I know firearms—I spent over a decade in the Army carrying, shooting, and cleaning guns, and lived the better part of a six-month combat tour in Afghanistan within arm’s reach of a pistol, assault rifle, and probably a grenade or two. I don’t hunt or own guns personally, but many of my friends do. They are responsible and law-abiding gun owners, and I have no objection to that.

The Canadian Armed Forces has extremely strict policies for the transportation, storage, and use of firearms. Weapons and ammunition are secured in purpose-built vaults. Strict protocols for handling and transportation are enforced. Everything has a serial number—whether you’re a reservist going on a weekend exercise or a soldier deploying to war, you line up in front of the vault, sign for each gun, magazine, bolt, sling, and whatever else you need to fight under the watchful eye of a non-commissioned officer whose job is to keep track of that kit.

These protocols and controls are taken with a seriousness bordering on zealotry. Any Canadian soldier who has spent time at the Infantry School in Gagetown, New Brunswick can rhyme off a half-dozen times that the entire base shut down and people were trucked from all over the training area to look for a weapon lost in the woods by some poor soldier.

Losing controlled gear like weapons or night-vision goggles in a warzone automatically meant additional scrutiny. One time, after I fell into a well in the Panjwayi district on a night patrol and nearly drowned, my platoon went back out first thing the next morning to look for gear that I had stripped off myself in a desperate bid to stay above water (no guns lost!).

Military weapons training is deliberate, methodical, and it takes months (if not years) of practice to develop adequate skills—and I still sucked at shooting after that. Weapons are assigned based on what you need for your role—there is no picking and choosing a rifle that you like better or looks cooler. In short, the military follows the gold standard for the security, transportation, training, and seriousness about firearms—and even in that highly-controlled context accidents occur. No less than the former head of the Canadian Special Forces was found guilty of negligently discharging his weapon in Iraq.

This week, the Liberal government announced new gun control legislation—among the proposals, reinstating the requirement for a permit when transporting certain types of restricted firearms, a regulation scrubbed by the previous Harper government; enhanced background checks for people applying for a firearms license; and requiring vendors to keep detailed records of gun sales. These controls are the bare minimum—they are no more invasive than those that apply to the sale of a car, or a routine employer background check.

As I said, I don’t object to law-abiding gun ownership—but I object to the gun lobby and their allies claiming that reasonable controls on dangerous goods are somehow criminalizing gun owners. The gun lobby argues that enhanced background checks and enforced record-keeping by merchants are overly intrusive measures that infringe on the rights of gun owners. They argue that “Criminals obtain guns through criminal means,” and attempt to sway the public to believe that the proliferation and inadequate regulation of legal guns does not cause gun crime. Another common argument is that most guns used in crimes here are brought in illegally from the United States, although public data doesn’t support that theory.

Police forces and Public Safety Canada dispute this. According to authorities, crackdowns on guns at the border have resulted in a significant uptick in domestically-obtained legal guns being used in violent crimes. Canada’s largest cities report increased gun violence in recent years, and polling suggests that a wide majority of Canadians agree with stricter gun controls on handguns and assault rifles—especially in urban areas.

Don’t let the narrow interests of a vocal gun lobby confuse the issue. Stricter control over the sale, purchase, and transportation of restricted weapons is not onerous nor does it impugn the good intentions of hunters and law-abiding gun owners. If the military can discipline its management of weapons, then the rest of Canada can too.

We can take another lesson from the military as well. The military does not hand out guns based on individual preference—they are assigned based on need. Hunters don’t need assault rifles and handguns. If we want to talk about serious gun control, the best place to start is not just by enacting these controls, but by resurrecting the question of whether or not we want to ban certain types of guns outright in our cities. Toronto averaged one act of gun violence per day last year. It is time to consider once again banning assault rifles and handguns in cities—we just don’t need them.

Josh Makuch is a former infantry officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and a combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He is a supporter of #vetsforgunreform. You can follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Quebec.

A survey of the website Finder.com, which aims to help people make thoughtful purchases, reveals that nearly $30.4 billion USD were spent by drunk people last year. According to the site, the most common expenditures by drunk people are: food (60.83 percent), clothing and accessories (25.09 percent) and gambling (24.91 percent).

