(Top image: Channel 5)

I'm not going to sit here and explain Craig Charles to you as if you don't know who Craig Charles is. Because Craig Charles is everything, to everyone: author, poet, actor, comedian, funk and soul DJ, TV presenter, cackling Scouser. You know Craig Charles from Red Dwarf and Robot Wars and Coronation Street. Imagine living a life where you do not know who Craig Charles is. Not worth living it, truly

So we all know who Craig Charles is. Craig Charles is also jetlagged, when we talk, having just completed a round trip from Australia. Craig Charles does not go into detail as to why he went to Australia, but he's the host of Channel 5's The Gadget Show now, so maybe that is related. I don't know. I probably should have asked that, you're right. Anyway, here's Craig Charles:

VICE: If you could live in any period in history, which would you pick?
Craig Charles: The future.

The future is not an answer Craig, sorry.
I often wonder what it'd be like to live three million years in the future, but if I wanted to live in the past there's a few eras. I'd like to do Rome. I'd like to see Tudor England. I'd love a bit of Victoriana as well. The thing is, I'd be a serf or a slave in all of those times.

Yeah, it's a tricky one. What about the Egyptians and the pyramids and stuff like that?
Yeah, I mean that's sort of quite exciting as well. I'd love to see them getting made. But I want the future already.

Sort of related: what conspiracy theory do you believe?
What conspiracy theory do I believe? Well, I do believe in aliens. I do believe that they came a long time ago. There's too many coincidences, and with the pyramids and things like that. If you look at the ancient Mayan artwork and stuff like that, they've got people with space helmets on their heads. So I do believe aliens physically visited Earth previously. That makes me sound like a wacko, doesn't it?

I think it's weird not to believe in them at this point, because it's a huge universe and it's sort of quite egotistical to think we're the only forms of intelligent life out there.
I think so.

Who is more attractive – you or your partner?
My wife, of course. My wife, definitely. In fact, you'd be a wrong'un if you thought you were better looking than your missus, wouldn't you? If you thought you were slumming it.

What would your specialist subject on Mastermind be?
Funk and soul. But like, it's such a big genre, so you'd have to trim it down. Specialise in a kind of soul, like northern soul, you know.

What's the best fact you know about funk?
I know so much. I'm not an expert, but I know a few things. I think someone did a Mastermind about Red Dwarf. We did a special called Universe Challenge, where we had four fans against four members of the cast, and they battered us. They knew what time it was on a clock in the middle of a scene. How shit must our acting be if they're looking at a clock at the back of a wall?

What are you more of a fan of: dogs or babies?
I've got a new puppy at the moment, called Ziggy, who's doing my head in. He's a golden retriever crossed with a poodle, so he's a golden doodle. I think he should be called a poo retriever. He's doing my head in, so I'd say babies. My nephew has just had a baby called Theo and he's cute as a button, so I'm going to go with babies. I'm a warm and caring individual.

How many drinks do you have to have before you're falling over drunk?
I have a tremendous capacity for alcohol. I wouldn't like to think [about how many drinks it woukd take]. I'm not allowed to drink Scotch any more because my wife said it turns me into a knobhead. I think Scotch turns everyone into a knobhead. I don't drink Scotch anyway, I drink Jameson's. But I don't like whiskey because it turns me into a knobhead. I can certainly put it away without anyone even noticing.

What's your go-to drink then?
White wine or a rose. I like the really pale, straw-coloured pink rather than the reddy pink. Reddy pink is too sweet. Or vodka and diet coke.

"When I told my parents I was going to be a poet, you wouldn't have wanted to witness that conversation. 'I'm going to be a poet, mum!' – 'Get the fuck out of here.'"

How many vodka diet cokes do you need before you're falling over?
I wouldn't like to say. I can do half a bottle without any serious side effects. It's not good. I'm not proud of it. I'm borderline ashamed. I've been known to drink three bottles of wine, but I think wine makes you drunker than vodka does. You get that kind of drunk where you've just had enough and you get that burning sensation inside of you and you think: 'I just can't drink any more.' But have you ever gotten so drunk that you've drunk yourself sober again? I have been in that kind of situation myself, and that's when you know you've got to get another hobby.

Would you rather change one day from your past or see one day from your future?
I'd rather change one day from my past. My dad dying wasn't a good day, and my brother Dean dying wasn't a good day, because I was on national television. I was on I'm a Celebrity and I got told he died suddenly. He was only 52. I'm 52 now. He just dropped dead. So I'd like to change that day.

Would you have sex with a robot?
[ Without even pausing for a second] Yeah.

Which Robot Wars house robot, if you had to, would you have sex with?
None of them, I'm afraid.

Not even Killalot?
Killalot! God, he'd kill you.

I feel like he could be modified, though, because he has those hands.
They're not very sensitive, healing or tender hands, though, are they? He'd chop your cock off! They look like hands that would cut your cock off.

What about Matilda?
Matilda's got a chainsaw! Another one that'd cut your cock off. Sergeant Bash if you kiss him, you're burned. He's not friendly. They're fighters, not lovers.

So you've never tried, or anything?
No. Not that I'm going to admit. I've never been caught.

What was your worst phase as a human being?
I don't know. This interview. I don't really have a worst phase. I've had some average phases.

Maybe it's to come.
It's in the future, mate. I'll have a look at that day in the future.

What would your parents have preferred you to choose as a career?
They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or some profession. When I told them I was going to be a poet, you wouldn't have wanted to witness that conversation. "I'm going to be a poet, mum!"; "Get the fuck out of here." They wanted me to go into a profession, lawyering or doctoring or something like that. They didn't want me to be a showman.

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
I don't frighten easily. [ Thinks for a really long time about a time he was scared] When Liverpool were getting beat three nil in [the Champion's League final in] Istanbul, I was in this bar in Manchester and I was still on Coronation Street. So I'm watching the cup final with a load of Man U fans and they were really taking the piss out of me at half time. At the end of the game, when we had come back and witnessed the miracle of Istanbul, I had had a lot of vodka and I started really teasing them. I was up on the tables calling the odds, celebrating. That nearly got a bit… but it was an amazing night.

Weeing in the shower, yes or no?
Definitely. Definitely, yeah. Not a municipal shower. You've got to draw the line somewhere. In your home shower, I think that's OK.

What would be your last meal?
Probably something West Indian, like jerk chicken or curried goat. Jerk chicken, rice and peas. If my auntie was alive cooking it that would be brilliant. Hers was the best. My dad's sisters and my uncle and his wife and her sisters, I suppose they're what you could call "big black mamas". They spent their whole time in the kitchen cooking curries and making this really thin flatbread, and then you roll your curry up in that and eat it. They were some of the best days of my life, in their kitchen eating curry… man.

The Gadget Show starts Friday the 10th of March at 7PM on Channel 5.

Previous VICE interviews:

Spencer Pratt

JoJo

Jamelia

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

US News

FBI Director Reportedly Asked DoJ to Refute Wiretap Claim
FBI Director James Comey reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly refute President Trump's claim that President Obama ordered the tapping of phones at Trump Tower. Anonymous officials say Comey believes there is no evidence for such a claim, and allowing it to stand suggests the FBI broke the law. Trump, meanwhile, has urged the congressional committees investigating Russian election activity to examine whether Obama abused his powers.—The New York Times

GOP to Introduce Obamacare Replacement This Week
Republicans in Congress are set to introduce a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said lawmakers were "at the culmination." A recent draft of the bill suggested the GOP plans to effectively get rid of the mandates to provide or hold health insurance, and introduce an expanded tax credit system, along with health savings accounts.—NBC News

FBI to Help Investigate Hate Crime Shooting
The FBI has joined the probe of the shooting of a Sikh man in suburban Seattle, considered by police to be a possible hate crime. The man was shot in the arm while working on his car in his driveway by a gunman who reportedly said, "Go back to your own country." Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said, "We are doing everything possible to identify and arrest the suspect."—CBS News

Marines Under Investigation for Nude Photo Sharing
The Defense Department has launched an investigation into the alleged involvement of US Marines in sharing nude photos of female service members and others in a closed Facebook group and via a Google Drive link. More than two-dozen women were reportedly identified by name, rank, and location, and some had been photographed without their knowledge.—AP

International News

North Korea Launches Four Missiles in Sea of Japan
North Korea has fired four ballistic missiles, launching them 620 miles into the sea off Japan's west coast, well inside the latter power's exclusive economic zone. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe called the launch a "new stage of threat." The provocation comes after North Korea threatened a response to joint military drills by the US and South Korea on Friday.—BBC News

Tens of Thousands Displaced in Push for Western Mosul
Around 45,000 people have fled from western Mosul since Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake the area from ISIS in February, according to a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). With camps in eastern Mosul now full, many refugees are apparently being moved to Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.—Al Jazeera

Turkish President Accuses Germany of 'Nazi Practices'
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Germany was engaging in "Nazi practices" after some German authorities denied or revoked permission for local events ahead of next month's referendum (in Turkey) on giving Erdogan more powers. "Your practices are not different from the Nazi practices of the past," Erdogan claimed.—The Guardian

Israel Decriminalizes Smoking Weed
The Israeli parliament has voted through a new measure to decriminalize smoking marijuana. Selling and growing weed remain prohibited, but using is no longer a criminal offense unless you are caught smoking in public and reoffend four times. A new approach will "emphasize public information and treatment instead of criminal enforcement," said the country's public security minister.—VICE News

Everything Else

Future Claims Historic First
Future has become the first-ever artist to debut two different albums at the No.1 spot in consecutive weeks, after HNDRXX ousted Future from the Billboard 200 top spot. The Atlanta rapper sold 121,000 equivalent album units of his latest release.—Billboard

Pablo Escobar's Son Condemns Narcos Series
The son of notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is not down with the Netflix series Narcos, which he says has a habit of "glorifying criminals and showing drug trafficking as glamorous." Sebastian Marroquin said he was dismayed about getting messages from young people who said they wanted to be like his father.—AFP

'Logan' Makes $85.3 Million in Opening Weekend
Logan took $85.3 million in its opening weekend at the North American box office, the fifth biggest-ever debut for an R-rated movie. Jordan Peele's Get Out dropped to second, but grossed another $26.1 million, taking its total so far to $75.9 million.—The Hollywood Reporter

Father John Misty Tries to Explain Taylor Swift Lyric
After debuting the new song "Total Entertainment Forever" on SNL, Father John Misty has attempted to explain the lyric about "bedding Taylor Swift" using Oculus Rift. "If you don't think that this virtual reality thing isn't going to turn into sex with celebrities then you're kidding yourself," he said.—Noisey

Canadian Men Convicted of Moose-Riding
Two men in British Columbia, Canada—Jaysun Pinkerton and Bradley Crook—have been convicted of harassing wildlife after a video of them riding a swimming moose went viral. They have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines.—VICE

Chance the Rapper Pens Foreword to New Chicago History
Chance the Rapper has written the preface to A People's History of Chicago by local poet Kevin Coval, explaining why he returned home after living in LA. "I can reach my peak in Chicago cuz that's where I was planted and where I can continue to grow."—Noisey

This story appears in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

On January 25, just days into his presidency, Donald Trump ordered the construction of a wall along the Mexican-American border. In the same breath, he vowed to strengthen the Immigration and Customs Enforcement—the agency charged with enforcing immigration law—and to oppose "sanctuary cities." That day, news outlets released a draft of an executive order that blocks entry of all refugees for 120 days and suspends immigration for at least 30 days from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Protesters gathered that evening in New York City to defend the safety and acceptance of immigrant communities, chanting, "No ban, no wall."

