It was cold the morning Stacy Loknath was killed, colder than any New Year's Day in New York City since 1962. The mercury had already dipped to single digits when, around 3 AM, a next-door neighbor recalled seeing the 26-year-old and her 42-year-old husband Vishwanand “Vinny” Loknath tumble out of a cab and into their apartment at the corner of 103rd Avenue and 113th Street in Queens. He said they were so bundled against the icy chill that only her shock of red hair gave away their identities. Several neighbors remembered the mother of two had dyed it a few weeks before from black to an arterial vermilion.

The woman's brother-in-law went on to tell the Daily News that Vinny had been drinking and using cocaine that night. The paper later reported that the couple fought so viciously they'd been thrown out of the club where they celebrated the nascent New Year. It wasn't the first time their relationship became violent: Police confirmed to VICE that Vinny had been arrested in September for allegedly punching Stacy in the head, and half a dozen neighbors told me they'd seen her taken away in an ambulance after the incident, events that would seem to have required interventions on her behalf through the new citywide Crime Victims Assistance Program deployed at the 106th Precinct in August. (VICE reached out to Safe Horizon for comment specifically on Loknath's case but had yet to hear back at the time of publication.)

“I remember Vinny [Jr.] said, 'My dad went to jail because he was drinking at the bar and my mom got mad. We didn’t see him for two days,'” recalled Cherron Cox, 36, who said she taught the family’s five-year-old son until June at Bev’s Kiddie Daycare on 113th Street. “In the centers during dramatic play, you hear them talking about whatever’s going on at home. I listen out for things, but I never heard anything that made me think there was domestic violence."

In a city where nearly one out of every five homicides is domestic and a country where half of all female murder victims are killed by their partners or exes, what happened to Stacy Loknath in her Richmond Hill home just before dawn on January 1 might be called both horrific and commonplace. According to the NYPD and the medical examiner, Vinny Loknath stabbed his wife repeatedly in the torso, striking her heart, lungs, and liver, leaving her dead in the upstairs apartment they shared with their two children, Vinny Jr. and his 12-month-old baby sister.

But then something happened that makes cases like this one even more disturbing to experts in the field. As the temperature hovered near 10 degrees, Vinny apparently set out on a mile and a half long journey to Forest Park in Kew Gardens, where, according to the NYPD, he was discovered at about 11 AM on New Year's Day, hanging from a tree.

Why men kill their families is a matter of longstanding national inquiry over the years by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Justice, among others. But what makes some of those same men take their own lives is both different and dangerously understudied. According to one study from the early 2000s, 30 percent of men who killed their partners went on to kill themselves. Yet even now, according to the Violence Policy Center, a prominent research and advocacy group, neither the FBI nor any other federal agency tracks those deaths together. That means almost everything we know about them comes from small research labs, independent groups, or local fatality review boards, whose mandates do not always grant them authority to examine deaths in detail.

In New York, the Fatality Review Committee only just last year worked out a deal with the medical examiner's office to view reports where homicides are accompanied by suicides. But while the same body in Washington, DC, has the right to review all relevant medical examiner's reports, New York's historically has not, according to Elizabeth Dank, general counsel at the Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence. That has almost certainly made it harder to draw accurate conclusions about what causes violence and how it can be prevented in America's largest city.

Yet, “[thanks to Fatality Review Boards] this is the first time ever that there’s a link between homicides and suicides that occur together,” said Dr. Sonia Salari, a gerontologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who has spent the past decade studying Intimate Partner Homicide-Suicide, the technical term for what cops concluded happened to Stacy and Vinny Loknath. “Our only chance for linking these things are through these fatality review boards,” themselves a patchwork of city and state-level operations with little in the way of uniform standards.

According to Salari and others who study the phenomenon, two important distinctions emerge between homicide-suicides and homicides alone. Both have alarming implications for the future, as well as insights into how families like the Loknaths might be helped.

The first, perhaps surprisingly, is guns.

“That whole scenario is kind of unusual, because murder-suicide typically includes a gun,” Salari explained when I told her about the Loknath incident. A 2014 Center for American Progress report analyzing federal and state data concluded that, between 2001 and 2012, 55 percent of all American women killed by intimate partners were shot. But, at least in New York City, the rate has been far higher among intimate partner murder-suicide cases, with firearm deaths accounting for some 64 percent of them in 2016, versus just 16.5 percent of non-suicide intimate-partner homicides. “In our nationwide cases, we found that nearly ninety percent were perpetrated by a gun,” Salari told me of her study of more than 700 murder-suicides scraped from news stories, obituaries, and police reports between 1999 and 2007.

That’s not exactly welcome news for many Americans given the desire by some powerful figures in the federal government to loosen gun laws in the Trump era. What makes it worse, Salari and others cautioned, is that current demographic trends could make murder-suicide more likely.

“The Baby Boom cohort is actually more suicidal than other cohorts have been in the past." —Sonia Salari

Though younger men frequently kill themselves in a tailspin of a homicidal rage, Salari told me, murder-suicides are more commonly an older man’s response to his own will to die, and his fatal conviction that his wife must not live without him. “There’s this idea that she doesn’t have autonomy to live aside from his lifespan,” the researcher explained. New York City's own data bears this out, concluding that "the proportion of intimate partner homicide-suicides involving victims age 60 and over was almost twice that of other intimate partner homicides."

Based on her work, the Salari also went so far as to call this a “white phenomenon.” But in New York, at least, spousal murder suicide was found to be statistically twice as common among what the city calls "Asians," compared with other groups. Where the Loknaths fit is less clear—although Indo Caribbean immigrants like them have been among the city's fastest growing populations, some local activists said few in New York’s social service infrastructure seemed to know they exist, much less be in a position to provide help.

“Domestic violence is an issue that impacts many communities but it has a unique history in ours,” explained Simone Jhingoor of Jahajee Sisters, a grassroots Indo Caribbean advocacy group based in the city. "We were taken as indentured laborers from India to the Caribbean. There was an extreme shortage of women who were brought—for every woman, there were ten men. It created a sense of ownership and a power dynamic between men and women where men felt like they had a stake on the women they were with."

Without more help from the city to prop up local efforts, she said, domestic-violence victims like Stacy Loknath will continue to lose out on life-saving help.

"I met with our attorney this morning and she said a lot of women are coming in, saying they want to divorce their husband," Stacy's aunt Ramona Latsis told mourners at a memorial service I attended Monday night. "They don’t want to end up like her."

(VICE reached out to Safe Horizon and the Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence for comment on how Indo Caribbean communities in particular are reached by the local social service structure but had yet to hear back at the time of publication.)

Salari went on to point out another problem that emerged in her own data. Unlike with murder alone, where prior assaults are a strong indicator of future homicides, in many murder-suicide cases, no one is ever arrested or even suspected of domestic violence until it’s too late, making much of what we know about how to help domestic violence victims virtually useless in preventing murder-suicides.

"In those cases where there’s no domestic violence history, we have a perpetrator who’s more suicidal,” she said, adding that it's here where demographics turn from informative to foreboding. After all, suicide rates have been rising steadily over the past decade, both in New York City and nationwide. And research cited by the CDC in its most recent report on intimate-partner violence suggested suicide prevention could significantly reduce domestic violence.

Evaluations of an Air Force–based suicide prevention program among members of the military “showed a 30 percent reduction in moderate family violence (exposure to repeated instances of emotionally abusive behavior, neglect, or physical or sexual abuse) and a 54 percent reduction in severe family violence,” the CDC report found. “The program also significantly lowered rates of suicide.”

As far as Salari is concerned, similar programs for the general population can't come soon enough.

“The baby boom cohort is actually more suicidal than other cohorts have been in the past, and now they're aging to that time where old white men are extremely suicidal,” Salari explained. “It’s actually something that I fear for the future."

Follow Sonja Sharp on Twitter.

For more than 15 years, the Boulet Brothers—a duo of veteran drag artists, event promoters, and media wunderqueens—have been putting a spotlight on drag’s wildest, most challenging impulses in a way the queer world too rarely sees. In Los Angeles, they’re a queer nightlife powerhouse, responsible for events like Queen Kong, a weekly lineup of often boundary-pushing drag and queer performance, and Dragula, a formerly monthly “celebration of drag, filth, leather and glamour,” where queens were known to mud wrestle and attendees once walked out “covered in blood, fish guts and confetti,” as the Brothers told LA Weekly.

An event like that was always too awesome to happen solely once a month, and the Boulets have always been too prolific to stay under the radar forever. So it makes sense that they’ve evolved Dragula from an event to a web series, where demonic, hell-born queens compete to become “The World’s Next Drag Supermonster” weekly. The second season, whose finale premiered Tuesday, has included paintball duels and physical thunderdome battles, and contestants have faced off in challenges where they’re made to stand in buckets of ice and get terrible tattoos. Not that this season’s queens weren’t warned: “This competition is not safe” was one of the first things Dracmorda Boulet told them in this season’s premiere.

I think what the show and the Boulets are doing is vital for the queer community for exactly that reason: Nothing they do is safe. Sometimes literally, but always figuratively. Their movement is the opposite of bland, anesthetized, complacent queer culture, the kind that’s been toned down and made safe for the consumption of straight people. It’s unabashed and raw, and in a world where our rights are imperiled and queer people are dying, one where we need loud, unashamed queer visibility more than ever, the Boulet Brothers are doing something that feels incredible—both to people like me in the audience and to the queens they champion on the show.

“Queer culture has always been looked down upon and made to feel lesser than,” said Meatball, a Los Angeles–based drag queen and “fan favorite” winner on Dragula’s first season. “But our culture feels stronger and more visible than ever thank to people like the Boulets. They taught me that sometimes, just going out and supporting queer art is a form of protest. Walking down the street in a dress with my hairy chest out is a form of protest. Staying visible and saying ‘we aren’t going anywhere’ is a form of protest. The Boulets have made queer culture stronger because they want everyone to express themselves however they see fit—they care about individuality and showcasing people and styles you can’t see anywhere else.”

Watch Trixie and Katya discuss the dos and don'ts of dying:

“Dragula has changed the landscape of queer entertainment simply by being a platform where the weird, the unusual and the often-unheard of is held in the highest regard,” said Vander Von Odd, winner of Dragula’s first season. “It screams out to the weirdos and the outsiders of the world that they’re seen and they’re valuable, and there’s a family of freaks out here waiting for them. During a Trump presidency, with what feels like constant attacks on minorities of all kinds, visibility and representation are the strongest tools we have to fight back. We owe it to each other to be seen.”

That ethos was baked into Dragula from the very beginning, when it was a monthly party at an LA gay bar called Faultline. It was as unfiltered as the show, and the Boulets aimed to make it “primal and refreshing,” as Swanthlua Boulet told me. “We felt deeply outcast growing up, so being able to provide a place like this for other disenfranchised gays put a smile on our faces,” added Dracmorda

That’s what I remember from those events, even years ago—those parties had a way of making everyone in the room feel like no matter who you were or how you dressed, as long as you were queer as fuck (and that includes straight people, too), you were the most special thing in the whole world.

And that’s really what we need more of as a queer community—more solidarity and communion, especially with the most marginalized among us. Hate crimes in America are on the rise among virtually every minority, including against LGBTQ people. Anti-trans violence and murders have continued their chilling increase year after year. There’s no doubt that some of that is motivated by the divisiveness and tribalism seeded in our society by Donald Trump and his acolytes. And that divisiveness trickles down into every corner of our society; the amount of infighting that plays out among queer activists and communities is sometimes hard to watch, made more toxic by the fact that if that energy were turned toward realizing our collective goals, we’d be that much stronger as a community in combating the forces of hate and intolerance that have overtaken our country.

What’s important these days is that we’re visible. Each and every queer person and our allies must stand together and be unified as a community if we want to combat hate and political injustice. Especially if you’re among the most visible and privileged members of our community. Because it’s those of us who don’t fear for our lives or face marginalization in the ways that our queer family of color, our trans, gender nonconforming and femme siblings and other members of our community imperiled for their identity do who must stand tallest. All of us need to be loud, queer as fuck, and united in our commitment to this community and its future.

“We don’t believe that there’s a universal definition of the word ‘queer,’” Swanthlua told me. “Being queer is different everywhere. But to us, to be queer is to reject mainstream approval and the idea that anyone has authority over how we live. We are who we are, we don’t need anyone else’s recognition, and fuck anyone who places themselves above us in the first place. We’re all equal and nobody has authority over anyone else.”