Men are more likely to shop drunk, with 48.19 percent of respondents admitting to having spent this type of expense. And nearly 41 percent of the women surveyed would have spent money on a drunken evening. In addition, the marital status of a person could influence his decisions: about 55 percent of singles have made spurious expenses.

Being accustomed to putting things on my desk that I ordered at four o'clock in the morning the week before, I asked around to find the craziest purchase anyone had made while drunk, and I'm happy to say that my entourage did not disappoint me.

Yann
I bought a bottle opener with the image of Luis Suarez, a nod to the time he bit Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup match. Yes, it opens bottle with his mouth.

Mark
I bought smart glasses on Kickstarter. I've been waiting for them for two years.

Max
A shower curtain with a picture of Jeff Goldblum holding a monkey.

Misha
Once I bought a foot bath the night before my birthday.

Yan
I bought Kanye, my dog, online, from a store in Los Angeles, while I was blackout drunk. I was woken up by calls from the pet shop that told me that his documents were ready and that they were planning his flight to Montreal.

Emma
This…

Stéphane
I bought a mini-amusement park and a bed, as accessories for Fingerlings [children's characters that are worn around the finger, Ed]. I still have not bought the Fingerlings. I also had a collection of 20 healing crystals, and I just bought another 30 two days ago. I still have not followed the three-month course on how to use them.

Mathieu
I was completely drunk at four in the morning about three years ago and bought a dove off Kijiji! I did not really remember it the next day, but then I received an email to announce that I was the owner of a dove. I found the situation too hilarious, so I sucked it up and went to get it. I have had it for three years, and it continues to become an inexhaustible source of absurd situations. She was featured in videos by Alex Nevski and Coeur de Pirate. She even has an Instagram account.

Brendan
While in London, I bought a plane ticket to the Panorama Bar in Berlin's Berghain to meet my friend. Once at the bar, they did not let me in.

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Laura
A tooth-shaped lamp, a Rob Zombie t-shirt, an industrial amount of wool yarn.

Malcom
I tried to buy a rifle once, but it did not work.

Josh
A hat knitted by the grandmother of the singer of a band I love.

Michel
I had a personal golf cart at Osheaga, which was really cool. The following week, I was invited to the Rogers Cup final and drank a ton at the closing dinner. I was at home at 11 PM and then blacked out. The next day at lunch I had a flash: oh shit, I think I bought myself a golf cart. I checked my internet history and it seems I had watched a video of two golf cart guys running into stuff, and then I went on Kijiji shopping for one. In exchange for $100, the gentleman finally agreed to cancel the sale.

In 2011, I bought bitcoins while I was high. I bought them for $72 and sold them for almost $35,000. I've made other impulse purchases, like the flamethrower of Elon Musk, but not while drunk.

Billy Eff is on the internet here and there.

It's been just over a month since a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In that short time, the momentum in the country's decades-old gun debate has accelerated at breakneck speed. Some of the nation's largest retailers have announced they are raising the minimum purchasing age for firearms to 21 and ending sales of assault-style rifles. Others are getting out of the gun business altogether. Companies are abandoning the NRA in droves, and around 1 million students participated in a nationwide walkout last week. On Saturday, the March for Our Lives is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of protesters to Washington, DC, alone, and many more will attend marches across the country.

Much of this action is thanks to the handful of Parkland students who have become leading activists for gun control in the days since the shooting. They are organized, articulate, driven, and—maybe most importantly—crazy good at social media. In the weeks since the shooting, the survivors have become fixtures on national television, making the rounds on news programs, speaking at rallies, and going to the White House for a meeting with Donald Trump. The kids are members of what is sometimes called the "Mass Shooting Generation," a cohort that grew up having to deal with gun violence, mass shootings, and lockdown drills as an unfortunate fact of life. If the Stoneman Douglas students have made one thing clear, it is that they intend to lose that nickname.

While much of the attention in the recent national debate has rightly been focused on these teenagers, it's important to remember that school shootings are not a new problem in the United States. And so now, at a time when the needle finally feels like it's moving a sensible direction, we wanted to reach out to those who have lived through the school shootings that have plagued our country over the past several decades to hear their stories.

