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We May Never Know the Truth Behind Tommy Wiseau and 'The Room'

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By virtue of what it is, The Disaster Artist is difficult to parse. It’s a movie based on a book about a movie, and each level of that matryoshka doll comes with its own set of questions as to authorial intent—both in terms of how we are meant to feel as an audience, and how much we can or cannot accept from an artist for the sake of art.

Since its premiere in 2003, The Room has become a beloved cult movie and a perpetual object of ridicule. It became such a phenomenon that one of its stars, Greg Sestero, co-wrote The Disaster Artist, a book detailing his experience making the movie as well as his friendship with Tommy Wiseau, the director, writer, producer, and star of the film. The anecdotes contained within range from predictably odd to slightly harrowing, as the production of the movie takes a back seat to the relationship between Wiseau and Sestero. To give you an idea of just how strange things become, at one point Sestero compares Wiseau to the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

As it’s portrayed in The Disaster Artist—which was adapted from Sestero’s book—the friendship between Sestero and Wiseau still has its ups and downs, but rather than taking the shape of a thriller, their story is a heartwarming comedy, and a tale of triumph. There is one end to which this works: The Disaster Artist has a distinct humanizing effect for Wiseau, who, like his movie, is a simultaneous object of cultural fascination and mockery.

Wiseau is a character, to be sure, but there’s still something slightly discomfiting about the cult of personality that’s sprung up around him. As a culture, we've finally recognized that “So where are you really from?” is a question that’s potentially offensive—a way of implying that anybody who isn’t white and doesn’t speak perfect English couldn’t possibly be American. So why do we still feel so comfortable asking the question when it's in reference to Tommy Wiseau?

It’s a question that goes hand in hand with examining the popular reaction to The Room, which is to ridicule it. There’s a certain humour in just how poorly made it is—but the fact that it’s widely thought to be somewhat autobiographical lends a similar surrealism to how ready we are to make fun of it. For the uninitiated, The Room tells the story of Johnny, played by Wiseau, whose professional ambitions are stymied and whose girlfriend cheats on him with his best friend. Ultimately, he commits suicide. This isn’t a plot that’s inherently comedic at all, and even though the midnight-movie tradition that’s sprung up around the movie isn’t malicious in intent, it’s strange being in a theatre full of people goading Johnny to kill himself.

James Franco, who directed The Disaster Artist and stars as Wiseau, doesn’t seem to intend for his portrayal to be a parody or a joke—but this will likely take a while to sink in for any audience trained to laugh at anything delivered in a Wiseau-ian accent. But, again, the movie is perhaps too kind in smoothing over the rough patches in Wiseau’s behavior in order to present a sweeter, more palatable story. There’s one scene in The Disaster Artist that allows the audience a glimpse of what the movie could have been if it had stuck more closely to Sestero’s book: As they’re shooting a sex scene, Franco-as-Wiseau berates the actress playing his girlfriend (Ari Graynor as Juliette Danielle), calling her “disgusting” when she strips down, all while being practically naked himself.

Sestero (Dave Franco) takes him aside, telling him that his behaviour is unacceptable. Wiseau’s response is to say that Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock were terrors, too, citing Hitchcock’s use of live birds in a scene with Tippi Hedren in The Birds. There are, of course, two problems with this argument—or, rather, just one: It doesn’t matter whether or not The Room is great art, because even great art doesn't excuse such horrendous behaviour.

But The Disaster Artist, practically a love letter to its subjects, doesn’t linger on that ugliness. The scene moves on, and that’s the last we have to wrestle with it. As such, the film rests on one end of the spectrum where The Room rests on the other, with the book The Disaster Artist landing squarely in the middle. They are the patron saint of misfits, the space oddity, and the man, respectively, and to take any one apart from the others undermines the entire enterprise. Wiseau has been famously coy in divulging any details of his life, but such is his right. Between two movies and a book, there’s a picture of something real in there, somewhere.


When Cosplay Crosses the Line

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It was a conversation that quickly crossed the line. Malaysia-based cosplay model Kino Mikii was approached online by a man who claimed to be a Singaporean photographer named "Michael Alex" to pose for some photos.

It was a common enough request. Kino Mikii is a professional cosplayer, charging fans as much as $250 USD a month to see photos where she poses in costumes inspired by anime franchises like Sword Art Online and re:ZERO.

But the photographer wasn't all that interested in her costumes. Instead, he quickly shifted the conversation to sex toys before offering her SG $2,000 ($1,483 USD) for a private photo session and sex, writing "I want to taste your beautiful body."

Kino Mikii shut the conversation down and posted the entire exchange on her Facebook as a warning to other cosplayers in Southeast Asia. Her post touched a nerve. Some of her followers accused Kino Mikii of making the whole thing up. Meanwhile, other women started to share their own stories about conversations with the same photographer. While it wasn't big enough to spark a #MeToo moment in the region's cosplay scene, it did start a conversation about how often female cosplayers are sexually harassed by their fans, both in the real world and online.

Here in Indonesia, some of the worst harassment comes online, explained Pinky Lu Xun, an Indonesian cosplayer who has been active in the cosplay community since 2004. She told VICE that it was fairly common to see harassing comments on her Instagram page or sexually explicit messages in her inbox. She often opens her Instagram to see comments like "this person is just begging to be raped" or DMs where guys ask how much it costs to sleep with her. And it's gotten worse in recent years, she said.

"Usually the perpetrators are people who feel safe hiding behind their online ID," she explained. "They think they're free to commit such conduct."

The problem is that a lot of people don't understand how traumatizing it is to be sexually harassed. And plenty of others in Indonesia think a woman's dress, her choice to cosplay in a "suggestive costume" is an invitation for sexually explicit remarks or pervy behaviour. But even modest clothing doesn't protect women from harassment, Pinky explained.

“The worst harassment I experienced didn’t happen when I dressed in something sexy," she told me. "It happened when I was 11 years old and wearing my middle school uniform. I would like to remind you that harassment, whatever the motivation is, may change the victim’s life.”

Convention organizers in the United States and Singapore recently instituted a code of conduct for attendees in the hopes that it will curb instances of sexual harassment. The Singapore Toy, Game & Comic Convention and the Anime Festival Asia have anti-harassment policies that aim to protect cosplayers from "sexual harassment, stalking, unwanted physical contact, unwanted advances, unwelcome sexual attention or inappropriate photography."

In the US, a shocking survey of attendees at the San Diego Comic-Con—the biggest in the country—discovered that 13 percent of the more than 130,000 surveyed said they had experienced some kind of sexual harassment, either physical or verbal, at the convention.

The “Cosplay Is Not Consent” movement came out of the scene in 2014 to address what was quickly becoming a toxic environment at comic and anime conventions. The New York Comic Con now has an anti-harassment policy of its own displayed prominently throughout the venue. The San Diego Comic-Con, sadly, still hasn't addressed the allegations with an actual sexual harassment policy, aside from a few vague words on its website.

And here in Indonesia, we don't even have that. Pinky told me that the situation is so bad that she sometimes has to change her mind and choose to wear a less revealing costume when she's attending conventions in Indonesia. She even took some Krav Maga and Jiujitsu lessons to feel safer at conventions and on the streets.

At photo shoots, she prefers working with gay or trans photographers. She only cosplays "sexy" characters during private sessions with photographers, she told me, and just doesn't feel as safe being photographed by straight men.

“A women’s position is pretty vulnerable,” Pinky explained. "If we report the harassment, we might get more than just embarrassment back. Our safety might be jeopardized. Sometimes the people around us don't even provide support. Some of them might even blame you."

Aphin, another cosplayer, told me that she's harassed way less when she cosplays a male character—an activity called "crossplay." When she's a male character, the photo requests aren't as fast, or as demanding. But when she's a woman, few people actually ask permission before taking a photo and many don't seem to care what what she's actually comfortable with before sliding over for a picture.

"You can tell some people don’t see cosplaying as a hobby,” Aphin told VICE. “Many people think that they’re just free to take pictures with you. People often forget these personal boundaries, especially when it comes to cute girls.”

Photographers themselves can also work to make the scene safer for cosplayers, explained Alf, an Indonesian cosplayer and photographer who currently lives in the US. Alf told me that he tries not to touch his subjects at all when directing their poses during a photoshoot. That's one way to help curb the kinds of harassment that permeate so much of the scene.

But a nationwide anti-harassment policy at cosplay events is still the best approach. The country's conventions need concrete zero-tolerance policies on harassment that define banned behavior and require people to respect models' personal boundaries.

“In Indonesia, perpetrators can easily find a way out, and the victims are left with very few choices of action,” Alf explained. “Every time I told a friend to report their experience, they were hesitant and didn’t want to ‘exaggerate’ the situation.”

And whenever someone is harassed, it's important to speak out and identify the harasser. Staying quiet about the harassment can create a culture of silence that allows these kinds of behaviors to fester.

“I think we shouldn’t be afraid to speak out now that we have all these technologies,” Aphin told VICE. "I’m sure many people would support us. This is our collective hobby. If one part of it is tainted, then everything is tainted.”

'The Office' Might Be Coming Back for Another Season

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It looks like Office Depot hasn't forced Dunder Mifflin out of business yet. According to a new report from TVLine, NBC is in talks to revive The Office and bring us back to the Pennsylvanian paper company once again.

The network is considering a whole new run of The Office for its 2018-19 season, starring "a mix of new and old cast members," TVLine reports. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing more Michael Scott. While it's unclear which old cast members might return, TVLine reports that Steve Carell definitely won't—probably because the guy's too busy starring in Minecraft movies or whatever.

The news comes after NBC's successful revival of Will & Grace earlier this year, which might have sent the network skimming through its archives for other beloved shows of yore it could resurrect. And while it's still unlikely that we'll be getting a Wings reboot any time soon, The Office could be the next NBC sitcom to come back from the dead.

The idea of bringing it back has apparently been bouncing around NBC for a while, but this is the first time we've heard about real movement.

“We often talk about The Office," NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt told Deadline last summer, before Will & Grace returned. "I’ve talked to [Office creator Greg Daniels] four times over the past few years. It’s always, 'Maybe some day, but not now.' There is certainly an open invitation but we don’t have anything happening right now. If he wants to do it, I would do it."

As great as new episodes of The Office might sound, another season without Carell should be enough to give any fan of the show pause. NBC already made us suffer through a string of terrible replacement regional managers after Carell quit the show in 2011. Michael Scott was the nucleus that held the original iteration of The Office together, and NBC will have to do better than Robert California if they want to find a suitable replacement.

Everything That's Wrong with 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in theaters, and you all have to go see it or it might not make the $800 million it needs to break even. Presumably, most of the movie’s profits will be made over the holiday vacation from families who need a break from each other. I saw it last night since I don’t have a family.

The Last Jedi is a long, bewildering long movie with too many characters and an overall message that’s either unclear or just stupid. It’s also funny, visually pretty, and surprisingly weird—but the plot is too cluttered, feeling like the product of dozens of very talented people disagreeing with each other and making bad compromises.

I don’t know if the movie can be described as having a plot, but here’s what happens: General Leia—once Princess Leia—is evacuating her troops from their secret base as the bad guys close in. (Her sideways promotion from Princess to General is the kind of fake promotion that people give instead of giving raises. Leia was always a boss.) Poe Dameron prank-calls the bad guys to distract them, and proceeds to blow up some evil spaceship turrets. It looks great, like the dog fight at the end of Star Wars: a New Hope.