That sentiment is exactly the kind of political energy we need to fight those who hate us. It’s a way to channel the energy and sentiment that’s propelled queer politics and activism for decades, one that rejects our differences and encourages solidarity in the face of those who hate us. And don’t think that Dragula is just a show about drag queens who love grotesque, hardcore queer performance art. In its own way, it’s encouraging us to stand united, whether you’re a supermonster or not.

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The first thing you need to know about FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is that it’s not really about Gianni Versace. While O.J. Simpson—and his fame, his race and his abusive history—were central to Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology in its first season, this story focuses on the man who killed Versace and the society that aided in that murder.

The new season is based on Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, a 450-page tome the journalist Maureen Orth published in 1999. Much of the book is devoted to the life story of Cunanan, the 27-year-old spree killer who shot Versace in 1997. Her reporting is thorough and revealing, but much of her analysis is dated. When Orth explores Cunanan’s demimonde of meth, escorts, sugar daddies and BDSM, it feels as though she’s unaware that this milieu isn’t representative of gay male culture as a whole.

Especially considering that Murphy—who is gay and has created some groundbreaking queer characters—has also been known to perpetuate the occasional homophobic stereotypes, the interplay between the book and the series is bound to give us plenty to discuss. At the very least, Vulgar Favors is handy for determining which parts of the show are confirmed fact and which are purely conjecture. (I’ll also be using Deborah Ball’s House of Versace, a breezy history of Gianni, his family, and the brand from 2010, along with a few other sources.)

I don’t want to call these recaps “fact-checks,” though, because fiction doesn’t have any responsibility to stick to the official record. Instead, I’ll look at how the discrepancies between what Orth dug up and what Murphy depicts reveal the show’s real agenda. These pieces may take a different form from week to week, but since the premiere was mostly a reenactment of the crime and its immediate aftermath, we’ll start with some pretty basic background stuff.

July 15, 1997

Orth’s book ends with the death of Versace and the intensified hunt for Cunanan, who had already killed four men by the time he came to Miami Beach. American Crime Story begins with the murder and goes backward from there. It’s a promising approach, because the real suspense here is in the question of how the smart, charismatic, cultured young man we meet in flashbacks ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

The show sticks fairly close to the facts in recounting what happened on the day Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) died. He really was returning home from an early-morning excursion to buy magazines when Andrew, played by Darren Criss in a performance that’s already riveting, gunned him down on the steps of his palatial home (more on that later). One bullet also killed a turtle dove—a symbol that initially led authorities to suspect a Mafia hit. While Versace’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), stayed at the designer’s side, the couple’s neighbor Lazaro Quintana chased Andrew until Andrew pulled a gun on him. Versace was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he was declared dead at 9:21 AM.

Cops really did spot someone who matched Andrew’s description on the roof of a parking garage around the same time, but he escaped. (Orth doesn’t mention them tackling the wrong man.) It’s not clear what he was doing later that day, when police found the stolen red truck Andrew had abandoned and he became the suspect. The scenes that show him changing into fresh clothes and watching gleefully as the media descends on Versace’s house aren’t just plausible; they underscore how easily Andrew blended in among the town’s gay beachgoers.

One character to keep an eye on is FBI agent Keith Evans (Jay R. Ferguson). The Bureau was searching for Cunanan long before he killed Versace, and Evans was its man in Miami. Sadly, he was also inexperienced and unfamiliar with the city’s gay community. Sgt. Lori Wieder, the lesbian cop played by Dascha Polanco, wasn’t on the scene that day, but the officers who were there did find boxes of undistributed Wanted flyers in Evans’ trunk. The scene where the pawnshop owner complains to police about the legally mandated transaction form she’d filed a week earlier, which included Cunanan’s full name, is another embarrassing real-life detail. But the emphasis Murphy, who directed the episode, places on Evans’ neglect of his assignment is crucial, because it’s the first suggestion that law enforcement’s homophobia—its literal fear of engaging with gay men—contributed to its failure.

October 1990

Did Versace really know his killer? Well, sort of.

It’s true that Versace designed the costumes for a production of Capriccio at the San Francisco Opera, and stayed in the city during its run in 1990. At the time, Cunanan was living rent-free in Berkeley with his friend Liz Coté (Annaleigh Ashford), who Orth describes as a “rich and spacey debutante,” and her husband, Phil Merrill (Nico Evers-Swindell)—the couple we see in the flashback. A fixture in SF’s gay scene, Andrew met Versace at a club called Colossus. But, Orth reports, it was the designer who approached him: “I know you,” said Versace. “Lago di Como, no?” he asked, referring to his Italian lake house. It was, most likely, a flimsy pickup line. Andrew, who’d never been to Italy but had also never heard a flattering lie he couldn’t get behind, went along with it. On another night, Versace, Andrew, and a local playboy named Harry de Wildt were spotted together in a limo.

That dreamy encounter after the opera, though? It’s pure fantasy, although Andrew was known to lie about his Filipino father knowing Imelda Marcos, owning pineapple plantations and having a boyfriend. What’s important here is the conversation about Andrew’s future. “You are creative?” Versace asks, and his date answers in the affirmative. In fact, the only things Andrew ever created were fictions about himself, passed off as fact. (I won’t get too deep into that, because his lying is sure to come up later in the show.) “I’m sure you’re going to be someone really special one day,” says Versace. The distance between Andrew’s ambitions and the life he ended up with—as well as the reasons why he was such a failure—is going to be important.

The Family Business

The episode’s strangest divergence from the facts comes during the same scene. Versace explains the history of his company’s Medusa logo, recounting that he first spotted the image while playing in ruins as a child in Calabria. In fact, as Ball notes in House of Versace, he borrowed his logo from a door knocker at the Milan palazzo he bought in 1981. Perhaps we’re supposed to suspect Versace is a liar, too, but I’m inclined to believe the line is pure exposition, a hint of the designer’s humble beginnings that will soon become relevant to Andrew’s story.

Meanwhile, Versace’s mourning siblings/business partners, Donatella (Penélope Cruz) and Santo (Giovanni Cirfiera) provide some insight into the company’s status in 1997. Poor Cruz, normally a fantastic actress, has a thankless role (and a distracting accent) in this episode. All she does is sob, scream and provide dry background info that writer Tom Rob Smith doesn’t bother surrounding with believable human dialogue. For the record, it’s true that Santo, the oldest Versace sibling and the company’s most pragmatic voice, wanted to take the business public. And Gianni, after accepting a large dividend to subsidize his lavish lifestyle, agreed to do so. The plan was to make an initial public offering in the summer of 1998. It never happened. Two decades later, Gianni Versace S.p.A. remains a billion-dollar private company. None of this is particularly interesting, so here’s hoping it becomes relevant to the Cunanan story eventually!

Gianni Versace’s Fucking Insane House

There isn’t much art in this workmanlike premiere, but it does begin with a shot of the clouds painted over Versace’s bed that leads to a lovely, nearly wordless sequence contrasting Gianni’s civilized morning with Andrew’s primal scream. If you paid attention to the Renaissance-style art and the stained-glass windows and the gold accents and the massive tiled courtyard, it probably occurred to you that Versace’s home was totally off the wall. (“If Donald Trump had taste,” I said to myself, “this is what Mar-a-Lago would look like.”) Surely it was exaggerated for TV?

Actually, it was not. Built in 1930, Casa Casuarina, as the home was known, was inspired by Christopher Columbus’s son Diego’s residence in the Dominican Republic. In the courtyard of the 20,000-square-foot villa were busts of Columbus, Pocahontas, Mussolini and Confucius (all of which Versace kept). After Versace bought the property in 1992, he spent a million dollars restoring it. An army of artists and artisans filled the place with murals, mosaics and baroque furniture. Versace published a typically bizarre coffee-table book about his many bonkers properties in 1996, and in it you can find photos of the family frolicking poolside at Casa Casuarina alongside busy interiors and shots of naked men ironing. My favorite page shows a close-up of a burger, fries and a milkshake served on gilded Versace china, atop an ornate gold table. America! If you can’t track down a copy, this Google Image search should give you an idea. Look, here’s a bare-assed dude with a lampshade over his head! See you next week!

This weekend, whistleblower and transgender woman Chelsea Manning announced that she will be running for US Senate in her home state of Maryland. Her announcement sparked anger among those who regard her leaking diplomatic cables as a criminal act, and stirred those who see her as a whistleblower and a hero. Though her specific goals and reasons for running have yet to be revealed, and beyond the specific debate that always springs up around her, there's the remarkable nature of her announcement in the first place—both for what it means in terms of trans representation in politics, and for what it says about how marginalized people are responding to the onslaught of outright discrimination they’ve seen since Trump took office.

Manning is far from the first (and certainly won’t be the last) transgender person to run for office, but she is the most famous trans figure to date to announce a candidacy. And though her chances of beating incumbent Senator Ben Cardin in a January primary are low, it’s that visibility that’s historic, and the fact that the cultural and political bramble has been cleared enough to even allow trans candidates viable pathways to office.

Until the last few years, trans people have faced significant barriers to running for office, due to widespread stigma and discrimination. But in the years since the trans tipping point, Time's declaration that a decisive turn in trans public visibility had arrived, and the subsequent rise of transgender media visibility—visibility that was aided in no small part by Manning herself, and her sometimes tortuous public battle to transition while detained—trans lives have become normalized to a degree in certain corners of American society, enabling voters to more easily imagine a trans candidate taking office.

That's changed, as made apparent by Virginia Delegate Danica Roem’s much publicized win last fall. Before last year’s elections, only seven publicly out trans people held elected office, a number that more than doubled in November. But over 30 trans candidates are now running for office at various levels of elected government in 2018—and 30 more reasons why this election could make history for the trans community.

Watch Broadly profile Danica Roem's historic rise to becoming the first transgender politician to serve in a state legislature:

To understand what’s happening, it’s important to step back and realize that a growing wave of marginalized and minority candidates are stepping into the electoral spotlight in 2018. “Right now, there’s a trend for [marginalized] people to be stepping up and understanding that if they want to change things, they may have to be the ones to change them,” said Mara Keisling, Executive Director for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), noting the historic number of women and LGBTQ people set to appear on ballots this year.

That rise is due to a host of factors. Obviously, people of marginalized identities and experiences are reacting to Donald Trump and the increasing threats, both legislative and otherwise, they see Washington making on their lives. And the path has been cleared over the past few years for them to channel that anger effectively. With the growth of groups like Emily’s List, an organization that mentors and trains female candidates (including trans women) to run campaigns, and events like the Women’s March encouraging more women to run for office, more candidates with marginalized identities are seeing the support and momentum they need to take to 2018 ballots than ever before.

In the past, the widespread acceptance of transphobia no doubt scared trans candidates away from campaigning. But today, trans candidates are running, and winning. It was perhaps Roem’s most cunning campaign move to focus on bread-and-butter issues like turnpike gridlock—which enabled her to better handle GOP attacks on her gender identity. Though the office she earned is relatively minor, it could be a sign of big things to come.

“Remember, until a week ago, there was never an out trans state legislator,” Keisling said. She went on to note that in the past, only wealthier trans people had the resources to compete on many electoral stages, and even then, they sometimes overshot with their choice of office, as was the case with Misty Snow and Misty Plowright, who in 2016 became the first two trans candidates for major offices. Snow ran for a US Senate seat in Utah, and Plowright for a House of Representatives seat in Colorado—tall orders for first-time candidates, no matter how they identify. Both lost. (It could be argued that Manning, by challenging an incumbent politician as a first-time candidate, is set to do the same.) Today, more trans candidates are running for lower-tier elected positions, allowing them time to build their careers. “As a general rule, if you want to see who’s in Congress in ten years, look at who’s in the state legislature now,” said Keisling. “We’ve never had trans people in state legislatures, so they can’t move up into Congress.”

A recent push has seen the creation of several political organizations tasked specifically with supporting trans candidates, like the Breakthrough Fund, the Victory Fund, or the NCTE’s own PAC, the Action Fund. And it’s important to remember that trans social acceptance has opened doors for trans people working in politics at all levels; as more trans people fill support and strategic roles within campaigns across the country and accrue campaign and political experience, the more support will build towards electing trans people overall.

With an assault of transphobic new policies from the White House this year, and the more than 160 bathroom bills proposed at the state and local level in 2017, there’s more reason than ever for the trans community to stand up and fight back. And the rise in political action we will see “will be possibly the only good thing that’s come out of the Trump administration,” as Keisling put it. “Every time Donald Trump has attacked trans people, he has made us stronger.”

