I’ll be the first to admit, millennials can be really irritating. We started a selfies at funerals trend, we’re late to everything (if we don’t flake out altogether), we’re glued to our phones at meals, we kill our boyfriends as part of a YouTube stunt.

Still, the trend of blaming us for everything has gotten completely out of hand. I mean, sorry that we’ve crushed the car industry, but with our high rates of unemployment, they’ve become a luxury those of us who live in urban centres can’t afford.

At this point, you could Google “Millennials are ruining” and add literally anything to the end of that phrase, and you’d likely get at least a few hits.

As this year comes to a close, let’s take a closer look some of the things we millennials have allegedly murdered in cold blood.

Cops
No, we aren’t actually killing cops. That would be foolish. But according to Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall, we’re a threat to the law enforcement profession itself. Hall told Dallas city council that millennials don’t seem to be interested in becoming police officers. “We have nights, weekends and holidays — not attractive to millennials who want all days off and to be the chief in six months,” she said while Dallas Fire Chief added, “they’re job hopping every five years.” In an effort to reach a wider net of younguns, Hall’s strategy is to overlook people who’ve been convicted of minor crimes and give days off to officers who successfully bring on new recruits. Maybe it'll work. But she could also try not publicly insulting the demographic she's hoping to employ.

Malls
According to a consumer report from Yes Lifecycle Marketing, more than 55 percent of 1,000 millennials surveyed in March buy crap off Amazon. I am one of them. My bathroom would not exist were it not for Amazon. Meanwhile, profits for major department stores like Macy’s are falling and the US-based National Retail foundation has found young adults’ top choice for online shopping was online. I can’t pretend to be sorry about this one. The minute I step foot in a mall, I regret it. The crowds, the slow walkers, the hell that is the Apple Store--who, aside from teenagers with no lives, actually enjoys any of this?

Drinking/drugs
An Eventbrite survey of UK millennials found that four in 10 had negative views on getting drunk, describing it as “pathetic” or “embarrassing” whereas only 10 percent thought getting drunk was “cool.”

Part of the reason, according to dating expert Nichi Hodgson, who contributed to the report, is that millennials don’t need to self-medicate as much as their older counterparts.
"Generation X were still suffering from a stiff upper lip problem, they used drink and drugs to hide their problems. Younger people don’t want to cover up their problems with drinking and drugs, they want to face them," she told the Telegraph.

DrugAbuse.com has found that millennials consume less weed and cocaine than baby boomers at their peaks.

Anecdotally, I don’t feel like when the subject of drinking comes up, my peers are like “that’s pathetic!” In fact, I’d say it’s still the number 1 hobby amongst writers my age, for better or worse. (Someone just asked me to go for a beer as I was writing this paragraph.) And as far as Canada goes, we are smoking tonnes of weed out here. Unfortunately though, it seems millennials are using far more painkillers than other generations. More than 12 percent of millennials ages 19–20 report recent painkiller abuse, according to DrugAbuse.com.

Dinner dates
Dinner dates with people you barely know are dumb. Why would you commit several hours of time and money to potentially be bored out of your skull, when you could just be chilling on the couch alone with take-out. Probably for these good reasons, millennials are over the dinner date. According to an OKCupid survey, only 7 in 10,000 messages suggested going out to dinner. Frankly, if someone asks you out to dinner for a first date, you should be suspicious as to why they have so much time on their hands.

Soap bars
Research firm Mintel found soap bar sales dropped 2.2 percent from 2014-2015, and you can bet millennials are being blamed for it. The survey found it’s men over 60 who tend to still buy bar soap. The problem with bars of soap is they get dirty and little hairs stick to them and they become sort of gross to look at. They really can’t complete with a nice, classy bottle of shower gel that contains “30 percent goat’s milk.”

Threesomes
It’s starting to really sound like millennials are boring. No booze, less drugs, and now you can add threesomes to the list. A study out of the University of New Brunswick surveyed 300 straight Canadian undergraduate students, and asked if they’d been in or were interested in threesomes. It found “only” 13 percent had had a threesome. (That actually sounds like a lot, tbh—how thoroughly were the claims of these horny undergrads verified?) Anyway, the survey found the hesitation to go through with threesomes was based on a fear of being judged by peers. I will say, I saw very few people under the age of 30 when I attended a massive swingers’ convention in Niagara Falls this past Valentine’s Day. I guess it takes a few decades to grow a pair.

Boobs
Who in god’s name doesn’t like boobs? According to PornHub: millennials. The porn site found people aged 18-24 were 19 percent less likely to search for things like “boobs,” “tits,” or “breasts” when looking for content to help them jerk off. And when they do look for boobs, they tend to prefer fake breasts. Disappointing.

Fabric softener
What the fuck even is this?

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

There’s really no way around it: 2017 was an awful year for climate change. And much—but not all—of that is due to Donald Trump. In his first year as president, Trump staffed his administration with climate deniers and fossil fuel allies, began the process of repealing the Clean Power Plan, pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, and basically did everything possible to halt progress at a time when it desperately needs to be accelerated. As if that isn’t enough, a report in November showed that global emissions grew in 2017 after several years of modest decline, thanks in part to a bump in coal use in China. So yeah, it was a pretty terrible 12 months overall.

But as bad as all these things are, they only tell part of a larger story. Buried in the avalanche of depressing news this year were legitimate reasons for hope. The nine trends and events listed below are not just excuses for wishful thinking: Any of these on their own is a major step forward for fixing climate change. And taken together, they show we might not be as screwed as the year’s headlines suggest.

1. China is making big moves on climate

It’s true that China is the biggest carbon polluter on the planet. And yes, its coal use went up last year. But China is taking serious steps to shift off of fossil fuels. This year alone, the Communist government promised $361 billion in spending on renewables, said that it will be banning gas-powered vehicles, moved to close hundreds of coal plants, and unveiled the world’s largest financial market for reducing emissions. China sees solving climate change as a way to get richer and stronger. And its actions could reshape the entire global economy.

2. Renewables are beating fossil fuels

You wouldn’t know it from all the attention given to the coal industry by Trump’s administration, but renewable energy is doing spectacularly well. There’s a simple economic reason for that: Stuff like wind and solar is getting ridiculously cheap and outcompeting fossil fuels. Over two-thirds of new electricity added to the world in 2016 was from renewables. Prices reached record-breaking lows in Argentina, Chile, India, Denmark, and several other countries, industry tracker REN21 calculated last June. Even the International Energy Agency, which has underestimated renewables in the past, argued in October “what we are witnessing is the birth of a new era.”

3. Clean energy survived the GOP tax bill

There’s a curious fact about the Republican Party’s denial of global warming. It doesn’t include a rejection of renewable energy. In red states such as Texas, Iowa, and Kansas, clean energy is booming and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. So when Republicans in House and Senate proposed big cuts in its tax bill for federal programs that support wind, solar, and electric cars, some Republican congresspeople raised concerns. The final bill, while projected to add more than $1 trillion to the debt to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, nonetheless preserves credits for clean energy that both Democrats and Republicans support.

4. The era of fossil fuel cars is ending

The vast majority of vehicles on today’s roads are still run by gas and diesel. But there were many signs in 2017 this could quickly change. It wasn’t just that Volvo announced plans to only sell electric vehicles and hybrids by 2019. Nor that China, as I noted earlier, will be banning gas-powered cars. There is an emerging consensus among followers of the industry that the entire auto business model is radically changing—shifting from privately owned cars to fleets of robot-driven electric vehicles hailed on your phone. “It saddens me to say it,” acknowledged the former vice chairman of General Motors Bob Lutz in an article for Automotive News, “but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.”

5. Voters are electing climate leaders

Though the big political story of this past year remained the global rise of the far right, there is growing evidence of a progressive backlash. First came the national election this summer in the UK, where a surge of young voters helped create unexpected gains for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Next were the string of Democratic wins in this year's state and local elections. Climate change wasn’t central to any of these elections. But many of the winning candidates, including Doug Jones in Alabama, have promised strong solutions to global warming. And a Democratic “wave” in 2018 could help deliver on them.

6. Fossil fuel divestment keeps growing

Amid the insanity of 2017, a movement urging investors to sell off investments in fossil fuels didn’t grab much attention. But it won some big victories. Indigenous activists helped pressure cities like Seattle and Santa Monica to sell off billions of dollars worth of financial ties to banks financing the Dakota Access Pipeline. And in November, Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund caused European oil stocks to fall after it floated plans to dump $35 billion in oil and natural gas stocks. So far, institutions worth over $5 trillion have committed to some form of divestment.

7. Climate lawsuits are multiplying

Suing governments or companies for causing climate change is hard. With federal leaders unwilling to take action, however, more and more people are willing to try. Researchers from the United Nations and Columbia University calculated that the number of climate lawsuits worldwide has tripled since 2014, with 654 cases in the US alone. Experts like Tim Crosland of the UK climate law group Plan B think that only one big case has to be successful—whether it’s former tobacco lawyer Steve Berman suing big oil or a Peruvian farmer taking on a German utility—to cause an “avalanche” with “the potential really to bring down the fossil fuel companies.”

8. States and cities are stepping up

When California Governor Jerry Brown went to China for an energy conference earlier this year, he got a private meeting with President Xi Jinping. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, who also attended, met with a lower-ranking official. It pretty much sums up US climate policy in 2017: States such as California passed wildly ambitious legislation, while the Trump administration denied basic climate science. Actions of states and cities can’t replace strong and focussed federal policy. Yet they’ve helped the US already get halfway towards its Paris emissions goal.

9. Oil companies are questioning their future

The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell made an astounding prediction in July: Global oil demand could peak and then begin declining in about ten years, due partly to the trends and events I’ve described above. Statoil is making similar predictions. It raises existential questions for an industry whose profits depend on continuous expansion. Others like Chevron are publicly dismissing the concept of peak oil demand—but the fact that big oil is debating it at all means industry leaders are increasingly unsure about their future. With Trump as president the fossil fuel industry has never looked so powerful. In reality, its days may be numbered.

Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change. Follow him on Twitter.

There it is again, then. That question. Creeping up behind you at your Christmas lunch. Drifting into vision on the first nights of December. The ghost of unmade plans. The chill down the back of your neck. The voice that returns in every silent moment.

What are you doing for New Year? I don’t really know, OK? I haven’t thought about it properly. Come on… tell us… what are you doing for the big NYE? I just said, I don’t really know. Better think of something soon, mate. Gets expensive on New Year’s Eve. What does? Everything, mate. Everything? Taxis. Clubs. Drinks. Terribly expensive. Right, well maybe I’ll stay in. Don’t do that, mustn’t do that, very depressing. Okay then, I’ll go out! Good luck, left it a bit late haven’t you?

So you bite. You grit your teeth and emit the question like a gas leak between your molars: What are you doing for New Year’s Eve, then?

"WE BOUGHT TICKETS FOR AN ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD-SOUNDING CLUB NIGHT SIX WEEKS AGO"

Your most organised friends probably bought their tickets to Oval Space or Hidden some time in March. They’ve probably already bulk-bought a fistful of pingers and are starting the pre-drinks on Boxing Day. Feeling pangs of envy at their clearly excellent-sounding plan you slink onto Resident Advisor to have a look – just a little look, no harm in looking – to see if there are any tickets left, only to be greeted by a batch of a "FINAL RELEASE, ENTRY BEFORE 9PM" ones which cost £160 each.

"WE’RE GOING TO BE IN BALI!"

Unfortunately, you’ve made the mistake of asking one of the rich friends you acquired during university, and they’ve told you, through white teeth and taut, tanned skin, that yes, they are going to be in Bali this New Year’s Eve.

We just thought: fuck it. We saw the flights, and they were only £4k return first class, and this little beach hut was only an extra couple of grand, and we just thought: fuck it. We’ve worked so hard this year. Why not do something different?

