alarmed by the dead animal—cat or whatever it is—in the street," according to Dr. Thomas Coombs-Hahn, a University of California Davis professor of biology who focuses on the responses of birds to unpredictable events in the environment. But Coombs-Hahn told me he's "not sure why they're circling it."

Harvard bird cognition expert Irene Pepperberg (who mostly studies parrots), told me that, while they're more likely to do it around stuff like rocks and trees, "it's not totally uncommon for turkeys to circle things."

According to Daniel A Cristol, an ornithologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the whole thing was "very odd."

"They are following a leader, which is normal, but for some reason the leader is circling around the dead cat," Cristol wrote in an email. He could only offer speculation. One possible theory he offered was that the leader was literally keeping an eye on the cat. "Birds see out of only one eye for most of their visual field, so if they are walking and keeping something in view they will walk in a circle."

Cristol called it an emergent phenomenon—a system in which small units of life give way to some larger entity. In this case, we have "an emergent phenomenon that looks like some weird religious ceremony," Cristal told me.

So until someone funds a project that delivers dead cats to ornithology researchers so they can perform controlled experiments, calling this a weird emergent phenomenon is probably the best explanation we're going to get.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Disney's live action remake of Beauty and the Beast, which hits theaters nationwide on March 17th, looks primed to be a delightful update to the classic animated tale. And with Tuesday's news that the film's director has cast Gaston's sidekick, Le Fou, as a sexually confused man possibly in love with his buddy, it's been catapulted into newly political territory, quickly becoming a figurehead in the ongoing political fight for LGBTQ representation in media.

"LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," director Bill Condon told the UK's Attitude magazine. "He's confused about what he wants. It's somebody who's just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh [Gad, who plays Le Fou] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that's what has its payoff at the end, which I don't want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie." The move comes as a reinterpretation of the story by Condon (who is openly gay), possibly in light of the fact that Howard Ashman, the original film's gay co-songwriter, was dying of AIDS while working on the original.

Condon's announcement that there will be an "exclusively gay moment" in a Disney film is historic, but it's been a long time coming. (Full disclosure: Disney is an investor in VICE Media.) Pressure has been building from fans and media watchdog groups for more LGBTQ content in children's movies for a while, and Tuesday's announcement comes a little late for the industry as a whole. While it's nice that we're no longer tiptoeing around the idea that children's movie characters can be gay, studios and those involved in their projects have a lot more catching up to do.

Just last year, Disney subsidiary Pixar's Finding Dory turned heads when the film's first trailer was released. Fans barely caught a glimpse of what could maybe possibly be a lesbian couple—a shot of two women with a stroller walking through a park—but that was enough to launch them into a frenzy. USA Today asked the film's co-director Andrew Stanton if the rumors were true, a question he evaded by answering, "They can be whatever you want them to be. There's no right or wrong answer." When prodded further, a producer added, "We never asked them," referring to the imaginary couple themselves. Upon the film's release, fans were disheartened—unfortunately, that ephemeral moment in the trailer was the only sighting of the two women in the film. (Disney did not respond to VICE's request for comment.)

Even Ellen Degeneres, one of the most notable out lesbian figures in entertainment and a star of the film, has dodged the question. When asked about it in a press conference, Ellen chalked it up to a bad haircut. "Just because someone has a short, bad haircut doesn't mean she's gay," she said. Disney's 2013 film Frozen also had characters that sparked gay rumors. Jennifer Lee, the writer and co-director of that film, ducked similar questions about their sexuality.

Playing it safe is an in-house trick at Disney. In May of 2016, Frozen fans launched the social media campaign #GiveElsaAGirlfriend, in which they demanded the film's protagonist, Elsa, be the first lesbian princess in Disney history. The hashtag surfaced after Walt Disney Studios released 11 films in 2015 with zero LGBTQ characters, prompting LGBTQ media watchdog GLAAD to give them a failing grade in their annual Studio Responsibility Index. GLAAD noted that Walt Disney Studios had the "weakest historical record when it comes to LGBT-inclusive films" of all studios tracked by GLAAD's yearly report, first launched in 2012.

While Elsa's voice actress Idina Menzel expressed her support for the campaign, Disney refused to address it head on; when asked by The Washington Post about it, the company merely stated that "[Disney] has always been inclusive, with stories that reflect acceptance and tolerance and celebrate the differences that make our characters uniquely wonderful in their own way."

Though uncommon, LGBTQ characters aren't completely nonexistent in children's movies—but by and large, when they exist, it's their films' directors and performers who are filling in gaps in fan curiosity. There was Zootopia, the 2016 Disney hit which won Best Animated Feature at the 2017 Academy Awards. When prompted on Twitter about a fan theory that two minor male characters in the film were in a relationship, Jared Bush, the film's director, tweeted that "they are a gay married couple." Then there's Gobber the Belch, a Viking character in DreamWorks Animation's 2014 film How to Train Your Dragon 2. That film's director, Dean DeBlois, also confirmed that Gobber was gay. As an innocent bystander during a public marital dispute, Gobber quips, "This is why I never married. This and one other reason."

