Help comes in many forms, from chainsaw-wielding nuns to intrepid pizza guys, monster-truck drivers to daring reporters. But like some kind of animal-loving Zorro, the latest bold human to step up when disaster struck is keeping his identity a mystery.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC unearthed footage of a man rescuing a rabbit from California’s Thomas Fire, which has already torn through more than 90,000 acres in the state. A local reporter caught the moment the man spotted the critter hopping towards the flames near Highway 1, pulled over, and sprang into action.

The footage shows the guy sprinting after the bunny as it darts at a wall of fire and smoke. With his hands on his temples, he jumps and paces frantically, apparently trying to coax the creature towards him. As it nears the highway, where a few cars are seen speeding by, he crouches down and reaches for it, scooping it into his arms and carrying it away.

The man turned down an interview request from the reporter who filmed the rescue, apparently content just to have done the right thing.

What, exactly, happened to this not-so-savage creature after that is impossible to know. But the the wildfires ripping through Southern California are only getting worse. More than 110,000 acres have already been scorched, destroying more than 300 homes, businesses, and other buildings, the New York Times reports. Forecasters say strong winds blowing through the region are going to continue spreading the blaze.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Apologies to all the Danny DeVito fans out there—Ryan Reynolds will play Pikachu in the upcoming live-action Pokémon movie, Detective Pikachu, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Reynolds will lend his voice to the titular character as well as doing motion capture for the CG Pokémon, meaning that the new Pikachu won't just sound like Deadpool, he might kind of look like him, too.

Reynolds has plenty of experience with voice acting, having starred in The Croods and made appearances on Family Guy in the past. But it'll be interesting to see how his weird, hyper-referential comedy will translate to the plump electric rodent.

It's unclear whether Reynolds' Pikachu is the same one that once trailed Ash around Viridian City or just another member of the same Pokémon species. If it's the Pikachu we know and love, then he has apparently retired from the fighting circuit to work as a gumshoe, complete with a Sherlock Holmes hat, a magnifying glass, and a newly-acquired grasp of the English language.

Reynolds will star alongside Justice Smith (The Get Down) and Lady Bird's Kathryn Newton in the film, which is directed by Rob Letterman and set to go into production early next year.

There isn't much concrete information on the film's plot right now, but it looks like the story will center around Detective Pikachu's quest to find Smith's character's kidnapped father. Newton will play a "sassy journalist who helps them on their quest," according to the Reporter.

The whole concept of a crime-solving Pokémon begs a lot of questions: If Pikachu is actually a detective, does he work cases alongside human cops, or is he part of some separate, Pokémon-only police force? And if it's the latter, does that mean we'll get to meet Police Commissioner Meowth? A Snorlax working impound? Maybe some crooked Lieutenant Grimer who's on the take from Team Rocket? The mind reels at the possibilities.

We'll have to wait for Detective Pikachu to hit theaters to see how—or if—the mechanics of the world make any sense at all. If you need your Ryan Reynolds fix before then, Deadpool 2 is set to drop June 1.

Over past three weeks, eight women have accused Senator Al Franken of sexual harassment, all sharing eerily similar stories of the former Saturday Night Live star groping them before a photo-op, kissing them without their consent, or both. After mounting pressure from his Democratic colleagues, Franken announced that he would resign on the Senate floor on Thursday morning.

“Over the last few weeks, a number of women have come forward to talk about how my actions affected them. I was shocked. I was upset,” he said, a little choked up. While he denied many of the allegations against him, saying that people are under “the false impression that I had done things I simply hadn’t done,” he was still quitting.

“You know, an important part of the conversation we’ve been having the past few months is how men abuse their power and privilege to hurt women,” the senator said. “I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought dishonor on this institution.”

Franken also noted the “irony” of his resignation “while a man who has bragged on tape is in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls is running for Senate with the full support of his party.”

Whether Franken should have resigned in the first place is a tense issue among both Democrats and Republicans. After his first accuser, radio anchor and model Leeann Tweeden shared her account of the senator groping and forcibly kissing her on a USO tour in 2006, 36 women who worked with him on SNL signed a letter calling him “a devoted and dedicated family man, a wonderful comedic performer, and an honorable public servant.”

When the allegations first surfaced, the Democrats’ party line was generally that “it’s his decision” and the consequences should depend upon the findings of an ethics investigation. But the tide turned against Franken on Wednesday, when 33 Democratic senators called for their colleague to step down. Though some Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, agreed with them. Conservatives in general have been less quick to condemn. Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham referred to the Democrats calling for his resignation a "lynch mob." Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who was a guest on her show, said that the Democrats’ mindset was, “Let's just lynch him because when we are done, we will be so pure.”

I have thought that Franken should resign since Tweeden shared her story, “If Franken practices his politics in his personal life, and genuinely believes in punishing men for their sexual misconduct, he needs to resign,” I wrote at the time. “It might have socially permissible to grope women in a way that was ‘clearly intended to be funny’ back in 2006, but now it's 2017, and we've finally realized as a culture that it is unacceptable to sexually assault or harass women.”

But afterward, I almost immediately began doubting myself. After all, I don’t consider groping irredeemably bad behaviour. And all but one of the allegations of sexual harassment took place before he was elected senator—the earliest accusation dates back to December 2003, when Army veteran Stephanie Kemplin says the Minnesota senator “cupped her breast” before they took a photo together. In 2003, groping a woman without her consent wasn’t considered a capital offense. Should he have had to pay the price for what he did in the past now?

In a conversation with a friend who is also a reporter, she said she was concerned about the expectation for “politicians to be moral saviors and activists.”

“They are imperfect vessels,” she told me. “They are and have always been despicable excuses for humanity—who else would be drawn to such a life?” I don’t disagree. But as more and more women began sharing their tales of Franken’s alleged sexual harassment, it indicated that the senator had a pattern of disrespecting women that went unchecked until now. Since Franken has positioned himself as a supposed advocate for women, how could he continue that work? The deluge of allegations against him interfered with his job as a senator—and since Minnesota has a Democratic governor who could appoint a Democratic replacement, his resignation wouldn’t lead to a Republican taking his seat and undoing the good he had done.

And Franken was also unable to own up to his bad behaviour, calling many of the allegations against him false in his resignation speech, which to me indicates that he still doesn’t grasp why his behaviour was harmful.

There’s a lot of whataboutism in the conversation about Franken’s resignation, which the senator touched on in his speech. Why does Franken have to resign when Trump is still in the White House and Roy Moore has the full support of the GOP? But holding politicians to a high standard is a good and necessary thing for both parties to do—and Republicans not doing it is not an excuse for Democrats to abdicate their responsibility. Franken’s resignation sends a strong message to powerful men who think they can do whatever they want to women—no, actually, you can’t.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

There is basically no such thing as an unremarkable hitchhiking story. I learned this pretty quickly when I started asking the people around me about their most memorable “free” rides. By its very nature you are putting your life into a stranger’s hands, inviting them to assess you for a potential exchange—as they used to say—of ass, cash and/or grass.

It’s a truly weird thing to do in an age of Uber and Craigslist rideshares, but many of Canada’s West Coast islands and northern communities still rely on hitching as an informal public transit. Fortunes can change so quickly from ride to ride—you can end up meeting the mayor of a tiny seaside town, or end up contemplating the best throat-slitting angle, should you need to take justice into your own hands (in self defense, obviously).

To understand what kind of person still hitchhikes in 2017, and why so many more of us have sworn it off forever, I’ve compiled the strangest and most terrifying stories I could find. One person described it as the original IRL Chatroulette: you never know who you’ll get next.

Kamilla, 35

Over the summer of 2004 I was dating a very adventurous anarchist activist in London, Ontario. We were both in our early 20s, it was the summer after our third year, and we wanted to go on this trip from London to Halifax.

We had big backpacks with us, and we were really doing it on a budget, which was part of the adventure. We didn’t sleep in motels or anything, we just had our sleeping bags and we’d sleep on the side of the road, in nearby parks, behind school buildings—wherever to make due for the night. We were really roughing it.

There wasn’t really a single moment where I felt unsafe, except this one part, which was kind of scary, but also kind of fun and enjoyable—it was a mix of emotions. It was a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon. We were leaving Quebec City and we had some trouble. Nobody was picking us up.

We made our way to the highway, pretty much standing on the on ramp trying to get a ride for a few hours. Finally this big transport truck pulled over. It was this young hippie from Quebec, Francophone accent, mid 20s, progressive politics, chatty and friendly. He had a beard and long blonde wavy hair, probably wearing a plaid flannel shirt.

He had this big bag of weed next to the shifter or clutch, whatever it was. He was freely dipping his whole hand into this big pound bag. And he was chain smoking joints—one hand on the wheel, single-handedly rolling joints with the other the whole time.

He had a young child with him also, a five-year-old kid in the back of the cab, which was pretty bad, I thought. He had this curtain that the kid kept pulling shut. I’m not sure what the THC is in second-hand smoke, but the smoke was everywhere. He probably smoked two or three joints at least.

It seemed he was such a super stoner that it wasn’t affecting him that much. I would watch him, looking for signs of him spacing out. We kept exchanging nervous glances. We were uncomfortable, in a hitchhiking situation, thinking are we going to crash? But he seemed really skilled at multitasking. He kept a coherent line of argument, kept his eyes on the road and the kid.

I’ve never hitchhiked since, but not because I was discouraged. It was almost the opposite. It was surprisingly easy, it took us six days. Other than getting rained out at one point, and having a guard come and tell us to move once, it went surprisingly smooth, considering we went half way across the country.

David, 36

When I hitchhiked I mostly went with truckers, because they’re accountable. It’s true there are dangers involved, especially if you’re not a guy like I am. But truckers have a number, an identity, you can text someone what truck you’re on. Not saying it’s perfect but it felt safer. Plus they have little TVs in the back.