You can already see the Instagrams: the sea, the sand, the coconut cocktails, the fireworks melting over purple sunsets. New Year is always such a stress to organise, so we thought we’d just get away from it all, they will tell you, as if the only thing standing between you and a trip to Bali was the fact you hadn’t thought of it yet.

"WE ARE DOING SHROOMS IN A CARAVAN OR SOMETHING SIMILARLY SQUALID"

Prepare to sound impressed while the gremlin you’ve ended up sitting next to in the pub bores you to tears with stories of the very, very interesting package he’s expecting from the dark web in the next couple of days. 2CB, few tabs, some shrooms, some kush. Things are going to get weird, he grins at you, before sluicing some Doombar past his prickly lips.

He will start the new year being picked up by a police patrol car in a pair of soiled harem pants, somewhere north of the Brecon Beacons.

Lifes Windows, Flickr

"WE’RE GOING TO A 'WAREHOUSE PARTY'"

It’s the big clubbing brand that killed nightlife in your city, back with their once-in-a-lifetime New Year’s special! Expect fancy dress, gurning 18-year-olds, major brand partnerships and the exact same lineup they had last year – DJs who are also booked to play in six other cities tonight so can only play for half an hour each in a web of ever-inwardly-spiralling B2B sets.

"WE HEARD ABOUT THIS MASSIVE HOUSE PARTY…"

So you’ve got a mate who knows someone who is going out with someone who lives with someone who knows these people having a fucking amazing-sounding party. It’s these guys who live in a converted barn in South-East. There’s a massive pond at the bottom of the garden, they're hiring a bouncer and a lo-fi DJ you've never heard of is going to be on the decks. One of the people throwing the party is a hedge funder, and the other one is Michael Ball’s nephew, or was on Game of Thrones, or something. You will hear about this party once, and then never again. You will chase the rumours through friends of friends, only to be told on the 2nd of Jan that it was the best party ever until the police / the council / Noel Fielding turned up.

"OR THERE'S THIS OTHER PARTY WHICH SOUNDS A BIT MORE... CHILLED"

Ah yes, here’s the party you will probably end up at. The party that is being "thrown" by a group of boring lads simply because they can’t be arsed to go anywhere else. It will end up serving as a liminal space between three other parties in the area, and as such will only house about 12 people at any given time. I mean, people are playing Playstation games – which is the ultimate sign of a terrible party: you’re not even going through the motions of putting on some music and trying to talk to people, you’re literally splayed out on your sofa clicking away at a game of Rocket League.

This is the place you’re "only popping in at", the one where you’re "showing your face", the one you’ll accidentally end up counting in the new year at when you realise Uber is totally over-subscribed, leaving you standing on a freezing cold patio watching some bloke called Paul try to write his name with a sparkler.

Andy Eick, Flickr

"I AM IN A RELATIONSHIP, OK?"

Oops, guess you just asked your mate who has recently gotten themselves into really good relationship what he / she is doing for NYE, and yep, they are going to be spending it with their new beloved. They are going to be booking hotels, they are going to be eating slap-up dinners, they are going to be taking selfies on bridges, they are going to be snogging in front of the fireworks, they are going to be in bed by 2.

"WE’RE ALL GOING ON A CLASSY RURAL SESH"

AirBnBs are fast becoming the new nightclubs. Nobody wants to go out and get fucked any more. They want to book cottages in seaside towns, go on nice long walks, ruin cosy pubs for the locals and then get fucked. So, some of your mates have found some ten person mansion in the Hebrides and they are going to take a bunch of MDMA and laugh at sheep for a couple of days. Probably your well-off media mates, to be honest: nice opportunity for them to lock themselves in a cottage with a bucket of gear and chew each other’s ears off about search-engine optimisation and the state of online content. You’re not invited, no.

"WE ARE GOING TO PAY A TENNER TO GET INTO A PUB"

Picture the scene: you were in here last week for free, but this time you’ve paid over the odds for that tattered raffle ticket you were given on entry. Still, worth every penny for the tinsel hanging behind the bar and the mulch of human bodies that are slowly subsuming you on the squelch towards the bar. There’s a "DJ" playing Blondie songs off their phone, and your coat is going to smell of cigarette smoke for the next 60 years.

"YEAH, I’M WORKING IN THAT PUB"

You’ve fucked it and asked the poor sod who is going to be behind the bar in the aforementioned establishment. You ask, in vain hope: Still, that’ll be fun, right? You can get pissed, right?

No, not really, they tell you. It will be too busy.

Paul Holloway, Flickr

"WE’RE HAVING A DINNER PARTY"

This is how you will be spending every New Year’s Eve past the age of 40, so probably not a bad shout getting a few dry runs in during the next few years. Trouble is, at a dinner party there is nowhere to escape. At least, at a house party, if someone starts gassing about Baby Driver being the film of the year you can walk away and find another room. At a dinner party, you’re strapped in for the whole crazy ride, my friend, like a peasant-thief having bad chat pelted at them in the stocks. There is no wriggling out of this very long discussion about whether or not you can separate art from the artist.

"I WILL BE AT HOME WITH MY PARENTS"

I see how this happens, but that doesn’t stop it from being tinged with melancholy. This is normally the result of someone finding the ordeal of organising New Year’s so stressful they eventually decide not to come back after Christmas. So satisfied are they by the endless wheels of cheese and the box of red wine that’s been sat, wheezing its guts into sticky glasses for the past week, that they simply never come home. Might sound strangely idyllic, but bear in mind there is no FOMO quite like that of scrolling through your mates' Insta-stories while watching your father dribbling yawn-juice into a glass of Advocaat as Jools Holland brings the bell hammer down on another uninspired year in your uninspiring life.

Matt Squirrell, Flickr

"EEK! WE’RE HOSTING OUR FIRST MURDER MYSTERY!"

This response means you’ve probably just asked your friend who went to drama school, or maybe your friend who loves "anything vintage, anything a bit quirky". Yes, they are spending New Year’s Eve with their inner-circle pretending to be a family of Italian mobsters, thanks to a box they were given for Christmas last year. The host will be playing Bonnie Bonvito, the mobster’s wife, and she will spend the evening doing a terrible New York-Italian accent and getting very cross whenever anybody slips out of character. Not for me, personally, but that's just my personal taste.

"JUST GOING TO GO INTO TOWN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS"

Ah, the sadist in your group, who thinks it will be fun to head out and "see where the night takes us" – which means letting the night take you in and out of a variety of different queues outside a variety of different terrible clubs you wouldn’t touch any other night of the year, but are suddenly willing to pay £30 to get into. Lots of wandering the streets, lost at sea, probably bringing the new year in from a rain-spotted bench or the back of an Uber.

"I’M NOT ACTUALLY SURE WHAT I’M DOING, TO BE HONEST"

Eesh, you say. Leaving it a bit late, aren’t you?

@a_n_g_u_s

Disney bought Pixar in 2006. Since 2007, the only year Disney or Pixar hasn't won the Academy of Film Arts and Science’s Best Animated Feature Award was 2001—the one year neither production company had released an eligible film.

This year, Pixar’s Coco will probably snag the statue, which is fine. It’s visually stunning, wholesome, funny, and a box office juggernaut. But there was a lot out there in 2017 that doesn’t mimic the Pixar mold of high production value, #relatable stories about the importance of family. There are stories about broken or cruel families, niche narratives hand-animated by microscopic teams, and surreal parables about humanity’s relationship with technology. For the most part, these aren’t movies you’d watch with your grandma or bring your nephew to during the holidays. Without further ado, here are the best non-Disney/Pixar animated films of the year.

Loving Vincent

You don’t need to know much about Loving Vincent that isn’t in the stunning trailer above. Hundreds of artists factory-produced Vincent van Gogh–style paintings for every frame of the feature-length film. The plot follows an acquaintance of the artist who, in the wake of his suicide, travels all over Europe to return a letter to van Gogh’s brother. In the process, he meets all sorts of kooky, van Gogh associates, rotoscoped from performances by actors like Chris O’Dowd, Saoirse Ronan, and Jerome Flynn. The historicity of the film is up for debate, but exploring the legacy of the archetypal starving artist with such an innovative process earned a standing ovation in the theater where I saw it.

My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea

Comic artist Dash Shaw’s first foray into feature films is the opposite of Loving Vincent. My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea relies on strong writing, memorable lines, and relatable characters to pull viewers through 80 minutes of choppy, low-fi, gorgeous animation. This is an experimental film, animated mostly by Shaw and his wife, Jane Samborski. A skeleton crew pulled the movie together and a handful of A-List actors, including Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon, Maya Rudolph, and Reggie Watts, bring it to life. If you can dig Shaw’s mixed-media visual style, his story of teens navigating floods, sharks, and emotional conflict on a journey to the roof of their sinking high school is more fun than playing hooky.

Napping Princess

Robot fights, virtual reality, surreal dreams, magic, giant robot fights, self-driving cars: There's certainly a lot going on in Kenji Kamiyama's airy new feature, Napping Princess. Set in Japan on the cusp of the 2020 Olympics, the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex alum weaves together two stories. The main plot is a five-minutes-in-the-future speculation about modern technology centered on a nap-prone schoolgirl named Kokone. Conflict arises when her father is arrested for allegedly stealing self-driving car technology from his deceased wife’s former workplace. Kokone is his only hope. Her attempts to rescue dad are intercut with sudden dreams of a Howls Moving Castle–ish realm where medieval hierarchy meets magic and advanced technology. They seem like a distraction, until Kokone realizes her dreams could be the key to saving her father. The premise is kind of out there, but if you’re down to go along for the ride, Napping Princess is a fun and innovative anime for fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in between.

Birdboy: The Forgotten Children

If Aesop's Fables had threesome with Sartre SparkNotes and a My Chemical Romance album cover, the baby might come out something like Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, a not-for-kids film by Spanish animators Alberto Vázquez and Pedro Rivero. Parents suck, conformity is strictly enforced, and drugs—except for the "happy pills" on every mantlepiece—are blamed for all society's ills on an island nation crippled by an industrial disaster. Its only hope is Birdboy, a nice guy who is unfortunately possessed by a demon that scares the daylights out of everyone from murderous rat scavengers in the lawless dump to canine police officers who enforce brutal law and order in town. The only one unafraid of him is Dinki, a quirky white mouse who wants to leave the island and pursue a better life. Birdboy is a brand-new emo classic—Tim Burton with teeth—so if you’re not o-fucking-kay, get to a select theater near you before it’s gone.

The Breadwinner

You may have heard about The Breadwinner because it’s a passion project of Angelina Jolie, who executive produced the animated tale of Taliban-occupied Kabul in the early 2000s. But it’s way more than a feather in her philanthropy cap. Director Nora Twomey, fresh off a streak of award-winning animated films like The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, has beautifully adapted the novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis, based on interviews with Afghan refugees, into a beautiful meditation on childhood, gender, and war. Thirteen-year-old leading lady Saara Chaudry is a joy as Parvana, a fierce young girl who masquerades as a boy to feed her family under the Taliban’s draconian modesty laws. Despite genuinely joyous and beautiful moments, Twomey doesn’t sugarcoat the dark reality of the setting. At a screening and Q&A, I saw an Afghani woman rise and thank the director. She had never seen a mainstream film address this period with such nuance before.

Nerd out about cartoons with Beckett Mufson on Twitter.

