Gengoroh Tagame is often cited as Japan's most influential gay manga artist. Called the "Tom of Finland of Japan," Tagame has been working as a full-time, openly gay erotica artist since 1994. His work has been described as "Mishima meets Mapplethorpe," combining a meticulously drawn manga style with boundary-pushing themes of bear culture, bondage, S&M, and sexual abuse.

The 53-year-old artist's latest and easily most mainstream title, My Brother's Husband, Volume 1, comes out next week in English from Pantheon. Featuring Tagame's signature draughtsmanship, cinematic visual storytelling, and hypermasculine beefcake characters, the graphic novel is a beautiful, stirring, and deeply human work.

The story follows Yaichi, a terse single father, and his bubbly, inquisitive daughter Kana. When Yaichi's estranged twin brother dies, his husband, a mesomorphic Canadian named Mike Flanagan, arrives at Yaichi and Kana's doorstep. His twin's husband brings with him new and subversive ideas, like marriage between two men (in Japan, same-sex marriage is still illegal), that challenge Yaichi's more traditional values.

In the excerpt below, "Silhouettes," Yaichi spends the day with Mike, sharing the places of his and his brother's childhood, when he comes to a sudden, painful revelation. The panels read from the "right-most side"—right to left—as is customary in Japanese written language.

—James Yeh, culture editor

From My Brother's Husband

From MY BROTHER'S HUSBAND: Volume 1 by Gengoroh Tagame, translated by Anne Ishii. Copyright © 2014 by Gengoroh Tagame. Translation copyright © 2017 by Anne Ishii. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.

As copy editor of VICE.com, it's my job to read every word that appears on our site and make sure everything is in its right place—that all the commas and semicolons are where they need to be, names and places are spelled correctly, and "fuccboi" is written in the proper style. Over the course of the day, some sentences from our stories catch my eye, usually because they're good or funny or odd or compelling in some way. Often they're about sex. Here they are now, presented with zero context, for the week of April 24. To find out why they exist or how they were used, simply click the link for the full story.

- Go to hell, Martha Stewart!

- But the worst part was that we got no sleep all night because a bear was getting fucked next to a statue outside our window for HOURS.

- The uniformed soldier getting sucked off.

- Phones don't pop popcorn.

- I can't drive any more.

- The man you're looking for has never had a girlfriend.

- I thought it would be easier.

- Once it became clear that Waynesboro, Virginia, was dealing with a serial kitty shaver, the cats' owners started to take matters into their own hands.

- I would say that I am a composite of the two but not as pretty as either of them.

- People are so into labeling right now.

- His autopsy report showed it was the only non-drug substance in his stomach.

- And if they got a job, it was something like opening letter bombs.

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A massive phishing campaign targeting Google accounts is ripping through the internet right now.

Several journalists, as well as people working in other industries, have said they've received emails containing what looks like a link to a Google Doc that appears to come from someone they know. These, however, are malicious emails designed to hijack your account.

If you have clicked on the link, go to your Google account's page (https://myaccount.google.com/permissions) where you can manage the permissions you've granted to apps. Then locate the "Google Doc" app. This looks totally legitimate, but it's actually not. If that's the malicious app that's gotten access to your account after you clicked on the link it should have a recent "Authorization Time." Now, click on that Google Docs app and click Remove.

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The Trump Century Tower is a 57-story luxury skyscraper in the heart of a gentrifying neighbourhood controlled by one of the world's most bloodthirsty strongmen. In a 2012 ad for the property, you can watch the developer's son Robbie Antonio explain how the building was born out of a meeting with Ivanka Trump and promise it will be "the most important residential condominium the Philippines will ever see." As her dad plays golf in the background, Ivanka herself appeals to Filipino consumers on "a great quest for luxury."

Several years later, the tower is nearly complete, even as the American dynasty behind it has moved on to bigger things. The man who swung a golf club in the ad's b-roll is now the leader of the free world, recently launching missile strikes at Syria in what one high-level official called "after-dinner entertainment." These days, Donald Trump's eldest daughter is not just the face of a glass tower in Asia or the purveyor of the finest luxury goods your local Dillards has on offer, but a White House advisor who convenes with foreign heads of state.

Meanwhile, just before the election, the Trump Century Tower's developer Jose Antonio was appointed by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte—a man whose answer to his nation's drug problem is to encourage vigilante shootings of suspected dealers and users in the street—as a special envoy to the United States. Just this weekend, President Trump invited Duterte to the White House, setting off alarm bells for exhausted watchdogs who can barely keep up with the most ethically dubious administration in decades.

Since dad began running for president, Ivanka Trump, a businesswoman and public figure in her own right, been touted as a social progressive who might moderate his worst impulses on everything from women's health to war to gay rights. But even if this proves to be the case, she has shown over and over again that she's as compromised as anyone in a White House that includes dudes admitting straight-up they want to use the government to make themselves richer.

Next to the White Nationalists hanging out in the West Wing, it's tempting to see Ivanka—who converted to Judaism to marry Jared Kushner, also an advisor to the president—as a comforting presence. (This may be partly the work of a marquee branding effort helmed by Democratic communications whiz Risa Heller.) Whatever Ivanka's handlers are doing behind the scenes, it seems to be working: The First Daughter is currently schilling an advice book for working women that has garnered positive press—both by outlets that are and are not government-funded—even in the midst of her latest ethics controversy. (It has also won its share of scathing reviews.)

But to Jeff Hauser, executive director at the watchdog group Revolving Door Project, Ivanka Trump's meticulous attention to branding and how she's perceived might acutally be the key to combatting corruption in her father's White House.

"There's a school of thought in politics where you go after the squealer—not the most important person, but the person most likely to respond to pressure," he told me. "Ivanka cares. She wants to be thought of as a moderate, smart, pragmatic, feminist success story. Scrutiny on her could actually produce results."