I was traveling with two women friends, introducing them to train hopping, and later hitchhiking. From Winnipeg heading west. I think we were going through Field, Alberta. This guy in a small car went by, didn’t stop, and then I’m pretty sure did a u-turn, which was the first red flag. He was coming from the wrong direction, going east.

We thought it was a u-turn but we weren’t sure. There were a lot of cars going by, we thought maybe it wasn’t him. He told us he commutes to Fort Mac from Salmon Arm. We get in and his car is spotless, not even a shred of junk food, or a coffee cup. And in the trunk he had all these pillows and blankets neatly stacked and wrapped in plastic. But we thought, maybe he’s just anal, you know? An anally clean long-distance commuter.

He says to my friends oh, so happy to meet you. And he tells me to reach under my seat, he has a gift for them. By this point we’re racing at full speed. It’s this box with 30 or 40 rocks in there, with “BC girls rock” painted on them. Which we thought was creepy, but I guess not dangerous.

I think we were just past Malakwa and he started talking about showing us a cabin the woods, and kept trying to pull off the main highway. And he did pull onto some side road, under the guise of wanting us to see the real BC. Which was when we decided we may actually die, and I decided to take my knife out. Apparently I blacked out with knife in my hand, and my friends kept hitting me. We all had the same fear of death.

Finally we get to Salmon Arm, and he veers into a post office and we get out and just run. We find an RCMP officer, walk up to the window and say we’d like to report a suspicious incident. We believe this guy could be a danger to women hitchhikers. I had his information, I asked could you enter this into your system. He literally replied “hitchhiking is illegal in BC.” He basically said he wasn’t going to write a name or number down, and threatened to charge us. It was awful. I think I said under my breath, no wonder there are so many missing women in this part of BC, and walked away.

Eugene, 27

My best friend and I were invited up to a friend’s cabin for the weekend, and we brought along another friend. I don’t think they expected us to make it there, but they were polite enough to offer, so we jumped on a bus to the ferry terminal, and made our way to Vancouver Island.

We were heading up to Port Alberni area and we kinda got stranded for several hours, to the point where one of us was approaching hysteria. It was just starting to get dark, then we saw a vehicle coming down the highway that started to slow down. We immediately thought this is awesome, it was a Lexus, a nice big car, so we were excited to jump in.

I ended up getting in the front seat, and my two friends got in the back. Right away I got a vibe, like a Fear and Loathing thing. This guy was wearing a suit, but his tie was kind of undone, and he looked sweaty and stressed out. We tried to make small talk, but he’d respond with something completely different. Like he asked where we were going, I said we were heading up to Port Alberni, and then he didn’t say anything. Then a minute later he asked where you guys going again. I looked back at the guys like “what’s going on?”

At this point we’re speeding down the highway at 100 kilometres an hour, so it’s not like we could just jump out. It seemed like he was in a rush. At some point he asks us “Do you guys party?” And being young guys, all in our early 20s, we said yeah, sure. He said, “Do you mind if I party?” We were like, kind of, what do you mean? He says, “Do you guys mind if I do some ketamine?” and we’re like yeah, actually we do mind.

He just kind of looked a bit embarrassed and shocked. He seemed genuinely upset. I asked, “have you been on ketamine since you were driving us just now?” and he didn’t really answer me. I looked back at the other guys, kind of talking without speaking, and I just kept a close eye on him. We didn’t talk for another hour and a half.

When he dropped us off, we made sure it was far from where we were going. We weren’t scared of him, we just didn’t want him to come party with us.

Shaina, 33

Years ago my best friend and I did a long trip around the southern tip of Nova Scotia. We were in Halifax, and we took a bus to the outskirts of town. Our first ride was this middle-aged man with this East Coast country vibe. I wanna say he was driving a four-door pickup.

He sounded a bit concerned for us, so he gave us his business card. I didn’t keep the card but I’m pretty sure the job he had listed was “pig roasting” which was a little strange. I can’t remember his exact words, but he started telling us about these two women he picked up 10 years ago. These women were backpacking, basically doing the same thing we were doing. He said a few months later he was called by police because these two women were found murdered somewhere in the bush, and his card was on them.

He told [the police] he’d given them a ride, and gave them a card just in case something bad happened. At this point I had my phone open, ready to call 911 just in case. I remember thinking if something weird happened I could press call and they would hear what was going on. I mean that’s not a great way to make someone feel comfortable on a ride. Nothing ever came of it, he never got charged. I don’t think he did it, but he could have, I don’t know. I don’t think we ever looked it up.

I don’t think it was a conscious decision, but I haven’t hitchhiked again since that trip.

Rob, 37

I was at an SNFU show, which was a fairly prolific punk band back in the day, at the Starfish room on Seymour in Vancouver. I was 17 or 18 at the time, but it was super easy to sneak into. They didn’t ask for ID, they didn’t care. It was summer because I remember taking off my shift in the show. It was so packed and sweaty. I was having a conversation with a guy in the beer line, just talking about music.

Once the show finishes up, I lose track of all my friends in the pit. I was quite wasted so I just started hitchhiking, and the guy I was talking to in the line pulls over. He asked if I needed a ride, and I said yeah dude, totally. I was thinking to myself “thank God, I didn’t get in some random weirdo’s car.” He seemed nice, maybe he could be a new friend.

I was giving him directions, like take a right on Boundary or whatever. And then he pulls over and is just silent. I’m like no, dude, it’s still further. He seems super nervous about something. I ask, are you OK? Do you have a health problem? He says no, it’s fine, and we keep going. Wasted rob thinks this is kinda weird, but whatever, we go another five or ten blocks, and he stops again.

He’s avoiding eye contact with me, just staring at the steering wheel, and I’m worried. I ask, are you OK to be driving? For a second I thought he might be wasted like me. We did meet in the beer line. We start driving again, and he pulls over a third time. He takes a deep breath, looks at me, and says, “I’ve always wanted to suck another man’s dick.” I was like oohhhhh, that’s what’s happening.

I said thank you, I’m flattered, but no, I’m totally good. Thanks but no thanks. And he started getting really flustered. I said I’m just gonna walk, and I got out of the car. I was nowhere near home, and this was before the days of cell phones. In retrospect I kinda feel bad about how I reacted. That guy probably came out to me. I don’t know what happened to that guy, but I hope he’s happy, I hope he’s come to terms with his identity and feels comfortable.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

Three days ago, Lily Madigan – a 19-year-old transgender woman and the women's officer of her local Labour Party branch – made a plea to be left alone. "Please stop," she tweeted. "I can’t handle it any more. I’m so mentally distressed that I can’t sleep or eat or go to school."

It has been a singularly shameful experience, as a journalist and as a woman, to watch what has been done to Madigan over the last few weeks. She is an obviously bright, determined and ambitious young woman, but her brutal exposure to public scrutiny and mockery would test anybody’s sanity, let alone that of a teenager who has only been living publicly as a transgender person for two years.

Madigan first came to widespread attention when Lucy Bannerman wrote in The Times about her election to women’s officer in Rochester and Strood. The report drew attention to the fact that Madigan had previously made a complaint about Anne Ruzylo, the then-women's officer of Bexhill and Battle, East Sussex, for expressing transphobic views. Ruzylo later resigned. Bannerman makes it fairly clear in her reporting that she is proposing Madigan as an emblem of a wider struggle.

"Her appointment highlights the battle being fought between transgender activists," she writes, "...who believe gender should be a matter of self-declaration, and critics who claim that the very category of 'woman' is being erased to appease the demands of a minority group."

READ: Broadly Meets Lily

Following media coverage, hordes of outraged transphobes began to attack Lily on social media. The level of vitriol and aggression is genuinely shocking to see, even if you’re used to the nastier corners of Twitter. It’s a grotesque spectacle: a vulnerable teenager being bullied and taunted by people – some of them powerful activists – who are old enough to be her parents.

I'm not here to convince transphobic people that their ideas about gender are wrong. I’m under no illusions that I have any power to move someone who insists that trans women are men in dresses, or that trans men are just confused lesbians with eating disorders. I don’t know how to do that – I wish I did. What I do feel capable of saying is that this cruelty is unacceptable. Bullying a vulnerable young person, using the full weight of the media and the vast hateful horizon of Twitter, is unacceptable. We have seen people bullied and shamed to death this way before, and will again.

One of the accusations being made against Madigan involved a Twitter account from 2013, when she would have been 15, with her former name attached to it. The line goes that the account had a rape joke on it, and that a person who could say such a thing was not fitting to be a women’s officer ("rape.com/Savilesapprentice" was listed as its website, in someone’s unfunny idea of a risque joke).

There were outraged demands for her resignation on this basis. People scolded that she shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it just because she is trans. Of course, the reality is she is not getting away with anything because she is trans. She is being scrutinised malevolently to a degree her cis equivalents would never be.

Madigan has denied authorship and claimed the account was set up maliciously by someone other than her. But frankly, regardless of who wrote it, it’s time to reconsider the now-established routine of searching through the juvenilia of someone’s internet history to undermine them in the present. It’s become an easy journalistic Gotcha! to search a person’s Twitter and Facebook history with offensive keywords and unearth past transgressions. We saw it in November, when Stormzy’s homophobic tweets were revealed.

WATCH: 10 Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask an Ethical Hacker

Of course, I believe there are some things along these lines which are worthy of being revealed. There is a difference between a politician or public figure being found to have engaged in holocaust denial in their recent past, and a person using common linguistic tropes of their age and generation during their adolescence. That doesn’t mean we applaud it, or tolerate it. It simply means that, for instance, during my childhood a young person using the word "gay" pejoratively was neither unusual nor particularly meaningful. Culture changed, and we with it.

I did a search of my own social media recently – went looking through my Twitter and my Facebook for all the questionable words one might find buried away in the nooks of 2007. I knew, though, there was only one I was likely to find recurring. I knew that I had made rape jokes when I was younger. There was a certain type of humour which attracted me back then, the starkly vicious 4Chan sort. I can't really empathise with the person I was when I found it funny, but my best guess is that it was connected to the sheer outrageousness of the malice, how ludicrous it was to laugh at such terrible things. Before you experience much of the world yourself, including the mundanity and ubiquity of its cruelty, such jokes are easier to make.

