Back in November, environmentalist Twitter had a giant collective freakout when a graph showing the amount of sea ice in the Arctic went viral (or at least as viral as a graph about global warming can go). It showed that while sea ice levels were once trending downward, they went off a cliff last winter. The graph has since been updated, and the results are even more horrifying.

But numbers and colored lines fail to convey a really crucial part of the story: Higher temperatures from climate change are here, are so are their impacts on human civilization. In short, when the ice around the North Pole didn't materialize over the winter, people's lives were torn apart.

All photos by Ken Bower

This past March, photographer Ken Bower was in eastern Greenland visiting his friend, an Inuit hunter named Kunuk, giving Bower the rare chance to witness and document the damage climate change has already done to the way of life in this area of East Greenland, about 68 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

VICE: Tell me a little about your friend in Greenland.
Ken Bower: Kunuk is native Inuit, and he's 25, in the village of Kulusuk, which has about 250 to 260 people. He and his father have about 20 dogs, and he has to go hunting to feed all of his dogs. It's too expensive to feed 20 dogs solely on dog food. 20 dogs that weight 80 to 90 pounds eat quite a bit. Also they rely on hunting to feed the family as well. Hunting provides about half of their food, and then there's a little store where they can subsidize their daily food.

Hunting seals has had some very bad PR in the past. Can you tell me a little about their hunting practices?
The Inuit subsistence hunting in Greenland is extremely different from commercial seal hunting. The Inuit have relied on seal hunting for thousands of years for food and clothing. They don't take what they want, but rather what they need to get by and nothing more. Today, in the world of overpriced imported goods and food insecurity, the traditional hunts still continue.

What goes on during traditional hunts?
What Kunuk told me about hunting is that everything gets used. They're basically against clubbing. They don't hunt baby seals, because they think it's a waste of resources. That seal would grow up to be a larger seal, and potentially breed and create more seals, so they only hunt the adult seals. They use primarily rifles now because it's a quicker kill. Once they get the seals, they use everything. They use all the meat, and feed the liver, and other parts they can't eat, to the dogs. Sometimes the very large seals, which don't taste so good, they'll use solely for the dogs.

Why keep so many dogs around?
The village has no vehicles, so really the only form of transportation is dogsled. That's the primary means. A few people have snowmobiles, but they're pretty expensive. Most people can't afford it.

How has Kunuk's lifestyle been hit by climate change?
Normally all of these areas are completely locked in with ice, three to five feet thick, but when we go out on a dogsled, it would be a relatively short trip—20 minutes to a half-hour—and then we would hit the edge of the ice. The open water prevented them from going to their other hunting spots, and limited their hunting to one area when I was there. They'd go there and wait for seals to pop their heads up. After they would shoot it, they'd go out in a kayak or small boat to retrieve it.

Wait, do people in this village normally go around carrying a boat with a dogsled?
It was incredibly unusual to use such a large boat and to have it dragged by the dogs. Actually when Kunuk was hooking the dogs up to the front of the boat, he said that he didn't know how they would react, because he never did this before, but the reason he decided to bring that boat was that he just couldn't make it out to the other areas. By boat, with the engine, he'd be able to get to other hunting spots.

In the photos, it looks like the boat is cutting through the ice like Shackleton or something. Was that a challenge?
It was a small 19-20 foot boat with a 75-horsepower engine. He would just drive it right through the ice, which is about a half-inch to about an inch and a half thick, which is still far too thin to walk on.

How's the village coping?
The direct impacts are on his dogs—and other peoples' in the village. Because it was so difficult this winter, and in previous winters, [other people in the village have] gotten rid of their dogs completely, and abandoned this tradition of using the dogs to go hunting for good. And my friend Kunuk told me that at the end of this winter, it's been so difficult for his dogs that he might have to get rid of probably seven or eight of them.

What else happens when they can't sled across the ice?
It prevents them from going to the other five villages in the area. Kunuk's uncle is in one of the other villages. And they can't see him until the summer, when they can reach him fully by boat. They're essentially separated throughout the winter.

Other than getting to other villages and hunting, is there any other use for a dogsled?Kunuk's father was going to go on a one-week expedition with tourists, but they had to cancel because they couldn't bring them by dogsled to where they needed to go. They were limited to such a small area, you could see it in an afternoon. That's had a huge impact—preventing tourists from going there for dogsledding. Dogsledding has been such a tradition in this village and the others in Greenland that it's really sad to see this fade away.

What happens to the dogs now?
He'll try his best to give them away, but since everybody's trying to get rid of their dogs, because they can't feed them, they'll either starve or he'll unfortunately have to put them down himself.

Check out more of Ken Bower's photos and videos on Instagram.

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When Steve Stephens allegedly killed Robert Godwin in cold blood on Easter Sunday and put videos of the shooting on Facebook, there wasn't much Stephens' friends or followers could do to prevent it from appearing in their news feeds.

This basic fact—and the two hours from the time the videos were first posted until they were taken down—seems to have rattled Facebook, which until this week had taken a more detached approach to atrocities posted on the platform. This time, just 24 hours after the Easter shooting, Facebook released a detailed timeline of the event and a promise to review the reporting systems that led to the delay.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the controversy Tuesday at Facebook's developer conference, saying that the company "will keep doing all we can" to prevent similar situations in the future.

Continue reading on VICE News.

If you're looking to get blazed from a bowl of green without smoking, Abdullah Saeed is your guy. With a few simple ingredients, VICE's resident pot expert walks through how to make a tasty salad dressing using cannabis-infused olive oil.

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Aside from the fact that early classes are the worst, a recent study found that they can actually be detrimental to your learning ability—so much so that some researchers are pushing colleges to start scheduling classes later in the day, NPR reports.