Then, Poe disobeys orders to return to base and calls in a squadron of bomber ships, which fly in and explode like a domino effect. This sequence pulled me out of the movie: The Rebels have been at war for many decades and they haven’t learned to fly far enough apart so they wouldn’t blow each other up? It might seem like nitpicking, but The Last Jedi is full of moments where things don’t make sense and supposedly smart characters make dumb choices.

Meanwhile, Finn unceremoniously awakens from the coma he was in at the end of The Force Awakens and runs around in a see-through plastic suit, squirting liquid in all directions. At this point, it was the strangest thing I’d seen in a Star Wars movie (wait until later), which was pretty cool. He asks where Rey is, and we cut to her on that Irish island holding out Luke’s old lightsaber to the man himself. After a long pause, he takes it and throws it over his shoulder, which caused the audience to laugh and released some tension.

For some reason, Luke now acts like a jaded, pessimistic dick who wants to forget about all the Jedi stuff. Mark Hamill has publicly said that he thinks his character was written badly, and I agree, but he’s still a lot of fun to watch. Rey bugs him to train her, he curmudgeonly refuses, but eventually gives in.

Disney

The main villain is still Kylo Ren, and when we first see him he’s talking to his evil boss Snoke. In The Force Awakens, we only saw Snoke projected on a giant scale, and a popular fan theory arose that he was actually teeny; in The Last Jedi, though, we find out that he’s just a normal-sized, bad-CGI-looking video-game guy who hangs out in a beautiful throne room.

As Rey continues to follow Luke around the island, we see a giant creature standing upright
with what appear to be very large testicles but are actually bosoms (or udders). This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in a Star Wars movie, as Luke milks the giant beast and messily quaffs the beast’s milk. The island is also home to these very cute, Furby-like creatures called Porgs; later, we see Chewbacca roasting one over a fire, while other Porgs watch on and cry over the loss of their friend. That was also really weird. There’s another giant space battle in which General Leia gets blown out into space; it seems like she’s dead, but then she regains consciousness and floats back into a spaceship, which is also really weird.

Her job’s taken over by Admiral Holdo, who’s portrayed by Laura Dern. (Carrie Fisher completed filming before her passing last year, but it does seem like Dern’s role fills in for shots they couldn’t get to.) Holdo (and Leia) repeatedly tell Dameron that running away and surviving is better than fighting and sacrificing human lives, which is the big message of The Last Jedi—a message that comes across as murky and possibly dishonest. After all, the franchise isn’t called Star Peace.

Disney

After the second giant space battle, the good guys use hyperspace to escape the bad guys —but the bad guys immediately follow them, and the good guys can’t use hyperspace again because they’re running low on fuel and will be stranded if they do. How and where do you fuel up a colossal spaceship? I always imagined that these giant space ships had some sort of giant nuclear reactor powering them. Maybe that sounds like a nerdy complaint, but imagine someone saying that they couldn’t drive their submarine because it had a boot on it. Did they drive the Death Star to a giant gas station?

Finn—in the middle of the second Star Wars movie he appears in, possessing almost no defining traits besides cowardice—tries to run away from the good guys’ ship and is arrested for desertion by an annoying character named Rose. They discover that they need to go to a casino-like planet to find a codebreaker so that they can avoid being tracked by the bad guys, which kicks off The Last Jedi’s most unnecessary plotline.

The planet they go to has big band music and rich space people playing sci-fi slot machines. They meet Benicio Del Toro—sorry, DJ—who helps them in jail and betrays them soon afterwards. Arguably, The Last Jedi would be a lot better without this entire plotline and all the characters involved, which is pretty shitty because the plotline also contains the only three actors of color in the film.

Anyway: there’s a cool part where Rey goes into a hole in the ground and sees awesome psychedelic stuff, as well as a beautiful ground battle that happens on a salt-covered red planet. But the rest of The Last Jedi is bland mélange of explosions and disappointment. The bad guys keep using weapons that take a long time to power up before firing, Luke seems to die unceremoniously by disappearing into the air without warning, some other bullshit happens, the movie’s dedicated to Carrie Fisher, and that’s the end.

Disney

It’s easy to imagine the Star Wars franchise as a vast playground of infinite possibilities, but everything that’s happened in these largely weak and forgettable films since Return of the Jedi has revealed how limited Star Wars’s scope actually is. Capturing the feeling and tone of the original three films has stymied a lot of highly paid pros. The original Star Wars movies were simple stories with simple characters exploring richly designed locales. The protagonist of this new trilogy is supposed to be Rey,but we still haven’t learned enough about her, as The Last Jedi dedicates more time to other characters who don’t seem as important.

The reason George Lucas decided to kill the character of Ben Kenobi midway through A New Hope was because after the characters escaped the Death Star he had nothing left to do. The Last Jedi is supposed to be analogous to The Empire Strikes Back, but it actually has more in common with Return of the Jedi, which most Star Wars fans consider the weakest film of the original trilogy. If RotJ had focused on the freeing of Han from Jabba’s Palace and Luke’s confrontation of Vader, it would’ve been a better movie—but instead, it dedicates too much time to the forest planet of Endor, where a teddy bear army unconvincingly conquers a giant armada of well-armed space soldiers.

Similarly, The Last Jedi could have used less characters and less shit happening. Poe, Finn, Rose, DJ and Holdo were all unnecessary characters with pointless plotlines that added nothing but took away a lot. So far, the only character with any depth is Kylo Ren. Will Rey get a personality in the next movie? I guess we’ll find out.

T.J. Miller Allegedly Sexually Assaulted and Punched a Woman in College

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Comedian and Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller was publicly accused of sexual assault on Tuesday by a woman who said he choked her, beat her during sex, and penetrated her without her consent, the Daily Beast reported.

Miller denied the allegations, slamming what he called "false accusations" in a joint statement along with his wife.

The woman in question told the Beast she and Miller were friends at George Washington University, his alma mater, when they studied there in the early 2000s. They had grown close after spending time together in a college comedy troupe, she said, and wound up in a relationship. But a few months after they started seeing each other in late 2001, things allegedly went completely off the rails.

After a night of what Miller's victim described as heavy drinking, the two went back to her house and started "fooling around," she said. It began as a consensual hookup—but while they were having sex, Miller allegedly started "shaking me violently” and punched her in the mouth. She told the Beast she woke up with a fractured tooth and a bloody lip, and that when she asked Miller about what happened, he claimed she had taken a drunken fall.

Days later, Miller allegedly came home with her from a party, and the two started having consensual sex. She told the Daily Beast she'd only had two drinks that night, and that her memory of what happened next was "crystal clear."

“We started to fool around, and very early in that, he put his hands around my throat and closed them, and I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised."

She said she was "fully paralyzed" and "choking audibly," prompting her housemates to knock on her door to see if she was OK. She said she sent them back to their rooms.

"He pulled me back to bed and more things happened,” she said. “He anally penetrated me without my consent, which I actually believe at that point I cried out, like, ‘No,’ and he didn’t continue to do that—but he also had a [beer] bottle with him the entire time. He used the bottle at one point to penetrate me without my consent.”

The better part of a year later, the woman said, she brought her story to GW's in-house judicial system. A few weeks after the beginning of the school's hearings—during which the woman and two of her housemates testified against Miller, and he appeared with a lawyer—the proceedings ended. She was told the issue had been dealt with, and to her knowledge, he was never disciplined, graduating in 2003. (Some sources told the Beast he might have been expelled after completing his degree in an attempt to appease the woman.)

In their statement, Miller and his wife framed the accusations against him as a hit job, saying that his alleged victim had tried to "break us up" back in college with "contradictory claims and accusations." The Beast also spoke to college comedy friends of Miller's who insisted he would never engage in this kind of violence against women.

"We are confident that a full consideration of accounts from and since that time will shed light and clarity on the true nature of not only this person’s character, and also on the real facts of the matter," the Millers wrote. "It is unfortunate that she is choosing this route as it undermines the important movement to make women feel safe coming forward about legitimate claims against real known predators."

It's still unclear if the allegations—which the Beast suggested the comedian may have joked about in subsequent years—will affect Miller's career. He was set to appear in Underwater with Kristen Stewart and Deadpool 2 with Ryan Reynolds.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

At Worst, the CDC's Ban on 'Transgender' Could Cost Lives

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On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Health and Human Services officials had banned the Centers for Disease Control from using seven words or phrases on documents relating to next year’s budget. The list itself consists of words like “science-based,” “diversity,” and “vulnerable,” but perhaps the most concerning is the banning of the word “transgender.” Despite a statement from an HHS spokesperson denying that these words have been banned, a restriction like this represents an astonishing attack on reality-based medical treatments and has the potential to exacerbate what is already a public health crisis within the trans community.

This move is one item on a growing list of hostile policies from the Trump administration that take aim at an already vulnerable trans community, including a full-on ban on military service (which has been so far rejected by courts), a claim that employment discrimination against trans people is essentially legal despite case law indicating otherwise, and revocation of Obama-era school guidelines for trans students. Even though Donald Trump claimed numerous times during his campaign to be an ally of the LGBTQ community, his administration has turned out to be the most outwardly hostile toward queer people since Ronald Reagan.

Looming in the background is a long-term effort to revoke Obamacare Rule 1557, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity in the healthcare. Rolling back those protections has been a priority of the religious right since it was first enacted. HHS has been considering allowing religious groups to ignore some regulations, mostly related to healthcare for trans people and abortions; the agency has received over 10,000 comments from the public but has chosen to only release 80 of those comments, the vast majority of which support revoking the rule. (HHS’s refusal to cooperate with multiple requests to release the full list of comments is unprecedented and may violate federal law.)

This is clearly part of a new policy of opacity on the part of HHS, with a follow-up Post story reporting that multiple other HHS agencies were instructed to similarly avoid certain words in budget documents.

But trans advocates in particular were worried about these changes and how they fit into the Trump administration’s assault on their community.



“The CDC not being allowed to use the word ‘transgender’ in budget documents could have a cost in people’s health and lives,” said Harper Jean, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “At best, it means a chilling effect on the work of the CDC’s scientists and public health professionals, keeping them from pursuing the most effective public health interventions. At worst, it could mean a priority population for preventing HIV is completely ignored.”

According to data released by the CDC, transgender people, particularly trans women of color, are especially at risk for contracting HIV. Trans people also have tremendous difficulty accessing affirming care for a multitude of health ailments, HIV included. Among the most critical public health initiatives currently underway at the CDC are several programs aimed at testing and preventing HIV transmission and accessing HIV care specifically among the trans population. Those initiatives could now at risk because a handful of hardliners with connections to the anti-trans Family Research Council have been appointed to high-level HHS positions.

“I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC,” CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, a Trump appointee, said in a statement posted to Facebook. “I want to assure you that CDC remains committed to our public health mission as a science- and evidence-based institution. As part of our commitment to provide for the common defense of the country against health threats, science is and will remain the foundation of our work.”

Fitzgerald, however, has her own history of peddling anti-scientific medical solutions. As Health Commissioner of Georgia she allied with Coca-Cola on an anti-obesity campaign that emphasized fitness rather than diet. And in her previous career as an OB-GYN, Fitzgerald was certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicines to peddle anti-aging medications which have no scientific backing whatsoever. It remains to be seen what the net effect on dozens of CDC-backed transgender health initiatives will be in the long term after years of Trump administration policies.

“Without being able to talk about a priority population, the CDC can’t do its job, and if the CDC can’t do its job, people’s health and lives are at risk,” the NCTE’s Harper Jean told me. “CDC officials are being told essentially to pretend that until now what they called a priority population for HIV, doesn’t exist... Without talking about a population, how can you budget for critical efforts to enhance prevention, access to treatment, and critical research research and data collection that inform public health efforts?”