US News

Roy Moore Launches Legal Bid to Block Opponent's Victory
The Republican—defeated in the special election for an Alabama Senate seat by 20,000 votes earlier this month—filed a lawsuit late Wednesday night in a bid to stop the state’s canvassing board from naming Democrat Doug Jones the official winner. Moore’s lawyer suggested alleged trickery merited a fraud investigation. Alabama's secretary of state, John Merrill, insisted Jones would be certified as the victor.—AP

Trump Claims to Break Record Is Wrong
Speaking to a group of firefighters in Palm Beach, the president said he had "signed more legislation than anybody… We broke the record of Harry Truman." According to GovTrack, Trump has signed fewer bills, at this point in office, than the previous nine presidents. Trump has signed fewer than half the number of bills Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush had after one year in the White House.—Politico/GovTrack

Crime Rate Continues to Fall in New York City
The latest figures showed fewer than 95,000 major crimes had taken place in the city this year, which would be the lowest number since current forms of record-keeping began. There had been only 236 killings so far in 2017, a remarkable drop from the 2,245 killings that took place in 1990. One noteworthy increase was in "misdemeanor sex crimes," which ticked up 9.3 percent.—The New York Times

Pharma Bro’s Former Lawyer Convicted of Fraud
A federal court found Evan Greebel guilty of conspiring with Martin Shkreli to engage in wire fraud and securities fraud. Prosecutors argued Greebel "hatched a plan" with Shkreli to help him steal $11 million from the pharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc. Greebel now faces up to 20 years in prison.—Bloomberg

International News

Dozens Left Dead After Kabul Bomb Attack
At least 41 people were killed and another 84 injured when at least one suicide bomber stormed a Shia site in the Afghanistan capital, according to the country’s health ministry. The initial blast was reportedly followed by more explosions at the Tabayan cultural center and the adjoining Afghan Voice news agency. ISIS said it was responsible for the attack, claiming a suicide bomber and other explosives were used.—BBC News

Putin Claims Terrorists Responsible for Supermarket Bombing
At least 13 people were hurt after an explosive device blew up in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin described the incident as a terrorist attack, and said another attack planned for the city had been foiled. Russian investigators said the supermarket bomb contained shrapnel.—AP

China Backs Cambodia Over Disputed Election
China’s National Election Commission plans to step in and supply Cambodian officials with equipment needed to hold 2018 general elections. Both the US and the European Union pulled support for the vote after the country’s main opposition party was broken up.—Reuters

Ukraine and Pro-Russian Forces Agree to Major Prisoner Swap
Hundreds of prisoners were exchanged in Ukraine’s Donetsk region Wednesday as part of a deal reportedly mediated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Pro-Russia rebels released 74 Ukrainian soldiers and 235 rebels were handed over in return, according to Ukrainian officials. Their captivity was the legacy of the armed conflict that began in eastern Ukraine in 2014.—Al Jazeera

Everything Else

Obama and Clinton Remain Most Admired Figures
Gallup's annual poll has revealed Barack Obama is still the man Americans most admire, with 17 percent picking the former president. Hillary Clinton remains the most admired woman, with 9 percent choosing her—a 3 percent fall from last year’s poll.—NBC News

Solange Knowles Shares Disorder Diagnosis
The artist revealed on Instagram that she has been "quietly treating, and working through" a disorder affecting the autonomic nervous system. The illness forced Knowles to scrap a planned New Year’s Eve performance in South Africa.—i-D

Former Miss America Winners Will Help Choose New Leaders
A group of former winners of the beauty contest will help appoint new leadership at the Miss America Organization. CEO Sam Haskell and other officials recently resigned after emails showed at least some of them making disparaging remarks about contestants.—Variety

Weed Use Among Pregnant Teens Soars in California
A new study by Kaiser Permanente found marijuana use by pregnant teenagers under the age of 18 rose from 13 percent in 2009 to almost 22 percent in 2016. Among pregnant women aged 18 to 24, it rose from 10 percent to 19 percent.—VICE News

Fruitcake Causes Bomb Scare in Seattle
A ferry terminal in the city was evacuated and incoming boats stopped when a suspicious package was spotted under a decorative tree in the waiting area. Thankfully, the local bomb squad found only fruitcake inside the wrapped box.—VICE

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we revisit an interview with comedian and actor Hannibal Buress.

Evan Greebel, an attorney who once advised Martin Shkreli's drug companies, has been convicted of fraud after a ten-week trial. He was the guy who helped the so-called Pharma Bro pay back jilted investors with stock in Retrophin, a company Shkreli founded. His role was to help cook the books to make the payouts look like consulting contracts and settlements.

Shkreli himself was convicted in August for crimes related to the scheme. His legal team tried—and failed—to paint a picture of a possibly autistic savant who made a big bet and lost, but ultimately didn't hurt anyone since his investors profited in the end. Greebel's lawyer, on the other hand, tried to dig up dirt on government witnesses and to paint a picture of an innocent man whose only crime was happening to know the most hated guy in America.

"We’re just shocked by the decision," Greebel's attorney Reed Brodsky said, according to Bloomberg. "Shkreli himself is so toxic that it's hard to, in today’s environment, get justice."

That isn't an absurd argument. Federal prosecutors made a big show of indicting Shkreli about four months after he jacked up the price of a lifesaving drug by more than 5,000 percent. Between his sleazy business practices and stunts like buying the only copy of legendary rap album and threatening to hide it on top of a mountain, Shkreli made it very difficult to find jurors who said they could be objective about such an obnoxious troll.

Greebel was apparently expressionless as he found out that he'll face up to 20 years in prison, Bloomberg reports. He's currently out on bail awaiting sentencing.

Interestingly, the guilty verdict could affect Shkreli's sentencing, which is scheduled for February 21. He wasn't convicted of looting Retrophin, but now that another judge has determined the crime occurred, the separate judge in charge of determining Shkreli's punishment could take that into consideration.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

While most people have their fair share of first-date horror stories, most of us have the luxury of pretending they never happened and moving on with our lives. A Texas court reporter, however, did not fare as lucky and is now facing felony criminal mischief charges after allegedly getting drunk and destroying $300,000 of her date's high-end art collection.

According to CBS affiliate KHOU, Lindy Lou Layman, 29, went out on a disastrous first date with prominent Houston attorney and Trump fundraiser Anthony Buzbee last weekend before the two ended up back at Buzbee's $14 million mansion. Things apparently started to go downhill when Buzbee called his date an Uber. Layman, who Buzbee says was drunk, allegedly refused to leave and started to scream obscenities before going on an art-destroying rampage.

After Buzbee called Layman a second Uber, she allegedly destroyed three of Buzbee's expensive paintings—including two original $500,000 Warhols—and poured red wine all over them, the Dallas News reports. She then allegedly threw two sculptures—valued at $20,000 a pop—across the room, according to the criminal complaint.

"She also pulled a Renoir and a Monet off the wall," Buzbee told Texas Lawyer. "Luckily those weren’t damaged."

Layman, who ended up causing around $300,000 worth of damage, was arrested on felony criminal mischief charges and taken to jail. She's now out after posting her $30,000 bail.

Buzbee, who once fought with his Home Owners's Association after parking a $600,000 World War II tank outside his house, reportedly disavowed Trump after the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. According to Texas Lawyer, he donated $500,000 to the president's inauguration committee weeks after condemning Trump's comments.

According to BuzzFeed News, Buzbee is still listed on Facebook as being single. It's not clear if he and Layman will be going out on a second date.

Though it was released decades after traditional holiday movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and
Miracle on 34th Street, the 1990 film Home Alone is already a holiday classic. Hitting many emotional sweet spots, the film evokes both 90s nostalgia and holiday magic while capturing
the wonder of childlike imagination.

Although it explores every kid’s fantasy of freedom without parental supervision, Home Alone is ultimately a celebration of family. The dysfunctional McCallister family makes your own relatives seem perfect by comparison, and every December, many let the McCallisters into their own homes to rewatch as they ditch their son on the way to the airport. There’s just something about the McCallisters’ chaos that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy during the holiday season.

If you haven’t seen Home Alone in a while, you’ll probably find that the movie is probably more violent than you remember it being. “There are plenty of articles about how, in real life, the robbers would've been dead or maimed from all the injuries,” actor Michael C. Maronna, who played Jeff McCallister, says. And it’s true: little Kevin McCallister dishes out some lethal tactics to beat up the bad guys like a miniature action hero, taking out his frustration on two bumbling, house-invading burglars (portrayed by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) after enduring relentless abuse from his siblings and cousins.

But at its core, Home Alone’s message is about empowering the helpless and innocent, flipping the inherent power imbalance between children and adults with bad intentions. And despite the comical violence, Home Alone a kid-centric movie; many of the film’s supporting actors were children, and the bulk of the screen time belongs to ten-year-old Macaulay Culkin.

Following the massive success of Home Alone and the 1992 sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Macaulay Culkin was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stars. But since the mid-90s, he’s mostly lived his life away from the spotlight, and even though Culkin’s claimed that he’s “essentially retired,” an air of intrigue continues to follow the star of the highest-grossing comedy of the 90s.

We spoke with members of the McCallister family about their impressions of castmate
Macaulay Culkin, Michael Jackson’s visit to set, and their favourite memories portraying the filmic family.

Senta Moses Mikan (Actor, Tracy McCallister): What makes Home Alone so special is that it's about family. It has a lot of heart, outside of all the hijinks that [Kevin] pulls in the house. It's about wanting to be with family and realizing how important it is to have family around you.

Terrie Snell (Actor, Aunt Leslie): There was a fun, family atmosphere on set. The kids were everywhere, and it was so delightful because you could watch them all building their relationships with each other and becoming close.

Diana Rein (Actor, Sondra McCallister): I remember the cast having dinner one night, and I was joking around with the kids and John Heard [who portrayed Peter McCallister]. I had the brilliant idea to stick an ice cube down the back of his shirt. He was wearing a silk shirt, and wardrobe got so mad at me. I turned bright red, but John came to my defense.

Mikan: We hung out a lot in our downtime and after shooting. We were such a tight unit, and that's what comes across onscreen.

Jedidiah Cohen (Actor, Rod McCallister): In addition to working together, the kids were all effectively in school together. In between scenes, we'd be working with tutors on school assignments. We shared an experience during our formative years, and that will always be a bond between us.

Kristin Minter (Actor, Heather McCallister): I was a little older [than the other kids] and my parents weren't there, so I was on my own. All the kids would watch movies in my room and order pizza.

Rein: We even planned a couple of group trips on the weekends we weren't working, just to hang out and have fun together.

Mikan: I feel sorry for the Assistant Director, because there were a lot of us and we had a lot of energy.

Minter: I think the movie did so well because the joy comes across. Also, every kid's fantasy is to be left home alone and have a good time—I mean, not for the robbers to come. But every little kid wants to spend some time without their family, without discipline, doing whatever they want to do.

Maronna: Home Alone really helped us conquer a lot of our fears. What could be more of a nightmare than a kid’s parents being out of town and two burglars breaking into the house? Somehow, it works out all really nicely.

Snell: Home Alone came at a time when empowerment of young people was something
that hadn't really been investigated. This was one of the first movies in our era that showed
that a child could empower himself and take care of things.

Maronna: Director Chris Columbus knew how to make a hit movie out of child empowerment. The Goonies, which he wrote, was all about that—kids marooned without adult protection, defeating menacing creeps. He definitely knew how to make the movie the right way.

Rein: The film had the advantage of being a holiday movie, but my family laughed so hard the first time we saw it. The physical comedy was definitely a winner, and the premise that a little boy could outsmart some burglars really touched the audience.

Maronna: It’s kind of like watching Tom and Jerry—the compelling contrast of this angelic, sweet-faced kid doing these dastardly things.

Minter: Mac[aulay] was so adorable. He was just a totally normal kid. Here's this kid who's the star of this movie with Catherine O'Hara and Joe Pesci, and he's just ten years old!

Snell: Macaulay was hysterical as a little kid. The family had a swear jar, and there were some slips of the tongue on set. Macaulay had a brown paper bag that he would go around with, and every time somebody swore, he made them put a quarter in the brown paper bag.

Mikan: Mac was a cool kid. He was, obviously, very precocious for his age. We had fun together on set. It wasn't like he was treated any different than us. He was part of the family. Despite what happened with him and his career—becoming this huge star because of the movie—he was just Mac. A goofy little ten-year-old kid.

Minter: Imagine the pressure Macaulay had as a ten-year-old—he's the whole movie. He talks to himself in half of it. I can understand why he stepped away from the spotlight. I think that he was under a tremendous amount of pressure.