The study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience this month, found most college students don't stop being complete zombies until about 10 or 11 AM, an ideal time to offer the first classes of the day. Researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and the UK's Open University quizzed 190 freshmen and sophomores on their sleep schedules and productivity to determine how well their brains function at different times of the day.

The researchers discovered that a vast majority of college-aged kids aren't programmed to use their brains early in the morning and consider themselves night owls, and biology is to blame.

"There has been evidence over time from specific studies indicating that teenagers's body clocks are set at a different time than older folks," Professor Mariah Evans, a co-author of the study, told NPR. "It has nothing to do with laziness. It's not in their control. It's to do with their bodies."

In other words, asking a kid to get up at 7:30 AM and go listen to some old dude talk about fur trading on the Silk Road is basically the same thing as forcing an adult to wake up for work at 5 AM.

Scientists have advised middle and high schools to push back the beginning of the school day for years, and it only makes sense that college kids—many of whom are still teens—would benefit from the same thing.

"We want the students to learn," said Evans. "We go to great lengths to increase academic performance with methods that are less effective than the free solution of just changing the timings."

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Over the past eight years, even as they fetishized the historic presidency of Barack Obama, Democrats lost power in Congress and fell into a deep hole in statehouses across America. And if Hillary Clinton's disastrous presidential campaign proved anything, it's that the Party has a real, enduring problem actually winning. But Democrats' strong, if not quite victorious, showing in the special election for Georgia's sixth congressional district on Tuesday offers real hope—and fresh validation for their #Resistance strategy of making everything about opposition to Donald Trump.

The Atlanta suburbs comprising Georgia's sixth have gone red since 1978, but after local Congressman Tom Price resigned to serve as Trump's health and human services secretary, anxiety on the left gave the party no choice but to go for it. In the special election, an open race that pitted 18 candidates against one another, Jon Ossoff, the 30-year-old Democratic frontrunner, pulled in 48.1 percent of the vote. He needed 50 percent to win outright, and could well lose in the run-off this June. Still, it would be disingenuous to categorize Tuesday night's election as a defeat for Democrats or some kind of validation for Trump, his tweets to the contrary notwithstanding. After all, despite his youth, good looks and generous national media coverage (along with his robust fundraising), Ossoff was not a particularly strong candidate: he was halting on the stump and didn't even technically live in the district, as Olivia Nuzzi reported for New York.

Whatever the final outcome in Georgia's sixth, the race has already clarified that the future of the Democratic Party and Donald Trump's early and profound unpopularity can't be untangled.

Earlier this month, Democrats came surprisingly close to winning a special election in Kansas's fourth district. (Yes, God is cruel and after 2016, we've been cursed with a continuous stream of anxiety-inducing elections that will last forever and always.) 60 percent of the historically red district voted for Trump in 2016, which helps explain why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its House counterpart, the DCCC, basically ignored the contest. Yet even without much institutional support until the days leading up to the election, Democrat James Thompson lost by only about 9,000 votes.

Ossoff had a lot more help, raising over $8 million. But the emerging theme here is that running hard against Trump has brought Democrats to the cusp of victory in previously unfathomable pockets of America.

"This race is absolutely and entirely a referendum on President Trump," a Republican consultant told CNN. "Every single vote Jon Ossoff receives is a rebuke of Trump from within GA-06."

Not exactly immune to fits of vanity, Trump took to his favourite social media platform to remind the country who Georgia's special election is really about: himself. He's not wrong, actually, but repeatedly calling on his Twitter followers to send Democrats a message before voting closed Tuesday may have done his party more harm than good.

In the 2016 election, Clinton actually did well in the district—or at least much better than Barack Obama did. So even though the area has had for a Republican congressional representative for almost 40 years, Democrats seem to be gaining ground, a trend that continued with Ossoff's strong showing.

Ossoff, for his part, resides with his girlfriend a mile and a half away from his district to "support" her as she finishes medical school—something Trump made sure to note in his barrage of panicked tweets. But a friend of mine who grew up in the district doesn't think his residency was problematic for local voters. "The six covers a fairly wide swathe of north Atlanta and the suburbs, and he lives near the district, so it's not like he reads as a stranger," she told me, arguing that after Karen Handel's involvement in a high-profile spat over Planned Parenthood funding at the Susan G. Komen foundation in 2012, Ossoff's lone remaining opponent is not especially popular there, either. On Tuesday night, Handel told CNN's Alyson Camerota that she hopes the president will help her campaign, which may or may not backfire horribly.

Ossoff's nebulous campaign message is somehow clearer than the typical "moderate" one Democrats have historically embraced in traditionally red territory: As Nuzzi noted in her profile, one of Ossoff's early fundraising emails that helped define him had a simple subject line: "Make Trump Furious," a goal he seems to have already achieved.

The question for Democrats if they can continue to find decent (or at least less than horrible) candidates who tap into the anxieties of reluctant Trump voters having second thoughts in districts across the country.

"There was not much enthusiasm for Trump here before the election—few signs or bumper stickers in an area that was overrun with vocal, visible Romney and McCain support," my friend from Georgia's sixth told me. "These are the kinds of Republicans more concerned with their taxes than immigration, so Trump-ism doesn't play as well here."

Luckily for the Democrats, Trump has neither the humility nor the self-awareness to address his growing unpopularity. Meanwhile, he's presented the country with a platter of Orthodox Republican shit. So even as remnants of the Never Trump crowd might think the president is out of line with their party, he is the only real face of the GOP.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

According to an extensive report released today by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC), teenage girls face a number of barriers to getting a quality education. The survey, titled Let Her Learn: Stopping School Pushout, aims to take a closer look at what girls with varying identities and experiences face in school on a daily basis.

