Earlier tonight, VICE Canada hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and MP Bill Blair for a town hall to raise some questions and concerns about the Liberal government's plans to legalize the recreational production, distribution, and use of marijuana. In addition to reaffirming his government's commitment to the public safety of children, here are the five big takeaways from the event where Trudeau took questions from VICE senior writer Manisha Krishnan and Head of Content Patrick McGuire, industry insiders, and people caught up in the current criminal court system.

1. There are no plans to fight the opioid crisis by legalizing or decriminalizing more drugs

In an emotionally-charged exchange near the end of the town hall, Trudeau was confronted by Zoe Dodd, a harm reduction worker on the front lines of Canada's opioid epidemic who called the amount of overdose deaths in the last 18 months a "national disaster." Citing the example of Portugal, where drug use has been decriminalized for more than a decade, she asked the prime minister if he would decriminalize other drugs—especially opioids—as a matter of public safety.

Trudeau replied that his government would not do this, saying that they only got a mandate to legalize marijuana. He also acknowledged that although "we need to do more," the Liberals were softening the policies of the Harper administration with regards to prescription heroin and safe injection sites. Bill Blair also voiced his perspective that "the evidence does not necessarily show that [mass] decriminalization works," and that the government should instead focus on providing treatment, rehabilitation, and front-line services.

The prime minister said the government needs to do more on the file but avoided making any promises.

2. Pardons won't be happening anytime soon

When asked by Malik Scott, a young man facing criminal charges for possession of marijuana, if there were any plans to pardon people currently charged under laws due to be changed, the prime minister was largely evasive. He related to the crowd that his younger brother Michel, who died in an avalanche in 1998, was charged with marijuana possession not long before his death, but the family was confident he would bear the charges due to his father's influence and their access to legal resources. Trudeau acknowledged that the justice system is often inequitable in this way, particularly for visible minorities like Scott.

Despite this admission, Trudeau remained largely noncommittal about plans for pardons, reparations, or even an apology to anyone convicted of marijuana charges under prohibition. Any future amnesty is TBD for an indeterminate time after legalization.

3. The medical marijuana regime will stay the same

Trudeau was emphatic that whatever else is going on with the legalization of recreational marijuana use, "the current medical marijuana regime will remain as-is." The prime minister also suggested that, since many people currently illegally use medical marijuana services for recreational purposes, legalization will free up the strain on the medical sector and enable new research into the medical uses of cannabis—including as a substitute for opiates in the case of chronic pain.

Photo by Anthony Tuccitto

4. There will be room for smaller players...but Big Weed will rule

While the prime minister admitted that a lot of production of recreational cannabis will likely be handled by larger corporate operations, he was also emphatic that there will be room for smaller producers as well. He likened it to the alcohol industry, pointing out that while a lot of beer is produced by large brewers, Canadians also enjoy microbrews. The government is also actively encouraging the participation of Indigenous peoples in legal production.

However, Trudeau also emphasized that there was no guarantee that any small producers who have previously been convicted of possession or trafficking will be given licenses for production under the new framework. All licensing decisions would be handled on a case-by-case basis. He also acknowledged that although edibles are currently legal for medical use, their production and sale would not be considered for recreational regulation until sometime in the future.

5. The provinces will be making the real decisions

As repeatedly emphasized by the prime minister, "the provinces have the authority to introduce legislation that works for them." Specifically, provincial and territorial governments will be responsible for setting and enforcing their own regulatory regimes where the minimum age of purchase, maximum sentences for offenses, and method of distribution, with the end goal of ensuring a "well-regulated, safe supply."

In the event that a province or territory does not introduce a regulatory framework, Trudeau promised that Canadians living in those areas will still be able to obtain marijuana legally, although he did not specify how.

Bonus round: Trudeau does not want to be known as a pothead

Trudeau began the town hall by saying that he was a boring partier, who rarely ever touched weed in his youth and told us the well-known story of a dinner party several years ago (before he was Liberal leader but while he was an MP) where he smoked a joint that was passed around. He said he's more a beer and bourbon guy, particularly Jack Daniels—which famously calls itself a Tennessee Whiskey, but who's judging.

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With America having enjoyed nationwide marriage equality for about two years now, it's easy to forget just how hard we fought to achieve it.

But fight queers did, for decade after exasperating decade. That struggle is captured in Awakening, out today from Harvard University Press. Written by historian and commentator Nathaniel Frank, it's a fascinating account of the modern battle for equality—particularly given how many LGBTQ people were against gay marriage while that fight raged.

The concern in decades past was that marriage was a clunky, obsolete institution, burdened irreparably by misogyny and racism and the myth of monogamy. Queers, many felt, could do better.

As Frank recounts, it took years of debate and infighting—and a plague—for that attitude to change. AIDS made clear that marriage equality was as much a moral imperative as an institutional one. As queer populations were decimated by the virus, it became commonplace for people with HIV to find themselves with few legal protections, and for their partners be left with nothing after their death. That led to a more unified campaign for marriage equality, particularly in the early 90s, via a steady growth in lawsuits—and a backlash of discriminatory laws.

But now, as that battle recedes into the background of history, we finally have the opportunity to dust ourselves off, take a deep breath, look around, and ask: What's next?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: Why were so many activists resistant to marriage equality when the conversation started in the 1950s?
Nathaniel Frank: Back then, many who worked in gay politics and queer subcultures were enjoying levels of community they hadn't known before, which they found tremendously novel and exciting and utopian. They were creating networks of friendship and socializing and care-taking and sex that few had thought possible.

So the idea of joining marriage seemed anathema to that exciting project that so many people felt part of. They thought they could be the vanguard of a new way of organizing society and family that didn't focus on retreating into the private sphere in duos. And I think it was threatening and alienating to the vision that they shared together for many people.

Were they right? Now that we have marriage, could we lose those networks of queer support that built up over decades?
I think there's always loss in gains. This is a classic phenomenon for minorities of any kind. When you gain acceptance and greater measures of equality, you lose some aspects of your identity that were built around marginalization. You don't have to lose everything, but there is a loss.

Did the fight for marriage equality change how people think about marriage?
While I do think that the effort to win marriage equality questioned norms about marriage—for example, gender disparities—I don't think the LGBT activism around marriage changed the definition of marriage. It may have expanded people's expectations of what marriage was becoming.

Marriage has always been changing. Always, always, always. Once upon a time, it was exclusively for nobles and about tying kingdoms together and consolidating power. When it was finally extended to ordinary people, it was about sharing labor and divvying up chores on the farm. And then, within nation states in the modern era, marriage meant that women lost their legal identities. Often marriage was something that consolidated racial privilege. And then marriage became about none of those things. That was happening long before same-sex marriage gained traction in the 1990s.

How much credit can Republicans take for marriage equality?
Republicans were certainly instrumental in getting marriage passed in several states. I think progressives would be wise to recognize that. It's often critical to have broad support, including bipartisan support, when you're fighting for big social changes. Particularly so if you want them to be durable.

When you grow your coalition, you have more buy-in from different kind of people, and your changes are less likely to be vulnerable over time. That's something that many of us woke up to on November 9.

Republicans have a mixed record on marriage equality, and for the most part, it's a very bad record. As a party, Republicans were all too happy to sell gay people down the river in order to consolidate their own power. The Democratic Party wasn't too far ahead, but they can't be blamed in the same way that Republicans can for thinking up and ensuring the passage of DOMA as a wedge issue in the 1996 election.

Now that we're included, can queer people improve the institution of marriage?
I think that creating a national discussion about marriage equality has already, according to some evidence, made the institution of marriage stronger. You wouldn't have had President Obama and Justice Kennedy and all these people articulating the role and function of marriage if it hadn't been something that was contested.

You'll even find straight people quoting rulings on equality in their own wedding vows now. I had many conversations with my straight brothers about what marriage was for.

This is something that [marriage equality activist] Kate Kendell said a lot—she met [fellow activist] Evan Wolfson at one of those legal roundtable discussions and came in as a novice lesbian feminist queer type, saying "I think marriage is patriarchal." She said Evan almost jumped across the table.

Over time, she saw that you had to join the institution in order to reshape it. And she looks forward to the next generation being able to do that.

Matt Baume is the author of Defining Marriage: Voices from a Forty-Year Labor of Love, a personal and political history of marriage equality. Follow him on Twitter.

When Abdul El-Sayed addresses a town hall of Democratic stalwarts in a conservative pocket of southeast Michigan, he lets out out a battle cry. "Who believes that we have to put people ahead of profits?" he roars. "Who believes in democracy over dynasty?"

The former University of Michigan varsity lacrosse player has the air of a coach confident he's on pace for a championship win. His athletic and academic success earned him a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and his degrees in medicine and public health led Detroit mayor Mike Duggan to tap him to restore municipal control over the city's health department after bankruptcy proceedings in 2015. Now, at 32, El-Sayed is running to be Michigan's next governor. If elected, he'll be the first Muslim in American history to hold that position, a fact that he doesn't shy away from despite a national climate rather hostile to people like him.

Although Islamophobic acts appear to be on the rise and immigration policies designed exclusively to target Muslims have been imposed by President Donald Trump, more Muslim Americans seem to be vying for political office than ever before. While some members of Trump's Cabinet have, in the past, claimed that Islam is fundamentally at odds with the Constitution, echoing longtime right-wing paranoia about Sharia law, many of these nascent politicians say the things that put them on blast—their faith and immigrant roots —are what inspired their candidacies and desire to serve.

"My dad, he immigrated from Egypt, and he was looking for an America that was big enough for him too," El-Sayed tells the hundreds gathered in a banquet hall of overstated chandeliers and dizzying carpeting on a recent Tuesday evening. "He chose to come here because he knew he could raise their children to practice [their faith] as they wanted and be just as American as anyone else."