To back up, Ivanka Trump's conflicts raised eyebrows before her dad even won the election. After introducing him at the Republican National Convention, Ivanka tweeted about the dress she was wearing, causing it to sell out online. Then, during a November interview on CBS, the daughter of the president-elect wore a $10,800 bracelet from her jewelry line and the company sent out an email blast to fashion writers promoting the piece's appearance. After a media backlash, the brand issued an apology—something her father almost never does.

Even as President Trump angered the Chinese government early on by jumping on the phone with the leader of Taiwan, Ivanka has proven a much more effective—or at least tactful—emissary on the global stage. For starters, she seemed to garner an immense amount of good will from Beijing after a video of her daughter singing a song for Chinese New Year went viral on thatduter country's version of Twitter. Now young Chinese apparently consider Yi Wan Ka (a.k.a. Ivanka) their idol, with tabloids reporting people are getting plastic surgery to emulate her appearance.

This idolization obviously bodes well for Ivanka, who just got a bevy of lucrative trademarks approved by the Chinese government, and with them the ability to sell a whole slew of products bearing her name to crazed fangirls sometime in the future. (It's worth mentioning that these trademarks were approved on the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Trump resort in Mar-a-Lago in Florida to hang with Ivanka's father, and that she has additional trademarks in Japan and Canada—two countries whose leaders she met with in November and February.) Putting all of that aside, Ivanka Trump still has a stake in her father's DC hotel, where foreign dignitaries can theoretically stay in hopes of currying favour with her dad.

True to her penchant for cultivating a righteous brand, the First Daughter has at least taken baby steps toward good governance, placing her own businesses in a trust. And in March, after ethics groups demanded clarity on Ivanka Trump's status in the White House, she announced plans to become an official, unpaid employee of the government.

"I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the president in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees," she said in a statement.

But Ivanka Trump hasn't gone all the way, liquidating her assets and moving them into a completely blind trust, like George W. Bush and Barack Obama did. That makes advocates like Paul S. Ryan with the good government group Common Cause think the First Daughter's professed ethics concerns are more about optics than anything else.

"She cares about her brand and her reputation," Ryan says. "That may cause her to do things that we want to hear, but I'm not convinced that it will lead her to do the things we need her to do as a country. Her personal fortune is directly influenced by foreign trade policy, and because the mechanism for enforcing our ethics laws is so weak, all we can do is hope for the best."

Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Tom Carpenter on Monday released a response they got from the Office of Government Ethics, detailing how Ivanka's new gig will require her to tell us where she's getting her income, which includes ongoing payments from her father's company and her own brand. She says she won't participate in day-to-day business decisions, even if she can still veto specific deals. She's also promised to recuse herself from government affairs affecting her assets, and is prohibited by law from intentionally enriching herself with the new gig.

But the government ethics office is not a law enforcement agency, and it can't actually compel any meaningful change—it's just there to spotlight issues and occasionally make noise about glaring misconduct, like Kellyanne Conway hawking Ivanka's clothes on TV. And the Obama-appointed head of the agency will finish his term in early 2018, which means President Trump can select a new one sympathetic to his worldview. Meanwhile, the prospect of some kind of public corruption investigation into the administration by the attorney general's office is basically nonexistent now that Jeff Sessions, a Trump campaign surrogate who was forced to recuse himself from the Russia probe, is running the show.

"I'm holding back my attempt to chuckle at the notion that he would enforce any of these laws aggressively with regards to the Trump administration—never mind with regards to a member of the Trump family," Ryan tells me.

Depressingly, it seems like one of the better ways to discourage corruption in the new administration may be as simple as Americans looking askance at Ivanka and denting her public image. In fact, around the same time President Duterte's impending visit was announced, a Twitter user posted a photo of a billboard for Trump Tower Manila featuring her likeness. Though the image sparked outrage, the photo was out of date, and conservatives used the apparent mischaracterization as a way to deflect from the glaring ethics issues at stake.

Meanwhile, ads for the Filipino property featuring Ivanka quietly disappeared from its website.

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Congratulations to all the Canadians who have done dumb shit while bombed on Bombay Sapphire in the past couple of months, you've just earned yourself a hell of an excuse.

You can now explain some of it away because, as it turns out, some bottles of Bombay Sapphire were a lot fucking stronger than advertised. So, if you punched your fist through that Corvette window, slept with that person at the bar you really shouldn't have slept with, or stole your neighbour's cat, well, it's now on the gin.

We know this because an investigation by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario quality assurance team found out that some of the gin was a little more ginny than it should have been.

"This recall was initiated after an investigation by LCBO Quality Assurance revealed a deviation in the stated 40 percent alcohol content by volume," reads a news release by the board. "The affected lot... has alcohol content by volume of 77 percent."

Hell yeah, that's so much more bang for your buck.

Not everyone followed that particular line of logic though—Saskatchewan, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland have all followed Ontario's lead in pulling the liquor from the shelves. Turns out having more alcohol in your drink than you advertised is, understandably, a major no-no.

Furthermore, this isn't the first time that extra-boozy booze has wound up on the shelves in Ontario. A few moths ago, the province recalled Georgian Bay Vodka because, again, it would fuck you up more than it was supposed to (the vodka, sold at 40 percent had some bottles with up to 80 percent.)

Next time, just drink a whiskey—you can always blame it on whiskey.

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There are details in Raven Rock: The Story of the US Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die that read like they've been ripped from the pages of a pulp spy novel. The book, written by national security expert Garrett M. Graff, takes us inside the bunkers cut into granite mountainsides and dug under an elite country club. He brings us deep beneath the White House on 9/11 and into the cockpit of an airplane that doesn't officially exist. As you make your way through Raven Rock, it's easy to forget that all this elaborate high-tech doomsday infrastructure is actually real.

But Graff's half-century chronicle of the government's nuclear planning is far from an escapist spy thriller—he spends as much time on the mundane bureaucratic details of building and maintaining an elaborate worst-case scenario. To the executive branch leadership, the question of "winning" a nuclear encounter becomes, like any other government project, a logistical nightmare. There are thousands of cogs that must work in unison to protect DC leadership, symbols of democracy like the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell, and a few specific private industry heads before the capital is flattened by a nuke. In almost every test, and during the few attacks that have hit within American borders, hardly any of the well-laid plans actually worked.