As a Mexican immigrant living in a sanctuary city myself, these orders set a dark tone for the months and years ahead. How are relationships that cross borders resisting the Trump administration's assault? I talked with culture writer Josephine Livingstone, philosopher and writer Fuck Theory*, and graduate students Amanda Choo Quan and Rosa Boshier about how love, interpersonal relationships, and our sex lives are affected when, as immigrants or first-generation Americans, our rights and those of our loved ones are threatened by the state.

Ana: First, I think it would be good to hear a little bit from each of you about your individual stakes on immigration.

Rosa: I'm first generation. If my parents hadn't exercised their right to cross borders, then I wouldn't be here. But beyond liberty, immigration is an issue of human dignity. I just think it's ridiculous that with all the imported labor that built America that we would have the audacity to deny others the chance to make better lives for him or herself.

Amanda: I am from Trinidad and am in the States for graduate school. I have an F-1 visa, so that means I can only work 20 hours a week on campus. The visa is very much intended to bind your life to the school and not to the wider world.

Josephine: I was here on a student visa for a long time, and I'm now a nonresident alien. I will be O-1 status, once my visa is finally processed. It's been in "administrative processing," and they won't tell me what that means or anything else. I've been in London for a month just waiting.

Fuck Theory: I am not a US citizen. I grew up multilingual with English as my strongest language; all of my long-term partners have been American; I have a degree from an elite American university; and I have been living here for almost a decade. But I cannot travel freely, much less vote, and my status in my adopted home is precarious.

Ana: Given your individual situations, have you ever felt immigration law threatened your partnerships, or the possibility for a partnership?

Amanda: The precariousness of my visa situation—I have a year after school to find a job—has definitely affected the way I've pursued intimate relationships. I constantly carry an awareness of unexpectedly having to leave the country. But I am undecided as to whether the kinds of paranoia that I had pre-Trump will change that much in the coming year. Even though I have been here legally, I still feel as though anything can happen at any point in time, and that was not a feeling that suddenly arose in me when Trump was elected.

Ana: Are any of you sensitive to how things might shift because of Trump's administration?

Josephine: There's the fear that Trump will mess with the visa categories. He's talked specifically about restricting work visas, and that means me. It introduces an element of contingency to a relationship that makes everything feel impermanent.

I am stuck in London and currently in an open relationship with a US citizen. We got back together two days before I left for England, expecting we would have a million conversations as soon as I was back a week later. We didn't know I would be here indefinitely, so we've had those conversations about the various reservations I had pertaining to getting back together via text, which is not ideal.

We have sex a lot less often, and I think it's because we're in our heads a lot, thinking about the current situation, stuck in the fuzz of depression.

Ana: How else have immigration issues affected your relationships?

Amanda: I've wondered if it's my reluctance to be involved in a relationship or another person's reluctance to be involved with me. I don't know which one is stronger. I wonder if my precarity is at the back of their minds, too.

It's also the nature of American relationships. In Trinidad, you enter a relationship with someone, and then you fuck. Or, if you fuck, it's implied that you're going to be serious at some point. So you are kind of assured that the relationship is "real" in some sense. Here, there's a sense of people drifting in and out. I had a hard time adapting to this new way of being with someone. I can't let myself just be chill. When I am only here for two years, with the threat of deportation in the back of my mind, I do not know if I can just be cool and say, "Yeah, let's just do stuff."

Rosa: For me, though my partner was born here, he is often mistaken for a noncitizen. His whole life he's been subject to stereotypes. Before Trump, it was upsetting and potentially dangerous. We watched where we traveled. Now, I regularly worry for his physical safety and his mental health, even here in California.

The need for additional precautions can be frustrating and humiliating. Not too long ago, my partner was accosted at a gas station in the town where we live. He was worried that the next time he was profiled he'd lose it on some bigot and have to pay the price. We actually had a serious conversation about whether or not he should go to the gas station by himself. I don't think either of us thought it would come to that. The inability to protect yourself is demoralizing, and naturally, that affects your partnership.

Ana: Has it affected your sex life?

Rosa: Yes, definitely. Before it was fun, you know, recreational. Sex was a way to strengthen our friendship as well as our physical connection. It could be this light, funny thing. Now it feels less playful, more functional—for comfort, for a sense of safety. There's a component of clinging, or survival, like we're using sex to affirm our humanity. We have sex a lot less often, and I think it's because we're in our heads a lot, thinking about the current situation, stuck in the fuzz of depression.

Ana: Has "otherness" impacted the way your relationships develop, even apart from the idea of citizenship and deportation?

Josephine: I'm white and have a European accent so probably in no way at all, except that the people I date often have very little concept of where and how I grew up. In my college, teaching, it has probably even helped. It's nice to be unknowable, sometimes.

Rosa: My partner and I initially bonded over being "misunderstood mixed kids." Finding humor in misperceptions has gotten us through a lot of hard times. Whenever our places as members of our respective cultures are questioned or our identities are essentialized, we have each other. It's nice to be with someone who understands that experience. You don't have to explain it to them, they just know.

I wonder constantly if I am viewed as an exotic oddity.

Fuck Theory: This goes in many directions for me, partly because of my weird mix of identities. I was born in the Middle East, but I'm white-passing, speak unaccented English, and Judaism can have very different sexual connotations for people, so I've gotten all kinds of responses.

Like a racial difference, a national difference tends to be marked, whether positively or negatively. Practically speaking, that means that my partners tend to either err on the side of treating me completely "normally," forgetting and erasing my difference in the process, or on the side of constantly reminding me that I "didn't grow up here," asking invasive questions about my family's personal habits, and requesting that I speak in an accent.

I will definitely say that as a foreigner in the US, not having an accent completely changes my experience. People treat foreigners as slightly stupid, but they also let them get away with shit. We tend to expect higher standards from people we think are like us, so speaking English without an accent has sometimes made it difficult for me to convince someone there was a genuine cultural difference at play in an interpersonal dynamic.

Amanda: My biggest insecurity around otherness is a fear that I don't share the same references as my peers. Being American is so self referential in lots of ways. I've learned that you have to wear your references on your sleeves.

I wonder constantly if I am viewed as an exotic oddity. There's a layer of race put over that. I've learned there is a desired exoticness—and an undesirable one—that are in part determined by race and class. Coming to America was my first awakening to my difference.

Ana: Has the question of marriage for citizenship ever come up for you?

Josephine: I've seen a lot of peers marry for immigration reasons, and while it has worked for them, I am sure that I just could never do it. It would be so hard—too hard.

Ana: How so?

Josephine: It's difficult to describe; it's just stubbornness. I refuse to cheat. I want to demand my place in America. I also have a terrible fear of being in debt to somebody, not knowing how far I can trust. In order to pull off a visa marriage, you have to open a joint bank account with the spouse. You're making yourself vulnerable—your money, your future. Whenever I start thinking about it, I just feel real worried for all the women who have married for citizenship in the past.

Fuck Theory: I agree. The specter of marriage came up in all three of my most recent long-term relationships, each time in a different way. At the end of the day, that person always knows they have something over you, or that you might want something from them. Obviously, there are many possible complications, and I would advise anyone considering such an arrangement to think very carefully and know the risks, both for the partner who is foreign and for the partner who is a citizen.

Ultimately, I feel about that sort of arrangement the way I feel about virtually any arrangement that improves the lives of individuals without doing harm as collateral damage: A-OK.

As you might recall, the S was all the rage in high school. Scrawling this sweet baby onto a desk got you through maths and impressed countless friends. This was because as a shape, the S was deeply cool, but also quite mysterious. I discovered this second feature eight months ago when I tried to uncover the origin of the S and couldn't. It's not the Superman symbol. Nor is it an early Stussy emblem—both of which are the two most common theories. So I wrote an article about how indecipherable it all was and moved on.

But the internet did not move on. For eight months people have been offering me theories over Twitter and Facebook. And what's interesting is that I keep hearing the same theories over and over. So here they are. My favourite five theories as curated by the internet.

Theory One: The S Was Invented by a Band Called Sacred Reich

As you can see, all photos were taken by me around the office

The most frequent claim, by far, is that the symbol originated with an Arizona metal band named Sacred Reich. The band has been playing thrash metal since 1985, and once even toured Australia with Sepultura back in 1994. I'm an Australian who was in school in the 90s, so it's possible the band could've brought the S over with them on tour. But when I reached out to the band's bass guitarist, he assured me they didn't invent the S. "I'm pretty sure Suzuki was using it long before our little band," Phil Rind explained. "Our guitar player Jason used to ride motocross and I'll bet he rode a Suzuki. That's where we got it. Anyway, it's nice of those people to think we invented it. But they're wrong."

Theory Two: It's the Suzuki Emblem

This theory was originally suggested by a woman who works at Stussy and appeared in the original article. At the time, I didn't chase it. So let's do that now. Lewis Croft is the Australian marketing manager for Suzuki. I wrote Lewis a long email to which he responded: "The drawing you have sent to me is not an earlier version of the Suzuki logo nor is it our current, official logo. This is the Suzuki logo as it first appeared in 1958."

The image Lewis attached was the same one Suzuki always uses—i.e. the S wasn't some earlier rendering of the now famous logo. Although it should be pointed out that Suzuki is a Japanese company, and I was speaking with their Australian marketing manager, it seemed reasonable that Lewis would know what he's talking about.

Theory Three: It's a Californian Gang Thing

Photo of Richard Valdemar courtesy of Richard Valdemar

Another popular idea is that the S has something to do with gang and/or graffiti culture. Many people seem particularly convinced the S is associated with the Sureños—an affiliation of Mexican gangs connected to the mafia. A lot of people from LA theorised that even if it wasn't the Sureños, it had to be some other gang from Southern California.

So I decided to ask Richard Valdemar: a former detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. For the better part of 33 years, Richard was tasked with combating LA's Gangs, which is why Police Magazine now uses him as an expert on the matter. But according to Richard, the S has nothing to do with any gangs he's seen.

