When I wake up in the morning, here are some things I generally don’t think about: I don’t imagine my future self giving naked photos to someone I call “master.” Nor do I expect to one day get the initials of a man branded just below my hip. I haven’t thought about making videos of myself trash talking friends and family either, and even if I try to fathom these possibilities, I certainly don’t see myself submitting to it all in the name of empowerment, self-fulfillment, or a wish to change the world for the better.

But these are the allegations Vancouver actress Sarah Edmondson and others have levelled against the leaders of a secret society based in Albany, New York, and precisely the reasons they went along with it. I don’t say this to undermine Edmondson’s intelligence or judgment. When we recently met for an interview, she agreed that what happened to her earlier this year still sounds unbelieveable and obscene.

Edmondson never got out of bed expecting to be branded either, but through more than a decade of business and coursework she did with a personal development organization called Nxivm (pronounced “nexium”), she believes she was manipulated to a point where she simply couldn’t turn back. Edmondson has alleged she was blackmailed with naked photos and other damaging information, and branded with a cryptic symbol near her crotch. The so-called self-help group is also accused of bringing in dozens of women “slaves” from all over North America using coercive tactics, allegedly taking millions of dollars from some high-profile members.

Since we sat down for that conversation last month, I have been turning over many questions in my head. The main thing I’ve been trying to resolve is the contradiction between the group’s “empowering” and “humanitarian” goals and the actions of burning skin and threatening to release nudes. How can a group that enforces master/slave relationships and starvation diets also be a “global force for good”? And while we’re asking the tough questions, why is former Smallville actress Allison Mack reportedly one of the “masters” orchestrating the alleged abuses?

To better understand Edmondson’s experience with Nxivm and the secret society known as DOS, I enlisted the help of experts as well as a former close confidante of the group’s leader Keith Raniere. They walked me through the tactics groups like these use to produce life-changing, profound experiences for people seeking fulfilment, as well as the ways peoples’ will and critical thinking can be used against them. I also got some insight into why New York’s Attorney General may now be taking another look into Nxivm’s dealings, after more than a decade of hands-off acceptance.

Right out the gate two experts told me it’s common for cults and similar organizations to boast humanitarian goals. Rick Alan Ross of the Cult Education Institute calls them “large group awareness trainings”—a relatively benign label reserved for intensive, immersive self-help trainings like Landmark Education or the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

“The universal appeals are improving yourself, becoming more effective as a communicator, more effective as a human being, having better relationships, and making the world a better place,” Steven Hassan of the research organization Freedom of Mind told VICE. “They’re things virtually everybody would sign up for.”

Executive Success Programs, the self-help and career coaching stream of Nxivm that offered five- and 16-day courses, is no different. According to one psychologist who studied the entry-level training, the course aims to “change the way people think, make decisions, react and perform” and to “develop the emotional and intellectual skills necessary to reach their maximum potential in all areas of life.”

Nxivm’s literature even suggests that humanity’s survival may be at stake—that students must “develop an integrated ethical framework of human experience to stop the destruction of value in the world.” Now, here is where the program’s seemingly altruistic aims intersect with the capitalistic interests of its targeted demographic. The study found the goal of participants is actually to control as much of the world’s wealth as possible so that they can use that money ethically. Nxivm’s recruiting-focused structure presents its own opportunity to make money. Edmondson herself was a talented recruiter, who opened a Vancouver chapter and sold trainings.

Nxivm claims over 16,000 people have taken their entry-level course. That includes celebrities and Fortune 500 CEOs like Richard Branson, US Surgeon General Dr. Antonia Novello, the editor of Oprah magazine, and acting CEO of Enron Steven Cooper, Raniere’s ex-girlfriend and former Nxivm board member Barbara Bouchey told VICE. Hassan says groups like this seek out people who are idealistic, educated, powerful, creative, wealthy, and charismatic. “Because they can recruit more people of that level or higher,” he said.

The trainings themselves are long days, filled with extended eye contact and as much self-examination as a human can handle. Edmondson told me she felt “cracked open” at her first one, seeing her own “patterns” in a new light and feeling ready to make changes. According to Bouchey, participants often report profound and life-changing experiences. “Keith developed a questioning technique that lets you peel back layers to get to where a negative pattern came from, why it’s controlling you,” she told VICE.

According to Ross, Raniere’s underlying philosophy is combo of the Socratic method, Ayn Rand, multi-level marketing, and some language borrowed from Scientology. Bouchey agrees there are certain words Nxivm shares with Scientology, like “parasites” and “surppressives.” But having observed behind the scenes for many years, Bouchey says Raniere has developed much of his own material—thousands of hours of it, in fact—and that she still recalls taking some good away from it.

For example, Bouchey said she was personally prone to anxiety around being late for appointments. She claimed her training with Keith helped her get to the bottom of what that meant about herself and other people. “I worked on that, had some ‘ahas’ and was able to get rid of that pattern,” she said.

Hassan explained how groups start to become sinister when they take some steps to control behaviour, information, thought and emotions. “The major components to watch out for is when you allow a person or group to control your sleep, tell you what you should say or who you can talk to, instill phobias in people’s minds—like if you question the leader or think about leaving, then your life or world will fall apart,” he told VICE.

“When session after session goes for 12 to 14 hours a day, you’re mush.”

Hassan says the trainings themselves also create a bubble where a new standard of normal behaviour is set. “What’s happening frequently with someone coming into any mind-control type of group, is people are exposed to strange-ish kinds of behaviour, but the ratio of believers to non-believers is usually something like three to one. So the established norm is the cult behaviour as opposed to normal behaviour,” he said.

Edmondson said she saw weird behaviour from the beginning—like wearing coloured sashes, and bowing to a leader everyone called “Vanguard.” Seeing so many people getting something out of it, she chose to reserve judgment and try to figure out their deal.

This is where someone’s natural curiosity and can actually push someone deeper into the group. A will to understand brings people in, and then cognitive dissonance theory keeps them in that lane, according to Hassan. “The concept is that we as human beings like to think we’re doing things in a consistent way—we’re not doing things that are hypocritical or dissonant,” he said. In other words, people keep choosing things that align with what they did before.

One of the other tools Hassan claims Nxivm is using to manipulate thoughts and emotions is neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Raniere’s second-in-command, Nancy Salzman, is an NLP trainer. The system of patterned speech was developed by two self-help marketers, based on the research of psychiatrist and medical hypnosis expert Milton Erickson. (Scientists tend to dismiss NLP as pseudoscience.)

“The more effective mind-controllers talk about vague things, but as if they’re really well defined. It invites people to project meaning into it, when there may actually be very little there,” said Hassan, a technique also known as “hypnotic patterning.”

For example, one video of a conversation between Raniere and apparent branded society architect Allison Mack explores the topic of “designer emotions”—the premise being you can practice emotional responses and bring them out as needed. “Designer emotions—is that like designer jeans, or designer drugs? What associations does designer come up with? Special, expensive—different people will react to the word differently,” Hassan said.

Bouchey cautions against hypnotic explanations. In our interview she asked me straight: did I think Edmondson sounded hypnotized? I honestly didn’t think so. Reports of “brainwashing” and starvation diets have certainly grabbed tabloid headlines, but don’t tell the whole story, she said. “I don’t think she was on a 500 calorie diet, I don’t think she thought she was hypnotized—other people used those words.”

Bouchey is also an NLP practitioner, something she learned to better understand the psychology of her financial planning clients. She claimed it’s far less insidious than it sounds. Simply rephrasing a sentence so that the listener feels they have a choice falls under the banner of NLP, according to her.

From the outside, the ideology of a group like Nxivm can appear politically and ethically neutral. Bouchey compared the indoctrination that happens when parents teach their kids whether it’s better to buy a house with cash or with a loan. There’s good reasons to do both—leverage money vs. avoid debt—but being swayed from one side to another is a rearranging of values.

Though her training with Keith, Edmondson identified that giving up and “looking for the back door” was a pattern she wanted to change. And while that seems benign enough as a personal development goal, it also made it harder for her to even consider leaving the group. “When people get stuck in cults it’s usually because their own warning system is overwritten,” said Hassan. Edmondson was training herself not to leave, and not to play victim.

To an untrained eye perhaps the most obvious red flag about Nxivm is that everything is so centred on Raniere’s personality—he often positions himself as the smartest person on Earth (based on a dubious self-administered IQ test in the 80s), and requires students to bow and call him Vanguard. “The defining element is him, it’s all about him—even the branding of these women, it’s about him,” Ross told VICE.

Sarah Edmondson's brand. Photo submitted

It was many years after Edmondson’s first training that she caught a glimpse of Nxivm’s more coercive tactics. Edmondson already developed a safe sense of community and purpose around her work with Lauren Salzman and others. Bouchey says followers like Edmondson looked up to Keith as they would an author of an uplifting spiritual book, like Herman Hesse and his classic self-discovery novel Siddhartha.

“She’s had 13 years of admiring and respecting these people, she’s read it so many times she loves the book,” Bouchey told VICE. “You don’t expect that in Mr. Herman Hesse’s inner circle they have hidden chapters of the book, and they’re using it against you—you can’t imagine it in a million years.”

Nxivm discredits its critics the way a family might discredit an estranged parent, according to Bouchey. It encourages people like Edmondson to cut off communication, and trust first-hand experience. When people express skepticism, some leaders start bringing in more tough-love tactics—suggesting if you don’t join or commit, there may be business or personal opportunities you’ll miss.

Together these elements create a closed ideological system where leaders can actually start saying one thing and doing another. Edmondson’s best friend pitched the secret society as a global force for good—something that would change her life forever. Up until that point she had no reason to think it was anything else.

Bouchey calls this the “hidden chapters” of the Nxivm story, where women are asked to submit nudes as a proof or pledge that they won’t leave or tell anyone about the group. According to her, the leaders have earned so much trust they can actually cause harm without risk of losing the follower. “You start to think, I don’t like this chapter, that doesn’t belong in the book,” she said.

When it finally came to being branded, Edmondson claimed she wasn’t fully told what any of the rules or rituals were going to be. She had already submitted damaging information about herself before she could even know what the group was about. Now she would have to answer to her master’s every direction. The facts fall way outside anyone’s concept of reasonable “humanitarian” activities, but the personal cost of turning back seemed higher than gritting her teeth and moving forward.

According to Bouchey, there is likely a negative propaganda campaign in full swing smearing those who have left, likely using some of the personal issues they may have revealed in the class. She knows first-hand that Raniere supporters quickly wrote her off as sociopathic, unfeeling, even developmentally delayed.

Bouchey left Nxivm nine years ago, and has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself in court. Over that time, authorities have declined investigating the group, and even recently dismissed branding allegations as consensual. Now that tide is beginning to turn, with the New York Attorney General saying they’re opening a new file. Ross said he’ll be watching for when other US major crime, immigration, and child protection agencies get involved.

“This may be the tipping point of this group,” he said. “They’re being looked at and scrutinized in a way that perhaps they never were before.”

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

As the music industry moves forward from its old-school mentality, independent artists and managers are redefining what it means to make it. One of the leaders of this new wave is Lola Plaku, an Albanian-born, Toronto-based talent manager who has worked with acts like The Weeknd, French Montana, and Belly. In the second episode of Question IT, Plaku discusses how to be successful in the industry by trusting your instincts and how having authentic relationships with unique personalities outside of the mainstream is crucial to building a career.

Having only arrived in Vancouver from the UK a few months ago, my feelings about this city’s nightlife scene are not yet entirely cynical. Being new allows me to live as a “yes woman”—I am more than willing to explore the bad with the good and always, always (as is my mantra for life) the weirder the better. So when my editor set me the challenge to venture down the rabbit hole of Vancouver’s worst clubs I couldn't help but leap at the opportunity. The task was simple—go to the worst rated clubs in Vancouver, make some friends, ask them to point me in the direction of what they thought was the worst club, and repeat.

I predicted a fair bit of drunken sloppiness, an extensive list of new and short-lived best friends, and floors so sticky that I’d have to restrict my dancing to arm work only. If you throw in a proposition for an intergenerational threesome and the most depressing Yaletown meat market I’ve ever seen, then I was pretty much right on the money. But even through all the strobes and smells, Vancouver’s resistance to even naming one bad club did manage to surprise me.

The Roxy

Yelp reviews (3.5 stars)
“A very typical vulgar choice for poor students and low life whose main objective is to get drank”
“It's a cesspool.” “worst place to spend your night”
“You will first notice the smell, it is a mix of Axe body spray, shame and stale overpriced beer.”

My review (3 stars)
“fun but smells"

I began my pilgrimage at 9 PM at The Roxy, notorious amidst locals as one of the most terrible clubs on Granville and thus a seemingly appropriate place to start. Walking in was like entering the hygienically challenged 90s, and it seemed some people may have actually been here that long. Why there was carpet in this place was a mystery to me, and the general decor was unfashionably retro.

But on first impression The Roxy wasn't half bad. Sure, there was a smell, but there was also a live band, people seemingly having fun and it was actually full. What surprised me first was the sheer range of age in this place. In the corner were old men who resembled Boot Strap Bill on board the Black Pearl; men who had seemingly become part of the furniture.

Meanwhile, the dance floor was full of teenage girls in cowboy hats. In the middle of the room were the in-betweens: a couple of groups of out-of-towners, some regulars, and a table of punks who didn't know why they were there. A wise Australian friend hailed The Roxy as “lame but fun” and this is exactly how I would put it—for a club on Granville, it is doing its best to retain some kind of identity but its place on the Granville strip, or “Vancouver’s shit strip” means that it will, by association, always be a little lame.

I spoke with the bartender who had worked at The Roxy for 18 years, who fondly refers to it as “the amusement park for adults.”

“The whole playing field is welcome,” said Dave. Looking around I couldn’t deny his remark was an astute observation; a whole range of human experiences seemed to be happening. Dave’s 18 years working in this place also gave me an indication that maybe The Roxy instills a certain loyalty in its staff and in its locals. Dave probably started working here around the same time that most of the girls on the dance floor were born—how special is that?