But his story is more nuanced than one might expect: El-Sayed's parents split up, and his father married Jacqueline Johnson, a white woman from central Michigan. In the middle of his stump speech, the candidate asks his stepmother's parents—Judy and Jan—to stand before painting a picture of Thanksgiving in their household.

"I've got my dad, Mohamed, who's a part-time imam and leads prayer at the mosque, and I've got my grandma Judy, and she's a deacon in her Presbyterian Church. And then we've got the wildcard, my uncle Piotr, who immigrated from what is now Poland, who's a devout atheist." El-Sayed says. "And we sit together, and we eat our turkey, and we have conversations about God and country, and we don't always agree. But I'll tell you we always respect each other."

The Democrat's fate rests on a resurgence of that kind of mutual respect after the state narrowly—and surprisingly —voted in favour of Donald Trump for president. The pitch seems to play well, albeit to a friendly audience: The crowd is dotted with pink pussy hats and jackets emblazoned with union logos. Nearly the entire group rises to its feet and cheers when El-Sayed wraps up his speech with an explicit appeal for support.

The man's cadence and energy remind Gary Fougni, a retired 63-year-old in attendance, of another candidate with a diverse background and midwestern roots: Barack Obama. Fougnie appreciates how forthcoming El-Sayed is about his background. He knows a bit about the challenge El-Sayed faces, having worked in the defense industry alongside many who swapped their Middle Eastern names for ones more familiar to those in the American Midwest.

"I was very pleased that he puts himself out there [with his faith]," Fougni says. Still, he doubts that sentiment will be shared very widely across the Great Lakes State. "It's gunna be an uphill situation for him, because unfortunately there's not a lot of open-mindedness... He'll give a good speech, but all they'll think about is where he came from."

This is exactly what many people with immigrant backgrounds fear when entering the fray of public life, according to Sayu Bhojwani, who heads up the New American Leaders Project (NALP). A majority of applicants to the organization's political trainings "cite some marker of their identity as an obstacle: name, religion, appearance, skin colour, and/or immigration status," she explains. "They talk about how each of those things could be perceived as a barrier."

Despite those fears, NALP has seen double the normal number of applicants —and double the number of Muslim American applicants—over the last year.

When I drop in to one of the trainings for potential candidates from New York, Colorado, and Michigan at the Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Bhojwani offers simple but essential advice. "Because of who you are, how you look, what your name is, you will be asked questions that perhaps a white candidate might not be asked," she says in a room tucked away from where other aspiring politicians are practicing their speeches.

Instead of getting defensive as opponents and voters whittle them down to a series of negative stereotypes, Bhojwani says, would-be candidates should take a sip of water, count to ten, and then "pivot back to the message and the reason that you're running."

Check out the recent VICE News Tonight segment on the ongoing crisis of displaced migrants drowning in the Mediterranean.

Derogatory comments and false accusations come with the territory, according to Nadeem Mazen, an MIT-educated engineer who serves in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, city council. Breitbart, the alt-right site formerly run by Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon, called Mazen an "aggressive anti-police activist" with "Islamist sympathies" just after he secured another term in November 2015.

Mazen was expecting such a blow. After all, he says, every single Muslim American he knows who's made an attempt at a career in politics "has been targeted in a smear campaign without exception."

But when I broach the prospect of facing off against angry Trump supporters with the potential candidates at the training in Michigan, few seem particularly worried.

"People might come at me with some xenophobic and discriminatory comments, but I think calling it out as it is is really important," says 28-year-old Ghida Dagher, who was the campaign manager for Abdullah Hammoud, a state representative in the Dearborn area. Still, she notes, it's important not to let prejudice dictate the terms of debate. "The more you feed into that rhetoric, the more that you get stuck in it."

Abdul El-Sayed has already taken his own share of abuse and factually dubious skepticism. Earlier this month, a right-wing blog accused him of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he denies. Driving in what he calls his "trusty Ford Explorer" from a campaign stop in Northern Michigan into the potholed expanse of highways surrounding Detroit, El-Sayed says his faith is his North Star, but not really relevant to running the state of Michigan.

"I'm proud of my faith, and I'm proud of who I am. I'm not leaning away from it at all," he tells me over the phone. "I didn't change my name. I didn't shave my beard. My wife wears a hijab. But it's not what's going to build an economy. It's not what's going to rebuild our schools or address our public health challenges."

Part of why he's entering politics is to prove that politicians don't have to fit the old white man mould.

"For me," El-Sayed says, "There is a responsibility to stand up and say, 'Look, whichever colour I am and however I pray, I think I've got a skill set that my state needs right now.'"

Follow Beenish Ahmed on Twitter.

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From the book WHEN YOU FIND OUT THE WORLD IS AGAINST YOU: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments by Kelly Oxford.Copyright © 2017 by Kelly Oxford. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It's available for purchase here.

I grew up in the '80s and '90s. My parents raised me to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. They even bought me books that said, "A girl can be an astronaut! A girl can be a doctor, just like a boy!" When I became a parent, I read this book to my daughter, and she asked, "Why couldn't a girl be an astronaut or a doctor? What does this book mean?" I put the book in storage, and I took note. I was telling my child she could be as successful as a boy when she had no idea boys had an advantage. The world had changed a lot since I was a girl.

"You should go to university. The kind of man you want will want to marry a woman with a deep education." This was advice from my well-meaning mother, and I considered this was possibly true, overlooking the fact that the subtext was: Go to school to get a man. The smart woman gets proposed to by the right man. I was raised on the objectification of women through a dialogue that was positive and even encouraging, by a feminist, no less!

Even so, the ideas around appearances were still out there, and I studied them like a PhD candidate. All in all, those boiled down to: Have long hair, be thin with a nice bust and hips. Don't have too many opinions and be a good listener.

Objectification. It is a hot, loaded word. Women have been bearing the weight of this behavior forever. But here were Donald Trump and Billy Bush taking objectification to a shocking next step. They were actually joking about sexually assaulting women. Billy's horrendous laughter in response to Donald's remarks put my head in an extreme place. I immediately open my Twitter account and see everyone tweeting about this. This is huge. This leaked tape is demanding a response. I have to jump in. I have no choice. Through a pit in my stomach, I tweet, "Grab them by the p—y," Trump says. "You can do anything." And Billy Bush is like, OK!—This is rape culture. This is what we hear & live.

My tweet is instantly being retweeted, but I feel like what I wrote isn't as clear as I want it to be. So I tweet again.

Billy Bush cackling after Donald Trump says "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." Is rape culture.

I read these two tweets and wonder if I should delete one. No, they're different. I sigh deeply and look back at the television, watching Donald and Billy Bush now shaking hands with a blond actress.

Just minutes before, the conversation between Billy and Trump had turned to this woman, who clearly turned the Donald on. To wit:

TRUMP: Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.

[CROSSTALK AND CHUCKLING]

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Yeah those legs, all I can see is the legs.

TRUMP: Oh, it looks good.

I'm engulfed in a feeling, a sensation. My body is drowning in it. That feeling is white-hot rage.

This was the woman Trump just said "It looks good" about. It. He called a woman IT. You know how when you get bad news, or you are hit with a flash of sudden pain, it feels like time stops? Time stopped. I'm engulfed in a feeling, a sensation. My body is drowning in it. That feeling is white-hot rage.

WINTER 1989

I've been waiting for today all week.

1. It's Friday. Schwing!

2. I'm going to my friend Penny's house after school. She lives in a suburb, which is exciting. New houses, so fancy! I live in the inner city. Old houses, gross! We are taking the city bus, which is also very exciting. Taking city transportation is the closest I get to feeling like a kid living in New York City.

3. My crush Mike lives close to Penny, and he too will be on the bus. I will get to spy on him. Schwing!

"Penny!! Let's go." I puff clouds from my mouth into the air, grabbing her arm and sprinting for the bus. It's one of the coldest days of the year. Penny zips her backpack and tries to keep up.
"We're going to slip, we don't have to run."

"I won't slip, I have Sorels on! My mom got them on sale! Hold on to me."

I shift my bag off my shoulder and onto the other so Penny has space to grab, a "dad trick" that always works for me.

"Hold on tight!" I drag her in her Doc Martens across the ice-covered sidewalk. I pray this is the closest I'll ever get to being in the Iditarod, or a dad.

"Shit, Kel, the bus is going to be so full. Let's get the next one." I look to see what Penny is staring at; up ahead of us the number 47 bus has an epic line of middle school kids scrambling to getting on. I spot my crush Mike, he's ascending the bus stairs with his white-blond hair, like a wintry Viking child-god.

"We can't wait! We will freeze to death!"

"We can wait in the Circle K."

"Penny, hold on tight. We're getting on that bus. He's on it."

"Who?"

"Mike!!"

"Kelly, he's dating Gabby. Stop obsessing."

"No way. Gabby isn't on the bus. Don't you get it? I'm not missing this opportunity. We are getting on that bus."

I have done my hair today, in a ponytail with teased bangs. I even used hair spray, enough hair spray that this Iditarod run is barely causing my vertical hair wall to lose a single strand from its crisp wave.

My mom had no idea I'd added the hair spray to our grocery pile.

"I guess you're a teenager now," she said when she found me in the bathroom, backcombing my bangs, hair spray bottle sideways in my mouth. It was a small moment, and a minor one, but my mother was acknowledging me becoming a woman. I was trying to look beautiful, on my own, without her help.

I dig the Sorels deep into the crusty snow on the edge of the sidewalk and double my pace, keeping Penny and her slippery Docs on the ice of the sidewalk, dragging her behind me.

"Hey!!" I hear a girl's voice yell, and I turn so quickly that my cheek is stung by the air.

"Hahaha!" Penny laughs at the boy she'd actually run into. He is still trying to stabilize himself on the ice.

"I could have cracked my head, bitches."

He straightens his jacket and I turn, laughing, toward Penny.

"His voice hasn't even cracked yet, and he's worried about his skull?"

I was not a nice tween.

I stop dragging Penny as we reach the crowd of kids piling up into the bus. She nods in agreement.