More than 1,000 girls ages 14-18 across the country participated anonymously in an online survey in January. Additionally, researchers hosted six focus groups in Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, DC The series of reports resulting from this data ultimately focused on challenges facing: girls who have suffered harassment and sexual violence; girls who are pregnant and parenting; girls of colour; girls involved in the juvenile justice system; girls in foster care; girls who have experienced homelessness; girls with disabilities; and LGBTQ girls.

"There's an assumption that girls are doing just fine at school and there's no need to worry about them," said Neena Chaudhry, NWLC Director of Education, during a press teleconference this morning. "But in our research, we heard from many girls whose experience challenge that assumption. They say no one asks them how they're doing or what's going on in their lives. So we decided to ask them."

Continue reading on Broadly.

America is not great at sex education. According to reports by organizations like the sexual health-focused Guttmacher Institute, many schools at best focus on abstinence and the risk of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). But they skimp on basic issues like birth control and consent, much less navigating the complexities of idiosyncratic sexualities, desires, and relationships. Unfortunately, American parents haven't traditionally been great at filling in these gaps. For decades "the talk"—one conversation in which a parent awkwardly breaks down "the birds and bees" with their kids—has been ingrained in our culture, and parodied in films. Oftentimes, it isn't very effective and probably, alongside our prudish and sclerotic sex ed system, goes a long way towards explaining our high rates of teen pregnancies and STIs relative to other developed nations.

Sexual health and parenting experts, to their credit, have advanced promising and well-supported ideas for years on how to engage kids on sex and sexuality to help them have safe, consensual, and ideally pleasurable sex if and when they choose to become sexually active. Blogs and expert advice columns now urge parents not to have just one "talk," but many conversations about sexual topics with their kids, often from a young age. These resources extol parents to go beyond sexual mechanics, offer straightforward information rather than euphemisms, and not shy away from any topic to slowly build up a wide body of awareness as well as parental trust and an open channel of dialogue. But it's unclear how much of an impact it has made on American society at large. Even for those who are open to changing up the way they talk to kids about sex, it can be hard to overcome internal barriers, or to figure out when and how frequently to bring sex up, how to frame those many tiny conversations, and what to cover within them.

Dr. Dalmacio Dennis Flores III of the University of Pennsylvania took an interest in parent-child sex talks while working as an HIV/AIDS nurse over the past decade, as he realized the role anemic sexual dialogue had played in many patients' lives. This year, he completed a meta study compiling the results of 116 studies conducted between 2003 and 2015 on child-parent sexual communications in the US. VICE recently caught up with Flores to see what he learned about whether new advice has changed the way we talk to kids about sex in recent years and how parents can actually practically move towards more nuanced and constructive conversations.

VICE: What does "the talk" look like for most American kids today?
Dr. Flores: There hasn't been much change. These are one-time conversations… or several conversations. It's funny: parents tend to report they've had multiple conversations, but children under report it. What qualifies as sex conversations for parents is sometimes missed by kids. [Maybe] kids just weren't in the mood to listen, so even if it was concise and clear conversation about sex, they just blotted it. You also have parents who feel like even giving a look to a child when they're watching TV and something sexual comes up, to them, that's communicating.

What exactly are most parents actually communicating these days in their sex talks?
Instead of providing a conversation that's not steeped in emotion, the majority [fall] under the heading of "you'll get in trouble if" or "these are the things you do so you don't get in trouble." Conversations that involve pleasure or desire… sex positivity is just not rising to the top yet.

What should parents focus on in sex talks that they aren't right now? Are there different ways to approach these talks at different times, for different families and contexts?
It's not just about coitus or body parts. It's about sexuality and how one expresses themselves physically. It's also about relationships and knowing one's boundaries. How, during puberty, an adolescent manages emotion—when you have your first crush, how to deal with that. It all falls under the umbrella of sex communication. Which is why this one-time idea is such a disservice.

It's not the big parent being an expert bequeathing the child with knowledge. Ideally we'd like there to be equal air time to the children and parents, for there to be feedback. And sometimes there is that… but not as much as there is the awkward "just trying to get done with the process."

You consider the topic and how you can frame it to meet their cognitive needs. It also has to do a lot with prior conversations you've had. A dad sitting down his son the night before prom and showing him what a condom is will not fly when there have been zero conversations beforehand. But if a mom has been gradually engaging her children in conversations about genitals, cleanliness, and [the importance of protection], you can build on preliminary conversations. It's more than just checking off ["the talk"] for the parent of the year award.

How does a parent figure out when to actually initiate conversations?
Teachable moments. It sounds corny, but that's a convenient way of bringing up issues. A four-year-old asking how is my baby brother going to arrive? That's a teachable moment initiated by the child. When you [get] vaccinations [done], you can have a conversation on what they are and segue into STIs. The same thing with watching TV. Salacious behavior regarding public officials has been shown to trigger talks at the dinner table. Even picking up a child from middle school, when you have them captive in the car. These have been reported consistently as opportunities. It's a matter of normalizing that conversation. There's such a hang-up about sex in this country. Getting comfortable with sex, that this is not a shame-filled behaviour or topic [is important].

But like you said, kids might just not be open to hearing things sometimes. So how can parents pick their teachable moments to have the best chance of having an impact?
The sex advocate in me would say if there's an opportunity to discuss it, go ahead. But one consistent barrier for parents is that they feel they didn't receive adequate education so there's concern about the validity of the information they possess. So even if a teachable moment comes up and they know they should capitalize on it, there's still [that] factor. And that's a product of their generation. The story of sex education in America has been passing on minimal information about it generation after generation . So they still have this handicap, even if their intentions are good.

Yeah, and teachable moments are so off-the-cuff, so how do parents prepare for them?
There's no such thing as over-education. The opportunities for millennials to start providing sex education for their children are coming up in the next few years. Parents provide information based on their own experience, so coming of age facilitated by the internet—it'll be interesting to see if they change the narrative from what their parents provided them.