DeBlois' confirmation is proof that Disney is far from the only studio facing an LGBTQ problem. Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me franchise and Blue Sky Studios' Ice Age films, to take two prominent examples, also lack gay characters.And in both Zootopia and How to Train Your Dragon 2, no mention was made in the actual film about the nature of those characters' sexuality. It was the directors of these films, rather than the studios themselves, that have had to rise up to address public clamoring for some—any—shred of tangible LGBTQ identity, and that's almost always the case. A notable exception can be found in Mitch, a jock voiced by Casey Affleck in the 2012 LAIKA animated film ParaNorman, who was largely noted as being the first out LGBTQ character in a mainstream children's movie. That remains a rarity, and that it was released by Focus Features, a major indie presence in Hollywood, is telling.

"LGBTQ representation in all-ages programming is incredibly important," Megan Townsend, Entertainment Media Senior Strategist at GLAAD, told VICE in response to Disney's announcement. "These portrayals both help real LGBTQ youth to recognize they aren't alone, and know their identity is valid when they see someone they can recognize themselves in on screen, creating a safer environment for LGBTQ young people to be authentically themselves."

But why the decision to do this now, as opposed to in years past? Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, chalks it up to money. In an interview last year with The Hollywood Reporter, Ellis noted, "When you look at the global market, so many of the big studios look to the international box office, and there are a number of LGBT issues abroad, so they want to be careful not to be cut out of countries." She's not wrong: Frozen is the 9th highest grossing movie of all time. Universal's Minions and Disney Pixar's Toy Story 3 both grossed over $1 billion worldwide. But according to Townsend, the hesitance major studios feel is outdated. "If the film industry wants to remain competitive and relevant, they must begin to embrace new stories which authentically reflect the world the audience knows," she said.

Beauty and the Beast's portrayal of an LGBTQ character is undoubtedly monumental. But it's a lack of forthrightness on the part of all ages film studios leading up to this moment that makes it so, and that doesn't make it great.

Follow Jillian Gutowitz on Twitter.

Iowa State Senator Mark Chelgren already had a bit of a reputation as a lawmaker who loves to court controversy. But the scandal that came to light last week is probably not what he had in mind, and we have a feeling that he is none too happy about all the attention it's receiving.

Here's why: It now appears that a section on the senator's official website claiming that "he has a degree in business management from Forbco Management School and attended the University of California at Riverside majoring in astro-physics, geo-physics, and mathematics" in fact referred to the one year he spent in college before dropping out, and to a management course he took once at a Sizzler (yes, the steakhouse chain) in Torrance, California.

Mr. Chelgren did not respond to our requests for a statement and his voicemail box is (unsurprisingly) full. But in a phone interview with NBC, when pressed about Forbco—which we now know is not a school at all, but a company that operated a Sizzler franchise—Chelgren became vague, remembering only that "the school [read: Sizzler] was created by Forbco Management," and that he "got a degree in hotel restaurant management." That "degree" was, in fact, a Sizzler management certificate, and likely not even that; Chelgren has been unable to produce documentation of any kind.

Read more on MUNCHIES

Kellie Leitch is often in the news for the wrong reasons.

The Conservative leadership hopeful's otherwise forgettable campaign has been covered extensively because of her desire to screen immigrants for "Canadian values."

Last week, Leitch released a painfully awkward, eight-minute video in which she chatted about her controversial (racist?) immigrant vetting proposal. Thing is, it's unlikely anyone could take in a word she said, so transfixed were we on the low-budget cinematography, the extended pauses, the strange camera angles highlighting the sides of Leitch's face, and so on. Needless to say the video went viral because it's a surreal viewing experience.

In an interview with the CBC Thursday, Leitch didn't seem to grasp why her video became so popular. Asked by Calgary Eyeopener host David Gray if she was concerned she wasn't getting endorsements because of her ideas on immigration, Leitch responded "Let's be clear. I published a video just a few days ago. Over half a million Canadians have watched it. Over one million Facebook impressions in Canada. I can tell you that two-thirds of Canadians support my policy idea, 90 percent of Conservatives."

Gray then said, "That video you mention it did get a lot of views and you think it's because of the content of your video? Because a lot of people picked up on the fact that frankly it seems a little awkwardly staged and even delivered according to some. You're being ridiculed on social media for that."

Seemingly unfazed, Leitch replied, "Well that's what the media loves to do, you guys love to ridicule me. And so I'm delighted that now, unfiltered, the Canadian public can see what I'm talking about."

She is right about all of that.