Snell: Mac was such a sweet kid in the beginning—a kid doing something that he thought was fun. By the time we made the second movie, there was a lot more sophistication to him, because he’d done other things.

Rein: One time, we had a rehearsal in front of the Evanston house on a weekend, and all of a sudden we see Macaulay arriving with Michael Jackson. We were all so surprised and excited. He hung out with us for a bit and took pictures with us. He was pretty shy, but kind.

Mikan: It actually happened during the second movie. I have a photo of it. We were outside the McCallister house when a white van with no windows pulled up, and Michael Jackson got out. He came to visit Mac, and he spent the whole day on set with us, which was completely surreal.

Cohen: While I don't generally introduce myself by telling people I was in Home Alone, it’s of universal interest. Invariably, mutual friends bring it up within a few minutes, and people are a mix of amazed, amused, and interested. It's a conversation piece that I include on my resumé, and it’s come up in every job interview I've ever been on.

Maronna: The movie’s presence in my life now is mostly limited to this time of year—getting text messages and calls like, “I'm here with my family and your face comes on the screen. How are you?” That type of stuff. But it's helped finance my lifestyle for the last 25 years as well.

Rein: Being on the Home Alone set made me fall in love with filmmaking, and it was terribly sad to say goodbye to my movie family. It also created an addict out of me, in the sense that I was always looking for my next “fix” to book something. It sent me on a 20-year journey that I gave everything to, without getting much in return. It messed with my sense of self-worth. I was always looking outside of myself for validation. It wasn't easy.

During my adult years, I went through a phase where I resented the movie. It wasn't until a few years ago, when my son was old enough to see it for the first time, that I fully embraced it again and was proud of the fact that I was a part of something special and unique.

2017 is the year I lost my mind. Or the year I found it. It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays.

I don’t mean “2017” as the literal calendar year. I mean as a historical moment. History is a coat of many colours and our threads started spinning a long time before 2017, and they will continue indefinitely after. But this year is the one where it really feels like we’ve gone through the looking glass that is the 21st century. The world we left is never coming back and our next destination is still somewhere out of sight.

Every day is something new, and every day is exactly the same.

You wake up in the morning and reach for your smartphone. You skim your newsfeeds for the fresh new hell each day will bring. US President Donald Trump said and/or did something wacky? Another record-breaking mass shooting? International incident between nuclear powers? Beloved public figure committed vicious sexual crimes? White nationalists are marching on Virginia and murdering people with cars? YouTube videos radicalized so many people into believing the Earth is flat that one guy built a rocket in his garage to prove it? A random person that you never heard of 30 seconds ago said something problematic on the internet? Praise the Lord and pass the goddamn benzos: it’s another red-letter day for content.

So much happens in the run of a week or a day or even an hour that it becomes impossible to hold anything in your head. You forget that Fyre Festival happened or that Kim Jong-Un’s brother was murdered in a Malaysian airport by a woman wearing a ‘LOL’ sweater or that Ted Cruz liked a porn tweet or that the US president repeatedly threatened to start a nuclear war, because the world is a nonstop horrorshow beamed directly to your eyes. (Soon it will be superimposed on your surroundings, like Pokemon Go but for anxiety.)

The world has always been a parade of nightmares and bullshit. But once upon a time, you could give all this up and log off and go the fuck outside. Most of us can’t do that anymore. The border between the mad world of the internet and the maddening world of flesh and blood is growing thinner every day. And it goes both ways; your FitBit can be hijacked as part of a Bulgarian ransomware attack on the US Department of Agriculture, and most public discourse has already dissolved into an unmoderated media flamewar that has put the trolls in power.

Every real thing that happens is broken down into a million ephemeral shards that endlessly slice through our screens. A series of algorithms, built out of the pieces of your life scattered across the internet, ceaselessly brings you new content designed to provoke you into interaction and distraction and consumption. Anger, sadness, laughter, joy, disdain, nostalgia, fear, whatever. Like and share and hashtag. Click click click. Welcome to the arms race to monetize the human brain.

This is a strange moment in social life when we can feel the ground shifting beneath our feet and see the void peering up through the floorboards. Nobody is who they seem and nothing is what it appears. Time feels distorted; fast and slow and stopped altogether. Anxiety is everywhere. The present is unbearable but the future is unthinkable. Small wonder mass culture is trapped in an endless nostalgia loop, desperate to clamour back into our 1980s Eden. The Emperor wears no clothes and the King has left the building; there is no social operator’s manual and there are no adults that you can call for help.

There is no time to catch your breath. The mad masterless machine we call late capitalism must smash forward through the bodies of the poor and the limits of the Earth and the fragile trellis that holds the human mind together. It is clearing the path for the world it makes in its own image. It is racing us towards the edge of something, some great blind hill on a cliffside, pedal to the metal, spinning out of control. Everyone is scrambling for the wheel. Nobody is reaching for the brake.

There are many days when it feels that the world has already gone over that edge. That it’s been too late since before I was born. That it’s only now in the geological microseconds before The End where we see exactly how fucked up everything is and always has been and how utterly powerless anyone is to do anything about it.

There are some days when I believe that this is true. But as they used to say in Newfoundland: “we have to live in hopes, supposing we die in despair.” Turn the lesson of 2017 on its head: if the old world is coming undone, then there are no fucks left to give. This year has been more than just wreckage: it has been a reckoning. The silver lining on a cloud of generalized nihilism is earnest vulnerability. The sky is falling; let’s pull it down together and storm heaven.

The real watershed moment this year, beyond an impressive display of cruel and craven idiocy by the global ruling class, is that 2017 marks the inaugural year of a new phase in the sexual revolution.

This, too, has been building for years. But #MeToo seems to have finally exposed the vast architecture of male sexual entitlement—as well as its small army of enablers—to those who have otherwise enjoyed the luxury of ignorance. The tide it has loosed in Hollywood will not stop anytime soon. It will roll across the world and sweep through every bedroom, until every man worth the title stops and listens and reaches deep inside his heart to renounce the genital rapacity that has been promised him as his birthright.

The dog days are over. God damn you indeed if you skip that long look in the mirror for the roots and seeds of violence.

The process will not be smooth, shot through as it is by a thousand other intersecting political projects. It is an open secret to the Extremely Online that anti-feminism is a gateway drug to white nationalism and the cold embrace of fascism. Gamergate was the canary in the coal mine for the current digital kulturkampf. The well of reactionary rage is deep and seems unlimited, and the backlash will be fierce and ugly. But a revolution is not a dinner party. No one ever promised it would be easy—only that it would be worth it in the end.

One day all this will end, and we will come out on the other side. This is how you survive the existential crisis of this year and all the ones to come. You learn how to see, with an almost psychotic clarity, the ugliness around and inside you without losing the golden thread of hope that makes life bearable. You learn to be bent and warped and frayed by the forces beyond your control without ever really breaking. You learn how to stop time; to hold still in your mind those brief moments of peace and light that can still be found if you understand how and where to look.

This kind of survival is maddening. But it’s also the only way you can remain sane. And if that’s not a perfect paradox to cap off 2017, I don’t know what is.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

As Canadians we spend approximately 57 percent of our waking life saying “Hey, he/she/they are Canadian!” since we have a national case of young sibling syndrome. But it is true, we do a lot of cool shit in this country and don’t get much credit for our culture beyond hockey and Celine Dion. Anyways, this intro is already too long so here’s a list of Canadian content that we at VICE Canada want to highlight from 2017.

Lido Pimienta
"Anger motivates me a lot," Lido Pimienta told us between otherworldly vocal runs at the Art Gallery of Ontario last year. “Getting my power back is also very important.” The Columbian-Canadian singer’s reflection became an apt summary of 2017, a year of much resolve forged in deep pain. Her lush 2016 debut album, La Papessa, led to a stunning Polaris Music Prize win last fall, but not without white critics decrying her acceptance speech as “unprofessional.” Pimienta refused to back down from her spontaneous triumph and jabs at racism, raising her voice again to call out a racist volunteer during Halifax Pop Explosion, affirming the importance of safer spaces for people of colour. Let Pimienta’s wisdom across all these year-end lists foreshadow an even bigger 2018 for her career. —Jill Krajewski

Unfounded - Robyn Doolittle, Globe and Mail
Before the New York Times ripped open a global conversation around sexual assault and harassment in Hollywood and beyond, Canadians were unknowingly a few months ahead of the curve thanks to some heavy-hitting data journalism by Robyn Doolittle. Like those later 2017 reports, this one crystalised the way we think about a widespread injustice hiding in plain sight. Doolittle uncovered massive disparities across police forces when it comes to how sexual assault allegations are labeled and investigated, with one in five cases dismissed entirely as “unfounded.” It did the unimaginable—actually changed policing for the better. —Sarah Berman

Alvvays - Antisocialites
It’s been three years since “Archie, Marry Me” capitulated this Toronto-by-way of the Maritimes band to Canadian indie rock darling status. And while nothing on Antisocialites quite reaches Archie’s perfection, you will find 10 extremely well-crafted indie pop songs on this record. Alternating between 60s garage rock and 80s Anglo synth pop, Alvvays is elevated by Molly Rankin’s melodic penchant for late 20-something melancholy, best seen on should-be Toronto anthem “Forget About Life.” —Josh Visser

METZ - Strange Peace
Going to see METZ’s album release/homecoming show in Toronto on a Friday night back in September was a perfect release valve for all the pent-up frustration with the constant stream of bullshit that has been 2017. The entire crowd seemed ready to embrace the sonic assault and let the sheer power of amped-up decibel levels blast away the bad vibes—the pit was a sloshing, sweaty mess of spilled beer and late-30-somethings colliding together in reckless abandon. It was a fitting scene, considering the Toronto trio’s third (and best, imo) album, Strange Peace, is a perfect soundtrack to this ongoing apocalypse. Engineered by Steve Albini—an inevitable choice for a band so clearly steeped in the AmRep oeuvre—the album builds upon the Metz’s penchant for atonal riffage and massive drum grooves, by adding more layers of sprawling noise reminiscing of their early “Blue” 7-inch (yeah, I’ll be that guy) and tightening up the lyrical punch. Some days, “Lost in the Blank City” on infinite repeat is the only way to get through. —Chris Bilton

CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show
Baroness von Sketch continues to be genuinely funny. The all-female sketch comedy troupe returned for a second season of biting social commentary, physical humour and absurdity. The highlight of the season was a mimed childbirth sequence in the middle of a dance floor. —Maisie Jacobson

Daniel Caesar
It was the year of Daniel Caesar, who just played five magical sold out shows in Toronto, resulting in five nights of amazing Instagram stories and an unknown number of marriage proposals. Everyone’s rooting for Danny, whose soulful indie R&B debut Freudian, an emotional rollercoaster of an album about what he’s described as “the most intense relationship of my life,” has picked up two Grammy nominations and racked up hundreds of millions of streams without the backing of a label and little radio play in Canada. Not bad for a 22-year-old from Oshawa. More of him, everywhere. —Tamara Khandaker

Feist - Pleasure
While Feist might not receive the same kind of attention as she did in the post-iPod Nano commercial heyday a decade ago, she has continued to put out ridiculously great albums. Metals deservedly won the 2012 Polaris prize (full disclosure, I was on the grand jury), but her follow-up, Pleasure, is even better. Feist seems to have embraced the vibe of her one-off pairing with metal stalwarts Mastodon—aka Feistodon—and pushed her sound into a looser, grungier depths of expansive riffs (check the title track) and disaffected signalongs (“Any Party”). This should be on any self-respecting Canadian’s year-end playlist. —Chris Bilton

Maudie
Maude Lewis, Canada’s beloved Maritime folk artist you’d probably never heard of, got a biopic this year. The film explores illness and creativity, and includes an unusually nuanced depiction of a marriage with a striking power imbalance. Sally Hawkins gives a beautiful performance, much of it within the confines of a tiny house (but way before that was a thing). —Maisie Jacobson

Jacques Greene - Feel Infinite
Toronto-based Montrealer Jacques Greene has gained a solid reputation in the electronic music world by being one of the few people who can pull off consistently flawless live sets. In a scene where LPs are becoming more and more uncommon, Greene impressed everyone once more by dropping Feel Infinite last March. The 11 tracks perfectly showcase the producer’s ability to create dark yet energetic club anthems, all while using samples as forgotten as Amerie’s ‘That’s What U R’ on ‘I Won’t Judge’, and enlisting friend and collaborator AsianDan to play live bass on ‘Real Time’. — Billy Eff

NHL Playoffs Actually Had Canadian Teams
For one brief shining moment, Canadian hockey teams were great again. After coming off the bleak 2016 playoffs where none made the playoffs, five of the Canadian teams made the postseason. The only two that didn’t make it were the Jets and the Canucks (and let’s be real here, everyone hates the Canucks.) Hell, Erik Karlsson, on his back, hauled the Ottawa Senators to the Eastern Finals. Most importantly though—the Oilers and the Leafs made their triumphant return to the after party. The Leafs put up one of the most entertaining series of the playoffs against the Capitals and the Oilers made it to the second round.