If you met a millennial who'd just had a kid and wanted to provide solid parental sexual communication for that child down the road, but maybe didn't have a great parental or institutional sexual education themselves, how would you tell them to approach this topic?Figure out where your roadblocks are as far as discussing sex. If you can't have an assessment within yourself of how you perceive sex, then how can you imagine communicating about that with a child who is at such a different developmental place than you? It's not about having the knowledge or the skills, but figuring out [your views]. If they're based on religion, shame, or whatever, take the next steps to address those. Then you can start communicating with a friend, a spouse, and figure out what points you want covered with your child. It's not such a sexy answer, but it starts with [that].

Is there anything you think is especially important for parents to start focusing on more?
I'm looking at how we can make sex communication more inclusive, because same-sex attracted youths have some of the highest outcomes for HIV and STIs. It's such an afterthought [for many parents today] that "my child may not play out this role I had for them when I was born." You'd like to start planting the idea with new parents not to assume heterosexuality. I would like to come up with an approach [for] an inclusive and successful sex talk that encourages consensual, disease-free, and pleasurable encounters for these same-sex attracted youths, but I'm not there yet. I'm a few years away from that.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

FOX News kicked Bill O'Reilly to the curb Wednesday amid a sexual harassment scandal that lost his primetime show, The O'Reilly Factor, more than 50 advertisers, the New York Times reports.

In early April, O'Reilly found himself in the midst of a PR nightmare when the Times uncovered how much FOX's parent company, 21st Century Fox*, paid to settle several sexual harassment allegations against the host that date back to the early 2000s. The company dished out $13 million to keep five of his accusers quiet. Though FOX was aware of the allegations, it wasn't until The O'Reilly Factor—the most watched and most profitable cable news show on television—began to lose advertisers and face significant public opposition that the company decided to part ways with its star host.

"After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O'Reilly have agreed that Bill O'Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel," 21st Century Fox wrote in a statement.

The company hired a team of lawyers to investigate the allegations made against O'Reilly, which the former host has denied. So far, they haven't released their findings.

O'Reilly has hosted his show on FOX News for 20 years, and without him, the network's ratings could plunge by roughly 25 percent, the Los Angeles Times reports. From 2014 to 2016, The O'Reilly Factor pulled in more than $446 million in ad revenue for the network. Whereas O'Reilly averaged 3.98 million viewers per episode, Tucker Carlson—the second most-watched host in cable news—nabbed 3.27 million. Carlson, a FOX commentator and the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, will take O'Reilly's 8 PM spot on the network, according to NPR.

O'Reilly's sexual harassment scandal came on the heels of FOX News's former chairman Roger Ailes's ouster, who got the boot after women made similar allegations against him. Though the company vowed to do better in terms of maintaining a safe work environment, several female employees criticized executives for condoning O'Reilly's alleged behaviour, claiming its emphasis on "trust and respect" was BS. It's a line the company has continued to use up to this day.

"Lastly, and most importantly," the company wrote in a letter to employees, "we want to underscore our consistent commitment to fostering a work environment built on the values of trust and respect."

*In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that 21st Century Fox owns a small stake in VICE Media.

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The common-sense wisdom about the most widespread artificial sweetener on the market, aspartame, is that it's perfectly safe. The substance laces more than 6,000 products and is added to diet versions of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, and Dr. Pepper. It is also sold under the brand names NutraSweet and Equal. It represents a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Popular pieces across the internet in recent years have declared that concerns about aspartame are just a bunch of hype. A pediatrician and writer for The New York Times defends aspartame and says he regularly gives it to his kids. Vox dismisses concerns about the sweetener and includes a video about how safe the stuff is.

These are reputable news outlets. Yet unlike what their headlines suggest (see, among many others: The Evidence Supports Artificial Sweeteners Over Sugar or Sugar-Free Soda is Safe), the scientists I spoke to for this story are not comfortable making such bold statements. They say there truly is no definitive data to show that aspartame is safe. "I certainly would not be saying it is safe," says Robert Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has written extensively on the subject. "We just don't have the data."

Continue reading on Tonic.

It's 4/20, which means everyone, including people who normally don't give a shit about weed (looking at you, media pundits), feels compelled to express their ill-informed opinions on it.

Just last week, a radio host tried to tell me that weed can send a person into a k-hole and that swapping spit while sharing a joint is a health concern—you can listen to the entire trainwreck interview here (it starts at the 22-minute mark). 

This year is a double whammy because the Canadian government just announced its plans for legalizing cannabis by July 2018. And stateside, Donald Trump's administration seems to be pushing the war on drugs with a renewed enthusiasm.

But not all hot takes are created equal. Depending on a person's profile or platform, some can be far more damaging than others. Without further adieu, here's a handy shortlist of some of worst ones we've seen in recent times:

Pot makes you drive better

Admittedly, Marc Emery knows a lot about pot—fighting for its legalization has been his life's work. But this week, in response to the government's proposed overhaul of impaired driving laws, Emery told Global that pot actually makes you a better driver.

"This idea, one of the many myths I have to clear out in the next 18 months, is that pot impairs you. Marijuana makes you more self-aware of your situation, so you'll be a better driver if you smoke pot regularly."

Now, there are definitely potential issues with proposed Canadian regulations, which include fines and up to ten years of prison time for testing positive for five or more nanograms of THC per millilitre of blood within two hours of driving. Officials have said it's hard to assess how much THC results in impairment, further complicated by individual tolerance and metabolism. 

And there are studies that show that alcohol causes far worse a driving impairment than weed.

But claiming weed makes everyone a better driver seems like a stretch. The safest bet, obviously, is to drive sober. Lulling people into thinking they might enhance their driving skills by taking a psychoactive substance is irresponsible, especially when young drivers are already statistically more likely to get into crashes, and realistically, they're probably going to have a lower pot tolerance than someone who has been blazing for 50 years.