The CDC provides many programs important to trans health, Jean said, including encouraging HIV testing (nearly two-thirds of trans people have never been tested, despite being a high-risk population), conducting a vital survey called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and monitoring tobacco use and mental health among the LGBTQ community.

Without being able to request specific budget allocations for these programs, there’s a real risk they could be deprioritized by Congress or even cut entirely.

According to Jean, the CDC has in the past gone to great lengths to include transgender people in their HIV prevention public health campaigns. An April letter from the CDC to health officials around the country about National Transgender HIV Testing Day discussed why trans people are such a vulnerable (there’s that reportedly banned word again) population at risk of infection. Any move to curtail existing efforts to promote testing within the trans community could result in a worsening public health crisis.

This brand of ideological government neglect has a gruesome precedent. In the 80s, the Reagan administration infamously ignored a growing AIDS crisis within the gay community, with former Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes even mocking LGBTQ people suffering as the crisis raged. “The slogan back then was ‘silence equals death,’” said Jean. Trump’s new policy is a throwback to the willful harm of neglect from administrations’ past for transgender people.

Several trans related public health projects that have already been funded could now be at risk from this new Trump budgetary policy. “A few weeks ago they published a notice about an evaluation that [the CDC] is doing of the efficacy of an in person health insurance enrollment assistance intervention targeting black and Hispanic [men who have sex with men] and trans people living in Chicago,” said Jean. “This is an important, innovative public health effort that the CDC has funded and now they’re trying to evaluate it to see what they can learn from it and how it can inform efforts around the country.” Given how many trans-specific initiatives currently underway, it’s unclear how the CDC can continue these efforts if they’re not allowed to even put the word “transgender” in any budget requests.

The official stance of the Republican Party is that sex is established by God at birth and is immutable. But the consequences of deciding transgender people don’t exist or don’t have unique health needs is going to lead to a lot of pain, suffering, and even death.

Follow Katelyn Burns on Twitter.

Eight Hanukkah Lessons I Learned from Smoking a Menorah Bong

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Although I've been trying to reconnect with my Jewishness all year, I almost didn't celebrate Hanukkah this time around on account of the fact that I don't own a menorah, and it's honestly been so long since I indulged in the festivities I forgot how to play dreidel. But then Yahweh came to me in a dream and reminded me that there exists a bong so holy, it can inspire even the most secular of Jews to partake in the festival of lights. The Grav Menorah is a bong with eight bowls you can hit at the same time, and as soon as I pulled it out of the box I knew I could no longer ignore my religion's sacred winter tradition, where Jews all around the world gather by candles flickering with the dank, infinite light of G-d to remind us who we are and how we got here.

So I smoked the menorah bong. All eights pieces. At the same time. And I learned eight very special things.


1. What's up with this 12 days of Christmas nonsense? Sounds awfully Jewish to me.

2. In 2016, recreational weed got more votes than Donald Trump in the states that voted to legalize it. So why is weed still illegal when Donald Trump is legal? Because we live in an oligarchy, not a democracy!

3. Nothing to remind me how dumb my alleged emotional problems are like getting paid to smoke a $400 menorah bong I got for free. In the immortal words of Kourtney Kardashian:

4. "Weed's" cool, if you know what I mean. (Our lawyers tell me I can't directly reference smoking marijuana, which is illegal in the state of New York, home to 1.1 million Jews, out of my special Jewish bong, which seems anti-Semitic to me.)

5. Speaking of anti-Semitism, is it discrimination that VICE gives me the day off for Christmas but forces me to work for all eight days of Hanukkah? (Yes, 100 percent.)

6. The first time I smoked the Grav Menorah bong was in late 2015. I couldn't handle it, I coughed and got too fucked up. Two years later, I can smoke this thing no problem. Is this what it means to grow up, to go from being "not a girl, not yet a woman" to an Adult Woman? I think so.

7. Nixon once said, "Every one of those bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them?" Guess I'm not really proving him wrong, but the question we really should be asking is, "What the Christ is the matter with Nixon?" Weed's fun, and relatively harmless!

8. People should celebrate 8:40 by doing 420 two times.

Having smoked all eight bowls of the menorah, I feel closer to my heritage than ever before. Being Jewish was already great, but being Jewish while smoking a bong is even better. While I'll always prefer joints to any other method of smoking, I'll be sure to bust out the Hanukkah bong on every Jewish holiday. In fact, if synagogues started celebrating the high holidays with more emphasis on the "high," I'd become Orthodox in no time.

This review was based on a complimentary Grav Menorah given to me by 420 Science.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

The 'Trial-by-Combat' Lawyer Is Back and Scarier Than Ever

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Richard Luthmann seems to have a thing for comparing himself to Saul Goodman. Like the fictional TV character, the 38-year-old Staten Islander is a flamboyant lawyer with plenty of ties to allegedly violent criminals. But he's also facing federal charges for allegedly running a fake scrap metal empire that involved setting up a blind man as the fall guy and extorting people at gunpoint. In fact, according to the 11-count indictment in that case, the bow-tie-wearing Luthmann may prove to be one of the most colorful—and dangerous—criminals in recent New York City lore.

Before Luthmann embodied the spirit of Breaking Bad, he made headlines for trying to create a scene out of Game of Thrones. Back in 2015, the Staten Island Advance reported he was involved in a civil suit with plaintiffs who alleged Luthmann had encouraged his own client to illegally shield assets from them by violating state law. Luthmann (unsuccessfully) asked the judge in that case to sanction a trial-by-combat—to the death—in the event the case wasn't thrown out.



Now the attorney's back in the news because federal prosecutors alleged on Friday that, back in summer of 2015, Luthmann, an unnamed co-conspirator, and a guy named George Padulla III—who appeared to have mob connections—started a series of fake scrap metal businesses that actually sold filler parts to unsuspecting clients. They are accused of pressuring one of Luthmann's clients—who was blind, living on public assistance, and afraid of getting caught—into being the head of one of these companies.

The trio are said to have enlisted the help of 59-year-old Michael Beck, an alleged mob enforcer. According to the complaint, the hired muscle also precipitated a plot twist: At one point, he pulled a gun on the unnamed co-conspirator and claimed that the man owed Luthmann $10,000.

Federal agents arrested Luthmann early Friday and charged him with kidnapping, money laundering, and extortion conspiracy, among other crimes. Prosecutors said that throughout his alleged crime spree, Luthmann referred to himself as "Saul." They also asked that the defendant remained locked-up during his trial because every witness they've interviewed, they said, has expressed fear of retaliation from a guy who claimed to have ties to multiple criminal organizations.

There's evidence to suggest this isn't just bluster. In a recording, Luthmann was reportedly heard threatening to send the Chinese mafia to rape and kill the new attorney of a female ex-client. Court papers also said that Luthmann—who according to several posts and at least one photo on his public Facebook page is a Trump supporter—tried to send his muscle to kill Kevin Elkins, the former executive director of the Democratic Committee of Richmond County (a.k.a. Staten Island).

Luthmann isn't just accused of terrorizing people physically, by the way. He's also said to have created fake Facebook pages to spread misinformation about political enemies like District Attorney Michael McMahon. In another instance, according to the New York Daily News, when McMahon was running his campaign, Luthmann allegedly tried to pay an exotic dancer $10,000 to allege, falsely, that the candidate raped her.

So far, Luthmann hasn't spoken in court other than to mouth "I'm OK" to his family, according to the Advance. But the accused's own social media accounts have, at least in the recent past, appeared to lend credence to some of prosecutors' claims.

"My political Bible was written by Roger Stone," he apparently wrote on a public Facebook page on August 25. "I am a bear with the taste of blood in my mouth. I am a maneater."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.


I Tried to Make My Home Energy Efficient and It's Ruining My Life

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Leonard McBean had been told for months that his south Los Angeles home was a firetrap. Decades-old wiring had never been replaced, a common situation in his low-income neighborhood. One Tuesday morning, McBean asked a friend about the electrical contractor working on their house. By Wednesday night, the same contractor—a man who gave his name as Yogi—had approved the Jamaican immigrant for $18,000 in energy-efficient improvements.

“I said, ‘I don’t have that money,” McBean, a 67-year-old retired medical shuttle driver, told me. “He said, ‘Mr. McBean, don’t worry, you’re not going to pay a lot, just $100 a month.’ He said it was an Obama program.”

When McBean electronically signed the contract two years ago, he didn’t realize he was consenting to have a lien placed on his house, meaning the county could take the home away for lack of payment. He didn’t know the escrow payment attached to his mortgage would jump $400 a month. He didn’t know the lien would make the home difficult to sell.

“If I saw anybody with this intention, I would tell them no, don’t do it,” McBean said. “It’s going to be a nightmare for you, it’s going to be a rip-off.”



McBean was ensnared in a harmless-sounding program called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), which helps people finance solar panels or energy-efficient windows with no money down. Homeowners pay through a surcharge assessed to property taxes, enjoying clean-energy upgrades that might otherwise be out of reach financially. And society benefits from more energy-efficient housing stock. “You can go solar right now,” President Obama, a longtime PACE booster, said last year. “And in the process, you can help America lead the world in the fight against climate change and for a cleaner, safer planet for our kids.”

“This is the next subprime crisis."—Anne Richardson. Public Counsel

But public-interest lawyers and housing advocates—some of whom are representing plaintiffs in civil suits over PACE financing—warn that aggressive salespeople dupe homeowners into high-cost projects they can’t afford. Victims complain of shoddy workmanship, overcharges, and add-ons that have little to do with clean energy. They often have no idea what they owe until receiving an exorbitant property tax bill. Lack of payment can lead to foreclosure. And it’s happening without oversight from the federal agency that’s supposed to protect consumers from financial scams—the one that recently got taken over by a top Trump official.

“This is the next subprime crisis,” said Anne Richardson of Los Angeles-based Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm. “It’s a frightening development.”


It’s easy to be fooled into thinking PACE is a government program. It’s not. The Obama administration blessed the concept, injected $150 million in stimulus funds for startup costs, and issued best practices guidelines through the Department of Energy in 2010, which were updated in 2016. But states and localities pass enacting legislation authorizing PACE, which private-sector businesses then run. “It uses the tax process, so it has the imprimatur of a government-sponsored program,” said John Rao, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

First tested in Berkeley, California, PACE-enabling legislation has passed in 33 states, but it’s only available for residential properties in three: California, Florida, and Missouri. Over $1.5 billion in residential PACE loans were sold in 2016, up from just $350 million in 2014, making it one of the fastest-growing loan types in a country with a history of heavy borrowing. (For what it’s worth, PACE providers insist their product is not a loan, but a tax assessment.)

The story usually begins with a phone call or a knock at the door. PACE providers—among the primary ones are Ygrene and Renovate America—use contractors as their sales force. Critics allege at least some contractors target low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of seniors, minorities, and Spanish speakers. Maps on the Renovate America website show large numbers of PACE projects in places like South Central Los Angeles and the wealthier View Park-Windsor Hills area, known as the “black Beverly Hills.” Renovate America denies any targeting.

Homeowners usually sign up on tablets with an e-signature, without receiving hard copies or disclosure forms normally associated with a home loan.