"That guy is the bitch. He's definitely pubeless. He probably has the penis of a seven-year-old."

Neither were my friends.

"Penny, that's gross." I laugh, of course.

She squints her enviable aqua-coloured eyes at me. "A half roll of Certs."

We walk up the two bus steps to the driver, and I pull my mitten, smelling and tasting of old spit, off with my teeth as I scan the bus for Mike. All I see are faces of people I don't have crushes on. The bus is packed, all the way to the back. With my naked hand I fumble around in my jacket pocket for my bus change. My glasses fog up.

"Please hurry, we have to go!" The bus driver yells at me as I blindly dump all the coins I have into his little money box and grab my ticket.

"Penny, I can't see." She grabs my shoulder as we move down the aisle. Penny has a bus pass and doesn't get yelled at. I need to get a fucking bus pass, they're only, like, fifteen dollars for students. My parents would rather pick me up than let me take public transport. They think I'm too young, the pains of being the oldest child.

I remove my glasses and stand in a puddle of sandy melted slush on the bus floor, holding the pole. Other students, adults, are all around and pressing into us. I feel alive with my cement bangs, glasses off, on public transport.

"I don't see him, Kel. Are you sure he got on the bus? Gum?" Penny offers a piece of gum but it's too close to my face and my eyes cross as someone bumps into my butt. I hope Mike didn't see my eyes cross. I put on an annoyed face to counter the cross-eyed idiot face. I'm bumped into again.

"Penny, I can't see shit without my glasses. This bus is too steamy." I put my glasses back on because steamy glasses are less embarrassing than crossed eyes.

"Oh, man," she giggles, "Mike is gonna see you and—"

And then everything goes silent. Those bumps into my butt were a hand and now that hand is crawling from my butt to my vagina on the outside of my pants. And then, the hand is there.
When I was a kid I would jump into the lake and stay underwater, just for the moment when things would go silent. I'd surface, let the yelling, talking, dog barking back into my ears, the sound of my feet as I ran down the hollow wooden boards of our dock. Then I'd hang airborne for a moment before hitting the water again. The loud rush into my ears, then numb silence. I lived for that lonely numb silence in this womblike peace and safety.

But now the tiny invisible soft hairs on my arms and neck stand on end because instead of the peace I felt in that silence, it is fear I now feel. I turn and face a small old Indian man sitting on the bench behind me and pulling his hand back from touching me. He smiles.

"Kelly. Kelly," Penny says.

I'm out of the water.

"Sorry," I say too loudly. Penny is looking toward the back of the bus.

"Look. Look. It's Mike. He's with some guy I've never seen before. Do you know who that is?" I see Mike and feel nothing. I shake my head no. Penny keeps talking. The bus keeps driving. Eventually, we get off and walk to her house. We have dinner, we listen to music, we talk about how Lindsay's dad always says he is going to come see her and he never shows up at the airport. The next morning, my mom picks me up.

"You have fun?"

"Yes."

I get home, go upstairs, and throw the hair spray in the garbage.

I SHAKE AS I type.

Women: tweet me your first assaults. They aren't just stats. I'll go first:

Old man on city bus grabs my "pussy" and smiles at me. I'm 12.

I send the tweet and go to the kitchen for water. My throat is so dry. If no one responds, I'll delete that tweet. It was too presumptuous. I'm asking too much.

At age twelve I didn't tell anyone about the Indian man on the bus, because I was embarrassed. Why was I embarrassed? Because it's my vagina. Because that's private? Because I was twelve and I was embarrassed and didn't want to ruin my sleepover at Penny's?

My water glass is overflowing in the fridge dispenser. I take a long sip.

It was the hair. I was trying to look attractive to Mike. I purposefully wanted Mike's attention, I tried to be pretty for him. Maybe my shame was in trying to look pretty. I looked so pretty that a stranger felt he could touch me.

"Grab them by the pussy." I shiver all over, feeling sick as I return to my room. The video of Trump and Billy on the bus is on repeat. I decide to delete my tweet, but when I check my responses. There are too many to count. Stories are coming in faster than I can read them. What is happening?

• My stepfather sexually abused me from when I was 4–17, no one believed me, I have felt guilty and ashamed my whole life.

• Age 7 at toy store, bend down to see Barbie, man reaches under my dress. I go home and bury the ribbon I had in my hair.

• Saw doctor for eye irritation and he gave me a breast exam.

• I'm laying on my stomach reading, my grandfather puts his hand up my shorts. I was ten.

• I'm a secretary to priest. After service he says, "I always wondered what you'd look like with lipstick." Kissed me on lips.

• My disgusting music teacher tries to kiss me, I was 12.

• I was at a party, 15, smoked a lot of weed and passed out. Woke up to man raping me.

• Swimming at busy pool, feel someone reach into my bathing suit crotch and grab me. They swim away.

• Space needle elevator with my parents, man behind me rubs my ass. I'm 9.

• I was on the x-ray table, tech "adjusted" my pubic bone for 10 mins. I'm 14.

• Friend's dad pulled on my swimsuit bottom and looked inside the front. I was 9.

• I'm 5 or 6. Sitter followed me to bed, covered my mouth and put a finger in my vagina.

• Grandma's boyfriend put my hand on his penis. She said I lied and bought him a car.

• I was gang raped by a group of professional athletes. Guess it was my fault. I was staying in the same hotel.

• I'm 11 in hospital waiting room, man waits for my mom to leave then offers me $50 for a blow job.

• Family doctor asks mom to leave the room. He then tells me I'm old enough to get a breast exam. I'm 13.

• 6 years old. Sleeping. Friend's dad spoons me and holds me against my will. I beg him to stop, be he says he knows I like it.

Those stories all come in the first ten seconds. Then another four. Another six. This is not stopping. I realize I can't delete my tweet. I have to tweet again.

MY HASHTAG #NOTOKAY IS flashing into my feed over and over again. I check to see what these women are tweeting at me. I can't be the only one reading these at this point. I want everyone to read them. And simultaneously, I want them to disappear. It is awful. It is real.

• At 7, in grocery store, man presses his penis on my neck. This is my second tweet ever. #notokay

• Guy interviewing me for a job tries to get my clothes off, I'm 15. #notokay

• #notokay in 1941 my bible teacher, my dad's best friend molested me and my sister. Ages 13 & 7. Some things don't change.

• Chiropractor rests his clothed genitals on my hand. Scared. No one was around #notokay

• 40yo guitar teacher teaches me to strum by stroking my leg. He asks to kiss me. I'm 13 and I don't go back #notokay

• He was a friend giving me a ride home. I just wanted to get away. #notokay

• I can't send mine without losing my peace. Thank you for doing this. #notokay

• My brother raped me repeatedly for 3 years, told me it was my fault I was born a girl. I was 9. #notokay

• Age 7, guy masturbates while watching me play handball. Mom calls cops. I can't remember colour of pants. He goes free. #notokay

• First time I remember I was 7. Mom's BFF. Pretty sure he was the first. Not the last. #notokay

• I don't remember the first time. I just know my mom took me from bio-dad at 8 months after catching him. #notokay

• I made anon acct to reply: I was maybe 8, my older cousin put his hand down my pants and underwear and in me.

• High school civics teacher would rub the feet of an attractive student in the front row. She had no choice. #notokay

• Man on street walks by, moans in my ear "The things I'd do to you."

• Dad didn't believe me. #notokay

• Pediatrician neighbour teaches me how to masturbate, tries to get me to do it beside him. I'm 12.

• Podiatrist grazes my breasts while examining my foot. Felt violated. Kept quiet.

• Just one assault? A pelvic exam in ER. My back was hurt from gymnastics class.

• At my gram's funeral my 90 year old uncle says he wants to fuck me. His wife laughs it off. #notokay

I see that my Twitter account is trending in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York. But that simply means that enough people are replying to me that my name is trending. These tweets could still go totally unknown. I have to make sure other people see this. I owe it to everyone who has responded to me. So, I decide to tweet: 1 hr ago I shared my sexual assault & asked if you could do the same. Look at my timeline. 1000s of stories. We must discuss. Not our shame. #notokay

WINTER 1994

I look down the hall to my girlfriends Karen and Erin, sitting with a few guys from the university hockey team. I decide to join them. Karen is one of my closest friends but I think she secretly hates me. This is because once she was hooking up with this awful athlete, and I knew he was a creep. So, I kept going into the room while they were trying to fuck. I turned on the light. I so unsexually got into bed with them and started talking about the weather. I told her she should leave. I was thrown out repeatedly because I was being a huge asshole, but I kept going back in, drunk, but determined to save her vagina. I remember her telling me something along the lines of "You're just jealous."

And that was partly true, I mean, I wished I could just have sex for the sake of horniness...but I was not there. I needed something more. I needed someone to genuinely like me for me. As a teenage girl with a body that society has deemed attractive, it's very clear you can get a large percentage of guys to have sex with you. That really didn't turn me on.

But tonight, all seems right in the world and between Karen, Erin, and me.

"Erin, I don't think I've peed all night." At the table are the hockey players Jesse, Dylan, Tim, Ross, and Warren. All are regulars, except for Warren. I'd never hung out with Warren. We were friendly with these guys and would flirt back and forth with consent, harmlessly.

"Pee, girl, pee!"

I dance to "99 Luftballons" all the way down the hall to the bathroom, as only a drunk person can. Carefree, cinematically, as if my life is perfect.

I push into a dirty stall and take one of the longest pees of my life. The kind where you think it's over and then suddenly realize there's possibly a second bladder tucked up behind the first one. This is another thing that only seems to happen to drunk people.

"I pull the stall door in and gasp. Warren is standing in the bathroom, facing me. He is six foot five and probably the best-looking human being in this bar. His face is Denzel Washington symmetrical. He looks angry. I open my mouth but I don't know what to say. My fight-or-flight instinct is raging but I'm frozen, unable to react. I know that this situation will not end well, and my mind begins to go to that dark place when he grabs my waist and picks me up. I feel like I'm a child, not sure why an adult is picking me up. Adults don't announce their actions to children, they just do them. What is happening? Are we about to re-create the Johnny and Baby performance from Dirty Dancing?