The resulting series, called Voices of School Shooting Survivors, features essays from 15 current and former students and teachers who have lived through the horror of a senseless shooting at a place of learning. The contributors come from Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and many other schools, and their essays range from discussions on the authors' experiences to their views on media coverage of school shootings to how they feel about gun control today and what sort of change they would like to see. Those who have experienced these events are some of the most valuable voices in the current debate, and the stories in this collection paint a picture of how these tragedies affect victims not only in the weeks and months after the event, but often for the rest of their lives.

Read their stories here.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Like Tinder one-night stands, self-destructive activities in life are best when gamified.

In all likelihood, amidst being indoctrinated into society's normalization of alcohol use, drinking too became a game to you. Whether it’s an attempt to power through social anxiety, a bad competitive streak or, simply, that your party is boring as fuck, we’ve all played drinking games. They tend to lead to you being hammered as fuck and make you do things you shouldn’t do. As a debatably wise man once said, “Fun nights lead to awkward mornings.” So, with the power of these games in mind, we put together this list to help you make sense of your personal identity as it relates to your favourite drinking game—because that’s totally something you need.

Beer Pong: Ahhh, one of the most popular drinking games. Rest assured, if this is your favourite drinking game you have 100 percent asked someone if they’ve ever gotten high and watched Planet Earth.

Liquor Pong: Are you sure you want to do this?

Quarters: You’re a masochist.

Beersbee: You have a wide collection of board shorts at home.

Chugging an Entire Bottle of Vodka for the ‘Gram: You really like Barstool.

Photo via Pexels

Little-Known Card-Based Drinking Games That Everyone Is Too Drunk to Understand Rules for So They Quit Halfway Through: Your name is probably Gerald and no one really likes you all that much.

King’s Cup: You probably were super popular and had house parties in high school, which you still consider the best days of your life.

Beer Hockey: You lost a lot of money in cryptocurrency.

Cards Against Humanity: You're a cop.

Those Games Where You Have to Like Clap and Shit: Your name is probably Jenny and no one really likes you all that much.

Taking Over a Jukebox at a Dive Bar and Then Making People Guess What Song You Put On: You are the managing editor of VICE Canada and assigned us this story because you were grouchy. Fuck you, Josh.

Photo via Flickr user gavinrobinson

Drinking Every Time Someone Says a Certain Phrase in a Movie: You really want people to watch Army of Darkness for the 17th time and slam a beer when Ash says, “This is my boomstick.” Like Gerald, you are not well-liked and were only invited to this party because you have good weed.

Guitar Hero: You peaked in junior high.

Wizard Stick: You’re dying for attention at the party you’re at. You walk around begging—BEGGING—for people to ask you about the stack of beer cans that have duct-taped together. Then, when they finally do, you lightly chuckle and say, “Oh man, it’s just a cool little thing my friend Jim and I do.”

Trivia: Parties part like the Red Sea around you because no one wants to talk to you or hear about your weirdly specific knowledge of Mork and Mindy.

Flip Cup: You either have fucked a frat boy or you are a frat boy.

Drunk Karaoke Kamikaze: DON’T GO CHASSSSSSSIIIINNNNNGGGGGGG WATTTTTEEERRRRFFFFFAAAAALLLLLSSSSSS.

Truth or Dare: You have an incredibly hard time getting, uh, shall we say, romantic with the opposite sex and this is your last-ditch effort to get with someone.

Fire and Ice: You are a person who values speed, simplicity, and efficiency in all parts of life, including in getting shitfaced. You may have puked on yourself before.

Drunk Jenga: You enjoy destruction and getting in touch with your inner-child.

Sexy Jenga: You’ve been to an orgy.

Drunk Twister: You’ve had knee surgery.

Chandelier: You are unnecessarily competitive and had a bro phase. You may have peaked in college, but hey, you had a good run.

The Sports Video Game Drinking Game: You’re the fuck who buys shots for people at a bar when they adamantly say they don’t want them.

Mario Kart Drinking Game: You cried after you lost your virginity.

Cow-Tipping: You’re gullible and grew up in the middle of nowhere.