Contractors, who are not licensed mortgage brokers, don’t have to check whether homeowners have the ability to repay. The only real requirement is that they have a good payment history and significant home equity, which companies can determine through a public records search. “They tell the contractors the maximum amount of eligibility for a client before they walk in,” said Alysson Snow, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, California. “It’s like walking into a car dealership and the dealer knows how much money is in your pocket.”

Amazingly, three public-interest lawyers told VICE they regularly receive solicitations themselves because they fit the demographic or live in low-income areas. “My first question is what’s your contractor license number and they hang up on me,” said Adelaide Anderson, an attorney with Public Counsel in Los Angeles.

Using hard-sell tactics promising increased home values, lower energy bills, and massive tax benefits, contractors approve tens of thousands of dollars in work in a couple hours, lawyers and homeowners allege. “They’re targeting a very vulnerable group with excellent salespeople who know how to pitch it,” said Carolyn Reilly of Elder Law & Advocacy in San Diego. “They’re just plain lied to by the masters.”

Homeowners usually sign up on tablets with an e-signature, without receiving hard copies or disclosure forms normally associated with a home loan. “Even when they are given paperwork, it’s not clear at all,” said Public Counsel’s Anderson. “That fact was brought home when I, an attorney working on this for a year, go to find the repayment amount, and have trouble finding it.”

Greg Frost, a spokesman for Renovate America, said homeowners can request copies of anything they sign, and that the expedited process helps those in emergency situations who don’t want to wait weeks for approved financing. “We do customer satisfaction surveys, and the levels of satisfaction are around 90 percent,” Frost said, while conceding that only those who fill out the surveys are counted. VICE asked to see the surveys but was told they were conducted over the phone. Renovate also denied suggesting a false military connection, including by calling its PACE option the HERO program, which might suggest that it’s affiliated with the military and that most of its workforce are veterans.

Some of these “energy-efficient” upgrades are of dubious value, like the replacement of interior doors, which does not affect energy usage in the home whatsoever. Other contractors offer “cool coat” paint that they claim saves on air conditioning costs, even as its usefulness has been questioned. The paint retails for as low as $57.99 a gallon, yet lawyers have alleged charges in the tens of thousands for simple paint jobs with no proven savings.

Leonard McBean’s case is a good example. “I’ve talked to several electricians, there’s no way a 1100 square-foot house should be $18,000,” said Carmen Hill, a counselor with the Harambee Housing Information Program who reported McBean’s case. “The contractor said, ‘You don’t know all the work I had to do.’ He said, ‘I tore up walls. ‘ [Electricians said], 'You don’t need to tear up walls to upgrade a panel.” Hill added that the contractor also claimed to have installed insulation into the walls and the attic, which McBean disputed. Ygrene Vice President Mike Lemyre said the project “met requirements for compliance, and the paperwork was in line.”

McBean, like many who regret getting involved with PACE, is elderly. A highly publicized case in Los Angeles featured Ossie Hill, an 86-year-old with dementia subsisting on less than $1,000 a month who was pushed into financing 19 vinyl windows, exterior remodeling, and a patio cover. After interest and fees, the bill came to $5,471.03 a year for 20 years, nearly half of Hill’s annual income. A collection of 29 case studies assembled by the National Consumer Law Center included similar horror stories, such as the tale of a 95 year-old Tuskegee airman and his legally deaf and blind wife, who were sold $42,800 in projects. The contractor later sued the couple after they refused to sign completion papers authorizing his payment, alleging bad workmanship.

PACE providers argue the completion papers step ensures quality of service. “We will not fund a contractor until the homeowner provides [the papers],” said Michael Middleberger, vice president of compliance for Renovate America.

But victims complained of not being informed that payments would be assessed to property taxes, or that PACE added a lien to the property. When the bill finally came, homeowners were sometimes shocked to find increases of thousands of dollars. Written advertisements obtained by Legal Aid of San Diego’s Alysson Snow and reviewed by VICE stated, “Investing in solar DOES NOT increase your property taxes,” when that’s precisely the method of payment. Ygrene said that would not be “an appropriate or approved communication.”

These contracts often contain prepayment penalties, meaning homeowners can’t pay off the assessments early and reduce the total interest charged. The tax assessments stay on the property until paid off, making homes harder to sell. Most banks avoid PACE-assessed homes, and new buyers can be reluctant to take on far higher property taxes, despite the energy upgrades. The lien typically takes top priority, so even if homeowners are up to date on their primary mortgage, they could get kicked out for missing property tax payments. That part even has bankers, unlikely allies to public-interest lawyers, up in arms. “This allows a private consumer credit transaction to effectively jump my lien position, using the power of local government,” said Pete Mills of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Defaults have been rising on PACE projects, and while providers insisted they haven’t pursued foreclosure on anyone, they’re not the only ones with that authority, as counties can initiate foreclosure for missed property taxes. Plus, attorneys cited cases where defaulted homeowners gave up and left the properties, as well as at least one case where a mortgage lender paid off the property tax assessment, and immediately put the homeowner into foreclosure.

Virtually everyone involved in making these deals is protected—except the homeowner. Contractors get paid upon completion of work, and providers can sell securities to recoup their profit. County governments, meanwhile, can assess large tax penalties or take over the property if taxes go unpaid. Despite this security, PACE carries far higher interest rates than home equity loans, from 10 percent to as high as 26.99 percent. “It’s a high-cost loan with no risk to the investor and all the risk to the person,” said Snow, the San Diego Legal Aid lawyer.


For their part, Renovate America and Ygrene both described a thorough pre-screening of contractors, sales training to ensure honest dealing, an initial probationary period with extra contractor scrutiny, and investigations into complaints of unscrupulous conduct. But attorneys said providers merely document violations rather than provide restitution to homeowners. Ygrene’s Lemyre insisted the company has occasionally ripped up PACE contracts due to fraud or misrepresentation, though that was rare among the 50,000 projects the company has completed.

More recently, in response to complaints, Renovate America initiated a third-party review of its practices, and a contractor rating system they said resulted in halting business with over 100 out of 7,000 approved contractors. But Renovate has also resisted audit requirements to prove the upgrades save homeowners money, claiming that would slow down the process. Lemyre said Ygrene encouraged homeowners to do the audits themselves and shop around for the best bid, but not “prescribe whether they should do certain measures.”

Of course, this is all effectively self-regulation. Counties that earn revenue from the programs have been reluctant to shut them down, though Bakersfield, California did so recently. “These counties have been doing quite well with PACE,” said John Rao of the NCLC. And environmentalists still see the programs as promoting clean energy. “I think PACE program can be reformed in way that’s beneficial,” said RL Miller, head of the California Democratic Party’s environmental caucus and president of Climate Hawks Vote, an advocacy group. “I could see the potential for abuse, but at the same time, so many well-meaning good people fought for a good program.” And a study published in Applied Energy earlier this year was generally bullish on the program's cost-effectiveness in promoting solar energy in the state.

“It could be a problem to keep this house.” Leonard McBean

The Golden State has also taken steps to reform the program, amending PACE in October by adding requirements that companies check borrower income before approving financing and prevent kickbacks with contractors. The new rules go into effect in April, and Renovate said they want to use them as a model for other states. But attorneys argued the bills, which the providers endorsed, come with too many loopholes. And patchwork state protections traditionally give financial companies incentives to shop around for the most favorable state to operate in; the credit card industry is a good example. “There were bad actors in the past, but we’re saying please regulate, we want a level playing field so there isn’t a race to the bottom,” said Renovate spokesman Greg Frost.

The FBI has been investigating Renovate America’s practices, though the company insisted it is not the target, claiming the probe involved a rogue contractor. The diffuse layers of responsibility make it hard to police or litigate the parties involved. Some attorneys in California have gone after contractors through a state licensing board, but that means companies like Renovate America or Ygrene aren’t brought into the case.

The watchdog with the most power to implement real oversight is a federal one: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the CFPB has thus far not gotten involved, at least in part for an obscure technical reason. In 1969, according to NCLC’s John Rao, the Federal Reserve determined that tax assessments weren’t loans, and therefore didn't require compliance with regulations like the Truth in Lending Act. CFPB has never changed that guidance; the agency doesn’t even take formal complaints on PACE.

“Their silence is killing cases,” said Snow, the legal aid attorney. Pete Mills of the Mortgage Bankers Association likewise stressed that CFPB usually “doesn’t have a problem asserting broad jurisdiction,” but lamented they won’t regulate PACE as a mortgage. “They look in every respect like a consumer credit transaction,” he told me of these projects. An IRS ruling even confirmed that interest on some residential PACE assessments was deductible as home-mortgage interest.

David Mayorga, a spokesman for CFPB, declined to offer any information about PACE. And the agency has been dealing with an identity crisis in recent weeks. Both Deputy Director Leandra English and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney have laid claim to the role of acting director; English lost a bid to unseat Mulvaney, but the matter is still under appeal. While that gets resolved, it’s highly unlikely the CFPB has any capacity to embark on a new regulatory initiative. A bill moving through the US Senate would direct CFPB to consider creating federal underwriting requirements for PACE, and Renovate America and Ygrene expressed support for the measure. But does anyone expect Donald Trump’s handpicked foot-soldier, a guy who sees the agency as “a sad, sick joke,” to take that on?

Meanwhile, low-income homeowners who feel tricked by the program are in the lurch. And with companies interested in expansion, both in locations and in types of work (in Florida, PACE has been applied to home protections against hurricanes), more people could suffer the cruel, ostensibly environmentally-friendly fate of Leonard McBean.

“It could be a problem to keep this house,” said McBean, who has been trying to reduce his payments but feels trapped by the PACE contract. “I have nowhere to go. I cannot live on the street. I need to hold on to what I have.”

This article was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Follow David Dayen on Twitter.

The Political Documentary That Was Banned by the Indian Government

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“In India, you don’t grow up wanting to be a documentary filmmaker—you grow up wanting to be a filmmaker,” Vinay Shukla explains over a phone conversation with VICE. And An Insignificant Man, a documentary film by Shukla and Khushboo Ranka exploring the hushed topic of politics in India, is being released by VICE in the U.S. this week, and against all odds.

Politics tend to be a messy game, especially so in India. “Neither Khushboo or I came from a political background," Shukla claims. "We had no idea of how politics function before this. We both come from the kind of decent Indian family that tells you, 'Don’t go near politics—it’s not a good thing, it’s not for good people.’” But when the two started brainstorming for the film, the election was the most interesting thing happening. Ultimately, the election ushered in a new era for India and saw the end of its Congress’s 15-year hold on Indian politics, the BJP, and Narendra Modi. It also saw the birth of an entire new party: the AAP.

“When the AAP was starting out, they were basically a startup—they were trying to figure stuff out, there was this buoyant energy around them,” Shukla explains when discussing the filmmakers's gaining access to a government body that, otherwise, has proven elusive to the public eye. “They were campaigning for transparency, and a more interactive form of government.”

Luckily, Shukla and Ranka gained access to the AAP when it was just being formed, allowing them to follow its party leader and current Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, from conversing about policy to emerging as a force that would fight for democracy in India. Shukla and Ranka’s unique perspective and learning-as-they-go vibe created not only the country’s first documentary on the subject, but an uninhibited, honest look at what goes on behind the haze.

We caught up with the filmmakers to talk about gaining access, India's perspective towards documentary films, and their impossible fight against the country's censor board to release the film.

VICE: How did you guys come to work together?
Khushboo Ranka: Vinay and I were friends, and we worked together on Ship of Theseus. We were really inspired by watching that film shape up, and were able to travel with the film to places like Iran and Egypt. We met a lot of filmmakers and artists—it was an inspiring time for us. When we got back, we knew we wanted to make a film. We just wanted to pick up our cameras and start shooting.