"While the letter appears in gang and tagger graffiti-style, I wouldn't say it's the most common style used by Southern California gangs," he explained. "Usually, Californian Latino gangs almost always use the S followed by the number 13, as in 'S-13.' This is because the 13th letter of the alphabet is M standing for Mexican Mafia. Either that or it's written 'SUR,' which is Spanish for South or for 'Southern United Raza.' The letter S, just standing alone wouldn't represent the Sureños."

That all seemed pretty conclusive, so I asked Richard about his own theory about where the S came from. According to him it was probably just some viral piece of graffiti text, currently attributable to no one. "It's like 'bubble text' and letters formed from arrows," he said. "These lettering styles are just used universally."

Theory Four: It Was Invented By Nikki From Delaware

Nikki is a woman who got in touch via Facebook to explain that she personally invented the S. Although I'm pretty unconvinced she did, it should be said that Nikki is lovely, and definitely not the first person to believe they've invented something. Case in point: me. I once thought I'd pioneered that 2000s trend of wearing belt buckles sideways. Nikki might be mistaken about the S, but I was definitely mistaken about the belt thing. So who am I to judge?

"I started that S drawing in the late 70s and 80s," Nikki explained. "The S was for my tag name Stormer! You can't find its origins because it doesn't belong to any company. I came up with that S with my best friend. Sorry to upset you, but it's not Superman, Stussy, or Suzuki. Just my tag name symbol!"

Theory Five: It's a Form of "Decorated Initial" From Medieval Europe

You know how in old books they often turn the first letters into an illustration? Like if the passage is "once upon a time" the "O" will appear as a piece of medieval graphic design with a castle and a few fauns. These things are called "decorated initials. According to Sonja Drimmer, who is an assistant professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, the S could be one of these.

"Recently I decided I should learn how to use a quill," explained Sonja. "So I've started making my own quills from turkey feathers and writing with quill ink. At the same time I read your article, and decided to try writing an S and discovered it's really hard to draw with a quill." Sonja described that the problem is that drawing an "S" requires pushing a quill in two different directions, which creates two opposing "C" shapes instead of a single flowing line. But this problem can be overcome if you produce the "S" with a lot of vertical strokes.

"So it's only a theory," she said, "but maybe they started doing these elaborate, embellished angular S shapes to compensate for the quill problem." Sonja went on to say that she's seen S-shaped decorated initials throughout texts going back to eighth century England, although there's no definitive evidence to say this is where they originally came from.

So here we are, in article number two, and not much further on. The only thing we can really say is what we said at the start: The S is fucking way cool, and mysterious.

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The emails started arriving in Moncton inboxes last Saturday and haven't stopped.

The messages, attempting to reach the majority of the student and staff population, are the primary tool in a massive targeted revenge porn campaign against one female student. The emails claim to be coming from someone connected to the woman, with the sender saying she cheated on him (and police say they have identified the suspect.) The emails have contained a nude sexually exploitative photo of the woman, a link to her Facebook page and threats to the university.  

On the Université de Uonctons Reddit page, a user who got the email said that some contained a link to a video on a popular porn website that has since been removed.

On the weekend of Feb 28 alone, over 10,000 emails were sent out to students and staff of the New brunswick school. This last weekend, another 2,000 were sent out. The university's IT department is working to block the emails and have had some success but haven't been able to stop the entirety of the harassment.

READ MORE: People Are Terrifyingly OK with Revenge Porn, New Study Finds

A spokesman for the University told the CBC that they believe that it is a single person carrying out the campaign and that the emails were sent from a European server and that the sender is using multiple accounts and identities to send them from. The president of the University of Moncton, Raymond Theberge, has called the targeted harassment "cyber-terrorism" and, in a news conference, said there are no current plans to take down the server as some have called on the university to do.

""This is a type of cyberterrorism and it's never a good thing to give in to these kinds of attacks because if we give in once, there will be other attacks and there will be other demands made on the institution," said Theberge.

The woman that is being targeted has filed a complaint with the RCMP, who have said that they have identified a suspect in the case. If the person who is orchestrating the campaign is caught, he would most likely be charged with distributing intimate images of another person without that person's consent. The charge could bring with it a five year jail sentence and a fine of up to $5,000.

Lead photo via Flickr user Rocco

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Reverend Franklin Graham is the preacher who gave the blessing at Donald Trump's inauguration this past January. He has caused significant unease within the Christian world, and the general public, for saying things like Islam is evil, that LGBTQ+ people should not be welcomed into your home, and that god intervened to elect Trump because, among other things, the White House had been infiltrated by secularists and Muslims. He's also the son of legendary tent revivalist, Billy Graham. And an Obama birther to boot, according to the Globe and Mail.

Graham was in Canada this weekend—not under some tent in rural Alberta, but preaching to a packed 20,000-seat stadium in rainy, progressive Vancouver. I went to the free-to-the-public "Festival of Hope" to find out why so many turned out for a man openly opposed by many local church leaders and politicians.

More than 30 church leaders published an open letter to the organizers last week calling out Franklin Graham's invitation. "[Graham] has made disparaging and uncharitable remarks about Muslims and the LGBTQ+ community, while portraying the election, administration and policies of U.S. President Donald Trump as intrinsically aligned with the Christian church," reads the letter. They asked the organizers to drop Franklin from the event.

Many of the people I meet outside the venue expressed hurt over the "divisions" within the "body of Christ" over the event.

In response to the letter, Graham released a statement: "Politics, policies, economics and commerce are significant matters, but for these three days, we will come together in Vancouver to focus on the most important thing of all: god's love for each and every one of us."

And that's what his followers told me they were here to experience. Frank, 65, explained to me how it's the media's fault, for misrepresenting Graham and creating divisions.

"If you were represented by the news media as one quote that you made, how do you know the person's heart unless they have a chance of rebuttal?" he said. "You can't. There's no way that you can do that... It comes down to a misrepresentation of small dialogues that he made."

His partner, Audrey, 55, jumped in, saying: "We're not against the gay lesbian population at all, no. I think he [Graham] needs to explain what he said because when you make a statement like that they chop of everything before and in the middle."

Our conversation was cut off as they entered the building.

Like many in the line-up, Kristine, 27, was excited to help spread the gospel. She and her husband Marco are not familiar with the controversy surrounding Graham.

"I'm quite surprised for a Christian preacher like that, how come he mentions those kind of things. This is open for everyone … he shouldn't be acting like that," Marco said.

The couple told me about their home church in the suburbs and how they've been part of a group that has been praying for the event. They explained that they were excited about the good things that god wants to do in Vancouver and concluded that, despite the divisions, the time has come to "set aside the politics and just enjoy the event."

Outside the venue there was a contingent of 20 or so loosely affiliated people demonstrating the event. I asked one of the protesters, a 25-year-old named Celine, about Marco's particular refrain. She's a Christian, as were most of the demonstrators, and was holding a sign that read: "Love your LGBTQ+ neighbour."

"I don't think that you can ever isolate the idea of soul's being saved or the gospel being preached without the context of politics and social impact that surrounds those ideas," said Celine. "In my opinion, the gospel, which is the good news for all people, is inherently political and so it just depends on what politics you see as aligning with it."

Vick, 29, made the trek from Surrey for the event. "I love sharing my testimony," he told me, explaining that he grew up Sikh but he was saved after god intervened in his life by preventing his brother's suicide.

"I've heard things that he's done but I've also learned that hearsay is just hearsay," he said. "I don't think he meant it in that way. I think he meant it in that some, you know, are very radical and they're against every other person."

No one should ever say anything hateful about anyone, he added. We should all "just have love." And from what I can tell, he genuinely means it.

Inside the venue it was a familiar scene for any hockey fan, minus the overpriced beer (and the hockey). This is a dry event, and by far the politest crowd I've mingled with at Rogers Arena. The food workers look pleasantly bored, expecting a food rush that never shows.

A band that sounds like a Christian Arcade Fire is playing, and the place looks packed up to the nosebleeds. Lyrics appear on large screens so everyone can sing along to phrases and titles like: Children of love. Soldiers of God. Your love awakens me. God is in this place tonight. You're beautiful.

Irony was abundant. Ads for the upcoming Lady Gaga show and a Game of Thrones fandom event sit awkwardly amongst the scatterings of Christian organizations promoting their ministries, like Focus on the Family.

Scrounging the last available spots underneath the large screens, I craned my neck to the left to see Graham's gigantic head. He was the lone figure on the floor, standing atop a walkway on an eight-foot stage, staring out into an empty ground floor, soon to be filled by converts. His figure cast a metaphor for each and every person in the arena—how they too stand before god, alone.  

He was composed and steady in his tone. He spoke with a calming southern drawl that was emphasized when he said words like Babylon (it came out Ba-ba-lyn). His sermon—a story about a man was a "party animal"—consisted of nine verses from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament.

"Sin is disobedience to god and we're all guilty of that," he said, as part of his larger sermon about the pagan secular city of Babylon, and how it fell to an enemy army because its leader, Belshazzar (Bal-shaz-a), did not repent.

"God would have forgiven him … but he just sat there," he said.

For the most part, Graham steered clear of politics—almost. This is Franklin Graham after all. His website has a donation button with the title: "We won't back down. We won't retreat."

"Many of you here tonight may be guilty of immorality," he said. "You see the bible says that the body is not meant for sexual immorality. The bible says flee from sexual immorality… God first of all, gave us sex and he wants us to use sex. Sex is a wonderful part of our life, but it's to be used in a marriage relationship between a man and a woman."

Rogers Arena erupted into a chorus of applause.

After that he went deeper into talking about sin and forgiveness, how he too is a sinner, that you can't save yourself, that god loves you, and that now is the chance to tell Jesus you're sorry.

Then came the alter call, the point of all of this, the moment when, if you want to repent, you publicly respond to the preacher's message. Into the pit where the Vancouver Canucks ice rink normally sits, hundreds, maybe thousands (though it was hard to tell exactly between the volunteers and the about-to-be-saved), filed in. I followed the crowd down and listened as people began confessing their most intimate thoughts with members of the Graham ministry team wearing orange vests—people trained to help the new believers in conversion. Franklin talked the sinners through a simple prayer, which they repeated after him, line for line.

And then it was done. Another chorus of cheers.

On my way up to retrieve my things from section 320, the tip of the nosebleeds, I had one last conversation, with Destiny, 28. She told me she attended a church that was protesting the event, though she'd rather not say which one.

The divide is hurtful, she explained, speaking of the collection of Vancouver churches boycotting the event. She said that she's been "persecuted" for being honest, that political correctness is a problem, and that she wants to go on a Facebook fast because of all the negativity she's seeing in the media.