Graff does a great job communicating the true, specific horror of a nuclear war for the average American, which is, effectively, that we'll all die and only a handful of very senior officials will be protected. Since the Kennedy administration, government officials have repeatedly explained the futility of protecting the civilian population. This has led to doomsday procedures—referred to as Continuation of Government (COG) planning—becoming narrower and narrower. Plans that prepared for nationwide civil defense under Eisenhower today simply focus on saving a coterie of top government officials—for example, Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos would have been saved, but press secretary Dee Dee Myers, along with almost all of us, would not have been. In a scene in Raven Rock, General Thomas Power explains to a horrified John F. Kennedy, "Look—at the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"

But as awful as nuclear war would be, Graff does well to highlight the impact of doomsday planning on peacetime government, and what it says about our democracy in general. Spearheaded by the executive branch, COG planning leaves most of Congress and all of the public out of the confidential decision-making. The classified programs, technology, and infrastructure are impossible to account for—Graff estimates they cost the country at least $2 billion annually. They also include crisis plans that run counter to the Constitution. JFK's attorney general's emergency briefcase, for instance, would have allowed him suspend habeas corpus. Other presidents' apocalypse contingencies have included forced nationalization of industries as well as plans to install unelected private sector executives to run broad swathes of the emergency government. Graff makes it clear that surviving a nuclear war would not be much better than dying in one: If doomsday plans save neither American people nor America's democratic principles, what exactly are they protecting?

Raven Rock, which should have been a Cold War history, now feels especially timely, hitting bookstores right as a President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un's on-again, off-again relationship pushes us ever closer to nuclear holocaust. I called Graff to talk about secret bunkers, shadow governments, and the unfortunate fact that we'll all die during a nuclear war.

VICE: I was somewhat aware of the idea of doomsday prepping, but the scale of the investment and the infrastructure was pretty shocking to me. What got you interested in the United States government's doomsday plans?
Garrett M. Graff: I've covered national security and intelligence in Washington for a dozen years at this point, and it's something that you sort of bump up against—you hear people talking about these facilities, you hear people talking about some of these programs. But a couple of years ago, when I was at the Washingtonian , a colleague of mine found a federal employee's ID on the floor of a parking garage, and was like, "I'm gonna give it back to him." But when we turned the ID over, it had evacuation instructions on the back. I decided to follow the directions to this facility on Google Maps, and looking on Google Satellite, you could see that if you follow the instructions, it ends in a road that just disappears into a mountain in West Virginia. At that point, I'd never heard of the facility and had never seen anyone talk about before. And I was like, "Oh wow, this is a whole new series of bunkers that have been built up since 9/11."

Throughout the book, sources remind us again and again that, in all likelihood, almost every average American will die in a nuclear encounter. There's a stunning quote from the New York deputy head of Civilian Defense in the late 70s about warning sirens the city had installed: "The people who hear them will run into buildings and be turned into sand in a few seconds anyway." How would public sentiment change if it fully registered that despite the billions spent on nuclear war prepping, the average citizen would not survive a nuclear encounter?
That, in my mind, is the central tension of the whole book: The government started off with all of these grand hopes to be able to protect the citizenry and then gradually the scale of the weapons and the size of the weapons overtook any reasonable efforts to protect the civilian population. The government plans just kept getting simpler and simpler until it was just about getting this core group of government leaders into the side of a mountain or up into a plane somewhere.

And you talk about how the doomsday prepping is really about protecting the idea of the US government rather than American citizens.
I think that that gets to what is the absolute essence of the question that these doomsday planners have struggled with for generations and continue to struggle with today, which is: If you are trying to preserve America, well, what is America? Is it the presidency? Is it the three branches of government? Is it the Constitution and the Liberty Bell? Is it a capitalist society? You really see how different generations of government planners struggled with that question. And now it seems like the answer is, effectively: America is the presidency, and then eventually, after some length of time, it's three branches of government, and after some additional length of time, it's a functioning post office, tax system, so on and so forth.

In the book, William Arkin, a nuclear weapons scholar, tells CNN: "As long as we have nuclear weapons, we're going to have to fudge the Constitution."
Yeah, and I think that part of what is weird and troubling about this entire world is we know precious little about what these powers mean today. For all we know, there could be czars walking out amongst us right now, who after a catastrophic attack, will help nationalize industries. And I'm sure that there are similar pre-written executive orders and draft legislation waiting on shelves in Washington offices or bunker safes ready to be unveiled in the moment of a catastrophe. In some ways, it's not so troubling to me that these systems exist—it's how little we actually know about them, even the ones that are in play today.

"If you are trying to preserve America, well, what is America? Generations of government planners struggled with that question. The answer is, effectively: America is the presidency, and then eventually, after some length of time, it's three branches of government, and after some additional length of time, it's a functioning post office, tax system, so on and so forth."

The book is definitely dark, but I took comfort in a scene that kept occurring throughout: A president would come to office, have the reality of nuclear war explained to him, and then realize that it was too terrible to even consider. Do you think that the American President's understanding the gravity of the nuclear option is the best deterrent to nuclear war?
Yes, absolutely. And you see that on both sides. There's also the Khrushchev quote in the book about how when he was first given the nuclear powers, he was terrified by them. But then he thought about it and was like, "Oh, well. I guess no one's ever going to use them, so it will be OK."

What's frightening to me is the question of whether or not Trump understands that gravity.
And the entire point of everything that was done during the Cold War was about trying to simplify and remove any checks or balances or impediments to a president quickly and unilaterally launching a nuclear war. So, that's a real challenge in the system—the entire point of the system is geared toward ensuring that the moment a president decides to launch nuclear weapons that they are launched as broadly and as efficiently as possible. But that all presupposes that the person who would make that order is the most sober and thoughtful and well-educated person in the nuclear system.

"You've really seen the US government over the last couple of decades pretty much decide that people are going to be left on their own."