A film like this is unheard of in India. How receptive were people to its filming?
India’s politics are extraordinarily opaque. The access is nearly impossible, and even this observational form isn't something that people have experimented with a lot. When we started making this film, people were astounded by the kind of access we were getting: “We’ve never seen anything like it.” The novelty of the film exists in various ways—from the content, to the form, to the fact that people were able to watch politicians they see everyday in the context of a larger story. People really responded to that.

How did you guys get that kind of access?
Vinay Shukla: When the AAP were starting out, they were new players in this political scene, making very tall claims and saying they were going to wipe out corruption. Ultimately, I think they thought someone probably should shoot that story. To be honest, at that point not too many people were taking them seriously—especially in the media. People were like, “Activists becoming politicians—when has that ever been successful?”

When we started shooting this film, we were amazed at everything we saw—how politics plays out on the ground. When you go out on the ground and see the extraordinary mess that politics functions in, it’s strange to find yourself in the mix. We wanted to try and transport that experience onto the audience. That’s why we tried to stick to the observational form—where there’s no one telling you what you should be thinking, but you feel like you’re in the room.

The film was initially banned, and when the ban was lifted, it had a limited theatre release. Can you talk about how documentary films are released and treated in India?
Ranka: The film was effectively banned because we were asked a few impossible things. We were asked to get permission from the Prime Minister, which is literally like saying you need to get Trump’s permission to show the film in America. So we fought against it at the level of the Judicial. After that, we did a limited release. In the first week, we released the film in about 25 theatres, and in the second week, we expanded to 64 theatres. It performed beyond expectations in the first week.

Shukla: To be honest, it’s been very hard for us to convince people that there’s an audience for a film like this. When we said that we wanted to make a film about the political process in India, people said the establishment would come after us for trying to make a political statement—especially one involving a new party. So perhaps we were naïve to make the film anyways, and when we did run into the censorship trouble, it reminded us of a lot of people telling us to be careful.

You have to remember, when we started making the film, we were both 26—just two kids who knew how to use a DSLR camera. We had no experience and no idea how documentaries were made. It’s been an impossible film in a lot of ways, but what happened is word spread that this is a film that takes you behind the scenes about Indian politics, which no film has done before—and people said it's a really entertaining film. As documentary filmmakers, we take that as a great compliment—that, ultimately, people are walking away having been really entertained.

Take a First Look at Stephen Colbert's New Show 'Our Cartoon President'

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While Donald Trump might not be too eager to sit down for an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, his cartoon self is a regular: The show has been running a bit featuring the character for months. Now, our animated president is getting his own series.

On Monday, Showtime dropped a teaser for Our Cartoon President, and announced the first episode will premiere February 11. The network's snippet shows an animated, extraordinarily orange Trump struggling to make it to the podium for a press conference, running out of breath on his way to the dais before collapsing to the floor and dragging himself towards it. Ultimately, his entourage—including cartoon versions of Melania Trump, Don Jr., and a Keebler-like Jeff Sessions—lift him to the microphone for a little speech.

We've already gotten glimpses of a fictionalized Trump taking advice from the ghost of Richard Nixon and getting tucked in by Steve Bannon on The Late Show. According to Showtime, we'll be getting an even closer look into the president's "tru-ish" private life when Colbert's series drops. In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, the network said Our Cartoon President “examines the quintessentially Trumpian details of the presidency and his most important relationships, and no one is safe—from his close family and confidants to key political figures from both parties and members of the media.”

Colbert is executive producing the series alongside Chris Licht, a fellow Late Show EP who's serving as showrunner, Deadline reports. Tim Luecke, who co-created the Late Show bit that gave birth to Trump's caricature, is serving as the lead animator.

Given that Colbert is one of Trump's most outspoken critics, Our Cartoon President might not be as generous to him as, say, Barry & Joe would be to Obama and Biden. We'll only know just how brutal the show gets on January 28, when Showtime drops a preview—just two days before the real, fleshy Trump's first State of the Union.

Related: The World's Greatest Trump Impersonator

Stunning Photos of Small-Town Pennsylvania

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Welcome back to "Doin' Work: Flash Interviews with Contemporary Photographers." This is a place for me to celebrate inspiring photographers and to present you with an easily digestible bite of their personalities and work.

This week's guest is Mike Thompson. He's a self-taught photographer born in Onwasa County, North Carolina and based in southwestern Pennsylvania. While only active for two years, he has quickly developed a distinctive style through the simple process of keeping his camera on him at all times. He's constantly searching for an image that "makes [his] heart race." Thompson's travels have taken him to big cities, which he captures with the same intimacy he practiced among the rural communities in which he grew up. "Making photos takes me out of the blue collar mindset surrounding my area," he says. "It makes me feel less judgmental, and more empathic towards the world, and people I meet in it."

The artist as a young man, image courtesy Mike Thompson.

The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

Where do you live and work and how does that impact your photography?
I live in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania, about an hour south of Pittsburgh. Shooting in a small town sometimes makes it harder to produce good work. You have to be patient and constantly keep watch of your surroundings, because you don't know when you'll get another chance to make a photo. On the upside though, a lot of my pictures tend to be personal, dealing with close friends, family, and whatever fits in between.

When and how did you get your start in photography?
I started making photos two years ago. This isn't going to sound cool, but I started with an iPhone 4, taking photos with it at my waist, usually walking around work, or just hanging out with my friends while they weren't looking. About six months into it my friend Emilio told me to save up and buy a real camera. I remember I was so ignorant to how a real camera works. I would message photographers on Instagram asking about F-stops and shutter speeds. Thank goodness I asked the right people.

What compels you to pick up your camera?
Before I started making photos I was a complete shut-in. I didn't see too much of anything good around me. I was depressed and constantly negative. Now that I use a camera, it forces me to be more outgoing and gives me space from over thinking every aspect of my life. Something happened inside of my skull. It's not that I'm a much happier person, but it made me less introspective, and more empathic towards the world.

What are you working on now?
I cannot give away all my secret plans, but I will say it's so difficult to focus on one project at a time. I have a simple project shooting old school box televisions that are left around my town. I don't know why, but it just bothers me knowing that no one is going to do anything with them. The garbage man doesn't take them, so they just sit there for months at a time. I guess it just shows how this world is filled with things we don't need.

If you had to explain your work to a child, how would you describe it?
I would say to my one year old nephew, "these are the things and people I see that make me feel things."

Do you make a living as a photographer?
No. The most money I've made off of photography is selling a print to a friend for $20. I work at part-time factory job during the week. Working part-time has its ups and downs. Yeah, I get more free time than most people, which I can spend editing photos or writing articles for my blog. On the down side, I don't make a lot of money and having to throw a huge chunk of it away for rent.

Show me the image you are best known for. What are your thoughts on it?


I couldn't tell you what image I'm best known for, but maybe it's this woman crossing her legs in NYC. It's not really a personal photo, it's more street. I started off doing street photography when I got my camera, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. This is probably my favorite street photo that I've taken.

What frustrates you about photography?
Not taking photos is the only thing that frustrates me. I get anxious when I don't have my camera. I carry it everywhere I go. I've heard people say, "You miss out on a lot of things by doing that," but I don't think I'd be interested in doing things and going places if I didn't have my camera with me. Maybe someday I'll set my camera down—it'd probably be a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

Describe your working process.
For street photography, I just look for people and things that interest me. Some days I get good shots and some days I don't. I try not to stress over it. It's not a competition. For personal work, I usually don't pull out my camera until I am comfortable with the person I want to photograph. Some people are put off by cameras so I try to learn about them by hearing stories about crazy things they see or just about their family life. It might take me a couple visits to feel comfortable with them.

You mention on your blog that you're a big fan of Hannah Wilke. Talk to me about that love.
Hannah Wilke is admirable in a lot of ways. The first time I saw her work was at the Carnegie Museum of Art when I took a photo of a man with his back turned towards me while he was staring at a piece from her S.O.S (Starification Object Series). In this series, she placed chewing gum on her models to represent the male perception of women—as if they are stars in the sky. It seems nice on the surface, but stars are objects without any feelings or needs. If one of these 'stars' were to voice their wants or needs, they would get chewed out just for being who they are. This isn't right in my opinion. Everyone has feelings, wants, and opinions; therefore, not respecting women is not right. I admire Hannah Wilke because to be an open feminist in today's day and age is not always celebrated. I cannot imagine how difficult it would have been to be one in the '60s and '70s.

Describe the approach you take when establishing a relationship with a subject?
Some of my photos are candids of strangers I see at events or out on the street. I sometimes take portraits of people I know so developing a relationship isn't usually an issue. When I want to take a portrait of someone I'm not close with, I usually try to get to know them a little more by hanging out with them for a while.

What do you think of the vast sea of online photography? What is your approach to standing out?
There are so many photos on Instagram that it's hard for me to pick something I like. I usually stick to a group of photographers I enjoy. If I stumble across an account that catches my eye, I'll follow them.

I've never been one to use hashtags. Some people do it and it surely helps them get their work out there, but whenever I check out the Instagram hashtag #streetphotography, most of the time I don't remember any of the good photos I see.

Standing out isn't something I focus on. If I compare myself to other photographers then I doubt I'd ever post. If I make a photo of something that interests me, and people seem to like it, then that's a plus.

What are you most proud of in terms of your work?
The only thing I can think of is getting past the learning curve. I'm proud of not quitting when things got frustrating in the beginning—when I would miss a shot, when I didn't know how to work the camera in manual mode, and F-stops and shutter speeds were difficult for me to understand. I could have quit and sold my camera and gotten into something else like video games or drugs, but I stuck with it.

What are you doing when you aren't making pictures?
I usually try even harder to procrastinate cleaning my house. I'll go visit friends and family, go to the laundromat, hang out at the house with the pet ferret (Gutsy), and take naps. Aside from napping, I usually have my camera with me. Sometimes I'm working on articles for my blog, and that takes forever.

What do you think the future of photography might look like?
I guess with smartphones, there are going to be a lot more selfies. I just saw an article on PetaPixel that compared a photo taken with a Leica M9-p and an iPhone 7. You can still see the Leica took the better photo… but the iPhone isn't far behind. Things cannot stay the way they are forever. Photography is very popular right now. Soon enough I think expensive digital cameras are going to die out. Google Glasses are a thing, right? I've never seen the images they make and I don't know about the quality of the photos they produce, but I'll tell you that it's only going to get better.

Name three contemporary photographers that blow you mind?
Emilse Laguna because no one does it exactly like her; Emilio Vignali inspires me to edit better; and I don't know his real name, but his instagram account is @Stanislavtroitsky. He documents life in Montreal, which is a pretty cool series.

The most important question of all: Dogs or Cats? Why?
I've just recently met a couple dogs that I enjoy, but I've always been down with cats. I think people are a lot more like cats than dogs. We only want to be noticed by people who know exactly what we want, namely, people who don't harm us. And when we want to be left alone, we just leave.

Facebook Now Lets You Know When You Show Up in a Picture You're Not Tagged in

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On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled a handful of new facial recognition features on the social media platform, including a tool that promises to let you know each time you appear in a photo—even if you're not tagged in it, the Washington Post reports.

