"Can I look in your bag please?" asked a security guard, stationed on the door of the Imperial War Museum, as I stepped in. It felt somewhat appropriate, given the fact I was there to see "Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11", which – as the title suggests – is a collection of artistic responses to the threat of modern-day terrorism.

With 50 pieces in total, this is the largest collection of contemporary art the museum has ever hosted. It’s a busy exhibition with a few documentaries; a range of photography; works by Grayson Perry, the Chapman Brothers and Jitish Kallat; a video of people who'd responded to a casting call for someone who "must look like a terrorist"; a homemade video game from the 1990s, Bomb Iraq; and 9/11 and drone-themed rugs from Afghanistan.

Although the art does feature as a sobering reminder of the relatively heightened security we live in, it isn't exactly evidence of a perpetual state of emergency. Do we actually exist in an "age of terror"? I’m not too sure. I don’t know even one person who is in any way terrified.

© The Artist / Photo Thelma Garcia / Courtesy Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris-Brussels / The Imperial War Museum

Oliver, a 35-year-old designer who I met browsing the exhibition, was also unsure. "I guess you could call it that," he said. "But I also think it’s so normalised now that [an attack] makes waves one day, then two days after nobody talks about it any more, until the next thing happens."

A 27-year-old public sector worker, Christine, gave a similar response. "We live in an age of terror, which is supported by the age of technology," she suggested. "We have alerts constantly telling us that awful things are happening everywhere. It’s almost like we are somewhat desensitised to actual acts of terror."

Patricia, a 55-year-old retired financial advisor who was in Manchester in May of 2017, at the time of the Manchester Arena attack, argued that we don’t live in an age of terror at all. "No, people get immune to it," she said. "In Manchester, you had a couple of days of shock, then people seemed to go back to normal. They didn’t overthink it."

WATCH:

Available statistics seem to back up these views, as well as highlighting that most human of assumptions: that yes, people think an attack might happen, but they're not going to be affected.

In the UK, the perceived threat of terrorism has risen considerably over the last few years. Compared to a YouGov survey in 2010, where 25 percent of respondents said they thought the threat of terrorism had risen in the previous five years, by July of 2016 – after the murders of Lee Rigby and Jo Cox, and attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park – that number had nearly tripled, to 74 percent. However, only 12 percent believed that they, a family member or friend would be affected by a terror attack.

In a survey of 2,456 people living in Britain carried out by VICE UK in late 2016, only 9 percent said their greatest fear in life was being caught in the middle of a terror attack, making it the most minor fear among respondents, behind "imprisonment", "losing your job", "finding yourself homeless" and "never falling in love".

What about the mental health of society at large? Have we seen a spike in mental health disorders attributed to the ongoing threat of terrorism?

Courtesy of the Artist and Ruya Foundation. Jamal Penjweny, “Saddam Is Here”, 2009–10. The Imperial War Museum.

I asked Professor Silke, Director of Terrorism Studies at the University of East London, and a leading expert on terrorism, who explained it isn’t as simple as that.

"It’s one of those surprising things," he told me. "The assumption is that if you’ve got a high degree of terrorism in society it's going to have a really negative psychological impact; a lot of people with PTSD and other disorders." However, what the research actually shows is that in wider society (not among direct victims, who have "high rates of psychological harm") the effects of attacks can be surprising. "If you have a society that is experiencing an awful lot of attacks, it can be good for psychological health," Silke says. "You get this 'resilience effect', which has also been called a 'Blitz Spirit' – people pull together and society is surprisingly robust."

But that’s not necessarily what’s going on in the UK right now. "In a case where you’ve got terrorist attacks occurring on a more sporadic basis, you don’t get this 'resilient effect'," Silke added. "In a place like the UK right now, where you might have a bad terrorist attack once every two or three months, that kind of isolated attack pattern tends to have a big impact."

It seems that, since attacks in the UK are relatively infrequent (compared to, say, Israel during the early-2000s or Northern Ireland during The Troubles), we don’t have the benefit of the resilient effect.

One recent example we can look at is the false alarm at Oxford Circus in December of 2017, when, after perceiving a threat, passengers evacuated the station. The Evening Standard described the scene as "mass panic", while the Daily Mail said that "panicked" and "terrified" passengers created a "stampede". Do these headlines suggest that people are living in a perpetual state of emergency?

Dr Chris Cocking, a Senior Lecturer at University of Brighton, is a leading expert on the behaviour of crowds, and wrote about the incident on his blog. "The two main words that were used to describe it – 'panic' and 'stampede' – just didn’t happen," he told me.

"The research that myself and other people have done on crowd flight has shown that if you are describing it as a stampede it's not accurate," he says. "It implies animalistic and unthinking behaviour. That just doesn’t happen. Even when crowds are fleeing, if people fall over, others pick them up when they are able to."

Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York / © Coco Fusco/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Coco Fusco, Operation Atropos, 2006. Film still. Imperial War Museum.

Dr Cocking flatly refutes the notion that a panic actually took place: "If you see a crowd surge towards you and armed officers on the streets," he says, "this is a perfectly logical response. The government advice for terrorist attacks is to 'run, hide and tell'. The irony is that when people follow that advice they are accused of panicking."

There is a credible argument for looking at society through the lens of pre and post 9/11. That single event marked the beginning of a violent period of political unrest and a civil liberties disaster; it gave governments and regimes a tool to swiftly relieve mass populations of their rights and civilians of their lives; it has contributed to the hardening of political views, institutional racism and discriminatory attitudes.

However, when it comes to actually making the population scared, neither these repercussions nor the many subsequent attacks seem to have affected us as much as they're sometimes touted to have. We're aware that attacks are a possibility, but we don't let that define the way we approach the world, or – for that matter – even appear to consider it very much at all.

As Professor Silke said, "It is an age of terror, but it’s not the first and probably won’t be the last."

@oldspeak

"Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11" is showing at the Imperial War Museum, London until the 28th of May, 2018.

This article originally appeared on Creators.

Studio Ghibli's beloved iconic animation My Neighbour Totoro will be immortalized as a theme park within the Aichi Prefecture's lush EXPO Park, RocketNews24 reports.

Fans of legendary filmmakers Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata's classics Princess Mononoke, The Wind Rises, and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away have flocked to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo since 2001 to get the most immersive possible experience of their films. That could change as early as 2020, the projected completion date Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki and Aichi prefectural governor Hideaki Oomura announced yesterday in a press conference yesterday. Suzuki is often the face of major Ghibli news, as he confirmed Miyazaki's return to feature filmmaking earlier this year with the upcoming Goro the Caterpillar, also due in 2020.

Image courtesy Takumi

Aichi Prefecture EXPO Park's 200 hectare swath of land already attracts Ghibli devotees with a scale replica of Mei and Satsuki Kusakabe's home from My Neigbor Totoro. Soon the park will eclipse Japan's other rural Ghibli themed attraction, The Yufuin Floral Village's replica of the bakery from Kiki's Delivery Service .

Plans for a Ghibli theme park seem to foil Miyazaki's technology-free nature park for kids, which The Atlantic dubbed the "anti-Disneyland," due in 2018, although according to Anime News Network, the park will take great pains not to disturb Aichi EXPO Park's existing plant and animal life. We've reached out to Studio Ghibli for a comment, but have not yet received a response.

In 2015, illustrator TAKUMI created a concept for a Studio Ghibliland modeled on the Tokyo DisneySea theme park. Images throughout this post are sourced from his imagination, not from actual plans, which have yet to be announced in detail.

The Studio Ghibli Theme Park is due to be completed in 2020, as is Hayao Miyazaki's next feature film, Goro the Caterpillar.

Related:

Um, the Bakery from 'Kiki's Delivery Service' Is Real

Studio Ghibli's Animation Software Is Now Free

Miyazaki's Nature Retreat for Kids Is the Best Idea Ever

January is an excellent time to start thinking about gardening. Especially if, like me, you have no idea what you’re doing.

I have always wanted to grow plants. My parents grew vegetables in our backyard growing up but I was only ever involved in the maintenance and harvesting. And at any rate, a dozen years of bouncing around the city and the country in student housing doesn’t lend itself well to growing much more than a tiny herb garden. Which is fine! It’s where I started. My wife got me a tiny hydroponics set for Christmas and now already we have an infinite supply of dill. (Please give me recipes using dill.)

I’m not sure how I got so horny for horticulture. One morning just before the new year I was checking the seed pods in the kitchen and when I saw the first tiny sprout coming up out of the soil, something moved deep in my heart. Since then I have spent hours browsing gardening videos on YouTube and leafing through local seed catalogues and watching how the sun and the wind move across my backyard.

No, there isn’t much to do in the dead of winter except watch the barren ash trees bend in the brutal Newfoundland wind and dream about the life you will sprout up in spring.

A small vegetable garden on the back deck will be a fine summer starter project. Along with a nice flower bed in the front so the house doesn’t look so much like how I feel. I found a little dogberry sapling in the backyard that has already grown into a spiral, so I’m also thinking about training it as a bonsai, because I’ve gone insane and now I’m completely obsessed with trees.

Once you start consciously thinking about the plants around you as living creatures—utterly alien yet intimately familiar—it becomes an event to just go outside and look around. Not far from my house is a crabapple tree that was knocked over about a decade ago but lived to grow sideways through a chainlink fence, flowering and fruiting over a hillside full of trash. It’s very ugly and also one of the most beautiful scenes in the neighbourhood. I smile whenever I think about that handsome, shitty tree.

But OK, sure. You are like me a month ago: unmoved by the prospect of rediscovering a sense of sublime wonder among the banality of everyday life. There are other reasons to get excited about gardening—namely, growing cannabis.