"Why are you in the girls' bathroom?" I ask mid-air before he lowers me into a wet sink and spreads my legs with his body. His perfect mouth comes close to my face, seething with hate. He is so close, I can feel his sweat and his spit as he begins to speak. "Do you know what rape is?" he hisses into my mouth, grabbing my body. My mind goes blank. A moment later Dylan enters the bathroom.

"DUDE." Though significantly smaller, he grabs Warren's shoulder. Warren puts his tongue in my mouth, then spits on me. Dylan leads him out of the bathroom, but Warren turns and looks back at me, eyes full of rage.

I'm left in a sink. Tasting Warren's Jack and Coke, feeling the damp of people's dirty hands seep through the bottom of my pants. I hop out of the sink, and walk back into the bar to "Tainted Love." Warren and Dylan are nowhere to be seen.

I walk right to Erin and sit on her lap, suddenly sober.

"Eew, you're wet."

"Warren came in the bathroom and asked me if I knew what rape was. He put his tongue in my mouth and then spit on me. Dylan saved me."

Erin's eyes widen, hand to her heart. We would protect each other from this day forward. I was seventeen years old.

Why haven't men stopped talking about us and touching us as though we are their objects?

WHEN I WAS TWELVE and the old man grabbed my vagina on the bus, I felt shame, because I was truly trying to get the attention of a boy and I innately felt as though putting hair spray in my hair had invited the grabbing. And Warren, well, he was just teaching me a lesson, right? I probably shouldn't drink so much and I definitely shouldn't go to the bathroom alone. Girls who do that could get raped.

I've always felt like rape is the invisible vampire I had to run from, if vampires were real and everywhere, all the time. Because I've never been raped, I've always waited for it, wondering where and when. Dark parking lots, elevators, bathrooms, hotel rooms, my front yard, my own bed. I feel it could happen. Anytime. All the time. I'm ready to fight, but I'm almost forty. I'm fucking tired, you guys.

I feel lucky that I've only have a handful of experiences with sexual assault. Of my five closest friends all of us have been assaulted, none of us has been raped. But among our mothers, sisters, friends, there are many who have—on dates, by family members, in the street. This is fucked. And now, a man running to be the President of the United States is making jokes about it. Making jokes about how he can do anything to a woman, he can grab them in the pussy.

Now more than 3 million women have been to my Twitter page and shared stories of strangers, relatives, family friends, close friends, peers, doctors, teachers, police officers, touching them. More than 3 million. The media have picked up on this: Vogue, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Boston Globe, everyone is talking about Trump, but everyone is also talking about the unraveling of secrets that I helped create this afternoon. My head is spinning. By the end of this week, more than 40 million people will read my tweets and share stories. I'll have been on the cover of the New York Times and on TV panels with Professor Anita Hill.

What is the story of women in this country? The neurotic witch hunts, being treated as property. Being kept in the home to raise children and make our men's lives easier. Being denied access to jobs we deserve or the recognition and equal pay for jobs we've done.

In the last one hundred years we've won the right to vote.

We've become leaders in politics, in industry, in media, in the arts.

Why haven't men stopped talking about us and touching us as though we are their objects?

When will it ever stop?

My cat Gertie jumps on the bed. I hold my hand out to pet her. We approach this moment as equals.

I turn off the television. I have to let the world go for now.

I don't know when this will all stop. Or when women will truly be equals. Sometimes I feel so alone, and other times I open my mouth or reach out and find that everyone is feeling the same way I'm feeling. And that the world wants to discuss those feelings, no matter how painful. The sharing is maybe the thing that helps us see that the world isn't really against us after all.

Maybe.

Follow Kelly Oxford on Twitter.

A federal court just blocked Trump's executive order that calls for restricted funding to so-called sanctuary cities, the Associated Press reports. Judge William Orrick of the Northern California District Court issued a temporary injunction on Tuesday, calling the order unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from meddling in state law.

The decision is a blow to President Trump, who is approaching 100 days in office and has so far failed to deliver on a number of his signature campaign promises. Throughout the election, he vowed to penalize sanctuary cities—municipalities that are noncompliant with federal immigration officials—and on January 25, he issued an order called "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States." The order said that cities like New York and Los Angeles were responsible for "immeasurable harm to the American people and to the fabric of our Republic" and called for federal agencies to strip some of their funding.

Since then, at least five cities have sued the government claiming that they could be denied a potentially crippling amount of money. Suits from San Francisco and Santa Clara County were heard Monday in a joint hearing where lawyers centered their arguments on ambiguity––what exactly a "sanctuary city" constitutes and how much money could be taken from them.

The attorneys for San Francisco and Santa Clara County also said the executive order was forcing government officials into making a terrible choice––enforcing an order they thought was unconstitutional or to violating the constitutional rights of people they were being asked to detain.

Judge Orrick apparently didn't take too long to land on a ruling after hearing Monday's arguments, and said that the order unnecessarily infringed on local governments' rights. Meanwhile, Trump's other blocked executive order––his controversial travel ban––remains stalled in court.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

On Tuesday, authorities formally charged three retired NYPD officers and a former city prosecutor for helping get people gun licenses in exchange for a wide range of bribes—from cash to prostitutes to extravagant vacations, BuzzFeed News reports.

The culprits allegedly worked together inside the NYPD's licensing division to run their bribery scheme from 2010 to 2016, CBS News reports. Paul Dean, a former lieutenant, and Robert Espinel, a former officer, are charged with accepting lavish bribes from "expediters" who charge people looking to speed up their firearm licensing.

Gaetano Valastro, a former NYPD detective, allegedly worked as an expediter and bribed Dean and Espinel to move the process along for his clients. Those bribes sometimes came in the form of "cash, paid vacations, personal jewelry, catered parties, guns, gun paraphernalia, and other benefits," according to federal prosecutors. According to DNAinfo, the officers also scored "food, alcohol, parties, dancers, and prostitutes" from other expediters in exchange for their services.

"The alleged corruption pervaded the license division up to its senior level," Joon Kim, acting US attorney for New York's Southern District, said Tuesday.

John Chambers, a former New York assistant district attorney, was also charged Tuesday in the scheme. He allegedly looked to represent people who had issues with getting gun licenses and is accused of bribing David Villanueva—the guy who ran the NYPD's licensing division from 2010 to 2015, but who was arrested back in June of 2016 on corruption charges. According to the criminal complaint, Chambers offered Villanueva a fancy $8,000 watch and tickets to Broadway shows and sports games.

According to BuzzFeed News, Dean, Espinel, and Valastro are facing charges for conspiracy to commit bribery and extortion. Chambers's lawyer, Barry Slotnick, told CBS News that his client will plead not guilty to his conspiracy charges.

This is just the latest development in a long-running corruption investigation of the NYPD's licensing division, launched by the force's internal affairs department and the FBI back in 2013, according to the New York Times. The last big splash came with Villanueva's arrest in 2016, around the same time two top NYPD officers were arrested for accepting bribes in exchange for services unrelated to firearms licensing.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

She's saucy, savvy, and determined to build a fashion empire." So reads the tagline for Girlboss, a new Netflix show loosely based on the story of Sophia Amoruso, founder of clothing company Nasty Gal. The show sticks to the narrative Amoruso created for herself: a quirky, entrepreneurial woman succeeding at a business despite all odds, and succeeding precisely because she's a woman—a Girl Boss!—who understands and believes in other women.

What's not covered? In 2015, former Nasty Gal employees filed a series of lawsuits alleging that the company wasn't the girl power haven Amoroso presented. According to a complaint obtained by Jezebel, the company had fired "four pregnant women, as well as a man about to take paternity leave" in violation of California law. (A Nasty Gal spokesperson called the accusations "defamatory" in a statement to Jezebel, adding that the lawsuits were "frivolous and without merit.") In subsequent anonymous interviews, other employees spoke of an atmosphere of fear, where layoffs were abundant and Amoruso was described as "vengeful."

With the rising popularity and visibility of feminism in pop culture—and the movement's increasing lucrativeness—the narrative featured in Girlboss has become fairly widespread. Increasingly, we're hearing celebratory stories about women rising to corporate power by branding themselves and their companies as feminist, and framing both their products and their workplaces as hubs for empowerment and progressive values. But, as several high profile-scandals in recent months have shown, the figure of the self-proclaimed feminist CEO is much more complex than most breathless media coverage would suggest. What good is designating a business as feminist if it doesn't treat workers fairly?

Continue reading on Broadly.

For years, it's been obvious that poppers aren't exactly the smartest chemical to vigorously huff. It sometimes seems like a new article or piece of research emerges every month emphasizing their potential consequences—eyesight damage, increased risk of contracting HIV, and rarely, sudden death.

But many of us gay men are more than willing to glaze over the dangers of our colourful little bottles for their "bedroom enhancements." I'm as guilty as any of enjoying the burst of head heat they impart. All kinds of aromas can have adverse effects on your body—just try walking into a Bath & Body Works without vomiting.

Because of the risks, getting your hands on poppers carries stigma and red tape. Poppers aren't easy to come by in many cities and states in the US; their sale is illegal in Canada and they were almost banned last year in the UK. But here in the good old US of Haayyyy, you can still buy poppers online and in adult stores—IF you know what to ask for, because "poppers" are illegal here.

But video head cleaner, room odorizer, leather cleaner and a whole laundry list of other uses for the tiny amber bottle of amyl nitrates isn't.

These days, every huff of the drug I love brings a concurrent pang of regret. And as I wonder what the hell I'm doing to my body, I'm faced with the question: is it time to finally put my poppers collection to their intended use? What else am I supposed to do with dozens of lube-sticky amber bottles, after all, if not odorize my rooms?