Screenshot via Twitter

But Leitch isn't alone in her poor grasp of internet-related things. Fellow Tory candidate Kevin O'Leary just last week tried to tweet a couple of photos from the leadership debate at the Manning Centre in Ottawa. Both now-deleted pictures were upside down and, moreover, they pretty much just showed the backs of people's heads.  

At least Donald Trump knows how to use Twitter.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Hey, so you know how people have been protesting loudly at town hall meetings because they're upset about their Republican politicians' Obamacare repeal plans? And how a lot of Republicans have responded by simply skipping those meetings entirely? And how skipping those meetings has, in some cases, just emboldened the activists?

Well, this one congressman from Illinois was asked about his own lack of town hall meetings Thursday and he responded not with a canned statement, but with an honest answer, for which he deserves kudos:

Representative Mike Bost, who made these comments to the editorial board of the Southern Illinoisan, was probably referencing "struggle sessions," a brutal practice in Maoist China where people judged to be insufficiently devoted to Communism were placed in front of a crowd that would assault them with criticism, abusive language, and sometimes physical violence. And he's correct that these were not productive meetings!

He also told the Illinoisan, "The in-person [meetings] going on around the United States right now are out of control, which means you don't actually get to talk to people and listen, and we're looking for ways to do that."

But when you are comparing America in 2017 to China's Cultural Revolution while simultaneously calling for a more temperate discourse—already a tricky combo to pull off—it certainly does not help to drop a racist slur while doing it.

When Bost first won his seat in the House of Representatives in 2014, the main thing he was famous for was getting really pissed off in the Illinois legislature. Now he is famous for one other thing!

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

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

US News

Trump Says Pressure on Sessions a 'Total Witch Hunt'
President Trump has declared the scrutiny faced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his contact with the Russian ambassador "a total witch hunt!" after the revelation that Sessions spoke with Sergey Kislyak twice last year, despite telling Congress he did not have communications with Russia. "He did not say anything wrong," Trump said in a statement. "He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional." Sessions said he would recuse himself from any investigation into the presidential campaign.—CNN

Mike Pence Used Private Email for Business as Governor, Got Hacked
Vice President Mike Pence used a private AOL email account to conduct government business while Indiana governor, his spokesman Marc Lotter confirmed. He used the account until it was hacked in early 2016, before setting up and using a second private AOL account. The AOL emails may show Pence discussing homeland security issues.—The Washington Post

Tech Giants Back Transgender Teen's Lawsuit
Fifty-three companies—including tech giants Apple, IBM, eBay, and Microsoft—have signed a brief supporting a transgender teenager's landmark lawsuit against a Virginia school board. Gavin Grimm wants to use his school's boy's bathroom, which matches his gender identity. The supporting brief states that "transgender individuals deserve the same treatment and protections" as all US citizens.—CBS News

MS-13 Gang Members Slapped with Murder Charges
Prosecutors in New York have charged 13 adult members of the MS-13 gang with the murder of seven people, attempted murder, arson, and other crimes. The Salvadorian MS-13 is said to be one of Long Island's most violent gangs.—The New York Times

International News

Syrian Army Recaptures Palmyra from ISIS
The Syrian army says it has recaptured the city of Palmyra from ISIS. An advance by the army and Iranian-backed allied fighters forced ISIS militants to withdraw to the east of the city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ISIS was driven out in March last year, but then retook the city in December.—Al Jazeera

German Town Receives Bomb Threat After Turkey Speech Cancelation
Germany authorities have searched Gaggenau's city hall after a bomb threat was received. Mayor Michael Pfeiffer said he presumed there was "a direct link" to the cancelation of a planned speech by Turkey's justice minister. Bekir Bozdag was set to speak to Turkish expatriates in Gaggenau about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's post-coup crackdown.—Reuters

More than 200 Killed in Zimbabwe's Recent Floods
The Zimbabwean government says flooding in the country has killed 246 people and left almost 2,000 homeless since December. The country is appealing to the international community for $100 million for relief efforts, as it struggles to cope with collapsed infrastructure. President Robert Mugabe declared a national disaster earlier this week.—AP

Banksy Unveils New Hotel in Bethlehem
The British street artist Banksy has opened a hotel on the outskirts of Bethlehem in the West Bank, near a border wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territories. The ten rooms of the Walled Off Hotel were unveiled to the media on Friday and will be available for bookings later this month. The venture's aim is to boost jobs and tourism in the area.—The Guardian

Everything Else

SXSW Founder Responds to Immigration Criticism
SXSW founder Roland Swenson has dismissed criticism over festival contracts giving organizers the right to inform immigration authorities if international bands do not comply with rules. Swenson said it was a "misunderstanding" and the contract was merely a "safeguard." Indie rockers Told Slant have canceled over the issue.—Rolling Stone