She opened up freely, as everyone at the event seemed so willing to do. She talked out how the event is powerful and overwhelming. That it's about love. That it's full of hope. That it's about what god thinks, not what people think. That the world is suffering. That god can use Graham, despite the division, for the greater good.

"We can be too blunt… as Franklin Graham can be, we're only human. But people do need to hear the truth, and the truth will set you free. But we do it out of love," she said.

For Destiny, the event had an added level of meaning. She told me that her mother was saved at a crusade just like this one, led by Franklin's father, Billy Graham, many years ago. That synchronicity was ultimately the reason Destiny is here, chaperoning two youths in the nosebleed section as they wait for the redeemed to flee the floor area so the bands can come back on.

She, like many of the people I talked to that night, related a message that coincidences are often evidence of the divine.

As I squeezed myself between a railing and the growing crowd of converts, I heard a familiar voice. I could see shaded brass sunglasses, a balding head, and a tense chin and jaw. Immediately in front of me was the very same man who, two weeks before, called me a "faggot" and threatened to kick my ass at a downtown Vancouver bus stop after I stood between him and a young woman that he was harassing.

Drunk, holding an open Pepsi can and a crinkled tote bag stuffed with Festival of Hope swag, he started speaking in tongues as two Graham handlers tried to walk him through the sinner's prayer and then politely out the building. Go figure.

Yucky Duster doesn't have a strong narrative. The Brooklyn band doesn't have a management team sculpting their brand, or a consistent message, or even an easy genre tag—they've been called "twee" and "surf" and "riot grrrl," but those labels don't quite fit, since the musical style varies wildly depending on which of the band's four songwriters penned the track.

The band's drummer and singer Madeline Babuka Black bristles when I try to get her to talk about the Yucky Duster story. "I don't know," she says, "we're just brats." She won't give me more than that.

Yucky Duster are just four friends who like to write songs together. Those songs happen to be some of the best coming out of Brooklyn right now, but the band probably wouldn't care much either way. Their latest EP, Duster's Lament, packs a lot of corkscrewing hooks into five songs (one by each of the band members and a title track written as a group). The EP's centerpiece, "The Ropes," sounds like something Polvo might have cranked out if they grew up listening to SMiLE, while other songs wander into Breeders territory. But there's no consistent, easily-marketable Yucky Duster thing that a PR guy could drool over, besides the fact that the band sounds like they're just having a lot of goddamn fun.

They may not make punk music, but Yucky Duster is a more punk band than the majority of the mediocre groups trying to fly that genre flag right now. They're not focused on marketing themselves or trying to reinvent pop music or whatever—they just dick around and make things they like. That's real punk, regardless of what Babuka Black says.

"We're not a punk band. We're not. When people write that, I'm embarrassed."

The band's latest EP, Duster's Lament, is out now on Infinity Cat. Watch a new music video for the song "Elementary School Dropout" below, exclusively on VICE.

Life in the kitchen is never easy—being a chef is a profession that involves an incredible amount of precision, creativity, and the ability to keep your cool in this uniquely stressful environment, even in the best of conditions. In a place like Antarctica's Concordia Station, one of the most isolated research facilities in the world, where day and night can last months on end and temperatures generally hover between -30 and -60 Celsius, the already stressful task of being a chef begins to sound downright hellish.

This however, is not the opinion of Luca Ficara, who has been serving as the base's resident chef since November.

When I Skyped with Ficara last week, he was well into the first full week of perpetual darkness at the base, but despite the fact that he wouldn't be seeing the sun for another three months, he was all smiles and jokes. Ficara must operate in an environment which is a far cry from "the best of conditions," yet despite all the hardships his job description entails, it's the small things that he misses most: "It's been three months since I've had a orange," he told me with a melancholy that only three months without a orange can warrant.

Read more on MUNCHIES

In the summer of 2010, Showtime premiered the pilot of The Real L Word, a reality spinoff of The L Word, which had ended the year before. I didn't watch the spinoff at the time, but I was aware of it. Two years before, I'd binge-watched all of The L Word, streamed illegally, while I was studying abroad in Spain and essentially friendless. I was watching the show years too late to have any frenzied "Did you see last night's episode??" conversations with anyone, so I went in search of recaps (and their many ensuing comments).

I began a covert relationship with lesbian websites AfterEllen and then-brand-new Autostraddle. I had nothing against either site, obviously—I just wasn't gay, and I worried that if anyone saw my screen they might get the wrong idea. I just liked The L Word. And Tegan and Sara. And I really wanted Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson to make it work. But it didn't mean anything.

For similar reasons, I considered entering the "reality" L Word universe a bridge too far. It was one thing to speed through six seasons of a lesbian-focused fictional drama in the dark of my tiny bedroom in my host mom's apartment in Madrid, but it was another to watch a show about actual lesbians while at home in Minnesota. Plus, I was too afraid to pirate television in my home country, so close to the police. So I forgot about it. Over the next few years, I kept reading what I self-consciously referred to as "my lesbian sites," feeling more like a voyeur than someone who belonged there.

Then, in 2015, I came out as gay. It felt startling and swift, like plunging into water. But when I thought about it, I'd been standing around on the diving board for seven or eight years.

In the nearly two years since, I have fallen in love and moved in with my girlfriend. I have made friends with several lesbian and queer-identified women and tried as hard as I can, without being too creepy, to make more. It's not enough. I'm greedy. I want a lesbian gang. I want a queer community so big and so messily intertwined we fill up a whole bar. I want my own "real" L Word. But the closest I've been able to get is watching the one on television.

In case you are interested, covertly or not, all three seasons of The Real L Word are currently available to stream on ShowtimeAnytime, which I discovered two months ago when I decided to rewatch The L Word. I abandoned the latter for the former, both because I wanted something new (to me), and because I wanted to watch real, actual queer women hang out and hook up. Make no mistake: The Real L Word is not "good"—it's heavily produced, certainly scripted in parts, outdated, and sometimes exploitative of its stars—but it is about real, actual queer women, talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking (etc.), and it's the only one we have.

Watching The Real L Word seven years after it first aired allows me to enjoy it for what it is—a cultural relic. I do not watch it with a critical eye because it is, in TV terms, old, and because I started it expecting very little. My girlfriend, in fact, refuses to watch the show again with me; she watched the first season in 2010, but gave up when the show aired a pornographic strap-on sex scene between Whitney and Romi. For her, a woman who's been out and craving representation since she was fourteen, The Real L Word is an embarrassment. It is every worst lesbian (and female) stereotype smashed together, wearing a fedora and a technicolor tattoo sleeve.

"But for me, a first-time consumer of the show in 2017, it is virtually all I could ask for. Watching The Real L Word gives me a sense of queer friendship and sex and drama—a surface-level exploration to be sure, but something I haven't yet found offscreen. When considered as a representation of the queer community at large, the show is inadequate and limited (the cast—though much improved upon the entirely femme and almost entirely white L Word cast—is fairly homogenous), but when viewed purely as a depiction of eight or ten lesbians' overlapping lives, it satisfies my desire to simply watch queer women exist."

I am thirty now, and while I would rather die than start going out to gay clubs and partying and getting myself mixed up in lesbian love triangles, I kind of wish that I already had. By the time I came out, I was ready to be settled, to go to bed at 10 (or 9:30) with the same person every night. My modest early-twenties partier window has long since passed, and I can't help but feel that I wasted it on heterosexuality.

When I watch Whitney juggle Sada and Tor and Romi and Rachel and Jaq and then Sada again, I do not admire her, or wish I was her friend, but there is a part of me that wishes I knew her once, if only to have had access to that kind of gossip. I wish that I had once been part of a circle like theirs. When I watch Saj and Chanel declare their love for each other on their second date, I think how sweet, how twenty-two-year-old of them. When I watch the "Pants vs. Pumps Throwdown" in season two (a sort of butch-vs-femme competition Whitney creates which incorporates relay races and wrestling in chocolate syrup), I think, sure, that classification is a little reductive. But I also think God, that looks fun. I wish I'd been there. Watching The Real L Word lets me pretend, for an hour at a time, that I was.

Follow Katie Heaney on Twitter.

I'm 16 years old and I'm kneeling beside the toilet in my family's bathroom. I am trying to make myself throw up.  For the past fifteen minutes my fingers—first one, then two—have been dancing around the back of my throat. I can feel my knuckles push hard against the roof of my mouth. My fingernails prick the gap between the soft squish of my tongue and the rougher edges of my esophagus. For a second I almost gag. I feel a little jolt of excitement but then…nothing. I listen to the running sink and then reach for my toothbrush on the counter. The toothbrush always feels harsher than my fingers do, but I ate bread at lunch. This has to get done. I turn the toothbrush to its handle, I don't want to ruin the bristles, but just as I'm about to do the act the bathroom door opens. My mom and I briefly make eye contact then she closes the door. I'm ashamed. I feel embarrassed. It's like I've been caught stealing or jerking off. I put the toothbrush down, sit and the floor, and I sob. A day later when I weight myself I realize that I am down two pounds. I suck in my stomach and take a selfie in the bathroom mirror that I later post to Myspace. I feel validated and whole. Variations of these events have been happening for two years and will continue to happen until I leave home for university.

I've wrestled with an eating disorder, on and off, since I was a teenager. The statistics about eating disorders in Canada are mostly based on a 2002 survey. It says 1.5 percent of the population between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are diagnosed with some type of eating disorder, and around 10 percent of that are males.  While in my life I've known other men who have struggled with food, we've rarely talked about it. Whenever the subject has come up, it's quickly glossed over with jokes about two-a-days at the gym or the denial of t-shirt sizes.  The closest thing I ever got to a real conversation about my eating disorder happened when a friend and I were blackout drunk after a work party.  He told me about how as a kid his mother would make the family weigh in person by person on after Sunday dinner and record their weights in a note pad. I explained that growing up my dad used hand puppet called "the ignorant moose" to point out how much fatter I was than my brother.  We laughed off the anecdotes and continued to drink.

Photo of the author

While conversations about female body image and the struggle with food have slowly been creeping into larger societal conversations, the topic of male eating disorders is still something that's rarely spoken of in public. There is a stigma for men about admitting their problems with food. Guys are supposed to be able to eat a lot. Guys aren't supposed to be too worried about the way they look. We're not supposed to talk about our feelings. I knew that I couldn't be the only one in my peer group who's had trouble with this, but for a long time I didn't know how to ask. Recently I put out the call on social media asking if any men would be willing to talk to me about their struggles with food. Slowly but surely the private messages started to fill my inbox. There were a lot more than I would have expected. In the following days I had candid and brutally honest conversations about how eating disorders have affected some of my friends. Below are stories from those conversations, the hope is that they serve as a reminder to any guys that struggle with food that they're not the only ones.