To answer that, I decided to roll up my sleeves, grab some poppers and get elbow deep… into a Sunday spring cleaning marathon.

CLEANING MY CLOCK

I have two prized vintage possessions in my household: a Hamilton brass mantle clock and a 10 ml bottle of poppers under the brand name Fisticuffs, discreetly labeled as "clock cleaner" in fine print. And with the Hamilton covered in grime and dust residue, my clock was well overdue for a polishin'. I dabbed a few cotton swabs into the Fisticuffs and used it to get deep in crevices and corners, and what do you know—the Fisticuffs was fantastic at removing old tarnish and achieving an original factory-like shine. Colour me impressed!

WHAT A CROCK!

Like most Americans, Sundays in my household are all about watching Long Island Medium and Crockpotting. When I upgraded my Crockpot to a larger stainless steel model earlier this year, I was able to tackle recipes I couldn't fit into my old model—but over time, splatters would stick to the outer stainless steel housing and leave dull, crusty marks that aren't easily removed. So I put some of my aerosol Jungle Juice "cleaning solution" to the task. I spritzed a couple of trouble spots, and after letting them set for about 10 seconds (and enjoying a delicious shiver from the subsequent headrush), I rubbed them out with a cotton ball. The "cleaning solution" truly did its job—I could nearly see my reflection after. Go to hell, Martha Stewart!

LEATHER FETISH

For my next experiment, I chose an off-label bottle sold to me under the pretense of "leather cleaner" from a local leather/sex shop. Earlier this year, I bought a vintage leather jacket off Craigslist, sold by the roommate of a man who'd just been sent to prison—the good stuff. It was pristine with hand-painted artwork, but I wanted to remove a reference to a street gang added by the original owner. In an attempt to spot clean this otherwise hardcore punk masterpiece, I dipped a Q-tip into the unlabeled bottle and delicately dabbed off "San Pedro Scumbags" like it was Photoshop's Magic Eraser tool. Much to my surprise, it actually worked as a leather cleaner without discolouring or visibly damaging the area. Maybe poppers really did start as a leather cleaner, and some fisting pig decided to take a whiff while cleaning his chaps? That guy is probably blind and/or dead now, so the world will never know!

RUNNER'S HIGH

I was recently disappointed with the rapid discolouration of my new running shoes—I rarely run outdoors, but that white trim quickly collects scuffs and marks from walking in general. I then took a bottle of Rush—the Nike of poppers—to my black and white Nikes. A very fast swipe quickly removed any evidence that these shoes have been used in a Planet Fitness. Perhaps they exclusively grace the pillowy, spotless track of the Beverly Hills Equinox…? I'll never tell.

VIDEO HEADS

One of the most common aliases for poppers is "video head cleaner," for some reason. I don't recall my father ever prying open our VCR with a screwdriver and treating the mechanisms with a bottle of Locker Room—I'm pretty sure there was a simple cassette cleaner you could pop-in and let it automatically run a short cycle—but with every other poppers brand sold as "VCR cleaner," hell, it's gotta be good.

I have an old VCR in storage (for emergencies!), so I followed a simple YouTube tutorial on how to open and clean its heads with rubbing alcohol. I went with a tall bottle of Blue Thunder 150 "video head cleaner" that I initially christened on a trip to Palm Springs. I gently rubbed the head of the unit with a cotton swab, which then transferred black residue onto the cotton—clearly it was doing something. Ideally I'd test a cassette tape to see if it enhanced the performance of the machine, but I can't remember the last time I saw one in my apartment. But this machine smells as clean as I felt after my trip to the desert.

DAVID'S 50 HUFF WEEKEND

In place of a VHS, though, I decided to try cleaning the next wave of home entertainment technology: Digital Video Discs. There are all kinds of DVD spray cleaners and wipes on the market, but I went with the latest addition to my home collection of nitrates, Jungle Juice Black Label. I dabbed a little bit on a cotton ball and made gentle swirls around a copy of Dawson's 20 Load Weekend my good friend Bryan gave to me. As I watched fingerprints and dust from improper storage and handling instantly vanish from the reflective layer, I knew I'd made Dawson proud.

While I was able to make fantastic domestic use of these potions—many of which feature advisory flame illustrations and other general warnings on their adorable labels—I couldn't forget the fact that they're mostly found on the same shelves as buttplugs, XXX movies and flavoured lubricants, rather than at your local Home Depot. And despite those potential vision problems and other health effects, I know a lot more people who ended up in the hospital due to contaminated lettuce than anything to do with poppers, and I know a LOT of piggy bottoms.

If poppers aren't your jam, that's cool. And if you're put off by the research-based evidence that they'll possibly murder your eyeballs, at least now you'll have other alternatives for your leftovers before tossing them in the trash.

Follow David Dancer on Instagram.

As President Obama was leaving office, he imparted (roughly) the following piece of wisdom to Donald Trump: Good luck with North Korea. For years, his administration had been engaging in what's known as "strategic patience"—foreign policy speak for steering clear. The idea was that by ignoring Kim Jong-un, America might actually convince the despot to stop building a nuclear arsenal, or at least make him less dead-set on acquiring one.

But that approach was probably far too sanguine, if not downright naive. After all, it's written right in the North Korean constitution that the nation is governed by the idea of "songun," or putting the military above all else. Paranoia about foreign invaders is the principle that justifies the quality of life in the so-called Hermit Kingdom. By telling citizens that their land is constantly about to be attacked by a malevolent foreign power, and that preventing an invasion is of paramount importance, the government has been able to invest almost all of the money it receives from Chinese trade deals into high-grade weapons while its citizenry struggles in poverty.

Songun was on full display earlier this month when North Korea celebrated its founder's birthday. The holiday, which is known as the Day of the Sun, is usually an occasion to display Pyongyang's latest military hardware. This year, observers reported the addition of two new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) canisters, which promptly put much of the planet on edge. No one really knows what's in the canisters, so it's impossible to say if the missiles have the capacity to reach the United States (or almost any other given country) with a nuclear weapon onboard. Meanwhile, North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests over the past 11 years, and many experts are bracing for a sixth.

The immense volatility of the situation became clear when NBC News reported earlier this month that the US was willing to hammer North Korea if it believed the country was about to carry out another test, followed several days later by North Korea's warning of a "super-mighty preemptive strike" if provoked. Many speculated that if a sixth nuclear test were to occur, it would likely take place on Tuesday––the 85th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's military––though the event was marked instead by a large, live-ammo artillery drill. Still, Trump somewhat ominously announced on Monday that all 100 Senators will meet on Wednesday to discuss the developing situation at the White House.

The distrust between America and North Korea dates back to the middle of the 20th century and, of course, the Korean War. As part of the armistice agreement signed in 1953, the US pledged to always have South Korea's back, and to keep troops in the area in the event of a conflict. This has left America in something of a quandary, according to Rodger Baker, a political forecaster and strategist who focuses on North Korea for the military intel firm Strafor. "The US and the North Koreans can't fully trust each other," he told me. "The North Koreans never fully believed the US won't attack them, and the US never fully believes that the North Koreans have any intent to give up weapons. Meanwhile, the North Koreans feel they need the weapons because they can't trust the United States, and the United States says they can't talk to North Korea unless they get rid of the weapons."

Baker says that there was one instance in 1994 when relations with North Korea nearly flipped. That year, when the United States was on the brink of nuclear war with the country, ex-President Jimmy Carter ended the crisis by taking a three-hour trip down the Taedong River with Kim il Sung. "I think that had Kim il Sung not died in his summer house that year, that we'd probably not be in this position now," says Baker. "I think we would have seen a unified if not confederated Korea."

The next concerted US attempt to improve ties with North Korea came in the form of the so-called Six Party Talks, which were held alongside Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea between 2003 and 2007. The mass meeting was kind of a mess that resulted in well over a dozen bilateral agreements. But they too deteriorated, along with the health of then-leader Kim Jong-il.

"We were getting close to the end of Kim Jong-il––he had been sick and then came back in power and was looking for succession," says Baker. "He realized he had to have some real strength to give his successor because none of his sons were prepared to lead the country."

Back in June, Trump talked up how he would pull a Jimmy Carter, despite the fact that the US government does not have any formal diplomatic relations with North Korea these days. During a rally in Atlanta, he made fun of Hillary Clinton for being a "rank amateur" who didn't know how to talk to people––part of the larger narrative he spun during his campaign about being an expert negotiator who could apply business tactics to foreign policy. Instead of using tired old tactics, he said, a President Trump would open a dialogue with Kim Jong-un over a hamburger at the White House.

"That's not gonna happen," said Stephan Haggard, a professor of global policy and strategy at UC San Diego. "The hamburgers thing was cheap talk."

The absurdity of Trump's statement notwithstanding, Haggard said it wouldn't make much sense for the United States to just up and recognize North Korea on the world stage. For one, there's the optics of legitimizing a territory you've previously insisted is a bad actor. Second, it's just bad strategy to give someone what they want without any promise they're going to hold up their end of the bargain.

"The thing is, if the US recognizes first, first of all you've got a problem of a president recognizing a country that he's said is an absolute mortal threat, which is politically kind of a non-starter," he told me. "Meanwhile, there's also this sort of political problem that the North Koreans might negotiate this and then drag out the nuclear negotiations forever, and so you've recognized North Korea and you're back where you were, where they haven't done what they need to do."

There is, after all, precedent for this: That Jimmy Carter sailing trip in 1994 paved the way for what's known as "Agreed Framework." Under that policy, Bill Clinton gave North Korea two nuclear power plants in exchange for the country freezing their weapons program, and it took the US eight years to find out Kim Jong-il ignored his end of the bargain.

Another touchstone of Trump's campaign was claiming that he would be tough on the Chinese government, which he previously called "currency manipulators." But earlier this month, Trump invited President Xi Jingping down to Mar-a-Lago for a visit. While they had steak and pan-seared sol rather than hamburgers, the two discussed trade and the rising threat of North Korea.