Follow Katelyn Burns on Twitter.

Most of our exposure to politicians is tightly controlled. Any MPs let anywhere near a television camera seem to have been rigorously briefed to repeat meaningless slogans and to avoid letting anything like a personality shine through.

On Facebook, politicians seem different. Many have hobbies, interests and passions that extend beyond the narrow prism of party politics. A number of them don’t even have private profiles. Browsing through their friend lists, page "likes" and niche interest groups, VICE has discovered a different side to our elected representatives.

Here’s what we learned.

John Whittingdale likes a "sugar daddy" dating site

It's a genuine shame most politicians feel the need to hide their personalities and interests. But if, like former culture secretary and Tory MP John Whittingdale, those interests include sugardaddie.com, a dating site which connects wealthy older men to attractive young women, it’s probably best to keep that on lockdown. The posts, likely to have appeared in Whittingdale's news feed, have included a guide to dating "insecure" women and "Why Men Seek a Trophy Girlfriend". Whittingdale declined to comment, but he has since made his Facebook likes private.

In 2013, Whittingdale had a six-month relationship with a woman who worked in a brothel. He claimed he met the woman online and did not realise what her job was, and that he broke up with her after he found out.

Many Labour MPs are members of tribal anti-Tory Facebook groups

Earlier this year, newly elected Labour MP Laura Pidcock sparked controversy when she said she had "absolutely no intention of being friends" with any Tories. In fairness, she’s not the only one. At least seven Labour MPs have subscribed to updates from a page titled "Nobody likes a Tory". Catherine West is a fan of "No to Tory scum", while Lyn Brown is a member of "We hate Iain Duncan Smith – The Minister for Manslaughter".

Lyn Brown’s office told VICE she had no recollection of joining the group and has now left. West said: "I do not ever recall ever 'liking' this page, and scanning through the content of its news feed I do not support much language or tone used in its content." She added that she may have liked the page inadvertently and has now un-liked the account. "Whilst I have campaigned against the policies of the Tories for many years, I have done so in a way that is passionate but most importantly respectful and considered," she said.

And Tory MPs are part of racist anti-Labour groups

It’s not just Labour. Tory MPs Ross Thomson and Michelle Donelan subscribe to "Labour Party Exposed", a page which describes the workers’ party as comprising "liars, traitors and pedophilia". It includes several posts comparing Labour figures to Nazis, and one recent post where Diane Abbot's face has been photoshopped to make her nose and lips look bigger, and pasted onto a "race card". Thomson previously criticised Labour MP Jared O'Mara for the "deeply offensive & ignorant comments" he had made on his Facebook page, while Donelan questioned the prime minister on what more can be done to stamp out racial hatred in politics.

A meme from the "Labour party exposed" Facebook group which presents Momentum as Nazis and Jeremy Corbyn as Hitler.

A spokesman for the Scottish Conservative party said Thomson "does not endorse in any way the views contained in the posts that have been highlighted". Michelle Donelan did not respond to a requests for comment.

Andrew Rosindell likes "Bin The Labour Party", a page "for like-minded Brits who despise Labour". Rosindell’s office told VICE to take that "with a pinch of salt", adding that the Tory MP has "lots of Labour friends" and "likes Jeremy Corbyn, personally".

Supposedly pro-May MPs think Boris Johnson is PM material

Wendy Morton – who was recently appointed assistant government whip, and wrote a blog post last year entitled "Why Theresa May Will Make a Great Prime Minister" – is a member of the group "Boris Johnson for British Prime Minister". So is Michelle Donelan – another Tory MP who has publicly backed May. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Still, at least one MP is resolutely on-brand: Labour MP Ivan Lewis is one of nine committed members of "Friends Who Like Ivan Lewis for Mayor".

They crave "likes" as much as the rest of us

MPs are as thirsty for notifications as anyone else. They post career highlights such as "First time at the Dispatch Box", and update their job titles when they’ve been made a cabinet minister – and then again for sympathy likes when they’re fired a few months later. They "check-in" at the House of Commons and the Strangers Bar. They share photos of themselves with celebrities (if you count Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn as celebrities). Some even subscribe to clickbait groups like "See Who Visited Your Profile" – hello there, Christopher Davies, Conservative MP for Brecon & Radnorshire!

Brexiteer MPs love Churchill, 'Top Gear' and Disney

You can spot a Brexiteer instantly based solely on their Facebook page. Take Jack Lopresti, a Tory MP who calls his son Brexit because he was born on the day Article 50 was triggered. His Facebook likes? Winston Churchill, Richard "Hamster" Hammond and Proud to be British. Or Damien Moore, who likes British Monarchy Lovers, Prince Harry and The Iron Lady.

And there’s another common interest linking Brexiteers Andrew Rosindell and Ross Thomson: both appear to be serious Disney fans. Perhaps that explains their optimism about happy endings.

There’s an old skool raver in the Commons

Judging by Facebook, most MPs aren’t huge music fans. Labour MPs like Billy Bragg. Tories like Vivaldi. Everyone loves Dusty Springfield. But there are no hard and fast rules. Chuka Umunna is well known for his days as a UK garage DJ, but who knew Conservative MP Justin Tomlinson was an old skool raver? Tomlinson was a nightclub manager in Swindon before becoming an MP and remains a Facebook fan of Slammin’ Vinyl, Fantazia, Altern8, Slipmatt and Ratpack. Meanwhile, Labour’s Richard Burgon is a metal fan who listens to bands including Pulverise, Dream Tröll, Krokodil and Sacred Reich (Noisey spoke to him about it last year).

MPs are real people

Sure, plenty of MPs' profiles confirm certain stereotypes. As a rule, Tory MPs love Margaret Thatcher and the military. Labour MPs? They tend to like unions and saving the NHS. But there were also some surprises. Tory MP Michelle Donelan is apparently a fan of WWE SmackDown; Labour deputy leader Tom Watson likes gaming; Iain Stewart is into model trains. And Steve Baker is a fan of extreme sports, which should serve him well in his role as minister for Exiting the European Union.

They all love The Thick of It

But, then, who doesn’t?

@mark_wilding

"What happens when we die?" is one of the existential questions that humans have puzzled over since we first grew aware of our own mortality. Few of us can ever have contemplated that our name might be seized from our gravestone by a bestselling author, assigned to a fictional evil wizard and our final place of rest transformed into a vacuous bucket list novelty for fans of a popular fantasy franchise.

That is, however, the fate which has befallen Thomas Riddell, who died in Edinburgh in 1806. His grave, nestled within the city’s Greyfriars Kirkyard, has become a pilgrimage for hundreds of visitors every day, who trek to the site to see an inscription that possibly inspired the naming of a character in a book.

Riddell’s name, you see, is a bit like that of Tom Riddle, otherwise known as the wicked wizard Lord Voldemort, the primary antagonist of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. On another tombstone nearby, someone has scrawled "Sirius Black, 1953 – 1996", a reference to another series character.

Tourists at the grave of Thomas Riddell (Photo by Liam Turbett)

That this part of the churchyard is now swarming with visitors, its grass having long been churned into mud by hundreds of daily visits to an obscure grave, is just one symptom of an emerging trend: Harry Potter tourism is infringing more and more on Edinburgh.

The year had barely begun when it was revealed – in a mysterious overnight change of signage – that a well-known city centre pub, the Conan Doyle, was now the J K Rowling. Just in case the point needed hammered home any more, a hanging sign featuring a glum portrait of the author settling down to a meal of three (three!) boiled eggs in an austere-looking flat appeared outside too. Apparently a tie-in with a literary themed visual art festival, and therefore a temporary change, it was a clever piece of marketing, rapidly generating press coverage around the world.

I mean, come on (Photo by Liam Turbett)

The pub’s owners are not the only company to realise the viral potential of everything HP-related, and the last year or so has seen a growing number of budding entrepreneurs attempt to corner the Potter pound.

The city now boasts two shops devoted to its merchandise – their frontages both claiming to represent the "inspiration" for Diagon Alley, the imaginary shopping arcade of the wizarding world. A daily walking tour traipses around sites in the city tenuously linked to the series, excitable drama students in pyjamas – sorry, wizarding robes – leading the way. A pop-up Potter themed bar will also open up in the city for three months from February.

There is inevitably – in a city where housing is coming under enormous strain from Airbnb – even a Harry Potter-themed luxury apartment available for rent. "I have ordered a sign saying 'Wizards welcome (Muggles Tolerated)'," its owner told a property website recently, revealing she is already lining up plans for a second "Slytherin-themed" apartment. The Potter craze even extends to an institutional level, with an excruciating American YouTube personality given a pile of Scottish government tourism cash to run around the country cosplaying Hogwarts last year.

(Photo by Liam Turbett)

Then there is the Elephant House café, where, legend has it, Rowling wrote some of the first book. The café overlooks Greyfriars Kirkyard and, from certain seats, probably has one of the best views of Edinburgh Castle in the city. Helpfully, it also has a giant, brightly-coloured window sign – in a font I had previously thought was killed off with Windows 98 – screaming out that it is the "'Birthplace' of Harry Potter".

Things do not get much better on the inside, where you are immediately greeted by one of those inane chalkboards – "we don’t have Wi-Fi, talk to each other and pretend it’s 1995!", the year Rowling was writing her first novel. Which is a bit ironic, given the only reason anyone comes here is so they can tag themselves on Instagram.

If you were writing a book, the Elephant House is now probably the last place in the world you would come to do so, unless you fancied being peered down on by photos of JK and surrounded by awestruck Spanish tourists and screaming Edinburgh Uni students in Hogwarts house scarves.

The toilet in the Elephant Café (Photo by Liam Turbett)

That other Edinburgh cultural export of the 1990s – Trainspotting – famously claimed to showcase the worst toilet in Scotland. It was wrong. The worst toilet in Scotland is clearly within the Elephant Café, the most disturbing confined space into which I have ever stepped foot.

In the probably optimistic belief that Jo Rowling is one day going to come out from behind the giant hedge where she lives and return to the café where she penned some of the first book, her fans have turned the toilets into a graffiti-strewn dungeon of desperate messages to their hero-author. Ever felt the urge to crouch down over a sanitary bin and scrawl "Jo you are my patronus, my dream is to meet you and do some shopping with you," or, perhaps, "nice shot! 10 points for Gryffindor!" above a grotty cubicle floor? Then this is the toilet for you!

A couple of years ago, there were warnings that the sheer number of tourists in Edinburgh, alongside the rapid rise of unregulated holiday lets and overdevelopment of new hotels, was making the city’s Old Town increasingly hostile for those who live there, and even threatening its heritage status. Just last month, another Edinburgh literary titan, Alexander McCall Smith, warned that the city was in danger of becoming "a vulgar wasteland of tourist tat shops, big hotels and nothing much else", with families driven out. The sudden rise in Harry Potter tourism seems to cut to the heart of that, cheered by local tourism chiefs and some businesses, but bearing very little relation to the city of Edinburgh or its inhabitants, aside from the only one who matters: JK Rowling. In Northern Ireland, drastic road closure measures have already had to be brought into play after the country got more than it bargained for when hordes of Games of Thrones tourists started descending on sites that were unprepared for the onslaught.

If Harry Potter tourism feels hollow, it’s because it is built on a fantasy. Then again, Edinburgh – and indeed, Greyfriars Kirkyard – has form when it comes to pandering fantastical bullshit to tourists, cynically exploited by local business owners and indulged by the press. It has been doing it for 150 years. The story of Greyfriars Bobby, the faithful terrier who kept up a vigil by his master’s grave – of the statue and film fame – was actually a shaggy dog story invented by a local businessmen who fabricated it in return for cash. After their story became a newspaper sensation in Victorian Edinburgh, it proved so lucrative that, when the first dog died, they brought a new one in as a replacement.

On Sunday, local dignitaries turned out to commemorate the 146th anniversary of the dog’s death. Perhaps, in centuries to come, people will be doing the same for Thomas Riddell.

@parcelorogues

Drug traffickers are an inventive bunch. They have to be, really, because these days it's generally fairly hard to walk through airport security with 50kg of cocaine strapped to your body. Usually, their methods work: despite the billions of dollars spent fighting the drug trade, more people are getting high than ever before (almost like the War on Drugs is a wildly pointless exercise?). But not always.

On Wednesday, Spanish and Portuguese police revealed that a joint operation had resulted in the seizure of 745kg of cocaine hidden in plastic tubes inserted into fresh pineapples. The investigation, which took place over a ten-month period, led to nine arrests and broke up an international smuggling ring led by Colombians.