Jeremy Hammond, writer at The Hard Times and host of 'Ballin' Out Super'

I think it really started for me when I was fourteen. I went to this art camp where there were a lot of cool older punks. They were the dudes I wanted to be like and the girls I wanted to date. It seemed like every cool punk had a beautiful, svelte, hairless, physique. I was a doughy teen and my torso hair was growing in the shape of a fucking elm. Everyone looked like a sexy dolphin and I looked like I'd get your order wrong at a deli.

It was around then I remember first noticing these less flattering aspects of my body—I had hit my first growth spurt but still had a lot of baby features. When I'm overweight, my body tends to hold fat in weird places. My stomach goes forward like I'm pregnant. I get weird little cone boobs. Puberty really started to hit hard, so sex became a pretty big occupant of my psyche, too. I think one of the common bedfellows of desire for sex is introspection as to why nobody wants to fuck you, and for me it became pretty hard to deny that my weird misshapen body was a big contributor to the issue.

It's also around then that the "scene kid" thing really blew up, so everyone wanted to be rail thin, androgynous and have interesting hair. There were these famous MySpace kids who looked like fucking elves from Lord of the Rings. Online was worse than real life, honestly. In the real world you saw all kinds of body types, and you saw how unflattering those haircuts could look but online everyone looked like some kind of ethereal emo angel shrouded in soft light and female attention.

I grew up in a single parent home, and by this time my brother was away at college. My mom worked two jobs, so I was eating dinner alone fairly often. I think being independent in that way made it easy to just stop eating without anybody asking any questions about it. I spent about six months trying my best to only eat solid food twice a week. I would drink tons of coffee and Diet Coke as a means of filling my stomach and I guess the sugar in the Coke would keep me from passing out. When I did eat, it was a very ceremonial process—I would only eat foods I hated, or that were difficult to eat. A big favorite was stale bread soaked in vinegar. I wanted food to feel like punishment, and the pain of hunger to feel like my normal state. Getting to sleep at night was always hard, and I would go without it pretty frequently. Any amount of strenuous activity would make me dizzy. I remember passing out skateboarding a few times. Honestly it's hard to remember the time period, because my brain was fuzzy and useless for so much of it.

It took a long time for people to even realize I was losing weight at an unnatural pace. At that age your body changes a ton regardless, and people could dismiss it as me growing into my body. Being a boy didn't help either. Nobody really thinks of boys as being susceptible to body dysmorphia or whatever. I was a fourteen year old who dropped forty pounds because I wanted to look like Connor fucking Oberst, but it was still easy for people to assume nothing was wrong. It's insane, my therapist knows all about my history with eating disorders, but still frequently references the root of anorexia being "conflict between young girls and their mothers."

I still hate my body, but I've accepted that there are aspects of it I can't change. What's toughest now is losing weight in a healthy way through diet and exercise. There's always going to be that call of the wild in me, the little voice that says I should be eating less and if I just had more control I could lose the weight faster. There's always going to be the voice when I hit my goal weight that says I could be thinner if I only cared more. 

Jesse Byiers, puppeteer

It's the start of grade five, my family is living in Alberta, and I'm pushing 240 pounds. I'm 5'3" maybe. I'll be about 260 by grade six. I don't remember being big in grade four. And I guess in my mind I wasn't, though the thought 'he become fat over summer vacation' seems kind of ridiculous.

I'm outside on the playground, or lack thereof, on/near benches and I'm with people who I would call my friends for the last time. We're hanging out with the grade seven kids. His name his Colby or Cody or something redneck. I disagree with him? There's a small debate. Now I'm not a smart kid and I'm still not one by a long shot, but clearly I must have been on top this one. He says whatever and ends the argument by calling me bitch tits. His girlfriend laughs. My friends laugh. And that's when I became fat.

I started developing an unhealthy relationship to exercise. Always trying to lose weight, pushing myself to the point of throwing up and never letting myself off the hook, because losing weight means exiting the world in which I have to live in. And here's the thing: I'll show pictures to people now, who didn't know me then, and am often met with 'you weren't that fat.' And physically, no maybe not, but that's how I was identified all through school to graduation and I played into that role so much so that I haven't unidentified as fat.

I have Binge Eating Disorder. Unlike bulimia, binge eating is not followed by purging, but excessive exercise, or fasting. I experience guilt, shame, and distress about my binge eating, which can lead to more binge eating. This can look like a lot of different thing. It was taking the protein bars from the top cabinet when I was a kid because they taste like chocolate bars and going out behind the woodshed in my backyard to eat two or three in a sitting until my parents move them because protein bars are fucking expensive. It's sneaking out to the fridge in college, when my roommates were asleep, and I thought they couldn't hear me making my many sick sad sandwiches to bring to bed, only to get up right after eating those to make maybe one more and eat something filled with sugar. It's that fact that If I do not portion my food, or have someone cut me off, I will and have (multiple times, even in my adult years) eat until I'm sick. It's sleeping. It's unaware. It's unapologetic. It's well I didn't eat breakfast or lunch, so this probably isn't that bad for me. A shotgun wedding. It's nothing can go to waste.

As I said before, I struggle. The patterns are still very much a strong influence in my life and force me to be very conscious of how I eat. My partner will always check in with me and help me with portion control and just eating when I'm supposed to. And I mean, I live alone, so even though I have that support group I still have to go home and hold myself accountable for what I bring into my house. Working in an art studio (and it's a dream come true and I love it) can be difficult as I'm sitting all day and it's such a mental stretch that often I just don't do the exercise I should be doing after work, which only just adds. I unfortunately don't have an answer of how it gets better, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Jiv Parasram, cultural worker

Shortly after graduating from university I was supporting myself largely by working at a brewery, both in the sampling room and on the bottling line. I ended up getting injured and herniating a disc in my back. I couldn't really walk for a long time and was in pretty excruciating pain. I'm also allergic to painkillers so I didn't have many options but to just take it. I guess there's a certain hyper-masculine-martyrdom about that, but really it just sucked. I started becoming aware of my size during this time period. I wasn't able to walk which lead to gaining a lot of weight. That lead to being outright ignored or actually berated by my partner at the time because I "wasn't fun." That was a pretty abusive relationship on the whole, and we had only started dating after I'd lost a considerable amount of weight in my undergrad. For the record, I wouldn't say that the reason we started dating was due to the weight loss, but it did help build my confidence. I'd been quite heavy for a long time and being slimmer kind of felt like a new lease on life. Having the weight back and my mobility compromised took a lot of that away. I was worried about what is was doing to my relationship and it got me thinking more broadly about how I interact with food.

My family wasn't very well off when we were growing up. We weren't poor either, but things could get tight. So we were shoveling pasta and beans, or rice and lentils, because they were cheap and we didn't eat meat. I never specifically thought of us as not very well nourished but I did grow up with a fair amount of joint problems. I had a bit of a wake up moment when I was a teenager working at a specialty health food store for pets. My manager was training me and explaining this one kind of dog food, he said "Basically grocery store dog food is all filler. If you ate just rice and lentils your whole life you'd be malnourished, so why would you do that to your dog?" I thought about it.

There's also this conundrum culturally where my mother and my aunts, all the motherly figures in the family consistently want you to eat when you're a kid. They want you to just eat as much as possible. And then if you get heavy as an adult—that's not OK. I still get a bit of anxiety when she comes to town. I try to eat clean and add more cardio whenever my Mom is coming by with the hopes she won't tell me I've gained weight. I thought about that, too.

I think about my weight a lot, but I don't know if I've ever suffered from it so bad as to be comparable with people who legitimately have lived with body dysmorphia and anorexia. But at the same time, it could also be that I've never been assessed and don't want to believe that I have lived with these conditions amongst my mixed bag of issues. I use an app to track calories and exercise, and I know that it's always a slippery slope till I'm obsessing over it. When things are so much easier to be quantified it gets a lot easier to focus on the numbers rather than how you're actually feeling health wise. On all levels of health be it spiritually, mentally, or physically.  There is also the fact that fasting can be an important part of my religion as a Hindu. I think there's a logic and wisdom to it too when you look at the lunar calendar as to when we tend to fast. It has to do with making your body more in tune spiritually, and also just giving the digestive system a rest. But it's also, like many things, an appropriated thing here in the west. The reality is that when you fast, you're usually going to lose weight. Often very quickly. I can tell myself that my fasting is  all about changing my relation to food, or about gaining spiritual attunement, but when I start extending that fast well beyond the traditional period I know it's becoming an issue. I also find it to be a bit of a hin-don't so to speak. Cause at that point it's not about spiritual health. It's about the physical self. And philosophically, the physical self is itself an illusion. So if anything it takes me away from the religion, and also is just unhealthy for maintaining the body I'm in. But being in the body I'm in can be difficult.

Glyn Bowerman, journalist

When I was fifteen we were on a family trip to PEI. I put on my bathing suit, and ran to the beach. Obesity is a problem in my family. When I reached my parents, my brother and sister, my dad said, in front of everyone, "looks like I'm not the only one in the family that needs to go on a diet." I had literally never thought about my weight before that. After that I started jogging strictly to lose weight. Things just kind of progressed from there. As I reached my late teens, I think on some level I wanted to look freakish. I can remember wanting to look visibly shocking to people, the way the Joker is drawn in Batman comics. I can't honestly remember why though. At one point, at 18, I weighed 118 pounds, (I'm 5'10"). It was less about a goal weight, and more just testing how far I could go.

By the time I got to second year university, I had what I realize now was a massive depression. I wasn't in the program I wanted to be in. I wasn't fulfilled by the classes. I was hopelessly in love with someone, but I didn't have the courage to tell her, and never would.  I was wrestling with losing the faith I was raised in, with forming my political worldview, everything. I became dogmatic about every aspect of my life. I wrote obsessively in a journal, even when hanging out with friends (which I imagine was disturbing), I swore off masturbation, eating for pleasure, and anything I thought of as an indulgence. Control became the most important thing in my life. I was proud to be able to control everything beyond the basic necessities of life. Hypocritically, though, I was smoking weed all day, and getting drunk every weekend, which somehow didn't factor into my "no indulgences" thing. Still, I felt a lot of pride in how small I had become. I looked at the people around me as selfish slobs, at the mercy of their desires. I felt superior to people, until I inevitably gave into literal starvation, ate something, or even binged, and absolutely hated myself for it.

My daily routine was something like this. I would jog around the perimeter of York University, twice a day. If I didn't, I would be furious with myself. Any time I did eat, I felt like I lost some battle. I was humiliated. I had a book that listed the amount of calories in every kind of food. I would try not to eat more than 1,000 calories a day, which was a limit I set pretty much arbitrarily. There was a time I would only eat apples, one packet of unsweetened oatmeal during the day, and microwaved carrots with Matouks Caribbean hot sauce for dinner. Looking back I realize how sick I'd become.