Weed is almost as bad as heroin

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who is definitely not down with sessions) told a crowd of law enforcement officials last month that marijuana is "only slightly less awful" than heroin.

Here's the full statement: 

"I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana—so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that's only slightly less awful."

Let's compare. Weed has killed 0 people. You cannot overdose on weed. While some people can become dependent on weed, it is not highly addictive and physical withdrawal symptoms are very rare.

Heroin is an opioid. In 2015, 33,000 Americans died of an opioid overdose. Meanwhile Canada is currently in the grips of a fentanyl crisis; drug overdoses were responsible for 922 deaths in 2016 in BC alone—575 were caused by fentanyl.

America and Canada are the top two consumers of opioids in the world. And much of that stems from doctors' painkiller prescriptions (e.g. Oxycontin) that later led patients to become addicted. To that end, research shows that opioids are not a good treatment for long-term chronic pain, but cannabis could be and it is far less harmful.

Pot has ruined BC

To be fair, this one is from January, but it is one of my favourite bad weed takes.

Writing in the Calgary Herald, Barry Cooper, a political science professor from the University of Calgary, said we should look to BC as a cautionary tale of all the ways pot can destroy a society.

How did he reach that conclusion?

Well, he went to an Abbotsford steakhouse and ordered a bad steak and determined that his server and the manager were "stoned." Then he complained that there are too many dispensaries and the "Vancouver police don't bother to enforce what is still Canadian law." From there he leaped into the opioid crisis, stating: "There is also a gloomy side to the drug scene in B.C." That's true, but he didn't explain what weed had to do with it.

Cooper ended by speculating that weed use was behind a spike in bizarre 911 calls in BC, noting that one caller asked for advice on how to turn off his razor and another wanted help getting his drone out of a tree.

"It was unclear whether these emergencies involved pot or just stupidity," he wrote. I'm unclear as to how any of the things he complained about are relevant to his thesis.

Legal weed will cause all hell to break loose

I think there are probably a lot of terrified parents who can relate to this op-ed, which claims that weed legalization in Canada will be a "national disaster."

Written by Benjamin Anson for the Montreal Gazette, it is the height of pearl-clutching, "think of the children!" hysteria.

Anson assumes that weed going legit will cause "untold suffering for countless families in the form of impaired driving accidents, workplace accidents and adverse health consequences."

As mentioned earlier, driving drunk is worse than driving baked (even if the latter isn't recommended).

Anson believes the easy access to bud will encourage dealers to focus on selling weed to children, since the adult market will use dispensaries.

"The youth market is particularly price sensitive and will be excellent customers for the illegal growers and pushers," he writes. (By "pushers," we assume he means gangsters in stairwells.) 

He may have a point that the black market could undercut the legal regime, but it seems a bit premature to assume that kids are going to be the primary target. Not to mention Canadian teens lead the world in smoking pot, so clearly they already know how to get their hands on it.

Anson claims the anti-drug and anti-tobacco efforts are going to be "set back by light years." On the contrary, the evidence suggests we should've gotten rid of prohibition decades ago. 

Dispensaries will attract "riffraff"

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens, a self-described "big guy" recently told the Windsor Star he was nervous about all the "riffraff" he saw while visiting a Denver dispensary last summer.

The dispensary was run efficiently, he said, but on the streets he apparently witnessed "a lot of erratic behaviour."

"The riffraff and the undesirables were rampant. I was looking behind my back as I was walking because some of these people truly concerned me. These were very aggressive people." He said he was concerned legalization could bring about the same impact at home.

It's impossible to know exactly what Dilkens saw, but the implication that people who use drugs are "undesirables" is not cool—they are already highly stigmatized.

Maybe Dilkens should focus on improving his own city's reputation.

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Abdullah Saeed knows how important it is to chill. That's why VICE's resident weed expert came up with a way to infuse chai tea with weed, using a handful of spices and a bit of milk.

The Noun Project
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By Sixth Planet, UA

I'm not racist. I just have preferences. On dating/hook-up apps for gay men, this seems to be a common justification from guys who state phrases like No Asians in their bios or while chatting. Now, I totally get that these apps are primarily for sex and people have preferences, and blah, blah, blah, but really: how these things are said with such casualness shows the insidious powers of language.

Being so upfront and flip in denying conversation with an entire race is, let's face it, pretty racist. And this isn't just Grindr; online dating sites offer pretty much the same dynamic towards gay Asian men. It's gross how someone could be so upfront about a dislike for a race: Sorry. You're cute, but no Asians for me. (Sorry, but apologetic openings don't redeem you as a good human being). Short and to-the-point with why I wasn't wanted, I started feeling like the majority of guys didn't have any interest in me because I am Asian. Eventually became fed up and got off apps, and continue to put little effort in online dating.

I recall the first few months being app-less, going out more with friends, not looking to hook-up, or even find Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet—just interacting with the gay community IRL to see what would or could happen. But even offline here in "progressive" Vancouver, the attitude towards gay Asian men is disappointingly reflective or a result of treatment received online.

The one that still stands out for me to this day was when I met a guy through a friend, who I eventually asked out for coffee. It seemed to go well, and before I realized it, we had spent a couple of hours talking at the café. When we were leaving, he said to me that he wasn't looking for anything more than being friends; that he was a no rice, no spice kinda guy when it came to intimate relationships. A phrase that is typically used online was said to me in-person with such casual bravado, and I was basically left speechless (until after the fact where I thought of many worthwhile responses.)

This is a very blunt example of how online discrimination can be felt in real life, because as I spoke to other gay Asian men in Vancouver for this story they all touched upon that even though racism towards Asians is so upfront online, they've felt it in real life on a more subtle, but just as hurtful, level.