When marijuana legalization is law in Canada, you are entitled to grow four personal plants of up to 100 cm in height. That is one hell of a home garden. Depending on the strain you grow and how you set it up—Grow cabinet or greenhouse? Space Bucket or a pot of soil?—it’s not too hard to harvest close to an ounce or more of dope per plant if you care for them properly. Even at a conservative estimate of 20 grams a plant, you’re laughing.

You can learn a useful skill and get in touch with nature while saving hundreds of dollars a year on quality-controlled drugs. There is no better time to start developing your green thumb. Plus, then you’ll be ready for next year when you won’t lose half the natural growing season waiting for the plant to be legal.

It will always be more convenient to buy it than grow it, which is fair. I buy all of my vegetables at the grocery store and most of my beer from an Ultramar. But I‘ve already found that the serene contemplation of plant life goes really, really well with marijuana, so I think it makes sense to take it to the next level.

I bought a used book on gardening last week, an old CBC-radio approved guide to gardening on Canada’s East Coast. The man at the counter told me I was mad to think of starting a garden in St. John’s; not only is the climate hostile, but most of the soil is polluted with old lead paint.

Challenge accepted—there are ways to work around poor soil. But it did give me a new appreciation for the spindly little spruce trees growing up among the garbage in the woods behind my house. The earth is poison and the sky is dark and the wind is enough to snap the stands in half but the trees keep growing anyway.

All the ugly trees in my backyard are strangely reassuring. They are living reminders that even in the depths of corruption and decay, life will always find a way. The unseen machinery of the universe is maybe best understood as a kind of cosmic mulcher. Nothing is ever really lost; it’s only rearranged.

They taught me this in my high school chemistry class. But it took me 16 years and a basil sprout to finally understand.

This weekend, a bunch of Hawaiians were sent a text that probably freaked them out a tad—it warned people of a ballistic missile threat and gently reminded them (in all caps) to “SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

Due to the fact that it explicitly said it wasn’t “a drill” most people took this pretty seriously. As we all know now, this was due to a massive design error mixed with the perpetual fuck-up-machines that are humans. That said, at least Hawaiians got a courtesy text before their impending doom—other countries aren’t so lucky.

Canada is one of those unlucky nations, as not too many Canadians would be warned before they feel the warm embrace of a nuclear shockwave.

It would be cool though. Photo via Twitter/Photoshop.

An ICBM attack on Canadian soil is not quite as far-fetched a theory as one would like given America’s heel turn and North Korea stepping up its game—a nuke sent from North Korea to the States would go right over Canada—so we Canucks are starting to get a little worried. In the last year an atomic ton of articles regarding Canada getting the ol’ nuke were written but still, the question remains: if, god forbid, we were—probably by mistake—targeted for a nuclear attack, how would we find out?

Well, it wouldn’t be by text, at least not yet. The first that Canadians would hear about this would be through the Alert Ready system after NORAD picks up the missle on radar. This system works primarily through radio and television and would give us about 25 minutes to get our lives in order. We’ve all seen these, they are the typically red screens that say “this is a warning” while the most grating alarm noise you’ve ever heard plays.

Since a large portion of millennials don’t have cable—nor do they tend to sit around listening to FM or AM radio—we most likely would either figure it out from a panicked text sent by a parent who does watch cable and listens to the radio. If you are one of those who don’t have people who love you (feel free to hit me up in the DMs), you most likely will see tweets or something on Facebook about it or will simply be vaporized in the attack.

Above: An artistic interpretation of you being vaporized.

Some Canadians can sign up for text message alerts through their province but it’s voluntary and most of us are far too lazy to do that. Currently the way that Alert Ready works is that the government issues the type of alert—ie. tornado, Amber Alert, terrorist attack—it will then be sent to the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination system (which is run by Pelmorex Communications) and which works as the middleman between the government and media companies. From there the media companies will choose the type of message to send out and it will finally be seen by the public who will then, most likely, start freaking the fuck out.

This will change in April of this year when the new Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) rules compelling Canadians telecommunication companies to send text messages to their customers comes into effect. Pretty much all of the major Canadian telecommunication companies—thanks to oligopolies, there are only a few, yay!—have signed on. The CRTC writes that the “alerts on mobile devices will warn Canadians about dangers to life and property in a timely manner so that they can take appropriate action.”

Until then though, if you don’t have TV or listen to the radio you might not find out before the bomb drops which, thinking about it now, might be the better way to go.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Alex Lawther seems like a really nice guy. He’s liable to call you "mate" several times in a convo, and can say "sorry" with a tone that’ll make even the most stereotypical Canadian melt. It’s slightly confusing when contrasted with his character James, an angsty teenage psychopath on the Netflix mini-series The End of the F**king World.

From the title alone, I’d forgive you for feeling there’s more than a little bit of that Fight Club/90s Tarantino DNA in this Gen-Z series. But look deeper, and it becomes easy to spot the very non-traditional love story here. You got James of course, and a girl named Alyssa (possible sociopath, definitely poorly parented) who find themselves on a road trip in a stolen car following a meet cute. Sure, one may want to kill the other. And one may want to still decide if a human connection is a real possibility. But in the end, there’s something very relatable here through their growth over eight 20-minute episodes.

I decided to reach out to Lawther, partly because I wanted to know if he’s anything like very odd James character that he plays, and if he’s made a deeper sense of the strange/unorthodox boy meets girl story that’s frankly, pretty damn good.

VICE: One of the things that I personally loved about the show is that it explained itself. The title alone kinda screams shock value. But these characters aren’t twisted for the sake of being twisted. Their weird actions are explained. When it comes to James, elaborate on what attracted you to this personality.
Alex Lawther: I think at first, I found James so far from anything I recognized within myself. Very cold, closed and violent. I’d like to think that I’m not any of those things (laughs). But then, as a double whammy, on reading further episodes of Charlie Covell’s script, I saw someone that was somehow the opposite of those things. Beneath him was a far more fascinating character. It also doesn’t hurt that I found it all so funny, moving, and I loved how simple the story was with two lost and lonely kids just trying to make sense of an adult world. Being able to sum up that kind of story so simply was really appealing, even though it was really weird, bizarre, and so fucking confusing (laughs). Ultimately, there’s a real simple relationship that runs between the craziness of James and Alyssa.

And when it comes to James. He’s apparently a self-proclaimed psychopath, but on the other hand, he kinda isn’t. How do you accurately portray a kind-of psychopath exactly?
I had to work out what a psychopath actually meant to James...on a very basic level. I mean, the label of psychopath is in the very first line he says in the script, so it’s pretty much my job to find out what he’s trying to do by proclaiming himself as one. I can’t be sure of the answer, and I hope people come away with different interpretations, but my view is that it was a term he used to understand who he was. In general, he found his own self and life very confusing. By being a psychopath, it seemed simpler than having to accept that he was very sad and fragile. It was easier to imagine that he didn’t fit into anything rather than accept that maybe he felt a bit too much of everything. Hiding behind a tougher outer image as a teenager feels cooler, and safer compared to admitting perhaps that you’re the very opposite.

Yeah, and in many ways, beyond the craziness, these characters are still just teenagers. Their inner monologues don’t always represent who they actually are. They don’t understand themselves fully.
Yeah, that’s so true. How often have we found ourselves saying things out loud in front of a group of people, and then later thinking, why did I say that? I really don’t believe that at all (laughs). Or even still, finding yourself filling some space that isn’t you. It ultimately comes down to the need for connections. James and Alyssa are both so desperate to connect. Right from the beginning even. And even behind the bravado, rather than admit that quite embarrassing fact that they’re desperate as we all can end up being, one instead decides to kill animals and pretend as if he doesn’t feel anything. The conclusion that it’s cooler to deal pain and physical pain in a really fucked up way.

James (Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Jessica Barden).

How do you personally relate to all that?
I don’t think that the main longing for another is something that ever goes away. I mean sure, I'm only 22. During teenager times, the feelings of longing is perhaps at its most strong and profoundest because everything feels multiplied by ten. The title of the show comes from the feeling of being that age. That everything really is the first time that you’ve experienced anything. Some moments make you feel like you’re on top of the world, or in a in a place that really feels like the end of the fucking world. The stakes are just that much higher all the time. That longing comes with a part of being on this planet I suppose.

I can’t speak directly as an actor, but at times it feels like choosing roles is a struggle between quality vs opportunity. You seem to have a soft spot for the unorthodox, Black Mirror, Freak Show and also this. Where’s that dedication to these roles coming from?
My immediate answer is good writing, which is a boring answer (laughs), I know. But it’s an honest one. Now that isn’t to say that for it to be good, it has to involve some outsider, or outcast sort of character. But I really enjoyed the characters that I’ve had the opportunity to play in a sense. If I’m being honest, yes, I’ve always been into the underdog instead of the golden boy or guy with the easy life. It doesn’t seem that dramatic from a storied perspective to play someone that has it easy, or is incredibly normal. I’ve been thinking about that by the way...I don’t even know what that looks like. Someone very...normal. What does that even mean? (laughs). Until I figure that out, I’m going to continue to have a soft spot for the unorthodox, and so far, they’ve all been crazy fun.

Not just unorthodox though, some involve some pretty dark subject matter. Is this a preference as well?
You know, I’m not sure about the darkness part. What I find myself doing conversely is looking for the levity in my roles. Sure, I love the darkness in The End of the F***king World, but what really struck out to me and enjoyed was the strange humour. One of the things I’ll always remember from my time with Black Mirror, is the sense of all the tongue and cheek, and very, very dark sense of comedy there too.

I still remember when Jerome Flynn’s character Hector was at a Petrol station, and Hector bumps into a lady with a child that goes to his my character’s school, and the awkwardness and tension stands out as a scene that I still remember (laughs). So the darkness definitely isn’t a conscious thing. But it goes hand in hand with the outsider thing. There just seems to be more immediate material to explore there compared to the typical coloured story.