"I think what's happening is that the president is giving Xi Jinping a couple of months to see what he can do in terms of ratcheting up pressure, making a diplomatic approach to the North Koreans and so on with the ultimate objective of getting them back into some sort of formalized talks about denuclearization," says Haggard.

In the past, economic pressure from the United States has not worked, even as North Korea suffered a famine from 1994 to 1998 that killed millions. Haggard says it's possible that things might have changed in the decades since, as the country has taken on big construction projects in Pyongyang, which requires importing building materials from China. Today, just less than 90 percent of North Korea's external trade is with China, and the key to denuclearization might come from exploiting that relationship.

Haggard believes that nothing significant will happen for at least a few months. If no major developments come out of the Mar-a-Lago chats, he suspects America might try to impose sanctions on Chinese firms that do business in North Korea. The other option, he says, is to go kinetic, a.k.a. use military force, after a calculation of what North Korean targets might be hit and which ones the US can afford to lose.

"North Korea is not Syria, and it's not Afghanistan, and there is obviously opportunity for the North Koreans to retaliate against things of value to the US, whether US forces, or South Korea itself, or Japan," the professor said. "So the ability to go down the military route is really a function of your tolerance for risk."

In more recent years, pulling out of South Korea entirely has been presented by some skeptics as a self-preservation tactic. By getting out now, they argue, America could potentially avoid being drawn into a war that would not affect actual American citizens all that much. That assumes, however, that a war in the region wouldn't escalate to a global crisis and that North Korea might not take advantage of US capitulation to sell a nuke to an even more unpredictable enemy like ISIS. And besides that, military strategist Baker says that such a withdrawal would destabilize the whole region—something that is definitely not in America's best interest.

A huge part of that risk would be economic, he explained. For instance: an active war zone in the Yellow Sea would likely close up Chinese ports, stop shipments off the west coast of Japan, and freeze all the technology exports coming out of South Korea. So looking at the situation holistically, he says, the US is extremely unlikely to do anything unless the North Koreans strike first.

"Right now they don't have the proven capacity to be able to strike the United States," he told me. "They say it all the time, but they also said they tested a hydrogen bomb and at one point Kim Jong-il had 100 holes in one in a single golf round."

What we do know is that they can hit South Korea, most of Japan, and Beijing. If any of those targets were hit, the US would likely do anything necessary to take out North Korea's front line artillery, air defense, and mobile missiles by using cruise missiles and submarines in the region, aircraft carriers, and long-range bombers currently located in Guam.

It probably won't come to that. Baker says he doesn't want to be dismissive about the possibility of war, but that all the recent jockeying is more likely to indicate a relatively mundane shift in policy than the onset of cataclysmic destruction. What he jokingly calls 'strategic impatience' will probably be Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking the UN to re-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism on Friday.

"Things could happen," he says. "There's a lot of tension, and a lot of misunderstanding. Those types of things can trigger the unexpected or the unfortunate, but right now I would say the overall situation is such that they're really gonna do whatever they can to prove that they've exhausted the diplomatic and financial means before they finally resort to military means."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Throughout the 1970s, John Ingham was heralded as one of the most important music journalists in England. The first person to ever interview the Sex Pistols in 1976, Ingham (who wrote under the name "Jonh" Ingham) helped to bring a nascent scene of just a handful of bands and maybe 50 audience members to readers across the UK. His new book of photography, Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness, out Tuesday from Anthology Editions, is an electrifying snapshot of punk's halcyon days in London. It collects Ingham's personal photos of bands like the Damned, the Clash, and the youngsters of the fabled Bromley Contingent.

In the book's foreword, punk historian Jon Savage points out that the bulk of the photos were taken in the span of only ten days. During that brief November in 1976, beginning with sparsely attended performances by the Sex Pistols in art schools and seedy bars before they were even calling themselves punk, the ferocious sentiment of the music and culture—raw, fast, in your face—spread as a much-needed shot in the arm for Britain's youth, who were graduating from school with bleak job prospects and a general atmosphere of doom and malaise. Through word of mouth and pivotal gigs like the Sex Pistols' legendary performance in Manchester, which was responsible for forging bands like Joy Division, the Buzzcocks, and the Smiths, the scene exploded into the musical rite of passage it is now for young people everywhere. This massive and seminal leap is beautifully captured through Ingham's photographs and lovingly pieced together in this hardcover edition.

Just before the book's release, I spoke to Ingham about the earliest days of the London scene, transforming punk into propaganda, and feeling everything's over and terrible in your 20s.

VICE: What was going on in your life when you started taking these photos?
John Ingham: I was 25 in 1976. My teenage years were spent in the US, in California, so I kind of got the whole psychedelic band thing, but I felt too young for it. Then later, when punk showed up and I had moved to England, I felt too old for it. I moved to London in 1972 and was writing regularly for the NME and then Sounds. In 1975, I started getting very upset with what was going on musically. The big bands were not very good, and they weren't producing any new records. I was looking around, seeing a lot of new bands and not seeing anybody who was very interesting. Then I read a review of the Sex Pistols and I thought the name was the best name I had seen for a band in ages.

Was seeing the Sex Pistols play your entry into what was going on? How did you end up being the first person to interview them?
When I first saw the Sex Pistols in early April of 1976, it was in a strip club in Soho. It was immediately apparent—I mean, John Rotten was just amazing. There was no denying he had just an incredible amount of charisma. It was fairly primitive, but you could tell there was something there. I talked to Malcolm McLaren, who was their manager, first. He didn't call it punk, but he gave a whole manifesto about breaking free from the 60s. He was pretty much telling me what I was already thinking, so I was converted really early on in the conversation. Then he gave this big flourish like he was giving me some rare audience, and he said, "OK, you can interview them." We did it about two weeks later, and that was the first interview the band had ever done.

What was going on in England at the time that allowed the youth to easily identify with the frustration and sentiment of punk? Economically, the country was not doing well. People were graduating from school and not having jobs to go to. The IRA were on a bombing campaign in the UK, so they blew up some restaurants and social places. They were delivering a lot of letter bombs. You were almost in a civil war. So, people were kind of graduating, they had no job, and if they got a job, it was something like opening letter bombs. I mean, for Mick Jones, during "Career Opportunities," he says, "I won't open letter bombs for you," because that was his job. He got hired at a company as the kind of intern, and his job was to open any letter that looked suspicious. People were fed up and there was a kind of grayness to the country. There was just a ton of frustration, and the Clash articulated it very clearly.

You had been doing a lot of writing before, but what felt so mobilizing about punk at the time? Well, for one, it was a new generation of people. There was about a group of 50 or 60 people at this point, and everyone was somewhere between 18 and 22 at best. It was like any of those things where it starts out really small and secret, but grows into something really big. When the Clash showed up, that was just like another whole level. That was when I sort of started thinking I wanted to contribute to the movement, rather than just being an observer. I was talking to Mick Jones about that feeling fairly early on, and he made the point that people do what they can. Some people manage, some people play the music, some people make the clothes, and some people write about it. I consciously decided to write propaganda and try and write in the way that somebody that was 15 or 16 would think, This is the most exciting thing I've ever read about, I must go and see it.

What motivated you to start taking these photos and documenting the scene?
For the longest period, it was just the Sex Pistols and no one else. A professional photographer named Ray Stevenson, who was McLaren's friend, was photographing them all the time. When the Clash started up—they were just amazing onstage. They were dressed in a way that looked like Jackson Pollock had poured paint all over their clothes. And that's why I picked up a camera, and that's why I shot in colour as well. The professional photographers only shot black-and-white because if you took colour photos, no one would have published it and printed it. So I was only shooting to record it, I had no thought of getting it published or trying to sell it. I've been told by someone who looked through the book, "I've seen every collection that there is, and yours is effectively the only colour around of the Clash."

What were those couple of months of early shows like? Did it seem as though everyone was trying to get everything together before the scene fell apart?
I felt like it was starting to take off when I went up to Manchester to see the Pistols. It was in a small hole on top of the main auditorium of Manchester called the Lesser Trade Hall. It held about 300 people or something, and it was about half full. You find out later that the people who then turned into the Smiths and Joy Division and everything else were all in the audience. That was the first time they played "Anarchy [in the UK]," and the place went absolutely nuts. That's what Malcolm was sort of working toward. He wanted to sort of build this big movement.

We were always down there when bands were sound-checking and that. But at one show the owner of the venue, Ron Watts, said, "You know, there's gonna be about 300 people here tonight." Everyone was sort of like, "You're kidding! No, impossible! You must be joking." And he said, "The phone's been ringing constantly for three days about tonight." I thought it was kind of gonna probably take all of 1977 and it would have this kind of slow growth. Now, overnight everybody knows about punk rock.

I love that the book sort of finally ends with shots of a giant crowd watching the Sex Pistols. It really shows the contrast in scale, from the beginning to where it ended up by the end of the year.
What fascinated me about that night was, it was an invite-only because they were shooting it for a TV show—like, a current-affairs show. And yet half the people there you'd never seen for a current-affairs show, like ever. There's a guy with a long hair and an overcoat, and the guy that's on the cover of the book—never saw them before. The two girls who are handcuffed together in the black leather and plastic—never seen them before, never saw them again. All these people had kind of come out of somewhere, and that's what prompted how the book ends. Because a lot of the original people were going, "Oh, look at these guys! I mean, who are these people? It's terrible now!" I was kind of shocked that people who were 20, 21, were so kind of pessimistic and cynical. It's a very young age to kind of think the world is finished.

Scroll down for more photos.

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Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness is available in bookstores and online from Anthology Editions.

Offred spends a lot of time in limbo. She catalogs her bedroom in the Commander's house, waiting for her daily walk to the market; she kneels in the parlor for the ceremony where she acts as sexual proxy for the Commander's Wife. It's enforced stillness, designed to numb, and even though Offred loathes these new-world horrors, she swallows them in order to survive. There's no point playing the hero—she's just meant to warn us.