A significant part of my career now involves writing and speaking about sexual violence and reproductive health issues. But I made rape jokes. If someone in my life, or someone I followed on Twitter, was to behave that way now, I would exclude them. I would not now do what I did then. But I did make those jokes. I even made them after I was raped myself – and probably laughed along at plenty of other things that would horrify me now.

Are we to give up on each other because of such things? Are we to abandon the idea that people are capable of change, growth, accumulating wisdom? If so, how do we find reason enough to fight our battles? If we accepted this premise there would be no point in going on.

This mindset is not just draining and petty and pedantic. It’s actively antithetical to the premise of revolutionary politics, which relies on the possibility of people becoming aware that better versions of humanity are possible. And it is possible; on the grandest scale of organisation, and right down to the individual kindness we can find within our flawed, afraid, salvageable hearts.

@mmegannnolan

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In 2005, filmmaker Jonathan Olshefski was teaching photography for a program called New Jerusalem Now in North Philadelphia. One day after class, a student named J.C. Rainey invited him back to his brother’s basement hip-hop studio a few blocks away. J.C. knocked on the door and was met by his brother, Christopher "Quest" Rainey, who was surprised to find him standing next to Olshefski, a 25-year-old white dude.

As Olshefski tells it, Quest was like, “Who you bringing to my house?” But after their initial meeting, it was all love. A few weeks later, Quest got in touch with Olshefski personally, and invited him back to the studio to take photos of his recording artists, images they could use to promote the music coming out of Everquest Recordings.

Blown away by the passion and grassroots individualism of the underground community, Olshefski simply wanted to keep hanging out. He got bit more than he bargained for: in theaters Friday, Quest, Olshefski's debut feature documentary chronicles over a decade in the life of the Rainey family of North Philadelphia.

Previously attracted to the DYI ethos of the punk scene, Olshefski felt like what was happening at Quest’s studio was similar—just for hip-hop. It was a space where people made art together, with what little resources they had, for the love of the music. The only white guy in the studio, he was a hard sell to some of the rappers, who suspected he was a narc or an undercover cop. But Quest, a community figure who delivered newspapers to make ends meet, got a good vibe from the newcomer and kept inviting him back, ultimately forming a friendship that would impact both of their lives.

What began as a photo project became a 110-minute documentary filmed with the intimacy of cinema vérité. VICE caught up with Olshefski by phone to find out what it was like filming for almost ten years, why Obama imagery is so important in the film, and what Quest taught him about how young black males are viewed in society.

Jonathan Olshefski, director. Credit: Carina Romano

VICE: You spent close to a decade making this film, explain the process and what it feels like to finally have it out?
Jonathan Olshefski: It started off as a photography project in 2006, and about a year-and-a-half into that, I just sort of felt like still photos weren’t the proper medium to tell the story. Still photos can’t capture the magic that Quest had when he was delivering papers, and I really wanted to reflect [the Raineys'] voices and points of view. After a year-and-a-half of doing the stills, I was like, “Hey, do you guys want to do like, a short documentary?” I’d never made a documentary before, but everyone was kind of up for it. We filmed for about four months and I had a version of the film, but it just didn’t quite capture everything that I’d experienced—the layers, the nuances.

So how did it become a decade-long project?
I kept pushing. Let’s film more, a little more footage. There was definitely uncertainty for awhile. [It was] like eight years with no funding, no distributor, no broadcast, none of that. I think by not having those external pressures, it allowed me to kind of take my time and be patient with it. Allowing the story to unfold really naturally, but then it was like, How am I going to get it done, and is it ever going to get done? Always, from the very beginning, I knew this family was special.

Christopher “Quest” Rainey, Isaiah Byrd, Christine’a “Ma Quest” Rainey, Patricia “PJ” Rainey. Credit: Carina Romano

How did it impact you as an artist?
I felt like the challenge for me [was to] take my craft up a notch, to a level that can really reflect how special this family is. I have a film that really does reflect how incredible and inspirational this family is. I feel very proud of the project, and I’m really excited to be on the other end of it, especially when we’ve been able to tour with the film and have the family be there to participate and meet people after screenings. It’s been really amazing after all these years of uncertainty and not [being] sure if I was ever going to finish the film.

The film is heavy on Obama imagery. How important to the story were the Obama presidency and moving into the Trump era?
It was a big deal in 2008 when Barack Obama started running for president. There was energy, there was excitement, like, Whoa, is this going to happen? He became the Democratic nominee, then he ran, campaigned, and won. I was with [Quest] on Election Day in 2008, and you could feel the energy. It’s like the whole community really responded to that. There were calendars, postcards, the barber was wearing an Obama and Biden T-shirt... You couldn’t miss it. Four years later, we’re still filming this thing, and it’s like, Why don’t I just hang out with you guys during the 2012 election?

I actually slept over at the house a couple of days leading up to that election. Then, four years later, we’re still working on this movie, and who’s running for president? Donald Trump. And again, that made its way into the film. But I think the strong presence of Barack Obama [is felt in] the film because it was there from the community. It was a phenomenon. I think people were sort of encouraged and inspired by it. With Trump, it feels a bit like a slap in the face. It felt like, Hey, maybe we can be heard, we can be understood, maybe we’re changing the narrative here—and then we get smacked down with messages of fear and division.

Patricia “PJ” Rainey, Christopher “Quest” Rainey. Credit: Jonathan Olshefski

What did you learn about how black males are seen in our society?
Especially [with] Quest and his relationship with his daughter, there’s this tenderness, this love, this gentleness—and it’s not like I just found this one gentle, nice, tender, black father. There’s hundreds of thousands of them across the country, and all over North Philadelphia. Thousands of men doing right by their kids and their families—but those aren’t the stories that define black men. I think Quest [is] trying to change that narrative and create an authentic depiction that encourages and invites connection and understanding, as opposed to justifying the injustice, harshness, and cruelty. If we can change that narrative, and see people as human beings in all their complexity, with their beauty and their flaws, I think then, as a society, maybe there would be more willpower to address the injustices that places like North Philly endure consistently. The constant injustice in and pillage of [these] communities is systematic.

Quest isn’t quite a talking head-style documentary. Was this something that evolved during the process, or was it planned from the beginning?
I wanted the film to be cinematic. I wanted to use the camera to put the viewer in a situation where life unfolds. It’s definitely not the first 'observational documentary' that’s been made, but to create an observational documentary, it’s about being patient. You need to have trust. You need to have a subject that will allow you into their lives when stuff gets real in order to get those really special moments, and that’s something that I wanted. Because I was there so much, there wasn’t an awareness of the camera or me. It was just like, Hey, Jon’s always here, so we’ve got to just live our lives.

In the moments when it really got intense, the family actually invited me in. When P.J. was in the hospital, they reached out to me like, Jon, this is a major moment in our lives, we want to make something good come out of this. So it was a collaboration in a lot of ways. They put their blood, sweat, and tears into this. They invested ten years of their lives in order to tell this story, and I see it as something we did together. Something I’m really proud of is the relational aspect of it, the collaboration of what we did.

Patricia “PJ” Rainey, Christine’a “Ma Quest” Rainey, Christopher “Quest” Rainey. Credit: Jonathan Olshefski

Did it ever seem like things could go wrong?
In the film, you see a couple of scenes where the police do right by the Rainey family. But in one scene [taken with] cell phone footage, all Quest was doing was taking the garbage out. The next thing you know, he’s over the top of a police car getting frisked and questioned. We know very well that those situations can go really wrong really quick, and that’s why Ma pulled out her cell phone and documented it. You see them go through these experiences, as opposed to the evening news where this kind of tragic thing happens and it’s almost like [they're] anonymous victims or perpetrators.

How does the Raineys’ story relate to what’s going on in America today?
With their story, you see the spectrum. You see the beauty, vibrancy, and love of a community that doesn’t often get depicted as beautiful or loving. It gets depicted with bad, scary, and depressing things, and that ends up defining the community. I felt like that was just wrong, so that’s a big part of it: changing that narrative, and [giving] a response to Donald Trump’s kind of viewpoint [where] African-Americans live in the inner city, a war zone worse than places we’re having conflicts.

That’s not how these people see themselves. Yes, they have some obstacles and some threats, but they’re not defined by those threats. You see a family just struggling. You see these social issues that we talk about—gun violence, economic inequality, addiction—you see them through the Raineys trying to cope and deal with them in their lives. The film, in a lot of ways, is about giving them control of the narrative.

Quest opens in New York on Friday.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

The 1980s were a golden age for cinema in Indonesia, where audiences turned out in droves to see movies packed with sexual innuendoes, violence, and a whole lot of gore. A wave of exploitation films dominated the country for nearly two decades before an economic crisis in the 1990s left the industry on its knees, effectively putting the genre to bed.

On this episode of VICE's Foreign Film Club, we met up with the directors, producers, and screenwriters behind Indonesia's greatest B movies of the 1970s and 80s to hear how their films became so popular, and what it took to make one. Then we sat down with Joko Anwar, a modern filmmaker hoping to put Indonesian cinema back on the map by paying tribute to the exploitation film masters who came before him.

Two students were killed on Thursday in a high school shooting in New Mexico, putting schools throughout the small city of Aztec on lockdown as police scrambled to address the threat, as the Associated Press reported.

The gunman also died at the scene. Though police hadn't divulged any details on the shooter's identity at the time of publication, a county official told the Farmington Daily Times the perp was also a student. No one else was injured, according to police.

The FBI was working with state police to investigate what might have motivated the shooting at Aztec High, a school of about 1,000 students in a city of just under 7,000 near the Colorado border.