It’s one thing to be into that sort of thing, but it’s another to be in sync with another person that may or may not share that. What came down to that chemistry that you and Jessica Barden shared on set?
We’re actually two very different people. I can be quite quiet, but you can always rely on Jessica to be the funniest person in the room, and have the best conversation. Something about that just works. It’s a sort of mutual respect that we have for each other (laughs). Or at least I hope she respects me. When you’re faced with someone that’s so different from you in that way, you end up being a bit fascinated by them. That definitely helped with the strange sort of curiousness that James and Alyssa had for each other at the very beginning. We spent 12 weeks every day together, and there’s a sibling-ness that developed which definitely supported whatever strange kind of love that grew between those two.

If you had to change the title of this show given that initial shock value, what would you change it to?
(Laughs) I hesitate to change it. Honestly, I’d refer reviewers towards the end of Charles Forsman’s graphic novel, where he basically says no, it’s not the end of the fucking world, they’re just fucking teenagers, or something along those lines. It’s important that we as viewers know from the outside that we’re going to be following this story with the stakes, and the sense of heighten-ness that you get when you’re that age. Everything feels like it’s the end but it’s not, and hopefully, we as the audience can have the distance to see that. Of course, there’s also hope that those who watch this can take on the nostalgia of a time when everything did seem so important, scary, and wild to us all. Hopefully not on James or Alyssa levels of extreme, but to each their own (laughs).

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

In the front row of the dimly-lit strip club sit two clusters of fratty manboys. The guys stare up at dancers with names like Mocha, Phoenix, Lexis, and Selena, one after the next. The women hoist their bodies into the air by the strength of their arms gripping the pole.

Backs twist. Legs stretch. Asses shake. The guys stare wide-eyed. They do not, however, seem to be paying.

Until one woman turns to a group of them and yells. “Are you going to tip her? You’re sitting right in the front row!... It’s her birthday!”

“Yeah! It’s my birthday!” Selena joins the heckling, standing above the cheap bastards in high heels and a power pose. I am grateful that, while my cash has run out, I’ve been hiding beside a friend who has diligently thrown down bills all night.

“I was going to,” one dude protests, tossing a twenty on the dance floor.

This is a Friday night at Ralph’s Place. It’s Nova Scotia’s last strip club. And on Saturday, January 13, the Dartmouth joint closed its doors.

Four years ago, Ralph’s son Khalil Nasrallah told Halifax alt-weekly the Coast that two things were recession-proof: “alcohol and women.” But today, strip clubs are disappearing all over the place. Experts and industry insiders point to puritanical city regulations, a rise in alternative forms of sex work like camming or massage parlours, and the bogeyman of gentrification as possible factors contributing to the trend.

While the reasons vary from place to place, Tuulia Law says she sees a common feeling from people in the clubs: work is just “not as good as it was back in the day.”

That might be nostalgia, she says. But Law, an assistant professor of criminology at York who studies management in the sex industry, also points to “observable changes.” Many clubs that had feature dancers—strippers from other cities, famous for their work in porn or otherwise “known”—in the 90s don’t bother now. Managers tell her that their lines used to snake out the door on the weekends. “That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”

Closed for now, but locals speculate about a Ralph's comeback. Photo by the author

Locals on Reddit describe Ralph’s as "greasy" and "certainly lacking," saying it "aint much but it's all we got." It has one-and-a-half stars on Yelp. Yet, after other strip clubs in the Halifax region closed—Sensations, the Lighthouse, Load of Mischief—Ralph's became the last holdout.

For Kyla, who asked VICE not to use her last name, it’s goodbye to a place that was full of memories. She worked as a server and coat check at Ralph’s for almost a year in 2014. “I think strip clubs are really awesome and healthy for a community,” she says. Plus, she had recently moved close to the club, so the commute was ideal. She showed up with a resume. She got an interview and a job on the spot.

Kyla says Ralph’s was usually pretty dead. The occasional biker would stop in for a drink, which probably didn’t help its reputation. And sometimes they’d get big groups of guys coming in from work boats.

But contrary to ideas of catty girls or wild strip club drama, “You basically just see a lot of lonely or sad people,” she says. “Men who were uncomfortable speaking with women, or their wife had died or something like that … and this was their only time to be social.”

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I walked in alone. Bright red-and-green lights swirled around on the floor, like a disco ball offering up one last sputter of Christmas cheer. They only made the emptiness more noticeable. Two guys sat at the bar holding the rapt attention of the women who sat beside them. A dancer lackadaisically walked between the poles, beginning her tease. It seemed like nobody was even watching her.

Kyla says on days like these people working could seem miserable—“because they’re there to make money, and they aren’t making money.” But when it was packed, the vibe was different. “When we had a good night, everyone was having fun … I formed a lot of great relationships there.”

The club has closed. But some locals are whispering about a possible comeback elsewhere, pointing to a carefully-worded goodbye on Facebook.

“This phrasing in their closing message has me suspicious that the rumours of [a] Burnside strip bar is just a move,” writes popular Twitter account Halifax ReTales, which regularly breaks news about local business in Halifax. “‘January 13th will be our last day on Main Street!’”

Will we once again hear this DJ’s buttery voice call on all the “gentlemen” to bring out their “loonies, toonies and those bills?” Will Halifax’s stripper scene rise from the ashes like “the beautiful Phoenix,” lifting herself out of an inversion on the dance floor?

“I’m not comfortable saying there will never be another strip club in the municipality,” says Halifax spokesperson Brendan Elliott. But anyone who wants to open a new club will face an uphill battle with local bureaucracy.

“Generally, though there may be exceptions given there are many zones in each of our 22 or so Land Use By-laws, you CANNOT propose a [strip club] as-of-right in Halifax,” Elliott wrote VICE in an email. “Theoretically, if someone wanted to propose a strip club for a mixed use or commercial zone, they would have to apply to the municipality for an exception.” That process would include an application and a public comment period and could take eight to twelve months.

Halifax’s Deputy Mayor Waye Mason says “people get pretty upset about someone building a building two stories higher than what’s usually allowed, so something like this would ... be controversial.” From prohibition laws of the 1900s to bylaws regulating arcades today, he adds, legislating morality is a big part of the Maritimes’ history.

But titty bars aren't great places to think about historical context.

“We’re here to have a good time, right?” says one man as he hears me waffling about getting another beer. He’s here with a woman who sits at the bar, facing the stage. They’re fans of Roxy—a curly-haired bombshell who today pulls on a turtleneck and woolly slippers after her set, then comes out after each of her fellow dancers to wipe down the poles and pick up cash from the floor.

My friend and I are fans too. At one point Roxy looks at us—we have been cheering for her raucously—and smiles. We melt.

We hemorrhage more money. Later, we leave the club and head into the strip mall parking lot, surrounded by fast-food joints and auto shops. Dartmouth has been trying to clean up this street lately. I get in the car. I’m not sure where we’re going next.

Follow Katie on Twitter.

On January 19, Congress will face its first major legislative challenge of 2018: figuring out how to fund the federal government for the rest of the year, or at least keep the lights on a bit longer.

This is hardly new territory for this Congress. Legislators blew off their funding responsibilities last September to focus on tax cuts, choosing to keep the government running at previous funding levels until December 8, then passed two more stopgap measures that month to keep the doors open until next week. But with each vote, it’s been harder to get legislators onboard with short-term fixes.

With pressure building to get it over with and fund the government through the end of this fiscal year, you might think legislators might be able to cut a deal this time. But you’d be wrong. They’re are so far from hashing this out that they’ll likely try to kick the can down the road again. The only questions are how far they’ll try to kick it, and if they can come up with a short-term fix a critical mass of legislators can buy into, or if they’ll finally slide into a full-on federal shutdown.

The frustrating thing about this prolonged funding battle is that the funding itself isn’t the real problem. Just about everyone in Congress is anxious about looming across-the-board automatic budget cuts that will be triggered unless they can come up with a deal on raising budget caps in the next few weeks. There’s been some public partisan bickering about how much to raise spending, with Republicans arguing for more defense than non-defense spending, and Democrats demanding parity. But few in Congress want to see those cuts kick in. So most observers think that, in a crunch, legislators could bury the hatchet and come up with tolerable top-line spending numbers.

“The numbers being floated right now have been fairly stable for a couple months,” argued Congress watcher Joshua Huder. The problem is, “that agreement is getting caught up in other issues.”

Funding bills are must-pass items, and thus ideal vehicles for legislators to use to try to muscle through unrelated priorities. And Congress started 2018 with a metric shit-ton of unfinished business to attend to. There’s been pressure to wrap a long-term reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) into any deal next week, as well as disaster relief, stabilization for the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance marketplaces, and any number of other program reauthorizations neglected in 2017.

“The number of moving parts… is part of why this whole episode has dragged on as long as it has,” said Congress watcher Molly Reynolds.

Not all of these issues are that controversial. CHIP, for instance, is an extremely popular program that only got punted because of disagreements about how to pay for its reauthorization. But recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office suggests it’d be much cheaper to renew than expected, making it an easier sell for inclusion in any sort of upcoming funding deal.

The real sticking point is the effort to negotiate a fix for the “Dreamers,” about 800,000 people who came to America as undocumented children and who were granted the ability to live and work without fear of deportation by a 2012 Barack Obama executed order. Trump announced he was ending that policy, called DACA, in September, then called on Congress to find a legislative solution to allow the group to stay in America, as the vast majority of the country believes they should be able to do. (This week, a federal judge in California blocked Trump’s move to end DACA, a decision that may be appealed.)

Republicans are open to cutting a deal on this, but their leaders want it to be a standalone bill, ideally after funding is dealt with, since protections for most Dreamers don’t expire until March 5. But Democrats are demanding it be part of the current funding deal to resolve this issue quickly.