Unfortunately, the book is coming out an important moment, with Trump and Kim Jong-un posturing about nuclear war. You've spent years studying the government's doomsday preparedness—if North Korea dropped a bomb on America, do you think the public would be safer today than we would have been in the 1960s?
Well, you do have to look at the level of scale: North Korea doesn't, at least yet, have anywhere close to the arsenal that the Soviet Union did at its peak, or even that Russia has today. But that is of little comfort to anyone who does get hit by a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world today. I think the actual technical answer to your question is: Yes, we are safer in that Kim Jong-un would only be able to kill perhaps several tens of millions of people as opposed to several hundreds of millions.

But I don't think that's actually the question that you're asking. I think you're asking: Are we any better prepared today? And I think the answer to that is no. In some ways, we haven't taken civilian preparedness seriously since the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the experience of a generation of doomsday planners is that protecting the civilian population is actually more trouble than it's worth. So you've really seen the US government over the last couple of decades pretty much decide that people are going to be left on their own.

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Raven's Rock: The Story of the US Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett M. Graff is available in bookstores and online from Simon and Schuster.

There are a lot of reasons to visit Japan—the food, the fashion, the eclectic city streets of Tokyo—but now some are worried that the demand for ninjas has gotten so high that there aren't enough of them to entertain the influx of people visiting the country, the Telegraph reports.

Back in the day, ninjas were a legendary warrior force in Japan. According to the Independent, they were often recruited to work as spies or assassins, dishing out their distinct brand of violence using throwing stars or poisoned darts. Working as a ninja in Japan today is a lot more of a PR gig, but still requires a special skill set in the art of ancient ninjutsu—unarmed combat, acrobatics, and sword fighting.

Apparently, some people who manage these entertaining ninja squads say that they're just not seeing these basic skills in many of their applicants and the demand has gotten out of control.

"With the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan on the increase, the value of ninja as tourism content has increased," Takatsugu Aoki, manager of the Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hattori Hanzo Ninja Squad, told a local Japanese newspaper. "There are more employment choices while ninja shows held across the country have become popular, not to mention other attractions."

Aoki's squad has seen a major drop in applicants since 2016, when more than 230 people applied to join its seven-person ninja team. The gig was advertised globally and boasted a salary of $1,600 a month. So far this year, the squad has received only 22 applications, and Aoki believes competition is partially to blame.

"I feel there is a ninja shortage," he said.

It's like a crawly feeling inside," says Judy*. "You get hot, then chilled, and you feel like you want to run away." The 57-year-old has short dark-grey hair and a haunted expression. She's breathless and sits with her right leg balanced up on her walking stick, rocking it back and forth as she speaks.

Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.

She's taking around 20 different medications each day, including painkillers, antidepressants, sedatives and a skin patch containing a high dose of the opioid drug fentanyl, which she says did not significantly help her pain and which she's now trying to come off. Her physician has been tapering the dose for months, so in addition to her pain she suffers withdrawal symptoms: the chills and crawling dread. Then her clinic announced that it would no longer prescribe any opioids at all, the unintended result of new, stricter measures aimed at clamping down on opioid abuse. Faced with losing access to the drug on which she is physically dependent, she has come to another clinic, Pain Consultants of East Tennessee (PCET) in Knoxville, desperate for help.

Continue reading on Tonic.

Gone are the days of admiring rats for trying to eat an entire slice of pizza, of smiling down at them from a subway platform as they scurry along the tracks, of taking them home as pets and feeding them bok choy. These are times of war, and for one Brooklyn man, the rats struck first.

Last Friday, Alec Steinfeld was driving to work from Brooklyn to Manhattan when he caught a whiff of roadkill, local station WGN reports. He kept on driving, knowing that encountering a dead animal in New York wasn't too out of the ordinary. But once he got to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the smell had developed into an olfactory cocktail of burned plastic and death, and smoke started to billow out of his vehicle.

"Then smoke started to pillar," Steinfeld wrote on Facebook. "I pulled over and got out of the car."

Then his Volkswagen just burst into flames, and the fire department dispatched a truck to come put it out, though within three minutes, his engine was toast. When he popped the hood, he found two dead baby rats inside—his first clue as to what the hell he'd been smelling during his drive. He took a closer look and discovered that they'd nibbled through his electrical wiring, likely suffering a brutal end. Soon, two more rats emerged from the wheel of his car, where presumably they had been camping out, munching on his car's insides.

As if rats blowing up your car in the middle of Manhattan isn't weird enough, Steinfeld's day took an even stranger turn, and out of the smoke plumes, a golden ray of light emerged. As his car was spiraling into a fiery doom, he noticed Tony Hawk, the pro skater, was standing nearby filming the whole hellish scene before him.

"So I am watching my car get mauled by a rat fire, seeing Tony Hawk capture this across the street," Steinberg told WGN.

Though the Birdman didn't really do anything to help Steinberg out, he did join him for a selfie, which isn't nothing.

Photo from Alec Steinberg's Instagram

Just another Friday in Gotham, baby.

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On a new episode of WEEDIQUETTE, Krishna Andavolu tracks a shipment of bud from California to New York. Decreased enforcement in the Empire State and increased production out west has created a coast-to-coast "pot pipeline"—which Krishna follows alongside a trafficker who's mastered the route.

WEEDIQUETTE airs Wednesdays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

Plus, on a new episode of BONG APPÉTIT, Abdullah Saeed throws a Southern-style barbecue with industry legend Kevin Bludso. They dig into hemp-raised pork, cook up cannabis-infused cornbread, and top it all off with barbecue sauce that will get you stoned.

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.

In Early Works, we talk to artists young and old about the jobs and life experiences that led them to their current moment. Today, it's Swedish actor Noomi Rapace, who's in the just-released Steven Shainberg sci-fi thriller Rupture, which is out theatrically and on VOD. Rapace also stars in Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, which hits theaters on May 19.