Bitcoin Value Now Greater Than Gold
Bitcoin has topped gold for the very first time, surging to $1,271 per unit compared with gold at $1,235 per ounce. The Securities and Exchange Commission will decide whether or not to approve a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund this month.—NBC News

Rachel Dolezal Changes Her Name
Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane NACCP leader who was caught up in the controversy over whether she had tried to pretend she was black, has changed her name. Court records show her name has been changed to Nkechi Amare Diallo.—AP

Trent Reznor Sends NIN Fans Black Powder in the Mail
Trent Reznor sent Nine Inch Nails fans a mysterious black powder in the mail alongside the physical edition of EP Not the Actual Events. Fans posted photos of dirtied hands after sifting through the record's artwork.—Noisey

NASA Rover Captures Dust Storm on Mars
NASA has released footage of a dust storm on Mars. The Curiosity rover captured the storm at Gale Crater, and it's helping NASA scientists learn more about how the Red Planet's atmosphere and surface interact.—Motherboard

Congressman Blames 'Oriental' Politics for Skipped Town Hall
Republican congressman Mike Bost compared the eruption of town hall protests to an "Oriental" political practice. Explaining his own lack of events, the Illinois representative said: "You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do when you'd put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That's not what we need."—VICE

Read all of Andrew W.K.'s columns here.

I heard about them, as many did, in middle school. Whippits: little canisters of nitrous gas that you could... well—there was a proper use for them, which was to charge a can of whipped cream. But the kids in my school weren't interested in using them the proper way. Instead, they'd empty the gas from the tiny canister into a balloon, then inhale that balloon for the unique physical effects it promised: lightheadedness, euphoria, a warm tingly feeling, a palpable physical undulation, being "happy drunk."

Many of my classmates talked about these whippits and their experiences with them. Many tried them or said they had. We were at that precious (and potentially dangerous) age where no one wants to be left behind, or feel like they aren't clued in, or risk being perceived as uncool. It was hard to tell how much of this talk was genuine. Either way, there was still the sense that the use of whippits was pretty widespread. I managed to get through school without ever partaking. For the longest time, in fact, I thought people getting high off whippits meant they were sucking on plastic tubs of Cool Whip by cracking the lid a little, letting gas escape.

But eventually, I learned. I started going into the head shops around my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to explore their world of barely legal wares, and I'd see boxes full of little metal canisters for sale right next to the cash register and people buying them with a few balloons, which were in a fishbowl on the counter. I also started to hear about some of the health risks the contents of these little shiny metal gas containers posed—that you could black out on them due to a lack of oxygen, or freeze your vocal cords, or feel nauseous to the point of puking. I heard quite a bit about how inhaling the gas killed brain cells, but people often debated how dangerous it actually was since it was discovered nearly 240 years ago.

None of the apparent risks kept my friends away, though, and at one legendary party in particular, a group of them obtained a tank full of nitrous, supposedly from a dentist's office. They sucked on the thing until it was empty, and everyone there managed to escape the experience without inhaling themselves into a permanent state of brain damage. So, years later, finding myself bored on tour, and after trying harder drugs that changed me in profound and positive ways, I decided to finally huff some nitrous oxide to see what it was all about.

I was in Austin, Texas, and there was a head shop near the hotel I was staying at. I bought a box (thankfully, America wasn't facing a shortage then) and a black "whipping cream" canister. The store helpfully walked me through the process after I admitted it'd be my first time (it's true what they say about Southern hospitality!). Before I took that first hit, I thought of the brain cells I might kill and remember thinking about the often-stated theory that we only use a small percentage of our brains. Maybe all the damage I'd do would be to the 90 percent or so of my brain that I don't use anyway! I inhaled.

"It would require a pen, made of a quill, plucked from an angel's wing, to describe half the pleasures arising from this source."

It was such a short high. So short I found there was no room for much reflection or exploration. It was very physical but not cerebral or emotional. I felt brief twinges of happy giddiness wash over my body, but it wasn't accompanied by any insights or new perspectives; it didn't stir my imagination or knock any creativity loose from my brain like past drug experiences. I wasn't floating on a cloud for the 30 seconds it lasted, as some had suggested I would. It left me feeling a tad empty, hollow. I appreciated the sensation, but I wasn't left with much except an instant desire to do it again, which I did. Over and over until the box was nearly empty. It was easy to recognize how someone could just keep going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with this stuff, and that held little appeal.

The pure physicality of the effects reminded me of another head shop classic, amyl nitrate. Or low-dose edible marijuana. I felt it deep in the body. But it failed to alter my thoughts in a unique or novel way. Nitrous was almost like amyl nitrate in reverse. With the former, there is a very light and floating lift, and with the latter, there is an incredibly heavy heart-pounding weight, like a slow feel-good headache.

In all, my experience with whippits was frustrating, interesting, and boring all at once. It was also short lived. After that day in an Austin hotel, I've felt no need to revisit them.