Eventually when I was around my smallest and looking really bad my friend Cam approached me. He said: "you look sick, dude. Really, are you okay?" Until that happened, it had literally never occurred to me that I was doing something harmful, or that other people could notice. I just thought I was taking control of my life. Having a trusted friend express concern cracked the thing wide open. It made me start asking questions about where this would ultimately lead.

I'm lucky. After about six years of developing these kind of extreme thought patterns, I was able to shake it off fairly easily. I took stock of what I was losing, I had the presence of mind to recognize I was a stupid kid wrestling with how to be an independent adult, and that I had fucked it up. Now, as a real ass grown up, I can look back at that kid and understand he was depressed, and lost, and working through some shit without the proper tools to do it. I pretty much eat what I like now. I have a healthy attitude towards the right kind of exercise. I even became pretty confident in my looks, and my personality. I realize it's not that easy for other people who have gone down similar holes, so again, I say I'm lucky. And relatively happy. I'm also extremely grateful to have had a friend confident enough to reach out.

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On Monday, President Donald Trump signed a new executive order that revised his infamous "travel ban," which temporarily halted entry into the United States of refugees and the residents of several Muslim-majority countries. The new order is less restrictive and promises to be more smoothly implemented (it doesn't come into effect immediately), a clear attempt to withstand legal review after the old order was (mostly) suspended by a judge in February. In contrast with the January original, this executive action was not accompanied by pomp and circumstance; Trump signed the new order behind closed doors, an oddly mellow event following a weekend in which he accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of tapping his phones.

It's impossible to separate the new policy from the especially rough stretch for the 45th president that preceded it: Trump's alleged Russia ties have continued to dominate the news, and he has faced growing pushback on a variety of issues from within his own party. Which is to say the new order represents an opportunity for Trump to reset the national conversation, something he did to great effect during his insurgent presidential campaign. The key question is whether this new ban, which unlike its predecessor does not include citizens of Iraq and ditches the original's carve-out for religious minorities (a.k.a. Christians), will stand up to legal scrutiny.

The president's new policy does still include a blanket ban on new refugees for 120 days—though this time there is no indefinite ban on Syrians. Bolstering its odds of survival is the fact that the new order allows those who have already been granted refugee status or issued green cards to continue traveling, which should reduce the likelihood of chaos at airports. Still, there are bound to be protests and legal challenges in the days and weeks ahead.

For some perspective on the new order, what exactly it means for the people affected by it, and how likely it is to hold up in court, I called up Sarah Pierce, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute who specializes in immigration law. Here's what she had to say.

VICE: What's your initial reaction to this thing—is it fair to say it's less harsh or narrower than the original, and what jumps out to you?
Sarah Pierce: It's definitely narrower than the original, for sure. One question I had going in was whether or not it was going to be a complete replacement of the prior executive order, because the administration has expressed they had plans to continue fighting for the prior executive order in the court system. I was a little surprised to see, today, that this executive order is replacing and revoking the prior one.

Which is to say that there's an implicit concession of defeat or error here?
Maybe. I actually wouldn't say that, because if you look at this new executive order, they spend quite a bit of time in section one going through the prior executive order and justifying why it was correct.

Right, almost a passive-aggressive thing with... the entire country and world.
Yeah, they definitely do their best to have the last word on it, for sure.

Do you think given that it does seem to be a little less all-encompassing, does it make sense for travel ban opponents to see this as a victory?
This ban will still be protested and it will still be challenged in the court system. But I think it will have less immediate and less, kind of visual effect, right? Because it doesn't affect individuals who are already legally authorized to come into the United States. So you're not going to have the same instance of individuals stuck at the airport who suddenly lost their right to enter the country mid-flight. That sent a very strong message to people and really inspired a lot of the protests, and that won't be happening with this one, because it's only applying to people who haven't yet received visas to travel to the United States.

But it's still suspending the refugee program, it's still suspending entries from these six countries, now, so I definitely think there will be pushback on it.

One other practical difference is there's a ten-day rollout period. Which we famously did not have with the original. How big of a deal is that practically, and what do you think it says that that was included this time around?
I think the administration was somewhat open in acknowledging last time that the implementation of the executive order was not ideal. [Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John] Kelly directly said so at a congressional hearing—that they should at the very least have run the order by Congress ahead of time. It's a ten-day delay to give the agencies some time to decide on the nuts and bolts of policies they'll be implementing on the ground.

Can you talk at all about the removal of Iraq from the list of countries affected by the ban?
I thought it was interesting that the executive order says that since the prior executive order was issued, the Iraqi government has expressly undertaken steps to enhance travel documentation, information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final orders of removal.

So the executive order has implied that Iraq has taken steps to get more in line with the US government's priorities as far as security vetting and travel. That was one of the reasons they were removed. I hope more information comes out on that in the future because that was kind of an interesting inclusion.

What about the nixing of the minority provision, which people took to be referring to Christians? That seemed to be the most nakedly unconstitutional provision because it referred to religion. How significant is that change?
I think a lot of the changes in this executive order are designed to help it be immune from the court system, and that is definitely one of them. I don't think it will make the executive order entirely immune from legal challenges—I know that groups are preparing right now to file more legal challenges. I think they will still argue Establishment Clause and religious discrimination issues. But instead they're going to be arguing just the issue that these six countries are Muslim-majority and prior to the executive order, Trump said he wanted to implement a Muslim ban.

What's your sense of the viability of any nascent legal challenges generally?
Anyone who is trying to challenge this order is going to have a problem with standing—with finding individuals who have an injury in fact and have rights under the Constitution to challenge this order. Because it doesn't apply to anyone who's currently within the United States or who's outside the United States and has the right, currently, to travel. So you might see a challenge, for example of a US citizen who has a husband, for example, outside the United States and can't enter. But historically individuals who are not in the United States have very few rights under the Constitution.

In the Ninth Circuit case, they found third-party standing—that the states could assert standing of the state universities, which were in the process of applying for individuals to come in to work as interns, employees, scholars, etc. It seems like that standing would potentially be viable under this new one.

This order leaves open the door to other countries being added to the list of banned nations in the near future. Was that in the original, too, and do we have any idea of which countries those might be?
So the deal is that they're suspending entries from these countries for a certain amount of days. And then during those days, just like in the original, DHS will come up with a report on the information they need from countries in order to properly vet individuals who are trying to enter the US—and DHS will come up with a list of countries that do not adequately provide that information. Then, each of those countries will have so much time to begin providing it, and if they don't, then they would be added to the list of countries who have a suspension on their entries. And that is something that was in the original as well.

As far as what countries they might be thinking of, we don't know. Kelly in one of the congressional hearings following the original executive order, implied there were no countries currently under consideration. I'd be surprised if it came out in the end that the list has no countries on it. But we don't know what countries they're thinking about adding.

Do you have a sense yourself of where it might be plausible given this language about improving vetting—are there countries known for mediocre vetting?
This provision has always kind of puzzled me, because when someone from a foreign country is applying to enter the United States, they're filling out their own application and their government doesn't necessarily get involved in that application. For each national trying to enter the United States, there's no report from that nation's country about whether or not that person is a good person.

Are they asked by the United States, say, via the State Department, on some kind of back-channel?
Maybe in a special scenario, that might occur. But I'm not aware of it occurring regularly at all. So I've never been totally sure what they mean by countries that aren't providing adequate information. I'm hoping that, just like with many things on this executive order, more information will come out as it's implemented.

Does it make sense for citizens of countries not on this list to accelerate their travel plans given the possibility other countries will be added in the near future?
After DHS comes up with this list of countries that aren't supplying adequate information, those countries will be notified and have 50 days to get in line with the US government's expectations before the nationals of their country are barred from entering the United States. So ideally nationals of those countries will have 50 days' notification that their country is potentially going to be barred in the future.

The administration cites 300 refugees being investigated for links to radicals—do you know what they're talking about?
No, that's a new one for us—we're still trying to figure that out as well.

So we again have a blanket ban on refugees for 120 days. What are the humanitarian implications here given what's going on in Syria, Africa, and elsewhere around the world?
We have record global humanitarian displacement right now. So the fact that such a large country is kind of putting such a pause on refugee admissions definitely has huge global complications. At the same time, though, under this executive order and the last one, they limited refugee admissions to 50,000 a year—and we're actually coming very close to that number. We're already the majority of the way there the last time I looked, in 2017.

So the pause is a big deal, but if we're going to stick with 50,000 refugees a year, the pause probably isn't affecting how many people are going to come into the United States in 2017.

So do you think the order will survive a challenge in court?
I can't say with any certainty. This is all new ground. We've never seen a president implement this type of authority so broadly, especially with respect to barring nationals of certain countries. No one knows for sure whether or not this will survive the court system.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Fans of action-orientated RPGs full of possibilities have been spoilt so far in 2017. Horizon Zero Dawn is a near-enough-future world of recognizable ruin, drawn with uncommon environmental detail, while Breath of the Wild has taken Zelda back to its roots of limited hand-holding and extensive exploration, wowing both series fans and absolute beginners in the process.

And now Nier: Automata presents a depiction of our world several thousands of years from now, cities reduced to hollow, haunted shells and Earth's human inhabitants replaced by rather-more-mechanical beings, many of which are out to destroy the "you" of the experience, an android by the codename of 2B.

Developed by Platinum and published by Square Enix, it's quite the collision of company characteristics. After two healthy play sessions with the game, I'm happy to say that its frenetic combat packs a punch akin to Platinum's own action classic Bayonetta, while also offering a great deal of central story depth and side-quest distractions reminiscent of so many quality JRPGs. I'm hooked right now—which is quite something, given the "competition" of that first paragraph.

Read more on Waypoint

The number of people crossing into Quebec from the U.S. and making refugee claims skyrocketed seven-fold last month.

New figures obtained by CBC News show that 724 people made claims in February, compared to just 99 made at the same spot in February 2016. This is on top of the record number of people who claimed asylum at the border crossing in January: 452 people compared to 137 last January—a 230 percent jump.

There's been such a large influx of asylum seekers there that the Canada Border Services Agency in Quebec has converted an unused basement to process the mounting claims.

It's unclear how many of those claims were made by people crossing illegally, but other provinces have also seen an uptick in the number of people taking risky and irregular routes into Canada to avoid getting stopped by border guards and sent back to the U.S. Many of these people cite the election of President Donald Trump and the precarious status of immigrants and refugees in the U.S. as reasons for wanting to flee. Cities across the country are bracing for even more people to cross as the weather warms up.

Read more on VICE News.