Though nearby schools concerned they might be in danger went on lockdown after word broke about the shooting, police said they believed it was an isolated incident. The lockdown was lifted around 10 AM local time, area CBS affilate KRQE reports.

Aztec High was evacuated earlier in the morning, and the students were bussed to a local park while police cleared the school. Parents reunited with their kids a little after 11 AM, the Daily Times reports.

Caidyn Atwood, a student at Aztec High, told the paper the scene inside was terrifying.

“I heard gunshots and screaming,” Atwood said. “They just said, ‘There’s a lockdown, and this is not a drill.’ It was the scariest moment of my life.”

In a Facebook post, the county sheriff's office said it's hoping to speak with students who witnessed the tragedy.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

A man in Vancouver was charged with assault and threatening to cause death or bodily harm after he allegedly slapped a Muslim teenager in the face, pulled at her hijab, and repeatedly threatened to kill her while riding public transit Monday night.

Pierre Belzan, 46, was arrested following a violent attack that took place December 4 on the Canada Line train, according to the city’s transit police. Though there were around 20 passengers on board at the time, the victim said no one intervened until Belzan slapped her.

Speaking to VICE, 18-year-old Noor Fadel said she was heading home on the train after work Monday night at around 10 PM when Belzan came up to where she was sitting and began swearing at her in Arabic and a language she didn’t understand.

“He was saying ‘go back to your country, you slut, you whore. I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill all Muslim people,’” Fadel said. She said he began raising his hand and that she stood up in shock.

“That was when he came closer. In Arabic he said ‘choke on it.’ He tried to grab my head and tried to force me onto his crotch.” She said Belzan had tried to grab her by her hijab.

“I was thinking to myself ‘I need to film this guy but he’s going to hurt me,’” she said.

At that point, she said Belzan slapped her across the face.

That’s when she said a bystander named Jake Taylor yelled at Belzan and stood in front of her, blocking Belzan from accessing her. Belzan got off at the next station, she said, and she and Taylor proceeded to the next stop and reported the incident to transit police.

According to transit police, Fadel was “extremely traumatized and had trouble breathing” when they first came into contact with her. But she’d been able to take photos of Belzan and that same night he was arrested at a convenience store near Vancouver International Airport.

Transit police have coordinated with BC Hate Crimes Unit on the investigation. They have also recommended Belzan be charged with sexual assault.

Fadel, who was born and raised in Vancouver, told VICE she’s experienced verbal assaults “many, many times” but she’s never before been physically attacked.

While she said it was somewhat “disheartening” that prior to Taylor’s intervention, no other bystanders intervened, she also empathized with other passengers.

“It’s not just something easy for someone to just get up and risk their life for someone they’ve never seen.”

She said she now feels “very anxious” while riding public transit, but she has received thousands of responses from other victims of hate crimes since the attack went public. The support has encouraged her to speak out.

“This wasn’t just an attack on an 18-year-old Muslim, this is an attack on humanity,” she said.

Last week, Statistics Canada released data that showed police-reported hate crimes went up in 2016—from 1,362 to 1409. The numbers showed hate crimes went up against Arabs, South Asians, West Asians, Jews and LGBTQ people, while the reported attacks against Muslims went down.

However, police-reported hate crimes against Muslims jumped 253 percent between 2012, when there were 45 incidents and 2015, when there were 159 incidents. In 2016, there were 139 police-reported hate crimes against Muslims.

Experts told VICE News it is possible that attacks on South Asian and Arab people last year were meant to target Muslims.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Mexico. Leer en Español.

Eight years have passed since the day Mexican authorities detained a man named Santiago Meza López. At that time, President Felipe Calderón’s administration began referring to Meza as El Pozolero ("The Stewmaker"), a reference to the fact that he was believed to have dissolved some 300 people in caustic soda.

In a press release distributed by the Attorney General's office on January 25, 2009, Meza López was portrayed as one of the most ruthless drug traffickers in the game, and the official description of him suggested he'd be subjected to a severe sentence. Almost a decade later, the reality is quite different.

Information obtained by VICE News en Español via the Federation of Judicial Power —which is in charge of imposing sentences in Mexico—revealed that to date, Meza López still hasn't been formally sentenced, despite admitting to these horrible acts and being convicted of crimes.

For now, he remains incarcerated in the Almoloya de Juárez prison in the State of Mexico, where he finished a primary school education and learned how to write.

As can be read in his file, around mid-2015, a formal prison sentence was handed down due to Meza López's involvement in organized crime and illegal deprivation of freedom. But his defense attorney has managed to lodge various stays that have been accepted by judges, pushing back the official date for sentencing.

Nevertheless, in the northern part of the country—the farthest point from the capital—lies the border city of Tijuana, where human remains keep being dug out of the earth, presumably those that were dissolved by Meza López.

They appear every time it rains, every time the wind moves the soil, every time a group of family members of the disappeared shows up with a pick axe and a shovel to look for the remains of their children, fathers, and grandsons.

According to Fernando Ocegueda, president of the association United for the Disappeared (Unidos por los Desaparecidos, in Spanish), 16,500 liters of organic matter have been extracted thus far.

The most recent excavations were conducted between the months of August and October of this year, on the land where Meza López dismembered and dissolved in acid the bodies of people who were kidnapped by the Arellano Félix and Sinaloa Cartels, the groups that historically controlled drug trafficking in that city.

The most important excavation to date, which occurred in an area known as "The Chicken Coop," took place several weeks ago in a house just outside city limits. The event came eight years from the day that Meza López was detained, opening a new door for families of Mexico's disappeared. Authorities had informed families that DNA could not be extracted from the organic remains, but in mid-August, Fernando Ocegueda and other family members discovered new graves in the Chicken Coop, extracting 250 kilos of bones and bone fragments.

The Chicken Coop

The story of the Chicken Coop begins around 1996, when Meza López worked for the Arellano Félix Cartel, taking care of horses and doing masonry work.

Efraín Pérez and Jorge Aureliano Félix 'El Macumba', the heads of the organization, invited him to see an "experiment." They poured liters of water and other substances into a drum and asked Santiago Meza López to drop in a leg of beef. They told him he should let it sit for two hours. "Move it, and the meat dissolved," Meza López recalled himself.

"It was probably about six months later that they called me again and Efraín told me that now they were going to experiment with human flesh. 'I'm going to send some guys to train with you.' In other words, [so] that they learn the job," Meza López recounted in a statement to authorities.

The first body was dissolved one night in 1996, in a drum with 200 liters of water. They undressed him, put him inside, turned on the gas burner, and left it there all night.

"It left the water thick with foam," Lopez said. "We put the barrels in the pick-up and took them to throw them [away] in the canyon. It was still dark when we threw them in. Three months later, I did it again."

"I told them I didn't want to do it anymore," Lopez added in his statement.

Years passed and Santiago Meza López stuck with the job, and did teach the method to others; in his statement, he explained that, in one of the locations, which may or may not have been the Chicken Coop, he installed drainage where the dissolved human remains were dumped.

"It was the devil to move them (the human remains) because they weighed a lot. After everything was cleaned up, we stored the barrels. We also washed the drain with hot water because the remains stuck to the pipes," he recalled.

Meza López said he worked in the Chicken Coop itself for just a year and a half, and that, on some occasions, military forces showed up, but never discovered anything. He said the Cartel brought more than 70 bodies to that site to dissolve them in the caustic soda.

He described the Chicken Coop as a very rural place that "was along the free highway to Tecate (a neighboring city of Tijuana), I don't know in what kilometer; a path went up past the front of a gas station and led to a brick wall. We called it the Chicken Coop because they raised chickens there."

VICE News en Español was at the most recent excavation at the Chicken Coop. Here's what we saw.

A view of the Maclovio Rojas neighborhood, where the spot known as The Chicken Coop was found. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

A man leaving with his wheelbarrow, which was used during the excavation of the site. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

Behind this wall is the entrance to the area where the so-called "Well Man" dissolved the bodies. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

Entrance to the Chicken Coop, guarded by Mexican police. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

The periphery of the Chicken Coop was cordoned off so that nobody entered the site during the excavation. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

Wall surrounding the location where 250 kilos of bones were found. Photo by Joebeth Terriquez/VICE News

Excavations began in August, eight years after the detention of the Well Man. Photo by Fernando Ocegueda/Unidos Contra los Desaparecidos

The graves where human remains were found. Photo by Fernando Ocegueda/Unidos Contra los Desaparecidos

Among the stones and rocks, there are small pieces of bone fragments. Photo by Fernando Ocegueda/Unidos Contra los Desaparecidos

Since 2009, it's estimated that more than 16.500 liters of organic matter have been discovered. Photo by Fernando Ocegueda/Unidos Contra los Desaparecidos

On Thursday, VICELAND airs the season two premiere of BEERLAND, our show following the founder of California's Golden Road Brewing across the country as she searches for the best beers America has to offer. Meg Gill is kicking off this season with a trip to Portland, Oregon, known to locals as "Beervana" for its top-notch selection of craft brews.

BEERLAND airs Thursdays at 10 PM on VICELAND.

VICELAND is also airing a new episode of IT'S SUPPERTIME! with Matty Matheson, a cooking show unlike any other—aside from the fact that you'll learn how to make badass dishes, from comfort food to gourmet masterpieces. This time around, Matty's whipping up banh mi from scratch, along with a side of crab fried rice and Vietnamese flan for desert.

IT'S SUPPERTIME! airs Thursdays at 10:30 PM on VICELAND.

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

When we talk about female representation in science, we’re rarely talking about test subjects. We tend to want more women behind the microscope, not under it.

Neuroscience is one of the most skewed fields when it comes to testing on female physiology. One review found single-sex brain studies using male animals outnumbered those using females 6.7 to one.

Aarthi Gobinath, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, calls this a “hidden gap” in her field. She says there’s reason to question the assumption that the brains of males and females are identical, particularly in unique states like pregnancy.