The gak-hidden-in-plastic-tubes-inside-pineapples trick is the most recent in a string of imaginative food-related smuggling techniques to have been uncovered over the past couple of years.

As Business Insider reported in 2017, authorities have discovered narcotics hidden inside: watermelons, limes, bananas, tamales, tortillas, salsa, cakes, donuts, frozen sharks, tins of jalapenos and hugely suspicious "fake carrots", which were in fact massive bundles of cocaine wrapped up in bright orange tape.

Of course, food isn't the only method used by international trafficking gangs. Just today, Leicester Crown Court heard that a gang had smuggled £10 million of cocaine into the UK hidden in furniture.

What is it about after-work parties? Though most of us make a genuine attempt to maintain professional relationships and not act like sexist creeps in the workplace, this decorum seemingly flies out the window when people have a few drinks.

Over the last six months or so, we’ve been hearing an endless stream of assault and harassment allegations, a fair chunk of them going down in these not-quite-work-but-still-with-coworkers settings. Here we see some men abuse the alcohol and casual social nature of a work function to exercise their self-proclaimed entitlement to women’s bodies and attention.

You’ll often hear this being explained away as harmless flirting, a lack of filter or just misjudging signals. As someone who recently listened to a coworker laugh about rape for seven minutes straight, I’m here to tell you it’s a full-blown epidemic and it’s probably not “harmless.” Particularly because the men making inappropriate or aggressive comments tend to be in positions of power over their female counterparts.

For too long this has been something women have put up with, perpetuating a culture of “acceptable” sexual harassment. To give these men who may have never been publicly called out a hint, I spoke to a group of my female friends, and collected their stories of gross comments made to them at work parties. From friends openly being warned off particularly “handsy” bosses or friends who are asked by their male superior to wear makeup and shorter skirts, it seems that workplace equality still has a long long way to go.

*Some names have been changed.

“Who ordered the hooker?”

I work in a particularly male-dominated industry where the majority of their time is spent in the pub guffawing about something to do with property or golf. In order to not miss out on this networking opportunity I too have to subject myself to this event every Thursday where their four pints are matched with my four large glasses of wine. Last week when I walked into the pub one of my male colleagues shouted across the room (in front of both clients and bosses): “Who ordered the hooker?” So as not to offend anyone by seeming “sensitive” I pretended to laugh along with the brutes. Ha. Ha. Ha. — Jane*, 24, London

“You’re a nice girl Clare, and have a nice arse”

This was a senior colleague at a work party, in front of other senior people. I would have hoped for an embarrassed apology on Monday morning but nothing came my way—perhaps he was too drunk to remember. Suffice to say nice me and my nice arse didn't stick around for much longer. — Clare, 25, London

“So how’s your sex life?”

I hadn't seen this man in a long long time. But apparently this is a perfectly acceptable point of conversation to initiate a catch up. He asked me how I was and how my sex life was—all in the space of one breath. He really caught me off guard so I just replied “Good and good” and then, worse of all, thanked him. “Good and good thank you”. After that there was nothing I could do but leave. Sad for me. — Marta*, 23, London

“Am I coming to your place or is it a pass?”

I was at a networking event at my college and I was quietly sipping my drink at the bar perfectly content. But alas, a lone drinker in such an environment is like a drop of blood in the ocean for the sharks of Saratoga and immediately I could hear the familiar da dum, da dum, of approaching douchebaggery. I watch as a man in a suit spots me, he then reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone and without dialling a number he puts it to his ear as he slides over. I can still see the home screen lighting up his cheek when he says “Haha, no you’re awesome. Bye man.” He sits down next to me and without waiting for a word from me says “You’re probably wondering what that was about.” “I used to be a pro hockey player and that was my teammate.” Hoping to cover up the empty silence I was leaving by not caring for him one bit he said “I know what you’re thinking, this guy is just brawn. I went to college too OK? Don't be so snooty.” It's always a good move insulting someone you’re attempting to seduce, and although being called snooty does wonders for my libido this exchange wasn’t quite hitting the mark with me and I followed this comment with more silence. After the initial effort of the sentences he obviously thought this was enough courting to precede a lay “Am I coming to your place or is it a pass?” “It’s a hard pass” was my response. With a shrug and a “fair enough” he went on his merry way. But hey, at least his imaginary pro hockey teammate thinks he’s “awesome.” — Morgan, 22, Saratoga

“Do you girls have Brazilians?”

I was doing a full on schmooze at a work event—working in property so it’s pretty much 15 men and me on a daily basis—when my boss interrupted me to ask me if I had a Brazilian wax. He then went on to ask the only other female colleague the same question. Apparently he was asking for his wife. Does that make it worse? — Amy*, Reading

“I’m going to lick your pussy clean”

There was a guy at work who I had an ongoing flirtation with—he was head of another department but we worked quite a bit together, so technically my superior. Whilst the relationship was mostly professional some low key flirtation was known to happen but never anything untoward as he knew I was in a happy relationship. At some rather bizarre work club night he started to put on the moves pretty thick and it was obvious I should shut it down. After I reminded him I had a boyfriend he then leaned in and in an attempt at a seductive whisper said “I’m going to lick your pussy clean.” Now a few years later I can’t remember if he said “dry” or “clean.” But to be honest I find both equally as unsexing. Why would he want to lick it dry and why would I need to have him lick it clean?—so many questions. I walked away after this and now every time I even think about those words I full on shudder and feel my legs fuse together for maybe the rest of time. There’s no need for him to lick it dry, I just have to think about him and I dry up like a bone. — Heather*, London

“New York is all about sex and art. She's damaged but in a hot way”

I was at the Toronto Film Festival opening party and got trapped in a conversation with one of the heads of the department explaining to me how if capital cities were women what type of women they would be. According to this wise soul London is the type of girl who’s “a little snooty, very slutty, but you would want to introduce her to your parents.” Apparently he digs New York the most—“New York is all about sex and art. She's damaged but in a hot way.” As he proceeded to recount 15 different cities and what their female attributes would be (Copenhagen has great legs) I started to realize that maybe this was my fault. I should have shut this down before it started. This man was important in the company though, so I kept my mouth closed and counted how many times he said “fucking” or “tit.” I lost count at 32 times. I still didn't say anything, instead I slugged three vodka sodas in the space it took for him to tell me why San Francisco has “a great pair of tits but is fucking dull.” "I've dated a lot of Londons," he says winking at me. Sadly I think even he was confused with his own metaphor by the end; was he just referring to the women who lived there or was he trying to make offensive and sweeping generalizations about all women whilst arbitrarily linking them to cities? The whole thing needed more work. Anyway I digress with trying to understand his madness, because literally who cares? — Kat*, Toronto

“I just love your vibe. You look so FERTILE”

This was an unprompted comment by a man I’d never met. He stopped me to say “I don't normally do this but I had to come over and tell you.... I just love your vibe. You look so fertile”. I wasn’t sure if fertile was a compliment, and I have since been unable to work out what he meant. I guess it will always be one of the universe’s great unanswered questions. — Emily*, London

“Just breast?”

I was in a semi-professional environment the first time I met my friend’s boyfriend (who is now her husband but let’s not open that can of worms). Like many initial social interactions he told me he was a lawyer. I’m an actress. Turns out he was thrilled to be able to talk to me about various parts of my industry that interested him. I’m more than happy to talk about what I do but I’m not sure how many times someone can mention my breasts in a tirade of questions before I become slightly weary of their motives. “Have you ever been naked in a role?” he asked. “How much would they have to pay you to get naked?” “Just breast?” “What would it take for you to take off your clothes on camera?” The strangest part of this interaction was that he was attempting genuine interest that I think he assumed wouldn't bother me. Sadly, that interest was solely in my being nude and I wasn't down for that. I’m an actress, not a porn star, and asking me which breast I would prefer to show to a camera “if I had to” is just incredibly socially weird and not a conversation I would ever want to have again. (But, just for the sake of clarity, it would have to be the right one.) — Daniella, 26, Vancouver

“Oh look at all these women and look at all these things”

Oh boy. Less funny more horrifying was the conversation that I had to endure with a white male executive producer talking about diversity in film whilst at an industry event in London. He was British with an international accent that he’d clearly picked up from living in LA for a spell after being an arsehole over there too. The conversation began when we started discussing diversity in mainstream film, to which he told me he thought it was just unnecessary “box ticking.” “Oh look at all these women and look at all these things,” he said. I’m not sure what he meant by “things” (complete with air quotes), and I actually think it best not to think about it. The conversation got heated as I vehemently disagreed with all the comments he was making; there’s nothing like being shushed while someone continues to be inexplicably offensive, I was honestly stumped. After a while I just shut up and let it wash over me. Afterwards I took a long, long shower. — Sasha*, London

“Cultural appropriation is a construct of the left”

I was on board a networking event on a boat in London—I know what you’re thinking: networking + the inability to escape makes for an excruciating time. You would be correct. The party had a small theme “hint of wild.” Personally I didn't participate in the theme nor did 99 percent of people on board. One man did, he came wearing a full African gown complete with a headdress of fruit, and he was white. When I told him I thought it was unbelievably inappropriate, he scoffed. He then asked if I was “one of those horrible liberals” and lamented that “cultural appropriation is a construct of the left.” We had an argument for about 20 minutes and then I remembered I was going to be stuck on this boat with him for the next three hours so I went to hide in the cockpit. — Lil, 23, London

“I hear you’re very sexually liberated these days”

I was at an alumni event a couple of years after graduating and was exposed to all of the people I’d severed ties to immediately upon leaving university all in one go. Half way through the event I was approached by a loose friend of a friend—we’re talking the kind of guy I probably introduced myself to each time I saw him because he was that unmemorable. Without anything preceding it he says “I hear you’re very sexually liberated these days.” I was then instantly reminded why I hadn’t seen these people for two years. — Meg*, Oxford

“Are we getting ready for a spit roast?”

I was working in post production as a runner and found myself in a conversation with one guy my age and our superior at some work drinks. A senior colleague then walked over and, in front of the room at large—it was a fairly tame work drinks so there was no drunken ambience to drown it out “What’s going on here—are we getting ready for a spit roast?” I was so surprised I didn't say anything. The most disappointing part is that at least 10 people heard and not one stepped in to call out the inappropriate comment, instead they giggled along as if to appease him. Media is weird. — Katie, 22, Colorado

“How much?”

I was out with a friend and her dad at a regular networking event. Admittedly, he was slightly older than the usual drinker but nothing out of the ordinary. We’re talking Jon Hamm age, not Hugh Hef. A guy in a suit started talking to me at the bar as we were waiting for drinks—he seemed alright, a little arrogant but just about bearable. I could see the barmen throwing a bottle of vodka around so I figured my Porn Star Martini couldn't be far off. After a few minutes chatting he said: “So… how much…?” and then cocked his head towards my friend’s dad. “How much for what?” I asked. “Well I know—and you know—that you’re not hanging out with this guy for fun, are you?” My jaw dropped and I looked from the man in the suit (and his smudged beard scratch, still plugged with a tiny piece of white tissue from a shave that morning) to my friend’s dad and back again. Man in suit smirked as I spluttered. My friend's dad was strangely flattered, but let's not explore that too much. That was the first time I'd been mistaken for a prostitute but considering it was only last week that an older woman claimed I “didn't look old enough to be anyone's girlfriend,” I'm pretty sure it won't be the last. — Megan, 25, London

“You have a bum like Kim K”

I worked in a pub with a lot of male colleagues who were both flirtatious with me and unbelievably rude. I guess this dates back to playground politics where if a boy liked a girl he would probably push her over and call her ugly. The men in my work place were sadly no different. Once I was asked if I was disabled because I was so short. The same guy at drinks after work the next day then told me I had “a bum like Kim K” because he’d seen me bending over the photocopier and liked what he saw—which is weird because I am actually too short to bend over anything. Then later in the convo he told me he liked tall girls with small bums anyways. What a strange man-child he was. — Constance, 24, London

“Are you wearing white panties?”