Maybe I was feeling buzzed or maybe I secretly loved this place. This place was grotty and smelly and loud but people were having fun. The maybe reductive conclusion from one of the babies on the dance floor was that The Roxy was “energetic, exciting and fun.” “There’s a great energy, I don't feel like anyone is creeping” she said. I didn't feel particularly leched on either, maybe because the elderly men were unable to move from their posts in the corner where they had been for all of time, or maybe because people weren't here for that.

“Has it changed?” I asked a punky fellow who was back after a four-year hiatus. “No,” he said. “It’s still full of twenty somethings trying to get laid.” A place like this is built on the opportunity for potential coitus and as long as it’s not creepy and it’s consensual, I see nothing wrong with that. I’d been informed that The Roxy attracted cougars—perhaps they feel more comfortable preying in darkness and under cover of the loud live music, or perhaps the sticky floors make it impossible for their victims to run away… who knows? I approached two older-looking women in the corner and asked what they thought of this. “It has a good reputation” one claimed. Does it? I guess the burly man crowd was to their liking. “Republic is really terrible,” said one eventually. Bingo. My next destination. I thanked the two ladies and wished them both luck on their quest to get laid.

Republic

Yelp reviews (1.5 stars)
“Sucks. Not fun at all. You want fun? Go to the Roxy”
“DO NOT GO HERE ITS NOT LIT!!!”
“Legitimately the worst nightclub experience I've ever had in Vancouver”

My review: (0.5 stars)
“Please never again”

There is nothing more disheartening than walking into an empty club, but in this instance the empty dance floor, the sweeping erratic lights, and the lone DJ on some sort of perch between the first floor and balcony bar didn't dishearten me at all. Instead, I felt a little tug of hope that I was finally onto something. This really could be the worst place in Vancouver. I didn't spend too long looking around; turns out bobbing and weaving through a non-existent crowd takes no time at all. The downstairs dance floor was closed, and we were only given access to the balcony bar. This I guess was in an attempt to try and pretend people actually wanted to be here; all the smoke and mirrors didn't work however, as there were only eight other people in the room. I could feel the buzz of potential that people genuinely believed this place was going to kick off any minute—I wanted to tell them all to go home, to find somewhere else, that it was only 11 PM and they still had time to turn their night around. Between the two silent couples lurking on the balcony and a group of friends doing shots at the bar, no one was having fun.

I approached the group doing shots and struck up conversation with their ringleader. She was wearing knee high boots and a black dress and immediately apologized to me for being dressed like a slob. “If you’re a slob what am I dressed as?” I asked back, trying to establish a rapport so I could make my moves out of this place. “Puffer is so in right now” she said grabbing my arm “I love it, let’s be best friends.” At this stage I wasn’t one to pass up on friends of any kind so I eagerly agreed. Then came the test, I assume a test of our friendship, an initiation of sorts: “darling how old do you think I am?” Always the answer to this question is to go stupidly low, the lower the better. “24?” I say. “Bitch I’m 35!” I feign surprise, then after that I guess we’re best friends.

“Vancouver is very much about the time of the week, second week or last week are pumping when people have money,” she said to try and explain away the empty bar. “I’m kinda disappointed because it’s not packed.” According to my NBF, Republic is the place to be on a Thursday, drawing a hot and exclusive crowd. I wasn't sure if maybe she was confused and was talking about a different bar because that bore no resemblance to the place I was standing in. “What I’m telling you is legit because I’m a fucking veteran.” OK. If this lady was a club vet, and I didn't doubt that she was, I could learn a lot from her. “So where’s the worst club in Vancouver?” I ask her. “Girl, Vancouver nightlife fucking sucks.” Not good enough gal pal, I needed an answer. The conclusion was that Vancouver nightlife is just extremely terrible; and if she’s hanging out in places like Republic I’m not surprised that she thinks that. My appraisal of this place must have burst her bubble because she quickly dismissed Republic and she and her friends began to mobilize to make their way somewhere else. “Come follow us to Bar None,” she offered. “Is it terrible?” I asked. “I don't know, I’m pretty sure it sucks,” she replied.

Good enough for me.

Republic may well have been the worst club I’d ever been to—made worse still by the fact that no one would acknowledge how terrible it was. “Where’s the worst club in Vancouver?” I asked a couple of party goers clearly having zero fun, both in the place and with each other. “Um I don't know.” Wrong! I wanted to shout, “This is!” If an empty room, overpriced drinks and an air of thus far unrecognised exclusivity doesn't spell a terrible club then I don't know what does.

Bar None

Yelp reviews (3 stars)
“Please shut this place down”
“Everyone budges, people are entitled as hell, and a lot of 17-year-olds. Not poppin”
“Crowd was lame and super-enhanced douchey”

My review: (1.5 stars)
“More like Bar NoFUN amiright…?”

We arrived at Bar None and a long line of girls in dresses and heels stretched along the sidewalk next to three limos parked up outside. We had wandered into Yaletown and it was certainly different from the Granville strip. I suddenly felt like I was in a dream where you realize you’re naked and there’s nothing you can do about it. Glancing down at my silver puffer and trainers I felt very underdressed. “Am I appropriately dressed?” I asked The Veteran. She ummed at me and then gritted her teeth like she was about to say something extremely harsh. “Usually girls who go clubbing can’t wear flats.” There was an awkward beat. Good to know. Her judgement further cemented in my mind that anywhere you have to wear heels to gain entry is immediately going to be terrible.

Upon entry, I was instantly bombarded by a waitress carrying a burning chalice of champagne.The Veteran had been right, no one was wearing flats in here. The place was a neon nightmare with overpriced drinks and a dance floor full of children grinding to Zara Larsson. I stood at the bar watching teetering bambies drink $15 Jägerbombs with guys wearing loafers and chains—I assume this was the preamble to the public heavy petting that then followed. I was in Bar None long enough to conclude that I might have walked into Hades itself.

The Veteran and her friends were now about six shots down and when we all filed out of Bar None to venture further into the Yaletown inferno I sensed there had been a change in tone. I continued talking to The Veteran despite the obvious saltiness from her friends. Keen to get her take on the Bar None, I asked if she’d liked it. “It’s not about where you go. It’s who you're with,” she replied. True, I guess. But if that were the case I don't know why they wouldn't have just picked somewhere cheaper, somewhere less weirdly exclusive, and perhaps somewhere less full of preteens in tight dresses.

At this point her friend turned to me and said, “We’ve fucking known each other since we were 18, that’s why there’s no new friends allowed.” Unknowingly I had walked into a kindergarten level of social politics, and I had made an extreme faux pas; I had distracted their queen bee. It was as if she was the mamma bird and my talking to her was distracting her from vomiting food and fun into the mouths of her friends and now they were starving! “You’re lucky it’s really hard to make new friends so that’s why she’s being extremely friendly,” the jealous friend continued. I just wanted to be honest at this point. I wanted to tell them that I thought they had the worst taste in bars I’d ever seen and thus are integral to my quest to find hell itself. But I didn’t. “Are you trying to start something?” was the response to my silence. Now I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that one and, assuming it was a rhetorical question I just pointed over at a limo and said: “Limo!”

Pierre’s Champagne Lounge

Yelp reviews (2 stars)
“This place is the worst”
“The girls here were too busy taking shots with middle aged men to serve us”
“horrible venue—Yaletown has really just become a place to be seen and flaunt your money”

My review (2.5 stars)
“Fine—but where was Justin Bieber?”

“She told me not to let you in,” the bouncer said, referring to The Veteran who had just walked in. That little bitch. Clearly this vote of no confidence wasn’t enough to stop me getting into this place though, and the doorman let me in with a wink. I hate what these places can do to a person, because even as I was ushered into the room of the rich and famous I couldn’t help but feel a little important.

Pierre’s is small, maybe made smaller by the amount of huge heads in the room. It is one room with a bar at the back and a few tables around the edges. At the tables are expensive bottles of alcohol and I assume (locally) famous people. Standing at the bar, I was in the thoroughfare of hotties coming back from the loo wiping their noses. Pierre’s is “intimate, exclusive and high end” said the bartender as I got another drink. “They’re more selective on the crowd.” That was obvious. I looked around the room and saw a sea of beautiful people, not necessarily dressed to the nines but dressed well, and I didn't feel totally out of place in my trainers. Initially blinded by the happy beautiful people, it took me a little time to spot the lurkers on the periphery—the older gentlemen in suits with the young ladies and the expensive champagne. “A lot of suits in here,” I noted. “Yeah there are a lot of business type people and people bringing their clients in,” the bartender replied, and I gave her a nod as if to say aaah sugar daddies but she was unwilling to divulge too much. “I’m sure there is but I don't get to see a lot of it.” Sensible response, but unless that girl in the corner was here with her actual daddy I see no other reason why she’d be hanging around with a 70-year-old man.

Then I was introduced to the owner, Peter. “Our clientele is probably the best in the city they like to have fun. They like to let loose” he told me as he sat me down with two shots of 1942 Don Julio. “This is the only tequila I drink,” he says as we took the shot. Clearly Pierre’s has a reputation for people bougie enough to want to be here and it was blindingly obvious the type of place they wanted to be. “Our places are the places if you have a little money, if you want to be seen, this is where it’s at.”

Maybe I was meant to be impressed that I was being “seen” here, as if that somehow validates me as a person; that the fact I’m breathing in the same coke farts as famous hockey players and actors makes me a “someone”—but my not knowing or caring who any of them were made me further realize that a place like Pierre’s is wasted on me.

I was keen to get a suggestion from Peter on where was awful, but sadly no luck. “It’s tough to say as everyone works really hard at what they do,” was his response. Damn all this Vancouver loyalty. “Vancouver nightlife is terrible if you don't know anybody and if you don't know how to have fun,” he continued. Correct, I thought, as I looked at my third free vodka soda and the remnants of our $20 tequila shots. I wasn't having fun at all until I had my intro to the owner. Hell, without Peter I’d still be at the bar paying for my own drinks and being ignored. Peter introduced me to a group of men who I assume were athletes because being in their midst made me feel like I was walking through a literal forest of tree-sized people. However, famous faces and schmoozing with rich people ultimately isn’t what I look for in a good night out. I understood what Pierre’s was trying to do though, and I understood how for some people that’s exactly what they want in a club. This place wanted to be exclusive and expensive, and their target audience seemed to enjoy it. Was it the worst club in Vancouver? Probably not, it just wasn't for me. But did I enjoy all the free expensive alcohol? Absolutely, I’m only human.

Banter Room

Yelp reviews (4 stars)
“This place sucks”
“If you are looking for good service and a place to “banter”, this is not it”
“Will never return”

My review (2 stars)
“Unable to locate banter”

I still hadn’t found Vancouver’s worst club and time was running out—it was already 12:30, and in Vancouver time that meant we were approaching the twilight hours of the night time, since nothing is open past 3. Leaving Pierre’s, I found a couple on the street and managed to extract from them where they thought was the worst place. “Banter Room is pretty terrible,” the girl said. “Won’t you come with me?” I asked. These guys were actually decent and I thought might make the insufferably-named “Banter Room” more bearable. “No fucking way I hate that place.” Awesome.

Turns out Banter Room isn’t entirely awful but it’s got a perplexing crowd. A lot of older men with younger women and for the life of me I can’t imagine why these ladies would want to entertain their sugar daddies in a place called “The Banter Room.” A woman and her much older boyfriend were on a date and I managed to join them in the throes of a passionate domestic argument. The older man told me that this bar “is a little tough to get into, but you met the prerequisites to get in.” I guess he was trying to pay me a compliment. “Everyone is pretty and it’s free love,” said his girlfriend. “True love, not free love,” corrected the man.

Oh no, I quickly realized I had become a pawn in their weird intergenerational family feud. “What if I love a woman and you love a man?” she said offering me her glass of champagne. Oh god, get me out. The lady then kept whispering “LGBTQ” at me as I tried to divert the attention away from the hideousness. Not too keen on being groomed for a threesome by this couple, I excused myself. I wasn’t sure why this place had inadvertently become the hangout spot for dates that spanned the generations and it was never made clear where the banter was either. Was it a general atmosphere? Was it in the conversation the bar encouraged? Was it an introspective and ironic comment on how this bar actually lacks any banter at all? I would like an answer to that.

So what was the conclusion? Clearly everyone in Vancouver is just too nice to tell me which is the shittiest club in all of town. “I wouldn't go there” is enough to tell me they probably think it’s awful but are too polite to ever say so. Did I find the worst spot in Vancouver? I don't think so, but I did find some pretty terrible ones. The bougie Vancouver crowds confused me—mainly I was confused that for a city of plaid shirts and trainers there was an appetite for that sort of thing. I doubt I’ll be venturing back into the inner circle just yet; I know I’d have much more fun elsewhere. That’s not to say my quest proved unfruitful though because I did get to see five of Vancouver’s finest shit holes. I also got propositioned for an intergenerational threesome, danced alone in a club of five other people and made and lost a best friend all in one night. In short, it was a night I will remember (in all its excruciating glory) for the rest of my life.

Canada’s yearlong celebration of its history has been consistently sullied by, well, its history, from people pointing out John A. MacDonald’s genocidal tendencies to protests over the statue of Edward Cornwallis, the Halifax founder who placed bounties on Mi’kmaq scalps, including children.

Perhaps the feds were hoping to rectify that by having this year’s Canadian History Week theme be human rights. Which brings us to Canadian historical icon Emily Murphy, leader of the pioneering feminists known as the Famous Five. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Murphy and friends just last month as “trailblazers for social justice” who “defined the future of our country.”

This is true. But what JT left out is that Murphy’s influence on Canada was as grotesque as it was great. In fact, Trudeau was elected on the promise of undoing the lesser-known part of her legacy that defined the future of our country’s racist marijuana laws.

Murphy is a perfect example of how history isn’t just written by the victors—it’s also edited by their descendants. Take her 1992 “Heritage Minute,” one of the patriotism-stoking government ads that have attained retro-90s cult status, and which federally-funded Historica Canada proudly reposted on YouTube just last year.