It was crucial that the terrifying inertia Offred projects had to remain at the forefront of Hulu's TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. A more frightening notion than rape or death is Aunt Lydia promising the Handmaids that "this will become ordinary," and before getting to anything else, the show had to project an understanding of how frightening that notion is. So the premiere episode, "Offred," is exactly what it needs to be: a claustrophobic, unsettling introduction to a nightmare we need to see.

Within that sense of waiting, Offred illuminates the past and present tense. Her life now is a white-winged cap and platitudes and ritual rape; her life then (when she was known as June) passes in idyllic flickers, an unreal wash of light that lingers in her room like a dream she can't shake. There are some neat parallels between these temporal settings, but there's not much time spent explaining how we got from there to here.

Instead, director Reed Morano suffocates us with the present-day regime. Every close-up is a pathology study with Vermeer lighting, with women so imprisoned that we have to get this close to them in order to see them feel. We inhabit every unbearable second of limbo: magazine-spread houses with books under lock and key, bedrooms with nothing sharp in eyesight, the endless and wordless rape, and the constant sidelong glances that convey everything this world has choked out of women.

No wonder Elisabeth Moss, the most watchful actress on TV, is the show's anchor. The sheer intensity of her regard propels us through her struggle not to crack, as well as her refusal to lose her personality to fear. She shocks herself with her viciousness at the Particicution (terrified to buy into the Gilead bullshit for one second), but she also clocks Nick's interest from ten paces, determined to get some of her own back in any way possible. Simmering anger is a trademark for Moss, but she's truly arresting here; her throat spasming at the Commander's pre-Scripture cough is a full-page monologue.

She heads a fantastic cast. Samira Wiley's so sharply bright she casts a shadow over the present; Alexis Bledel is a wry surprise; Madeline Brewer plays Janine as a YA protagonist for whom everything's gone hopelessly sour. Amanda Brugel's Rita is the Schrodinger's Cat of sympathy, while national treasure Ann Dowd single-handedly holds down the regime change. And Yvonne Strahovski's nervous spite—her character is at the top of the oppression pyramid and still has nothing—connects her to Offred almost despite herself. (This in particular feels like a canny casting choice—she's a generation older in the novel, but casting Strahovski makes it clear Gilead isn't the result of a generational divide. Everyone's young enough to know better. It happened anyway.)

We know the plot will thicken, but the drawn-out dread of this episode really works; the monotony of these humiliations is almost as bad as their reality. The deepest horror lies in how intricate they are. All the rituals and their handy Scriptural justifications came ready-made—the men who enacted them knew exactly what they wanted women to submit to. And since the biggest threat to this world order is women working together, the episode gives its breathing room to the ways Gilead makes sure they can't: the petty rivalries between castes, the rewards for resentment. ("They do that really well," Ofglen admits. "Make us distrust each other.") It works; every beat of connection—a two-sentence joke with someone you know, a snatch of news, a kind word—has the vicious relief of a deep breath. As a viewer, it's terrifying how soon you get used to it.

The real scare, of course, is how familiar everything seems. Margaret Atwood has repeatedly pointed out that Gilead isn't an unimaginable landscape—it's just theocracy, the sort of government where men, say, refuse to meet women without their wife present and pretend they're honoring their wives instead of refusing women access to power. The Handmaid's Tale is terrifying because we know it's someone's primer, leaked too early; in its moments of stunned inaction and the glimpse at how quickly oppression swallows a nation, it might be the timeliest TV show ever made. ("We cannot hide from that ugliness," says Aunt Lydia, and for once, she's right.) It's hard to watch, and it won't get easier, but it's also impossible to look away.

Before We Go:

• For a show that otherwise has an iron grip on tone, that ending credits music is A Choice.
• The sound design is incredible. Everything from flour to breath is pushed to the fore as if distorted by the white wings, and she's never alone: bursts of radio static, the house's floorboards.
• The visual impact of red robes and white caps clustered around that Guardian feels like something we'll be seeing a lot.
• The voiceover's fairly deftly handled, though I suspect it will be used less as we get caught up on the upheaval beneath everyone's Play-doh-through-grit-teeth platitudes.
• I'll be very interested to see how the diverse casting plays out. In the novel, Gilead genocided the "Children of Ham." Given the deep connections between misogyny and racism, the diversity of this cast suggests a fertility situation so dire even the old saw of eugenics was set aside. It's the kind of thing a TV show has time for that a movie wouldn't, and it will make for fascinating tension if the show plans to get into that. If not, well, at least we have Samira Wiley.

Follow Genevieve Valentine on Twitter.

Two women from Papua New Guinea flew halfway around the world this week to tell their stories of sexual assault at a Canadian mining giant's shareholders' meeting — but when they arrived at the meeting, they say they were told they couldn't speak.

Everlyn Gaupe and Joycelyn Mandi allege they were raped years ago by security guards employed by the Porgera Joint Venture mine, which is co-owned by Barrick Gold and Chinese company Zijin Mining Group. The company has compensated about 130 women, including Gaupe, although she says her payment was not enough. Mandi also sought compensation, but didn't receive any. The women claim that rapes, beatings, and environmental contamination are still happening at the mine's dumping site today.

Read more on VICE News. 

Trump officials unveiled a one-page outline of the president's tax plan Wednesday, promising that significant cuts across the board would enable the economy to thrive—but Democrats have slammed the plan as a "gift" to the uber-rich, the New York Times reports.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Director Gary Cohn discussed Trump's plan—which will now be debated and tweaked for about a year—at a White House press briefing. They told reporters Trump wants to slash the number of income tax brackets from seven to just three: 10, 25, and 35 percent. As it stands, individuals can be taxed up to 39.6 percent of what they make.

Additionally, Trump wants to shrink the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and place a "one-time tax" on the billions corporations store overseas, plying them to bring it back to America. He's looking to apply that 15 percent rate on corporations to entities like hedge funds, partnerships, and real estate businesses—that last one being a major source of income for Trump himself.

His administration hopes to eliminate most tax deductions, only allowing taxpayers to deduct contributions to charity and interest on their mortgages. Plus, he's looking to get rid of the estate tax—what the government takes from deceased people before it's passed onto their heirs—and the Obama-era alternative minimum tax.

All in all, it's a sweeping series of tax cuts for individuals and corporations that Mnuchin called "the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country," according to CNN. He said Trump's administration hopes to have it enacted before the end of the year, though didn't say how the cuts would be paid for.

According to a review from the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—an independent nonprofit based in DC—Trump's plan could cost anywhere from $3 to $7 trillion and actually "drive up the federal debt, harming economic growth instead of boosting it."

Congressional Republicans are set to release their own tax plan soon, and some seem to be skeptical about Trump's. Many Democrats see it as a major gift to the wealthiest people and companies in America, a set of policies to slash taxes without any framework to make up for lost revenue.

Speaking with the Times, Ted Lieu, a Democrat representative from California, called the plan "mathematically impossible." Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said it would "explode the deficit." And Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic Party, said he was worried that it could significantly benefit Trump's own business interests.

"Trump's latest proposal is another gift to corporations and billionaires like himself," Perez told the Times. "Trump must release his tax returns, as millions of Americans are demanding, before Congress can consider any Trump tax plan. We must know how much Trump would personally financially benefit from his own proposal."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

The initial instinct after a messy break up is to purge. Tearfully erase the person you once considered your soulmate from your life forever. That means getting rid of everything your ex wore, drank, slept on, and ate for breakfast. It's the natural first step towards banishing those painful last months of unraveling compatibility. It's an ex-partner exorcism.

But there are always exceptions, aren't there? The human heart is weak. Birthday presents, cute handwritten letters from the honeymoon phase, weird in-joke objects that you guys purchased back when you were happy together. You'll probably hold onto them for the next twenty years, for no logical reason.

We asked six people to share their relationship relics, and explain why letting go sometimes means keeping things.

Jasmine, 28

VICE: What have we got here?
Jasmine: A very well-loved teddy bear.

Tell us your relationship story.
We got together in school and lasted about a year or so. He was undoubtedly parent-approved material—doting, respectful, and frighteningly intelligent. We had an absurd amount of fun together, while somehow avoiding the typical teenage relationship pandemonium. We were both uncommonly pragmatic, given our age. Our level-headed love was honoured with this teddy bear. It was on my shelf the day we broke up, and it was still there for many days after. After a while I had to take a second to remember who had gifted me the bear. In my current home, it is easily my oldest possession, so I think its value lies in the sense of comfort it gives. I would be lying if I said I haven't cuddled it recently.

Samuel, 29

VICE: What did you keep from your past relationship, Sam?
Sam: A box filled with things: a mug, a puzzle with a love note written on it, a promise ring, and a handwritten card.

Tell us the story.
I had done something wrong. We had some sort of argument. So she got me this mug. There's a card too, which says, "Thank you for being the loveliest." The box also has my promise ring in it. I stopped wearing it in 2014 because it broke and I never got it fixed. We both had one. I bought them from a jeweller in Fremantle. There is a puzzle in here as well, I was always lousy at doing it. I was one of those kids who would try to bash the puzzle pieces into each other.

I keep a box of things from 2014. 2014 was a really hard year for us, because it was the beginning of the end. The entire year was a slow protracted split. We'd been together for five years at that point. We'd lived together basically for four. We'd moved across the country together, we were starting a new life in a new city together. That has its own challenges. I was working a job that I really wasn't well-suited for. I was a really difficult person to live with during that time. And I think she copped the brunt of that, unfortunately.

We got together when we were 22, 23. It was true love for both of us. It was that thing where the sun shines brighter, you walk a little lighter, and things start falling into place. It just feels like you're on top of the world, you know? All the cliches ring true. I found I really bought into that.

We didn't split up because we didn't love each other. We loved each other a lot. Even to this day, she's still the love of my life. And she always will be.