I was at an obnoxious “white party” which was an industry-wide event where everyone had to wear something white (which made the weirdly retro blacklight slightly problematic). All the people I work with on a day to day basis were there plus the people I hoped to work with in the future. Everyone was drinking and doing a good job of remaining appropriate and all was going swimmingly until I got trapped in a conversation with my boss—MY BOSS—who asked me in hushed tones if I was also “wearing white panties?” Panties! Nothing worse than someone saying “panties,” especially complete with a little lick of the lips. What was even worse was I had to work with him the next day. — Lucy, 27, London

“I’ve thought about it, and I think you’d probably look good naked”

I worked at a bar and after a prolonged purposeful silence one colleague said “I’ve thought about it, and I think you’d probably look good naked.” I don't know what was more offensive—the fact that he said “probably” or the fact that he thought that was an appropriate thing to say to his colleague and also that I would “probably” like to hear it! — Zoe, 20, Hampshire

“Then we’d fuck on the desk at work”

My colleague knew I had a boyfriend but this didn't stop him getting drunk at the Christmas party and begging me to break up with my boyfriend and be with him instead. The following courting/argument for said dumping was to go into grotesque detail about how he’d imagine us having sex. Apparently we’d “fuck on the desk at work” and luckily for me he added that I’d “really enjoy” myself. At least my pleasure was factored into his fantasy. However I had to politely decline. He then ended up going home with another colleague. They probably fucked on the desk at work. — Rhea*, London

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

US News

Trump Miffed with Russia Over North Korea
The president claimed the Kremlin was assisting Kim Jong Un’s regime in getting around sanctions designed to stop its missile and nuclear development programs. “Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.” Trump also said the US was ordering more missile defense systems.—Reuters

John Kelly Reportedly Calls Trump’s Wall Promise ‘Uninformed’
In a meeting with Democrats from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the White House chief of staff reportedly said some campaign comments had been “uninformed,” referring to Trump's pledge to build a wall along the entire US southern border. Kelly later told FOX News that the president “has evolved in the way he looks at things.”—The Washington Post

DHS Making Haitians Ineligible for Low-Skilled Work Visas
The Department of Homeland Security was set to prohibit citizens of Haiti, Belize, and Samoa from securing seasonal and agricultural work visas. Explaining changes to H-2A and H-2B visas, the DHS said Haitians who received them in the past “have demonstrated high levels of fraud and abuse and a high rate of overstaying.” Haiti was among the nations the president reportedly called out in the same meeting he decried “shithole countries" in Africa.—NBC News

US Military Will Remain in Syria, Tillerson Says
The Secretary of State said the US would need to retain an indefinite military presence in Syria to make sure it did not become “a platform or a safe haven” for terrorist groups, including ISIS. Speaking at Stanford University, Tillerson explained the Trump administration still wanted to see President Bashar al-Assad removed, but said it would require “patience.”—VICE News

International News

North and South Korea to Appear at Olympics Under One Flag
Competitors from the two countries will appear together at next month’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony using the same “unification” flag, following talks between their respective officials. They have also agreed to enter a joint women’s ice hockey team at the games in Pyeongchang.—Al Jazeera

Ethiopia Releases Hundreds of Political Prisoners
Ethiopian authorities have freed opposition figurehead Merera Gudina and 115 others locked up in a prison outside the capital Addis Ababa following last year’s anti-government protests. Another 361 people were let go from jails in the country's southern region. The government recently promised to “widen the democratic space for all.”—AP

Bus Fire in Kazakhstan Kills 52
Only five of 57 people managed to escape the bus alive after it caught fire in Kazakhstan’s Aktobe region Thursday morning, officials said. The bus was reportedly carrying passengers between Uzbekistan to Russia.—BBC News

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Suspect
Armed police fatally shot a Palestinian man Thursday during an Israeli raid on a home in the West Bank. The man killed, identified by Palestinian officials as Ahmed Ismail Jarrar, was said to be a suspect or person of interest in the murder of a rabbi in the West Bank last week. Two Israeli officers were injured and at least one other Palestinian was arrested in the raid.—AP

Everything Else

Rachel Brosnahan Regrets Appearing in Woody Allen Film
Brosnahan is the latest actress to express remorse about collaborating with the director. She said appearing in Crisis in Six Scenes was “the decision… that is the most inconsistent with everything I stand for and believe in.” Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow again accused him of sexually assaulting her as a child in a new interview with CBS This Morning.—The Hollywood Reporter / CBS News

Gucci Mane to Make Biopic of Autobiography
The rapper told fans on Twitter that a movie version of his memoir The Autobiography of Gucci Mane “is coming to a theater near you.” Mane suggested he would direct it, and raised the possibility of a new film company by using the hashtag #1017Films.—Billboard

Brigitte Bardot Calls #MeToo Activists ‘Ridiculous’
The legendary French star claimed many actresses were making up claims of sexual assault and harassment “so we will talk about them.” Bardot told Paris Match magazine: “The vast majority are being hypocritical and ridiculous.”—AFP

'Fire and Fury' to Become a TV Series
Michael Wolff's controversial bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is set for a television adaption after Endeavor Content bought the rights in a deal reportedly worth millions. Wolff was said to be slated as an executive producer on the project.—VICE

Fake News Awards Link Led Only to 404 Error
The president, who promised to give prizes to his least-favourite news organizations, tweeted out a link to his “Fake News Awards” Wednesday night. But anyone who clicked on the GOP website page found only a 404 error message.—VICE News

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we sit down with VICE's in-house astrologer Annabel Gat to hear what the planets can tell us about 2018.

Over the MLK holiday weekend, University of Alabama student Harley Barber decided to hop on Instagram to give her followers a PSA about saving water. Filming herself in the mirror from inside a restroom, Barber started by saying, "We do not waste water... because of the poor people in Syria. We don't waste water." Then, for some reason, she started dropping the n-word.

"I love how I act like I love black people because I fucking hate niggers, so that's really interesting, but I just saved the fucking niggers by shutting that water off."

Then, apparently, one of Barber's followers reported the offensive video to her sorority, Alpha Phi, which prompted the 19-year-old to go on yet another racist rant.

"You know what? Nigger, nigger, nigger. I don’t care if it's Martin Luther King Day."

Barber was swiftly kicked out of her sorority, booted from the University of Alabama, and then wound up in a special edition of Desus and Mero's college white supremacist report. On Wednesday, the VICELAND duo weighed in on the appalling Insta-rant, and couldn't help but notice that Barber resembles a certain Trump supporter.

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.

Drug smugglers can get pretty creative when it comes to sneaking their products into countries. Some build giant catapults or repurpose old bazookas to launch weed into the US, some dress their meth up to look like novelty dick candles, and others just strap a bunch of coke to their bodies and hope no one notices how lumpy they are. But there's one method that smugglers around the world seem to keep coming back to, time after time—the produce disguise.

In 2016, it was marijuana dressed up like deformed carrots. In 2017, it was limes. And now, European authorities have discovered a massive shipment of cocaine hidden inside a bunch of fresh pineapples.

According to Reuters, the coke-stuffed pineapples were discovered as part of a collaboration between police in Spain and Portugal that began almost a year ago. The joint investigation led them to search a series of shipping containers, where they discovered that the shipment of pineapples from South America was moving more than just fruit.

Around 745 kg of cocaine—1,642 pounds—were split into packages, coated in pineapple-yellow wax, and hidden inside hollowed-out shells of the spiky fruit. Police seized the fruit stash of blow and raided a lab in Spain where the stuff was allegedly going to be cut and repackaged, making nine arrests in the process, Business Insider reports.

"This organized international group had repeatedly brought large quantities of cocaine to the European continent," police in Portugal said in a statement about the Colombian group.

This isn't the first time someone has tried to traffic with a trick pineapple, though. A shipment of cocaine-filled pineapples was intercepted in Costa Rica in 2014 and Spanish police uncovered another batch a year later.

It's unclear whether all these shipments are connected or if a bunch of smugglers all had the same idea. Either way, someone somewhere is snacking on the insides of a whole lot of pineapples right now.

With a reality star as president, it's only natural that celebrity tabloids have become a legit source of national news and porn stars have become national names. Last week, the Wall Street Journal was the first outlet to report that Donald Trump paid $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford, who goes by Stormy Daniels in her career as a porn star, to cover up an affair the two had back in 2006, just after Trump's current wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron. Trump's camp has denied everything, but this week InTouch dropped an interview Clifford gave to the tabloid back in 2011 in which she talks about the affair. At that time, she passed a polygraph, and is corroborated by her friend Randy Spears and her ex-husband Mike Moz.

That was followed up on Wednesday night with a post on TheDirty.com that revealed what the gossip site said were details from an email from Clifford. ("I’m so sick of seeing journalists not crediting TheDirty.com or myself for breaking this story. All of the sudden—everyone is acting like this is mind blowing news. Well, here you go," read the intro.) A lot of the details—including Trump's obsession with Shark Week—are shared across the two stories.

Trump's sex life is obviously news, not just salacious gossip: Trump has repeatedly denied having encounters with women, including women who have accused him of harassing or assaulting him. That includes Jessica Drake, a porn star who has said that Trump kissed her without her consent and offered her money for sex and that Clifford invited her to "party" with her and Trump in 2006.

The full InTouch interview isn't online, but I bought a newsstand copy in hopes of learning what the president allegedly paid a porn star $130,000 not to make public. Here's what's in that interview:

Clifford was worried Trump would treat her like a sex worker

After meeting Clifford at a golfing event, Trump invited her over to his hotel for dinner. She says that when she arrived at his suite, he lying on the couch wearing pajama pants and watching television. After they ate, Daniels excused herself to go to the bathroom and when she came back, that’s when—well, I’ll let her explain:

“He was sitting on the bed, and he was like, ‘Come here.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And we started kissing. I remember thinking, ‘I hope he doesn’t think I’m a hooker.’ Not that I have anything against hookers. I just personally have never done it… [The sex was] nothing crazy. It was one position, what you would expect someone his age to do.”

She went on: “I don’t even remember why I did it but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ’Please don’t try to pay me'... And then I remember thinking, ’But I bet if he did, it would be a lot.’”

Trump compared her to his daughter

“He told me once that I was someone to be reckoned with, beautiful and smart just like his daughter,” she told InTouch.

Trump was a fan of her work

She told the magazine they didn’t use a condom, and afterward Trump asked her to autograph a copy of her film 3 Wishes, which according to adultdvdempire.com is about a man who gets three sex wishes in exchange for his soul.

Clifford let her husband listen to calls between her and Trump

Moz (Clifford's then husband) told InTouch that after their initial encounter, she communicated frequently with Trump. “She put him on speakerphone and I could hear him talking,” Moz said. “They’d be jib-jabbing back and forth. He would call so often.”

(According to TheDirty.com, he'd call her "honey bunch" during those calls.)

Trump is really into Shark Week

When they met again in 2007, Clifford told InTouch that Trump was watching the Discovery Channel's Shark Week. She expanded a little on that to TheDirty.com, writing in an email "(he REALLY hates sharks..lol) ."

Trump told her he couldn't get her a gig on Celebrity Apprentice

The porn star has told multiple journalists that Trump promised to put her on the reality show he hosted, but this apparently didn't work out. Clifford told TheDirty,com how their relationship ended in 2007 when she came to visit him: "We had dinner in his bungalow/He wanted sex/I wanted to know what was up with Celebrity Apprentice... He kept kissing me but I wanted to talk business/finally he admitted NBC had turned me down/I left/this ending or 11 month regular correspondence."

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On Sunday, a 17-year-old girl from the southern California city of Perris dialed 9-1-1 from a deactivated cell phone. She had escaped from her parents’ home, she told the operator, but her 12 brothers and sisters remained locked inside, some of them chained to their beds.

When Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home of David and Louise Turpin, they found “several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings,” according to a statement released to the press. But they weren’t all children. In fact, the confined ranged in age from two to 29 years old; the oldest ones looked much younger, apparently due to prolonged malnutrition. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Greg Fellows—a captain with the Sheriff's Department—summed up the grisly scene by intoning, "I would call that torture."

Since the children’s escape, some neighbors have suggested in interviews that the family seemed “off,” noting they rarely saw the kids out and about, even if they didn’t observe anything that raised a significant alarm. After all, the children were homeschooled—it made sense that they weren’t coming and going as often as most families.

But what’s the protocol for a situation like this, where 13 children and young adults have allegedly been starved, shackled, deprived of anything resembling normalcy? For their part, the Turpin parents were arrested and face torture and child endangerment charges, their bail set at $9 million each—the two were due to appear in court for arraignment Thursday. Relatively speaking, that’s the simple part. For the Turpin children, seven of whom are over 18, the future is decidedly murkier even after they get released from the hospital.