Oscar-nominated actress Kate Nelligan’s in-character monologue explains how Murphy, the first female judge in the British Empire, led a decade-long struggle that eventually saw Canadian women legally recognized as persons in 1929. (Most women, that is. Indigenous women are still waiting in 2017 for the passage of Bill S-3, a court-ordered Indian Act amendment ending the “sex-based inequities” it has enshrined in law since 1876.)

For winning the “Persons Case,” Murphy understandably received a place in history, a plaque in the senate, a brief stint on the $50 bill, an Edmonton park and statues on Parliament Hill and across the country. If you read the (sadly Vin Diesel-free) Famou5.ca website, you’ll learn a lot about Murphy—just not about how she spread racist drug panic across Canada and is widely considered the mother of marijuana prohibition.

That “Heritage Minute” ad did actually mention Murphy’s work as the “author of the Janey Canuck books [and] pioneer in the war against narcotics,” it just left out the context. (It also left out her vocal support for eugenics which helped pass Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928. Nearly 5,000 women with mental disabilities were sterilized before it was repealed in 1972.) A TV biography of Murphy made in 1999, also available on YouTube, admits her findings inspired drug legislation into the 1960s but dismisses modern criticism: “It sounds racist now—and it was racist, I guess—but that's what she found as a result of her research."

Murphy’s research was initially published in a series of articles for Maclean’s under the pen name Janey Canuck which, according to the book Crime and Deviance in Canada: Historical Perspectives, were commissioned "for the express purpose of arousing public demands for stricter drug legislation." In 2010, the magazine even published a mea culpa headlined “The Secret Shame of Maclean’s.”

Those articles became the basis for her 1922 best-selling book The Black Candle, alongside original chapters like “Marahuana—A New Menace.” Her conspiracy-theory thesis was that “aliens of colour” had formed a drug syndicate called The Ring to “bring about the downfall of the white race.”

Her lurid prose warned smoking opium would lead to “the amazing phenomenon of an educated gentlewoman, reared in refined atmosphere, consorting with the lowest classes of yellow and black men” and that an addicted woman “doesn't work for anyone but the negro who buys her for the price of opium where with to ‘hit the pipe.’” She also described dealers boasting about “how the yellow race would rule the world” and that “some of the Negroes coming into Canada—and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either—have similar ideas: and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white men.”

Anti-Chinese sentiment in Vancouver had already led to non-medical use of opium being outlawed in 1908, with cocaine and morphine added in 1911. So aside from salaciously vilifying POC even further and spreading hate across the country, what her best-seller added to the national conversation was its warning about cannabis.

Cannabis was almost unknown in Canada at the time, making it easy for Murphy to claim it was poison that would end in “untimely death.” That is, after turning its users into “raving maniacs [who] are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.” For publishing this “research,” she nominated herself for a Nobel Prize.

In her book Jailed for Possession, University of Guelph professor Catherine Carstairs has claimed Murphy’s influence was “overstated both by herself and subsequent drug scholars.” But she also acknowledges that “Murphy’s articles did mark a turning point, and her book...brought the Vancouver drug panic to a larger Canadian audience.” Public opinion, of course, is a propellant for such legislation and cannabis wound up added to Canada’s anti-drug law a year after Black Candle’s publication. Canada was the first western country to do so, a full 14 years before the US.

Why does all this matter in 2017? Because it’s important to acknowledge that pot prohibition was born and raised in racism so that we don’t let this problematic past dictate our future.

This week Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor announced that the feds want to know if Canadians support letting people with pot charges into the legal industry. "We have over 500,000 Canadians with minor drug offences on their criminal records,” she said at a November 21 press conference. “We're just asking the question: should these people with a small amount of personal possession, should they be excluded from the market or should we consider them?"

To dig deeper into this question than the minister [publicly] did, a recent Toronto Star report revealed black people with no criminal history are three times more likely than white people to be arrested for possession. Even pot czar (and former police chief) MP Bill Blair admitted in 2016 that “one of the great injustices in this country is the disparity and the disproportionality of the enforcement of these laws and the impact it has on minority communities, Aboriginal communities and those in our most vulnerable neighbourhoods.”

So if people of colour are kept out of the post-prohibition industry because they have criminal records due to race-based enforcement, then that disparity and disproportionality will continue—and Emily Murphy will keep winning the wrong case.

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Have you ever seen Stealth, that movie from 2005 with a 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes score?

That one with Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx who play fighter pilots that have to, I dunno, beat up Sam Shepard who stole a jet with a cloaking device or something? No, alright, that’s all cool, not very many people other than me have. OK, have you ever seen Wonder Woman? No, not the classy movie that just came out! The freakin’ comic, where she has the invisible jet! How about Star Trek with those Klingon Bird of Prey that go invisible when someone yells ‘So'wI yIchu'?’

No? Jesus Christ, you gotta catch up on your invisible military technology pop culture, friend.

Anyhoo, I’m not here to talk about bad movies from my youth or comics and TV shows from the 60s. The reason we’re here, is because Donald Trump, took a break from fanning the ever growing flames of rage in his country and headed down to Riviera Beach in Florida to address the Coast Guard and talk about invisible fighter jets.

So for the second time in recent months, Trump kinda hinted that he thinks that F-35s are invisible. Look, Buzzfeed has the full transcription of his speech here, but what we’re going to break down here is this bit of it. Here’s Donald, is his own words.

“The Navy, I can tell you, we're ordering ships, with the Air Force i can tell you we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is like almost like an invisible fighter. I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, how good is this plane? They said, well, sir, you can't see it.’ I said ‘but in a fight. You know, in a fight, like I watch on the movies. The fight, they're fighting. How good is this?’ They say, well, ‘it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it.’ Even if it's right next to them, it can't see it. I said that helps. That's a good thing.”

To be fair, it might just be a bit of rhetoric from Trump, surely the Commander-in-Chief knows that while yes, it is small for a fighter jet and tough to spot on radar—the super-duper expensive F-35 is quite visible to the human eye. Especially when it’s “right next to them.”

But this is your president America,—you’re lucky he didn’t get in the cockpit and just go "VROOSH VROOSH" for ten minutes.

The second biggest takeaway from this speech was Trump really likes the way dogfights look in the movies (honestly, who doesn’t, shout out to Iron Eagle). That’s good because it’s unlikely he’ll be watching the F-35 in a movie-style dogfight anytime soon (it’s yet to even fly a combat mission for the US)—given that dogfights have basically faded into military history.

Anyway, as mentioned above, THIS ISN’T EVEN THE FIRST TIME THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD INDICATED HE THINKS PLANES CAN BE INVISIBLE and you know what they say, fool me once, shame on you, etc, etc. So, Trump thinking that his military has invisible planes—it’s a pattern. Take a look for yourself:

“So amazing we are ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35. You like the F-35? ... You can't see it,” he said in October. “You literally can't see it. It's hard to fight a plane you can't see."

“That’s a pretty cool piece of tech you got there, toots.” - Donald J. Trump (presumably)

Now, this isn’t to say some sort of cloaking technology couldn’t happen, scientists have been working on it for years, but—what I can tell you here—is that it is, most certainly, not currently used on F-35s.

My best guess is that someone once told America’s president that F-35 were invisible to radar (they’re not) and that just rattled around in the melting collection of well-done steak and ketchup clogged neurons inside his brain, and came out the other side that they’re actually invisible.

Next stop: convincing Trump that the Marines need to take out Cobra.

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When police fatally shot a Taiwanese national accused of dealing drugs from a low-rent apartment complex in Central Jakarta earlier this week, it was just the latest death in Indonesia's increasingly brutal war on drugs.

The country's police force have killed at least 92 suspected drug dealers since President Joko Widodo and his anti-narcotics chief Budi Waseso first ordered authorities to "show no mercy," in the war on drugs. The last time VICE's Indonesia office checked, a mere three months ago, that figure was far lower, at 55 dead. This time last year, only 18 people had been killed by police during drug raids, according to data compiled by Amnesty International.

The rising death toll is further evidence that Jokowi's "just shoot them already," rhetoric is more than mere tough talk from Indonesia's normally soft-spoken leader. It's also another sign that Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte's own brutal methods are finding a receptive audience in nearby Indonesia. The country's anti-drug chief has a hot-and-cold view of Duterte's methods, going as far as ordering officers to "shoot drug dealers, sellers, or users dead on the spot," before later telling the foreign press "I will not follow or copy it, I don't even support it."

President Jokowi himself believes that Indonesia is in the middle of a "drug emergency," one that requires a dramatic solution. His office restarted the execution of convicted drug traffickers, sending 18 convicts before firing squads on Indonesia's prison island since Jokowi took office in 2014. The executions have since been put on hold, despite initial plans to kill at least 30 more this year.

But at the same time, the president and top officials started to float harsher rhetoric in speeches and interviews with the press. And as officials reiterated the new "shoot them dead," rules of engagement, the number of suspected drug dealers gunned down during a raid increased, according to Amnesty International's Indonesia researcher Bramantya Basuki.

"What's for sure is the police can't answer the questions coming from civilians and intellectuals on why the number of killed drug dealers has gone up drastically since 2016," Bramantya told VICE. "The police said that what they did was in-line with procedures. There is no other answer from them."

Meanwhile, other public officials have backed the president's words. Members of the regional legislative councils in Medan, Tebingtinggi, North Sumatra, and Kotawaringin Timur, Central Kalimantan, have echoed Jokowi's words, expanding the shoot-to-kill orders to motorbike thieves as well—a class of criminal often referred to as "sadistic" in the domestic press.

“In Indonesia, people think that drug dealers are criminals, so it’s OK if they’re shot or killed,” Bramantya told VICE. “What we’re afraid of is if the president’s rhetoric becomes widely adopted by officers at field, as if they now have the legitimacy to do it [shoot to kill].”

This is the stickiest part of the country's increasingly violent war on drugs—the more suspected drug traffickers are killed, the more popular the government looks to the vast majority of voters, explained Evitarossi Budiawan, a researcher at the human rights group Imparsial.

"In the Indonesian context, every shooting is blown-up by the media and runs parallel with Jokowi's war on drugs because it reaps a lot of approval and sympathy from the public," Evitarossi told VICE. "Every time there is an execution, people actually support it. There's no resistance— people like it—and that’s why it’s been done repeatedly."

While some of these busts involve large quantities of illegal drugs, plenty of others don't. When the Taiwanese national was gunned down earlier this week, two of his alleged associates were also arrested. The authorities said he was a known drug dealer, but between the three men they only seized 10.2 grams of methamphetamine. That's enough meth to fill one tiny bag. Hold nine Haribo brand gummy bears in your palm—that's how much it weighed. Not every drug bust—or every death—is going turn the war on drugs.

And so far, none of them have. The rise in police shootings and executions have done little to actually curb drug use in Indonesia. The country's own anti-narcotics agency reported that the number of drug arrests had nearly doubled since 2010, despite the decision to use increasingly brutal methods to curb drug use.

The anti-drug agency has its own arguments for why this is happening. The department's top brass believe that the foreign drug dealers who used to work in the Philippines have fled to Indonesia to avoid Duterte's bloody crackdown. So the response, they argue, is a harsher crackdown—one that, to outside observers, looks a lot like a slow motion version of the tragedy currently playing out in the Philippines.

“We’re afraid that if this is allowed and normalized, it could be like what is happens in the Philippines,” Bramantya told VICE. “It could get out of hand.”

This entire swing toward heavy-handed policing in Indonesia has a lot to do with Duterte's refusal to actually address the complaints of foreign leaders and human rights groups over his support of a drug war that's left thousands dead in a wave of extrajudicial killings. When a country like the Philippines can get away with murder, on the global scene, then what's to stop other Southeast Asian nations from sticking to their own wildly unpopular policies?

“Duterte’s policies certainly influences the perspective of some Southeast Asian leaders in addressing human rights issues," explained Ardi Manto Adiputra, a research coordinator at Imparsial. "It reinforces this attitude about 'Asean values' that put aside some universal human rights principles and standards of values."

And this swing toward violence and populism also presents a dangerous future for other countries in the region, the ones that don't even attempt to uphold universal standards of human rights, Ardi explained.

"Even today the issue of human rights in the region is pretty unpopular," he told VICE. "The 'Duterte policy,' can be copied in even worst forms elsewhere, since the Philippines and Indonesia are supposed to be the role models of democratic countries that respect human rights more than anyone else in Southeast Asia."

The video had all the makings of a viral hit. A young girl confronted her father's (alleged) mistress as she waited in a frozen yogurt line at a Jakarta mall, shouting "I hate you! Why did you take my father away from me?" in an outburst that felt cringy in a "this is clearly a personal matter" kind of way.

But the video, and its fallout, also highlight an unfortunate reality about life in Indonesia. Infidelity is shockingly common, especially amongst powerful men who have the money to support long-term affairs.

Certain apartment buildings in the capital have the reputation of being "mistress apartments"—the kinds of low-rent spots where on some nights you can still find a luxury Italian sports car parked outside. And nationwide, infidelity is the fourth-highest cause of divorce amongst married couples, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

But while infidelity is common, and it's definitely an act that involves at least TWO PEOPLE, the woman, typically the mistress, is the one who has to shoulder all the blame. Don't believe me? Let's take this viral video as a case study of sorts.

I guess it's pretty important to understand all the characters in this very depressing viral play about marital infidelity before we focus on the fallout and what it all means.

Faisal Harris, the father, is a businessman and the former vice president of the Ferrari Owners Club Indonesia—which means he's totally rich and pretty well-connected. His wife, Sarita Abdul Mukti, is a businesswoman and a very public figure. Even their daughter Shafa Aliya has achieved a level of Insta-fame on social media. Sarita and her four daughters were all living in Australia when news of Faisal's alleged cheating hit the press earlier this year.

The "other woman" here is Jennifer Dunn, a sinetron actress more commonly known as Jeje Dunn who was arrested for drug possession back in 2005. She was also reportedly involved in an affair with her own lawyer and implicated in a second legal case, this one involving a money laundering scheme.