Anyone following Dreamer negotiations over the last week probably has whiplash by now. Last Friday, the Trump administration put out a list of immigration reforms they wanted as part of any deal to restore protections for Dreamers. It included, among other things, $18 billion for 700 miles of Trump’s infamous border wall (which now may be a fence), even more funding for border security, penalties for so-called “sanctuary cities,” mandatory employee immigration status verifications for employers, an end to the diversity visa lottery system, and a rollback of the ability of immigrants to sponsor their family members.

On Tuesday, Trump seemingly backed off in a meeting with legislators, during which he was often incoherent and seemed confused about his own priorities and positions, saying that he’d accept any bill Congress agreed on. Lawmakers left with a broad framework tying protections and a path to citizenship for Dreamers to border security funding and changes to the immigration system, but no details.

Then on Thursday, another bipartisan group of lawmakers approached Trump with a plan they’d been working on for some time but that conveniently fit the framework he’d agreed to on Tuesday. In exchange for Dreamer protections and a path to citizenship, they’d offer $2.7 billion in border security funding, including $1.6 billion for a wall. They’d also make it harder for immigrants to sponsor family members to come to America, and end the diversity lottery system. shifting those immigration slots over to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) visas for individuals fleeing natural disasters or civil wars abroad. Trump rejected that plan—and reportedly asked why America needed immigrants from “shithole countries" like those covered by TPS visas; he’d also recently moved to end TPS status for 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been living in the US since 2001. This instability makes the prospect of a deal in the next week seem pretty unlikely.

Even if legislators are suddenly able to break their stalemate on the Dreamers issue and settle on baseline funding levels, said Huder, at this point a short-term funding measure keeping the government going on 2017 spending levels is inevitable. “The next step is to draft an omnibus appropriations bill to actually keep the government open,” he said. That “will be well over 1,000 pages of legislative text. It will take some time to write.” Lawmakers would likely need a short-term spending bill to buy them time to write a longer-term one.

Legislators are just debating how long they should punt the issue, with some talking about going up to mid-February and others about early March. A longer-term bill would mean they feel they are close to a deal and need time to draft funding legislation, said Huder, while shorter-term would mean they may want “to create another crisis point to instigate talks.”

The problem is that many legislators on both sides of the aisle might not be willing to take a clean short-term funding deal at this point. Many within the Democratic Party and its base don’t want to let any funding measure, even a short-term fix, pass without including a Dreamers provision. If they forced their ideal outcome, say a Dreamers fix as part of a short-term funding bill that did not fund a wall, Trump could throw a fit and refuse to sign the legislation.

Defense hawks in the GOP, meanwhile, are making a lot of noise about how further short-term funding fixes could jeopardize the military’s ability to carry out operations. They might refuse to vote for any short-term deal that lasts too long, or doesn’t contain some ironclad guarantee about a massive spike in defense funding. And fiscal conservatives might try to block any funding measure that gives money to things like CHIP or disaster relief without clear offsets, or at least promises of future budget cuts.

Basically, this means next week will be a big game of chicken. Legislative leaders will have to make their best guess about how long they can stretch a short-term funding measure, and how many ancillary provisions they can toss into it without losing a critical mass of votes on either side of the political divide. Then both parties will have to test how far they’re willing to run toward a shutdown to force concessions.

The Democrats will have a great deal of leverage in this nail-biting last-minute showdown, said Huder. They don’t have much incentive to cooperate with Republicans, and can be fairly certain, given recent historical precedent, that the GOP would suffer more in the midterm elections if a shutdown occurred now. Meanwhile, Republicans need their votes to pass any funding measure through the Senate.

“The only remaining question” for Democrats, said Huder, “is whether they have the political will in their caucus to take a potentially risky political stance in an election year.”

In other words, nearly anything could happen next week. We could see a punt on everything until March, or we could see resolution to almost every outstanding legislative issue wrapped up in this short-term funding fix, or the government could shut down. Stay tuned.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

In describing how the "Urban Goals" project came about, photographer Michael Kirkham hones in on a street corner in his resident Liverpool. "I used to see this one goal in particular in Granby, in Toxteth, on the corner of Jermyn Street, and just by the side of it someone had sprayed 'RIP Chedz'. He was some Toxteth cat. I don’t know who he was, but he must have died. It got me thinking about the surroundings in which kids in the area play soccer, the urban goals of the kids who live there."

"Urban goals" has a double meaning here, both in the sense of the literal white-paint goalposts which Michael photographs and the aspirations of kids whose kickabouts happen up against bricks walls in Britain’s inner cities. In the two years since "RIP Chedz" caught his eye, Michael has travelled through some of the most deprived areas of the country in search of makeshift goals. A roofer by trade, he has no formal training in photography and no art school diploma, but his photos are ethereal, beautiful and a compelling testament to working-class life.

Chadderton, Oldham

Originally intended to be a project entirely focused on Liverpool, "Urban Goals" now comprises photos taken in Glasgow, Leeds, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Birmingham and beyond. Michael doesn’t drive and, having initially walked miles in search of places to shoot, the entire project has been done either on foot or with the help of public transport.

Talking about his method for locating improvised (or sometimes dilapidated) goalposts, Michael says: "Once I started looking further afield [than Liverpool] I went with the obvious cities – Manchester, London, Glasgow, Belfast and so on – and I just started writing locations down. I’ve got a notebook with 700-ish spots, and I’d write down the number of the nearest bus stop or train station… the whole thing was done just walking about."

Manningham, Bradford

If "Urban Goals" is an inner-city odyssey and a personal labour of love, then, it is also a tribute to communities and neighbourhoods which have been neglected by government. Implicit to each photograph is the need for improvisation and ingenuity in want of decent soccer pitches and facilities, whether that means kids using rusty old goalposts with no nets or creating their own goals with white paint and a wall.

Many of the goalposts Michael has photographed are splashed onto the sides of pubs, warehouses, rail lines and houses, or are simple metal frames on the borders of factories and council estates. Some you can imagine being used for snatched games during 15-minute work breaks, others by bored teenagers and kids in places where there isn’t much work to speak of.

Cobridge, Stoke-On-Trent

"Back when I first started taking pictures I realised that the common thread to most of my work is working-class life and its place in modern Britain, I guess," Michael says. "I wanted to show these neighbourhoods across the UK and how they have been systematically underfunded, some of them for generations. You look at a neighbourhood like Toxteth, or Brixton, or any other area that’s neglected, and you do often feel like your ambitions and your goals in life are limited if you’re from those areas. That’s been my experience, anyway."

Particularly when it comes to the photos of goals roughly daubed on walls, there’s a ghostly element to Michael’s photography. The white lines are often badly weather-beaten or faded with age, which in contrast to their orange-red brick canvas makes them seem like echoes of another time.

Walton, Liverpool

If this conveys the sense of societal neglect which is at the heart of the "Urban Goals" project, it also makes for poignant and moving images. There is perhaps a sense of anger in the photographs, as well as a sense of sadness, which is intensified by the spontaneity and simplicity of the premise: shots of impromptu urban soccer pitches condensed down into a trio of metal bars or paint lines.

If there is a melancholy aspect to the "Urban Goals" project, however, there is also a feeling of hope which runs through many of the photographs. Though, in Michael’s words, "you hardly ever find urban goals in the richer areas of a city, it’s always in the places which don’t get much love", there is some love to be found in their painted walls and cracked brown bricks.

Toryglen, Glasgow

While Michael’s photos say something about inequality, scarcity and economic disadvantage, they also speak to something childlike which predates those grown-up concerns for most of us. A goalmouth painted on the side of a railway bridge might symbolise neglect to an adult, but for a child who plays soccer there it could well be the most treasured spot in the world.

So, as the title of the project suggests, some faded goalposts on the wall of a housing estate might still be a place to daydream, to have visions of future heroics on a soccer pitch. Painted on in place of something more permanent, those goalposts are also testament to something irrepressible: the simple pleasures of being a kid.

@W_F_Magee

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

US News

Plenty of Foreign Conflicts at Trump Hotels, New Report Claims
A watchdog report called "Presidency for Sale" concluded that at least four foreign governments (and four times as many special interest groups) patronized Trump properties in 2017. Public Citizen said agents of the Saudi government, Malaysian government, American Turkish Council, and Kuwait Embassy used Trump properties last year. The report also found Trump properties earned money from 35 GOP congressional campaign committees.—NBC News

Trump Accused of Scorning Black Caucus at Immigration Showdown
The president was said to express straight-up disdain for the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) at the same White House meeting in which he reportedly referred to some nations as "shithole countries." According to some present, Trump suggested he had no interest in whether the group's members would back an immigration deal if it included protections for those countries.—The Washington Post

Couple Charged with Holding 13 Children Captive
California police arrested David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, after their children were found tied up and apparently malnourished at a house in Perris. A 17-year-old girl reportedly escaped the home and alerted police to the plight of her 12 brothers and sisters. Those held captive ranged in age from two to 29. The Turpins have been charged with torture and child endangerment.—ABC News

Democrats Need One Vote for Bill to Restore Net Neutrality
The party's members revealed there are 50 senators—49 Democrats and one Republican—now in favor of legislation to overrule the FCC's recent decision to end net neutrality. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said his party was "fighting to keep the Internet from becoming the Wild West where ISPs are free to offer premium service to only the wealthiest customers." Any bill would also need majority backing in the House and the support of President Trump, both of which were far from certain—The Washington Post

International News

Myanmar Promises to Accept Repatriation of Rohingya over Two Years
Myanmar has green-lit the repatriation of 1,500 Rohingya Muslims each week from refugee camps in Bangladesh, according to the latter government. More than 700,000 Rohingya are believed to have been uprooted by allegedly genocidal persecution in Myanmar last year, some of which appeared to involve the country's military—BBC News

Palestinian Leaders Want to Suspend Recognition of Israel
The Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) Central Council recommended withdrawing recognition of Israel until its government formally acknowledges a distinct Palestinian state. The body also proposed scrapping the Oslo Accords—landmark agreements with Israel on security and other issues. The executive committee was said to be "assigned" to carry out the changes, but had yet to move on the proposals.—Al Jazeera