In the anthology Oh Excellent Air Bag: Under the Influence of Nitrous Oxide 1799–1920, poets, scientists, and philosophers eloquently describe their experiences with huffing nitrous oxide or "laughing gas." They make it sound incredibly appealing. "I felt like the sound of a harp," writes one, beautifully stating what I'd heard a few times about the whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp waves of blissful feeling and sound friends past had described washing over them. Another writes, "It would require a pen, made of a quill, plucked from an angel's wing, to describe half the pleasures arising from this source."

This was not my experience. Similarly, others I've spoken to haven't had the same experiences I've had on drugs I've used to revelatory effect in the past. Dabbling in this kind of stuff is not without risk. It can offer extraordinary highs and devastating lows. Whether the experience is worth the gamble is an extremely personal decision. My days experimenting with these kinds of things are largely behind me. As I've grown older, wiser, I've come to find life is its own gas.

Follow Andrew W.K. on Twitter.

Donald Trump may be a business mogul, a former reality TV star, and, of course, president of the United States, but thanks to new footage showing him right before his address to Congress, we may have proof that he's also trying to worm his way into the rap battle circuit.

Last night on Desus & Mero, the VICELAND duo talked about the viral video that reveals Trump "practicing his address" out loud. But really, the hosts believe Trump is doing so much more than a simple speech rehearsal—the president is clearly channelling his inner Eminem and is getting ready to throw down.

You can watch every episode of this week's Desus & Mero for free online, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

This story was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

When I was 17, they told me I was going to die in prison.

In 1992, a second-degree murder conviction in Pennsylvania meant a life sentence without the possibility of parole, even for a teenager. I'm 41 now, one of seven living female juvenile lifers who grew up inside the wire fences of the women's State Correctional Institution in Muncy, Pennsylvania.

But in 2012, the US Supreme Court decided that juveniles couldn't be sentenced to mandatory life without parole. Then, in 2016, the court made that decision retroactive—meaning that more than 500 of us juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania had suddenly found out we might not die in prison after all.

In between those two decisions, I got cancer—and went from having all the time in the world but no hope, to having hope but worrying I might run out of time.

I hadn't really cared about getting out until I found out I had cancer. Not caring too much is what you have to do when you lose your freedom at age 16. If you fight every day, you'll burn out. And I did feel guilt for being involved in a robbery in which a man was killed—no court decision could ever bring him back to his family.

But one day three years ago, I started to bleed. It was like my period was coming on, but it wouldn't stop.

I put in a sick call. They gave me an ultrasound. The doctor told me I had a fibroid in my uterus the size of a baby's head.

I spent four days in the hospital for the hysterectomy, which wasn't that bad, but while they were doing that, they found cancerous-looking tissue in the lining of my stomach. Mucinous adenocarcinoma, they told me it's called. The doctor said they had to cut out part of my intestines and remove my appendix, because the cancer was all around that.

When I opened my eyes after the operation, there were two guards there. They don't allow family to come. Family can't even know when it's happening. We don't even know when we're going out of the facility—which I can understand. It's prison.

But who wouldn't want to wake up to their family being there?

All the juvenile lifers like me have to be re-sentenced, case by case, and there are about 300 of us just from Philly. They started by re-sentencing the people who have been in the longest and were locked up youngest. I was 16 when I was arrested and have been locked up almost 25 years, but other people have been in 30, 40 years—one man has been in more than 60.

With my being sick, they're talking about trying to bump me up, but all of it just feels so slow. That Supreme Court decision affecting cases retroactively came out January 25, 2016, and now it's March 2017.

Check out the VICE News short on Jeff Sessions recusing himself from investigations of Trump's campaign.

I signed papers so the lawyers can see my medical records. I write them letters, but I'm never really sure what's going on. I know they're busy, but knowing that doesn't make the anxiety of cancer go away. On the bad days, I just go numb. On the good days, I can talk with my friends in here and say, "I'm putting it in God's hands—if they're gonna let me out, they're gonna let me out."

When I got back to Muncy after the operation, I had a whole bunch of staples down my stomach. Other women had to help me do everything: wash up, pull my pants up, put my socks on. They made sure I ate.

The doctors tell me the treatment is going good, but it's hard to deal with an illness in prison. My hands swell up; my feet are cracked and blistered. They want you to eat healthier—salads and things like that—but we can't get that in here. Going to appointments, you have to be cuffed.

Then you're sitting at the hospital, on the machine, getting chemo through the IV, and you see the other people there with their wives or husbands, their brothers, sisters, kids. You're sitting there with the guards, and you want someone with you who loves you.

For me, that's my mom. She comes to visit me every other month, waking up at 4 AM to take the bus up here. Most of the officers know her, she's been coming here so long—more than 20 years.