For this reason, Alex, a 28-year-old writer and first generation Chinese-Canadian said it makes discrimination more difficult to process and confront. "People are much less willing to voice their 'preferences' for race in person. If anything it's more subtle, more ambiguous," he told me. "I'll be walking down the street and people will look through me as if I'm not there, no one will me check me out. But I'll notice, for example, white guys checking out other white guys."

The way Asians are treated online informs Alex's reasons for feeling less desired. He says questions his own physical attractiveness in the eyes of white men, or wonders if he never catches a glance from someone simply because he's Asian. "But after being told time and time again online that I'm unattractive due to my ethnicity, I can't help but believe that that's the reason. All the time. Either way, feeling invisible is the norm for me," he said. Because of this, Alex dissociates himself from gay communities, keeping to himself and not going out much.

The other result is feeling too visible for being Asian, exoticised or objectified for your race. On apps as a gay Asian man, receiving messages akin to, Looking for azns only, Asians+++, or the most memorable one I've received, Let me serve your Oriental noodle, are just as much a norm as it is being turned down for being Asian.

Because of this, I was weary with talking to guys in real life, worrying that they didn't care who I was as a person, but instead only about how Asian I am. And I found this apprehension to be shared among others. "The digital world really lays the groundwork for what is possible, and people are not afraid to speak out, and from that we get a sense of self-doubt," Kevin, a 23-year-old art director of Southeast Asian descent, told VICE. For example if a guy comes on to Kevin, he admits to also questioning whether it's because he is Asian or if the guy is interested in him as a person, regardless of race: "You question how much he values you, what facets of you he values, and what you're worth is based on."

It's tricky trying to understand your worth as a gay Asian man, or any person of colour, when the gay community can be so dominantly focused on the oh-so-desirable Adonis-bodied white man. The way gay Asian men can be spoken to (or ignored) online causes some second-guessing in interactions with (white) men, especially when it comes to being more than friends.

It works the other way as well, where being associated with a gay Asian is seemingly taboo.
I spoke to Daniel, a 30-year-old second generation Chinese-Canadian who works in social justice, who shared his experience of the early stages of dating a man. "When I first started dating my ex (who was white) he asked me, 'What do you think people think of me now that I'm dating an Asian? What do you think people are saying?'"

Daniel adds that there were many occasions where someone he was dating said that they weren't looking for anything serious, so they would casually date, but then it would be called off, only with the other guy immediately being in a serious relationship with a white guy.

There's no doubt that experiencing online racism affects psyches when apps and websites are out of the picture. All of this is quite intangible, and "it's hard to quantify racist experiences that you encounter in intimate relationships, and from the queer community sometimes. It's just how we feel or are made to feel, really," added Daniel. 

The only real obvious proof that can be seen are the toxic messages online ( No Asians, I'm a no rice, no spice kinda guy, etc.), and how gay Asian men feel discriminated against, exoticized, or ostracized in real life. It goes to show the power of language. How communicating online in brief and toxic messages is detrimental to people when they go about their daily lives on the street, interacting with people, and so forth.

"The gay community is much like high school, in that it consists of various cliques that seldom interact with each other (in this case, it'd be white/whitewashed gays being the popular, in-crowd while I'm hanging out with the other Asians)," argues Alex, "On a larger scale, I think sexual racism is one of the reasons why the gay community is so fragmented and segregated today."

For all the hilarious and witty ways LGBTQ+ individuals use language to spread joy and humour to relate to one another, I was—and slightly still am—disappointed with how some gay men can string together certain words without giving a second thought to how they impact others. 

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In 2011, Amy Poehler found herself at TIME 100 Gala, a dinner honouring what the magazine believed to be the most influential people of the year. She'd earned her spot. In the years leading up to it, she'd left a very successful stint at SNL to strike out on her own with Parks and Recreation, which after a first rocky season became a bonafide hit and a critical darling. In her speech at the dinner, she thanked Hillary Clinton and Lorne Michaels for the profound impact and influence the two had had on her life. Then she thanked Jackie Johnson and Dawa Chodon. From Trinidad and Tibet, respectively, the two are Poehler's nannies. She thanked them for doing nothing short of coming to her house and helping her raise her children, and allowing her to have the career she was being honoured for that night. Movingly, she spoke a truth many people know but seldom give voice to: Being a nanny is no small task. Good nannies like Johnson and Chodon, to quote Poehler, "are people who love your children as much as you do, and who inspire them and influence them." Important stuff, for sure. It can also be a thankless, frustrating drag, as we found out when talked to a few in-home childcare providers. Here are the weirdest, worst, most deflating or unexpected parts of their jobs, and how they'd like to tell the parents they work for.

Potty Training Is Important

I work for a family with two kids: an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. I was making lunch the other day when I heard the boy scream my name from the bathroom upstairs, and I ran to make sure he was OK. I was relieved to find him free of open wounds but not thrilled about the reason he'd called. Somehow this eight-year-old boy missed the toilet by about three feet and was standing there, pantsless, pointing at a turd on the floor. All he had to say was "I missed," and kept looking at me, then looking at the log like I was going to clean it up. I told him this was unfortunate but that he was a big boy and it was time for him to start cleaning up his own messes, and he flew into a rage: "MY MOM WOULD PICK IT UP! SHE'S GOING TO BE SO MAD AT YOU!" We went back and forth for a few minutes, but he ended up picking up and flushing the turd after I told him we could wait for her to get back to see who she'd be mad at. I told his mom when she got home, and she laughed and acted like it was totally normal for a kid that age to have "accidents." Mmmk! - Raquel, 23