Venezuelan Police Said to Kill Rebel Leader
Oscar Perez, leader of a group of anti-government rebels who was accused of firing on Venezuela's Supreme Court from a helicopter, may have been killed in a police raid. President Nicolas Maduro said Monday five people from the "terrorist group" had been arrested and two officers killed during an operation.—CNN

Kosovan Serb Politician Assassinated Outside Party HQ
Political leader Oliver Ivanovic died after being shot outside his party’s office in the town of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo. His lawyer said he was shot five times. Ivanovic was awaiting a retrial stemming from killings of ethnic Albanians during regional conflict in 1998 and 1999.—Reuters

Everything Else

Cranberries Singer Dies at Age 46
Irish vocalist Dolores O’Riordan died in London, according to a statement released by her representative on Monday. Bandmates Noel Hogan, Mike Hogan, and Fergal Lawler said: "We are devastated on the passing of our friend Dolores... The world has lost a true artist today."—Noisey

Simone Biles Accuses Larry Nassar of Sexual Abuse
The Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast accused the USA team doctor of sexually abusing her, describing his actions as "disgusting" in a Twitter post. More than 140 women have come forward accusing Nassar of abuse. He was slated for sentencing Tuesday.— CNN

Ava DuVernay Won Top NAACP Image Award
The director won the entertainer of the year prize at the 49th NAACP Image Awards, while Girls Trip won movie of the year. Daniel Kaluuya won best actor for his role in Get Out and Octavia Spencer won best actress for Gifted.—The Hollywood Reporter

Migos Announce New Album Details
The hip-hop superstars revealed new LP Culture II will drop next Friday, January 26, and shared cover art on Twitter. Quavo also tweeted a one-minute clip of new music along with footage of Martin Luther King, Jr.—Pitchfork

Timothée Chalamet Pledges Woody Allen Film Salary to Charity
The Call Me by Your Name actor said he did not want to profit from his role in Allen's forthcoming movie A Rainy Day in New York. Chalamet revealed the undisclosed sum would be going to Time's Up, the LGBT Center in New York, and RAINN.—i-D

North Korea Calls Trump Tweet 'Spasm of a Lunatic'
A state-run newspaper editorial called the US president's early January nuclear button tweet the "bark of a rabid dog" and the "spasm of a lunatic." It also referred to the January 3 tweet as the behaviour of a "loser" and a "psychopath."—VICE News

It's a tale as old as time: man notices attractive woman, woman shows no interest, and her bae grows pissed at the unwanted suitor. The men take their fight outside and, as always, shit goes down.

Not only can you catch this kind of love triangle form in the club on a Saturday night, it also presents itself in the animal kingdom—in this case, between three aggressive alpacas.

Last week, Desus and Mero lent their own brand of Attenborough-esque commentary to the brutal alpaca brawl, which saw three animals fighting over love, sex, and testicles.

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

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I moved to Berlin in April of 2017 after a breakup. I used the change in environment as a chance to reflect on my inner self, and began trying new things in an attempt to, as some might say, "find myself". Mind you, I'd rather say: I finally went on a long overdue trip to my first music festival and took part in some Buddhist meditation sessions. I also made a short-lived attempt at becoming vegan. Next on my list was naked yoga.

I first heard about naked yoga when I came across the Instagram account @nude_yogagirl. I’ve always loved yoga – not only does it look pretty impressive, but it's also just a good method to properly become stronger, more flexible and more balanced. As soon as I’m on a yoga mat, I feel more in touch with myself.

But how does being nude and vulnerable affect that? I wanted to see for myself.

It didn't take me long to find and sign up for a class nearby, and as soon as I read the session's description on its Facebook event page I was amped and ready to go. Take a look at this and tell me you wouldn't be, too: "Let’s tap into the deeper sensitivities of our body, mind and spirit; may we swim in the JuIcY-ness that lives beneath the 'masks' that we wear in our everyday lives."

The class consisted of four women and an instructor, all between the ages of 25 and 35.

So that's why now, a few days later, I'm sitting in a yoga studio in Kreuzberg, south Berlin. It's 7.45PM and I'm still fully dressed and nervously sipping some tea. We are five women, including our instructor, between the ages of 25 and 35. The mats on the floor are laid out in a semicircle – for obvious reasons, you don't want to sit behind someone when you're doing yoga in the nude. In one corner of the enormous white space is a collection of tea lights and Buddha statues, the heavy smell of incense wafting up and out of it. It makes the Zen-like atmosphere in the room seem a bit forced, but fine, I'll take it.

I’m sitting on my yoga blanket. The woman next to me forgot hers, so I lend her my towel. "Are you sure you're OK with that?" she asks, knowing what she'll soon be doing on it. I'm sure. Slightly awkwardly, she lays out the terry cloth over the blue studio mat that she just got out of the cupboard. It’s dark outside. We close the curtains so only the light from a bright red bulb on the building opposite shines through. I close my eyes and listen to the electro-shaman sounds coming from a small sound system. My only thoughts are of exactly how naked I will soon be.

For now, our instructor Danielle is still wearing leopard-print leggings and pink leg-warmers. She tells me that naked yoga helped her get to know her body better, and she discovered a new pride in her curves. Through her classes, she hopes to pass on the "transformative power of naked yoga" to other women.

A few moments later, it’s showtime. "You can slowly get undressed," Danielle says. I honestly don't know where to start. I decide to take off my jacket first, before wiggling my way out of my T-shirt, sports bra, yoga pants, socks and underwear. The others seem to slip out of their clothes in seconds, while I slowly peel off item after item.

When I’m done, all I can do is grin nervously. I have nothing to hide behind, and the situation suddenly seems so bizarre. Why are we a bunch of naked strangers on yoga mats, again? Automatically, my eyes start to wander, noting tattoos, oddly shaped birth-marks and nipples of all different shapes and sizes.

I started to appreciate my body more and more as the session went on.

"Run your hands along your body," Danielle instructs us. "Be aware of the way your skin feels." I’m quickly getting more comfortable as the session goes on, but he class is actually pretty hard, so my embarrassed smile quickly makes way for a look of pure determination. Before I know it, I’m fully immersed in the moment, not bothered in the slightest about stretching my naked limbs alongside complete strangers. It’s only during the Happy Baby pose – where you lie on your back with your hands gripping your feet while stretching your open legs in the air – that I remember how thoroughly I'm exposing myself to my new friends.

Many of my yogi friends reacted with outright anger when I told them I was going to try out nude yoga, considering it an Instagram fad for privileged white girls. And while that's of course not a completely unfair assessment, there's a lot more to naked yoga than that. As Danielle explains, the practise is also about getting to know your body better and having a healthy relationship with it. And though it might attract a lot of perverts and voyeurs on social media, it’s not about sex – a realisation you quickly come to when you actually find yourself naked and almost pulling a muscle while getting into some impossible pose. Considering the fact so many women in the world are unhappy with their bodies, immediately dismissing these kinds of confidence-boosting exercises as pointless trends seems a little reductive.

Two of my fellow participants showing off their headstands.

I notice that the poses we're getting into feel more intense while naked. They look different, too. You can see how your stomach moves along and changes during each turn, how your muscles tense up and tendons stretch. I'm also a lot more aware of the imperfections of my body.

It's about 25 degrees celsius in the room – Danielle turned up the heating full blast at the start so we wouldn’t freeze. A thin film of sweat has formed all over my body. As we perform a position on our stomachs, I leave a mark on my mat that reminds me of an Yves Klein painting. Some of the other women sigh as they perform certain stretches – which is perfectly normal in yoga, but I realise I suddenly find it a bit much now that none of us are wearing any clothes. Surprisingly enough, I'm completely cool with our instructor touching us in order to correct our posture.

Watch Desus & Mero discuss baby yoga:

During the final relaxation pose, Danielle tells us to put our socks back on, meaning – for a moment – we are five women, holding the Savasana pose, on our backs, with arms and legs stretched out, naked, wearing only our socks.

Afterwards, we put our other clothes back on. I slip back into my yoga pants, sneakers and the massive jacket that protects me from the Berlin winter. But something has changed. It might sound cheesy, but I do feel like I’m more in tune with the world around me, whatever that means. I feel good and, most surprisingly, sexy. That might be the JuIcY-ness kicking in.

Two weeks ago, at the very nice time of 4:20 AM, I polished off my last bottle of gin. Hopefully ever.

Overconsumption of alcohol has long been a problem for me. Last year, I was spending obscene money on alcohol—anywhere between $7 and $15 a day, depending on where and what I was drinking—and half-hearted efforts to lose a bit of weight were being seriously undermined by the sheer number of empty calories I was drinking. Plus, waking up hungover on more days than not wasn't exactly a great feeling.

A handy app on my phone tells me that in the short time since quitting near-daily binge drinking, I’ve saved close to $100. But a series of withdrawal syndromes—including vivid nightmares, extreme fatigue, and mood swings—led me to looking closer at the actual health impacts of regular alcohol consumption.

It’s not like there isn’t copious amounts of research out there: I’d just never taken the time to look it up. Perhaps I was afraid of what I would find.

I should have been.

One would think that governments, which both regulate and derive considerable tax revenue from the alcohol industry, would properly inform the public of health risks. As it turns out, they've largely abdicated the role, leaving alcohol producers to set the terms.

“The government has more liability than the liquor industry in not informing consumers,” said Timothy Stockwell, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and psychology prof at the University of Victoria, said in an interview with VICE Canada. “One day it will happen that citizens, as they did with tobacco, will sue Canadian governments for not requiring that they are informed about real proven risks to their health and well-being.”