This is particularly true for early animal testing, where new drugs for depression and anxiety are first developed. “This leads to the ultimate outcome of our research not even benefiting males and females equally,” Gobinath told VICE.

Gobinath wanted to tackle the issue of sex bias by trying to understand what depression looks like in female rat brains, specifically looking at postpartum depression. Her research suggests our standard depression treatments don’t apply to new moms.

VICE caught up with Gobinath to ask about her new study, which could have wide-ranging implications for humans of all sexes and genders.

VICE: What do you mean when you say there’s “sex bias” in brain research?
Aarthi Gobinath: So when I say sex, what I mean is genetic sex meaning XX or XY chromosomes. (Sex bias) is a bias towards using male subjects in research and then concluding from that research that what was true in that experiment will be true for both sexes without necessarily addressing that maybe it won’t be true for the female physiology.

When did you first come across this issue?
I first became aware during my transition between undergraduate and graduate research. I was working on a project that was looking at stress on the hippocampus of mothers. And we realized that there were quite a few differences in the way stress affects moms versus the brains of non-moms. That was really interesting and so I wanted to pursue that for my graduate education.

Why do researchers generally use male subjects in the first place?
(Cis) women have a menstrual cycle in humans, or the estrous cycle in rats, so some researchers see that as a complication or as an inconsistency that makes it difficult to study female subjects. Because male subjects don't have that some would argue that it's easier to work with male subjects. I've worked with male rats and I've worked with female rats. I don't find it to be problematic or more work. I think I've gotten more answers that way. I find it more rewarding to know that I've addressed both sexes in my work.

Have you found instances in your research where things we thought were true for males weren’t true for females?
Absolutely. We were looking at the drug fluoxetine, commonly known as Prozac, this drug is a well validated antidepressant. But a lot of that work was confirmed in males. When I applied it to female rats with postpartum depression we actually found that fluoxetine was unable to prevent depressive-like behaviour in the mother.

And you thought the best way to address this problem was to specifically study female subjects?
Yeah, and to specifically study things that were unique to female physiology and female biology. I actually take part of the problem—something that was different about female physiology, pregnancy and postpartum—and explicitly study it.

What relation does your work have with how we understand sex bias?
My work is laying the foundation that will hopefully inform the clinical world. Hopefully, laying out where we see sex differences will be clues to clinical researchers to say "OK, maybe we do need to start thinking about drugs affecting men and women differently,” and "maybe we do need to think of postpartum depression being a distinct disorder from major depression.”

Do you have a solution for the sex bias that's in neuroscience?
I think that transparency and appreciation for sex differences will be key here. It's OK for researchers to just study male subjects, that's fine. But then they have to include in their titles and in their abstracts that their research it was done in male subjects only and acknowledge that what they have found to be true is true for one sex specifically.

There are mandates put in place that state that human trials must include both male and female test subjects. So is there a sex bias even in studies that look at humans?
Yes. Both sexes will be represented in the human data, but they’ll just collapse the data into one category without acknowledging the sex differences. If a clinical trial found that there was no significant effect of a drug, but they didn't analyze by sex, maybe that drug was actually beneficial for one sex, but not the other. But because the dataset was collapsed we've lost information that way.

Do you know any cases where a sex bias has had a negative impact on humans?
This has happened with the drug Ambien. Work that was done on Ambien was primarily optimized in male subjects. When doctors started prescribing Ambien for men and for women, women were suffering from more adverse effects and were at higher risks for overdosing. This is because the way the drug is working throughout the body is actually different for (cis) men and women. Researchers we weren't aware of that until serious errors and problems had come up in the clinical population. And so now we can look back on that and say "OK, research supports that (cis) men and women should be given different doses of Ambien," but it took errors being made and actual human lives being affected before we thought to reconsider.

How can we improve the current model of research only focusing on males?
There are two sides to that. First of all I think that funding agencies need to appreciate that we need to study both males and females. The other side is that researchers need to see this as more of an opportunity and less of as an inconvenience. If it's true that some treatments act different between males and females, then there's an opportunity there for discovery and for innovation for what we know about treating diseases. We should be getting excited instead of becoming frustrated by it.

Were you worried that the results of your study could be misinterpreted?
There are some people who misconstrue any study about a sex difference as some sort of biological basis for misogyny. Which is unfortunate. There’s also a lot of pushback. I find it exciting when we find a sex difference because it means that we can better understand how to help male subjects as well as female subjects. But there are those who argue that they don't see sex differences so they don't believe there is a point to studying it. That's frustrating for researchers.

What would you tell a person that was completely unaware about this gap in the research?
If you're wondering "why don't we have the cure for Alzheimer's disease, why don't we have the cure for depression, why don't we have the perfect cure for any disease currently out there?" It is partly because we have been biased towards using male subjects. Depression affects twice as many women than it does men. Alzheimer’s is also characterized by a sex difference in that it affects more women than men. And yet, a large amount of knowledge on drug treatments for these diseases has been from research on male subjects only. This is part of the reason why we don’t have the best treatments out there.

So if you're wondering why as scientists we're not "done yet" with a disease, it may be because we didn't actually think about male subjects versus female subjects.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A few weeks ago, I worked the door at a party in Downtown LA with my friend Chance. Chance was dressed in a dark dress, with blue lipstick and long, stunning hair, an outfit that felt deliberate in the best way possible: challenging, gorgeous, one that demanded your attention.

From the outside, we’re polar opposites. I’m a middle-aged white Jewish gay man with a beard. A “daddy” or a “muscle bear,” as people sometimes put it. Chance is a tall African-American agender person in their 20s, a student at Occidental College.

I was telling Chance about this guy I used to hook up with, Davit. Davit was a 19-year-old student at UCLA when I met him. He was way too young for me—I was 47—but he would sneak me into his dorm late at night nonetheless, where we’d lay in his bed and fuck and talk about politics and genderqueer dynamics.

Davit identified as bisexual. “It’s as if the most radical thing I can do is say that I like to fuck women just as much as I like to fuck men,” I remember him telling me. “Gay guys never believe me. They always think that I’ll grow up and be gay. But that’s not who I am. It’s not true to me.”

Davit was taller than me, but I weighed a good 55 pounds more than him—he was skinny and young, almost boyish. I remember showing a friend a picture of him, and seeing them react with near-shock.

“I don’t see it,” they said, “He’s so… I don’t know. He doesn’t even have a beard. He’s a boy.”

“Yeah, but he’s hot as fuck,” I replied.

“Sure, he’s sexy, but I guess I only fuck real men,” they said. “I don’t really go for that type.” I told them that if he knew how good Davit fucked me, they would understand.

“Wait! You let this little twink fuck you?” they said. “You’re kidding.“

I laughed. “This guy, he fucks the hell out of me. He gets all alpha in charge, holds me down, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s an amazing top.”

“No way. If you had told me you were his daddy top, maybe I’d get it,” they said. “Daddy and boy can be hot. But there’s no way I’d let that guy top me. He’s too skinny.”

At the party I worked with Chance, I told them all about how, just because I was a “bear” and Davit was a “boy,” it was impossible for some people to imagine him fucking me.

“It’s all these assumptions people make, based on how we look,” I said to Chance. “As if somehow my looks define my desires or who I am on the inside. That because I have this masculine bearded daddy vibe I can’t explore my sexuality, that I can only behave in certain ways or I’m no longer a man.”

The conversation moved on to Chance’s experiences with others’ perceptions around gender and race.

“I don’t think any conventional understanding of gender can bring justice to the complexity of my identity or the space I deserve to take up,” they said. “The term that allows me to communicate this most clearly is ‘agender’—it allows me to place myself as far outside the binary as possible.”

A couple approached the entrance to the party—a tall, butch, hairy man in his 40s dressed in a black dress and black high heels, and a young femme boy in pink pants studded with faux diamonds. The older guy had a collar around his neck, the boy held a leash attached to it.

“People usually perceive me—or at least react to me—as a cisgendered gay man,” Chance continued after they walked off. “Even when I visibly subvert my gender presentation, through makeup, wigs, feminine clothing. I feel that I’m still only received as a cis gay man performing femininity, instead of simply existing as femme.”

“I feel like the majority of my negative sexual experiences can be attributed to the fact that my partner felt like I lacked sexual prowess—that I wasn’t a hypermasculine, physically fit gay man,” Chance continued. “Like when I linked my Grindr profile to my Instagram, where I present my makeup artistry, voguing, and other interests that are culturally deemed feminine, I started seeing exponentially fewer messages.”

Watch VICE check out an art exhibit about queer enlightenment:

In the queer community, it’s an easy crutch for us to define ourselves and others in these limited ways. Masculine and feminine. Tops and bottoms. Daddies and boys. But those definitions only serve to limit us—to force us to behave in ways that might not have anything to do with who we really are, or who we could be without them.

I’ve never felt comfortable identifying as a “bear,” let alone being seen strictly as a top or a bottom. People often laugh at me when I tell them I’m not a bear, tell me that I’m the textbook definition of one. But that’s based purely on how I look, and has nothing to do with who I am as a person or what I desire sexually.

A while back, at a party in New York City, I met a boy named Israel. He was Brazilian, tall and skinny, in his mid twenties. When I met him, he was in a red dress and black heels, with a white pearl necklace and arms that were covered in bright tattoos. He was gorgeous and funny, and we spent the night talking about science fiction and X-Men comics. Later, he took me home to his apartment in Brooklyn. We made out, and then he bent me over his bed, hiked up his red dress, and fucked me in those heels.

Did that make me less masculine? Or him? Does letting a man fuck me in a dress mean that I have a fetish for guys in drag? Does any of it really say anything about either of us, beyond the fact that I met a cute a boy, we had a good time talking, went back to his place and fucked all night, then got bagels the next morning?

When people talk to me about “real men,” or tell me they couldn’t fuck someone because they don’t hew to their preconceptions about masculinity or what makes someone desirable, it makes me wonder exactly what constitutes a “real man,” and where those preconceptions come from. What makes a man less than real?