According to Wired, Facebook first rolled out facial recognition technology on its site in 2010, detecting who appeared in your photos and suggesting who you might want to tag. Tuesday's update appeared to take that a major step further: You can be notified each time a photo of you is uploaded to the site, and be able to tag yourself, message the person who posted it, let Facebook know you're not actually pictured, or report it, according to Wired. You won't find out about the image, however, if you're not in the uploader's audience—which depends on their privacy settings

Images via Facebook

In a blog post, Facebook's director of applied machine learning Joaquin Quiñonero Candela announced two other new facial recognition features. The site will notify users if anyone tries to use their photo in a profile picture—an attempt, Candela wrote, to cut down on impersonators. (As Gizmodo notes, that could also help prevent people from making revenge porn profiles.) Plus, Facebook now allows visually impaired users to hear who's tagged in photos with them.

If you already take advantage of Facebook tag suggestions, you'll automatically be signed up for the three new facial recognition features. But users can also opt out of facial recognition altogether with a single "on/off" button in their settings, Candela wrote.

Facebook touted the new features as a way to protect its users, but privacy experts have long been wary of the tech giant's facial recognition program—already one of the most widely used on the planet. Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the digital privacy nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Wired users should be required to opt in, not out, of Facebook's facial recognition technology. That way, she said, people might be more aware of the privacy and data risks involved—not to mention the fact that facial recognition can be kind of racist.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

The Guy Bringing Lonely People Together for Christmas

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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

Christmas is an incredibly hard time to be alone. According to Age UK, around 1.2 million elderly people will spend Christmas on their own. In Germany, a 2012 study found that 2.5 million people in the country will be without any family or friends.

When the 32-year-old Christian* split from his girlfriend last year, he also found himself home alone just before Christmas. So he started the hashtag #KeineTwitterAllein (#NobodyTweetsAlone) to encourage people who were in the same situation, to talk about it on Twitter. "I was overwhelmed by the response," he says today. This year, he wanted to take things further by connecting kind families willing to open their homes to lonely people, on and around the big day.

I spoke to him near his house in Worms, a small city in western Germany, on the condition of anonymity, about how the idea has developed over the past year, the hundreds of people who have signed up for his service and whether he has found anyone to spend Christmas with.

VICE: How did you become the saviour of Christmas for so many people?
Christian: I always joke that it's because I don't have any hobbies. Due to my breakup, I found myself alone last Christmas Eve, and just wanted to connect with people in the same boat. I was only hoping to find a little humanity out there, but it quickly grew into the top trending topic on German Twitter for a few days. Even one of Germany's biggest pop stars, Helene Fischer, talked about it at her Christmas gigs.

This year, you want to bring people together offline.
Yes – I've asked people who are on their own to contact me on Twitter, and I’ll set up several small and large Christmas gatherings. When possible, I'm trying to put groups together from the same city.



How many people have signed up so far?
Around 220, while just as many people have offered up their homes.

What are these people like?
Of those searching for company, there are a lot of elderly people, but also a few young Berliners, and men going through divorces. Of those offering their homes, some are alone, too, and have the extra space, but many are just kind-hearted families.

But lots of people who have nobody at Christmas – the elderly; the homeless – don’t use Twitter.
I don’t want to exclude anyone, but, at least for this year, this is the only way to reach out. But there are plenty of other services and charities offering the elderly a place to spend Christmas.

Do some people treat you like you're Christmas day Tinder?
Unfortunately, yes. I've actually had men get in touch thinking I could set them up with women. I had to make it very clear to them that this is not about sex.

Why aren’t there more people doing this?
Obviously, most people see Christmas as a private, intimate thing, and so are reluctant to invite strangers into their lives. One alternative is to meet up with the person beforehand, and get to know them a bit before inviting them round for Christmas. But whether it works out or not, it can’t be worse than spending Christmas with family members that you hate.


Watch: Cooking Christmas Dinner in Shit


Are you hoping to create something more than a simple get together?
I’m also interested in the social implications. This year's German election showed just how far people will go to separate themselves in political camps. I hope that these meetings might encourage people with opposing views to spend time with, and listen to each other.

Where do you still need people?
I’m looking for people in the cities of Bonn, Marburg, and the whole of Lower Saxony.

Will you be spending Christmas alone this year?
No, I’ll be celebrating it with my girlfriend. But any lonely people in our region are more than welcome to join us.

*Christian is not his real name.

All the Shit You Have to Deal with as a Muslim During Christmas

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Ah, Christmas – a time of merriment, joy and festive cheer. But also very much a time of being obliged to bankrupt yourself on a Secret Santa gift the colleague you've been randomly assigned will actively hate. So, yes, it's lovely – but it's also challenging.

For Muslims, there are extra challenges associated with Christmas. Not necessarily because we don’t celebrate it, or don’t appreciate the day off, but more that in the run-up to the 25th we might have been accused of waging a war on Jesus's birthday, or of trying to rebrand Christmas as "Eid al ISIS", or of "invading" that most sacrosanct Christmas tradition, the annual Tesco ad.

Mind you, the shit you’ll have to deal with every Christmas as a Muslim isn’t strictly limited to bored Daily Mail reporters trying to find something to write about. From handling your uncle's annual anti-Semitic rants to putting on a smile while standing around awkwardly as the only sober person at the office party, here’s all the shit you have to deal with as a Muslim during Christmas.


WATCH:


THE TERRIBLE OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY IS WORSE WHEN YOU'RE SOBER

Heads up: as a Muslim, you're not supposed to drink alcohol. You might already be aware of that – it's one of the better known things about the Muslim faith, along with the fact we pray five times a day and generally don't have the best time at airports.

Considering that to be British at Christmas is to spend exactly six hours huddled into an overcrowded, asbestos-filled pub, wearing an itchy novelty jumper, trying desperately to make conversation with someone from work about anything other than work, it helps to be able to drink. Which, of course, is difficult when you’re religiously prohibited from getting hammered.

So, instead, you'll likely stand around awkwardly with a comically tiny bottle of diet Coke, trying to feign interest in Ruby from marketing's Game of Thrones theories (she's on season two, and wrong about everything), or nod and grin while Mike from accounts lists each and every time he's been "fucked off my tits" in the past year, before trying to convince you to sack off the pub and join him at a strip club.

No, Mike: I do not want to drink a J2O while watching you shout at semi-naked women about your £300 Christmas bonus.

TRYING TO AVOID BRITAIN FIRST WHILE BUYING A TURKEY

Trying to find halal turkey has always been difficult, but it's even harder now you have to worry about dodgy butchers and red-faced thick lads in flat caps and branded polo shirts waging a holy crusade against your card transaction.

Presumably thanks to groups like Britain First accusing butchers and local branches of Asda of being covert al-Qaeda operatives for selling halal meat, stores offering halal Christmas foods are fairly tricky to come by.

Not a biggie, obviously, but hey, we wouldn't mind getting in on the turkey action, too.


WATCH:


'YOUR LOT DON'T DO CHRISTMAS, DO THEY?'

Not really, no, but we are still alive during the month of December, and prefer to not be completely excluded from everything going on around us.

Let's take Secret Santa – a ritual gift-giving exercise that has much more to do with consumerism than religion. Let's think of when Linda sends round that list of names and yours is conspicuously missing. Or, if your name is included – and because nobody really knows you for anything other than being brown – you once again have to reluctantly thank Damien for that £3 multi-pack of socks, as he gives you the same excuse you hear every year for every shitty gift: "Sorry, I know it's a bit dull – but your lot don't really celebrate Christmas, do they?"

THE ANNUAL 'IS CHRISTMAS HARAM?' DEBATE

Pardon the generalisation, but, having been a Muslim all my life, I’m pretty sure that for the most part "Muslim Christmas" is like most people's Christmases, i.e. largely consisting of assorted seasonal snack foods, crap TV and desperately trying to stop your uncle going on a racist rant.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the exact same debate happening every single year, a debate that's usually instigated by your cousin Abdul (the one who calls your mum whenever he sees you speaking to a woman) in the form of daily WhatsApp messages running up to the 25th – an "Islamic advent calendar", if you will – describing Christmas as the "devil’s holiday", or pointing out that its recognition is, yet again, a sign of imminent end times. Cousin Abdul may disapprove of your now shrunken Christmas jumper on the grounds that flying reindeer are a sign of the apocalypse, but this won't stop him from eating all your mince pies.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, YOU STILL HAVE TO STOP YOUR UNCLE BEING RACIST

You may be a minority – a minority about which most Christmas dinner racism will be focused upon – but that won't necessarily stop one of your family members from deciding that a Christmas-themed dinner is the best venue to air their terrible opinions about the supposed Jewish takeover of Britain, something they discovered after watching a video on this famous news website. "You might have heard it, actually, nephew – Infowars?"

"Who are all the bankers?" your uncle will shout, mouth full of Christmas samosa. "The Jews! And have you read David Irving? Just something to think about, is all I'm saying."

@HKesvani


Fake Prescription Pills Are a Threat to Our Generation

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In the heyday of raving in the 90s, you had to have serious connections to get your hands on a pill press machine used to make ecstasy. Today, you can find a mold on Ebay for $72.99 US to make pills that look like Xanax and a pill press machine itself for just a few hundred dollars.

What that means is that effectively anyone who knows how to use the internet and has access to it, an accepted form of payment, and an address to receive mail at can get such tools. What people put in it the pills they’re making is up to them and what substances they’re able to source—but we know, at least some of the time, fentanyl is what they choose to use.

“We definitely know that it’s happening,” Mitchell Gomez, executive director of the prominent nightlife harm reduction organization DanceSafe, told VICE. “At this point, we’re seeing fentanyl in prescription pills; we’re seeing replica prescription pills of benzos, opioids.”

Police and health officials around North America have been warning about fake prescription pills throughout 2017.

A search of pills submitted to EcstasyData.org—a DEA-licensed laboratory that tests drugs submitted to it from the public—turns up a number of substances that have masqueraded as Xanax (a benzodiazepine and anti-anxiety medication) bars in particular in recent years. There are the lesser-known ones that have such long chemical names that I doubt many people reading this will recognize them—3-Trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) and AB-FUBINACA, for example—and then, of course there’s one bar that tested positive for fentanyl. That pill was submitted from Long Beach, California in 2016.

Though the proliferation of illicit fentanyl itself is one piece of the overdose crisis the US and Canada are experiencing—which is killing thousands each year—the reality is that fake prescription pills are mixed up in this. While shooting the VICE fentanyl documentary, DOPESICK, our subjects were primarily using fentanyl in the form of fake Oxycontin pills. Though the people who were crushing up and snorting those little blue-green round pills with the “80” printed across it in our film were knowingly doing fentanyl, it was disturbing nonetheless that this is what the drug market had turned to. Fake prescription pills containing a seriously potent opioid were a reality, the amount of the drug in them varied from pill to pill, and people were consuming the pills despite the fact that their friends had died from them.

“This is really a function of how drug markets have to operate under prohibition: It’s far easier to smuggle a few grams of fentanyl and just have a pill press in the country that you’re smuggling them into than it is to source and smuggle pharmaceuticals,” Gomez said. “It’s very, very difficult to source 10,000 oxycodones—but purchasing enough fentanyl to press 10,000 [fake] oxycodones is really kind of trivial if you have the right connections.” As well, Gomez said, the profit margin is massive for pressing these kinds of pills.

The DEA is currently investigating rapper Lil Peep’s death, which was the result of an accidental drug overdose. His death was reportedly caused by Xanax and fentanyl, which were both found in his system by Pima County Medical Examiner in Arizona. Other substances found in his system following his death included cannabis, cocaine, and Tramadol. Lil Peep, who was 21 years old, died in Tucson while on tour for his first studio album Come Over When You’re Sober. His single “Awful Things” only broke into the Billboard Hot 100 following his death.