Canadians spent $22.1 billion on alcohol last year. It killed 5,082 Canadians in 2015. In total, some 77,000 people were hospitalized because of drinking in 2016—liver cirrhosis, withdrawal, alcohol use disorder, and much more—which was even more than from heart attacks. Over 200 diseases and conditions are linked to drinking, including major depression, strokes, heart disease. When it comes to cancer prevention, there isn’t considered to be any “safe limit” of alcohol consumption.

According to a 2010 study by legendary neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, alcohol abuse is more harmful to the user and society than every other major drug including heroin and crack cocaine. Such impacts often manifest far slower than other overdoses, yet they’re still the direct result of chronic drug abuse.

My ignorance on the harms wasn’t particularly anomalous. Stockwell said that only 25 percent of drinkers in most of Canada are aware of alcohol’s relationship to cancer or low-risk drinking guidelines (10 drinks a week for women with no more than three drinks in a single session, 15 drinks a week for men with no more than four drinks at a time—and two “rest days” per week).

“A lot of the time, people just don’t know what the actual harms of alcohol are, so a lot of the time they hear bits here and there but don’t actually know how concrete the evidence is around alcohol,” added Jenna Valleriani, postdoctoral fellow at the British Columbia Centre On Substance Use and expert on cannabis policy, in an interview with VICE Canada.

According to experts, this is almost entirely because of lax policy decisions by Canadian governments—including a failure to require tobacco-like warning stickers on bottles and cans, or embark on a nationwide negative marketing campaign, or restricting how the alcohol industry can advertise. But when you make $6.1 billion a year from something, perhaps you’re a little less inclined to criticize it.

Ann Dowsett Johnston, journalist and author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, said in an interview with VICE Canada that there are three main factors that influence how people drink: marketing, pricing and accessibility. Each of the policies vary a great deal from province province. But Stockwell said that in order to implement something like minimum pricing linked to alcohol strength—which saw a 10 percent increase in price result in a 22 percent decline in high-strength beer purchases during a 2012 study—the public needs to have a very solid awareness of health risks.

Warning stickers on bottles and cans, like the ones on cigarette packs, are a great start from a harm reduction point of view; while there’s still not a clear link established between increased knowledge and quitting, it can initiate a higher rate of intention to quit—an important first step in the process.

But that’s based on research about the US warning label system, which Stockwell said is “pretty moot because the labels are so bad.” First introduced in 1988, the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act requires a small black and white label that informs users of risks of impaired drinking and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: facts that most people know.

So for the first time in the world, Stockwell’s institute and Public Health Ontario collaborated in late November to apply colourful, well-positioned and informative stickers on all bottles and cans in a liquor store in Whitehorse, Yukon. The stickers included graphics that informed users of the proven relationship between alcohol and cancer, as well as the aforementioned low-risk drinking guidelines.

But only a month later, the Yukon government suspended the study due to pressures from the alcohol industry, which included allegations of defamation.

“We’ve been criticized for not consulting with the industry,” Stockwell said. “Well, we knew this is how they would behave. Our study wouldn’t have even got off the drawing board if we’d consulted with them. They would have immediately gone to all the relevant ministers and there would be threats immediately. They wouldn’t have even considered our project.”

Those same forces help maintain what critics describe as incredibly weak and voluntary regulations on alcohol advertising—a situation well parodied in a 2014 South Park episode. And Valleriani said that alcohol marketing and licensing is getting even more lax as Canada gets closer to legalizing cannabis, pointing to massive billboards on major Toronto streets, new LCBO’s “pop-up stores” and Toronto’s recent “A Very Mommy Wine Festival” as examples.

“If anyone ever tried to do a ‘Cannabis Mom TO,’ there would be a major outcry,” Valleriani said. “Everybody enjoys a pint or a glass of wine here and there. Because of that, we just can’t really see alcohol for what it is. As cannabis is being legalized, this could really provide us an opportunity to step back and look at about how we think about alcohol. And maybe it’s time to be a little more restrictive about alcohol because of its known health harms.”

Ultimately, it may require a fundamental undoing of what Johnston deems an “alcogenic” or “alcocentric” culture, in which many of us can’t imagine relaxing, celebrating or having any fun at all without the “social lubricant” of drinking. Johnston said that navigating a social life without alcohol is indeed a skill to be learned. But given the slow and progressive nature of alcohol abuse, she thinks it’s well worth the effort and can to a whole new world of self-knowing and self-respect.

“I really don’t believe in fear-mongering and I’m concerned about being seen as a prohibitionist,” she said. “But I do believe that if we become more open to the dialogue about alcohol and the role it plays in our lives, we would benefit as a society.”

Remember that 2010 study that concluded alcohol was the most dangerous drug when harms to user and society are combined? Well, it just so happens that three of the least harmful drugs are mushrooms, LSD and MDMA.

We’re certainly not qualified to provide medical advice but, well, just know that there are far safer “evidence-based” drugs out there to help cope with the crushing realities of climate change, student debt and imminent nuclear war.

Follow James Wilt on Twitter.

Police have rescued 13 malnourished, unwashed siblings from a home in Perris, about two hours east of Los Angeles. Their parents—David Allen Turpin, 57, Louise Anna Turpin, 49—have been charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. They’ve been held on a US$9 million bail each.

The discovery happened when a 17-year-old girl escaped the house and called police on a mobile phone she had found in the home, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

David Allen Turpin in a mugshot supplied by Riverside County Sheriff's Department - Perris Station

"Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house, but were shocked to discover that seven of them were actually adults," the statement read. “Further investigation revealed several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings, but the parents were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner.”

They victims—ranging in age between two and 29—were taken to the Perris Police Station and interviewed. When they claimed to be starving, Child Protective Services and Adult Protective Services provided them with food and drink.

Louise Anna Turpin

Little is known so far about the parents or why their 13 children were being kept in this way. According to the ABC, neighbours said the Turpins and their children spent nearly all time inside their relatively new, housing estate home. Records show that the Turpins filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

Relations of the Turpins in West Virginia admitted they hadn’t seen the family for five years. They did however describe them as a good Christian family.

After Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale swept through awards season, netting dozens of accolades, it looks like the show will be heading back to Gilead this spring. At a Television Critics Association event in Pasadena last weekend, the streaming service announced that the second season will premiere at the end of April—and dropped a new trailer offering a first look at what's to come.

The minute-long teaser is scored by a creepy-ass cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and features Elisabeth Moss's character, Offred, back in her handmaid's dress and gagged after her rebellion at the end of season one. We also get a brief glimpse of the "Colonies," the wild land outside Gilead that was previously only discussed in the first season, though it doesn't particularly look like a place you'd want to go. But between all the bleakness, we thankfully get a little bit of hope seeing Moira, who now appears to be living a new and better life in Ontario.

This new season will be a departure from the original source material—Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel—since the first season ended at roughly the same point as the book. At the TCA panel, Moss revealed that the new season will center around Offred's pregnancy, Los Angeles Times reports, though Moss and the show's other executive producers were careful not to give too much away.

"[Showrunner Bruce Miller] and I always talked about the impending birth of this child that’s growing inside her as a bit of a ticking time bomb," Moss said. "It's a very big part of this season, and it gets bigger and bigger as the show goes on."

The second season of The Handmaid's Tale premieres with two new episodes on April 25 on Hulu. Until then, give the trailer a watch above.

YouTube has become a beacon for anyone—especially anyone 25 years old and younger—to watch and obsess over content focusing on their favourite topics. Make-up? Check. Unboxing toys? Check. ASMR? You got it, ace. It’s easy to become obsessed with the seemingly mundane lives of others filming themselves ad nauseam, but when those others cross even the faintest of lines, it’s time to reassess the cultural ecosystem’s usefulness.

Although YouTube has occasionally provided an outlet for young people to make their voices heard—especially when it comes to building like-minded communities for marginalized and underrepresented groups—YouTube stars like Alissa Violet, FaZe Banks, the Paul brothers, PewDiePie, and Jenna Marbles make ungodly amounts of money from posting digestible montages of their lives: Jackass-style stunts, Q&As with their best friends, footage of themselves completing “challenges,” and even just carrying around their iPhone X on a selfie stick to film their ultra-luxe day-to-day existence. The generation being molded on YouTube is one that is bound to reach its peak sooner or later, and the feeding frenzy of fandom only thrives as long as the object of a fan’s affection can provide.

Which brings us to the current predicament of Logan Paul: An insanely popular YouTube star, Logan decided in the waning hours of 2017 that he’d post a video from his recent vacation in Tokyo, in which he and some friends apparently hired a local tour guide to take them through Aokigahara Forest.

Logan claims that he and his friends wanted to explore the forest’s supernatural side, but the spot is primarily known as a place where people have gone to commit suicide. It is, without question, not the place you take your bros to go ghost-hunting. I can’t pretend to know Logan or what was going through his head that led him to all of this, but one thing is for sure: he and his crew stumbled upon a person who had apparently died by suicide. The Independent preserved parts of the now-deleted video (TW: suicide), in which you can see Logan’s horrified reaction to seeing the body of a deceased person.

Despite this discovery and his reacting with horror at what he’d seen, Logan still chose to edit the video and post it to YouTube. He also promoted the video like he would for any other, showing a lack of compassion or decency that was truly chilling and led to two essentially insufficient apologies.

Logan’s behaviour is unsurprising when you look at Logan’s previous, obnoxious antics. Starting out as a Vine star before moving to YouTube, Logan (as well as his brother Jake) made his millions performing stunts and engaging in crass antics to delight his legion of followers—or, his “Logang.” His recent “Why 2017 Was The Best Year Of My Life” video finds him recounting his numerous material blessings, including a $6.5 million mansion, a Rolex, and a car called “The Yeti.”

Later in the Best of 2017 video, he recounts faking his own death, mailing his friend in a suitcase overseas, and getting in serious trouble with the Italian authorities after he and Jake tried to fly a drone over the Colosseum. So while it still remains to be seen how big a hit his career will take from his latest scandal, past evidence suggests that this type of behaviour only makes people love him more. What reason does he have to stop?