We're still so happy to see each other on visiting day. I stand in the door where prisoners come out into the visiting room—prisoners in uniforms and their families and kids and friends. I pause until I spot her. It's just a warm feeling, to get to sit next to her in those wooden chairs and eat some food and talk.

But now that I'm an adult, it's a more mixed feeling. I see in her face that she's tired of making these visits. She works nights and has to take two days off work to come to Muncy, almost four hours each way. It costs $37 for the bus, then more for the food from the visiting-room vending machine.

That's why I don't talk to her about my panicked feelings. I don't ask her to make calls for me—even a couple of weeks ago, when the prison kept running out of my chemo pills. I don't share with her my frustration with the re-sentencing process.

Right now, I'm trying to focus on the things that I can actually control. Like my feet.

There are no comfortable shoes in here, but the administration was nice enough to tell me I could order some. I picked out a pair of Nikes and had someone call the prison supply store. But they said they were out of stock, and now I have to get a catalog and try to order again. Everything in here takes six steps when outside it takes one.

If I can make my feet feel a little better, I think it will help me keep myself up. I need these feet so I can see some of the world when I get free. On the day I get out, I don't even want to go right home. I want to drive home slow, stopping everywhere. I want to walk in and out of stores, into restaurants, McDonald's, whatever. I want to buy a pack of chewing gum—it's funny the things you never thought you would miss. And if my health does take a turn, I want the chance to cherish every little thing.

Shavonne Robbins is incarcerated at State Correctional Institution-Muncy in Pennsylvania. She was convicted of second-degree murder—and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole—for her role in a 1992 robbery in which an accomplice shot and killed a man.

Lisa Riordan Seville is an independent reporter and producer. Her work has appeared on NBC News, the Nation magazine, and Salon.com, among other outlets.

Alana Massey made her name as an essayist for publications like Buzzfeed, The Cut, The Guardian and Pacific Standard. In her first book, All The Lives I Want, Massey examines the lives of women she admires, both fictional, like the Lisbon sisters from The Virgin Suicides, to real icons like Sylvia Plath and Lil' Kim. Weaving cultural criticism with her own experiences, Massey uniquely touches on the complicated histories between famous women and the world that consumes them.

Having known Massey for the last two years, both professionally and personally, we spoke about what weaves these essays and women together. It's hard to imagine Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen having anything to do with Anna Nicole Smith or Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, but after reading All the Lives I Want, it makes a lot more sense than I imagined.

VICE: The first big essay I remember reading of yours was the first one featured in your book about being a Winona in a world full of Gwyneths. Was that what made you write this book?
Alana Massey: That essay was sort of the catalyst for me taking seriously the prospect of writing a book because it was successful in a very specific internet way that sort of fast-tracked me to more attention in the media and literary space. But I honestly wrote that essay in a sort of angry fit, and didn't have a home for it for months.

Did the connections between your life and the women featured in the essay always kind of exist, or was it more of a 'this Gwyneth and Winona thing worked, these other women could work as well'? Because of course, so many of these essays are tied to really major life experiences. 
A fun origin story is that it started with an internet comment. When Jezebel was reporting on GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter, this commenter Curt Cole said something like, "I just imagine that Winona Ryder sits at home reading this while smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine, and laughing and laughing!" It was just such an amazing visual that it stuck with me. I immediately recalled that when I was doing the necessary Facebook stalking of this guy's new girlfriend during this really messy and painful relationship ending. I really did look through this new woman's Facebook and [thought] she was just so ultra-bland but like, attractive and whatnot, and I was just baffled. The essay sort of emerged from that experience as I sort of thought through the stark differences. In hindsight, I wouldn't have been so diminishing of Gwyneth Paltrow or this other chick, and I attempt to rectify it in the newer version of the essay in the book.

Winona Ryder in 'Night on Earth.' Image via Flickr.

I really love Gwyneth Paltrow. Just as an aside, I love her to death. 
Really? What do you like about her? That's interesting to me!

Yes, I think she's real in a way nobody gives her credit for. She's rich and popular always has been. She's not going to pretend to be something she's not for us regular people. I love how out of touch she seems. 
I can see that, and that's sort of how I feel about Anjelica Huston. But like, Gwyneth does "affordable" versions of stuff in GOOP that are always so PROFOUNDLY out of touch, if you've even, like, walked past a J. Crew in your life. I think some stuff she does shouldn't get a pass.

There are so many good stories that lead into your essays. I really love that one about the cashier who totally blows it when meeting Anjelica, but I really do think it says a lot about how people see her legacy—Wes Anderson movies and Morticia Addams. I also think in a weird way she scared the shit out of me and still kind of does? It still only hit when I read your essay that she isn't given the respect she deserves in a lot of ways.
I think it isn't so much that anyone actively disrespects her or diminishes her, but that we have such a short memory for who our most iconic, glamorous couples are. Like, she won an Academy Award, she had numerous Vogue spreads, she spent 17 years with Jack Nicholson and wore gorgeous outfits during the whole ordeal. She was doing all of these things that make you a legend, but then when she wasn't in a famous [relationship] anymore, she just sort of receded from public memory as a glamorous woman and emerged as this sort of elegant matron. That's not a bad thing to be, but it doesn't do justice to the sort of things she represented, for better or worse, during her heyday. Hollywood history is littered with women we've treated like that.