Waterfall: You’ve woken up on the toilet before.

Never Have I Ever: You either really enjoy flexing that you’ve had a threesome, are super nosey, or get sadistic pleasure in watching others be publicly shamed.

Bullshit: You’ve seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Slam Cup: You have no regard for other people’s things.

Shotgun ‘Til You Puke: I don’t know if this is a game outside of my circle of friends but, whatever, you’re most likely from a small town (maybe in northern Alberta) and you should probably pick up a book one of these days.

Slap the Bag: You’ll take any excuse to use a sexual innuendo.

Thumper: You’re obnoxious as hell and could probably be talked into joining a cult.

Edward 40 Hands: You don’t mind pissing yourself in front of a contingent of laughing people you thought were your friends.

Swigging Straight Out of a Liquor Bottle in Your Bachelor Apartment Alone: This counts as a game, right?

An Ontario judge shut down a medical weed dispensary owner’s claim that his arrest during Toronto police’s Project Claudia raids was unconstitutional. A successful outcome could have paved the way for thousands of charges issued during dispensary raids to be tossed out.

Marek Stupek, owner of two medical pot dispensaries in Toronto called the Social Collective, was charged with two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking in May 2016. Stupek, who claims he has rigorous standards and only provides cannabis to sick patients, claimed through his lawyer that the charges are unconstitutional because the federal government has not adequately provided Canadians with access to medical cannabis.

Stupek’s lawyer Alan Young argued the challenge based on two previous court decisions. One, known as the Parker decision, found that a blanket criminal prohibition on using cannabis is unconstitutional because some Canadians benefit from it medically. The other, called the Allard decision, ruled that the federal government’s Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations was unconstitutional in that “under the single source system of a Licensed Producer [LP] there is no guarantee that the necessary quality, strain and quantity will be available when needed at some acceptable level of pricing.” The ruling, issued in February 2016, also found that banning patients from growing their own weed is unconstitutional.

The ruling gave the government six months to create a new regime, known as the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations. The new rules give patients the right to grow, or designate someone to grow for them, but aside from those options everyone else must continue to order medical weed by mail through the LPs.

Stupek argued that when he was raided in May 2016, there was no constitutionally valid medical weed regime in Canada, and thus his arrest was illegal.

In a Toronto courtroom Friday, Justice Heather McArthur rejected Stupek’s challenge on several grounds. She noted that in the Allard decision, the judge essentially gave the government a six-month grace period, during which the old MMPR system remained in effect; Stupek was arrested during that period and because of that, McArthur said it is legal for him to be prosecuted and convicted even if the MMRP was declared unconstitutional. She also said the Parker decision does not apply to possession for the purpose of trafficking—only possession.

Outside the courtroom Friday, Stupek called the decision a “cop out.”

“If you cannot afford the system being provided by the licensed producers, it is the same thing as not having it,” he said, noting his patients have serious illnesses and in some cases are dying of cancer. “My patients cannot afford a $350 ounce of cannabis and I’ve been selling it for the past 25 years at $125.” He said he will continue to operate his dispensaries.

The federal government has said it is not going to change the medical cannabis system as part of legalization—a decision Stupek said “baffles” him.

“You mean they’re going to extend the criminality of this stupid system?”

He said has no opinion on recreational weed dispensaries and doesn’t care if they get shut down.

He will be back in court in October to directly challenge the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the constitutionality of the federal government’s mail order system. The argument will likely focus on the idea that medical patients should be allowed to access cannabis through storefronts.

“Some of these people should be proud of what they’ve done, not criminalized,” Stupek’s lawyer Young told reporters. “I’ve been with Mr. Stupek, he’s been doing this for 20-25 years and has done enormous work with sick people, providing various different strains at a very low cost and giving away marijuana.”

He described the police and city’s decision to shut down medical pot shops as a “supreme waste of time.”

In February, nearly 300 charges against weed dispensary workers in Toronto were withdrawn in exchange for peace bonds.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This week, Disney announced new plans to add superhero-themed Marvel lands to three of its theme parks in California, Paris, and Hong Kong. In honor of the upcoming, superhero-themed Disneyland additions, Disney released a trio of posters featuring a bunch of Marvel characters. Nothing out of the ordinary there, right?