The playoffs ended as it usually does—with an American team led by a Canadian hoisting the Cup but that doesn’t matter all that much though. ‘Cause in the end, for one small but glorious moment, post-season hockey in Canada meant something again. —Mack Lamoureux

Kent Monkman’s show Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience at the Art Museum At the University of Toronto
Cree artist Kent Monkman’s contribution to Canada 150 turned our country’s archaic colonial narrative on its head. Monkman’s alter ego, the two-spirited Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, led us through the last 300 years from an indigenous perspective with tenacity, wit and stilettos. If you missed it, it’s being released as a book in 2018. —Maisie Jacobson

Travis Lupick - Fighting for Space
This is a deeply researched account of Vancouver's first overdose epidemic, and necessary reading for anyone trying to put 2017’s terrifying stats in perspective. There are some truly gutting scenes in here that prove it's always been a life-or-death battle to simply exist as an addicted person. In the face of police harassment that treated them like pests to be quarantined, drug users built up their own support network in the 90s and fought hard for the harm reduction transformations that experts now tour the world talking about. Back then 100 deaths was enough to get a public health emergency declared, but it was still a years-long struggle to get basic life-saving policies put in place. —Sarah Berman

The $60 phone deal

My last Rogers bill was more than $200 because apparently I’m a data fiend. For years, I’ve wanted a reasonably-priced plan that was data heavy but Canada doesn’t (and maybe never will) offer unlimited data plans. So imagine my shock when my friend told me Koodo was offering a $60 deal for 10 GB of data, and unlimited calling and texting. I didn’t even hesitate to ditch my decade-long relationship with Rogers. I did it so fast that I didn’t realize Rogers was offering the same deal. Long story short, all the major cell companies in Canada ended up offering customers this bargain for a limited time—finally some healthy competition. And Canadians went nuts. We waited on the phone for hours, only to get hung up on and dial in again. We set foot in shopping malls—at Christmas—with the hopes that it would be easier to sign up in person. And we posted about it on every form of social media. Canadians are starved for decent cell phone plans, so it’s no wonder we reacted that way. Even though it’s a service I’ll be paying for, and probably pales in comparison to what Americans can get, I still kind of feel like I won something. Sad. —Manisha Krishnan

Sappyfest
With music, beer, friends, and beds all within stumbling distance, this little festival that could in Sackville, New Brunswick is frosh week-meets-summer camp but better. Happier. Cozier. At Sappyfest 12, headliner Lido Pimienta moved more hips in the Maritimes than ever, guitar heroes Partner made the main tent a hotbox mosh pit, and legendary songwriter Willie Thrasher reminded us to sit down, be humble. Every community-branded festival with a food truck and Emerging Artist Stage™ is trying to be Sappy. Once you meet the real deal—complete with the best (only?) bowling-alley venue Thunder & Lightning—you’ll be charmed for life. Sappy forever. —Jill Krajewski

Marilyn Gladu’s weed poem in parliament
With weed legalization around the corner, it’s been a banner year for reefer madness-spreading politicians. Quebec’s Minister for Rehabilitation, Youth Protection, and Public Health Lucie Charlebois said she was scared weed is laced with fentanyl while Conservative MP Peter Kent one-upped her by claiming cannabis is “just as deadly” as fentanyl. Not to be outdone, fellow Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu read aloud an anti-weed poem in the House of Commons. This is the best stanza:

“The Grits will allow four pot plants in each dwelling,
Regardless of how bad each place will be smelling,
With mold, ventilation as issues unplanned,
This bill will not keep pot from our children's hand.”
—Manisha Krishnan

Hatecopy - Trust No Aunty
25-year-old artist Maria Qamar, best known as Hatecopy, has built a cult following around her pointed pop art meets Bollywood prints. Both skewering and honouring the legend of the Desi "aunty," Qamar's work takes on a slice of life inhabited by South Asian women featuring poisoned chai, burnt rotis and the daily drama of living. The bright, poppy paintings have found big fans in the likes of Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham. Her book Trust No Aunty pulls together her collection of aunties with recipes and practical advice on surviving womanhood, regardless of race. —Amil Niazi

This insane investigation into a Quebec chef's totally made up life aka Apollocalypse

With several restaurants, his own line of pasta products and a fan base consisting of all of Quebec's aunts and grandmas, celebrity chef Giovanni Apollo was on top of the world. Alas, 2017 was really not his year. First, there were the sexual misconduct allegations, followed by a massive, jaw-dropping investigation into the web of lies he'd spent his life weaving. For one, it was revealed that Giovanni —whose entire brand was built around his Italian heritage— was actually a French dude named Jean-Claude. This fine fibber had also pretended he’d trained under master chef Paul Bocuse, lied about working at the Élysée Palace and apparently once served horse steak passed off as exotic (and illegal) wildebeast meat, to name but a few of the many untruths outlined in this insane saga. Inexplicably, grandmas and aunts all over the province continue to stand by him. —Brigitte Noël

Black Mirror is the apex of every “the grass is greener on the other side” show right now. You may have it bad, but the mirror wants to show you something worse. It takes all that technology you love so much, churns the bitch; squeezing out all that goodness, until you’re found on a farm rocking a straw hat and some chin scruff.

It’s what Charlie Brooker’s ‘Black Mirror’ does ceasely well; take our reliances on modern technology, while throwing it in our faces and calling it a show—disastrous, dystopian nihilism included. Having seen season 4, I can disturbingly say that none of that has changed, but from that, it’s important to understand how one should watch this season. You don’t just down the show with one swift gulp, you temper those emotions. With its multiple genres and tonal differences, it’s all over the map like years, and you gotta know how to navigate. Balance it, so at least you’re left thinking, but at the very least, can still eye that smart phone without tossing it.

Episode 1: USS Callister

Now granted, this is your basic, feature-length Star Trek spoof and a half, but it’s also digestible as hell. This isn’t the wipe it from memory sort of Black Mirror affair. Because unlike other entries, there’s a concept around virtual reality, and the morals that should extend to those worlds, through the lens of a cliched as hell, final frontier shtick. Jesse Plemons ( Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad) doing a Captain Kirk imitation that’s entirely on point is only a small selling point compared to the overall watch. Peep this one first as a precursor to the royal fuckery that’s about to come.

Episode 3: Crocodile

What makes a good lie believable is the fact that it sounds believable. But take that shit muddling within the insides of your brain, all those alternative facts/sentences and toss it out. That’s the scenario Crocodile presents; a piece of tech that can read your mind like a projected episode on display. How far are we willing to go to keep those secrets when we no longer can? Pretty fucking...god-dammit...she killed that...good god...fuck that chick…- far. Have a drink on hand with this one.

Episode 4: Hang the DJ

This is a definite breather from Crocodile. The concept is simple. Imagine a world where we follow our Tinder matches literally. Like it’s an entire law and shit. We’re matched, un-matched as the triangle goes, until we find that perfect other. Hang the DJ is a classic ode to love in a social media age with a twist, and a dash of WTF. It’s pretty much the only kind of love story that you’re getting out of Black Mirror this season so enjoy it.

Episode 5: Metalhead

It’s basically Terminator, folks—Terminator if it was a metal dog without a backstory and all that shit. Compared to the topics liable to disturb, this is the least of them, mostly because we haven’t hit Skynet territory just yet; it’s the least believable. But in terms of tension, it’s up there, mostly in what we aren’t told. We’re so used to technology without faces. Ones that don’t express emotion. But imagine our greatest fears shaped like something we’re supposed to love. One that outnumbers us, and wants to kill us. What would that look like? Sound like? Feel like? Metal Head is about as close to that, Black Mirror Style, as we’re going to get. And if you’re a film head, it’s the most artistically shot.

Episode 2: Arkangel

Just about everyone should be able to identify with this. If you’ve had a parent or sibling that loved you, loved you so much that you could feel the overbearing weight of that sickening love, this is the one. Archangel like many, uses a piece of technology to play with the theme of momism and overprotection. Like the current tracking devices that parents already inject into their kids and pets, there’s an added level of surveillance at play here. One that dangerously flirts with the moral limits of privacy. No killer robots and shit here, but a whole lot to think about and question parents about.

Episode 6: Black Museum

This’ll rightfully bring you back down to earth. This is your quintessential Black Mirror episode within a Black Mirror episode...episode. Take Tales From the Crypt, put a tech spin on it, and you have “Black Museum.” As the story goes, you got a girl that finds herself in the middle of a crime museum, and a curator that starts telling her all the cautionary tales around the pieces of technology that riddle the space. This was the least compelling to me in the sense that it felt like a “don’t do drugs”—iPhone on a pan (instead of an egg)—sort of episode. A good time but pretty forgettable.

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

If you thought 2018 couldn't possibly be worse than 2017, think again, because New Year's Eve marks the final day customers can enjoy Guy-talian Nachos and Donkey Sauce at Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant.

According to Eater, Guy's American Kitchen and Bar will shutter its doors by January 1, after five years of offering tourists and people who don't know any better "hand crafted signature beers, killer cocktails, and rockin' tunes." In other words, the population of Manhattan's Flavortown will soon be zero.

It's sad news, as the restaurant has always remained relatively popular because of—or perhaps in spite of—its bad reputation. In 2012, fellow celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain visited the place twice, where he concluded that "it's single-handedly turned the neighborhood into the Ed Hardy district." That same year, Pete Wells, the New York Times food critic, infamously gave the establishment zero stars, in a review that was written as a series of questions posed to Fieri himself:

"Guy Fieri, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square?"

"Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?"

"Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret —a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers—called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?"

Still, the restaurant always attracted its fair share of hungry customers and Fieri fans. In 2016, Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli dined there for two hours and livestreamed the entire thing. And this year, the second annual FieriCon saw its attendance swell as roughly 100 college-aged would-be Fieris barhopped around Midtown until they ended in Fieri's own American Kitchen. Before it closes down, those who want to experience the "turbo-charged action you need to make your NYE party go up to eleven" can shell out $119 for a ticket to eat at the restaurant on its last night and ring in the new year.

It's unclear why Fieri is closing the joint and resigning as New York's mayor of Flavortown, but in a statement obtained by the Times, he wrote: "I'm proud that for over five and a half years, Guy's American in New York City served millions of happy guests from all over the world. And upon the restaurant's closing, I'd like to say thank you to all of the team members and guests who made it all happen."

Never fear, though. It's not all a complete loss. You can still eat Fieri's food at places like a beach in Mexico or a casino in Philadelphia, and catch him licking his fingers at diners, drive-ins, and dives across the country. While we may have to say goodbye to his "high octane American roadhouse" in New York, we'll always have love, peace, and taco grease.

Follow Alex Norcia on Twitter.

Mohammad Bagher Gerami is dying of brain cancer in a Montreal hospital. No treatment in Canada, where the 73-year-old retired surgeon is a legal permanent resident, has stopped the spread, and he’s lost his ability to speak and move. The good news: California doctors have told his family that they can help him with a special treatment only available there.