We lived in Iceland when I was a child, and my stepdad is Icelandic. My mother was a drama teacher and acted in smaller theater groups—very alternative. I was brought to an Icelandic viking film set when I was seven, because there were children in the film. I ended up being in the film for three weeks, and I loved it. It was a very brutal, bloody, muddy, intense, crazy film. The director was very loud and quite demanding. There was one specific night where we'd been shooting for 15 hours; the lead actress was tired, and people wanted to take a break. I was doing the same thing over and over, and all of a sudden the director had this big outburst. He was screaming, "What is wrong with you guys? Look at this girl! How old are you?" I said, "Seven," and he said, "She's seven years old, and she's not complaining! This is a real actress!" I was like, "Wow!" I kept that in my heart.

I went for one year to a preparatory acting school, before you're supposed to go the main acting school in Scandinavia. There were a lot of different steps to enter the acting school—it's very hard, most people try over and over, and I didn't get in my first try. I got so upset by them not accepting me that I was like, "I'm never, ever coming back." All my friends kept trying, and they eventually got in, but I wanted to do it on my own. So I'm uneducated.

I got my first job when I was 20 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, a very fancy, posh theater in Stockholm. People were very upset that I was hired without education, but I started acting anyway. I did plays for almost ten years. That was my school—just working and working. Theater is very respected and big in Sweden, so I got the opportunity to work with the best people. It shaped me a lot, and I decided what kind of actress I wanted to be. I made a lot of decisions and deals with myself about how to approach things.

I think I found my message during those years, but I was also questioning everything else around me—including myself. I was going through a lot of battles on a personal level. From 19 to 21 years old, I got a lot of good offers and was working a lot, but I was really lost. I remember feeling that the only place I existed, felt feelings, and was fully alive was on stage. Everything else was slightly vague and weak, and I didn't really care. Those emotions really scared me. I was like, "What kind of person is that? Who can only live and feel anything real onstage?"

Then, I realized that I was just doing things without really caring about the consequences. I was hurting people. Through my acting, I could get in touch with things within myself, because it was a safe place to do it. Later, I managed to build a bridge between the chaos inside me. But those years were quite crucial, scary, and chaotic. Looking back, that's when I shaped myself—but there were a lot of low points.

I was starring in Blasted by Sarah Kane, a British author who wrote seven plays and committed suicide. It was a very intense play—very well-written but very disturbing and dark too. One of the producers of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had seen me on stage and said, "You're a force of nature. You've got to do Lisbeth Salander." I felt that they had casted me because I was me, not because I fought for the role. I haven't done many auditions in my life. I'm not good at it. The few I've done, I've always felt weird and humiliated—like I'm trying to satisfy someone by giving them a version of me that I think they want, instead of being who I really am and representing what I really believe.

But I got Lisbeth Salander based on me and my work. They'd seen this Danish film I did called Daisy Diamond, too, so I knew that they wanted me because of my acting. I remember walking through Stockholm after getting a message that I got the part. I felt like I was so light, it was a weird feeling—like I had wings on my back, and I could almost take off. I was like, "This is going to change my life." I didn't really know how big the series was outside Sweden—I had to shut my ears and eyes to all that because I felt this deep connection with the character. I knew we were meant for each other, and I knew I could give her my soul. That was a blessing. Later on, when it all took off and we were on press tours worldwide, that was when I started realizing that it was way bigger than I first thought.

I met Robert Downey Jr. when I was on the press tour for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and then he and his production company wanted to meet with me. I'm a big fan of Rob, so I was super nervous. I came into this meeting, and I hardly spoke English, but he chatted with me for 20 minutes, and he said, "I like you. I want to work with you." I remember coming back to Sweden feeling that everything was completely surreal. I was afraid that I would wake up and realize that this was all a dream and that I'm back on the fucking farm on the countryside.

But I got the call, and they flew me to London to meet with Guy Ritchie for Sherlock Holmes. It was my first time in London, and even though I didn't know the language yet, it felt like I communicated with those people. Three weeks later, I was in London working on set. Everything happened so fast, so I didn't really have time to think about the fact that I couldn't talk to them because I didn't know their language. I hate feeling stupid and unable to express myself. I was very bad when I was younger: I didn't pay attention in school, but I was very good with people, so I could always talk people into whatever to manipulate them. I always got away with stuff.

So I was sitting in this hotel room in London, regretting that I didn't pay attention or study, and now I'm sitting here, and I can't talk to them. I started studying English in my hotel room, watching television and reading newspapers and books. It took me nine hours to read a script—I had to look up every second word. A lot of my big decisions have come out of a situation when I'm forced to step up, like, "OK, Noomi, next step, you've got to do it."

I went right into Prometheus after Sherlock Holmes, and then I worked with Brian De Palma on Passion. Ridley and Brian are filmmakers from the same generation, and obviously I grew up watching Brian's work—Scarface, Carlito's Way. When I heard that he wanted to meet with me, I was quite shocked. It was interesting to work with him, because he knew exactly what he wanted. He did very long takes, sometimes for four minutes. When he had three takes, he was like, "I'm happy. I'm good. We're moving on." Very different from Ridley's films and what I was used to. I was like, "Whoa, wait! We're not doing coverage?" But he was like, "Honey, I'm editing in my head already. No need for that. We're moving on." He's someone who knows exactly what he wants. It was very different and interesting working with him.

A Hay River, NWT councillor has been acquitted of a drunk driving charge two years after making a heartfelt confession on Facebook.

Councillor Keith Dohey was stopped by traffic cops for driving erratically one evening in July 2015. He blew more than twice the legal limit when tested with a breathalyzer. "I thought he was going to fall over," one of the cops later told a territorial court judge.

Weeks later, Dohey posted on Facebook that he would take full responsibility for driving drunk. "On Friday July 10th I made a terrible mistake," he wrote. "After spending the evening with friends I made the poor decision to drive home after drinking. I make no excuses for my actions. What I did was reckless, irresponsible, inconsiderate, and selfish. I of course take full responsibility for my actions. I am only thankful that no one was hurt."

Facebook screencap obtained by VICE

Dohey apologized for his behaviour, and set out to "make up for my mistake, whatever and however long that takes."

Apparently that promise wouldn't involve making the same admission to a judge. When the case went to trial this past October, he pleaded not guilty. Dohey's lawyer argued that the breathalyzer result was not admissible in court because her client wasn't given adequate access to legal counsel.