I can’t help but feel that so many of our ideas of masculinity and sexuality are rooted in our own internalized homophobia and shame. But imagine if we could step outside those labels and definitions, and no longer feel shame over who we are or what we desire. If we stopped judging each other based on these limiting beliefs, we might find a lot more freedom to be and do whatever we want.

“I think that our community needs a lot of healing,” Chance told me on the night of the party. “We have a lot of unlearning to do. I could go on about this forever. But the racism, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism and more that permeates the queer community needs to be addressed. There are queer bodies that need to be liberated. We need to address all the people in our communities who are hurting, and we need to help them heal. That’s the only way we’ll be able to transcend the systems of oppression and institutions that shuttle our bodies into violence, and all the labels that work to our disservice within them.”

Davit and Chance are right. The most radical thing we can do is to be ourselves, no matter what that means or who tells us we’re wrong. We have to be who we are and be open to change and new experiences. We have to try to grow beyond the limitations we set for ourselves. In this day and age, that’s a truly radical thing to do.

And if anyone tells you you aren’t man enough, or you’re too femme, or thinks what you do or desire is weird, or refuses to acknowledge your gender identity, just remember: we decide who we are. We decide what’s right for ourselves. We decide what it means to be queer.

And no one gets to take that away from you.

Follow Jeff Leavell on Twitter and Instagram.

It’s 4:45 on a Tuesday afternoon, and Sebastian Stan is singing over the phone. “Have yourself, a merry little...”

We had been in the middle of a conversation about the actor’s new film, I, Tonya, in which he appears alongside Margot Robbie and Allison Janney, when he began to croon. Stan was clearly feeling seasonal in a holiday sense, but given the early response to the film, it might be a good idea to start embracing awards season, too.

Best known for his role as Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier alongside Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stan’s performance in I, Tonya, couldn’t be further removed. “For me, this movie and the Marvel world are miles apart,” he says.

The actor plays Jeff Gillooly, Harding’s on-again/off-again-eventually-ex-star-crossed-lover and in the presence of other acting powerhouses—Robbie and Janney have been widely praised for their performances as the titular skater and her mother, respectively—he holds his own with a surprising amount of nuance, considering some of his bad (not good!) behavior depicted in the duration of the film.

The movie is based around a series of present-day interviews with both Harding and Gillooly, one often contradicting the other. The result plays like a Coen Brothers-plotted, fourth wall-breaking sports biopic, and takes a hard look at the events surrounding the incident that took place over two decades ago—with the nature of celebrity and what it means to win examined along the way. Nearing the end of a long junket, Stan took some time to chat with VICE about his character, the film, and more.

VICE: One thing that’s certain about I, Tonya is that your character has cemented a spot in the film mustache hall of fame.
Sebastian Stan: I’m trying to think of what other mustache’d characters there have been. I’ll take that as a compliment.

It's without a doubt a compliment. So, what first attracted you to the movie?
Steven Rogers just wrote an amazing script. It was so insane to read it that I had to find out whether or not it was true. Having seen the 30 for 30, The Price of Gold, I was familiar with the story, but the script was giving a whole different take on what happened that we hadn’t really seen before. It started with that, and then it just was really well-written and captivating, and at the same time, there were real people here. The idea of having to mold to someone, as opposed to creating a character, was also attractive.

You and Margot play off each other really well. Did that chemistry build as filming went on, or did it click right away?
I feel like it clicked right away. We had the screen test and it went really well. We were laughing and it just seemed really collaborative. There was always a sense of trust there. Her commitment has always been, to me, at least on this film, 120 percent. So, there was never any fear or hesitation about where to take a scene, because I knew that she was going to meet me halfway.

The movie plays Tonya Harding as this sort-of endearing figure. Your character, Jeff Gillooly, not so much. What goes into playing a character who’s not supposed to be likable?
Well, you can’t really judge a character. You have to let that go, and you have to try to understand why they do the things they do; I’m not sure I really did to this day. I had to find something based on the interview and the way it was written, and remember that the movie is also told from Tonya’s perspective. In Tonya’s perspective, Jeff was portrayed in all these ways. In the end, I kind of just tried looking at it as a toxic love story of sorts, that involved two people who were unfortunately matched because of their upbringing, and whose relationship became more damaging and unhealthy with the more fame that she gained.

Especially with him, it seemed in the script, at least—and he denies this part—but in the script it seems that he was always playing this balancing act between actually being really sweet, and then also being extremely violent. It was trying to find that balance, find middle ground, and that’s about tone within the movie. We really worked hard in terms of finding the right amount of violence, versus making the movie over-the-top where it alienates the audience. At the same time, it’s not a slapstick comedy either, where you’re just not taking anything seriously.

You’re actually playing two versions of Jeff: the ‘present’ version, removed from what happened 20 years ago with the incident, and then the version playing that story out in real time. How do you approach playing two different versions of the same guy?
You have to look at it like a detective: you gather all the facts and you lay them all out in front of you, and then you objectively look at it and connect the dots a little bit, and try to put together a life. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to meet with him, because I didn’t know what he was like when he was in his 20s, and I didn’t know what he was like now. I knew the footage that was out on him after and during the incident, but that was about it.

What was the experience like when you met the real Jeff?
It was a bit strange, because I had spent two-and-a-half months, or whatever, looking at him and hearing him every day. So, then you meet the person, and you sort of just do a lot of double-takes. It was informative on those particular issues. At the same time, I’m sure it must’ve been quite strange for him; I don’t think he ever really thought that somebody was going to play him someday.

The three principal players on this movie are yourself, Margot Robbie, and Allison Janney. What was it like to share the screen with those two in such strong roles?
I think they’re huge roles, absolutely, and they’re getting the attention that they deserve. I mean, it’s a very important relationship in the movie, between the two of them—it shapes the rest of her life, and I couldn’t picture anybody else doing it.

You have a couple scenes alongside both of them. What was that like?
It was great. I’ve always admired Allison in a million movies that she’s done, and she’s always been phenomenal. She was all those things in this movie: some of the takes, she would crack you up and start laughing. The end of the diner scene is pretty much that—she improvised something, and we had a genuine reaction to it. There’s other times when she’s very scary. You’re always in great company, and that’s always going to make you better.

You mentioned the 30 for 30 that was made. This is a well-known story—why is now the right time for the theatrical version?
I think when you see this movie, you’re going to find that it’s probably more relatable than you think, because of the times that we’re finding ourselves in, and the way that we continuously strive to be obsessed with celebrity and how we handle that. The way that social media works— media in general—hasn’t really changed since the 90s.

There’s issues, obviously, in our country now about what it means to be a winner, and what it means to be a loser. All these things are still being dealt with, and I think the movie ends up landing in a very appropriate time. Also, the notion that sometimes one thing that can happen when somebody’s getting a lot of coverage, is that you become desensitized to it—you forget the humanity of the person, which is essentially what happened to her. So, when you see this movie, I think you gain a little bit more compassion for what she’s gone through, a little bit of what that experience must’ve been like.

Follow Evan Romano on Twitter.

This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project

Born and raised in Washington, DC, I spent part of my childhood in foster care, as my mother struggled with drug addiction. Without support or guidance, I turned to the streets for belonging. I looked up to a lot of the older guys and wanted to fit in.

When I was 16, a group of us took part in an armed carjacking, and I was tried and sentenced as an adult and sentenced to 12 years in prison. But because the District has no prisons of its own, they could send me to any federal penitentiary in the United States.

I was transferred to a Bureau of Prisons-contracted juvenile facility in Montana. Outside, through my small, cloudy window, there was nothing but mountains, and 18-wheelers driving by. All you could smell was manure—very strong. Cows used to step right up to the fence.

I was the only black person, period. There were no black inmates, no black COs.

For my birthday, my mother mailed me some sneakers. I had just put them on when this guy came up, picked his nose, and wiped it on my shoe. Before I could react, he ran and told an officer that I’d threatened him.

There was no questioning; I was immediately sent to the hole. I had no say in my defense, no chance to explain what truly went down. I was transferred from the facility the very next day—it felt like they’d been planning to get rid of me.

Then I was sent to Seattle, Washington, for six months. Then to Oklahoma.

Then, soon after I turned 18, I was transferred to an adult federal prison in Springfield, Missouri.

On the plane to Springfield, everyone was herded together like cattle, both males and females. They looked confused when they saw a baby-faced kid walk down the aisle in shackles and an orange jumpsuit.

“You sure you on the right plane?” one of the marshals said, trying to crack a joke as he asked for the last four digits of my Social Security number. But soon he saw that I had just come of age.

I’d been sent to Springfield to work in a medical prison. The place looked like a hospital, with green and white tiled floors and white walls. Even though it was kept clean, it smelled awful, like urine and feces.

There was a psych-ward block, which housed mentally-ill inmates, as well as those who couldn’t handle the prison environment and had broken down. There was also a block for inmates who needed surgery; a block for inmates with chronic and terminal conditions; and a block for inmates in the work cadre unit, meaning those who were sent to this place to work and help run the building, like me.

On the work unit, we had all sorts of different jobs (housekeeper, medical-records clerk, dialysis attendant, and more), and I applied to be a nurse attendant, because that paid the most. I wasn’t licensed for it or certified in any way. I was trained by another inmate and got paid 71 cents an hour.

For other teens, McDonald’s is their first job. This was mine.

After working there for awhile, I started to realize I was doing the majority of the nurses’ work, even though I was only supposed to assist them. Every time someone asked for help, they’d call for a nurse attendant. They had us do everything except pass out medicine.

I gave men showers, changed their diapers, and wiped their asses. I made a connection with the sick inmates, and they appreciated me, offering to buy me commissary or pay me every month to keep helping them out. (I didn’t accept.)

Still a kid, I witnessed many inmates die during my stay, from four to ten every month. Pictures hung on the wall of the ones who had recently lost their lives—not sweet remembrances or anything like that, just photos from when they had first come to Missouri, with the date they arrived and the date they passed.