Mean Moms Gangs

I'm 20, but I've been told I look a lot younger. I nanny for a toddler on weekday mornings, and there's this group of three evil stay-at-home moms who hang out at the park a few blocks away from her house. Whenever I take her there, they are awful to both of us. They think I'm some kind of slutty teen mom, so they shoo their kids away when she tries to play with them, and ask one another who they think her father is or whether I'm still in high school while I'm very much in earshot. I've never corrected them because, to be honest, they scare the shit out of me. Besides, I don't think they'd be much nicer if they knew I was the help. - Lara, 20

No Go, Go, Go

Nothing drives me crazier than parents who work nine hours a day trying to plan out every minute of their child's life while they're gone. I used to work for a family who would leave me a detailed list of segmented activities that would take up every single minute of their day. Breakfast was exactly a half hour long, followed by exactly 45 minutes of piano practice, one hour of "playground games," half an hour of reading out loud, another half hour of reading quietly, a half hour of board games, a half hour lunch, an hour of Lego time, and on and on. I get that it's important to keep your kids on a schedule, but this was one step away from military school. Let your kids be spontaneous once in a while! - Kelly, 26

Illustration by Brandon Celi for VICE

TV Is Not the Enemy

I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I wish all parents would let their kids watch at least a little TV. I work for a family whose parents are really strict with TV. That sounds fine in theory, but these poor kids are teased by all their classmates and neighbourhood friends about how little they know about popular shows and movies. I'm not saying kids should be able to watch hours of TV every day; I just feel bad that they can't relate to most of the things other kids their age are talking about. Plus, it would be nice to have something for me to distract them with on rainy days when I've run through every other activity in their house. At least let them watch educational documentaries or take them to an appropriate movie once a month! - Leah, 25

Late? Pay Me

I'm sympathetic to last-minute schedule changes... up to a point. Being a working parent is hard, and sometimes you have to stay for that late meeting or whatever, but please keep me in the loop! It's so annoying when a parent comes home an hour or two late without notice, acts like nothing's wrong, and then pays me as though they were on time. If we have an agreed-on daily rate and you're late, you need to pay me for the extra time I spent watching your kid. Please don't make me ask for more money in these situations—it's really awkward, and it makes me feel like you don't value my time at all. - Hannah, 26

Laundry Service Is Not Part of the Service

I'm a child-care professional who spends all of my time focused on the kid I'm paid to be watching. I'm not a 1950s housewife for hire. Of course I clean up after I make lunch or dinner, and sometimes I'll put away dishes or wipe down a client's messy counters after I've put the kids to bed. But I've had a few not-so-great situations where parents have asked me to their laundry, vacuum, or dust while they're out. Anyone who wants a maid should hire one, but that's not my job. I have heard of people building cleaning into their contracts, but it's really rude to spring a cleaning job on someone you hired specifically to take care of your children. - Maria, 30

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Where does music reside, in the vast cosmic fabric that surrounds us? Is music something we must create—summoning the muses, conjuring phantasms from the ether, shaping the notes with our hands and voices? Or is music something inherent to existence, reverberating in the thrum of the universe's own never-ending song, pulsing under the surface of the reality we see around us, bursting forth unchecked from the founts of creativity? As lovers of music—nay, as citizens of this spiritual plane—it is our duty to ask such questions. Which is how I ended up, not too long ago, standing in the dark in my building's laundry room, stoned out of my gourd, watching the uninterrupted advance of minutes remaining in my load of laundry, listening to the shaking roar of the machines, witnessing one of the best musical performances of my life.

Transcending the earthly realm via botanical communion and doing chores go hand in hand. Chores are boring, while marijuana offers a path to discovering the pleasure to found in mundanity. What I'm saying is: Weed makes everything more fun. Puffing that kush is a reliable way to escape the tedium of existence and marvel at said existence instead. In layman's terms, pot makes the world seem richer and makes music sound incredibly sweet. Focus on anything long enough, and you begin to understand it in new ways. Improve your focus via naturally occurring herbal supplements, and said understanding only expands.

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After announcing a day earlier that he will not seek reelection in 2018, Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz turned heads Thursday when he told a local radio station he might not even finish out his current term.

Thank the lord. The bad news? The most powerful oversight watchdog in the House, the guy ostensibly tasked with keeping tabs on the Trump administration, "may run again for public office, but not in 2018," as the New York Times reported on his initial announcement.

As Chaffetz texted CNN's Andrew Kaczynski, "My future plans are not finalized but I haven't ruled out the possibility of leaving early. In the meantime, I still have a job to do and I have no plans to take my foot off the gas." The congressman has recently expressed interest in running in the Utah gubernatorial races, which makes this as good a time as many to offer my condolences to the good people of the Beehive State.

For those unfamiliar with Chaffetz, he's the guy who recently suggested poor people "invest in their own healthcare" instead of "getting that new iPhone they just love." Aptly described by Jezebel's Brendan O'Connor as a "slimy rat fuck," he was at the forefront of the Republican crusade to burn Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi attacks, thanks to his perch atop the House Oversight Committee. During the campaign, he apparently supported Trump, publicly unendorsed him after the Access Hollywood "grab 'em by the pussy" scandal, and then decided to vote for him anyway.

Perhaps worst of all for the public, when it still looked like Hillary Clinton was going to be president, Chaffetz told the Washington Post he planned to spend at least two years of her administration probing her tenure atop the State Department. But now that Trump and his friends are treating the White House like an extension of their business empire, Chaffetz has been glaringly quiet about potential conflicts of interest.

So what's a little Chaffetz to do before he likely runs for office again? "I love my family more than the work," he told Fox News. Good for them, keep him.

Meanwhile, anti-Trump conservative and failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin is reportedly considering running in his place.

On the bright side, things can't get worse? Just kidding, they always can!

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It was when overtime hit that Jason Maslakow realized, goddamn, a smoke could really help with all his stress.

In front of him in at the Verizon Center in Washington DC, the mighty Washington Capitals were taking on Maslakow's beloved Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the NHL playoffs. Maslakow and a couple friends had driven 10 hours from Toronto to Washington DC to see his Leafs, massive underdogs in the series, play the best team in the league.