But US officials have so far denied Gerami entrance into the country since he is a native of Iran—one of the countries placed under the Trump administration’s travel ban, which bars visitors from several Muslim-majority nations plus Venezuela and North Korea.

“This is our last hope,” Gerami’s daughter Sophia Gerami, an engineer based in Calgary, told me. She shared a letter from Canadian doctors to the US embassy, which urged them to grant him a visa since “his diagnosis is poor in Canada,” and he only has a chance with the experimental treatment in California.

“He’s in a very critical condition—why should they not grant him a visa? It’s humanity,” she said.

Gerami is one of countless foreigners shut out from the US because of their nationality after Donald Trump’s third and latest travel ban was allowed to take effect this month amid continuing legal challenges. The travel ban—created by executive order—is just one of many historic shifts in the US immigration system this year, which is being transformed by a president who seems to think that “putting America first” means converting a nation of immigrants to one increasingly closed to them.

Since Trump was inaugurated in January, he has taken major steps to make it more difficult for new immigrants to enter the country and for those who are already here to remain. Though he has not achieved some of his most high-profile, extreme promises pledged on the campaign trail—such as the construction of a border wall funded by Mexico, the creation of a “deportation force” that would round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants, and an end to birthright citizenship—the president has reframed immigration as a threat to US security and prosperity. Here are the most important ways Trump has affected immigration in 2017:

Trump Has Moved to Restrict Legal Immigration

Trump is the first president in decades to fight for a major reduction in legal—not just illegal—immigration. Claiming immigrants are taking jobs from US citizens, he has begun a series of administrative changes to make it harder to obtain a visa to enter the US, along with supporting legislation that would drastically lower the cap of visas granted each year.

“The most historic change this administration has made is changing the conversation around legal immigration,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, told me. “Previously, it was just such a standard that legal immigration is a net positive and so tied up in our heritage. Before the idea of reducing legal immigration was fringe.”

The April executive order “Buy American, Hire American,” which Trump claimed would result in higher wages and employment rates for US workers, called on the government to increase scrutiny of applications for the H-1B, or skilled worker, visa, of which there are 85,000 granted each year.

Since then, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued more requests for evidence from applicants to show they serve a role that couldn’t easily be filled by a citizen. This has caused delays in the approval process, Anastasia Tonello, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me.

“Things are very much in flux,” said Tonello, who noted that USCIS had also issued new guidelines for accepting applications from computer programmers and economists.

Approval rates for H-1B visas have already begun to drop: 86 percent and 82 percent of H-1B applications were approved this October and November, compared with 93 percent and 92 percent for the same months last year, according to data shared by USCIS.

“It is true that we’ve issued more Requests for Evidence recently. This increase reflects our commitment to protecting the integrity of the immigration system,” said USCIS public affairs officer Carolyn Gwathmey. “We understand that RFEs can cause delays, but the added review and additional information gives us the assurance we are approving petitions correctly. Increasing our confidence in who receives benefits is a hallmark of this administration and one of my personal priorities.”

Still, Gwathmey said the annual approval rate for visas remained above 10 percent, and she noted that USCIS is still considering new measures to further implement Trump’s “Buy American Hire American” order, including a “thorough review of employment based visa programs.”

Trump has just begun his efforts to slash legal immigration, and more drastic cuts appear on the horizon for 2018, Pierce projected. This month Trump called for an end to “chain migration,” or visas based on family ties, and he has already begun the process of rescinding work authorizations to the spouses of H-1B recipients. And he has thrown his support behind legislation that would cut legal immigration in half (that bill, the RAISE Act, seems unlikely to pass).

To Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reductions to legal and illegal immigration, Trump’s proposals are “long overdue.”

“Legal immigration is simply too high and badly run,” he told me. “What worked during our country’s adolescence doesn't work in our maturity.”

Trump Has Made More Undocumented Immigrants Vulnerable to Deportation

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were protected under the Obama administration are now in limbo, or being told to leave, after Trump decided to end two pivotal programs shielding them from deportation.

In September, Trump announced the end of DACA, the Obama-era program providing deportation relief and work permits to young immigrants brought to the US illegally as children. Roughly 800,000 of these immigrants—who often don’t remember a home other than the US—had status under DACA, a protection that has begun to expire.

"Every week since since Trump's termination of DACA, 850 immigrant youth have fallen out of status and lost their protections from deportation, their jobs, their driver's license, their ability to go to college, and peace of mind,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, advocacy director at United We DREAM, a nonprofit created by and for immigrant youth.

Trump also removed temporary protected status from 60,000 Haitians who were granted it after the country’s 2010 earthquake, along with 2,500 Nicaraguans granted it in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch. That means that within months, these residents—some who have lived here for decades—must leave or they will be eligible for deportation.

Trump's Administration Is Prioritizing All Undocumented Immigrants for Deportation

Just five days after his inauguration, Trump sent shockwaves through the immigrant community with an executive order making all undocumented residents priorities for deportation. The Obama administration, by contrast, had focused its efforts on serious criminals and recent border crossers.

“Interior enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States,” Trump’s executive order explained. “Many aliens who illegally enter the United States and those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas present a significant threat to national security and public safety.”

Within weeks, a wave of raids proved Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents would indeed pick up any undocumented immigrant in their wake. Out of ICE’s 110,568 arrests in fiscal year 2017, nearly one-third—31,888 detainees—had no criminal convictions, according to Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of ICE’s year-end removal data. More than 90 percent of the individuals removed from the interior by the Obama administration in fiscal year 2016 had been convicted of what the administration deemed “serious crimes.”

“We saw a lot of really sympathetic cases of deportations that shouldn't have taken place,” Stephen Legomsky, former chief counsel of USCIS under the Obama administration, told me of enforcement in 2017. “The Obama administration really did focus almost all its enforcement efforts on people who posed a real danger in the US or were apprehended at border, whereas the Trump administration has given free rein to ICE agents.”

Immigrant advocates say these deportations have separated families, struck fear throughout the immigrant community, and given ICE agents too much discretion in their enforcement.

But Krikorian said the change was “clearly a positive” development and “simply a restoration of normal immigration enforcement.”

“Under Obama, only the bad guys were targeted. Ordinary lawbreakers were in effect protected from law enforcement,” said Kriokorian. “That’s essentially saying breaking the law shouldn't have consequences.”

Trump Has Slashed Refugee Admissions

Just as the world reached a record high in displaced people since the end of World War II, Trump used his executive power to slash US refugee admissions to their lowest level in the history of the program. Where Obama had set the annual cap at 110,000, Trump slashed that number to 45,000 in a September proposal to Congress.

“The President has made clear that in the admission of refugees for resettlement, the safety and security of the American people is paramount,” Stephanie Sandoval, a spokesperson for the State Department, told me in an email, noting that all refugees were undergoing “enhanced security vetting procedures.”

To American citizens and politicians wary of the US resettlement program, this reduction was a welcome shift and served to help keep the country safe.

But the extreme reduction in resettlement numbers has been disastrous for the refugee community, according to Melanie Nezer, policy director of the resettlement organization HIAS. Refugees planning to reunite with relatives in the US lost their slots to enter the country, as did thousands of other individuals living in camps abroad.

The Trump administration also withdrew in December from the UN Refugee Pact, signaling “a “lower engagement overall in global refugee policy,” Nezer said.

“The US has always taken responsibility to be part of the solution for people who have been persecuted... rather than put[ing] responsibility all on countries neighboring conflict,” she added.

"For millions of American Muslims this is a message of exclusion that is completely contrary to values our country was founded on.”
–Cody Wofsy

Finally, There's Trump's Travel Ban

The travel ban has been one of the highest-profile and most controversial policy changes of the Trump administration since it singled out individuals from specific countries as ineligible for US entrance. After his first two versions of the ban were struck down in court, Trump issued a third version in September that is currently being enforced as legal challenges move forward.

“Our government's first duty is to its people, to our citizens—to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values,” Trump said in his statement about the most recent version of the ban.

The current ban limits travel from six majority-Muslim countries—Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—as well as North Korea and Venezuela.

“For the families affected, this is really heartbreaking—they're facing the prospect of never being able to live with their loved ones in this country,” said Cody Wofsy, an attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. “And for millions of American Muslims this is a message of exclusion that is completely contrary to values our country was founded on.”

Individuals from the banned countries can apply for waivers to be accepted into the US, but Wofson said he had so far not heard of any waivers being granted.

But Department of State spokesperson Virgil Carstens said the ban was integral for national security. Carstens said he could not provide information on the number of visa waivers granted, nor could he share information about Begami’s case, but added waivers could be granted if a visa denial would cause undue hardship, and if the applicant’s entrance into the US would serve in the national interest.

“We will continue to work with identified countries to address information sharing deficiencies that resulted in their recommendation for travel restrictions,” Carstens told me in an email.

Meanwhile, Gerami, whose family has reapplied for his visa, waits in Montreal for word from the US embassy about whether he can seek life-saving treatment in California.

“He’s gotten depression and anxiety, and has lost his speech because of the tumor,” his daughter told me. “Sometimes he just cries.”

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

In 2017, there was more TV than ever. It's true! Ask literally any TV critic if you don't believe me. Volume doesn't always guarantee high quality, but against the odds, there were plenty of television shows we liked this year. Here's a few of them:

South Park

There were many more important things to worry about than the 21st season of South Park, but longtime fans were weary of where the once-marginalizing, now pronouncedly mainstream bellwether for what we joke about and how we joke about it would go in an ever-persnickety 2017. In short, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's scatological satire still smiles with teeth: from Weinstein reckonings reflected as a "witch pursuit thing" featuring actual witches to a consensual relationship between co-workers being so off-limits that news of it causes townies to literally puke, we're lucky there's still something that isn't afraid to suggest that somewhere in an office in California, someone is picking up a phone with the greeting, "Netflix, you're greenlit." — Emerson Rosenthal

Rick and Morty

Endlessly quotable and memeable, Rick and Morty was a force, for better or worse, that couldn't be ignored in 2017. After two seasons of madcap adventures and nearly two-year hiatus, the show had to live up to a lot of hype when it exploded back onto Adult Swim. Season two ended on the befuddling cliffhanger of Rick in a full-body lock, filed away in prison like forgotten paperwork, and creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland spent the rest of season three systematically tearing apart the anti-hero's all-powerful status. What does a sci-fi superhero do when confronted with therapy? How can you fight an interstellar war and also properly raise a family? What use is all the power in the multiverse if all of your friends and family are dead or hate you? With stunning, acidic visuals and a torrent of Easter eggs, references, and sight gags that are a joy to unpack, it doesn't take a genius to enjoy this show, and you're not stupid if you don't like it—but maybe you are if you don't give it a chance. — Beckett Mufson

Nathan for You

The final episode in the fourth season of Nathan Fielder's reality-prank series caused one of the great documentary filmmakers of our time, Errol Morris, to write, in no less than The New Yorker, "I’m starting to see my own life as an experiment in Nathan Fielder’s weird business curriculum." It was that good. — Emerson Rosenthal

American Vandal

I've never been so grateful that my time in high school predated social media's domination of the internet than watching American Vandal. A true-crime story a la Serial, the Netflix series follows crack high school investigative journalists Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund getting to the bottom of a seriously funny mystery: Who drew dicks on 27 cars in the faculty parking lot? It's an eight-hour dick joke with a lot of heart, and plenty of brains too. Throughout a rib-cracking series of investigations, including a Snapchat story party recreation and a surprisingly graphic hand job simulation, the series also deals with privacy, viral success, and modern relationships. It also delivers thought-provoking lessons about to teach aspiring journalists about the right and wrong way to pursue local stories. I meant to check out an episode while nursing a hangover before I started my day in earnest. Eight hours later I had watched the whole thing and gotten nothing done, and I'd do it again. — Beckett Mufson