Cops testified that Dohey called a lawyer, but he did not pick up at 3 AM on a Saturday morning. Dohey was then asked if he wanted to call a 24-hour legal aid service. He declined.

Dohey's defence argued this was the same as waiving a right to a lawyer, and the cops should have said as much. A judge agreed; the breathalyzer was thrown out.

The local politician, still serving Hay River voters, was acquitted Tuesday. I'm sure he won't be the last public figure to be responsible for his actions, just not criminally responsible.

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Chelsea Clinton isn't the internet's favorite person. She's become more politically outspoken on Twitter, leading to rumors swirling about her running for office—and though she's denied those rumors, that hasn't stopped people from all over the political spectrum registering their distaste at that prospect. Vanity Fair recently published the rather brutal "Please, God, Stop Chelsea Clinton from Whatever She's Doing," while a columnist for the New York Post penned an op-ed with the headline, "God help us if Chelsea Clinton runs for office."

As I've previously explored, Chelsea Clinton does have a rabid (if small) fan base. But none of them compare to Justin Smith, a 34-year-old retail manager from Charleston, South Carolina, who has not one, but two Clinton-themed tattoos: a portrait of Hillary and another of Chelsea.

Smith doesn't have a specific reason for getting two Clintons inked onto his skin. When I spoke to him over the phone about it, he seemed exceedingly casual about the shrine to the Clinton family forever etched into his skin. "I've been a supporter of the Clintons since I was ten years old, going back to 1992, '93, actually before Bill took office," he told me. "I'm just a long-time supporter of them. They've been my heroes for well over 20 years." While his enthusiasm of the Clintons seems to go beyond just politics—stanning doesn't necessarily have to have a rhyme or reason—he told me he appreciates the whole Clinton family because he "saw at a young age that they care deeply about human rights," specifically their support of the LGBT community (he's been openly bisexual since he was 14). "That's the biggest thing," Smith explained. "Their longtime commitment to fighting for human rights."

The same tattoo artist inked both of the portraits. "He's an apolitical guy, but he thought it was cool," Smith explained. "It was the first tattoos of them that he's done. I think it might be the only Chelsea tattoo in existence."

Images courtesy of Justin Smith

He's met all three members of the Clinton clan, and according to Smith both Hillary and Chelsea "absolutely loved" his Hillary tattoo. (He just recently got Chelsea.) "It was one of the best moments of my life," he said, laughing nervously.

When he met Bill, he "got so nervous" that he forgot to show off his Hillary tat. "Pretty sure Hillary showed him a picture of it, though," Smith told me.

Smith said he's hopes to get a Bill tattoo to complete the trilogy ("might as well get 'em all, right?" he said) but for now he only has portraits of Hillary, Chelsea, and, uh, Howard Stern. "I'm a fan and longtime supporter of him" he told me. "Howard is a longtime Hillary supporter, too, by the way."

Image courtesy of Justin Smith

Chelsea has yet to see his latest token of devotion to her, but he's experienced a lot of backlash for the tattoo on social media, though none in real life. "I hope to show it to her sometime soon," Smith said. "I've been getting a lot of hate on social media recently, from people on the far right and the far left."

Unsurprisingly, if the young Clinton wanted to get fully into politics, Smith said he would support her "100 percent."

"I hope she runs for office," he said. "The backlash is really disheartening to see. She's such a caring, compassionate person. I just don't understand where all the hate is coming from."

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This article was originally published on VICE Colombia.

"To the dance floor, please!" the soldier told Gustavo.*

It was a rather strange request—the bar was empty; the woman tending it was doing math on a notepad while biting her pen. Gustavo had arrived early to reserve a good table for his friends.

The bar was in a small village in Colombia's Antioquia Province. While the village itself is very spread out—as big as two football stadiums combined—the town center, where the bar was located, is no bigger than six blocks long and two blocks wide. The total population is less than 2,500. Gustavo tells me now that it was normal to become a regular at the only nightclub; in the main square, there are only two taverns, where old men go to play pool.

The soldier was a "manly man" merely out drinking, Gustavo says, with no gun on him and no superiors present. Encouraged by the fictitious power of his uniform, he asked Gustavo, one of the most visible and publicly known gay guys in town, to accompany him out on the dance floor.

At first, it seemed like a fantasy. In a small Colombian village like this, every family has a gay member, many of whom have their first escapades while still in the closet. The soldier could merely be exploring.

"Get on the dance floor," he continued. "I have to search you, faggot."

All fantasy evaporated when he used that word, with that tone. Gustavo tells me that the soldier asked him to turn around and spread his legs. He started frisking him—Gustavo, who was at the nightclub so frequently that he'd basically become part of the furniture. The woman behind the bar knew something was off, but she couldn't see clearly between the curtains that separated the tables and the dance floor. The soldier's request turned into an order after Gustavo asked why he was being searched. "This faggot!" he replied, as he began patting him down angrily.

"I became very nervous," Gustavo says. We're sipping on rum in a café in front of the village's only church, just across the street from where it all happened. "Obviously I had to let him do it, and that's the hardest part. I felt powerless. I couldn't go home and talk about it—I just had to lay low after and remain silent."

"That son of a bitch!" he continues. "When men do that, it's because…"

He doesn't know how to finish that sentence. If heterosexual men say they don't understand women, then we gay men really don't know what to say about straight men in Colombia—with their wanton violence, rough games, football, boxing, locker rooms, and drunken nights, often with a fondling hand under the table.

"They end up giving in," he says, as the ears of people sitting nearby perk up.

I'm in my father's hometown for Easter; the rest of the village is out commemorating Jesus's crucifixion at mass. But as a gay urbanite, I wanted to know what it was like to be gay and out in a tiny village—so I'm chatting with Gustavo.

"They have a bit of liquor and they get uninhibited," Gustavo continues. "Then they start to break, and start looking for you. At the beginning of the party they get distracted and forget, but late at night, they ask you where to go."