So you can already see how the press is going to spin this whole thing. Jeje Dunn, a woman with a scandalous history, is painted as the villain while Faisal, the man, avoids the scrutiny and the social media hate. Type Faisal Harris into Google and you'll find photos of Jeje Dunn. His name has been largely kept out of the press, or at least it was until another video of him screaming at his daughter Shafa and hitting her showed up online Monday morning.

It's easy to see why the internet focused all the blame on Jeje Dunn. It's in our language. We have a word for women like Jeje Dunn: "pelakor." It's a portmanteau of "perebut laki orang," a term that roughly translates as a woman who snatches away someone else's man. It's a term that basically puts the man in a passive position. He's just out there, minding his own business, before this sneaky woman comes along and steals him away.

Now, obviously, I'm just an observer here, but I'm 99.9 percent sure that's not what happened. Jakarta isn't full of women going around snatching men from their marital beds. No woman is out there luring men into hotel rooms or setting traps to ensnare them in extramarital affairs. Relationships require the equal involvement of two parties. So shouldn't both of them shoulder the blame equally?

Not in a country that uses words like "pelakor." The phrase is more common than neutral terms like "WIL," ("wanita idaman lain," or "a woman who is wanted by someone else")—but even that is just another phrase that focuses on the woman instead of the man.

So what do we call a married man who cheats on his wife? Nothing. There literally isn't a word in Bahasa Indonesia. We have a term for men who sleep around (hidung belang), a term men who can't commit (buaya darat), but none for married men involved in extramarital affairs. That's sort of messed up, right? (Although, to be fair, we don't have a term for philandering wives either)

So, of course, when an affair hits the headlines, all the hate is thrown the woman's way. She's a homewrecker, a sneaky bitch who's looking to steal another woman's man away for herself. Our society just can't let a man be responsible for his own actions.

Think back to one of the most-famous affairs of the early 2000s, the relationship between Ahmad Dhani and Mulan Jameela. Mulan rose to fame when she started to sing alongside Ahmad Dani's then-wife Maia Estianty as the musical duo Ratu. The pop act lasted two years before it fell apart, along with Dhani's marriage. It was later revealed that Dhani and Mulan were having an affair.

For Mulan, a woman who eventually had children with Dhani, the drama destroyed her career. She was never able to recover from all the hate sent her way. Dhani, on the other hand, kept on being famous, despite repeatedly falling into public controversies like wearing a Nazi uniform and being implicated in a plot to overthrow the government—although the last one is a little weird and probably not all that accurate of a claim.

I couldn't probably keep going, but you get the point. This video went viral for all the wrong reasons. Shafa's response is totally understandable, a very personal, very hurtful thing just happened to her immediate family. But the rest of us are just bystanders casting judgement on a woman and leaving a man completely out of the conversation. So next time, instead of wasting so much energy condemning some guy's side-chick, let's take a step back and leave it all alone. Because we might not be able to change our language, but we can just keep our mouths shut.

On October 27, 1961, 19-year-old Kentuckian Betty Gail Brown was found dead in her car, strangled by her own brassiere. The mysterious murder became Kentucky’s most famous cold case.

Brown was your typical girl. She lived in Lexington with her insurance salesman father Hargus Brown and homemaker mother Quincy Stanton Brown (the sister of recently deceased character actor Harry Dean Stanton), while she attended nearby Transylvania University. She was popular on campus, described as likable and attractive by friends, and had no known enemies, which all helped to make her murder even more shocking.

In 1965, an alcoholic drifter named Alex Arnold claimed to have committed the crime. He made his confession while in police custody in Oregon for being intoxicated in public. He gave his statement while suffering from withdrawal symptoms and displaying suicidal tendencies. Despite the initial confession, Arnold eventually recanted his story. He was ultimately freed due to a mistrial.

Ever since that trial, Arnold's attorney Robert G. Lawson has been fascinated with the case. The lawyer saved all the files and notes for years and has used them to write Who Killed Betty Gail Brown?: Murder, Mistrial, and Mystery, out November 24 from University Press of Kentucky. The book explores the aftermath of the unsolved murder, highlighting the need for more scrutiny to be placed on confessions obtained by law enforcement.

I talked to Lawson, who is now a professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky College of Law, to find out what it was like serving as Arnold’s court-appointed lawyer and if he thinks the case will ever be solved.

VICE: Why did you decide to write a book on central Kentucky’s most famous cold case?
Robert G. Lawson: I have wanted to write a book about this event for more than 50 years. I was one of the lawyers who defended the only man ever prosecuted for the offense. I got full information about the matter in 1965, and became a law professor shortly after this trial. I’ve intended to write about the story ever since. I retired two-and-a-half years ago and spent all of my time writing the book, which was just published.

How big was this case in 1961?
It just captivated the whole city of Lexington, the whole state of Kentucky. In those days, you didn’t have network television, you didn’t have internet and all that, so most of the publicity that it got was in the newspaper. It was headline news forever whenever it happened, because of the nature of the homicide. She was a very attractive 19-year-old student at Transylvania University here in Lexington. She studied on the campus that night until about midnight, and she left and was never seen alive after that. She was found on the campus, in her car, a little bit after three o’clock in the morning. She had been strangled to death with her own brassiere.

The Transylvania University campus where Betty Gail Brown was found.

What made it so newsworthy?
I think it was a combination of the uniqueness of the homicide victim—she was not a typical homicide victim at all—and the concessional circumstances under which she was murdered. That’s what attracted the attention, and it just went on and on for weeks and weeks after the homicide—and then it got revived again. They investigated it like crazy for a year and two months but then it sort of died away. They didn’t have any more tips or clues to follow. For two years there wasn’t much on it, and then in 1965, Arnold gave the confession that became the core of the case against him. So it got revived again in ‘65, and the same kind of enormous coverage of it in all of the newspapers here and around here, and that lasted again until the end of the trial, which was at the end of 1965.

Betty Gail Brown's watch, found in the grass nearby.

Alex Arnold, Jr.

What was it like serving as Arnold’s court appointed lawyer?
It was very interesting because I was a really young lawyer. I was brought into the case by a much older lawyer who was appointed, and he had the court name me as co-counsel. I was 27 years old and the defendant, Arnold, was 33. This other lawyer was in his 60s and because of that age differential, I think Arnold identified a little bit more with me. I spent a lot of time with Arnold while he was in jail. He was in jail for almost a year awaiting this trial. I did a lot of the legwork and the investigating work and that kind of thing. It was really interesting and fascinating for me as a young lawyer to have that experience.

Why did the case get thrown out?
There was a four-year period between the time of the attacks and the time of the confession. There wasn’t a lot in the confession that hadn’t been published in the newspaper. Now, the prosecution, and particularly the police officers who took the confession, thought there were some things in the confession that hadn’t been published, and that only somebody who was involved in the murder could have known. They never clearly identified those. I would say the biggest explanation for the decision in the case was the heavy burden of proof that the prosecution had. They had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the case ends up with seven of the 12 jurors voting for acquittal, and five of them voting for conviction. It was just almost a dead heat, I would say. They were able to show that Arnold was in Lexington and close to the location of the homicide. On the night of the homicide, they didn’t have much more than the confession, so they never retried it. They rescheduled it for trial two or three times, but just always pushed it back.

Alex Arnold, Jr.

Why did you choose to write the story from the police’s point of view?
There were no transcripts because in those days, they made no tape recordings of cases. You had shorthand—the court reporters took all the occurrence of testimony, and they would never convert that into readable materials unless you had an appeal. Well, you didn’t have an appeal in this case, so there was never any transcript made of the trial. I thought the best way to reconstruct all that was to do it in the way in which it occurred, which involved communications between me and the other lawyer, me and Arnold, and then the prosecution. I reconstructed that from my own memory, the police records, and all of that, so that’s all reconstructed material, which I thought was the best way to tell the story.

I spent about two-and-a-half years writing it. I had lots of papers that I’d kept since the time of the trial. I used them along with lots of personal memories about this, the most interesting experience in my professional life. I obtained all of the police records that had been accumulated over years of investigation of the murder—close to 400 pages—obtained all of the court records generated by the trial, and read hundreds of newspaper articles that had been written about the case. And, of course, I relied heavily on my personal recollection of the events and the trial.

A diagram from the book.

What surprised you most as you wrote the book?
Having been involved in one-half of the historical events covered in the book—the investigation and defense of the only person ever tried for the crime—I obtained most of the story, and all of the important pieces of it, when or shortly after it occurred. My recent research revived some of my memories, but did not add a lot of new information about the murder and trial. My surprise has been the degree of interest shown in the story after the passage of more than 50 years.

Robert G. Lawson

What do you want people to come away with after reading the book?
Hopefully, after reading the book, readers would have a better appreciation for the need to exercise caution in judging the guilt of a person who has given a confession of an important crime.

Do you think this case will ever be solved?
If I had to guess, I would say that it will never be solved. It was as aggressively investigated at the time of its occurrence as any murder that ever occurred in Lexington. The investigation started with at least 25 detectives and police officers working around the clock to find evidence of the killer, lasted for two or three years without any solution, was reopened when the man that I helped represent confessed to the killing, and ended as it began, with no clue as to the motive for the killing or the identity of the killer. We are now 56 years since the killing, and the case is still hidden in darkness. I don’t think that is likely to change in the years ahead.

Order a copy of Who Killed Betty Gail Brown?: Murder, Mistrial, and Mystery.

Gerard Butler is a terrible actor. I’m not saying this to be facetious, or as a precursor to presenting redeemable qualities that justify his continued presence in blockbusters. With a career spanning almost two decades, his performances have been as riveting as watching paint dry, with neither the charm nor wit to make them tolerable. Critics have consistently panned his acting chops, so why do film executives continue funneling millions into projects that have been proven to be critical failures and, at times, financial quicksand?

The bankability of the leading man has always been both predictable and capricious. Hollywood was built in the image of Clark Gable and John Wayne, and when obvious masculinity was swapped for quiet intelligence, Montgomery Clift became the actor of choice. As audiences started clamoring for something a bit more daring, James Dean made a fleeting yet memorably rebellious appearance, and Marlon Brando carried the cause that Dean never had the chance to truly explore.

Throughout the years, we have seen different versions of these actors picking up the mantle of a desirable lead: white, able-bodied, and physically fit heroes. To be a white leading man in Hollywood is to face expectations that everything you possess gets the Midas Touch—and yet Butler’s entire career stands opposite to this theory.

His latest film, Geostorm, cost an estimated $120 million dollars; according to The Wrap it looks set to lose over $100 million. According to A.O. Scott of The New York Times, when it comes to Butler’s acting, ”Consistency is his chief and perhaps his only virtue as an actor.” Indeed, sit through a Butler film and the two defining factors will be consistent mediocrity and implausibility. Anyone remember Gods of Egypt ? Many films rely on a suspension of disbelief, but Gods of Egypt featured a whitewashed cast and insisted on forcing viewers to sit through over two hours of Butler playing an Egyptian God. The film's budget was $140 million, and it barely broke even at a paltry $150 million.

Butler’s onscreen debut was in the British drama film Mrs. Brown, but his first foray into the leading man big-leagues was in the thriller-action film Dracula 2000—a breakthrough that wasn’t as titillating as Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise, as contentious as Denzel Washington in Carbon Copy, or as captivating as Russell Means in The Last of the Mohicans.

Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office, failing to surpass its $54 million budget, and critical reaction toward Butler's performance as the Count foreshadowed the lukewarm reception his acting would receive throughout his career. Writing for Variety, Joe Leydon said, “Gerard Butler’s Dracula seems more like a peevish male model than a true prince of darkness”; Scott Brake at IGN.com called him “an amazingly uncharismatic Dracula.”

Four years later, Butler took on another well-known tortured soul in his role as the scarred and lovelorn Phantom in the onscreen adaptation of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. The film was praised for its visuals and acting (particularly actress Emmy Rossum), but once again Butler failed to truly impress. Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw said, “At least hidden mostly behind the mask, [Butler] can now try pretending he wasn’t in it.”

Throughout his career, Butler has largely remained in the action-adventure/thriller niche, churning out films such as 300, Olympus Has Fallen, Reign of Fire and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. What they lacked in substance, character development, and intelligent dialogue was made obsolete by the box-office dividends that come from the sheer viewing spectacle of CGI effects that require no thespian finesse. The few times Butler has tried to rely on his own charm—smaller-budget films like Playing for Keeps, P.S. I Love You, and A Family Man—has resulted in many critics criticizing his performances as uninspiring, dull, or unlikeable. A Family Man, in particular, made a domestic total of $0.

Butler has constantly offered sub-par work that has garnered him a level of financial security and fame, ensconced in the uncompromising safety of whiteness and male privilege. No person of colour can afford to make a film that flops while hoping to be offered a place in a $100 million extravaganza. Artists of colour are rarely given room to fail, but Butler has forged an entire career from being the guy who is usually bad and, at best, adequate.

Despite all of this, as well as Geostorm’s pitiful box-office performance, he has two more upcoming films in the pipeline: Hunter Killer and Den of Thieves, with the latter set for an early 2018 release. Even if they fail to garner favor with critics and come up empty on the awards circuit, chances are high that Butler will never find himself needing to fight for a seat at the table. Ultimately, white men are allowed to publicly fail while still emerging victorious.

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If you’re an adult with a vagina, chances are you’ve had a stranger examine parts of yourself that, even with the most skillful maneuvering of a hand mirror, you’ll probably never see. These encounters are bearable at best and traumatizing at worst. Nobody wants a cold, metal duckbill yawning up at their cervix.