Bojack Horseman

I laughed, I cried, I WTF'd. Bojack Horseman is one of the most unique shows you can stream, and in its fourth season, it remains as novel as ever. This time it's all about family. Cruel parents, rocky marriages, and unexpected children—or lack thereof. As usual, the crassness of Hollywood—er, sorry, Hollywoo—is the main object of the show's friendly ribbing, but this time it also tackles the superficiality of politics. The season opens as the lovable, but empty-headed, dog Mr. Peanutbutter enters a gubernatorial race that's dominated by misinformation and personality. Sound familiar? Meanwhile Bojack is playing hooky on life and wallowing in the past, until the past comes to him. As a bunch of self-centered entertainment industry rich people, it would be easier to hate the characters than love him, but we do, thanks in part to the amazing vocal talents of Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Paul F. Thompkins, Amy Sedaris, and Aaron Paul. Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg's creation remains one of the strongest and most empathetic representations of mental illness out there, while also packing enough jokes per second to floor the most serious stoic. — Beckett Mufson

Game of Thrones

Sure, without George R.R. Martin's writing, some theorize, Game of Thrones HBO's flagship show isn't as tight or thought out as previous seasons. But it's still fucking Game of Thrones! Warring factions jockey for power in a divided Westeros. Family hunts family. Characters who have been ignorant about pivotal mysteries for years (R+L=J, people!) struggle to figure out what to do with their newfound knowledge. Cersei remains delightfully evil, and Jamie is crushingly conflicted about it. Arya and Brienne are badass, Sansa is learning to rule, Danerys struggles with the brutality of power, and we get to see Jon (Targaryen?) Snow's butt! Sure, fan favorite Tyrion is kind of a wet rag this season, and many of the central plot points are based on garbage plans, but, again, it's Game of Thrones damn it! A bad episode of this is still better than a good episode of most other shows. We've invested too much time to believe anything else. — Beckett Mufson

Twin Peaks: The Return

I've said enough about this mystical, transcendent, and faith-in-humanity-redeeming work of art—and I'm not sure I want to say any more at this point. After all, with Twin Peaks, the less said the better, right? — Larry Fitzmaurice

The Good Place

Was there any show as good at deploying twists in 2017 as this one? (Twin Peaks doesn't count, the whole goddamn thing is a pretzel.) Michael Schur's ethical mind-fuck of a comedy seems to get better and more bizarre with every single episode, boasting one of the strongest ensemble casts on TV right now. Plus, I made it through (almost) this entire blurb without making a "forking" reference. Not bad, right? — Larry Fitzmaurice

As climate change ushers in another year of extreme global temperatures—a phenomenon President Trump seems a little confused about—cities up and down the East Coast are facing record-breaking snowfall and subzero temperatures. But while city dwellers might be able to hide indoors and crank up the heat, some animals aren't so lucky.

According to the Cape Cod–based Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, it's gotten so cold that sharks in the area have been washing up on the shore and essentially freezing to death. This week, the organization responded to three thresher sharks that likely suffered "cold shock" in the surrounding waters.

As Masslive.com reports, organisms suffer cold shock when they're exposed to extreme dips in temperature and can sometimes experience muscle spasms or cardiac arrest. Scientists believe the sharks swimming off the coast of Cape Cod—where temperatures have dropped to 6 degrees—suffered cold shock in the water, and then wound up getting stranded on the shore, where they likely suffocated.

"If you’ve got cold air, that'll freeze their gills up very quickly," Greg Skomal, a marine scientist, told the New York Times. "Those gill filaments are very sensitive and it wouldn’t take long for the shark to die."

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is currently working alongside the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the NOAA Fisheries Service to find out more about how the three 14-foot male sharks died—a process the frigid temperature hasn't made very easy.

"We hauled the shark off the beach and it is currently thawing at NOAA Fisheries Service to be dissected later," the conservancy wrote on Facebook about the most recent shark discovery. "A true sharkcicle!"

You can play a bit of a parlor game when matching up each Paul Thomas Anderson film to the work by Robert Altman (his clearest influence) it most closely echoes. Under those auspices, his new picture Phantom Thread feels like his Gosford Park: a British period piece that finds the filmmaker working in a distinctively classical style. Gosford Park was also one of Altman’s few genuine commercial hits, alongside The Player, M*A*S*H, and… very little else, though he worked steadily and frequently for four-plus decades.

This, alongside the aesthetic and thematic concerns, seems to be one Anderson’s big takeaways from watching (and, later, working with) Altman; after a few early, half-hearted stabs at box-office success, he seems to have resigned himself to making movies for himself, and whomever else decides to play along. Phantom Thread is, to put it mildly, well within that career trajectory.

In the picture’s striking opening, an army of women march into the multi-level home and workshop of the British couture designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis), ascending the stairway and walking single-file to the sewing tables and machines. They go about their work intently and precisely, as does the man himself, who sketches at his breakfast table and cannot be bothered to talk to Johanna (Camilla Rutherford), the beautiful young woman who is, presumably, some sort of romantic interest.

“Where have you gone, Reynolds?” she asks. “There’s nothing I can say to get your attention back at me.” “I’m delivering the dress today,” he responds impatiently, clearly irritated that he even has to explain himself. “I simply don’t have time for confrontations.” Later in the day, once the storm has passed, Cyril (Leslie Manville), his righthand woman, gets to the point: “What do you want to do about Johanna? I mean, she’s lovely, but the time has come.”

What’s abundantly clear, in these laser-sharp opening scenes, is that Mr. Woodcock—yes, that’s really his name—treats the matter of female companionship as the same locked-in routine as everything else in his life. It is a dance of formalities he can no longer bother with, and when he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress in the seaside town where he keeps a second home, the seduction that follows feels, more than anything, well rehearsed. “I’m a confirmed bachelor,” he tells her. “Marriage would make me deceitful. I don’t ever want that.” But when she proves an acceptable companion, he brings her home as a combination model, muse, and handmaiden. The relationship eventually begins to crumble, in what seem to be the usual ways. And then Alma shakes it up.

“Maybe he’s the most demanding man,” she admits, and he is, you might say, a bit of a prickly pear; when she brings him surprise tea in his workshop, she’s severely chastised and sent away with spite (“The tea is going out; the interruption is staying right here with me.”) Cyril makes excuses for him, saying things like, “If breakfast isn’t right, it’s very hard for him to recover through the rest of the day,” but tension and hostility develops between them, and finally explodes over a private dinner argument, the kind of spat where the words get so out of hand, you end up humiliating yourselves rather than each other.

So Alma takes some action. The curvature of Anderson’s script here is worth contemplating; what we’ve seen up to this point has been, when you get down to it, a comedy of manners, and keeping her precise intentions hidden is… a risk. Yet that is, to these eyes, where Phantom Thread finds its juice: in the unpredictability of the third act’s turns from sweet to sour, and the corresponding tone of the movie itself, where suddenly, thrillingly, all bets are off.

The film’s visual style is ornate yet formally austere, which makes the moments when he lets the camera careen (playfully at Alma’s fashion show, haphazardly as they attempt to remove a dress from an unworthy wearer) all the more affecting. Jonny Greenwood provides the music (his fourth straight Anderson film), constructing a score that’s jazzy and mellow but forcefully involved, a reminder of the manner in which, in every film since Magnolia, Anderson has used the music as a motor—not only carrying us from one scene to the next, but propelling us.

Yet all of these gestures towards conventional critical form—ah yes, the plot, the performances, the direction, the music—are essential an obfuscation of the key takeaway of Phantom Thread, which is that it’s such an exhilaratingly, unabashedly odd film. This should not come as a surprise to his admirers; his last feature was the bafflingly complicated and borderline nonsensical postmodern noir adaptation Inherent Vice, and it followed The Master, a film that steams along for two-plus hours like a pressure cooker that’s about to explode, yet never grants its audience (nor its characters) that release. Even There Will Be Blood, his previous Day-Lewis collaboration and biggest box office success (though still bringing in a fairly modest $40 million domestic), is a spectacularly idiosyncratic piece of work played in an often off-putting key, impudently thumbing its nose at conventional redemption arcs and the niceties of prestige drama.

Yet when he was anointed “the next Quentin Tarantino” before the release of his breakthrough film, 1997’s Boogie Nights, it was presumed that his big sophomore effort would replicate Pulp Fiction’s $100 million-plus box office. It didn’t; it stalled at $26 million. He put the biggest movie star in the country into his next picture, 1999’s Magnolia, and it made even less. He followed that up by making a film tailored specifically to the biggest comedy moneymaker in the business, and it made less than both of those. After a run like that, it’s hard to blame him for giving up on connecting with a wide audience, and focusing instead on weirdos like himself. (And me, and perhaps, if you’ve read this far, you.)

To be clear, Magnolia was not a typical Tom Cruise movie, nor was Punch Drunk Love a typical Adam Sandler movie—that’s what made them so compelling, to see their onscreen personas (and respective baggage, both positive and negative) married to Anderson’s singular sensibility. But by the time he was preparing Blood, it seems the path was determined, and that path brought him to Phantom Thread. It’s a film so gleefully peculiar, so brazen in its disinterested in convention or meeting audience satisfaction, that it sort of takes up residence in its own atmosphere. Some will read that as praise; others as a warning. Go with God.

Vincent Asaro, a member of the Bonanno crime family who was acquitted on charges tied to the JFK airport heist featured in Goodfellas, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for a 2012 road rage incident.

According to the New York Times, the 82-year-old mobster escaped punishment for a number of crimes he was allegedly involved in dating back to the 1960s. In 2015, Asaro wound up in court on racketeering and theft charges for allegedly taking a direct cut from the $6 million stolen from JFK in the 1978 Lufthansa heist—the same job that inspired Martin Scorsese's 1990 film. He was also charged with murdering a man in 1969 who was thought to be an informant and burying the body at the home of mobster James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke, but was acquitted of both crimes.

But it was a 2012 road rage incident that ultimately landed the mobster with prison time. On Thursday, the same judge that presided over the Lufthansa heist trial sentenced Asaro to eight years in prison after he pled guilty to ordering his underlings to set fire to a car that had cut him off at a traffic light in Queens.

According to the Times, prosecutors said someone with access to a law enforcement database gave Asaro the driver's address after the mobster provided the car's license plate number. The next day, prosecutors said the grandson of former Gambino crime boss John Gotti, John J. Gotti, and another man went to the house, poured gasoline on the car, and set it ablaze.

"It was a stupid thing I did and I'm terribly sorry," Asaro said Thursday. "I was on my way home—it happened. It just got out of hand."

Judge Allyne Ross, who said Thursday she remained "firmly convinced" Asaro was guilty of the 2015 charges, handed down the lengthy prison term and said the crime showed that even in his old age, Asaro had a "desire to carry out revenge."

At 82, Asaro may very well spend the rest of his life behind bars after spending years connected to real-life crime drama that will remain immortalized on the screen.

What does hope look like in the bleakest of futures? Staring down the barrel of the unknown,
where all is threatening to go wrong—or is going wrong—there’s a tendency to imagine only the worst. Black Mirror 's creator, Charlie Brooker, has often been accused of presenting only the worst-case scenarios in his anthology sci-fi series, and there's been a certain fatigue at the idea of more bleakness when entering into the show’s fourth season, which premieres today on Netflix—especially given the current state of the world. But there’s a sense of hope intruding into Black Mirror, finally.

The first glimmer of positivity came last year with the celebrated “San Junipero”, about two
women finding each other through time and then spending the rest of eternity together in a
virtual heaven. Not without its own moments of darkness and despair, “San Junipero”
nonetheless offered a vision of what technology might offer humanity that wasn’t just a nasty
poke in the eye.

Buoyed no doubt by the positive reaction to “San Junipero”—but perhaps also as a reaction to
The Times We’re Living In—Brooker appears to have internalized the lessons of pushing back
against total despair. If nearly the entirety of Black Mirror’s run has been defined by asking what the worst possible aspects of humanity would be because of technology, the show’s fourth season adds one more element: resistance.