So, to calm his nerves, Maslakow drew a Du Maurier king sized dart and put it between his lips.

"It was kind of little bit of a safety blanket for me," Maslakow told VICE. "I was sitting there stressing out watching the game, it was tied and I was hoping for a good outcome for my Leafs. I needed a smoke so I just threw it in there to get me through until I could get out and smoke it."

That's the state Maslakow was in when a camera swung through the crowd, caught Maslakow and, in that moment, the weird hockey obsessed corner of Twitter fell in love. It wasn't the happy grimace on his face, nor the makeup (that was a total pain-in-the-ass to apply) or the hair he cut to read "Go Leafs Go" which made people take a liking with this man. No, it was the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

In honour of that dangling dart, Maslakow was bestowed a name, Dart Guy—boy howdy, has Dart Guy's life been weird since he was caught on camera. The memeing of Dart Guy started to explode seconds after he was caught on camera. This was all happening without Maslakow knowledge.

"I had no idea. I was oblivious, Maslakow told VICE. "I was focused on watching the hockey game and I had no idea what was going on."

In fact, it wasn't until a journalist found his Twitter account and went to talk to him in the stands that Maslakow found out. Now, days later, Maslakow is getting calls from media rooms all over from Canada, the Maple Leafs offered him free tickets to game three (a win!) and he was brought to game four (a loss!) with a radio personality. And in between those moments people have bought the man enough beer to drown a adult horse. One of his favourite players, Wendel Clark, searched him out in the third game to get a photo with him.

Photo via Daily VICE.

"I'm definitely not going to complain but it's been crazy, non-stop interviews pictures. I absolutely didn't expect anything like this," Maslakow said. "I knew doing the makeup and everything I might get a second shot on CBC but I never could have imagined this is what happened."

"The last couple of days... weird would be the word I would use."

Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen to someone like Maslakow, a gregarious Ontario man who doesn't hide his love for cigarettes. He lives a quiet life an hour and a half outside of Toronto in Waterloo with his wife and small dog where he makes a living in a shop painting cars for Toyota. Maslakow has been handling the situation with all the grace he can, but he is also doing what we all would, trying to get what he can out of it before it's all over.

Photo via Daily VICE.

"Well it seems like right now there are a bunch of companies out there selling shirts and stuff like that who are milking the situation for me," he said. "We're going to take care of that as time goes. I've shared a few shameless tweets about Molson Canadian products and they've actually gotten ahold of that and we're going to be meeting. A couple shameless tweets never hurt the situation, that's for sure."

"You definitely just try and relish every moment you can and accept everything you can and when people want to give you the time of day you make sure you give it back to them."

As for that famous dart—the one that brought him all this attention—Maslakow didn't frame it nor hand it over to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the minute overtime finished he rushed outside and he smoked that dart.

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It was nearly 2 o'clock in the morning on Oct. 23, 2010, when an Air Force lieutenant called from his base in Wyoming to report the nightmare scenario unfolding before him. Fifty intercontinental ballistic missiles—each tipped with a nuclear warhead 20 times more powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima—had suddenly lost contact with the computers at the base's launch center.

"I… we… have no idea what's happening right now," the officer sputtered as he tried to explain the situation to support staff at a remote command center. Another officer barked orders behind him, interrupting the call. "Holy shit!" the lieutenant exclaimed. "I will have to call you back!"

The Air Force could tell that the weapons were still in their underground silos, but there was no way to know whether the missiles had been hijacked. A renegade missile crew, someone splicing into underground cables, or hackers exploiting radio signal receivers attached to the ICBMs could have set them on a countdown to launch. Even worse, without contact with the missiles, it was impossible to halt an unauthorized launch attempt.

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Whether it's cavities, root canals, or having to fess up about your flossing habits, going to the dentist can be really scary for a lot of people. But that's without the fear that you might be hooked up to an IV for a routine cleaning, or operated on while your dentist rides a hoverboard—two things one dentist in Alaska is being accused of doing, Alaska Dispatch News reports.

Authorities from the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the Office of Inspector General, the FBI, and DEA hit Seth Lookhart with 17 counts of fraud and "unlawful dental acts" this week. The suit, which was filed Monday, claims the Anchorage dentist committed a wild range charges—most egregiously, defrauding Medicaid of $1.8 million by sedating patients using IV anesthetic for simple procedures.

When Lookhart and his office manager, Shauna Cranford, figured out that their dental practice could rake in massive payouts from Medicaid if they frequently sedated patients with IV, they allegedly went hog wild, putting people under even for simple teeth cleanings. He then allegedly transferred those reimbursement funds away from the business and to his personal LLC.

"So pumped on the IV stuff," Lookhart texted Cranford in 2015.

"It's going to be awesome, and really drive things up here," she allegedly replied.

Lookhart and his alleged partner-in-crime are also accused of running their dentistry, Clear Creek Dental, like a madhouse. Authorities claim they have video evidence of Lookhart filming himself pulling teeth from a patient while he was riding a hoverboard, which he then texted to friends, saying he was conducting a "new standard of care." Lookhart also allegedly let Cranford—who, again, just worked as an office manager—pull two teeth from a sedated patient.

"It was a real patient," Cranford reportedly texted another employee. "(Lookhart) let me do it."

Lookhart appeared at a bail hearing on Wednesday, where a judge determined he was a flight risk and ordered that he hand over his passport. He was also ordered not to communicate with Cranford, who herself is facing 16 charges—ten of which are felonies. Should Lookhart be found guilty, he could owe more than $2 million in restitution, on top of additional fines.

According to the Dispatch News, Lookhart's practice is still open and his dental license is still active, though he's no longer a Medicaid provider. He's set to face a court hearing in June.

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