I myself have had my fair share of bizarre “women’s health” appointments, the most notable of which involved a pap test gone awry when my doctor’s penlight died at the beginning of the exam. Frustrated, she went to get the charging cable from another room (apparently her light was like an old iPhone, unable to hold a charge for long) but it still wouldn’t work when she plugged it in. Feet stirruped, I watched her shake and whack the light, the best way to fix a piece of medical equipment. Giving up, she left the room a second time but forgot to CLOSE THE DOOR. It was only open a crack, but so was my vagina, and so I quickly shielded my exposed parts (poorly) with that weird paper skirt they give you. I don’t know why I didn’t just take my feet out of the stirrups. I felt paralyzed, like a turtle on its back, about to give birth.

When the doctor came back she was carrying a five-foot-tall floor lamp, which she brusquely plugged in and aimed at my crotch without acknowledging that this was somewhat unorthodox. She prodded around for a few moments, inserted the speculum, cranked it open, and then announced that I’d just started my period.

“I can’t complete the exam,” she said, inconvenienced by my bleeding uterus and clearly annoyed. “Come back in a week or so,” she added.

But I didn’t. Because I needed time to process, or something? I don’t know. I’ll go back soon. I promise. Maybe.

Out of an impulse to commiserate, VICE asked women and non-binary folks for stories of their most awkward gynecologist encounters. Note: this is not meant to discourage you from seeing a lady doctor. It’s important and you should go. But also, just be ready.

Mallory, 25

I was spotting irregularly which always makes me a little paranoid, so I went to a gynecologist at a free women’s walk-in clinic. The doctor was a woman maybe a little older than me and she had this fresh, enthusiastic sunny vibe. I get a little nervous exposing my lady flora and fauna at the doctors but she was focussed, got right in there and up there and said my IUD was in perfect placement. “It all looks really good in there. Good job,” she said like she was my mother congratulating me for cleaning my room.

Then a little awkward silence ensued as she inserted a cotton swab for the pap test. I stared at the ceiling tiles. “You know Selena Gomez has lupus,” she all of a sudden said, digging right in and up there. “She seems like a really cool person. I wish she wasn’t dating that Justin Bieber.”

I wanted to tell her thinking about Justin Bieber while she was at the mouth of my crotch felt odd but I just said, “Yeah, he peed in a bucket once and got arrested.”

“Selena Gomez doesn’t tour in Canada enough,” the doctor continued. “It’s just not enough. Okay this will hurt a little bit. Have you heard her new song?”

It did hurt a little bit. “‘Fetish’? No.”

“It’s not that good. ‘Come and Get It’ was her best.”

“I completely agree.”

“OK, you’re all set. You should listen to ‘Fetish’ on your way home. See what you think.”

And then she removed her latex gloves, Purelled her hands and left me half-naked with thoughts of Selena and Justin on a red carpet somewhere. So there you have it—the most I’ve ever thought about and discussed Selena Gomez in my whole life was with this gynecologist.

I did listen to ‘Fetish’ on my way home. The Doctor was right. ‘Come and Get It’ is way better.

Tin, 24

For safety and simplicity, I had not disclosed my nonbinary identity/pronouns in my interactions with healthcare professionals at the time. I was 21 and having concerns about endometriosis, due to debilitating cramps and progressively worsening abdominal aches.

Beyond over-the-counter painkillers, the female physician at my college could not help me but understood my distrust of oral birth control. She referred me to a male gynecologist, which I didn’t really give much of a thought for my first visit, but I remember feeling relief to see his glowing 4.5/5 star reviews on RateMDs.com.

On the examination table, my body dissociated to witness the middle-aged white man lecturing me about how ovulation worked and how the Mirena IUD helped to suppress pain, gesturing at a poster of my reproductive system with a pointer stick, while over-enunciating every word. The highly rated gynecologist went on his way in the hurried manner of a walk-in clinic physician, and I knew already that I wouldn’t be able to afford it and never gave the pamphlet another look beyond that day.

On my way to class months later, I was suddenly not able to walk due to the sharp, raw stabbing pain and I hailed a cab to the ER. I had been too busy with my daily routine to take care of the pain since it came and went with my cycle.

At the hospital, pelvic examinations were done on me, first by a female triage nurse, which included ‘gently’ pressing down on my lower abdomen, which determined that there was likely an ovarian cyst. Moments later, a male resident walked into the treatment room, along with a scrawnier male intern. The resident repeated the pelvic examination that the nurse had just done to ‘confirm’ that there was indeed a cyst there, and then asked if it would be OK if the intern could repeat the vaginally invasive procedure. Was it his first time on the floor or something? I had the option to say no, but instead I politely obliged to this hands-on, teaching moment, while I was experiencing a searing 9 out of 10 pain.

The mini-me cautiously snapped on the latex gloves, and awkwardly squirted the medical lube onto them. His imprecise movements inside of my vagina made me cringe, along with the fact that he kept making eye contact with me on and off, as if he didn’t know how much of it was appropriate, or if he was maybe thinking about accidentally trying to arouse me, or himself.

Outside the hallway, I could vaguely hear the resident noting on the intern’s simulations while I sat bewildered and repulsed in the treatment room. The cyst ended up rupturing while I waited for the good painkillers.

Kerri, 32

I was told about the Women's Center by my roommate who said she had a lovely experience there. This felt like just what the doctor ordered for my lady cave. I phoned in and ordered the "physical" as it had been several years since I’d had one. When I got there, I went in right away and sat on the always too tall doctor chaise, sizing up the stirrups while I waited, and trying to recall what pair of underwear I had put on.

My female doctor came in and to my surprise she was not an old war nurse whose face was hardened by the Great Depression but a young, hip lady who was by the looks of things, my age. She was very nice and normal which put me at ease. I warned her it had been a while and she said you only have to come in every three years or so, which meant I was perfectly on schedule. She was so easy to talk to that I found myself chatting with her like we were at brunch. She told me to lay down and spread my legs, and without hesitation I responded "you gotta buy me dinner first." We laughed and shared a friendship that felt like forever but had really been seven minutes at best. Seven minutes in heaven with my bestie. The only downside was my down side being prodded by a cold pair of terminator claws but it went pretty quick. She told me she was new to Vancouver and I told her I had recently moved as well. I was sad that our appointment was over but I went home feeling good about checking my box off the to-do list.

A few days later I received what looked like my gyno gal pal friend requesting me on Facebook. I wasn't 100 percent sure it was her but it sure looked like her, and the name was familiar. I didn't accept the request because I thought that might be weird, and to this day I don't know if it was her. I never went back (because it hasn't been three years yet) but let me tell you it was certainly the weirdest friend request I'd ever received. Tina Fey considers her gyno part of her squad, and I regret not including mine!

K.C., 31

I was living in Cincinnati and I was Okcupiding. For a lot of dark reasons I won’t go into, I was sharing my entire medical history with strangers online. I was chatting with a med student about a discovery I’d made in my basement region. I described to him what was going on. He wrote, “I’m just a rando on okc, but you definitely have Syphilis!!”

So, the next day, I go to Urgent Care because I never know where to take my vagina or who to trust it with. Into the exam room hobbles an old, wizened doctor with hands the color of maps. He reaches down, reads my body braille, comes up and states: “I’ve been practicing medicine for 35 years… and I’ve never seen that before.”

Sooo, I make an appointment with the original pussy people, Planned Parenthood and go and take all the tests. Then they sit you down in a conference room to ask you all the, “How did we get here?” questions. My practitioner comes in and goes, “Why did you order the full menu?” as in why did I order ALL the tests.

“Because Internet Doogie Howser told me I def had capital S. Here—” I take out my phone, because like a good Millennial, I took a picture of my crotch. What I’m about to show her looks like the Mars rover landing, and so I gently swipe our way into it: latte art, latte art, aerial shot of my naked torso—cool. So cool. Not even a good one. One with, like, a Blair Witch filter. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen it all,” she shrugs.

“No. That sorry is for me.”

We get to Mars, she lights up with recognition. “Oh that? That’s not syphilis, it’s this totes normal thing that shows up, and then leaves, and prob won’t come back.” I was so relieved I forgot the actual word she said. It was legit just a cyst.

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The Michelangelo of rolling joints is getting festive this Thanksgiving by producing a true masterpiece: the smokeable turkey.

Tony Greenhand is a Portland-based artist who makes a living sculpting made-to-order joints with a DIY look that could be easily mistaken for Tom Sachs bricolages. Far beyond the humble cross-joint, he's constructed smokable tacos, pineapples, Simpsons characters, a peacock with 12 joints for feathers, a posable Tommy Chong, a replica of the Space Needle, and a machine gun blunt that shoots tiny projectile joints. Greenhand has rolled for Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, and Chong, been featured on CNN and in Playboy and Vogue, and holds a record for rolling the world's largest joint—a 4.2 pound monstrosity decorated as a watermelon. High Times called him one of the world's best joint-rollers.

This Thanksgiving, Greenhand whipped up a tribute to America's most munchies-friendly holiday. He sculpted the bird, a miniature plate of greens, some crumble stuffing, and a tiny bowl of kief, and arranged the whole thing to look like the dankest mini-Thanksgiving ever. It took about two hours.

"I made it to smoke on my customary walk-before-Thanksgiving-dinner with my girlfriend," he tells VICE. "I'll be spending the day with her family. They don't smoke, but they know we do, hence the smaller turkey. Next year it's dinner at my place. I'll be rolling up the whole meal and there will be more than enough to go around."

If you want to attempt your own turkey joint, study some glory shots of Greenhand's bird below, and read about his creative process here.

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In early 2019, the L train in New York City will shut down for 15 months to repair damage caused during Hurricane Sandy. Leading up to the closure, VICE will be providing relevant updates and policy proposals, as well as profiles of community members and businesses along the affected route in a series we're calling Tunnel Vision. Read more about the project here .

If you hop on the Hammersmith & City, Circle, or Metropolitan tube in London, you wouldn’t guess that you’re riding the oldest underground subway lines in the world.

The stations are refined and clean. The traffic flow throughout is streamlined to allow maximal entry and exit. Some of the trains are old and slightly dim, sure, but the new cars are bright, designed for comfort, and—for the most part—arrive on time. It very much appears to be 2017 in the London tube..

New York’s subway, on the other hand, has over the past year reached code red levels. Just last June, Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a “state of emergency” in an effort to fix the many, many broken parts of the system and revive it for a new generation. Delays and meltdowns are rampant, the age-old infrastructure is visibly decaying, and planned, long-term shutdowns (like the one this series was created to track) float ominously in the back of riders’ minds. In short, things are bad and threatening to become worse if these issues aren’t addressed.

For salvation, Gotham is increasingly across the pond. It is a form of London’s congestion pricing system—which charges drivers to enter the city during daytime hours—that Cuomo hopes to install in New York. It is the company who’s responsible for London’s wildly successful Oyster card (which we’ll explain later) that will be overhauling New York’s soon-to-be-history MetroCard. It is London’s fare-capping system that has influenced the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) thinking on subsidizing low-income riders. And most recently, the Toronto transit chief and a former London Underground manager, Andy Byford, was appointed president of the New York City Transit sector of the MTA, which oversees the city’s subways.

That said, as a New York City transit reporter, it seemed like the right time to come to London.

Truth be told, New York’s subway system is its own beast: it has double the number of lines, close to double the number of stations, and millions more passengers each year than London. Yet, to many critics, it’s the functionality of London’s transit system that offers a template for the path its American counterpart could take in the years ahead. So, over the last few days, I rode much of what Transport for London (TfL) has to offer (tubes, buses, connecting trains), and spoke to a number of regular riders to better understand what exactly New York could do to create a modern-day transit system.

At first glance, there are a lot of similarities between the New York City metro and the London Underground, both structurally, and aesthetically. Rush hour in London is like rush hour in New York: packed, and hurried. On weekends, lines face closures, either partial or full, and there is the occasional delay (although, due to its modern-day signal system, they are more rare than New York—out of my ten or so rides, I was held once). At stations, countdown clocks notify riders of wait times, while conductors embody a hometown persona. In London, that’s what I’d describe as ‘delightfully British’: on one occasion, a Dickens-esque limerick on escalator safety was read out loud by someone somewhere as I ascended out of the station; when everything is running smoothly, a cheery voice announces, “There is a good service on all lines.”

But systematically, the two couldn’t be more different.

In New York, a disjointed payment system, largely due to bureaucratic limitations, has arisen as if to endlessly confuse tourists. A MetroCard works on subways, buses, the AirTrain to JFK Airport, and the PATH Train, but not on the Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit, and Metro North trains, which each require different tickets. The recently launched NYC Ferry also has its own ticketing system, separate from the MTA.

London, instead, has Oyster, which can be used for nearly every form of public transit in the city. One simply has to tap their card at a reader to enter, and, in subways and trains, tap out when exiting to register the zone from which they’re traveling from. If you lose or forget your Oyster card, commuters can now use ‘contactless,’ or the soft touch of credit/debit cards, and Apple Pay, on iPhones. For someone who still gets stuck swiping behind metal bars, this is a thrill.

In addition, fares are capped after a certain number of rides, depending on the zone. That means that if commuters exceed that number in a single day, their Oyster card is no longer charged. The total amount of rides are calculated at day’s end, using the card’s data, and riders are then refunded a small amount at the end of the week.

That sort of ‘real-time’ adaptability is felt throughout the system. During one morning’s peak hour, I was leaving the notoriously awful Holborn Station in Central London where two lines—Piccadilly, and Central—intersect, when I noticed that the gates were actively switched to only allow people to leave, not enter, at street level. I later found out that this is done temporarily to adjust to traffic flow. (Although, at a number of stations, this isn’t always successful.)

Watch: Judah Friedlander on Sexual Assault in Comedy

Luckily, if stranded, there are alternatives, namely the steady stream of double-decker buses just outside the station. Utilizing a host of actual dedicated bus lanes, buses arrive so frequently in London that you’ll often witness buses eclipsing each other at stops; a sight for sore eyes if you’re from New York, where average bus speeds are some of the slowest in the country. Not to mention that riding on top of a double-decker bus here is probably one of the most enjoyable transit experiences in the world, the experience of taking the bus across the Waterloo Bridge is akin to taking a New York subway over the East River.