Well, sort of. The posters were all pretty basic and unassuming, featuring Spider-Man and Black Panther and whoever to tease the new park sections, but one piece of the Hong Kong Disneyland poster seems slightly out of place—namely, the big building shaped exactly like a giant wang.

There it is, in the center—tucked into the Avengers logo between Captain America and Wasp. What's that? Too small to accurately judge the building's dickishness? No problem. Let's enhance:

Ah, much better. There's no denying its peen likeness now—the long, straight shaft; the curved head; the bulbous tip. That's a dong, people.

Now, to be fair, a lot of buildings can wind up looking pretty phallic. The Washington Monument is basically a giant tribute to our first president's junk, Toronto's CN Tower looks like a pointy needle dick, and, speaking of needles, the Space Needle can start looking pretty cockish if you squint at it right. But those buildings all at least attempt to be a little stylized. The Avengers dick building doesn't even try to hide its true peen nature.

As Orlando Weekly points out, the building looks just like the Stark Tower featured in the Star Tours–style Iron Man Experience ride currently open at the Hong Kong park. But even if it is, the question remains: Why design a version of Stark Tower that looks like a massive metal peen in the first place? And did no one glance at the poster at any point and say, "Hey guys, maybe I'm just a perv or whatever, but doesn't this look kinda-sorta-exactly like a giant dong?"

Or maybe they did! Maybe that was the point all along! People have been accusing Disney of slipping secret wangs into works for ages now, from the alleged hidden penis on the Little Mermaid cover to the dickhead guy in Hercules. And Woody from Toy Story? Come on. Woody? WOODY? If this poster is another secret attempt at hiding a dong in plain sight, bravo.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In the weeks since the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on February 14, the country has erupted into yet another of its many debates over guns and the mass death they make possible. Except this time, there's a tangible sense that things really might be different. Teenagers are walking out of schools in protest. The Parkland survivors themselves have become cable news mainstays and are advancing an agenda that doesn't seem terribly radical. Gun control support surged in the polls. And even though Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress don't appear to have much interest in substantive gun-control measures on a national level, that doesn't mean action hasn't been taken in both the public and private spheres.

Below are a few of the most significant actions taken by public officials over the past month. Most of these moves are small in the grand scheme of things, but they suggest that attitudes on guns and their place in American life may be shifting ever so slightly.

February 22: Blue States Team Up to Fight Gun Violence

In the absence of plausible federal action, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut formed a coalition to share information about people prohibited from owning guns, collect data on gun trafficking, and work to get universities to coordinate research. It was at least initially unclear how all this would work in practice, but it represented a signal that Trump and his unique fealty to the NRA wasn't going to stand in the way of change.

The Last Week of February: Companies Distance Themselves from the NRA

The aftermath of every prominent mass shooting features a lot of NRA bashing, but after Parkland it went to another level, with activists pressuring companies who offered NRA members discounts and deals to discontinue those programs. A number of airlines, car rental agencies, and other businesses did so, publicly severing ties with the ferocious pro-gun group. There was a backlash from the right, naturally, with Georgia lawmakers responding to Delta ending an NRA discount by repealing as much as $50 million in fuel tax exemptions used by the Atlanta-based airline. The punchline is that only 13 NRA members actually used the discount.

February 26: Rhode Island's Governor Signs "Red Flag" Executive Order

Democratic Governor Gina Raimondo can't change laws by herself, but she signed an executive order telling cops to take "all available legal steps" to make sure guns are taken away from people who credibly pose threats of violence. The measure also started an effort to educate people about warning signs. Meanwhile, the (not brand new) idea that guns should be taken away from people judged dangerous by a court began picking up fresh steam across the country.

February 28: Walmart and Dick's Raise the Age on Gun Purchases

The two retailers are among the largest gun-sellers in the US, and two weeks after Parkland they separately announced they were limiting gun sales. Walmart had already stopped selling "modern sporting rifles" like the controversial AR-15 and only sold handguns in Alaska, but now said they would no longer sell guns or ammo to anyone under 21. The response at Dick's was bigger—the chain promised not to sell "assault-style rifles" or high-capacity magazines anymore, and raised the gun- and ammo-buying age to 21. Dick's also asked legislators to enact "common sense gun reform" like implementing universal background checks and banning assault rifles, policies that the Parkland survivors and many other gun-control advocates have asked for.