New Zealand's own self-described mad professor, Boris van Galvin, has a working collection of more than 30 electric-shock machines. Once used as a kind of cure-all for common household ailments, their manuals list instructions for fixing everything from muscle aches to constipation, cataracts, hysteria and parasites.

"One of the units has a manual that says it cures death apparent," Boris says, unpacking a car boot-full of leather and wooden cases. "So you're laying on the ground apparently dead and someone shocks you back to life. Not sure if that was an early version of a defibrillator or someone who slipped into a coma."

The devices were used to cure everything from skin ailments to mental illness

He came across his first electrotherapy device by chance, when he was gifted what a friend thought was a crystal radio. "I looked it up and it turned out it was an original home electrotherapy unit, dating back to 1902. So rather than pull it apart and repurpose it, I decided to rebuild it. Rebuilt it, got it working. That was kind of my first."

Boris began collecting them, and started doing shows almost accidentally, after taking a kit to a costume party. "I decided to go as the Mad Professor. I went along with one of the electrotherapy units, and everyone kind of went, 'ooh can I have a go? So I started shocking people."

Professor Boris van Galvin has a collection of around 30 working electrotherapy devices

With the oldest dating back to the early 1800s, most of these devices are still in working order, and he's always happy to demonstrate. Take a probe in your hand, and it prickles. Turn up the voltage up a little and you can see the pulse of electricity moving under your skin on a metronome beat, watch your muscles contract and release. It's not painful, exactly, but it's not comfortable.

Lined up on a table, some devices also provide their own pocket history of repression. If you belonged to a historically marginal group—LGBTQ, mentally ill, or female—there's a strong chance that at some point, someone suggested using electricity to rewire your brain.

The McIntosh device was designed for use in gay conversion therapy

In one case, there's a large black device was once used for gay conversion therapy. The voltage of this one, he says, is much higher than on the traditional home medical kits.

"It's sort of awful to think it was used on someone," he says.

Many of the units were once used for varying forms of 'mental ailment'.

"Things like schizophrenia, behavioural issues, things we might now know as ADHD," Boris says. "Back then would've been treated with electrotherapy: like, 'Hey, calm down, here's an extreme shock to put you in a better mindset'.

Some of Boris' collection dates back to the early 1800s

One machine's manual suggests the appropriate usages for hysteria, a psychiatric condition once thought to exclusively affect women—especially those who didn't respond well to the strictures of social convention.

"Be careful and do not give the patient any sudden shocks," it reads. "Give the patient general treatment with secondary current. In most cases the sedative influence of this tonic treatment will be sufficient."

As well as a good old-fashioned electric current, hysteria was also treated by doctors with 'massage devices', including the first prototype vibrators.

This antique 'massage device' was used to treat hysteria, and may have been used as a prototype vibrator

While electricity is still used in the medical profession today—including with some success in the treatment of symptoms for Parkinson's disease, it was once a blunt instrument.

"The original concept was, let's hook some electrodes up to someone's temple and turn the power up. Science is beginning to show maybe there was some credence in the general ideas. But it was too broad. Just hitting someone with a hammer doesn't work."

"One of the machines I have was used for or designed to be used for conversion therapy, and it's a horrible thing to hear that someone's actually had to go through that. Trying to fix something that isn't broken."

Perhaps ironically, the same electrotherapy devices that were once used to try and erase social and sexual difference have now been enthusiastically adopted by the kink community.

"A friend of mine said, you should really go to one of the fetish balls. I'd never heard of a fetish ball, but I thought OK."

He attended with a machine, and soon a line of eager shock-ees started forming.

"It's an environment where everybody is accepted and an inclusive environment. I really just fell into the kink scene, and I was surprised by how open and understanding people were. You're not considered weird. It's really nice to see that level of acceptance and understanding that in the real world people just don't get."

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On Monday afternoon, House Republicans led by Speaker Paul Ryan released their bill—previously hidden in a basement—that would dismantle the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a significantly less generous package. The Medicaid expansion that provided insurance to many poor people in states that accepted it would be gone under this bill. The mandate for people to buy insurance—an unpopular piece of the ACA that is necessary for it to work—would be abolished. So would the subsidies that help low-income people buy insurance.

The Hill reports that in place of subsidies would be a new tax credit system that givesbetween $2,000 and $4,000 per year to subsidize your healthcare costs. These credits "would provide less financial assistance for low-income and older people than Obamacare, but could give more assistance to younger people and those with somewhat higher incomes," according to the Hill. In other words, it's a health insurance bill that primarily benefits people who don't need insurance.

The bill would also defund Planned Parenthood for a year, allow health insurance companies to charge seniors more than they can under current law, and makes insurance more expensive for people who have gone more than 63 days without continuous coverage, among other changes.

The Washington Post reports that four Republican senators—Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—have promised to vote down any healthcare bill that doesn't cover "Americans who became eligible for coverage under the ACA's expansion of Medicaid." That suggests that this bill in its current form wouldn't pass the Senate, where the Republicans have a slim majority—even if it got past the House.

The bill hasn't been scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

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The following is an excerpt from Michael Finkel's new book The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, out Tuesday, March 7.

The trees are mostly skinny where the hermit lives, but they're tangled over giant boulders with deadfall everywhere like pick-up sticks. There are no trails. Navigation, for nearly everyone, is a thrashing, branch-snapping ordeal, and at dark the place seems impenetrable.

This is when the hermit moves. He waits until midnight, shoulders his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and sets out from camp. A penlight is clipped to a chain around his neck, but he doesn't need it yet. Every step is memorized.

He threads through the forest with precision and grace, twisting, striding, hardly a twig broken. On the ground there are still mounds of snow, sun-cupped and dirty, and slicks of mud—springtime, central Maine—but he avoids all of it. He bounds from rock to root to rock without a boot-print left behind.

One print, the hermit fears, might be enough to give him away. Secrecy is a fragile state, a single time undone and forever finished. A boot-print, if you're truly committed, is therefore not allowed, not once. Too risky. So he glides like a ghost between the hemlocks and maples and white birches and elms until he emerges at the rocky shoreline of a frozen pond.

It has a name, Little Pond, often called Little North Pond, though the hermit doesn't know it. He's stripped the world to his essentials, and proper names are not essential. He knows the season, intimately, its every gradation. He knows the moon, a sliver less than half tonight, waning. Typically, he'd await the new moon—darker is better—but his hunger had become critical. He knows the hour and minute. He's wearing an old windup watch to ensure that he budgets enough time to return before daybreak. He doesn't know, at least not without calculating, the year or the decade.

His intention is to cross the frozen water, but this plan is fast abandoned. The day had been relatively warm, a couple of ticks above freezing—the temperature he knows—and while he'd hunkered in his camp, the weather had worked against him. Solid ice is a gift to trackless stealth, but this touch of softness will emboss every footfall.

So the long way it is, back in the trees with the roots and the rocks. He knows the whole hopscotch for miles, all around Little North Pond and then to the farthest reaches of North Pond itself. He passes a dozen cabins, modest wood-sided vacation homes, unpainted, shut tight for the off-season. He's been inside many of them, but now is not the time. For nearly an hour he continues, still attempting to avoid footprints or broken branches. Some roots he's stepped on so often that they're worn smooth from repetition. Even knowing this, no tracker could ever find him.

He stops just before reaching his destination, the Pine Tree summer camp. The camp isn't open, but maintenance has been around, and they've probably left some food in the kitchen, and there's likely leftovers from last season. From the shadow of the forest he observes the Pine Tree property, scanning the bunkhouses, the tool shop, the rec center, the dining hall. No one. A couple of cars are in the lot, as usual. Still, he waits. You can never be too cautious.

Eventually he's ready. Motion-detecting floodlights and cameras are scattered around the Pine Tree grounds, installed chiefly because of him, but these are a joke. Their boundaries are fixed—learn where they are and keep away. The hermit zigzags across the camp and stops at a specific rock, turns it over, grabs the key hidden beneath, and pockets it for later use. Then he climbs a slope to the parking lot and tests each vehicle's doors. A Ford pickup opens. He clicks on his pen-light and peeks inside.

Candy! Always good. Ten rolls of Smarties, tossed in the cup holders. He stuffs them in another pocket. He also takes a rain poncho, unopened in its packaging, and a silver-colored Armitron analog watch. It's not an expensive watch—if it looks valuable, the hermit will not steal it. He has a moral code. But extra watches are important; when you live outside with rain and snow, breakage is inevitable.

He vectors past a few more motion cameras to a back door of the dining hall. Here he sets down his canvas gym bag of break-in tools and unzips it. Inside is a pair of putty knives, a paint scraper, a Leatherman multi-tool, several long-necked flathead screwdrivers, and three backup flashlights, among other items. He knows this door—it's already slightly scraped and dented from his work—and he selects a screwdriver and slots it into the gap between the door and frame, near the knob.

One expert twist and the door pops open, and he slips inside.

Penlight on, clamped in his mouth. He's in the large camp kitchen, light flashing over stainless steel, a ceiling rack of sleeping ladles. Right turn, five paces, and to the pantry. He removes his backpack and scans the metal shelves. He grabs two tubs of coffee and drops them into his pack. Also some tortellini, a bag of marshmallows, a breakfast bar, and a pack of Humpty Dumpty potato chips.

What he really desires is at the other end of the kitchen, and he heads there now, takes out the key he'd collected from beneath the rock, and inserts it into the handle of the walk-in freezer. The key is attached to a plastic four-leaf-clover key chain with one of the leaves partially broken off. A three-and- a-half-leaf clover, perhaps still lucky yet. The handle turns and he enters the freezer, and the evening's entire mission, all the meticulous effort, feels immediately rewarded.

He is deeply, almost dangerously hungry. Back at his tent, his edible supplies are a couple of crackers, some ground coffee, and a few packets of artificial sweetener. That's it. If he'd waited much longer, he would have risked becoming tent-bound from weakness. He shines his light on boxes of hamburger patties and blocks of cheese, bags of sausage and packs of bacon. His heart leaps and his stomach calls and he sets upon the food, loading it into his backpack; smorgasbord.

Jacket image courtesy of Knopf

Terry Hughes's wife nudges him awake and he hears the beeps and he's out of bed like a spring uncoiled, game on. Quick check of the monitor then a dash down the stairs, where everything's in place: gun, flashlight, cell phone, handcuffs, sneakers. Duty belt. Duty belt? No time, forget the belt, now jump in the truck and head off.

A right onto Oak Ridge, then left in a half mile, accelerating down the long driveway to the Pine Tree Camp. Headlights are off but the truck's still noisy, so he throws it in park and vaults out of the cab. He continues on foot, fast as he can though less agile than usual. The lack of a belt means his hands are encumbered with gear.