Of course, the system has its pitfalls, like any other. You’re unable to swipe an Oyster card twice in one sitting, making a passback to a friend without one impossible. When the Underground shuts down at night, it can be difficult to procure an Oyster card, which is burdensome for those without smartphones or contactless cards. Oh, and yes, the tube is closed after midnight, except certain lines on weekend nights, for a new service called the Night Tube. (The Night Bus offsets some of those gaps, with relatively reliable service.) And again, like New York, London has its fair share of pissed-off riders.

Planners in New York also can’t rely on copy-pasting ideas from one city that appear successful at first blush, but haven’t necessarily borne the best results. For example, the ‘Congestion Charge’ system hasn’t led to a noticeable decrease in traffic in Zone 1, which includes the areas most people associate with London (think Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, King’s Cross, etc.). Crossing the street in the heart of London at rush hour is just as nerve-wracking as doing the same in Midtown Manhattan. In fact, London still has reportedly the worst traffic in Europe. And that’s even when, one commuter told me, a number of Londoners purposely park just outside of Zone 1’s borders to avoid paying the £11.50 charge.

Traffic aside, TfL rakes in roughly 150 million pounds (or $197 million) from the charge each year—money that helps the agency not only maintain what it has, but also expand to meet the needs of a growing city. It’s hard not to spot the construction sites for the Crossrail, a new 73-mile rail service that will connect counties on the periphery of London, with portions set to open at the end of next year. Although the idea has been discussed about as long as the Second Avenue Subway was, it’s being built in a fraction of the time and covering much more ground. (The latter will only be 8.5 miles long.)

As a New Yorker, riding on London’s transit system can feel both familiar and exhilarating. Even if we share stories of delays and overcrowding, it’s obvious that London has taken planning for the future more seriously than we have. Things like being able to use a phone to pay for a ride, or not being afraid to wait for a bus at night—doesn’t seem as far-fetched here. But what was most telling as a lesson for New York was to see how service that is more reliable distills into public discourse, and behaviour.

In New York, declining subway ridership is said to be linked to a rise in rideshares and bad service. But London shows that correlation doesn’t equal causation: a number of commuters told me that they hail a cab or Uber maybe once a month, if that. There is no need, one friend told me, when every mode of transport to get from point A to B takes roughly the same amount of time. (Also, private cars are notably more expensive than public transit in an already costly city.) “Everyone here supports public transit,” she said.

New York, take note.

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This article originally appeared on Thump.

Worse than a one-night stand, or even a hangover, is waking with the grumbling knowledge in your stomach that last night you said some really dumb shit. In the whirlwind of alcohol, excitement, drugs and music, the floodgates open revealing the archive of weird secrets, buried emotions and shit jokes you have done so well to hide.

Personally, we actually think a solid fucked chat is good for the soul. The real diagnosis of course being that the stuff we say when we're wasted is everything we feel too socially constricted to reveal sober. It is in these lubricated twilight hours that friendships are made, lame recurring in-jokes are born and chests are relieved of all that 'stuff' that's been on them for so long. That being said, it is also the time when people try and start fights with wheelie bins, so let's not get too romantic about it

In an effort to better understand the 'fucked chat', to map its movements and meditate on its significance, we've put together a comprehensive guide to every boring, stupid, gross, cloying, creepy, bizarre conversation you are going to have this weekend.

Level 1: Stale Pre-Drink Chat

"I study engineering."
"Oh wow, that's pretty full on. I suppose it means you know what sort of thing you want to do after uni though?"
"Yeah, probably going to apply for some grad-schemes."

The evening starts in someone's living room, either with your mate's new boyfriend Dan, or the mate of a mate down for the weekend from another university. At some point, usually between cans, you find yourself asking the unfamiliar face in the room what they do for a living, something you thought only those completely devoid of personality did. In about six hours time you'll see the mate or the boyfriend in the club, pat them lightly on the back, ask them how the night's going, and slink off, never to see them again.

Level 2: The Taxi Driver

"When are you on until?"
"4."
"Nice."

Here we go. You've got that all important Stella buzz on, you've got a fresh ten deck in your pocket and the phone's on full charge. The Uber's cruising nicely. Put your chattiest/drunkest mate in the passenger seat and snigger from the back while they probe into how busy the driver's evening has been, how long they are working until, and whether or not they can put Beyoncé on the radio.

Level 3: Queue Chat

"..."
"..."
"...fucking freezing mate."

Queuing for a club is one of Dante's lesser referenced circles of hell. It's twenty minutes of standing about, saying pretty much less than fuck all, occasionally wondering if you can sneak off for a piss without losing your spot. Sometimes someone pushes in ahead of you and a cry of "WOAH, WOAH, WOAH"s ring round until you all realize that remonstrating with a stranger is fucking pointless because anyone rude enough to push in a queue isn't the kind of person who deals well with rational criticism delivered by someone stinking of Kroney and Amber Leaf.

Level 4: Flirting

"I recognise your watch."
"What?"
"This place is really good isn't it?"

I'm of the humble opinion that a night out is made a lot better without worrying about trying to get your pants off. I'm all about the music, maaaan. Still, even the shittiest of clubs can house the kind of face that rescues a dud night. When you catch it, and you've had enough to drink, you might decide to try and talk to them. Unless you're the kind of jeans-and-shoe lad who happily oversteps lines and limits, it'll probably be quite awkward. Pro tip: always ask them for a lighter, even if you or they don't smoke. If they do you can invite them outside and if they don't then, well, get ready to launch into a fifteen minute rant about how dirty smokers are. Alternatively, it always goes down really well if the object of your affection wears glasses and you ask to try them on and then pretend that you're now blind because you briefly wore someone else's glasses. Trust me.

Level 5: Talking to Someone Sober

"Helloooooooo."
"You having a good night?"
"Mmmm? Yeah just chilled out really. Mmmm?"

We've put this in at level five, but consider it more of a bonus level as it can strike at any time. A rogue phone call from your Mum, someone asking for directions as you walk to the club, I've even had a dog-walker trying to engage me in a bit of chit-chat while I sat on a bench trying not to be sick at 7 am. They are weird as shit – a sudden stark reminder that not everyone in the world feels like there is a fruit machine in their head. Best tactics include: trying to keep your eyes open (but not too wide), saying as little as possible (but not too little), and avoiding constant reassurances that you haven't even drunk that much.

Level 6: Coming Up

"How long ago did we drop?"
"Like, 20 minutes ago."
"Ok... I'm not feeling anything yet... how long ago did we drop?"

Depending on what sort of night out you have, this might be the point when you start furiously tapping all your mates on the shoulder only to say "I think I'm..." while pointing at the ceiling. This will happen roughly fourteen times over the next 45 minutes as each of you routinely try and convince yourselves that your half a gary is kicking in. If you're not riding that wave, you'll be the one calmly reassuring everyone that no, it's not that hot in here, and yes, water is free at the bar, and yes you'll roll them twelve fags. Sucker.

Level 7: I

"Come here, you. I've missed you... love you so much."
"Sorry, do I know you?"

This is probably as nice as the chat is going to get, before you descend into the bug-eyed hinterland. You're all fucked now but crucially still enjoying the music enough not to venture past a few brief declarations of how great you think everybody is. Even people you hardly know. Fuck, even if the weird woman who used to give you piano lessons when you were in primary school was out you'd probably put her in a headlock and thank her for everything she did for you. Note: some people like to punctuate these with kisses on the top of the head.

Level 8: The Smoking Area Stranger

"Do you like football?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah it's mint isn't it?"

The club is fucking popping by now and the real world's vanished. This is it. You want a cigarette and some time to take it all in. A stranger stumbles up to you and you both desperately try and find some common ground to rinse until there's nothing left to give. Beware though, some smoking area strangers don't quite understand what their role in your night is. They may well try and add you on Facebook, or worse, latch on to you for the rest of the night. Do you want to share a cab home? He only lives thirty miles away.

Level 9: Appreciation Season

"Thing is like, you're not just my mate, you're like my brother, and I've got actual brothers." "You're more of a brother to me than my sister is." "I'm so proud of you."

This is the intense evolution of level 7, a promotion from the 'I love you's of earlier, into full-on aggressive compliments If you don't get paired off with a stranger in the smoking area, you may still find yourself surrounded by your nearest and dearest. If this is the case, you will most likely jump two footed into the big, oily vat of mutual congratulation. You may have to stand, staring thoughtfully at your mates trainers, while they have you gripped in a vice-like hold around your neck, telling you over and over that they'd take a bullet for you.

Level 10: Shit Political Chat

"It's not about socialism anymore." "It is mate it's just not as easy to categorise." "Look, my Dad came from a working class background..."

Fucking hell, this is the worst conversation you'll have every weekend all year. You saw the debates? Greens are on the up are they? Piss off Owen Jones. Save it for a Frank Turner gig.

Level 11: The Cryer

"He's/She's such a dick/bitch!" "I know mate/babe." "You don't though! He/She doesn't talk to you like this!"

This is a real killer. If you are a night-on-the-town crybaby then sort it out. We've come out to drink over-priced Red Stripes, not to listen to you, perched on the edge of the curb, whimpering about someone you will continue to hang out with, or have sex with, regardless of our continued drunken support. Important note: you might be tempted to try and gender this one, but boys definitely do cry.

Level 12: The DMC

"Urgh sorry I'm ruining the night, is this really annoying?"
"No it's fine honestly, you can always tell me this stuff."
"Okay, basically..."

The DMC – a real deep-meaningful-chat – can get heavy. Best to watch out for these and nip them in the bud early before you end up losing two hours. It emerges when you, and one or two friends are so wasted somebody decides to reveal a dark family secret, major anxiety, or (at best) confession regarding the death of a pet. These have the potential to be very therapeutic, but they also have the potential to blitz through the DJ set you've been waiting all week for.

Level 13: The Prang

"Have you got any water?"
"You alright mate you look peaky?"
"Nah I'm sort of...bugging out a little bit."

Prangsmen are a nightmare. I've got a mate who, once past a certain point, will suddenly glare at me with furious concern as if my face is melting, only to then say "don't worry about it." These come about when you suddenly realise your mate has dropped a spot of something stronger without telling you, and now everyone has a Jansport rucksack for a head. That being said, the freak-out can happen to anyone, and it doesn't have to be hallucinogens that set it off. It could be you one night. One minute grinning along to the tune of the summer, the next convinced there are ants everywhere.

Level 14: Ordering Food

"Do you have garlic mayo?"
"What can I get for 80p?"
"Sorry, we're closed now."

It always amazes me how what should be the simplest part of any night can become by far the most complicated. What should be the sentence "Donner and chips please mate" becomes an endless cavalcade negotiation and condiments, words melting on impact into a mangled "alright-mate-how's-it-going-you-still-doing-chops-chips-or...have you got onion rIngs?". Your group will dissolve entirely, some trying to be mates with everyone behind the counter, others complaining that a small portion of chips are £2.50, all the while sloping about as if chicken shops are zero gravity chambers.

Level 15: Cosmic chat

"It's going to be a bit like Ocado, but for independent cinema."
"Do you ever think, fuck, Mike Tyson has a dad?"
"Stairs are man made, but have always existed in an unreachable parallel state...like...look at where those stairs are. There was a time when they weren't there, but the potential to move from that level...up to that level...had always existed."

Wow. You've made it to level 15. You must be really fucked. By this point all bets are off. Topics can range from 'how amazing it is to actually look a wild animal in the eyes' to 'an app idea you've had involving a simulated motion interface and interactive text'.

Completed all 15 levels? You should probably go to sleep now.

@a_n_g_u_s

Sometime in the late hours of Saturday, November 9, 2002, Dave MacDermott disappeared. No blood, no body, and no evidence of a struggle—but his family believe that MacDermott is dead, killed on that cold November night and most likely at the hands of someone he knew. Investigators have no evidence to support the theory of a murder, but they too think he is dead, and under suspicious circumstances.

This month marks the 15 year anniversary of MacDermott’s suspicious disappearance, a case—like four or five other long-term files stemming from the tri-cities area (Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, Ontario)—that have been designated to a state of purgatory in the legal system. But his family is persistent and police hope advances in technology may result in new leads in his mysterious disappearance.

MacDermott was 30 years old when he went missing. His family describes him as an enigmatic charmer, fiercely loyal to his friends, whose world revolved around those closest to him. Handsome (he modeled on occasion), he made friends easily, and enjoyed a vibrant social life. A veritable chameleon of work experience, MacDermott did odd jobs, construction and hairdressing—often bouncing between all three at any one time.

On the night he went missing 15 years ago, MacDermott was out with friends on a Saturday in Kitchener’s downtown core to celebrate a birthday. The last time he was seen alive was at the now defunct Club Renaissance, dancing and partying. He was supposed to grab some hockey gear from an ex’s place at 3AM but he never showed up. The next morning, Sunday November 10, MacDermott’s cousin went to pick him up for a ball hockey game, and discovered that his car was missing from the driveway of his rental property and his beloved dog was running loose around the neighbourhood. No one answered the front door. He then called Colleen Stevens, MacDermott’s younger sister, to say he couldn’t find her brother.

“The last time I saw Dave, was on the night he disappeared,” Stevens told VICE. “I went over to drop off a bottle of wine and to pre-pay him for the haircuts he was going to do on my son and husband.” That brief moment the night before he disappeared would be the last time that she would see her brother alive. After her phone call with her concerned cousin, Stevens began to call everyone in her brother’s life, hoping to find him crashing on a couch, the victim of a dead cellphone battery.

When Stevens phoned the property that her brother was renting at in Kitchener, she claims one of his roommates answered the phone and told her that “Dave no longer lived there,” and to “stop fucking calling the house”—then abruptly hung up. The roommate did not respond to requests for comment from VICE.

After an agonizing few days with no contact from her brother, Stevens and her sister Rhonda went to the Waterloo Regional Police to file a missing person’s report.

Unbeknownst to the women, several months before his disappearance the police had issued a warrant for MacDermott’s arrest in connection with an alleged assault charge, something the intake officers revealed to Stevens and her sister when they were separated and questioned. Their brother wasn’t on the police’s radar as a “Missing Person” but as a “Wanted Person.”(The warrant was eventually retracted due to time elapsed and the growing belief that MacDermott would not be found alive.)