“We have heard there was some sort of substance he did not expect to be involved in the substance he was taking,” his brother reportedly said following his death. “He thought he could take what he did, but he had been given something and he didn’t realize what it was.”

Just hours before Peep’s death on November 15, he posted a picture of himself with what appeared to be pills on his tongue on Instagram. Though the public still doesn’t know for sure what exactly Peep took that night, that hasn’t stopped his fans from speculating that he took fake Xanax.

Photo via Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Florida

Fake xanax in particular has become a problem in recent years. In Florida, counterfeit xans containing fentanyl reportedly killed nine people in the span of just weeks in 2016.

In case you’ve somehow missed all those references to Xanax in music over the years, or how obsessed Tumblr has been with it (check out the #xannies hashtag if you’re drawing a blank), or the number people on social media who’ve posed for selfies with bars on their tongues—the drug has been having a bit of a cultural moment that doesn’t seem to want to end. And if you need any more indication of how much this cultural moment has peaked, there is a rapper literally named “Lil Xan” now, and here’s a video of 17-year-old rapper Lil Pump (of “Gucci Gang” fame) eating a Xanax-shaped cake:

Gomez described benzodiazepines, including Xanax, as also being used in party culture, “mostly as a ‘crash pad’ or ‘landing pad’” at the end of the night.

Combine this with the misguided sense of trust some in our generation have found in doing pharmaceutical pills over traditional illicit drugs with the current state of the market, and the results aren’t exactly reassuring.

“Some of the presses looked really unprofessional just a couple of years ago—you could look at the actual pill and be like, ‘That doesn’t look like a pharmaceutical, that looks like a 1990s ecstasy pill, like someone made it in their garage,” Gomez said. “But now, we’re seeing [counterfeit] pills show up at the lab that, at a casual, visual inspection, look real.”

Sault Sainte Marie, a small Canadian community situated on the US border in northern Ontario, has recently seen the onset of what appear to be Xanax bars in the illicit drug market. Terri Nicholson, concurrent disorders counsellor at Sault Area Hospital, sees anyone who presents with a drug overdose at the city's only hospital. Sault Ste. Marie, a city of just under 75,000, is seeing multiple overdoses per day on average. The province it’s located in experienced a 68 percent spike in opioid overdose deaths this year.

Nicholson, who described the community of Sault Ste. Marie as currently being in the midst of an overdose crisis, said that in November the hospital saw a number of young people—including high schoolers—present with overdose symptoms after taking what they said was Xanax, but what she said are likely fakes.

“The ‘Xanax’ has been around for about three months—a lot of people are doing ‘xannies,’ people under 24 years old is most often what we’re seeing,” Nicholson said.

She said the community had multiple overdoses from what was reported as Xanax within the span of a week, including one week where their crisis team saw seven people who had reported taking it.

“There hasn’t been a major bust with them, so we don’t know exactly what people are taking [when they say they’ve taken Xanax],” Nicholson said. “We’re pretty sure it’s not genuine prescription pills—there’s a load of fake xannies going around.”

“I think the first time people know this is an issue is when they’re hospitalized or someone dies,” Gomez said.

As far as harm reduction measures that people who are purchasing prescription pills on the black market can take, Gomez suggested testing every pill that you intend to take with reagent testing and fentanyl test strips (even then, educate yourself on why these methods are not failsafe and have limitations).

“At this point, you need to test all of the substances you’re using. We recognize that’s not normal drug consumption behaviour… But it’s the new reality of the market,” he said. Other important measures include not using alone and getting trained in and carrying the opioid overdose antidote naloxone.

“Even if you think you’ve taken a Xanax to go to bed at the end of the night, that’s not necessarily what you’re taking,” Gomez said. “You have to treat every pharmaceutical, every baggie of cocaine as if it might be a lethal opiate.”

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Senate Republicans Pass Tax Bill
The Senate voted 51-48 to pass the Republican party’s overhaul of the US tax code early Wednesday. Though the House of Representatives passed a version of the bill Tuesday, the discovery of three snags in the legislation will force the House to vote again on the Senate's version Wednesday before President Trump can sign it into law. Senator Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, suggested the GOP's tax plan amounted to delivering “one gut punch after another to hard-working people.”—The Washington Post / VICE News

Democrat Wins Virginia Race by One Vote
Democrat Shelly Simonds won the 94th District in Virginia’s House of Delegates after a recount showed she beat Republican David Yancey by just one vote. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Simonds won 11,608 votes to 11,607. The House is now split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. The Virginia Democrats’ chair said the result “should strike fear into the heart of every Republican on the ballot next year.”—NBC News

Trump's UN Ambassador ‘Taking Names’ over Israeli Capital Fight
In a letter to her fellow diplomats, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said President Trump had asked her to “report back on those countries who voted against us” on his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy to the city. Haley also sent a tweet warning that the US “will be taking names.”—CBS News

Investigators Wonder if Amtrak Driver Was Distracted
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) official investigating the cause of the Amtrak train derailment in Washington state said establishing whether the driver was preoccupied in any way was a top priority. Bella Dinh-Zarr noted a new conductor was with the driver when the crash occurred. Investigators are also keen to know why no crew member used the emergency brake.—The New York Times

International News

At Least 9,000 People Killed in Mosul, NGOs Say
The number of civilians killed during the military operation to liberate the Iraqi city from ISIS is way higher than previously suggested, according to a new estimate. Databases compiled by independent outfits, mainly based on names registered at morgues, indicated that between 9,000 and 11,000 residents died from October 2016 to June 2017.—AP

Saudi Arabia Closes Land Border with Qatar
Saudi authorities ordered the permanent closure of a narrow physical border the country shares with Qatar. The Saudis and some other Arab nations have accused Qatar of supporting terrorism. Separately, the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen decided to keep a major Yemeni port open around the same time its air strikes killed at least nine.—Al Jazeera / Reuters

A Dozen Tourists Killed in Bus Crash in Mexico
Twelve people were killed and 18 injured when a bus taking cruise ship passengers on a trip to a Mayan site at Chaccobén lost control and flipped. It was carrying tourists from the US, Brazil, Italy, and Sweden. “We are doing all we can to care for our guests,” the Royal Caribbean cruise company said.—BBC News

Philippine President Orders Ten-Day Ceasefire
President Rodrigo Duterte said police and military operations against Maoist militants would be suspended over Christmas so people in the Philippines can enjoy a “stress-free” holiday. Duterte’s spokesman said the president anticipated the communist fighters, operating in rural areas, would offer up "a similar gesture of goodwill.”—Reuters

Everything Else

Gorillaz Plan New Album for 2018
Jamie Hewlett revealed the group will begin work on their next album “with no break” after touring on the recent-released LP Humanz. He said the group had "ideas for a few more albums so we’re going to go straight into that.”—Billboard

Ta-Nehisi Coates Leaves Twitter
The celebrated writer deleted his account after academic Cornel West attacked him for a “neoliberal” worldview in an op-ed. Although Coates defended his work, his final tweets stated: “I didn’t get in it for this” and “peace, y’all. I’m out.”—AP

Chance the Rapper and Jeremih Drop Holiday Mixtape
The artists released a joint mixtape entitled Merry Christmas Lil Mama: ReWrapped. The project is a follow-up to last year’s Christmas album from the duo, with nine brand new tracks.—Noisey

Facebook and Microsoft Take On North Korean Hackers
The companies revealed they’ve been working together to “disrupt the activities” of the Lazarus Group, widely believed to be working for the North Korean government. Facebook deleted accounts it believed may have been connected to the group while Microsoft disrupted malware used by the hackers.—Motherboard

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we're delving into the world of food activism.

Brittany Gibbons: Shopping for Plus-Size Fashion Is "Like the Hunger Games"

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Plus-size spokesmodel and internet personality Brittany Gibbons likens shopping for extra-large clothing to the dystopian Hunger Games in The Clothes Make the Girl (Look Fat)?, which is out on December 26 via Dey Street Books. A follow-up to her 2015 memoir Fat Girl Walking, Gibbons chronicles her love/hate (but mostly hate) relationship with fashion, sharing why what we choose to wear is especially important—and emotional—for curvy women.

A self-proclaimed “accidental advocate,” Gibbons shines throughout The Clothes Make the Girl with her honest and relatable account of plus-size fashion, and all the bumps and lumps that come with it. We talked about why The Clothes Make the Girl (Look Fat)? is the empowered battle cry all women deserve.

VICE: Plus-size fashion is the single biggest growth area in retail right now. How do you think fashion is (or isn’t) evolving to be more inclusive?
Brittany Gibbons: I think it is, but I don’t know why it took this long. Anyone who’s had to shop for an extra-large knows it’s a Hunger Games situation when you first arrive. I don’t own a company, but mathematically, the need is there. It’s so unique to women, too. Guys just grab jeans off the shelf and then they leave. I could never do that. I need to know how a store’s sizing works. A lot of plus- size stores have eliminated actual sizing so it’s sizes 1, 2, 3, and 4—which is exciting, because then I’m a size 2!

As you explain, body image is a women’s issue—not just a fat women’s issue—and having something to wear is an important part of self-esteem. How do you think that plays into the current plus-size fashion renaissance?
Fashion has always been an industry and a privilege of straight-size women. I’ve never been able to have that experience of shopping with my friends—I would buy a scarf, or perfume—but it’s how we connect with each other. A friend once picked up a sweater and said, “You should try this. It looks big. I bet it would fit you!” They’re just as excited as I am that it’s less awkward for us to go shopping.

A woman’s history is in her closet. Which pieces are most memorable to you?
I still have this pair of American Eagle jeans from high school—they were a size 14 or something, which is now doll-size because there was no stretch. I kept them because I lost a ton of weight in college. They come to my ankles,maybe, and are very small, but I won’t let them go because I remember being really carefree and thin in them. I really should break up with them but now it just feels like tradition.

Other than that, I surprisingly don’t keep a lot of clothing from high school because I was so angry at a lot of it. I had a lot of resentment from what I wore and what I couldn’t fit into.

One of the lessons you mention wanting to impart to your daughter is the idea of
being a better woman to other women, which seems to be somewhat of a movement right now. Why do you think that is?
It’s definitely happening and is a really important lesson. It’s a great time to step up and be a girl’s girl. Politically, there’s so much happening, and so many stresses facing women that for the first time, our voice and platform is the most unprecedented it’s ever been. It’s a revolution. Even five years ago, I didn’t understand the importance of being a woman that supports other women. It’s a late in life thing that I hope comes much sooner for her.

We are kind of on the cusp now with Gigi. She’s somewhat sheltered from the louder noise about body image, but she’s a gymnast, so I know it’s coming. I’m aware of it more than she is.

It sounds like pregnancy might have helped you move forward from an eating disorder. Is that the case?
My pregnancy fell between weird moments in my eating habits. I had bulimia between my freshman and sophomore years of college. My second son was born eleven months after my first son, and I had very disordered eating and was very unhealthy overall. Pregnancy bookended them. Eventually, I had to sacrifice the image I had of myself, but it’s hard to set aside narcissism and the standard of beauty we see in every part of society. To table that, it’s really hard.

There’s a chapter dedicated to your thighs that mentions commentary from high school boys. Looking back, do you consider that to be a form of sexual harassment?
I do. While I was writing, I made a skeleton outline and was reliving it while I was sitting there. This would never happen this way right now. My reaction to it at the time was feeling defeated, and I would hope that wouldn’t be my reaction right now. There are so many more instances where I’m like, this blurs the line of consent. In general, we didn’t have that perspective back then.