These "straight" men, under cover of alcohol, aren't always so straight. "And we have to sneak into the alleyways," he says. "We have to run and get muddy, and then I come home a complete mess."

Gustavo says that once, many years ago, he hooked up with the owner of the same bar where he was frisked. Gustavo is 40 now, but he was quite young when the owner started hitting on him.

"I would come [to the bar], buy something, and he would touch my hand. He was really nice to me, and I've always liked older guys," Gustavo says. "One day—I don't remember how—he dragged me [outside] and we made out. I said to myself, I need to make this happen.' Then, another day, his wife wasn't home and I went [back] with him. Afterwards, he pretended he didn't know me. Sometimes I would stay out until really late hoping it would happen again."

"Did his wife find out?" I ask.

"Not with me, but she did with others," he says. "I ended up befriending her, but only after he got involved with another young guy here. I got really angry, because she cried and felt really bad. She told me, if it had been a woman—but a man… and such a young guy…"

"Apparently he and the young guy were in love, and it became very public here," he says. "So they got a divorce and she left. He stayed in town, but the pressure was difficult, and eventually he also had to leave after [living] here his entire life. It's the gossip, the looks from ladies in the town, the priest… all of that matters."

Gossip is something we gay Colombian men have to carry with us throughout our entire lives. It stabs you every time someone makes a little joke or laughs in your direction. That's why, in order to fuck in peace, there's sometimes no alternative beyond going into the woods, where nobody can watch, listen or judge. There are no moral prejudices in the woods. The Colombian countryside—while at times a hostile, lonely place for a gay man—can also make for quite a nice, open field to gay it up.

When he was younger, Gustavo remembers, he and his classmates would take school field trips to swim in the river, where guys had circle jerk sessions and fondled each other underwater.

"Sometimes you don't see them as being macho, since they allow so much to happen," he says. "That happens a lot in these small towns, where all the boys play rough games like football and tease you because you don't have the skills to play or because of your mannerisms. That's when I thought— when I finish school here, I'll leave in search of a new world and other things."

When he was 19, Gustavo went to study at a technical school in Medellín, Colombia's second largest city. Heading there from the mountains of Antioquia was like moving from rural Arkansas to San Francisco. He went out to the gay dive bars downtown—"Underwear Street," as it's known to locals, for its racy window displays—and he was actually scared. Gustavo, who stuck to drinking, saw people snorting coke and smoking weed there, and felt it was a lot to handle.

"Every weekend we would go to a new place, and I had such a small town mentality. A whole new world opened up for me in Medellín," Gustavo says. "I wouldn't drink that much because I was too busy observing. I'd never seen men kiss or dance together before. It took a long time before I could dance with another guy. I took it slow, and I was careful. But yes, what many of us want is to go wild in the city."

Gustavo has since left Medellín; he now manages businesses in other small towns, and only returns to Antioquia to visit, where he'll hang out with former girlfriends and other friends. He says some ladies in town have given him a bad reputation, accusing him of being a pervert, partying too much. He believes there issue is that he's a proud gay man, rather than some closeted sodomite who winds up married with children.

Right before we finish our last glass of rum, I ask him what it was like to be a gay man in a small town. He says it depends—it's one thing to be closeted and another to be a gay man who left, succeeded, and made money. Just like one of his friends who moved to Europe. Every time they visit, they team up and take over the town.

"The first time he came he just flaunted his money and his sexuality," Gustavo says. "Every guy who got in his car threw themselves at us. And I told him, 'My God, I thought everyone in this town was straight—what I didn't have was money.'"

"If people in this town see that you have nothing, they'll just look at you like any other fag—let's be clear about that," he continues. "But if they introduce you as the mayor's cousin, the director of a company or something like that… their faces start to change, they tell you sit here, let me get you a drink. First people notice our sexuality, but when they know you're successful, they'll even ask for your number. The change is obvious."

*Gustavo's name, as well as identifying details of the town have been changed to protect his privacy.

On Saturday, during a "friendly" phone call about North Korea, Donald Trump invited Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, a moved that stunned even Trump's own administration. Since Duterte won the election last year he has become known mostly for his monstrous war on drugs, which has led to death squads reportedly killing thousands of people accused of being drug dealers or users. Duterte claims to have personally shot three men to death while cruising around on a motorcycle "looking for trouble." Oh, and Duterte has also compared himself to Hitler.

Trump has naturally come under fire for being on such friendly terms with Duterte. John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told the New York Times that "by essentially endorsing Duterte's murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings." CNN's Jake Tapper pointed to Trump's fondness for Duterte and other dictators and said, "Equating brutality and despotism with leadership, that's not an American value."

But befriending dictators kind of is an American value. Though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just made headlines for saying that the US wouldn't worry about "values" when making alliances for the purpose of national security, America has been picking its allies based on geopolitical strategy rather than morality for a long, long time. While Trump's open praise for dictators is unusual and disconcerting, from a foreign policy perspective, being nice to autocrats is one of the more normal things Trump has done as president.

In case you need it, here's a refresher on unlikely friendships from recent presidential history:

George W. Bush and Saudi Prince Abdullah

Those of you who remember Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 will recall the footage of George W. Bush holding hands with Saudi Prince Abdullah and strolling through the White House garden. If Moore used that clip as an attempt to tie Bush to the Saudi Bin Laden family it doesn't work, but it is true that the Bush White House—among other administrations—tacitly approved of a regime that at the time was cracking down on women's rights and lopping off a lot of people's heads with swords. Abdullah himself later became king, in which capacity he oversaw the suppression of public protests and had at least one of his critics publicly flogged.

Lyndon Johnson and Brazilian President Artur da Costa e Silva

In the 60s, President Lyndon Johnson really didn't want Brazil, the biggest country in South America, to turn communist, so the CIA helped replace Brazil's leftist leadership with a military government by way of a coup. According to Human Rights Watch, that repressive regime arrested 50,000 people in its first months alone. When he was elected president three years later, Artur da Costa e Silva, one of the coup's leaders, visited the White House in 1967. Johnson proposed a toast to him during a luncheon: "Sir, we welcome you to this Capital and to this house. Know that as geography has made us neighbors, history and hope have made us friends."