I feel like the last time I've seen either Huston or Lil Kim in the news, it was because of their faces. Looking now, there was a panel she [Anjelica Huston] was a part of in 2013, and it was about how her face looked. All the articles kept using the fact that she had admitted to using Botox or whatever against her.
Oh my god, the stigma of Botox is something I will never understand. I am 31, I've gotten Botox once and you know what, I looked fucking great! I felt great! It is a totally non-invasive, mostly comfortable treatment that uses safe chemicals to slow aging and smooth the skin and when I've admitted that on Twitter, these bored, sad, small men were like "SHE IS ADDICTED TO BOTOX" the next time they wanted to have a pile on. It's like, women are expected to conform to beauty standards that are rigid—impossible even—but we can never admit that we've attempted to conform to them.

"Beauty secrets" are not things women keep from each other to get a leg up—beauty secrets are what men believe they should have kept from them so they can live in the delusion that women are perfect, and effortlessly so.

I think what you're saying goes back to the kind of women you've focused on writing about. Do you think there's a common thread between two women who appear as different as Sylvia Plath and Lil Kim.
Well, the first common thread that tied all of these women together was me being a fan who was angered by their treatment. Because this all started out as sort of a fan's attempt to rehabilitate the public's mind about these women (as opposed to rehabilitating them, which they don't need), I hadn't really thought a whole lot more of the connections between the two besides: [they're] famous, I love them, and [they've been] scorned in some way that angers me."

But as I've sort of heard some of the critiques of the book and seen speculation that women like Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion don't belong in a book alongside Britney Spears and Lil Kim, it [has] become so evident to me what a narrow view we take of art and the compartmentalized way we talk about it. Like, if you don't realize that Lil Kim is a ground-breaking poet navigating female experience in a hostile world, and is doing so at the same level of skill and genius (if not above) as Sylvia Plath, then your understanding of art is profoundly, tragically impoverished.

A scholar whose work on Lil Kim was really helpful to me was Professor Greg Thomas, and I remember he taught a class on Lil Kim that made headlines that were very much in the "HIGHER ED GOES TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET WITH LATEST GIMMICK" family of inflammatory headlines. [The fact] that it was dismissed out of hand was just so transparently racist.

In a lot of ways, I think for so many women who come after trailblazers (in the case of Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj), the idea there can only be one is pretty much the default because there can ONLY be one successful black woman. Do you think this is something all women kind of internalize in a lot of ways?
I do think that all women are socialized to view other women as their primary competition. Like, when I see my own colleagues in media and publishing being jealous of people, it is usually of other women instead of ganging up on men. But I think that men reinforce that idea by remaining shut off from us: they aren't expected to be in solidarity with us. And in the same way, white women make it more difficult for black women to reach the highest levels of payment, recognition, and achievement because whiteness is so quick to congratulate itself for accepting one black artist into the ranks in this way that is really pernicious, because we think that our recognition of their talent is somehow a virtuous thing in and of itself rather than an incomplete and still condescending correction of white exclusivity. White people are deeply intimidated by black genius. I know this because I'm a white person! But it isn't news to black people, and especially not to black women.

I really love how you incorporated fictional women into this—the horror girls and Lisbon sisters. When I was obsessed with The Virgin Suicides (both the book and movie when I was a teen), I think I was really into it because I found white girls so fascinating, as they were always represented in a way I knew I could never be. I was really interested in how it was kind of the same for you, but still different.
Right. There are different distances between me and the Lisbon sisters, and you and the Lisbon sisters, but I think there's this element of being transfixed by the ways that they are portrayed as so "other," when really they are just mainstream ideals, and as ideals, don't really exist. It's an interesting and sort of boring sleight of hand that male creators do when they put a cheerleader in a white linen dress and a flower crown, and pretend she is not the exact same beautiful, perfect girl as she was before. [A]nyone who is not quite there buys into it too.

I think it says so much about our culture that we are so enamored [by] really sad, beautiful, white girls, because it's both so shallow of us to be like, "She is so beautiful, how could she be so sad?" And then it's also this obnoxiously white supremacist thing to give the sadness of beautiful white girls more power and legitimacy than any other kinds of melancholy.

To be honest, your essay changed my whole opinion on how I read the The Virgin Suicides. The way you broke it down, I felt kind of embarrassed to not be like, "Oh my God, this is what it all means!"
I felt the same way when I reread it! I was like "Oh. OH...these boys...I don't want them looking in my windows. These girls...They all die in the end."