Later, the live-in owner of the property MacDermott rented told police and the family his version of events from that night. The owner was a friend of the family, a person that Stevens had known since she was ten years old. Stevens says the homeowner told police and the family that MacDermott had come home from the bar that night, packed up his belongings, his dog and with a “big wad of cash” told him that he had “really done it this time” and left. (The landlord did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)

Although the owner’s version of events were vehemently denied by the family, “at the beginning it seemed the police were really listening to his version of events rather than the family,” says Linda Shaw, MacDermott’s mother. While both Stevens and Shaw acknowledge that MacDermott often escaped up north to Algonquin to fish, both women repeatedly stressed to the authorities that he never would have left without telling the family or without checking in.

Between the warrant out for his arrest and the story the property owner was telling, no one was searching for MacDermott—at least not as a victim. According to a Kitchener Record article, the police at that time ruled out MacDermott owing anyone a substantial debt—although he was considered a bit of a “party boy,” they could not find any connections to the criminal “underworld.”And if he did owe money, there was the curious fact he never picked up his last paycheque from the construction company he worked at.

Dave MacDermott

Weeks went by without any word or sight of him. Two months passed, and in January 2003, MacDermott’s car was located—snowed over at an apartment parking lot around the corner from his place.

“That was part of our frustration with the police,” said Stevens. “We felt the original officers didn’t do enough of an investigation, or they would have easily found the car so close to his place. Instead they listened to the [owner’s] theory.”

The initial investigation eventually petered out and the trail went cold for years with no evidence. It wasn’t until December of 2008 that the case was reopened—this time as a homicide.

Detective Constable Duane Gingerich was a recent addition to the homicide unit that year, and was assigned to the MacDermott investigation. “We had received some new information that had come forward suggesting that Dave may have been murdered and this was a homicide, and what we did was conduct an extensive investigation and worked with that information for several months,” he told VICE.

But the investigation came to a halt when the information was revealed to be “bogus.”

“The information that they shared led us to believe that they had direct knowledge that a homicide had occurred, but in sourcing that information and looking into it in much greater detail, the people we talked to—especially the people that this person was implicating—there was no indication that any of that had occurred,” said Gingerich. “We are confident that it did not occur that way. Nothing added up.”

For the family, it was a harrowing six years between the initial disappearance and the reopening of the case, plagued with more questions than answers. “We watch old home movies to hear his laughter,” said Stevens. “Dave was someone who would do anything for anyone, he loved his family and he took care of us and loved us fiercely.”

For Stef Shaw, MacDermott’s half-sister, the most prolific memory she has from that time was watching her mother suffer, looking for an explanation, searching for her son.

“I was in Grade 8 when Dave disappeared, and I can still remember the principal calling me out of my class and my mom being there to pick me up from school,” she told VICE. “What I remember most about that time is this memory of my mom sitting out in the garage, calling people.“

In the 15 years since his disappearance, Stevens, Shaw, and the rest of MacDermott’s family have spent hundreds of hours setting up information websites, handing out posters, offering rewards, knocking on doors, and chasing leads. At one point MacDermott’s mother Linda put a $10,000 reward up for any information that lead to determining her son’s whereabouts. They have their own suspicions about what occurred that night so long ago.

“We think Dave came home from the bar that night and got into an argument with someone in that house,” said Stevens. And although pure speculation on their part, and without any physical evidence, the family believes MacDermott died in the house that night, murdered by someone he knew.

Police also surmise the likely scenario involves someone known to MacDermott.

“I think it’s fair to say, that as a police officer, knowing cases like these in the past…you’re always going to look at the people who are closely connected to the person first. I think that’s much more likely than some stranger just encountering Dave [MacDermott] that particular night,” says Gingerich, “but we just have nothing to prove that one way or another anything happened.”

When the police reopened the case in 2008 as a homicide, the property owner had since sold the Mill Street house, but the new owner allowed the officers to do a search of the house, land, and detached garage. In a mechanic’s hole underneath the floor of the garage, a large plastic sheet was found with unknown substances on it. Forensic analysis was inconclusive, and no sign of MacDermott’s remains were discovered.

With another fruitless search for MacDermott’s remains having occurred, the police will now have to rely on “new forensic technology that did not exist when the original evidence was obtained,” said Gingerich, adding that items like the plastic sheet found in the garage and other physical clues can be retested. As time goes on, the family clings to hope that something will come of the retesting, anything that can divulge a clue that will lead them to his remains.

As recently as November 14 the Waterloo police went on a search related to the case, but came away empty handed. Gingerich said the WRPS “searched the green spaces and surrounding neighbourhood,” of MacDermott’s last known whereabouts, but “did not find anything.”

The strain of 15 years is felt among the police force, too. Currently listed as “missing under suspicious circumstances,” MacDermott’s file will continue to stay open—a thought that Gingerich said “will hang over him” even after he retires.

For the family, all they want is the opportunity to lay MacDermott to rest after so many agonizing years. “We know that somebody knows something,” Shaw told VICE. “All we want is the chance to say goodbye.

“I can’t remember the sound of my brother’s voice. And it hurts so much to know I will never get that relationship with someone you are supposed to be so close to in your life.”

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If you have any information about Dave Macdermott’s disappearance, please contact the Waterloo Regional Police Detectives Gingerich and Jessome at (519) 653 7700 x 8738 or Crime Stoppers at1-800-222-8477

My capacity for being a Jack Ü thot is limitless. Last March, when the duo unveiled their self-titled sophomore EP at Skrillex's house, I marked the occasion by getting a Diplo tattoo on my ass during the 24-hour livestream of their party. When they invited fans to make art in an LA gallery for their "Where Are Ü Now" music video back in June, I showed up in my favourite Justin Bieber T-shirt and doodled to my thirst's content. So on Monday night, when Skrillex and Diplo celebrated their winning streak at the Grammys—where they made their live television debut and won both Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Dance Recording—I naturally had to tag along and crash as many parties with them as I could.

PART I: DIPLO'S ELEGANT RAGER AT THE CHATEAU MARMONT

After watching the Grammys on TV at home, I showed up to Diplo's private party at the famed Hollywood landmark Chateau Marmont. The event started at 9PM on the outdoor patio in a giant translucent canopy tent with Persian rugs, velvet couches, and potted shrubbery. It was an intimate gathering of Diplo's 50 closest worshipers, including industry heads from Mad Decent and OWSLA, A-Trak, AlunaGeorge, Makonnen, and randomly, Chris Rock.

After half an hour of schmoozing, I wandered over to a private bungalow where I found Skrillex in the middle of a gaggle of girls, including Bibi Bourelly, co-writer of Rihanna's BBHMM. I would have stayed and lingered but I was hungry and eating goat cheese in front of celebrities just really isn't cute, so I devoured one lump by myself, then fled.

PART II: SKRILLEX PARTY BUS KIDNAPPING + JUSTIN BIEBER'S GRAMMY PARTY

On way out the Chateau, I was kidnapped by an Azn raver girl and thrown onto a party bus outside with 15 other EDM thots, allegedly on Skrillex's orders. Top 40 was blaring, everything was covered in laser beams, and before I could collect myself, we had arrived at our destination: Justin Bieber's Grammy party at celeb hot spot Nice Guy. A hundred paparazzi were parked by the barricade outside the private lounge, flashing their cameras at the slightest human movement entering or exiting the premises. The concentration of celebrities was so high that within ten minutes, I had chatted with Usher about him being a predecessor to today's alt-R&B sound, and took pics with both Justin and Khloe Kardashian.

(Photo via the author)

PART III: THE WEEKND'S BIRTHDAY CELEB-CLUSTERFUCK

After Nice Guy, I Ubered back to the Cheateau so I could make my way to the night's final destination: a hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, where GQ was throwing a birthday party for The Weeknd, who was also celebrating his Grammy wins, and where Diplo would be DJing. In order to get there, I had to wait in line for an hour with other guests and party crashers to be driven up to the mansion in a shuttle. It was 1:33AM when I arrived at the most lavish mansion—LA's closest thing to the Palace of Versailles. Custom "XO" logos were branded everywhere—from the pool table to the bottom of the backyard swimming pool.Outside the house, we were welcomed by a smoking, overturned car straight out of the music video for "The Hills," which had "crashed" on the driveway. Directly across from it was a $300,000 glossy red McLaren wrapped in a bow, a gift for The Weeknd.

(Photo via the author)

After making my way down the outdoor double staircase onto the backyard floor, I passed a huge lounge area filled with vintage arcade games and instantly lost myself in a lively, 1000-strong crowd. Unfortunately, the alcohol had run out and the caterers had just a single Krispy Kreme doughnut left (I should've eaten more goat cheese), so I went about my linger sober.

(Photo via the author)

Wedged between the pool and a mini-stage was the dancefloor, where Diplo and A-Trak were both DJing (rare af). A rotation of rap celebs came up to wish happy birthday to The Weeknd, who was front and center with Bella Hadid, having the time of his life. I can vividly remember DJ Khaled hyping up the crowd, next to Rae Sremmurd lighting up a blunt, right before Travis Scott appeared to perform "Antidote." By 2:43AM I had been kicked offstage 92 times.

PART IV: FROM HOSTAGE TO HOMECOMING

With no alcohol or food to fuel on, and my iPhone battery reaching its imminent death, I decided to leave at a responsible time to be peasant human the next day. This is when myself and a group of 50 others who left the party learned from an event staffer that the LAPD had just shut down the party due to noise complaints from neighbours, and were blocking the single road on the hill with their police cars. No one knew if any shuttles were coming up to the mansion to take us back to the bottom of the hill, which is when everyone started get upset and anxious that we were trapped and would have to sleep on Krispy Kreme boxes like the ravers at TomorrowWorld.

To make the situation even more confusing, despite the road closure, celebrities were somehow still arriving with their entourages by the droves. While waiting for some kind of transport to take me home, I saw Calvin Harris, P. Diddy, Ty Dolla $ign, Tyga, some Kardashian-Jenners, Justin Bieber, and Post Malone all pull up. Jamie Foxx arrived with two white girls under each arm, and perplexed at the sight of our defeated faces, blurted out, "DAMN, WHY Y'ALL LOOK SO SAD? WHO DIED?" I would have laughed if I had the energy.

Our shuttle forcing a BMW off the road (Photo via the author)

It was already 4AM and there were still no shuttles in sight. Delirium got the best of me and I, following the lead of some daring others before me (girls in heels, HOW?), decided to walk down the pitch-black hill back to civilization.

I hadn't walked 100 feet when I saw the lights of a shuttle bus coming onto the driveway, so I sprinted back up to catch the first ride back behind an elderly lady on crutches. The lucky 14 of us sunk into a deep relief (sleep) like we'd gotten a life raft on the Titanic.

But it wasn't over. Driving down the hill, we passed all the guests who'd decided to descend on foot; they all shone their iPhone lights at us while banging windows and frantically begging to be picked up, which our driver paid no mind to. After several police checkpoints and having to force a BMW convertible out the road from head on, we finally escaped The Weeknd's zombie apocalypse.

The hills do have eyes. It was lit, but next year I'm getting a helicopter.

Jazper is the world's reigning EDM thot. Follow him on Twitter.

Newfoundland and Labrador will allow weed to be sold in private dispensaries licensed by the province’s liquor board.

The province is the latest to announce its plans for setting up a weed retail market once cannabis becomes legal next summer. The legal age to buy pot there will be 19.

In addition to private dispensaries, weed will be available at select Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation branches where there are no alternatives.

Youth caught with weed will be fined. Under the federal regulations, minors can be caught with up to five grams of weed without facing any charges.

Justice Minister Andrew Parsons cautioned the public that weed sales will be offset by the cost of legalization and regulation.

But, according to the CBC, he noted, “it will be much better that any money generated goes to government rather than the criminals.”

Like Ontario, Newfoundland is going with a strict policy around public consumption, banning it outright. People will only legally be allowed to consume weed at a private residence.

Alberta and Manitoba have also both opted for a private dispensary model while Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick are all going with a government monopoly.

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On Friday, Professor Anthony Hall took to his conspiracy focused radio show False Flag Weekly News to celebrate his return to the University of Lethbridge's campus.

“Yesterday, November 23, was my first formal day to walk back on campuses, to take up my full professional responsibilities again,” he said—it would take only about ten minutes for Hall and his co-host to begin talking about “Zionist conspiracies.”

On his internet radio show, who he co-hosts on No Lies Radio, Professor Hall said his first day back was “relatively uneventful.” A little over a year ago, Hall was suspended from his duties for his fixation on Zionist conspiracies and his belief that the Holocaust should be open for debate by academics.

On Wednesday, the University of Lethbridge and the school's faculty association said in a joint statement provided to VICE, that they “have agreed that the outstanding issues that have been raised concerning Dr. Anthony Hall will be addressed in the context of the Faculty Handbook.”

“As a result, the suspension imposed on Dr. Hall has been lifted and he has returned back to work at the University,” reads the statement. “The parties will be fully participating in the agreed upon procedures in the Faculty Handbook to investigate and address the outstanding issues.”

The University where Hall teaches about globalization studies has also filed a complaint against their professor in the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Hall on False Flag News Friday morning. Photo via Screenshot.

In their Friday morning radio show, Hall and his co-host, Kevin Barrett, called the National Post article (which was written by the Canadian Press) regarding Hall “propaganda” and B’nai Brith Canada—a Jewish-Canadian advocacy group who put out a strongly worded press release on Hall’s suspension being lifted—a “genocide propaganda organization.” Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada, said he placed direct blame for “placing a discredited conspiracy theorist back in a university classroom” on the provincial government of Alberta.

“We repeatedly warned the Government of the likely outcome of its actions, but they sadly chose to ignore our warnings and expose Alberta university students to anti-Semitism and discrimination instead,” said Mostyn. “Despite this setback, we expect the University of Lethbridge to continue fighting anti semitism on campus, and to do whatever it takes to ensure that Hall has no podium for his unhinged anti semitic nonsense.”