The pictures often looked awful, showing men with sunken, hollow eyes.

One of the first inmates I treated was called Ziggy, and he was from the same neighbourhood as me in DC, facing life in prison. He loved to sing, and had been part of a Go-Go band before his arrest. At 35 years old, he was dark-skinned, with his hair cropped close to his head like mine, and he weighed 230 pounds. He said he’d gained weight because, in his wheelchair, he didn’t get much exercise.

Ziggy was paralyzed from the waist down and struggled to move both his arms. He told me he’d gotten into a conflict with a prison guard and was beaten by several of them. At first he couldn’t move his hands at all, but with physical therapy, he could use them some. Until he regained his ability to walk, though, I helped give him showers, changed his diapers, and fed him many of his meals.

Ziggy was loud. As much as he loved to sing, he joked even more. Since his arms weren’t strong, he’d creep up on me real slow in his wheelchair, and when he was right behind me, he’d scream, “Ha, caught ya!”

He also used humour to hide his embarrassment. Sometimes when I was carrying him to the shower or changing him, he’d say, “I know you like what you’re looking at, but you know I don’t go like that!”

One day, I walked into his room in a playful mood, but it became clear that he wasn’t up for joking. He was sitting in his wheelchair with his head down and his back turned to the door. As I peeped around to look at him, he tried to use his hand to cover the tears rolling down his face.

“Homie, why you crying?” I asked him, thinking someone had died.

Ziggy looked up at me, frustrated. “Man I can’t take this shit no more,” he blurted out.

He told me that a nurse had just told him that he should kill himself, and that he needed to stop being a bitch.

“Oh, shit,” I told him. I didn’t really know what else to say.

In my time at the medical center, I saw mentally-ill inmates kept in a room all day, some strapped down on a sheetrock bed, nude with the AC on blast.*

Eventually I left that job, because I needed a certification I could use on the outside, and became a cook.

Every once in awhile, I’d see Ziggy rolling around in the hallway. When I told him that I was leaving the facility and being transferred to New Jersey—my first time back on the East Coast in eight years—he didn’t really say much. He just told me to be safe out there, but I could see on his face that he was sad and didn’t want me to leave.

At least, after everything that had happened, Ziggy was still capable of getting sad. The place hadn’t taken that away from him yet. Everyone else around me acted as if it was all a normal thing—the dying we saw all too often, the abrupt transfers that take people away from friends and their community with little warning or care.

Later, in a book club, I would read War Child by Emmanuel Jal, about child soldiers in Sudan. I couldn’t believe how much that story felt like mine. War makes you do things you don’t want to do, and prison makes you become things that you’re not.

I saw grown men commit suicide because they couldn’t handle it. If prison does that to an adult, what does it do to a child?

The author, 27, who asked that his real name not be used while he rebuilds his life, returned home from prison in 2016 after serving ten years of his 12-year sentence. He works as a behavioral aide to an autistic young adult, a clerk at a grocery store, and a writer and community outreach facilitator for the Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop in Washington, DC.

*The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) did not respond to a detailed request for comment on the allegations made in this article.

On Edge is a series about stress in 2017.

“Man the fuck up!” I told myself, staring at my reflection in the mirror of a men’s bathroom at the Kings County Supreme Criminal Court in Brooklyn.

The date was November 6, my 35th birthday. But I wasn’t in any mood to celebrate, because I’d just seen Victor Dempsey crying like a baby.

On July 4, 2016, Dempsey’s older brother, Delrawn Small, was fatally shot during a road-rage encounter in Brooklyn with NYPD officer Wayne Isaacs. Small was unarmed during the altercation. Dempsey had been weeping in the courtroom because 12 Brooklyn jurors, five of whom were black, had just acquitted Isaacs of murder and manslaughter charges.

I wasn’t surprised Isaacs walked. Intellectually, I know it’s extremely rare for officers to be charged with a crime for fatal civilian encounter; it’s even rarer to see a conviction. That tends to be true regardless of whether the person the cop killed is unarmed, underage, or in wheelchair. But despite everything I knew, hearing the result of Isaacs’s trial still sent me into momentary shock.

In my eyes, this was another glaring case of the institutional racism that inordinately affects black people. It didn’t matter that several of the jurors or the police officer were black. They all were role players in a judicial system set up to protect police officers who disproportionately target, abuse, and kill black people.

But the lethal impact of institutional racism doesn’t just stop with policing. The harsh reality of American life for black people infects our health in insidious, covert ways.

“When you start to worry about something, whether that's race or something else, then that initiates a biological stress response,” Berkeley School of Public Health researcher Amani M. Nuru-Jeter told NPR in November. “Prolonged elevation [and] circulation of the stress hormones in our bodies can be very toxic...It just gets us really out of whack and leaves us susceptible to a bunch of poor health outcomes."

Black journalists like myself who cover social justice beats experience that toxic stress like second-hand smoke. It hits me every time I write another story on extrajudicial murder, or police misconduct, or a Trayvon Martin Halloween costume. I certainly felt its pangs when I heard the “not guilty” verdict in that Brooklyn courthouse.

Christina Carrega

New York Daily News reporter Christina Carrega shared my feelings of frustration and despondency at the Isaacs trial. The 32-year-old veteran court reporter was sitting in front of me, documenting the case when Small’s family erupted in anguish and anger.

“The wailing of Small’s sister, Victoria Davis, hit the back of my throat and caused my hand to shake,” Carrega recalled to me.

Later that night, Carrega did her usual post-work routine to cope with the pain: She smoked a Black & Mild on the balcony of her Manhattan apartment.

“That’s my way of dealing with it,” Carrega said with a laugh. “I have a bar in my apartment, but I don’t even touch the alcohol because I feel like that could easily become a bad habit.”

Mother Jones scribe Jamilah King has a different approach. “I allow myself to binge on episodes of Blackish or Living Single,” she told me. “I cherish my friends who make me laugh and can sit with me in silence.”

King was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, where Mario Woods was killed by police in December 2015. She detailed the aftermath of the tragedy for Mic.com.

King didn’t know Woods, but they were both 80s babies and had mutual friends. And while covering his story, she realized they were also distant relatives.

“I struggled with reporting on his life and being part of a media that his family had grown to distrust,” King recalled. “His death made me understand that the stakes are much higher for black reporters who do this work. That’s a huge responsibility. It’s also a privilege.”

Lee Merritt

Dallas civil rights attorney Lee Merritt’s burden is even heavier than many journalists’.

The 34-year-old is the last hope for justice for many black families. For example, he currently represents the parents of Jordan Edwards, the unarmed black Texas teen who was fatally shot in the head by a Balch Springs police officer on April 29.

While Merritt’s mission in life is to help families like Edwards’s seek justice, the work has taken a great toll on him. “Before I got into this line of work, I was really into fitness, leisure reading,” Merritt told me. “Now I have high blood pressure. At 34, that’s kind of a big deal.”

Merritt’s prominence in the civil rights community has made him a highly sought after attorney when police are accused of brutalizing or extralegally killing black people. Being there so often for other people of color—up to 15 hours a day—often prevented Merritt from being there for his ex-wife. The couple’s six-year marriage ended in divorce in 2015.

“My work didn’t allow me to focus on home the way she anticipated or expected,” the father of four said.

In 2015, Merritt founded the American Black Cross charity initiative, in part, because helping folks like needy Hurricane Harvey victims offers more instant gratification than waiting years for police-related court cases to play out. But outlets like this come with racially-charged stresses as well.

“We get a lot of hate and hostility from conservatives and people who for whatever reason don’t appreciate our work,” Merritt said. “But the Black Cross allows us to go out and do things directly. It’s almost like a built in vacation. It is work, but it’s gratifying work.”

WATCH: Charlottesville - Race and Terror

Due to the rise of racial tensions in recent years, journalists from all walks of life are forced to address these issues in their reporting. Fortune Magazine senior editor Ellen McGirt covered personal finances for two decades before her editorial team asked her to write about race and diversity in the businessworld beginning in 2015.

McGirt’s first major story, on what prevents black Americans from becoming executives, ended up with her being hospitalized for two days.

“I had a massive stomach attack,” McGirt recalled. “It was halfway through the assignment, it became this sort of soul crushing, yet exhilarating exercise of reporting. I talked to several black men who were very different from each other about what it’s like being a black man. It wasn’t until later that I realized the enormity of the question.”

Her story, “Leading While Black: Why Race and Culture Matter in the C-suite” was so popular, Fortune asked her to continue writing a daily email newsletter on race and diversity in the workplace titled raceAhead.

McGirt said the steady stream headlines of about tragedies like the police massacre in Dallas last year, debates over confederate statues, the Trump presidency, and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, have made talking about race at work a huge issue in the corporate world.

“One of the things I was not prepared for as a business reporter was actually litigating the personality of Robert E. Lee,” McGirt said, referencing her November 1 column responding to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s defense of the oft-excused Confederate general. “I’m proud of the fact that I haven’t been in the hospital for two years,” she added, jokingly.

At times, the intractable nature of American racism can sometimes be too much for the people I spoke with to want to carry on in their work.

At one point in 2016, McGirt contemplated quitting her column.

“I had viewed so many actual videos of police violence that I said, ‘I don’t think I can continue,’” she told me. “Nothing in my background had trained me for this. At that point, I did everything I could to make sure I’m as healthy as I could possibly be.”

To ward off her stress, McGirt took up healthy exercise habits, like hiking through the scenic terrain of the parks near her St. Louis, Missouri home.

“I find the only thing that really breaks it for me is moving,” she said. “I do yoga and pilates… Moving is essential.”

After my moment in that Brooklyn courthouse in November, I’m beginning to realize a little more routine cardio is probably not a bad idea.

Follow Chauncey on Twitter.