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Lead image courtesy of Alana Massey.

Ontario liquor stores have issued a recall of Georgian Bay Vodka after realizing that a batch of it was 81 percent alcohol as opposed to the standard 40 percent.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the vodka was bottled before it was diluted properly, resulting in the exceedingly high alcohol content.

"Consumers should not consume the recalled product described," the agency said in the recall notice. Few types of booze are in the 80-percent range (Bacardi 151 and Absinthe come to mind), but suffice to say, that much alcohol can get a person fucked up very quickly.

The LCBO has removed 654 bottles of the potent vodka from stores, according to the Canadian Press, and no one has reported being sick yet.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Teaching is largely a thankless job. The pay is low, the work never ends, and students and parents can sometimes lack respect—a real shame given the colossal scope and importance of the task at hand. Things only seem to be getting harder. Some teachers believe the public school system is under attack, and many are uneasy about what a Trump presidency could mean in the classroom, not unfounded given his choice to head the Department of Education. Good teachers have the capability to shape lives for the better and become profound role models. But that's becoming harder too given the attention of students' has now turned from the head of the class and into their handheld devices. If the American education system is in crisis, the least we can do is listen to the people who work in it. As such, we asked several teachers with various years of experience how they'd like to be treated by students and parents.

Kayla, Spanish Teacher, Three Years

I'm a black Spanish teacher at a predominately white school in the Deep South. Many of my students are initially surprised when they see me, and there can be some tricky racial issues to deal with. Once, a student emailed me about something she'd seen on social media, a Facebook post written by a student who was mad about a quiz. She tried to claim it was a pop quiz, but I had been announcing it all week. That night, she made a meme of me: "When your Spanish teacher is black I guess you can't expect them to be organized."

What you do online is your business, but if it impacts other students perception of you, me, or our class, we have a problem. I always want my students to tell me when they are unhappy with my classroom. No matter how disrespectful, obscene, or occasionally racist they do it, I'd rather it be directly.

Daniel, Science Teacher, 21 Years

When I first started teaching, it was much easier to guide my students' attention. Paper, pencils, and a wall clock were all there were to stare at. Nowadays, students are much more prone to distraction. Every student has access to a school laptop and usually his or her own phone, which can become a toxic mix of stimuli. I need my students to treat me with the same amount of attention they give to their apps. I tell my students to think of my class as an app—a science app. Only it'sbetter than Facebook because it might get them into college. I know it sounds corny, but framing it this way actually works for more students than you'd think. The worst thing students can do is never look up from their devices. If one student is totally engrossed in his or her phone, it gives everyone else permission to do the same.

Anne, History Professor, Ten Years

I am fortunate enough to work with exceptionally bright students who want to change the world for the better. They often ask questions or provide a perspective that is a pleasant surprise. I welcome students to attend my office hours as frequently as they like for a deeper discussion about whatever topic has resonated with them. This sort of open intellectual discourse is why I went into this profession.

However, debate and one-on-one attention must be reserved for a time and space outside of my classroom. It is absolutely detrimental when, during a lecture, students choose to interrupt me at the wrong time. Frequently, it is to challenge my narrative and assert their own version of historical events or cultural trends. The social justice movement has been big on our campus. This is a net positive, but I have found many students developing a very aggressive approach to enforcing alternative history and correcting perceived historical wrongs.

Kara, Kindergarten Teacher, 31 Years

When I think back on positive experiences, it really has been because parents invested the time in finding out what their kid was doing and getting to know me, and I invested the time to know them. For me to have a productive and pleasant school day requires a relationship with the kids. I need to know the kids and what makes them tick, and they need to know me and what my expectations are. Every kid needs something different. And getting to know the family helps me be a better teacher. They share information about what is going on in their kids' life with me—like how the dog died last week or that they're moving—so if there is a meltdown going on I know why, and it's not just, "I didn't get to sit on that rug square!"

Steve, Math Teacher, Nine Years

I know math can be intimidating for a lot of kids, so I try to keep the mood in my classroom light. I like developing inside jokes and banter with each of my classes. I want my students to feel comfortable working through problems together and less afraid of being wrong. The issue with this approach rises when my students feel too comfortable in the classroom. High schoolers are obviously keen on feeling accepted, and class-clown types are the absolute worst when it comes to this. I've had a couple of particularly rambunctious class clowns who are always on the lookout for an opportunity to make an obscene joke. Students need to know that, at the end of the day, this is a classroom and I am a teacher who must be shown a certain level of respect. Most students understand those limits, and it helps me when they keep the others in check. It can be a difficult balancing act, but it is always great when the rest of a class knows how to contain their laughter to inappropriate behavior. They provide a little bit of positive peer pressure for the rowdier students who take advantage of the relaxed classroom atmosphere.

Follow Jay Stephens on Twitter.