What would you say now to the person from your hometown who called you out for editing your photos?
It’s a weird feeling because I want to thank them now, but it was terrible at the time because I knew it was done in a hurtful way. But it was a huge catalyst to change my life, and it changed the trajectory of what I was doing. I wish it wasn’t handled the way it was handled or done as maliciously as it was. I didn’t say anything to them. We both know it happened, and I had to move on for myself or else I would be a terribly angry person.

Do you have any resolutions for 2018?
I don’t make resolutions because I never keep them. I like to make a goal to try something new every year. I think next year I’m going to try to do more independent travel, which I know is weird because I have a family. It’s always Disney World, and I would love to explore something different—like a mini- Eat, Pray, Love journey—and put myself at the center of the travel. I definitely want to go to Europe. I’ve never been!

Follow Allison Duncan on Twitter.

I Graded Hollywood on Diversity and It Didn’t Go Well

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When I first viewed Get Out, I sat back as a black man feeling equal parts horror and discomfort. I saw the film for what it was: a flick about the fuckery of being black in North America. I’ve lived it, and I’ve felt it. Others, namely the producers, saw it as something different—a fucking comedy, a classification that seemed to piss off director Jordan Peele in hindsight after being submitted as such by Blumhouse and Universal. This push and pull between what a film actually is versus the kind of “recognition” it deserves is that same stale Hollywood bread called progress—that trade-off of being a little too “hood” or a little too “brown” for an industry that’s a lot too pale.

While Hollywood is talking that good liberal talk about inclusion and diversity, it sure isn’t backing those words up.

Yes, we still get the promises for “change” here, and the reassurances around “progress” there, but that rarely reflects what Hollywood deems as its most prized possessions on a yearly basis (awards season). Every new nomination announcement is a reminder of the same ol’ faces that made the decisions—that dry field of faces like Harvey Weinstein who inspired #metoo confessions, and fostered a film industry where men still speak 70 percent of the dialog.

In the years between 2007 and 2016, we’ve seen that slow embrace of inclusion that still seems too damn slow. A study from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and The Media Diversity and Social Change Initiative found that in 2015, 73.7 percent of characters were white, 12.2 percent Black, 3.9 percent Latino and only one percent were Asian, Middle Eastern or Indigenous. That also didn’t factor in the pool of directors, producers and writers who still come from a white, straight, and able-bodied bias.

But my, how things have changed going into 2018 with films like Mudbound, Crown Heights, Marshall….or not. Sure, I can look to the new year with a single bodied text of rambling about the goods and bads of the current year, but instead, I've chosen to do this like my damn teachers did it.

Hollywood’s film industry (TV, you’re a different beast), here are your grades.

Report Card
Name: Hollywood
Course: Diversity Fundamentals
Year: 2017

Explanation of marks:
4 - Exceeds Expectations
3 - Meets Expectations
2 - Progressing Towards Expectations
1 - No Improvement

Quality of work: 2

Hollywood shows initiative. Though, for Hollywood to have understood “diversity” this quarter, it would have to be able to do it without its cheat-sheet. The typical solemn Asian, happy black brotha with jokes, taxi driving brown guy with the strong accent, flamboyantly queer and proud, kinda cheat-sheet. Historically, Hollywood’s been a little too reliant on its quotas-to-fill shtick, leading to some trash stereotypes. Thankfully, there’s been an improvement in this area thanks to the guidance of non-white and minority leads. Jordan Peele’s Get Out was crazily clever about a particular black man at a particular time. It never relied on super joke-ey, egregiously gory settings of horror. It simply took a regular black dude with a legitimate fear and told a story in a way that was unapologetically black in Hollywood.

Girls Trip by Michael D. Lee was another one of those shamelessly black films to remix something old to make it new. It was a movie that caressed its wig and pushed out a story about black sisterhood and self-care—a subject that Hollywood still needs to take a look at. Other quality titles with diverse casts and stories included The Big Sick, Lady Bird, Wonder, Wonder Woman, CoCo and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, among others.

Contrast that with a 2017 film like The Same Kinda Different Than Me: a film with the caucasity to feature Greg Kinnear with his silly-ass, I-have-a black-friend-ass Greg Kinner face. In it, he finds a oneness with Djimon Housou; the last unchained sage-brotha from the block. I’m not even gonna go through the plot, just watch this.

Puts the material to practice: 2

Hollywood is imaginative and has a lot of ideas. But in stating all that, we—by “we” I mean anyone that isn’t a white director/dude—are pressured to produce receipts, evidence, and a full bodied resume in order to get the same nods as our white counterparts by the award season . While white directors are allowed to tell the stories of their own worlds to others like “themselves”—see The Post, The Disaster Artist, or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Non-white men are encouraged to be less raw to their own stories and less random-as-shit for an award nod. For them, stories must be dreamt up in a marriage of classical, interpretational, traditional style to dress-down what is authentically black or brown (ex. Moonlight, 2016).

Girls Trip was comedic genius, but told authentically; something it paid for by not being given so much as a viewing by the Golden Globes according to Jada Pinkett Smith; a statement that was since challenged by the HFPA through an email with me who reiterated that it was in fact screened on Jul 18th for members. Get Out was bold, but lacked the pretentious first-world-problems of the white human condition; hence the comedy viewpoint by studio executives—possibly at the risk of a directing/writing nomination. Then there’s Mudbound, a film that brings a palpable reminder to a period when black and white war veterans came back to an America that valued lives very differently; no mention of a Dee Rees (director) consideration here. In terms of the suits that make the decisions, unless you're a black woman, the full value of Girls Trip will be misunderstood. Unless you're a black man/woman, the full terror of Get Out will fall on deaf ears. Unless you're South Asian, the full dilemma of The Big Sick will be missed, and it goes on. Get these folks on your panels.

Sensitive to others feelings: 2

Hollywood shows a strong desire to improve itself. That said, for all intents and purposes, Hollywood needs to stop with the gentrification shit.

Hollywood shouldn’t encourage anymore samurai-looking-ass Matt Damon’s on Great walls for the “mass appeal.” No more cyber-punk-ass Scarlett Johansson’s trying to be a Ghost in a Shell. No more Americanized Nat Wolff’s with Death Notes. Hollywood needs pull an Ed Skriene, and know when roles for the non-white folk oughta stay with non-white folk. Disney seems to have gotten the right idea for the most part with its future casting for the live action Aladdin; Mena Massoud (Aladdin) who is of Egyptian heritage. And of course the choices made with A Wrinkle In Time, which for a fantasy, is whitewash fodder. Point blank, the opportunism that comes with cultural staples should have nothing to do with the erasure of those that rep it. It just stinks. Stinks of the thief that displays the unwillingness to delve into the source material it borrows. Nah, let’s just transplant ideas into a look that goes down easy like a Starbucks latte.

Plays well with other classmates: 1

Hollywood shows a promise. But the concept of diversity is still a superficiality in their eyes—an aesthetic rather than something meaningful. True diversity is filling in the blind spots with you know, different life experiences or different perspectives. Take the lack of woman of colour in notable leading roles as an example, a glaring deficiency in 2017. Predictive female award contending leads this year include: Margot Robbie for I, Tonya, Sally Hawkins for The Shape of the Water, Saoirse Ronan for Lady Bird, Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Meryl Streep for The Post.

Let’s be real, if Hollywood were to seek a leading woman, and a chick named Scarlett or Jennifer with pale white skin and good hair just happened to have a clear schedule, chances are that the “un-tested” woman of colour would never have a chance, if they were considered at all. Girls Trip, Kidnap, and Everything, Everything isn’t enough out of the 700 theatrical films to not look like anything but a trash optic for “progress.” The television industry has proven that the Taraji P. Hensons, Issa Raes, Kerry Washingtons, Viola Davises and Tracee Ellis Rosses among the world kill it economically, so what’s the problem? The colour palette of the world is shifting, and folks don’t want their experiences blackfaced. Seeking out women of colour in leads shouldn’t be such a bold concept in that reality.

Willing to share with others: 1

Hollywood shows initiative, but is showing signs of regression to the status quo. Last year, movie watchers were blessed with films by people of colour like Duvarnay for 13th, Denzel Washington with Fences, Barry Jenkins for Moonlight, Raoul Peck for I Am Not Your Negro, and Ezra Edelman for OJ: Made in America. Despite that, it was representative of the small directorial percentage that came across top 1,000 grossing films with 5.6 percent of films (most of which were mentioned above) being lead by a person of colour. Compare that to the four or so notable and directed films that were black-led in 2017.

If you don’t know, the film was a drama about the fictional Algiers Motel Incident, involving the beatings and deaths of three black men by police officers in 1967. Directed by the Kathryn Bigelow, an Oscar-winning white woman, Detroit was a decidedly black tragedy told with a white comprehension. We’re talking about pre-Mike Brown sentiments. The included white savior components, the sympathetic-white-cop spin that would make any person of colour feel a type of way; the film is a psychological cavity into the depths of police brutality; but lacks the sensitivity by someone that likens black death to torture porn visually. People of colour who bring their experiences and a subtle awarenesses with them. It’s worth noting the Detroit did bomb, earning only $21-million, on a budget of an estimated $40-million.

Grade 40% / F

Recommended:

Hollywood can do the following in 2018 to support itself in its learning. Push the hell-oh-el outta Black Panther in all its blackity blackness. Push the hell-oh-el outta anything by Jordan Peele ( Black Klansman). Recognize what fantasy can look like from a black woman (Ava DuVernay, Wrinkle in Time), just give Berry Jenkin’s his next award already for If Beale Street Could Talk. And please, add the folks with an invitation to a cookout to the HFPA already.

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

North Korea Is Reportedly Testing Anthrax-Tipped Missiles

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As tensions continue to rise on the Korean peninsula, North Korea has begun to experiment with loading anthrax onto intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reports.

According to an unidentified South Korean source, the rogue nation is currently conducting heat and pressure tests to see whether anthrax can survive the extreme temperatures the bacteria would face during a missile's reentry into the atmosphere. Compared to similar biological agents, anthrax is particularly dangerous—aside from being deadly, it's difficult to see, smell, taste, or otherwise detect, according to the CDC.

North Korea is likely developing the biological weapon because its nuclear-tipped warheads might not be capable of reaching the US mainland, the source said. It's still unclear precisely how advanced the Hermit Kingdom's nuclear ICBM program has become, but that hasn't stopped some US states from preparing for an attack—or kept experts from gaming out what might happen if North Korea actually does try to nuke America.

US intelligence officials have long warned of North Korea's developing biological weapons program. The country has allegedly been stockpiling smallpox, anthrax, and other dangerous bacterial strains since at least the 1990s, the Washington Post reports, and it has likely already acquired thousands of tons of the stuff. A 2015 video tour of the Pyongyang Biotechnical Institute—ostensibly used to manufacture pesticides—fueled speculation that the country has the ability to produce "military-sized batches" of biological weapons.

Earlier this week, the White House's National Security Strategy report found that Kim Jong Un's regime is "pursuing chemical and biological weapons which could also be delivered by missile," though it didn't mention anthrax by name.

"North Korea—a country that starves its own people—has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that could threaten our homeland," the report stated.

Pyongyang quickly issued a statement denying the report, calling its findings "groundless" and threatening to "take revenge" on the US for spreading what it dismissed as bunk.

"As a state party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), [North Korea] maintains its consistent stand to oppose development, manufacture, stockpiling, and possession of biological weapons," the country declared.

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