To get a clearer picture of what the Turpins’ next chapter might look like, we reached out to Dr. Deborah Daro, Chapin Hall senior research fellow and former director of the National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research, and Barbara Andrade Dubransky, director of families at the child advocacy nonprofit First 5 LA.

Here's what we talked about.

VICE: Can you put the Turpin case into historical context? Is there a precedent that comes to mind?
Deborah Daro: I’ve been looking at child abuse cases for 40 years. I have never seen anything like this. It is unprecedented in the number of victims that were in one home, in the number of years that it went on—it’s an outlier in every dimension. So it’s hard to know how child welfare will respond to this, because they don’t see cases like this. It’s on the level of a cult—I’m thinking of cases like David Koresh [and the Branch Davidians] where there’s families and children living in one household under the auspices of a spiritual leader that’s brought people together. When you see this number of victims, that’s generally the she's like a noteworthy feminist ! y you see them in, it’s not just from one family.

Barbara Andrade Dubransky: Part of what you want to look at is how many potential opportunities for surveillance that family had. “Surveillance” is a technical term that probably doesn’t sound good to a lot of people, but another way to put it is that everybody is part of a community that they can tap into, and we want to support the norm that parenting is one of the endeavors in life that can’t really be done alone. All families typically have multiple opportunities for surveillance, like the medical community, an educational setting, your neighbours, your family. This is a family where how much of a lack of surveillance they had was completely an anomaly.

A spokesperson for Riverside County Social Services told ABC News the agency tends to favor sibling adoption—keeping kids together. And, for now, Child Services seems to be focused on emergency medical care and determining just how able the adults are to look out for themselves. How do you expect they ultimately fit into local systems of care?
Daro: Child welfare involvement ends at 18. They do keep children that are already in the system until they’re 21, but child welfare doesn’t take on new adult cases into the system. So these kids are going to be following two tracks [the minors and the adults].

These children aren’t heading for therapy right away. They are going to learn you sleep in a bed, you’re not bound, you can get food three times a day and it’ll be nourishing and you can eat as much or as little as you would like. No one is going to be yelling at you, beating you, mistreating you, although we don’t know what kind of physical abuse the kids might have experienced other than being shackled. But we certainly know they didn’t get proper nutrition and they weren’t eating on a regular basis.

Dubransky: We also have no idea if these children have developed disabilities based on their treatment. There are adult tracks for disabilities, both mental health-related and developmental. It’s not typically the child-welfare system’s responsibility, but given the uniqueness of this case I would like to believe that the child-welfare system will make sure that they’re all fully embedded into an adult mental health and developmental health system for assessments.

In an ideal world, what kind of treatment should they receive?
Daro: First and foremost, their caregivers have to develop some kind of trust and security for these children. The kids need to know they’re not going back to the situation they were in, people are there to protect them, support them, and nurture them. The biggest challenge will be giving these children some sense of permanency and security, when in truth it’s unclear what will happen. Normally, in child abuse cases, they may look for extended family members to take children. I don’t know in this case if that’s going to be an option or not.

Dubransky: We don’t really know what the children understand about what has happened to them based on the variance of age, and how long it’s been going on. For some of them, their sense of how the world works may make it impossible for them to even understand the extent of what they’ve experienced. Which will be something that will be addressed over time and will have to be done very carefully, because you can re-traumatize someone by telling them, “What you experienced is trauma.” It has to come out in a more organic way to not make the situation worse than it already is.

You get to go outside, you get to eat as much as you want—those sound like wonderful things. But for them, that might be stressful. They’re going to be dealing at such a level of sensory experience differences that treatment will have to be done very carefully.

Does it tend to actually make sense for siblings be kept together in an alleged abuse case like this one?
Daro: The one thing they do have is each other. It would probably be important to not farm them out to five or six different locations right away, so there’s some sense of continuity. Especially since the reason they were discovered is that one of the older siblings took it upon herself to get help—there is a very strong protective instinct in that young woman that made the initial call, probably at great risk to her wellbeing. Sometimes, when we’ve seen victims in one family, older children will say, "I don’t want to see my young siblings go through the same thing I did. I can see what their future looks like and I’m going to stop it."

Dubranksy: One of the valuable things about them staying together is that they all have a different sense of reality because of what they’ve experienced. And if they’re going to reorient to what reality really is, it’s good to have people who are in that same space with you, like, “Oh, did you know that most people go outside every day?” That’s hard to process, and they’re processing it with people that have gone through a similar experience.

What is a reasonable expectation for these siblings’ futures?
Daro: For the long-term prognosis, ideally all of these individuals would have the next decade of their life be much happier than the prior decade. They would find a sense of place, being secure about what they can do and come to appreciate what a nurturing network and social interactions can offer you in terms of mental health, physical health, their sense of self and purpose. These are children that have really been robbed of the basic positive socialization that children need to thrive and adults need to maintain their sanity.

Dubranksy: The Turpins’ new norm may not look like what we think of as normal because of the trauma, so it would be good if society withheld judgment on what their lives should look like now, what healing should look like. The goal of good treatment will be to find a norm for them that takes into account what their lives have been like so far, and I’m particularly thinking of the older ones, the 29-year-old. When this has been what you’ve experienced throughout your life, a comfortable, fulfilling, and hopefully happy life from this point forward for these children may look different from what most people would imagine.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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After President Trump reportedly described Haiti, El Salvador, and various African nations as "shithole countries" last week, the Yelp pages for his hotels across the country were swamped with negative reviews—and almost every one-star post describes the properties using Trump's unique brand of profanity.

Like this smelly experience at the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Manhattan's Upper West Side:

According to the Washington Post, the rating for Trump International in Washington, DC, dropped from four to two stars in a week's time after the immigration meeting. The ratings for his properties in New York City, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Chicago, and Palm Beach—all swarmed by an army of shithole trolls on Yelp—have taken pretty serious hits, too. Yelp reportedly knows about the flood of negative reviews, and it's warned users it'll be removing any post that seems politically motivated.

Still, people are going apeshit, and getting personal.

Comment about the Trump International in Washington, DC.

Some people broadside Trump in pretty general terms, while others—like this "guest" at his property in Vegas—tend to get a little more specific about their stays.

It's not clear if anyone making the reviews has actually set foot inside a Trump hotel—an obvious reason Yelp would want to delete their posts—but some people seem pretty good at faking it.

One commenter noticed the little things at Trump's Chicago hotel:

A few reviewers, apparently trying to outsmart whatever algorithm Yelp uses, have taken to calling Trump's properties "shit houses" and "snitholes." Some just steer clear of the whole "shit" thing altogether. And then there are those, like these folks who reviewed Trump's NYC hotel, who really didn't give a shit.

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A bunch of businesses along one of Toronto’s busiest (and bro-iest) streets have started flipping the city the bird.

If we were a lesser publication, we might say something clever like, “cooly flipping the city the bird,” because the business have installed ice sculptures of raised middle fingers, aimed at one the city’s latest public transit projects.

The bottom of the finger reads “Fuddle Duddle” which is a reference to an infamous moment in Canadian history when Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s papi, mouthed “fuck off” in Parliament and, when being pressed by reporters, claimed he only said “fuddle duddle.” So, in a relatively polite and Canadian way, the businesses are both flipping the city the bird and telling them to fuck off which is… redundant but effective, I suppose.

The whole middle finger fiasco has been sparked by a transit dispute happening along the King Street strip, one of the busiest public transit routes in Canada. The King Street Transit Pilot program, which came into effect last November, banned cars from driving straight through the busiest section of King, and has resulted in vastly improved speeds for streetcars and a significant increase in demand for public transit (the Toronto Transit Commission is claiming 25 percent increase in ridership but that’s with some caveats).

But while the pilot is app has worked from a public transit perspective, it has drawn the ire of the businesses—particularly restaurants in the theatre district—along the street. One of the businesses owners and proud owners of the ice sculpture, Al Carbone of Kit Kat restaurant, has been particularly vocal about how the transit situation is affecting businesses and how he doesn’t feel his voice is being hear.

“Listen to us, we are here we have no time to BS anyone…everyone is lying to us, they are trying to cover their ass,” Carbone told the Toronto Sun. “And I’m tired of that and I’m speaking up for myself, my business, for my colleagues for my neighbourhood.”

The restaurant owners say because of the pilot project they’ve lost out on customers that drive to their joints, although critics point out that there’s proof of a causal relationship and other factors, this freezing ass winter, a downturn in theatre productions, changes in restaurant taste—could just as likely be the culprit for any perceived downturn.

Photo posted on Twitter by Asif Hossain

It’s being alleged that the middle finger stunt may have been the brainchild of Toronto’s perpetually pissed-off suburb millionaire Doug Ford, Rob’s older and much less popular brother, who happens to be running for mayor in 2018. A tweet by the Kit Kat restaurant, posted earlier this week shows Doug Ford in the middle of the room and is paired with the caption “brainstorming.” Big-bad Dougie—well really the whole unscrupulous Ford gang—has a history of flipping the bird. In 2013, he flipped off a plane that he thought was following his family and it has been alleged his brother, while mayor, flipped off a mother and her daughter when told to stop texting and driving.

At least one business is being public with their unhappiness for the middle finger sculpture stunt. Z-teca, a burrito stop, tweeted out that the sculpture was there “without their consent” and that they had it removed. As for the 70,000 or so riders that the King Street Pilot helps them get to work on time, well, they haven’t expressed their opinion yet but they could always take a page out of the Ford’s books and use a certain digit to make their feelings known.

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More than 20 years after her peak in the public eye, the ways we choose to talk about Tonya Harding are still complicated and confounding. Since its initial theatrical release in December (the film expands nationwide throughout January), I, Tonya has been dubbed “the Goodfellas of figure skating,” with critics praising Craig Gillespie’s direction as “kitschy and smart and funny,” and a “pointed satire of athletic ambition.”

Like Harding herself, I, Tonya is many things at once, most of them at odds with one other. Nevertheless, with Academy Award nominations just over the horizon, Gillespie’s film is neither lost nor found in the shuffle—but decidedly part of it.

When Gillespie sat down with VICE, he opened up about Margot Robbie’s powerful performance as the titular Olympian, what kind of movie he hoped to make, and why consumers seem to need a villain to rally against.

VICE: What was the first thing that struck you about the film's script?
Craig Gillespie: I was literally driving home from shooting a commercial and my agent called and said, “Hey, we’re sending over this script about Tonya Harding.” Before he finished the sentence, I was like, “Ah, I’ve done a sports biopic [Million Dollar Arm]. I’m not really into figure skating. It was a long time ago." Then he finished the sentence: “starring Margot Robbie.” The idea that she wanted to do this movie was really fascinating, so I read the script, and it blew me away. The structure was like nothing I’d read before. If I’m visualizing it as I’m reading it, it stops being work.

Your film juggles multiple tones and formats. Was it chaotic to balance all that on set?
It was daunting that the whole kitchen sink of film tricks is in this thing. One of the first films I wanted to look at was To Die For: They use interviews to retell the story, but it’s very linear and everyone’s telling the same story. This film contains contradictory versions of what’s happening, and there's a very dark side to this story too: the domestic violence, and the emotional and violent upbringing she had. Talking with Margot about it and trying to figure out how we’d do the violence—I didn’t want to shy away from it because I thought it really informed Tonya’s actual journey, the reason that she is the way she is, the defensiveness she has, and her attitude toward violence. When we looked interviews with her talking about it, it almost seemed like she was so numb to that cycle of abuse. Trying to do it in this tone was tricky, and one of the devices we came up with was to actually break the fourth wall in our first domestic violence scene, to show how she can disassociate herself from what’s happening in the moment. She’s almost immune to it.

What about Harding do you think was so attractive and repelling to people?
It is such a crazy, complicated, powerful story, but it was simply told in the media at the time. They portrayed her as the villain, Nancy as the princess, and this whole mastermind plan to bring her down. I feel like as you now watch the film and start to see the history of what she’d really been through, you become more understanding of why she was so defensive about it, because she did have a lot of barriers. She was always having to defend herself throughout her whole life, so that shell, that tough exterior that she developed to protect herself, was something that I think made people bristle at the time when they would watch her, and was divisive at times.

What were some of your objectives in telling this story?
I thought this was a real opportunity to take this person in our society who has been the poster child as the villain, and a punchline for 25 years, and to just reexamine that, and to look at her as a human being and not as a tabloid headline. I also wanted to make a bit of a commentary on the media and how we churn up people’s lives, and then move on in the most simplistic way. It’s so much more rampant now than ever. I enjoyed that people would come into this movie being judgmental because we all have this perception of Tonya, and it gets challenged. Challenged in terms of being judgmental in general not just with her, but how we consume media.