After days of relative silence on the issue, YouTube issued an official statement earlier this week that seemingly condemned Logan’s behaviour. “Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You’re right to be. Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views. The channel violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences. It’s taken us a long time to respond, but we’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying. We know that the actions of one creator can affect the entire community, so we’ll have more to share soon on steps we’re taking to ensure a video like this is never circulated again.”

Logan’s since suffered even further serious consequences for his actions, too: he’s been removed from the popular YouTube Red show Foursome as well as the Google Preferred program (which will affect how brands advertise on his channel), and YouTube’s further put any projects with Logan on hold.

And Logan’s not the only YouTube star who has been massively followed and adored while going through deeply, deeply serious scandals. PewDiePie, one of the most popular and widely followed YouTubers, has previously tried to excuse using racist and anti-Semitic language during videos; earlier this week, popular YouTuber Shane Dawson faced allegations of pedophilia after an old podcast episode resurfaced where he was on record implying a six-year-old was “sexy”; and successful YouTuber DaddyOFive’s built a brand off of playing “pranks” on his children that caused many to ask if his videos were more resembling child abuse than mere entertainment.

Logan’s arguably faced the most severe fallout in the immediate wake of his scandal, and YouTube’s past response to transgressions committed by their content creators has been mixed. In the fallout of PewDiePie’s racially-charged comments, both his partnership with Disney-owned YouTube studio Maker and his YouTube reality show Scare PewDiePie were cancelled; YouTube has yet to issue an official response following Shane Dawson’s controversy; DaddyOFive lost custody of two of his children after he and his wife faced charges of neglect for a minor, but YouTube never issued an official response and the brand lives on through the MommyOFive and DaddyOFive channels.

In general, YouTube’s culture doesn’t seem to receive proper policing from the service—if it does at all—until it’s too late. When the content associated with it stands against basic levels of societal decency that should be impressed upon young adults, we need to question if it should exist at all. Think of it this way: if someone showed you a dead body in real life, you would call the police, not hit “Record.” Why not hold YouTubers to the same standard?

Follow Allie Gemmill on Twitter.

VICE Canada has been nominated for 13 Canadian Screen Awards which include nods for best documentary program, best news special, and best comedy series. The Canadian Screen Awards, which released its list of nominees on Tuesday, will be decided in March of this year and are chosen by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

The rebooted web series Nirvanna the Band the Show leads VICE’s series with three nominations and is tailed by Terror, Payday, and Dead Set on Life which each have two nominations. The most nominated series on a whole is CBC’s Anne of Green Gables reboot, Anne, which netted 13 nominations.

The full list of VICE Canada nominations are as follows:

Best Comedy Series, Best Picture Editing Comedy, Best Writing Comedy: Nirvanna the Band the Show

Best Documentary Program: RISE

Best Factual Series, and Best Picture Editing Factual: Payday

Best Lifestyle Program, and Best Host in a program or Series: Dead Set On Life

Best News or Information Program, and Best News or Information Series: Terror

Best News Special: VICE Talks Weed With Justin Trudeau

Best Photography Documentary or Factual: Abandoned

Best web program or series non-fiction: VICE Canada Reports

Follow VICE Canada on Twitter.

A selfie posted on Facebook was used as key evidence in a murder investigation that has led to a 21-year-old woman in Saskatchewan being sentenced to seven years in prison.

Cheyenne Rose Antoine, who was sentenced in the case on Monday, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the killing of her best friend, 18-year-old Brittney Gargol, CBC News reports. Gargol died in 2015. She was found on a road near a landfill in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

A belt that became a key piece of evidence was also found near Gargol’s body. That belt reportedly was seen in a selfie posted on Facebook of Antoine wearing it hours before her best friend was found dead. Gargol was strangled to death.

Antoine admitted to killing her friend but said she did not remember it. The two had been out drinking the night of Gargol’s murder.

A selfie of Antoine released by police (photo via Saskatoon Police Service)

Antoine had previously told cops that Gargol went home with a man she met when they were barhopping the night she died. But later, someone tipped off police about how Antoine had confessed to a friend that she had killed Gargol.

Crown prosecutor Robin Ritter spoke of the role of the connection between the belt found by the victim’s body and the selfie in court, saying it was “quite remarkable how the police developed this information.”

Evidence from social media is increasingly being used in major crime investigations. In Canada, 24-year-old Ager Hasan is currently in court for the murder of his former girlfriend after allegedly confessing on Reddit. Hasan also appears to have posted on Instagram while on the run.

A screenshot appears to show Antoine (though her first name is spelled differently on Facebook) leaving a comment on a selfie of her and Gargol. The selfie was posted the same day Gargol died, March 25, 2015. (via Facebook)

Ritter said Antoine attempted to use Facebook to throw off police after she killed her friend. She had reportedly posted on Facebook asking where Gargol was just hours after her death.

The murder investigation took almost two years. Antoine was initially charged with second-degree murder.

Gargol’s aunt, Jennifer Gargol, provided a victim impact statement in court.

"Most days we can't stop thinking about Brittney, what happened that night, what she must have felt fighting for her life," she said. “You feel darkened in your own dark world… You robbed this world of someone who had a special gift."

I recently came to the realization that I should have given my kid more screentime when he was little. And also more candy. Though hardly hardcore like our “crunchy” brethren—he’s well-vaccinated, wasn’t “baby-worn” and, thank God, we let him “cry it out” during sleep training—we still spent years freaked out about permanently wrecking him because we had no idea what we were doing. Being in charge of life is super scary.

The multi-billion-dollar parent-industrial complex will use that fear to sell you things. I wish we owned a fraction of the parenting crap currently filling our basement because we’re too busy to put it on Bunz. (Still cool with our gifted Paul Frank Bugaboo stroller, though, we used the shit out of that.)

But more well-meaning folks take advantage, too. I wish we’d ignored the “lactivists” who convinced us we’d destroyed our newborn’s immune system for life because the hospital gave him formula when he had trouble latching and was fast losing weight. I really wish I hadn’t read that advice about not giving kids Tylenol to cut fevers because, y’know, that’s the body’s way of fighting illness. It’s also body’s way of giving your kid a febrile seizure in your arms and an ambulance ride to Emerg when his temperature rises too high, too fast.

We’ve since learned most of our fears were unwarranted and moderation is key to all things parenting. Last week, he cooked up amazing, dolphin-shaped gummies using a DIY sour candy “science kit” and even though we didn’t let him watch much TV aside from Yo Gabba Gabba and My Little Pony when he was wee, the kid recently ran through, like, 220 episodes of Naruto in a shockingly short period of time. Guess what? Not only did it not make him dumb, when finished he just moved on to reading the manga.

Look, every child is a unique snowflake (seriously, they get triggered by everything) and everyone’s parenting experience is similarly singular. Nonetheless, we asked a bunch of parents what they wish they had known before unleashing another human onto our planet.

Advice Sucks

Every single piece of advice is shit for new parents. In my experience, people just wanted to tell you how it was for them. Are daddy wars a thing? Because mommy wars are out of control. It’s the “absolute” people that make me the most angry—like it’s all natural or all medical, and no matter what you choose you’re a shit parent. “Oh, you didn’t give birth down by the river assisted by virgin deer? Poor kid.” “You took your kid to the doctor? OMG, call child services!” Then you bring up some more “natural” options to medical professionals and they tell you that you’re a shit parent for thinking virgin deer know more than they do. It honestly made me fearful of having to decipher the BS and make a decision that makes me comfortable. — Monna Hansen Lane

I would love to have known more about logistics—parenting hacks, diaper management systems, road trip logistics, food ideas, etc.—and waaaaay less unsolicited philosophical ruminations on the obvious: "it will go fast!!" or "cherish every second!" or THIS ONE I ABHOR: "It gets better!" — John WD Mullane

You can survive without mommy groups, you really can. I made a point of keeping my close friends close—at least 50 percent of them don’t have kids—and for me, that’s been a sanity-preserver. Also, you don’t just die intellectually. Yes, you’ll spend lots of time thinking about whether to introduce squash as opposed to carrot, and about poop and such. But you can still read, and I’m not talking about mommy blogs. — Deana Sumanac-Johnson

Most of the things people say will “mess up your kid” really won't. Parenting a new child is full of guilt for things you should do for your kid, your partner and yourself. But life is different now. Be OK with that. Forgive yourself for not working out four times a week anymore or working 12-hour days anymore. A bit of screentime so you can have a shower won't destroy your child. Eating McD's sometimes isn't going to destroy them either. We all want to do the best we can but sometimes you also need a break. — Lisa Louie

There Will Be Shit

Raspberries make you poop. Didn't know that, now I do. I miss that shirt. — James R.C. Smith

Pee Pee Tee Pee. Worst. Product. EVER! If only I knew that two Ziploc bags, a diaper, wipes, and a bag of goldfish crackers was all I would ever need. — Stephen Fung

Grab handfuls of those mesh underwear from the hospital. — Kymberly Burchell

As great as the lighter coloured sleepers and clothes are, go for darker—they hide stains better. And. There. Will. Be. Stains. — Samantha Kemp-Jackson

It Does Take a Village

I wish I had known I’d need a lot of help from other people because it was really hard to do it on our own. I suppose it really used to “take a village” but in cities people are very isolated. We did not have grandparents around and no family other than my sister who would help out during the times of crisis—during my relapse into alcoholism or my son’s dad’s emergency eye surgery—so we were really lucky to have her. But we sucked at getting and keeping babysitters so that we as a couple could have some time to ourselves. There were almost no dates, no fancy outings—just parenting that was really stressful because I was struggling with addiction and then I was trying to get sober, which also takes up a lot of time and effort. I really wish we had more help and asked for more help. Ask for help. Set it up in advance. Surround yourself with people. Don’t isolate. The rest is easy. (It’s fucking hard but you’ll figure it out—just don’t drop the baby!) — Jowita Bydlowska, author of Drunk Mom

I wish I had known how lonely and boring it would be at times when they were really small, especially since I didn’t have any friends with babies at the time my daughter was born. — Alison Bates

To not wish away the stressful moments. I now look back fondly on 3AM diaper changes and snuggles. My daughter was formula fed, so I took night duty and taped hockey games. Many a night we spent watching hockey and feeding her a bottle. I sometimes got frustrated and wished away the time. — Justin Connors

I’d heard lots about postpartum depression, but nothing about postpartum anxiety. I wish I’d known as it hit me like a mutha the first time around, and is trying to sneak its way in this time, too. With my first kid, my PPA manifested itself in pretty typical ways—fear of leaving the house, fear of failing as a parent, anxieties about scheduling and this feeling that I had lost my identity as a person outside parenthood and that I would never enjoy or be able to do the things I enjoyed before having a child. I began seeing a therapist who gave me some skills to help me cope. After a few months of working on myself, and getting the hang of being a new mom, I started to feel a bit like the old me.