Elisa, 29

VICE: What's this, Elisa?
Elisa: Hand-stitched photographs of skies and flowers that have been dead for two years.

What's the story behind the artwork?
Elisa: We're both artists and when we met, he was doing this work that was very difficult to realise. He was using a really ancient way to print on cement. He had spent years and years trying to learn how to do it. But it was just too hard and at one point he said that he didn't want to have anything to do with photography anymore.

Photography was something that we shared, something we both loved….I started this project and, while I was still working on it, we broke up. Afterwards, it became a way to keep the both of us together, even though the relationship wasn't there anymore. It was about not denying that there is a link between us. Even so, I had to take a break, for a few months, because it was just too painful as a work.

Prudence, 24

VICE: A bike?
Prudence: Yes, a (slightly stolen) custom-made road bike.

What's the story behind it?
Prudence: As a 19-year-old getting wooed by a 31-year-old I felt special and grown up and interesting. He in turn was also so much more interesting than the high school boys I'd known in the past or others my age. With a considerable age difference there's a bit of awe that comes into play as this person has lived a whole lot more life and has so much more to show than yourself and, in my case, he was a part of a flashy cocktail bar scene that I was fascinated by.

As time went on the scene started to show some cracks as late nights, party friends, and an unhealthy amount of alcohol start to lose their sparkle. Somewhere along the journey, probably by the time I had realised I couldn't change his ways, we bought a cat. Classic situation of getting a pet to keep your relationship together. We didn't even make it 12 months with the cat before the cracks became too big to fix and I found myself calling the tall blonde backpacker whose "sofa" he'd slept on increasingly often to politely ask if I was right and they were fucking. No surprises, I was right, and he and I did a good job of avoiding each other for the weekend as I made arrangements to move out.

Come Monday morning I was hauling all my belongings into a friend's car without any real plan about where to live or what to do. With full knowledge and full disappointment that he was going to keep the cat I asked my girlfriend what I should do with the bike that was "available for me to use" and before I knew it, it was in the boot and we were sitting in traffic. I mean he got to keep our really amazing cat, so.

Ibrahim, 29

VICE: What's this?
Ibrahim: A book, The Secret Language of Relationships.

Tell us the story behind it.
I first met Adam on the set of a TV ad for car insurance. I was still coming to terms with being gay at the time, I wasn't fully open about it. We chatted a bit and there was some footsie going on but that was all. The second time we hung out at his place. My heart was racing. All the feels where there. He's a very spontaneous guy, very creative. All of that was definitely part of the appeal.

I remember driving home that night and being in a bit of a haze, a lovey dovey haze. From then on, we started seeing each other quite regularly. We bonded over music, over film. Till this day, I still listen to some of those songs. It was around the time Plastic Beaches came out and he had been to the concert and I remember him playing "On Melancholy Hill" to me. To this day, I listen to that song with affection.

This was during the summer, so it was quite warm. The days were beautiful and long. I remember a golden hue around everything. It was a very romantic time. Still, it was a bit of a fling, a summer thing, and it didn't last long. And yet, I was in love with him. Then he left me, broke my heart a little bit.

He gave me this after we broke up. I think it's pretty symbolic of our relationship because we were both given to flights of fancy. We both have a romantic conception of things. Relationships don't always have to be romantic, they can be something that persists beyond that. And I think we have that. We still have a bond. I don't think we're ever not going to be present in each others' lives.

Evie, 24

VICE: What's your object?
Evie: A bronze sculpture of a hand.

It's beautiful! Tell us more.
We met at university, both studying a degree in illustration. I thought, and still do now, that he is the funniest guy, I think that's what I instantly liked. He was also the first boyfriend I had whose interests in drawing and painting aligned with my own, so it was basically an added bonus that I liked his work and could talk about it. We did a lot of drawing together, it was awesome.

Towards the end of the relationship I felt I liked him a lot more than he did me. So when I went overseas by myself it solidified the feeling that I was too needy and greedy about attention or affirmation. I slept with someone else and after drawing it out for too long once I returned, we broke up. He gave me this bronze hand for Christmas a few years back, even though we agreed on a strict no present policy. His dad cast the hand in bronze, it weighs a lot but looks like it is light. I like the muscle-y fingers on it.

I kept it because it is a great object to have and hold, it makes me want to make 3D work. It's inspiring.

Follow Sami on Twitter

There are three battles in this episode of The Handmaid's Tale: They involve a birth, a game of Scrabble, and a cookie.

There's always something otherworldly about childbirth—Offred notes it as the Handmaids file in to help Janine during labour—but in Gilead, it becomes an almost supernatural event. Childbirth is so fragile that rules bend for it; handmaids can talk to each other without scrutiny, and make connections without punishment. (Offred's casual "Hey" is so powerful that the one word seems to bind her to Janine.)

That sense of the supernatural is only reinforced by the Wives recreating the labour downstairs—with bonus harpist—as if the pretense of the work will magically make the claim to motherhood legitimate. (What's oppression without a little classism?) Everybody knows it's bullshit: Offred snickers outright, and even Aunt Lydia flinches. But within the frantic editing of Janine's delivery, Reed Morano's camera allows the Wives a moment of real feeling. They know it's bullshit, too, but with so little else to hope for, are we surprised they bought in to some magical thinking?

Another reason they buy in: when it's over, they win. Offred has to guide Janine's stare away from what she can't have and gather her in. Around them, a fortress of red and white, the Handmaids hold on to each other.

That energy is everywhere, with desperate, hesitant lurches toward connection. There's Offred and Jeanine, and then there's Offred and Serena Joy. For Offred's sake, Ofglen taps the intel network gathered in Warren's house (behind those white wings, Handmaids have gotten very good at seeing). June even gets the satisfaction of a power game with Nick—a beat of triumph over a kneecap.

And then, Scrabble.

Amid the Commander's Victorian mad-scientist office with its obscene library is one of the most gripping battle scenes in recent memory: a miniature illustration of male privilege and oppression. There's a reason Offred invokes a horror movie just before she knocks: she's meeting a monster.

In this room, she's not her given name, June; instead, she's Offred. The Commander is part of the power structure that shapes the nation while Offred is separated from her daughter, forbidden to read, discouraged from speaking, and all his. If the aim really was just more babies, in vitro could do the job—but there's a reason why rich men get an extra woman.

Joseph Fiennes walks an incredibly difficult line here. The Commander himself might genuinely mean well. "In here," he promises, "we might be able to bend the rules just a bit." But what he doesn't understand, or chooses not to understand, is that it's not a gift to her. Those are rules he's responsible for, and she could be tortured for coming or for ignoring his order. There is no choice except to obey, and yet he treats it as if she took him up on an invitation. The Scrabble game gets offered like a gift—like a connection—and as the wash of letters overwhelms her, he gazes at her and smiles. When you take away everything someone has, you get to feel benevolent for handing out scraps.

It's almost funny, except when it's infuriating. We can see #NotAllCommanders coming a mile away, and so does Offred. But what can she do? Nothing.

That repeated Nothing is the real battlefield. It's the limit of her options when someone gives her an order; it's how much she knows about what happened to people she loves; it's what she becomes during the Ceremony, drifting, thinking about her old car. She's surrounded by a moat of Nothing, dying by a thousand cuts.

And so the biggest battle of the episode is when one of the Wives simpers, "Is it breach, dear? Did you hear that word?" and then offers her a cookie.

Elisabeth Moss is magnetic here: for a moment, and visibly against her wishes, her dignity implodes. She does want a cookie—it's one of the thousands of things she can't have, so why wouldn't she? But to take it from a woman who already accepts that Handmaids are ignorant, instead of editors and professors beaten into submission. Serena Joy, at least, knows Offred's playing a role; this woman wants nothing more than to believe what she's being told, and that indignity cuts deeper than anything at the Red Center.

Offred takes the cookie. She can't make herself swallow. (The sound design is still outstanding; that cookie dropping from her tongue onto the sink is viscerally satisfying and incredibly close.) Moss gives herself one murderous glare in the mirror before she goes, leaving that macaron on the matching pastel bathroom counter; a passive, wordless declaration of war. The Handmaids are in the next room; she isn't alone. In this moment, she can afford to fight.

But fighting back—even by connecting, or especially by connecting—can't stand. The second Offred tries to claim a little agency (courtesy of The Breakfast Club), she arrives at the garden gate and sees a new Ofglen. Sometimes you're in the horror movie; sometimes, nobody wins.

Before We Go:

• We're discovering new rooms of the house; that mudroom/servants' hall is like something out of a Grimm story.
• The dual signature shots this show is developing is a cluster of Handmaids seen from above as they're allowed to connect over something (anger, loss), and a close-up of Elisabeth Moss trying to give everyone around her an aneurysm through sheer force of will.
• It took us longer to get to a flashback—the present is getting more interesting—and the lighting has lost its idyllic veil. Now it's our first glimpse of the uneasiness of one's pregnant body being a public hope; the sour note of hearing the first "Praise Be" infiltrate this world she still thinks is safe.
• The Emmy for Best Flicker of Bullshit-Awareness Amid the Party Line goes to Ann Dowd, who made me laugh out loud in the moment Warren's Wife started pretending contractions.

On a new episode of VICELAND's show WEEDIQUETTE, Krishna Andavolu meets the mothers breaking federal law to treat their children's autism with cannabis. Though the local government might prohibit it, these parents have a conviction that helping their kids shouldn't make them criminals.

WEEDIQUETTE airs Wednesdays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

Plus, BONG APPÉTIT is back with a new episode, and Abdullah Saeed is teaming up with the founders of LA's Trap Kitchen to infuse their signature dish with a generous helping of cannabis oil. Abdullah and his buddies serve up the potent pineapple bowls—filled with jasmine rice, beef short rib, and lobster—to Slink Johnson, the comedian and actor who stars in Adult Swim's Black Jesus.

BONG APPÉTIT airs Wednesdays at 10:30 PM on VICELAND.

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