Of these six new episodes, four have endings one could describe as optimistic—which isn’t to say they’re all definitively happy endings. This is still Black Mirror, after all. But the darkest of them, “Arkangel,” tells the story of a mother who implants her young daughter with an internal tracker and the ability to see through her eyes and pixelate out anything offensive in her life. She eventually witnesses her daughter’s most private teenage moments, and starts meddling in her life. In the final scene, the daughter discovered what her mother has done and runs away, with the tablet—her only means of finding her daughter—destroyed.

Taken from another angle, the episode imagines a clear breaking point for the misuse of such technology—and for overbearing parenting in general. You can only go so far before human push back and demand better from each other.

The episodes “USS Callister” and “Black Museum” examine how men use AI technology to act out their darkest fantasies, treating the lives of the people around them as playthings. Both also end with the female protagonists pushing back and defeating their male oppressors; “USS Callister” specifically ends with a group of AI copies of human beings, living inside a simulated Star Trek-like game universe, free to explore an infinite universe. Meanwhile, “Black Museum” ends in an act of vengeance; it’s undeniably satisfying to watch a woman turn the tables on a malevolent scientist who tortured her father for decades.

Black Mirror suggests there is meaning in the will to not be bound by other humans's grossest impulses. Sometimes, the show even admits that technology can be positive, too, as is the case in the season’s most fun episode, “Hang the DJ." The episode focuses on a man and woman signed up for an unique dating app that gives couples the ability to see exactly how long the relationship will last. Once their time is up, they must part. The idea is that the system learns enough about each participant to pair them with their soulmate, but we're actually witnessing an AI simulation (a favorite plot device of Brooker's as of recent) run over and over again, designed to block given matches in the interest of seeing how likely come together despite the odds.

And there's real euphoria attached to the ending of “Hang the DJ,” even if the episode contains societal grey areas of its own. But throughout the majority of its new season, Black Mirror finds hope in the proposition that, despite the odds and our own self-destructive impulses, there’s some fight in us still.

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On the outside, New Year’s Day feels like a fresh start. I see it as a chance to turn the page and start a journey to different and exciting new paths. But when I was in prison, it was not like that for me. During my 21 years of incarceration, I never even made a resolution. I always thought that was something reserved for those on the outside, who had more control over their lives. New Year's Day was like any other day marked off the calendar as I eagerly waited for my freedom.

But I don't want to give the impression that all prisoners lack hope. There are a lot of convicts who celebrate a new 365. They just do it in a different way. There are no all-night boozers or crazy parties in the clink-clink. And for resolutions, prisoners often have something bigger on on their mind than swearing off eating sugar or drinking less coffee. They're thinking about finally getting out or developing new ways to better survive life on the inside.

Even though I've been free for three years, I've kept in touch with a lot of my homies in prison who think a lot about the promise of a new year. I reached out to them recently to see what kinds of resolutions they are crafting for 2018. One who is on the verge of being released told me about his desire to bring his family back together. Another former gangster told me all about how he is trying to get to know himself better so that he can make better decisions. The commitment that these men have to their future says a lot about the perseverance of human spirit in the face of adversity.

Here's what they had to say.

WATCH:

Angel Ocasio
Reg. #00373-748
Serving 23 years for a drug conspiracy at FCI Danbury in Connecticut

My News Year's resolution is to hit the ground running when I get home on January 9. I have two small business plans written out that I want to put into action within days of my release. Sleep is not an option for me. I know things will be tough, but I have to be relentless to get my business off the ground. I am 48 years old and I will be finishing a 23-year sentence. That’s more than 20 years of my life that have been lost that I can't get back. I have to make the most of my time to bring stability to my life and help bring my family back together so I can enjoy my grandchildren and give them some security.

I am looking forward to getting the hell out of prison. Shit will be tough in Puerto Rico, where I’m being released, but I’ll take that over jail. For many years, December 31 has just been another day. But this time I am looking forward to to getting my family back together, to spending time with them, and doing the things we once did. These hopes have helped me overcome some of the darkest days of my incarceration.

Timothy Tyler
Reg. #99672-012
Serving a life-sentence for LSD at FCI Jessup in Georgia (pardoned by Obama)

My New Year's resolution will be to eat only health food. It seems that if I sway from eating proper, my sister matches me in the free world. When I eat right, then she eats right. So I plan to eat healthy just to promote her health. Since I am going home next year, I want to be as healthy as possible and have her healthy too so we can live a decent, longer life.

On the low end, I would like to see my sister recover from depression. We have always been close and she has been severely depressed since I have been in prison the last 25 years. Just seeing her living without depression would be great for me. She’s my best friend and what makes her happy makes me happy.

On another level, when I get out, I would love to have the job of consecrating the people entering the stadium shows of the Grateful Dead in 2018. I could make it a sacred ritual that would raise the consciousness of those attending. Considering I've missed seeing the Dead for more than 25 years, this is something Bob Weir might want to grant me.

Donald Green
Reg. #39747-019
Serving life for a drug conspiracy at FCI Coleman in Florida

My New Year's resolution is to work very hard on my case so that I can win my freedom by 2019 and be free of the madness of prison. I also plan to help those who cannot help themselves in the law library by assisting them in their quest for freedom with what we call The Firm: a group of jailhouse lawyers who help other prisoners who've been shafted by their lawyers and the system.

Robert Rosso
Reg # 05546-010
Serving life for a drug conspiracy at FCI Terre Haute in Indiana.

I've thought long and hard about a New Year's resolution. This year, I've come up with some that I am going to stick with. I plan to watch less news and focus more of my time and energy on getting my writing projects done. For example, for the past ten years, beginning at 6 AM, I watch two hours worth of morning news. In the evening, my news time starts at 5 PM, followed by Inside Edition at 5:30 PM, TMZ at 6, then the World News after that. That's four wasted hours. So, beginning on January 1, 2018, I will reduce this to no more than a half-hour in the morning and a half-hour at night.

This will give me more time to complete some of my writing projects. I started a book that I am just now finishing up and my goal is to get it published this year and start on the sequel. Also, less news will allow me to edit and put into book format a collection of stories that I have been wanting to publish. Also, I want to stay positive for my family. This time of the year can be especially tough for my parents.

Walter Johnson
Reg. #47510-053
Serving Life for Three Strikes Law at FCI Otisville in New York

My New Year's resolution is to know myself better than anyone else. That way, I will be able to tap into my true potential. For years, I did things that I truly didn't want to do, nor did I understand the reason why I did them. I thought that being a criminal was tantamount to being a hero. But as time went by, I came to the realization that the majority of my criminal exploits were out of greed, having an insatiable desire to satisfy myself without consideration for anyone else.

A hero is one who commits acts of selflessness. They place their own lives in danger so that others will be able to live their lives. I now realize that I was born into this world for a purpose, and I almost threw my life away by choosing the wrong people, places, and things. I now know that I can do some really powerful things with my life that help other people find themselves and live out their dreams. I have to make sure that every act committed by me in 2018 is an act that I would be proud to pass down to my grandson.

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Everyone's favourite dystopian tech-anxiety anthology series Black Mirror returned this week, with six new episodes. For each one VICE is going to be exploring some of the ideas raised in the episode with key figures in the show and the wider world of science and technology.

First up, the "USS Callister" – a Star Trek-like space ship with a twist. The cheesy missions taking place on board are actually part of a jailbroken video-game run off the personal laptop of a tech developer.

The interview contains a couple of light spoilers.

VICE: Where did the idea for this episode start? Did you know you wanted to do something in space?
Charlie Brooker: Yeah, it was literally that precise discussion. We were on the set of “Playtest” from season three and there's a lot of special effects in that. We were discussing what we were gonna do next, because this was around the time we starting to plan this season and sometimes when we are talking about and working out what we’re gonna do next, we do it in term of genre. So we go, “oh what haven’t we done yet: musical, or erm, police procedural.”

Space was one we hadn't done, so how would we do a space episode? What would make a space episode a Black Mirror episode and also, because we were dealing with special effects on Playtest, well this is a tool box I haven't really used much in anything I’ve written. What happens if we sort of go for it. Because we were on set, there was a special effects guy there so I was having a chat with him about it. It came from there.

How does it differ doing a blockbuster episode like this, compared to some that have a more indie-film feel?
It’s a weird one because it’s probably in many ways quite a mainstream episode, structurally it's quite sort of trad in some ways, even if it goes into some weird places. It has weird detours in it. It was co-written with William Bridges. We co-wrote “Shut Up and Dance” in season 3. That was a very different episode, the sort of polar opposite in many ways. It was very much set in the real world, in the here and now and set in the present day and it was kitchen sink in that way. And then you have this, on a massive scale by comparison. So it’s more fun but also a different challenge. And the one thing we’re trying to do with the programme is make every single instalment of it different to the last instalment you saw.

I would say overall this season we do a lot of handbrake turns in terms of tones, genre, look, you know across the board. Every episode was different this time around.

I guess the thing that stuck with me through the series, there's a degree of sexual exploitation at the heart of a lot of stories, or just as part of them, those power dynamics at play.
What's really going on the "Callister" is it’s a story about power. It’s a story about a tyrant. It’s a difficult one. I mean someone said that to me before, that there was a lot of sex in Black Mirror and I was thinking is there that much? "15 Million Merits", I suppose. But I would say this is more to do with power, it’s to do with his weird fantasy world, this strange fantasy world which based on this vintage, ultra masculine, vintage sort of sci-fi world.

I more just mean that whenever there are new power dynamics from technology dynamics, you'll always explore...
The ramifications

Yeah.
I suppose that's because hopefully, because the stories are relatable and I guess most sci-fi stories don't really explore sex very much and if they do it tends to be like a sex robot. I guess you could argue we did a sex robot in the "Be Right Back" episode. I just think relationships are part and parcel of it. I think sex comes into the episodes but I don’t think we’ve done one which is about that. It’s usually about something else. So here it's more about power and tyranny really over all and in other episodes in the series, say "Arkangel", it's more about parenting and protection.

"The one thing we’re trying to do with Black Mirror is make every single instalment of it different to the last instalment you saw."

I guess here what you're also exploring is resentment: resentment toward women, resentment towards success, resentment from people who are often very good at using technology. You see that a lot with the Reddit stuff, ousting the female CEO and all of that...
There’s an element in there of which he’s resentful. But he’s resentful of everyone. That’s the thing. He’s resentful of the men and the women that he tends to, but with the women they’re placed in a Barbarella, sort of non-threatening doll sort of world. With the men he's subjugated them in a different way as the fawning sidekicks. I don’t know if there's one thing about people in tech that makes them more prone to misogyny or anything. It’s a tricky one because I think these things are elements within the story, but it’s not focused on these things. I think it’s more to do with someone in that story who’s not well basically, and who has unchecked power. So all of those things are aspects of that. But it’s interesting. Everyone seems to say that the episode are about different things.

I was reading this thing about how these superhero films are really struggling right now because they are so dependent on the franchise. So the viewer is more certain than ever before that nobody is gonna die. But in both this episode and “White Christmas” you manage to find a fate for your characters that is actually worse than death.
Yes we quite often like to throw in a terrifying existential nightmare. Like it wouldn't really be Black Mirror if there wasn't a terrifying existential nightmare somewhere at the core. I have to say I don't particularly enjoy superhero movies. I mean I can watch one to make the time go by, but I don't ever feel like I’ve got a foothold on what's going on. I’m not Iron Man, I’m never gonna be Thor. Although I hear Thor Ragnarok is good fun. I haven't seen that. But generally with superhero movies I feel like I can’t relate to what’s going on. Whereas here hopefully there's some point in it, where you sort of feel for the characters. On a basic primal level.

Especially in this case, where they’re linked with these real life normal people that work in an office.
Yes even our more fantastical episodes have an element that makes it more grounded or feel more grounded. Hopefully we’ve pulled that off in Callister.

Black Mirror is avaliable to watch on Netflix now

@samwolfson