Why do you think we’re so ready to move on?
It’s the ADD nature of our society. The speed and the consumption of news has gotten so fast that literally you’re in the headlines for a day and then you’re onto the next thing. It’s just conditioning that’s happened over the years. Obviously, with Tonya, this went on for a couple of months and it was the beginning of the news cycle and the beginning of needing 24-hour content. It was right when CNN and all these 24-hour news services came out, so we got bombarded with it. It was a different kind of funneling of information, and the media outlets could really design what they wanted us to consume. Now there’s so many outlets that as consumers we get to choose the message that we want, and then we just move on from that. I know Obama mentioned that at one point, you really can’t just choose your singular platforms. You should try and be more even-minded.

It often feels like we crave this kind of flagrant disregard for a person, though. Tonya was, as you said, a villain.
I don’t know if it’s the best human trait that we have. They want somebody to love, but they need somebody to hate. There is this unattractive part to the human psychology where you enjoy other people’s failures, and that tends to be what we consume in the media. You don’t see a lot of stories of optimism. You don’t see a lot of feel-good stories going on. Unfortunately it’s supply and demand. It’s what people are demanding and what they want to consume. We call it “tall poppy syndrome”: When you see somebody get cut down, there’s this unattractive human trait that people can’t help but be happy about that.

Do you think you made the movie you wanted to make?
I feel very fortunate I got to make the movie I wanted to make. One idea was to be able to take somebody that we really think we know and reexamine them and actually change our perspective on them. And the second part is as an audience member we actually feel guilty for being so judgmental. My feedback from audiences has been those takeaways. Not to be presumptuous about it, but those are very common threads that I get from people, and that was my goal in a simple way.

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If you’ve ever seen a couple “seeking a third” on Tinder, you might have wondered what it’s like for polyamorous people on dating apps. Though it’s very possible that couple you saw were “unicorn hunters” (a controversial descriptor referring to couples looking for a woman to have sex with), there are lots of poly people in varying kinds of relationship arrangements seeking sex, love, both, or even just friendship online.

While some sites, such as OkCupid, have features that have made poly people feel more comfortable and welcomed, there’s at least one major dating site that outright rejects married people from signing up—Plenty of Fish—and recommends they sign up for the once-hacked extramarital affair site Ashley Madison (honestly WTF). Anyway, VICE reached out to a number of people who practice some form of polyamory to ask them about their experiences with online dating apps and sites from OkCupid, to Tinder, to Facebook dating groups.

The Best (and Worst) Sites

“[I’ve used] Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, Facebook [poly] dating groups. OkCupid is definitely leading the way in terms of being more accommodating to both polyamorous people and trans people… They have a lot of ways to define your relationship orientation. I always leave that I am seeing someone, even if I’m not having a big relationship at the time.” —Heath, 38

“My three favourites for online dating are FetLife, Reddit, Pure. The reason I like FetLife is because it’s a fetish site; my fiancé and I are involved in the scene in Brooklyn… Even though it’s a bit archaic-looking, you can list multiple partners. Reddit is great for online dating—you can just post on r4r, and there’s a bunch of random sex ones. I think there’s even one for New York that’s just soliciting for hookups.” —Stephanie, 25

“Tinder, it’s probably the most casual, and you’ve got a lot more variety in the type of people—but because the pool is so much bigger, I think it can be easier to find poly people on there beyond OkCupid.” —Thomas, 31

“I tend to use OkCupid and Tinder most often. OkCupid is one of the most recommended apps for poly dating. On top of being a popular site with lots of users, there you can outright search for people who are comfortable with non-monogamy and you can even link an account with a partner's—though they missed the mark on not allowing you to link with multiple partners! Of all the sites, they are doing the most acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ issues and non-traditional relationship styles. Other sites, like Plenty of Fish, will actually reject you (and low-key insult you) if you select that you are married in your profile. There are a handful of poly-specific dating sites/apps, but most of them are teeming with unicorn hunters (couples looking to ‘add a third’) or simply don't have enough users to make it worthwhile.” —Morgan, 32

Communicating That You Are Poly

“It is front and centre on my profile. I go with the intention of being upfront about being polyamorous… When I first start talking to somebody, polyamory is something I bring up fairly quickly.” —Heath

“I definitely make it a point to make sure it’s the first thing I tell them. Not everyone is non-monogamous… I don’t want them to like me or have this perception of me that I’m only for them.” —Stephanie

“I always put it on my profile. I look at other people’s profiles who are poly… I think I try to mention it at least in the first few paragraphs, like on OkCupid.” —Olivia, 36

“I am very upfront about being polyamorous on my profiles. It doesn't make sense to waste anyone's time if what they are seeking is a monogamous relationship. Generally I stick to dating people who are also already seeking non-monogamous relationships. Trying to ‘convert’ people to polyamory is a lot of emotional labour and generally a futile exercise anyways.” —Morgan

“I've had it in my bio [that I’m poly]… I think there tends to be a little bit of a perception when you post pictures as a couple [on a dating profile], that you’re dating as a couple. I wanted to avoid that because we don’t date as a couple; we date as individuals.” —Thomas

When People Are Poly-Negative

“I do get, particularly men, who approach me to cheat on their wives, because they have a presumption about my sexual availability. They assume that because I’m polyamorous that I would be interested in cheating. The presumption is difficult and a thing.” —Heath

“Usually it’s things like, ‘Isn’t your man concerned about the diseases you’ve been catching on these dating sites?’ Sometimes it’s slut-shaming: calling me a ‘slut,’ a ‘whore’—especially if the first thing out of my digital mouth is that I’m poly.” —Stephanie

“I went on a date with a girl who was seemingly pretty interested when we talked on Tinder. I had [that I was poly] in my profile. She seemed open-minded to it, but then when I actually met her for dinner, pretty much the entire date was her challenging the concept of poly, challenging every reason why I would be poly… My parents are divorced, which may have come up at some point. She said something like, ‘Well, maybe I’ve just had a really great example because my parents are so in love, but I do think it’s possible to just love one person for the rest of your life.’ I was like it has nothing to do with that at all, how I was brought up, my parents’ relationship… Recently, a girl asked if I would be interested in going out on a date sometime. I said, well, in case you’re not OK with this, I just want you to be aware that I am polyamorous. She just responded with, ‘Ugh pass.’ There’s other people who are weirdly OK with it. I guess I’ve had so many negative experiences that whenever I have a positive one it’s almost shocking.” —Thomas

“My most common negative experience is men often assuming I'm down to hook up, or that I'm only seeking a casual relationship because I am polyamorous, which isn't always the case. You also get people who seem interested at first then fade away once they realize they can't handle non-monogamy.” —Morgan

The Risk of Outing

“My wife, someone in her family saw her on Bumble and outed her to her family… As far as myself, I actually live in a different state than most of my family, so it’s not as likely to happen. As far as my work goes, I actually got discovered [as poly] because one of the guys at work saw my wife’s profile and recognized her from Facebook. So then I figured I might as well put it out there since the rumour was going around that my wife was cheating on me—but really we were just in an open relationship.” —Thomas

“I'm fortunate that I can be pretty open about my relationship orientation now, but when I first began exploring polyamory I was worried that someone I know would find me online and make a big deal about it. So far that has never happened other than some good-natured teasing from my younger brother who stumbled upon my profile. In fact, I ended up finding out that more than a few friends of mine were also polyamorous by way of seeing them pop up on dating apps!” —Morgan

“My life right now is that my family knows that we are poly. We got that out of the way after a few months. Some friends and acquaintances don’t really know, but I’m not really worried about it.” —Olivia

The Good, the Bad, and the Fetishizing

“I had it in my bio that I was poly when I matched with her. She actually didn’t initially notice that part; she didn’t identify as poly at the time. We talked a little bit, then she wanted to plan a date. Before I go on a date, I’ll usually at least mention [being poly]. I sent her some info and links about it. She was actually really open-minded to it; she didn’t make a big deal out of it, she was OK with it. Since then, she’s been right on board with poly… We’ve been together for over a year.” —Thomas

“I went on about five dates so far [in the six months I’ve been online dating]. I got a steady partner for a couple of months from OkCupid. We got along really great… Then he cheated and lied about it. It’s just really hard on that end. But I had a great relationship with that person up until then. So far, my other dates I went on from Tinder or Bumble… there’s no real connection.” —Olivia

“I really get fetishized a lot—I think a lot of women, femmes, and feminized people do. I’m not a woman, but I can be perceived as a woman. Then, I’m sometimes even perceived as a trans woman—while I am agender. I know a lot of women get comments on their body, but I’ll get further comments usually about my genitalia, or about my physical presentation (like fetishizing my body hair).” —Heath

“I met most of my partners on Pure and Reddit. I’m not really into any serious relationships other than my engagement with my fiancé… We met via Pure (an app that is just locations and pictures) in October of 2016. We met knowing we were both poly and out. He took me on a date to a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen.

When I met him, I fell in love with him the first time ever I saw him and the minute that he opened his mouth. We had a great evening that night; he told me about his previous relationship with a primary partner. He was very open about that, very open about the other people he was seeing and having encounters with, his experiences being poly.” —Stephanie

Building a Poly Community

“Online dating helped me build a wide circle of polyamorous friends. I got acquainted with lots of folks who, in addition to dating, were hoping to find a poly community… In day to day life we aren't often able to talk openly about our relationships without being judged or having to explain yourself. After hearing this from so many people I decided to create a polyamory discussion and meetup group in my city [Pittsburgh], which has grown to over 600 members.” —Morgan

“I’m in a number of regional [poly] dating groups [on Facebook]. You get to talk to your community, right there. You’re not just meeting potential suitors, you’re meeting their partners, their networks—and there can be more protections…. We have also the opportunity to educate people on other types of people. We had a period in one group where we were educating about trans folks, attraction, gender. You feel more connected to people because they’re right there. The dating groups also double for community support.” —Heath

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Next time you visit Rotterdam, you might want to carefully consider what you wear. Not only because the wildly stylish people of Rotterdam aren't easily impressed, but also because the city's police force is planning stop and question young people strolling around in expensive designer clothing. If you're not able to prove that your shiny Gucci loafers were bought with money made in an honest way, they could be confiscated. Before the new measure is introduced, police officers in the city will receive special training to be able to spot the difference between Giorgio Armani and, say, Georgio Peviani.

Authorities hope this will function as a deterrent for young criminals, but locals think the measures might be illegal and will inevitably lead to racial profiling – a charge police chief Frank Paauw countered by insisting that officers will only stop and question people who are already in their system.

VICE Netherlands spoke to young Rotterdammers to find out how they feel about the police's plans, and how they'd respond if they were stopped in the street on account of their outfits reeking of money.

Ted, 17

VICE: Hey Ted. What do you think about the new measures?
Ted: I think it’s a strange way of trying to catching criminals. Why not just arrest a drug dealer when he's actually dealing drugs?

How would you feel if you were stopped?
If I had spent a lot of my hard-earned money on my clothes, I would be really annoyed. It just means the police see you as a criminal. Personally, I’m not worried at all – I don’t own expensive clothes. But many young people do, and they bought them in an honest way. In those cases, it’s normal they would want to show them off without being harassed.

Do you think it will lead to racial profiling?
Yes, I’m sure some groups will be stopped and checked more than others. It’s also very hard for the police as well, if they constantly have to decide who does and does not look like a criminal.

Quincy, 20 (left), and Jurian, 20

VICE: Hi guys, how do you feel about the fact police can stop anyone on the street to ask how they got their hands on expensive clothing?
Jurian: I don’t think it’s going to work. Firstly, I’m not sure it’s legal. And secondly, couldn't you just tell them that your clothes belong to an older brother, or something? How would they know?

How would you feel if they stopped you?
Jurian: I personally wouldn’t mind, because they'd just be doing their jobs. But if they’re actually going to confiscate people's clothing, that'll probably cause some minor riots.
Quincy: Most young people can’t prove on the spot how they got their clothes. A measure like this is just going to cause more resentment between the community and the police.

Do you think there will be other consequences?
Quincy: Yes, racial profiling. Police won't consider a white guy walking around in an expensive jacket to be a potential drug dealer. But it’ll be a different story with minorities.