Even so, it's full speed toward the dining hall, hurdling boulders, dodging trees, then a crouching scuttle to an exterior window. Heart pulsing like a hummingbird's; from his bed to the window in four minutes flat.

Hughes takes a breath. Then he cautiously lifts his head and steals a peek through the window, straining his eyes against the dimness of the Pine Tree kitchen. And he sees it: a person carrying a flashlight, the pale beam emanating from the open door of the walk-in freezer. Could this really, after all these years, be him? It must be. Hughes is still in his pajama pants, and he pats the clip-on holster on his waistband to make sure—yes, his weapon's there, a little Glock .357 Sig. Loaded. No safety switch.

The beam brightens and Hughes tenses and out of the freezer steps a man, hauling a backpack. He's not quite what Hughes expected. The man is bigger, for one thing, and cleaner, his face freshly shaved. He's wearing large nerdy eyeglasses and a wool ski cap; he roams the kitchen, seemingly unconcerned, selecting items as if in a grocery store.

Hughes permits himself a flicker of satisfaction. There are rare perfect moments in law enforcement, as Sergeant Hughes well knows. He's been a Maine game warden for 18 years, and before that, for nearly a decade, he was a US Marine. You might as well award him a Ph.D in grunt work, dead ends, and paper filing. But once in a beautiful while, wisdom gained through frustration pays dividends.

A few weeks previous, Hughes had resolved to end the reign of the hermit. He knew that none of the usual police methods were likely to work. After a quarter-century of intermittent investigations, including foot searches, flyovers, and fingerprint dusting, conducted by four separate law enforcement agencies—two county sheriff's departments, the state police, and the game warden service—no one had even figured out the hermit's name. So Hughes questioned experts in high-tech surveillance, he brainstormed with private detectives, he spitballed ideas with friends from the military. Nothing they came up with felt right.

He phoned some acquaintances working border patrol up at Rangeley, near the Maine-Quebec crossing. It turned out that one of the guys had just returned from a training camp in which new Homeland Security equipment had been introduced—devices that offered a better method of tracking people who tried to sneak across borders. This was closely guarded technology, Hughes was told, far too sophisticated for anything a game warden might need. It sounded ideal. Hughes vowed to keep quiet about the specifics, and soon three border patrol agents were tromping around the Pine Tree kitchen.

They hid one sensor behind the ice machine, another on the juice dispenser. The data-receiving unit was installed in Hughes's home, at the top of the stairs, so that the alarm beeps would be audible in every room. Hughes devoted himself to learning the system until operating the device felt intuitive.

This was not enough. To trap the hermit, he could afford little margin for sloppiness. An errant noise while Hughes approached, an inadvertent glint from his flashlight, and his plan would probably fail. He memorized the motion lights, located the best spot to ditch his truck, and rehearsed every move from his house to the camp, shaving off seconds with each practice run. He made it a nightly habit to set out all his gear; the duty-belt oversight only proved he was human. Then he waited. It took two weeks. The beeps—first heard by his wife, Kim—came shortly after one o'clock in the morning.

All that, plus luck, for this perfect law enforcement moment. Hughes spies through the window as the burglar methodically fills his pack. No gray areas here; no circumstantial evidence. He has him dead to rights. And at the Pine Tree Camp, no less. Pine Tree caters to children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities—it's a nonprofit organization, run off donations. Hughes is a longtime volunteer. He sometimes fishes with the campers on North Pond, catching bass and white perch. What kind of a guy breaks into a summer camp for disabled people, over and over?

Hughes eases away from the building, keeping his head low, and quietly makes a cell-phone call. Game wardens don't typically work burglary cases—usually it's more illegal hunters or lost hikers—and this effort has been chiefly a spare time obsession. He asks the dispatch office of the Maine State Police to alert Trooper Diane Vance, who has also been chasing the hermit. They've been colleagues forever, Hughes and Vance, both graduating from their respective academies the same year, then working together on and off for nearly two decades. His idea is to let Vance handle the arrest. And the paperwork. He returns to the window to keep guard.

As Hughes watches, the man cinches his pack and heaves it to his shoulders. He departs the kitchen and disappears from Hughes's view, into the vast empty dining room. He's moving toward an exit, Hughes surmises, a different one from the door he'd pried open. Instinctively, Hughes maneuvers around the building to the spot where the man seems to be headed. This exterior door, like all the ones to the Pine Tree dining hall, is painted cherry red, trimmed with a green wooden frame. Hughes is without help, deep in the night, seconds away from a potentially violent encounter.

It's a complicated instant, a fraught decision.

He is as prepared as possible for whatever might happen, fistfight to shootout. Hughes is 44 years old but still as strong as a rookie, with a jarhead haircut and a paper-crease jawline. He teaches hand-to-hand defensive tactics at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. No way he's going to step aside and let the intruder go. The opportunity to disrupt a felony in progress overrides all concerns.

The burglar, Hughes thinks, is probably a military vet, and therefore likely armed. Maybe this guy's combat ability is as good as his forest skills. Hughes holds his position by the cherry-red door, Glock in his right hand, flashlight in his left, his back against the building's wall. He waits, running the contingencies through his mind, until he hears a small clink and sees the door handle turning.

The burglar steps out of the dining hall and Hughes flips on his Maglite, blazing it directly in the man's eyes, and trains the .357 square in the center of his nose, steadying his gun hand atop his flashlight hand, both arms extended. The two men are maybe a body's length apart, so Hughes hops back a few feet—he doesn't want the guy lunging at him—while ferociously bellowing a single phrase: "Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Get on the ground!"

Warden Service Sgt. Terry Hughes, left, and State Police Trooper Diane Perkins-Vance talk about capturing Christopher Knight during a news conference on Wednesday April 10, 2013 in Augusta, Maine. (Photo by Joe Phelan/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

As Diane Vance drives through the dark toward the Pine Tree Camp, all she knows is that Terry Hughes is in a risky situation, without backup, pursuing a man with an amazing ability to disappear. She's pretty certain that by the time she gets there, the guy will be gone. Or worse. He could have a gun; he could use it. This is why she's wearing a bulletproof vest. Hughes, she's aware, is not.

Vance drives past the forest-green Maine Warden Service truck stashed beside the Pine Tree driveway and heads directly to the dining hall. There's no sign of anyone. She steps from her squad car, wary, and calls out, "Sergeant Hughes? Sergeant Hughes?"

"I'm ten forty-six!" comes his response—Maine State Police code for suspect in custody—and Vance's concern promptly eases. Around a corner of the building she sees a scattered mess of food and a man lying on his stomach, arms behind his back. Upon being confronted by Hughes, the thief, stunned, had dropped to the cold cement without resistance. Only he's not completely in custody. The man is wearing a thick winter jacket, and the sleeves are interfering with Hughes's attempts to secure the handcuffs. Vance swoops in and restrains the suspect with her own set of cuffs, and now he's fully ten forty-six.

The officers guide the man into a sitting position, then help him to his feet. They pull everything out of his pockets—a pile of Smarties, the Armitron watch, the clover key chain—and check his backpack and gym bag for weapons. He could be a bomber, a terrorist, a murderer; the officers have no idea. They find only a Leatherman. The tool is engraved, commemorating the Pine Tree Camp overnight of 2000, 13 years earlier.

The man is obeying the officers' commands but is not answering questions. He avoids eye contact. During their pat-down and search, the officers were unable to locate any identification. He did have a wallet on him, camo-patterned with a velcro closure, but inside is only a sheaf of cash. The money is clearly very old, some of it moldy.

It's late, 2 AM, but Hughes phones the Pine Tree Camp's facilities director, Harvey Chesley, who says he'll be on his way. Hughes has a master key that allows him access to the dining hall—Chesley had given it to him, with his blessing; anything to catch the hermit—and he unlocks a door, flips on the lights, and he and Vance escort the suspect back inside the place he just burglarized.

The dining room is cavernous and echoey, an expanse of blue linoleum beneath a vaulted ceiling of immense spruce rafters. It's the off-season, and all the tables and chairs are stacked against the walls. There is a row of windows on the pond side of the hall, but there's nothing to see in the dark.

Hughes and Vance drag a metal-framed chair with a maroon plastic seat into the center of the room, and they sit the suspect down, hands still locked behind his back.

The officers slide a folding table in front of him, then Vance also sits down, while Hughes remains standing. The man is still not speaking. The expression on his face appears blank and calm. It's unsettling; a person who has just been arrested after a sudden encounter should not be silent and impassive. Hughes wonders if he's insane.

(Photo by Andy Molloy/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

The man is wearing new-looking blue jeans, a hooded gray sweatshirt beneath a nice Columbia jacket, and sturdy work boots. It's like he has just gone shopping at the mall. His backpack is from LL Bean. Only his eyeglasses, with chunky plastic frames, seem outdated. There's no dirt on him anywhere, and little more than a shading of stubble on his chin. He has no noticeable body odor. His thinning hair, mostly covered by his wool cap, is neatly cropped. His skin is strangely pale, with several scabs on his wrists. He's a little over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, maybe 180 pounds.

Vance, like many officers who've searched for the hermit, always suspected that most of the story was mythical. Now she feels more certain. No way did this guy emerge from the woods. He has a home somewhere, or a hotel room, and was just coming around to burglarize places.

The camp facilities director, Chesley, soon arrives, as do the camp's maintenance man and, later, another game warden. Chesley immediately identifies the watch the officers had removed from the suspect's pocket. It belongs to his son, Alex, who'd left it in his truck, parked in the Pine Tree lot. The timepiece was not valuable but did have sentimental meaning; it had been a gift to Alex from his grandfather. The watch on the suspect's wrist, meanwhile, is claimed by the maintenance man, Steve Treadwell—it had been given to him by the Sappi Fine Paper Company, marking his 25th year of working at the Skowhegan plant.

There's a lot of commotion in the room, and the suspect's composure starts to fade. He remains seated and quiet but is soon visibly suffering, his arms shaking. Then Hughes has an idea. His confrontation with the man had been threatening and traumatic, but perhaps Vance can create a calmer atmosphere. Hughes herds all the men through a swinging door into the kitchen, leaving Vance alone with the suspect.

For a little while, she lets the air in the dining hall settle. She's followed this case, intrigued and bemused, for the entirety of her 18 years on the force. She switches the handcuffs so the man's arms are in front and he can sit more comfortably. Hughes comes out with bottles of water and a plate of cookies, then retreats to the kitchen. Vance removes the handcuffs completely. The man takes a drink. He's been in custody for more than an hour and a half. Perhaps he's realized there will be no disappearing this time. Calmly, evenly, Vance reads him his rights. He has the right to remain silent. She asks for his name.

"My name is Christopher Thomas Knight," says the hermit.

From the Book: The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel. Copyright © 2017 by Michael Finkel. Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.