This time around is different. I’m five-months postpartum, and the anxiety is there but I’m not plagued by worries as much—this time it’s manifesting itself in white-hot rage. I’m getting help for it, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the lack of control that comes with having a two-year-old and an infant.

I was better able to recognize something wasn’t right and spoke to a nurse about it right away. It also helps that I’ve told my close family and friends about what I’m feeling so I don’t feel so alone and they understand a bit better if I’m not quite myself or if I’m struggling and need help. — Michelle Lee Friesen

You Can’t Prepare for Everything

I wished I'd known about purple crying. Found it by Googling "why are my babies crying so much?" around week six with newborn twins. Just knowing this is an actual thing made me feel better and get through it with more sanity intact. — Hannah Wise

Oh my god, the breastfeeding troubles! Like is there enough milk?! How can I produce more?!? The pain of your boobs/nips/wrists, the worry of mastitis, the anger over your husband’s useless nipples! Like now, what were we freaking out about? — Leanne Sampson

Your Emotions Will Be Challenged

Plan for the hardest scenario and hope for the easiest. My first kid was easy. I remember watching her as a sleeping baby and waiting for some sort of difficulty to occur. Never happened. My second was born and any issues, we had them—feeding, sleep. That girl was literally screaming every time she would be out of my arms. Physically it was hard but mentally we were prepared. We just had it too easy the first time around. — Svetlana Putintseva

You're so caught up in the minutiae of day-to-day that you fail to pay attention to long-term relevance. We bought products and classes we didn’t need. We stressed more than we had to. We worried more than necessary. Give them love. Keep them smiling. They don't need to be spoiled. — Buzz Bishop

For me it was all about everything that would be taken away—choice, sleep, privacy—but no one told me how much joy would be given in exchange. — Will McGuirk

You don't know 'til you know, man. Now that we have our four-year old and a two-year-old, everything with the second is like "he's just two, this is how it is." While with our four-year-old, things are more WTF? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! IS THIS SHIT NORMAL?!? — Casey Evertove Palmer

I have so much to say, and so little energy. — Tyler Clark Burke

Follow Joshua Ostroff on Twitter.

In the latest update of what local investigators have deemed an "extremely disturbing" case, inventor Peter Madsen has been charged with killing journalist Kim Wall, the Associated Press reports. Her dismembered body was found at sea after she took a trip aboard Madsen's submarine last August.

Madsen, 47, who's provided conflicting explanations as to how Wall's torso, head, and legs wound up in the sea off the coast of Copenhagen after his submarine sank, has officially been charged with murder, dismemberment, indecent handling of a corpse, and having sexual relations of a "particularly dangerous nature" with her. After finding her dismembered torso, investigators say Wall, 30, was stabbed multiple times "around or shortly after her death." According to the AP, prosecutors believe Madsen strangled or cut Wall's throat, killing her.

Madsen's lawyer told the AP that her client still claims he didn't murder the journalist, though he admitted to dismembering her body last October. After Madsen was arrested following the fateful submarine trip, he claimed Wall died after hitting her head on the boat's hatch, then changed his story, saying she suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. Danish investigators also found disturbing videos of women being beheaded or strangled on Madsen's lab computer that they "presume to be real," Reuters reports.

"There is much technical evidence but I won't go into details right now," Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said at a news conference Tuesday. "Evidence must be presented in court and not in the media."

According to CNN, Madsen could face between five years and life in prison or end up in a mental health facility. His trial is scheduled for March 8.

Wall, who was working on a story about Madsen at the time she boarded his submarine, was a celebrated journalist who contributed to the New York Times, the Atlantic, Harper's, and VICE. Since her death, her family and friends have launched a memorial fund in her name to help support a female reporter cover "the undercurrents of rebellion."

"Kim wanted more women to be out in the world, brushing up against life," the website states, "and we would like to help bend the world in her vision."

It was a normal summer night for John Amitrano, working a Friday shift as security for Chicago's popular Logan Square hangout The Owl—but when we went outside, he saw something odd. "I saw a plane flying, but also something moving really awkwardly under it," he told VICE. "It didn't look like a bat so much as what illustrations of pterodactyls look like, with the slenderness of its head and its wing shape. I know what birds and what bats look like. This thing didn't have any feathers or fur, and it didn't fly like anything I've ever seen.”

Amitrano added that the thing he saw—which, according to him, had muscular legs, a jutting tailbone, and a human-like shape—flew in a "strange swooping motion, undulating up and down." After it flew away, he retrieved his phone from charging in the bar and texted his girlfriend and close friends what had happened. “I remember thinking, This was the worst time in the world to have my phone charging,” he laughed.

What Amitrano saw that night was one of 55 reported Chicago-area sightings of a flying humanoid in 2017. Accounts have varied from "a large, black, bat-like being with glowing red eyes” to "a big owl” or something that resembled a "Gothic gargoyle” or a “Mothman.” Most eyewitnesses spotted the being in-flight, but some particularly disturbing reports detailed it dropping onto hoods of cars, peering in through windows, and swooping down at bystanders. The alleged “Mothman” has captured the attention of the city, from local media articles and rap songs to Halloween costumes and countless speculative Facebook groups.

Amitrano later remembered seeing something on Facebook about the sightings, and as he read more about it he contacted Lon Strickler, a self-described Fortean researcher who’s been compiling all of the Chicago sightings on his website Phantoms and Monsters. Strickler—whose book Mothman Dynasty: Chicago's Winged Humanoids was released last month—has been investigating paranormal sightings since the late 1970s and claims to have seen both a “Mothman” and Bigfoot. Since the rash of sightings started in February, he’s been painstakingly interviewing witnesses and documenting their accounts.

According to Strickler, these Chicago sightings are unlike anything he’s seen in his decades investigating alleged flying humanoid sightings: "This group of sightings is historical in cryptozoology terms. For one, it's happening in an urban area for the most part and that there are so many sightings in one period.” He added that he believes there are at least three flying humanoids around Chicago due to the varied locations, the concentration of sightings in certain neighbourhoods, and the small differences in the eyewitness testimonies.

The main reference point Strickler uses for explaining this phenomenon was the wave of reported “Mothman” sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. From 1966 to 1967, there were several reports of a large, man-like bird with glowing red eyes; local folklore later tied the monster to a bad omen connected with a tragic bridge collapse in 1967. The sightings were popularized by John Keel’s 1975 novel The Mothman Prophecies, which was later adapted into a 2002 film starring Richard Gere and Julianne Moore—and since 2002, the town has commemorated the “Mothman” sightings with an annual festival.

Strickler doesn't believe that what Chicagoans have been seeing are harbingers of bad things to come: "These beings are less aggressive than the one in Point Pleasant, for the most part. I believe overall there was only one being in the Point Pleasant-area that was seen during that period.” While he’s not sure why Chicagoans are seeing what they’re seeing, he theorized, “I think they're flesh and blood beings that aren’t of this world.”

Dr. David A. Gallo is a psychologist from the University of Chicago whose research deals with memory—specifically, how people "actively (and sometimes inaccurately) reconstruct the past,” studying why people believe or are skeptics of paranormal psychic phenomena. A fan of The Mothman Prophecies, he offered his own explanations for what’s happening in Chicago: “It's a selective sample. When people are choosing to report sightings, the basis of data upon which your paranormal researchers are collecting is all self-report,” he said over a phone call. "He's not sampling random people and asking if they saw the Mothman—he's just counting the number of people that voluntarily came forward to report a sighting.”

According to Gallo, the people more likely to visit a paranormal-centric website like Strickler’s might also be more inclined to believe in, and therefore witness the existence of, a “Mothman.” "Ideas about the supernatural can be culturally transmitted and socially transmitted. When incidences of UFOs are reported in the media or represented in popular culture, more sightings happen. I've heard it called The Will Smith Effect.” But Strickler doesn’t buy that explanation: "We have had very few cranks from what I can tell, which I think is pretty unusual. If the media would have picked up on it more than it has, I think that we would have had more fraudulent sightings.”

"So many things could be different factors for why there's such a big uptick in the sighting,” Gallo stated, adding that he doesn't deny these witnesses saw something out of the ordinary. “There's a phenomenon where there's basically some real witnessed experience, but if there are holes or gaps in that original experience, sometimes the mind is unable to fill in the gaps.” Because of this, Gallo warned, "if something is suggested to them subsequently as a plausible scenario—like a Mothman or whatever—that person might be inclined to fill in the gaps with that.”

While Gallo’s theories for why people have been seeing this flying humanoid might help soothe the nerves of Chicagoans afraid to look up at the sky, Amitrano still believes he saw something that night: "The reason I said something in the first place is that nobody wants to say anything because they don't want to be perceived as a crackpot or a crazy person. That doesn't mean that those things don't happen.”

Follow Josh Terry on Twitter .