John F. Kennedy and South Korea's Park Chung-Hee

One of South Korea's many cruel dictators was Park Chung-Hee (incidentally, the father of the recently ousted President Park Geun-hye). Park seized power by leading a military junta that purged the government of opposition, and then declared that junta members wouldn't run for president, but ran anyway. Park was so notoriously brutal that he was reportedly gearing up to slaughter over 100,000 protesters when his own intelligence chief intervened and shot him to death. Not that any of this made him an enemy of the US. President John F. Kennedy's statement about their meeting in 1961 said, "The President welcomed Chairman Park's full exposition of the current situation in the Republic of Korea and expressed his gratification at the many indications of progress made by the new Government of the Republic."

Ronald Reagan and Indonesia's Suharto

Suharto was president of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998, during which time he encouraged numerous bloodthirsty communist-hunting death squads that slaughtered 500,000 people and put 750,000 in concentration camps. Machete-wielding death squad leaders received high-level posts in Indonesia's government that they hold to this day. In 1982, Ronald Reagan invited Suharto to Washington, DC for a state visit. The president toasted his guest at dinner, praising Suharto for his "wise and steadfast leadership." Reagan then got even more effusive, saying, "You will pardon me I hope, Mr. President, if I recognize here tonight what is already apparent to the nations of the world—that Indonesia, under your leadership, has assumed its rightful position as a great nation of Asia and of the world."

Barack Obama and a Bunch of People

The US habit of cozying up to oppressive regimes isn't limited to Republican presidents or a relic of the distant past. During his time as prime minister of Ethiopia, the late Meles Zenawi oversaw crackdowns on Islam and press freedom as well the deadly suppression of widespread protests against election fraud. In 2012, Meles attended an anti-poverty summit for African leaders and received a shout-out from the podium from Barack Obama, followed by a round of applause from the crowd. Obama explained in his speech that honoring them was part of America's "moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition."

In 2010, Obama met with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a leader who tortured hundreds of his own people and kept tight control over the media until he was overthrown in 2011. He and Obama appeared to have a conversation that was polite, but not friendly—mostly about Israel and Palestine. "I am grateful to President Mubarak for his visit, for his willingness to work with us on these critical issues, and to help advance the interest of peace and prosperity around the world," Obama said. (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the strongman who now runs Egypt, was supported by the Obama administration and has been praised by Trump.)

Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the prime minster of Thailand just got a White House invitation from Trump. Last year, Chan-Ocha attended a summit for Asian leaders in California with Obama, and two years before that he seized power in a coup and essentially banned all criticism of his government. According to Obama, attendees focused on easing tensions in the South China Sea. "When [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] speaks with a clear and unified voice, it can help advance security, opportunity and human dignity," he said.

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

Before March 28 of this year, something exciting and potentially world-changing (in a good way) was playing out in Pennsylvania. Seven young plaintiffs, including 17-year-old Rekha Dhillon-Richardson, were suing their state, arguing that the government had failed to protect their constitutional rights by refusing to adequately and immediately combat climate change. Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution guarantees "the right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment." This groundbreaking case, which requested strict reduction and regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions in order to ensure a habitable planet for young people and future generations, made its way through the legal system until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently upheld a lower court's ruling in the state's favor.

Even though they lost, Dhillon-Richardson and her allies made important ethical and legal arguments on the public stage. As many of us adjust to a presidential administration that denies the reality of climate change and scoffs at basic science, I talked to Dhillon-Richardson about what we can learn from this case and its creative pursuit of state-based avenues for progressive action.

VICE: Why did you get involved in this case?
Rekha Dhillon-Richardson: Because I believe that it is absolutely crucial that youth are central players in developing local and national strategies to fight environmental degradation. The fundamental human rights and futures of children and youth are disproportionately threatened by climate destabilization, even though we have had little to do with the production of the problem.

What have you learned being part of this process?
It's taught me how to be a more effective advocate for the things that I believe in and to use whatever avenues necessary to seek change and bring about justice. I have also learned that the court process is extremely slow; it is hard to make quick and significant changes through the courts. Those of us deeply concerned about issues of environmental injustice would be wise to explore multiple strategies to challenge the government.

Pennsylvania's environmental constitutional rights are pretty impressive. What do you think about the fact that we have rights on the books that aren't implemented?
Although Pennsylvania has extensive environmental constitutional protections, it is shameful and shortsighted that they are not being put into practice. I am encouraged by our government's consideration of the right to clean air, water, and natural resources—these are rights that everyone should have. However, it is very disappointing that Pennsylvania is failing to do the work to actually ensure that these rights are upheld. This case made me realize that just because a law is created in theory does not mean that it is applied in reality.

Has the new administration changed how you think about the case and what needs to be done to protect the environment?
The people Trump has chosen for his Cabinet are dangerous and are now in a position of authority. With this new administration that threatens the environmental movement, it is imperative that we continue to take immediate and significant action—protests, public education, youth organizing, and challenges in the court are all part of this resistance.

Are there things young people see about the future that older people don't?
My generation is ready and willing to fight for our human rights and for the rights of our earth. There are amazing kids all around the world who are standing up to environmental degradation and who live with the consequences of the decisions around extractive industries that are made in places like the United States. The natural world that my generation and the future generations will inherit is going to be very different than the one that older people have enjoyed. I think young people have the ability to imagine a better world—to have a vision for the longer term.

Do you think previous generations have let people your age down?
I do think we have been let down. Children across the globe have trusted the adults to make the right decisions—to lead us forward into a cleaner and more just future for everyone. We have been harmed by decisions that were made without our authorization.

What are your plans for the future? Has being part of this case shaped what you want to do later on?
I plan to become an environmental scientist—I start college this fall—and continue my advocacy work for climate justice, with a focus on areas in the world that are disproportionately impacted. Being part of this case has confirmed that young people are needed more than ever. Consequently, I also plan to continue to create platforms for young people to become leaders alongside me.