Charmaine, 31

VICE: What do you think about these new measures?
Charmaine: I can understand questioning 11 or 14-year-olds. It would be fairly surprising to see a kid walking around the poorer areas of this city in a jacket that costs thousands. But outside of that, it’s a completely ridiculous measure. It’s so easy now – especially online – to buy all kinds of brands at really low prices. Also, nobody has the right to determine what you’re allowed to wear. If you don't want to go anywhere without your Louboutins, that's nobody's business but your own.

What if something was taken from you?
I'd be angry. I’m an adult, so even if I'm walking around in one of these so-called "ghettos", the police don't have the right to ask me where I got my clothes from. It’s a violation of my privacy, and I won’t let that happen to me. I can be pretty feisty when I need to be.

WATCH: Hate Thy Neighbour

Bram, 21 (left), and Silas, 19

VICE: Hey guys, do you think police should be allowed to check what you wear?
Bram: I've done some reading on this – there's not really a proper plan for this yet. If they don’t come up with some proper guidelines, they'll end up racially profiling people. I read that they’ll only check people who are already in their system, but I think that’ll be very hard to actually pull off. A lot of those guys still live at home, and, naturally, parents buy their children stuff.

Do you guys understand why police plan on doing this?
Silas: No, and I think the idea is weird. There are so many young people out there with legitimate jobs.
Bram: Yeah, I don’t get it either. Police should be focused on dealing with the actual crime. Also, I don’t think most criminals are openly walking around in expensive clothing, but maybe it will work as a deterrent for those thinking about showing off.

Donna, 17

VICE: Hi Donna, what do you think about the police's plan?
Donna: It’s very hard to prove that something wasn't a present. Also, a plan like this definitely won't improve the relationship between the people of Rotterdam and the police.

What if you were stopped?
I would feel like police didn’t trust me. On one hand, I can understand it, because the kind of clothing they're after is linked to social status, and taking that away could have an effect. But on the other hand, I don’t think snatching people's clothes will make much of a difference in stopping crime.

Jainy, 31

VICE: How do you feel about the prospect of police stopping people based on what they're wearing?
Jainy: I think judging people on how they dress is crossing a line – it's a form of prejudice. Instead, you should just judge people on what they do.

Do you understand why police are planning this?
Not really. They should be focused on cracking down on actual crime. This measure doesn't solve the problem, it just focuses on the symptoms. I own some expensive brands, and I, like everybody else, should be free to wear the clothes I feel comfortable in.

How would you react if you were questioned?
I would cooperate, because it’s a police officer, but I wouldn't be afraid to tell them how I felt – that it's unacceptable and inhumane to question people solely based on what they wear.

This story originally appeared on VICE Quebec.

Not-so-vintage photos of neo-Nazis parading through in Montreal started making the rounds online earlier this month, shedding new light on a dark and somewhat forgotten period in Quebec history.

In the past few years, fringey far-right groups like La Meute and Soldiers of Odin have continued to gain ground in the province and across Canada—vocally opposing issues such as immigration and the “Islamisation of Canadian values.” Incidents such as the January 2017 mosque shooting, along with several cases of Islamophobic vandalism and harassment and anti-immigration protests also demonstrate increased racial tensions. In this context, the photographer behind the nearly 30-year-old images now hopes his photos serve as a cautionary tale.

“People forget that this existed in Montreal,” Montreal-based activist André Querry told VICE. “I want to show the dangers of that era and remind people that we have to fight against these dangerous ideologies.”

The early 1990s were a turbulent time in Quebec, with the Oka crisis—a standoff between Mohawks and the military over a proposed golf course development on sacred burial ground—and ongoing constitutional negotiations exacerbating racial and linguistic tensions.

In the midst of all this turmoil, different neo-Nazi groups—including a chapter of the Klu Klux Klan—emerged in Montreal, attracting more than 100 members who targeted black and Jewish people and members of the LGBTQ community.

“There was a climate of fear,” Querry told VICE. He explains that he started taking pictures in 1986 for a publication run by a left-wing organization called Groupe Action Socialiste. His focus was mainly student movements and union mobilisation, until neo-Nazis started crashing some of the groups’ events.

“In September 1990, we organized this rally against racism,” he recalls. “And the KKK leader and a bunch of young neo-Nazis showed up to confront us.”

The avowed racists’ efforts made headlines and Querry says the emboldened Nazis became increasingly visible and active. “It was dangerous, these were groups who were acting on their claims, who were attacking and killing people.”

In a 1991 documentary about the movement, neo-Nazis describe their participation in what they called the “white van ritual,” excursions during which they prowled Montreal streets to hunt down and attack immigrants. According to the report, this led to the assault of roughly 200 people.

In 1992 Le Devoir published a front page story on the concerns caused by the rising racist movements in Quebec.

“Montreal anti-racism organisations are expecting a hot and violent summer,” begins the article. “Montreal’s young Nazis and members of the Klu Klux Klan in Sherbrooke have led a major offensive this week, distributing the KKK newspaper again in Sherbrooke and Verdun and provoking violent racist encounters. On Friday night, ten Nazi Skinheads attacked two blacks, with one man defending himself with a knife and wounding one of the Nazis."

The director of the Global Anti-Racism League told the paper he estimated there were about 150 organized neo-Nazis in Montreal. He also warned the movement seemed to be taking root in Gatineau and Quebec City. “We’re afraid that their number could soon reach 300, even 600 people as of this summer. The KKK members are out there recruiting 13 to 16 year olds,” he warned.

A group of teenagers recruited by the KKK to throw rocks at anti-racism protesters, July 1992. | Photo by André Querry

Neo-Nazi youth taking part in Canada Day celebrations in 1992. | Photo by André Querry.

Querry’s photos—taken between 1990 and 1992—provide insight into this era, showing the neo-Nazis protesting communism, opposing anti-racism efforts, and just simply brandishing swastikas during public ceremonies.

“It was terrifying to see people going around with Nazi flags at July 1st celebrations,” says Querry.

In January 1992, two leaders of the KKK were arrested for their involvement in a plot to burn down a building in Hochelaga Maisonneuve. “The two main leaders of the KKK in Montreal, Michel Larocque and Alain Roy will be charged this afternoon for trying to burn down a building inhabited by blacks in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood,” read a report in La Presse. “The two individuals were caught red-handed on Saturday night, along with another KKK member and 36 Skinheads with molotov cocktails.” Police said the attempted arson—a settling of accounts over a previous skirmish—would have degenerated into a major blaze that could have “cost many human lives.”

Larocque is seemingly still active in right-wing groups. His Instagram account boasts a photo of the former KKK leader with a tattoo of anti-immigration group La Meute on his hand. La Meute spokesperson Sylvain Brouillette told VICE that he didn’t know Larocque and was unaware of his former affiliations. According to La Meute’s records, Larocque severed his ties with the group in early 2016.

Patrick Beaudry, the former La Meute leader who left to start his own similar organisation called PTRK Revolution, claimed that Larocque is now a member of his group. "I see no reason that could lead to his exclusion from the group," he told VICE, explaining that Larocque had since remade his life.

KKK leader Michel Larocque speaking to reporters near an anti-racism rally in 1993. | Photo by André Querry

Instagram picture from account linked to Michel Larocque, posted in November 2016.

In August 1992, the groups even went so far as to organize a neo-Nazi festival in La Plaine, QC. In La Presse’s coverage of the event, a police officer tells reporters the festival went on “without incident,” except for a couple of drug arrests and the burning of a swastika. “There’s a municipal bylaw against public fires,” said SQ lieutenant Benoît Poulin. “But that’s really all we can criticize them for this weekend. We were here to ensure they didn’t contravene the criminal code, we can’t prevent them from gathering.”

Article in La Presse, titled “Neo-Nazi festival wraps up without incident” accompanied by a photo of young girls who petitioned against the event.

Entrance of the 1992 neo-Nazi festival in La Plaine. Photo by André Querry

Querry eventually became a personal target of the KKK’s attacks. In 1993, he was assaulted as he passed out pamphlets warning neighbourhood residents of an upcoming Nazi event. “They attacked me because of my sexual orientation,” he says. “To hear children as young as four or five, who didn’t know me at all, calling me a faggot. That’s what they were teaching their kids, that we were dangerous and perverted.”

One morning, Querry woke up to find a KKK insignia on his front door. This was cause for concern, he says, as neo-Nazis had been particularly violent towards the LGBT community. In November 1992, four neo-Nazi teens were arrested for the murder of Yves Lalonde, a gay man who was beaten to death while out jogging. “I moved the year after, people wanted me to move right away but I didn’t want to, but I moved and then I became incognito.”

André Querry’s front door, July 1993. | Photo by André Querry

Neo-Nazis gathering for a protest near Jarry Park on May 1st, 1993. | Photo by André Querry

Michel Larocque and a group of neo-Nazis observing an anti-racism protest, March 1993. | Photos by André Querry

By 1995, Querry says the Nazi movement had mostly dissipated, or at least retreated. “We succeeded in getting rid of them with our protests and gatherings,” he recalls. “There was relative calm during a few years.”

Yet Querry says watching the rise of groups like La Meute and Storm Alliance has reminded him of this era. “The an anti-immigration sentiment is in the same vein,” he cautions. “When we look at the rhetoric used by these groups, it’s quite similar to what the KKK was saying at the time.”

Follow Brigitte Noël on Twitter.

As we all know, youth are the future. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that their future could be garbage. But a new Liberal initiative is aiming to change that—or at least prepare them for a life of doing lots of socially-approved work for modest sums of money.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the “design phase” of a new youth initiative called the Canada Service Corps on Tuesday. (Youth, for the purposes of the program, are defined as those aged 15 to 30.) Its proposed goal is to establish a national program that would recruit young people in community service projects around the country.

The government has committed $105 million over the next three years to build the program. This is being done in conjunction with a number of other national, regional, and local partners, including 4-H Canada, Apathy is Boring, Katimavik, and the YMCA. Overall, the Liberals hope the Canada Service Corps will create up to 12,350 youth service positions when it is launched in 2019.

Overall this is a positive development. There is a ton of (non-profitable) work to be done around the country. Given the dim economic prospects faced by most Millennials and post-Millennials, federal money that gets young people involved in community service work is fundamentally a good idea.

This being the design phase, it’s not clear what the final Canada Service Corps program will actually look like when it launches in 2019. This initiative was also supposed to launch by late 2017, so don’t hold your breath to find out—and maybe expect the promise of federal funding for volunteering to figure prominently in the next election as the Liberals and NDP square off for the youth vote when they aren’t trying to out-Instagram each other.

It’s also unclear at this time whether the Canada Service Corps will be a centralized and overarching national program, or whether it will work by dispersing money through local partners. Small grants are already available for young people looking to get paid for being socially-conscious, and the government has issued a helpful guide to developing a plan and applying for one of three funding streams ($250, $750, and $1,500).

There are some stipulations. In order to be funded, projects and organizations have to fall within the Liberals’ interpretation of social justice and the Charter. This means, for example, that no one is going to get any money for anti-abortion work, which has already proved to be a controversial feature of the Summer Jobs Program. Meanwhile, projects that encourage reconciliation—especially if they bring Indigenous peoples and settlers together—are highly prized by the powers that be.

Getting youth engaged in community activism and leadership positions has long been a personal hobby-horse for the prime minister, who is also the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Youth. Prior to entering politics in 2008, Trudeau spent four years as the chair of Katimavik, a youth service program established by his father but starved of federal funding by the Harper government in 2012. As a rookie MP in 2009, he also proposed creating a youth service corps similar to what was announced this week, but the motion was defeated.

In 2016, Trudeau established the Prime Minister’s Youth Council. This is an advisory board made up of youth from around the country that provide the prime minister with counsel on political issues like climate change, education, and the economy from the perspective of young Canadians—many of whom voted Liberal in the 2015 election. Say what you will about the Trudeau government, but on the youth file at least the prime minister’s personal political convictions are displayed most clearly.

So fill your boots, kids. Go on the government website and give them your opinions and take a gap year from uni by doing your civic duty. The Canada Service Corps will transform you from a normal person into a super citizen. You will be a maple-blooded patriot who will see the national interest buried in every rural ditch you dig. You will build a national network with everyone else in Canada who is as passionate as solving poverty through startups and tolerance as you are. It will root a “culture of service” deep within your heart and guarantee you a place on a “Top 30 under 30” list, or at least a profile in your local paper. You will be the very model of a future Liberal candidate.

Most importantly of all, it will also teach you the secret art of successfully applying for government grants, an invaluable skill across every sector of the Canadian economy. Master this, and the sky’s the limit.

Trust me; I live in Atlantic Canada.