In September of last year, Hall wrote a piece for his website American Herald Tribune, entitled “9/11 and the Zionist Question.” In it, Hall writes that citizen investigation into the attack have proven it wasn’t conducted by Islamic extremists but instead “Israel First neoconservatives.”

“The outcome of the people’s inquiry points compellingly to the conclusion that the real culprits behind the 9/11 attacks were not a group of Islamic jihadists acting alone out of no other motivation than religious zealotry,” reads the piece. “Rather, the dominant group directing the 9/11 false flag event was composed primarily of Israel First neoconservatives who sought to demonize Muslims in order to create the necessary malleable enemy required for their purposes.”

Anthony Hall speaking at the 911 Truth Truck tour in 2015 about how Israeli agents conducted 911. Photo via screenshot.

Hall goes onto to say that even Alex Jones, the world’s most prominent conspiracy theorist, is in on the conspiracy and works to “deflect interpretations of the 9/11 crime away from Israel and away from the inner circle of neocon proponents of the Zio-American empire.” Hall has, time and time again, made media appearances where he makes similar claims—in one he even hints that ISIS is funded partly by Israel.

In July of 2016, Hall made a video for the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust—a Holocaust denying group—in which he outlined his reasons for supporting open debate on the subject. In terms of the Holocaust, it seems that Hall hasn't changed his stance.

“One of the observations living through this situation is who we, the university professors, how did we let the precedent get established that maybe there are areas of history that should not be addressed, that should be closed off, that should be treated as so perfectly handled that they aren’t subject to any sort of revision,” he said on his radio show, Friday.

The show ended with Hall and his co-host speaking about chemtrails—unless something changes, Hall said he will be returning to teaching students next September.

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This week’s controversy about Lindsay Shepherd, the Wilfrid Laurier TA who got in trouble for airing a Jordan Peterson clip in class, has opened up the same old tired debate around “freedom of speech.” This isn’t to say that such debates are of no importance, but they often tend to focus on the voices of white, cis-gender persons who already have a platform to speak from. This is evidenced in the overwhelming support and amplification that people such as Lindsay Shepherd—the TA in question who gained 12,000 Twitter followers in a week—and Jordan Peterson receive when these controversies emerge.

For many of us, debates centred around gender pronouns aren’t just intellectual exercises. I’m a trans woman and a PhD student at Carleton University, and little has been heard from the transgender perspective throughout this entire ordeal, despite the fact that we are at the center of this debate.

For freedom of speech to work in practice, the argument goes, we must accommodate even the arguments we don’t like. At its most absolute, this argument advocates giving voice to those who would target the basic human rights of vulnerable populations.

I would like to humbly suggest that free speech is threatened in university campuses across the nation. However, the ways in which I think it’s threatened have been obscured by the entitlement of those whose voices are met with few barriers.

Freedom of speech isn’t a neutral topic. And it’s very complex in practice. From a sociological perspective, our society suffers from extreme stratification along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Your identity shapes where you might be located within society’s opportunity structure. Where you were born and what body you were born with matters and has a significant impact on your material and symbolic wealth.

For transgender folks, this positions us in a precarious reality. A great portion of Canadian society doesn’t recognize trans folks as real persons. And when they recognize us, it is often filtered through crude stereotypes that emphasize perversion or mental illness. The point is, we must go to great lengths to justify and defend our very existence in everyday situations. This extends to the classroom where many undergraduate trans students, who already face risky social situations, may find themselves working under prejudiced instructors.

To have the existence of your identity made into a debate within a classroom setting directly impacts trans students. And due to the number of us who are forced to stay in the closet for fear of the impacts of discrimination—an instructor can’t even be certain who is and isn’t transgender in their class.

There are tangible consequences to being transgender in the university. I began my transition shortly before my MA convocation ceremony at Queen’s University. It was certainly a surprise for my peers and professors when I came to the ceremony presenting as a woman. Largely, my colleagues were accepting. But one professor ignored me flat out in a blatant exercise in transphobia. For a graduate student, our professional integrity is intimately tied up with our social connections. There is a reason most of us stay in the closet. There is the omnipresent chance of having doors slammed in your face.

To return the controversy about Lindsay Shepherd, the topic of trans folks has been conveniently sidestepped in favour of oversimplified arguments for free speech in universities. In these arguments, the instructor’s right to present opinions supersedes a trans person’s right to be treated with dignity and respect. This is important, because after all, we pay taxes and tuition just like our cisgender counterparts.

Trans folks have been historically marginalized by academics who have been embroiled in debates concerning the authenticity of our existence. Many of these debates have centered around the medicalization of our identity through pseudo-scientific diagnosis of “transvestic fetishism,” “transvestic disorder,” and “gender identity disorder.” Up until 2013, scientific consensus had reduced our very personhood to a mental illness. This is further aggravated by the refusal to acknowledge our existence through the act of misgendering. This is when a someone refers to a transgender person by the sex they were assigned at birth which delegitimizes our right to our identity.

The threat that we face from instructors who insist that they must have a right to revoke our dignity because they do not recognize us as real persons has a silencing effect on many people who identify as transgender. This is compounded with the wider societal intolerance towards us. I spent 28 years of my life in the closet for fear of the harassment, stigmatization, and violence that accompanies being an openly identified trans person.

The pressures of daily transphobia and cissexism push us back into the closets where we are unable to express our voices. The “freedom of speech” of those who hold bigoted views silence the freedom of speech of those they target. So yes, this debate is important. The silencing effect this has is consistent over many vulnerable populations.

On top of this, there is the pressing issue of online vitriol that is unleashed on those who stand up against this injustice. This is reminiscent of the Gamergate controversy—but has become a normal routine in the lives of those who dare to challenge the dominant order of things in our society. Emma Jane, a social scientist focused on digital forms of misogyny, coined the term “e-bile” to characterize the kind of seething hatred that is deployed against (trans) women who speak out against injustices. This is evident when Jordan Peterson doxxed two protesters over his Twitter last month for challenging his “free speech” event—they were subsequently targeted with “extensive hate mail and harassment via Facebook, some of which have bordered on death threats.” In order for Peterson to have it his way, other voices must be silenced.

Lindsay Shepherd, has taken to harnessing her amplified voice to advocate for the Chicago Principles, which are a blanket statement to protect “free expression” on campus.

The Chicago principles were a response to the protests at universities that sought to de-platform controversial speakers. They are a statement that the university allows for any and all speech to occur on its campus as long as it does not breach the law. Though this is good in theory, such blanket statements ignore the sociological stratification that is already at play in silencing vulnerable populations. In other words, it doesn’t address wider systemic issues in favor of reinforcing the status quo.

To be clear, I am not against freedom of speech. But I am skeptical that the Chicago Principles work in practice as it results in privileging some voices over others. Instead, we should be focused on implementing fresh models of free speech that balance the need to express our ideas with the human rights and dignity of those around us. In this way, we can strive to uplift the voices of those who are silenced. After all, we need to share the same university campuses to learn.

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Basil Borutski has been found guilty of murdering three women—his ex-girlfriends—in a shooting rampage in Wilno, Ontario in 2015.

Borutski, 60, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for shooting to death Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, and one count of second-degree murder for strangling Carol Culleton, 66 on September 22, 2015.

The murders are one of the worst cases of intimate partner violence in Canadian history.

Borutski was convicted in Ontario’s Superior Court by a jury who deliberated for 14 hours.

According to media reports, Borutski said “I’m not guilty” as the trial wrapped up and deliberations began.

But the court heard a confession tape, in which Borutski, in reference to Warderdam, told an Ontario Provincial Police detective, "I just drove in, walked in the door, she was sitting there, she went around the corner, I followed her. Boom. That was it.”

He also said the three women were not innocent and complained about being abused by the criminal justice system.

Borutski left his Palmer Rapids home on the morning of September 22, 2015, taking with him a sawed off shotgun. Despite being ordered to give up his license, Borutski managed to borrow his neighbour’s car and drive to Culleton’s place.

There, according to Borutski’s police confession, he broke into Culleton’s house hit her with a TV cable coil and strangled her with it.

“I wrapped it around her head. And she just kept saying, 'This is not you, Basil, this is not you,’” he said, as reported by the CBC.

Afterwards, he stole her car and drove to Kuzyk’s house.

Months before the murders he had been released from jail on an assault conviction against Kuzyk. According to CBC News, he was meant to serve 17 months but ended up being released after five due to credit for time served. He was under a lifetime weapons ban. Upon release, he reportedly refused to sign an order barring him from contacting Kuzyk, but was still let go.

Kuzyk’s sister Eva testified in court that she heard Kuzyk scream and then whisper “It’s Basil.” She said after showing up at the door, Borutski went back outside to retrieve his gun and then came back into the house.

“I thought, we are both going to die,” she testified. She said she heard the gun go off and she ran outside.

“I ran for my life,” she told the court.

Borutski then drove another half hour to Warmerdam’s house.

Borutski was previously accused of assaulting Warmerdam. Because of him, Warmerdam carried with her a personal alarm and tracking device that connected her directly to police, her son told the Ottawa Citizen. According to CBC, she also slept with a shotgun under her bed and had video surveillance.

Her son Adrian testified that he saw his mother being chased by Borutski inside the house. When he saw that Borutski was holding a gun, he ran outside of the house.

“I ran out into the bush and I called 911 and waited for police,” he said, adding he heard a gunshot as he made his escape.

Borutski told the OPP “it was funny, it was like I wasn't even pulling the trigger on the gun, the gun was just going off. It was like, boop.”

Borutski was arrested around 2:30 PM that day.

He chose to represent himself in court, but according to media reports remained mostly silent throughout the proceedings.

According the the CBC on Wednesday he interrupted Justice Robert Maranger while the judge was instructions to the jury to ask if he had “missed” his opportunity to present his case.

Maranger replied that he’d been given ample opportunities to call evidence throughout the proceedings.

Borutski’s sentencing is scheduled for the first week of December.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Italy

Ruggero Freddi is a 41-year-old maths graduate who is currently teaching Mathematical Analysis and Clinical Engineering at the University of Rome. Ten years ago, though, he was better known as Carlo Masi, a gay porn star with an exclusive deal at COLT Studio Group – an influential American production company that has been producing gay pornography for over 50 years. Until recently, this part of his past was only known to certain gay porn aficionados – his students at the university had no idea.

But in October of 2017, Freddi's past became public after Italian newspaper La Verità published a still from one of his films on their front cover. That cover sparked a national debate in the country, about whether it's appropriate for a former porn star to teach at a university – especially such a prestigious one.

But the response wasn't only negative. Following the reveal, Freddi appeared all over Italian TV and radio, and in national and international publications – the story reached Vanity Fair and one of the country's largest newspapers, Il Corriere della Sera. He appeared on current affairs programmes and daytime television, which is remarkable in Italy – homosexuality and porn are often still considered taboo in the country.

Freddi used the fact that he was suddenly so in demand with Italian media to speak out publicly on LGBTQ rights – especially marriage equality – as well as the state of Italian politics and the education system. One of the country's most popular talk shows, Pomeriggio 5, invited him to be a regular guest on the show, to comment on news and culture issues. Despite all the attention, his academic work remains his main focus, and after a short break from teaching, he recently returned to work at the university.

I called Ruggero Freddi to find out what it was like to suddenly be thrown into a national media storm for his past as a porn star, and if it changed his relationship to his students at all.

VICE: Hi Ruggero, what was that moment like, when everyone found out?
Ruggero Freddi: It was a mess. From one moment to the next, my phone didn't stop ringing – everybody wanted an interview. It was very stressful, but I tried to be kind and reply to everybody who got in touch.

How did it all start?
A lot of people think it started with the article in La Verità, but it had been building up on social media for a while. Some students posted about their "muscular professor" on a Facebook page related to the university – by which they meant me. That post got loads of comments, and eventually someone recognised me from one of the porn films I was in. The thread continued to grow and it was eventually picked up by a bunch of gossip websites.

You recently went back to teaching. What was the reaction among your students like?
It was fine. Sure, a few rude people pointed and stared, but I just ignored them. I've received a lot of support from my colleagues and my supervisor, too. Mostly, people tell me that they appreciate that I've communicated a positive message throughout all of this.

Did you discuss it with your students at all?
No, not at all. I only talk about maths with my students. But I am working together with the university to try to organise conferences on LGBTQ issues and HIV awareness.

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How did you originally end up in porn?
It was pretty random. I had always been a fan of the work of COLT – not only because they're pioneers in producing gay porn, but also because they've always championed sexual liberation. Their scouts had come across some pictures of me online, and got in touch. I was flattered and said yes to doing a soft-core movie that would only involve me doing some foreplay. I wasn’t ready for hardcore porn yet – I had just finished my degree and wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do with my life.

Did you ever worry it would hurt your academic career?
No, not really. I always thought that if I returned to academia, my CV would speak for itself. And I was excited to try it out – I’ve always liked porn, and wanted to work with people and organisations that make an effort to change society's perception of sex. It wasn't easy at first, though. I initially had some moral issues with doing hardcore, but when I eventually did it, I quickly decided I wanted to go down that path.

How long did your career in porn last?
About six years – from the age of 28 to 34. I still feel a strong allegiance to COLT – I think it'll always be a part of me.

Why did you stop?
I stopped at a time when, professionally, things were going really well for me. But I had some disagreements with COLT and, being 34, I thought it was my last chance to start fresh and try a new career. So I did. For a short while, I tried to remain in the entertainment industry – TV, theatre, that sort of thing – but it didn't fulfil me. I quickly realised that I just wanted to get back to academic work.

Do you ever miss it? The working environment, the job itself, or the money?
I obviously miss the money and the attention you get when you're a porn star – being appreciated by fans, not having to queue for clubs, that sort of thing. But the industry seems to have changed. Guys I know in the business tell me that they feel that standards have slipped a bit – they think there's less care and attention for actors these days.