Justin Bieber had the most lit baptism in modern history—and that's all thanks to the Supreme-wearing, resident cool pastor, Carl Lentz.

On Thursday's episode of Desus & Mero, Lentz talked about the night he made a believer out of Bieber, which he documents in his new book Own The Moment. Long story short, he called up NBA star Tyson Chandler at 2AM asking if he and Bieber could use his pool. Chandler offered his bathtub instead, and at 3AM, he and his wife watched as Lentz baptized the pop star.

"That's the thing about baptism," Lentz explained. "It's not about where, it's about why."

You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

From the early 1980s to the mid 2010s, graffiti was rife in London. Burners on trains, tags on the streets, chrome and black dubs, throw-ups on trackside walls and building rooftops. London had developed its own unique graffiti style, much like New York, Philadelphia or Paris had developed theirs. On any day, looking out of a train window would be like attending an exhibition of London’s graffiti writers – names like Zombie, Oker, Fume, Teach and others.

But at the start of this decade, things changed. Graffiti writers were getting busted and being handed actual prison sentences, particularly for painting trains. Where there had once been graffiti, there were now big brown rectangles of paint, as "the buff" took effect. Councils, the police and the government were clamping down, particularly in the lead up to the 2012 Olympic Games, when panicked authorities and Games organisers were concerned that graffiti made them appear weaker or signalled impending anarchy.

It seemed like the days of widespread illegal tagging were over – that the only graffiti in London would be paid for by Adidas and later sold to art dealers. But something surprising has happened in the last two years: more graffiti is appearing in London again, particularly on the streets. From new young writers making a name for themselves to old school kings back in the game, there's been a resurgence. Not "street art" murals and stencils in Shoreditch, or tourist walking tours of Banksy’s work protected by plastic screens, but proper graffiti – tags, throw-ups, dubs and pieces. This is graffiti much of the general public might not want to Instagram, but graffiti that writers and those interested in it can appreciate.

A key reason lies within Tory government cuts to our public services, including the NHS, local councils and police forces. The Metropolitan Police recently announced that "low level crime" would, in many cases, go un-investigated due to budget cuts, meaning the force must save around £400 million by 2020. In a policy first reported by The Sun, the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner Mark Simmons said, "We are not talking about [not investigating] things like homicide, kidnap, sexual offences, hate crime or domestic violence, but the lower level, higher volume offences such as shoplifting, car crime and criminal damage."

WATCH: Kabul's Female Graffiti Master

Coming under the umbrella of "criminal damage" is illegal graffiti. I asked a London writer who wished to remain anonymous – we'll call him John – if and why he thought graffiti was on the rise. "There’s definitely been an increase in graff," he told me. "The internet has made people want to do it more. Instagram has made people wanna jump back on it because they’re seeing loads of pictures of graff, and a lot of graffers are hoping their dub gets flicked and put on insta."

Certainly, the rise of smartphones and social media sites like Instagram, where pictures can be posted and shared in seconds, means writers' work can be photographed, shared and "liked" without a wait. Writers may have previously used cameras, but pictures took time to develop, and getting such rapid respect from your peers wasn’t nearly as easy as it is now. In fact, in the pre-Instagram days, the graffiti scene involved some jealousy and anger as writers fought for wall space and respect. Having no platform or community meant many writers only knew one another by their tags, jumping to conclusions without communicating and creating competitive oneupmanship.

Former writer Luke explained how the internet might have brought some peace to a game often littered with fragile egos and disrespect: "Social media sites like Instagram have had a massive effect on creating a community within graffiti." Luke says this online community has meant writers are encouraged by seeing new stuff, feeling motivated to get out there themselves. Even older writers who appeared to have quit are back on it. "I think the increase in graffiti from lower level writers on Instagram has drawn them out of retirement," he explained.

If graffiti on London's streets has risen, what about trains? Painting trains remains one of the holy grails for graffiti writers. Getting a "runner" – a painted train running the lines – is what all writers want. It means a moving, truly kinetic display of a writer or their crew's name. However, punishments handed down to graffiti writers within UK courts have been off-putting for even the most dedicated. The risks for getting caught are still perilously high, even in these changing times. "Truth is, if you didn’t go to jail for it, I’d be out painting trains now, but I don’t wanna go jail," John tells me. "The thing writers go to jail for is trains, so you’re seeing a lot of people up on the street now."

In the last decade, many train writers have been prosecuted in large scale operations by the British Transport Police (BTP). Writers have been arrested and placed before courts after being put under surveillance and having their houses raided. Graffiti has been treated like serious organised crime by the BTP and justice system. A recent case, which ran from 2013 to 2017, saw five members of SMT crew handed jail sentences ranging from 12 to 16 months. Investigating officer PC Tony McGibbon said, "Our painstaking efforts have now paid off and I am pleased that each of these defendants have now been sentenced. I hope this sentence sends a very clear message to other graffiti vandals out there that we will not tolerate this form of criminality."

READ: Who Is Nat? And Why Is This Slogan Been Sprayed All Over London

When prolific train writer Vamp was sent to prison for an eye-watering three-and-a-half years for graffiti in 2013, the sentencing judge told him, "You are a prolific graffiti vandal. We are not talking here about witty imaginative images, such as those I expect you are familiar with by Banksy […] I would suggest what you are dealing with is simple damage, which to the vast majority of the public is tedious and depressing."

The harshness of Vamp’s jail sentence said a lot about the priorities of the UK’s justice system, the police and the country. While the transport system fell to its knees with rising fares and a poor service, energy seemed to be deflected from ensuring trains ran on time and served passengers adequately to instead focusing on making examples of graffiti writers.

The authorities were so hot on graffiti that painted trains were often buffed before going into service and, in some cases, taken out of service altogether to prevent them being seen by the public. Now, the government cuts which led to the increase in street graffiti have also begun to affect how quickly trains can be cleaned up. Until recently the buff was instant, but runners are now being seen more frequently, with pictures appearing online and painted trains being spotted across the TFL network.

Key to the graffiti clampdown of the last few years has been the government's fear that they lack control over the population. A city with lots of graffiti must be a broken, scary, deprived place. But a glance at many thriving European cities with much more illegal graffiti than London or other UK cities shows this theory is simply unfounded. Copenhagen, Madrid, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome – shop shutters, bridges, trains and walls are covered in graffiti, and it doesn't affect the cities one bit. The governments and local councils are devoting energy and taxpayers' money towards improving public services, rather than catching graffiti writers and buffing everything. It's about priorities, and whether you love it, hate it, or just don't care, the UK’s bizarre focus on graffiti has distracted from far more important issues.

@CharlesGD

The founder of the Potter empire has published a fairly lengthy defence of Johnny Depp’s casting in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

“When Johnny Depp was cast as Grindelwald, I thought he’d be wonderful in the role,” she wrote in a letter published on her personal site. “However, around the time of filming his cameo in the first movie, stories had appeared in the press that deeply concerned me and everyone most closely involved in the franchise.”

Rowling is, of course, referring to the claims from Amber Heard that Depp physically abused her during their marriage. In May 2016, the actress attended the Superior Court of Los Angeles with a large bruise on her face—an injury her lawyers attributed to her estranged husband. “Amber has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny,” her lawyers told waiting media.

Since then Johnny Depp has seemed to be on the verge of a Weinstein-style public meltdown. Almost, but not quite. And when long-time Potter director David Yates announced Depp was to star in the sequel to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, many fans were understandably outraged.

“Harry Potter fans had legitimate questions and concerns about our choice to continue with Johnny Depp in the role,” Rowling wrote. “As David Yates … has already said, we naturally considered the possibility of recasting. I understand why some have been confused and angry about why that didn’t happen.”

Rowling then goes onto explain that the accusations against Depp have been made by people who “want to get on with their lives.” She admitted finding it frustrating that “the agreements that have been put in place” prevent her from talking openly about the case, but says their wishes must be respected.

“Based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.”

As far as defending Depp’s behaviour or essential character, this is about as far as she gets. In many ways Rowling’s note can simply be read as “nothing has been proven, and the claims are from people who won’t talk.” So in this way it’s not really a defence of Johnny Depp, so much as a defence of the director’s casting decision.

“Conscience isn’t governable by committee,” she writes at the end. “Within the fictional world and outside it, we all have to do what we believe to be the right thing.”

Hollywood director Bryan Singer is being sued for allegedly sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy, according to court documents obtained by Deadline. The news comes just a few days after Singer was fired from the helm of Bohemian Rhapsody, the upcoming Freddie Mercury biopic.

The lawsuit alleges that the sexual assault happened in 2003 during a yacht party near Seattle. The accuser, Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, who was 17 at the time, claims that Singer offered him a tour of the boat before corning him in a secluded area.

"During this tour, Bryan Singer lured Cesar into a room, shut the door, and demanded that Cesar perform oral sex," the court filings read. "When plaintiff refused, Bryan Singer forced him into acts of oral and anal sex" as Sanchez-Guzman "pleaded with [Singer] to stop."

Afterward, the lawsuit claims that Singer told Sanchez-Guzman to keep the assault a secret, because he was a "producer in Hollywood and that he could help Cesar get into acting as long as Cesar never said anything about the incident." Singer also allegedly threatened that "no one would believe [Sanchez-Guzman] if he ever reported the incident" and said he had the means to "hire people who are capable of ruining someone’s reputation."

Sanchez-Guzman is now seeking damages for "emotional distress, mental anguish, physical and mental pain, and suffering, a decrease in his ability to enjoy life" caused by the incident.

Sanchez-Guzman isn't the first person to accuse Singer of sexual misconduct. Actor Michael Egan III filed a lawsuit against the director for allegedly drugging and assaulting him in the mid-90s, but the case later fell apart. A separate lawsuit claims that Singer attempted to rape another 17-year-old boy at the UK premiere of Superman Returns.

Singer's camp has responded to the new allegations, saying that the director "categorically denies these allegations" and plans to "vehemently defend this lawsuit to the very end."