March 1: A Gun Dealer Licensing Bill Arrives on the Illinois Governor's Desk

The Illinois legislature was determined to pass at least some gun-control measures and sent one requiring all gun dealers to be licensed by the state to the governor's office. But Bruce Rauner is a Republican and didn't seem eager to sign it before the state's primary election. He eked out a distressingly slim victory over token opposition and looked extremely vulnerable in the upcoming general election. Meanwhile, that bill remained unsigned.

March 5: Oregon Closes the "Boyfriend Loophole"

If you're convicted of domestic abuse, you are mostly prohibited from owning a gun, but there's a catch: In some states, this only applies to "domestic partners," rather than people who are merely dating. Earlier this month, Oregon became the 24th state to expand this prohibition to "intimate partners" convicted of domestic abuse. It was a small move, but it was controversial, with all Republicans in the state senate (plus one Democrat) voting against it.

March 5: Bumble Bans Guns from Profile Pics

The popular dating app joined the conversation, announcing that it was banning gun photos with a statement on Instagram. “As mass shootings continue to devastate communities across the country, it’s time to state unequivocally that gun violence is not in line with our values, nor do these weapons belong on Bumble," the site said, adding that it was donating $100,000 to the March for Our Lives, the gun-control protests organized by Parkland survivors for March 24.

March 6: Washington State Bans Bump Stocks

Bump stocks are devices that effectively increase the rate of fire for semiautomatics; they were obscure to most people before last year's Las Vegas shooting, where the gunman used at least one to deadly effect. An effort to make them illegal at the federal level may or may not eventually go somewhere—President Trump has rhetorically embraced a ban—but Washington (which Democrats took full control of in November) became the latest state to ban bump stocks less than a month after Parkland.

March 9: Florida Passes a New Gun Law

Even though Florida is run by Republicans, and has a history of insanely pro-gun policies and culture, lawmakers faced real pressure to act after Parkland, adopting a new law containing a number of distinct provisions. One of them creates a program that gives teachers firearm training and offers schools the right to arm them; it was denounced by many gun-control advocates. But the law also raises the legal age for firearm purchases to 21, bans bump stocks, and imposes a three-day waiting period for rifle and shotgun purchases (there was already such a waiting period for handguns). The NRA quickly challenged the law in court, but regardless of how that plays out, it showed the politics of gun control have already changed in a purple state—there's even a push to amend the state's constitution to ban assault rifles.

March 17: Fred Meyer Stops Selling Guns

The Pacific Northwest–based chain announced that it would no longer sell guns and ammunition in a way that made it difficult for gun control activists to claim a victory, exactly—it said that firearm sales were down and basically that they were looking to save shelf space.

This Week: YouTube Cracks Down on Gun Videos

Until this month, it was pretty easy to find YouTube videos demonstrating various guns and gun accessories, but the platform has slowly started to change that. It now bans content that “intends to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales...or links to sites that sell these items.” As Motherboard reported this week, it's also banning a lot of DIY gun videos:

The list of forbidden accessories includes, but is not limited to, anything that enables a firearm to simulate automatic fire or converts a firearm to do so, and high capacity magazine kits. YouTube's new policy also now states it will ban videos that show people how to manufacture firearms, ammunition, high capacity magazines, or even shows users how to install these accessories or modifications.

The people who made these videos were understandably upset, but they quickly found a solution—some of them are taking their channels to PornHub.

March 21: Gun Control Makes It Into the Omnibus Spending Bill

Congress just passed a big honking piece of legislation that funds a whole lot of things at once. Buried in the 2,000-plus pages are several items that address shootings. First there's the "Fix NCIS" measure that encourages state and federal agencies to keep the federal gun buying background check system (NCIS) up to date. It also explicitly suggests the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has the authority to study gun violence—which it hasn't done in decades—albeit without providing new funds. Finally, it increases funding for school security. President Trump was threatening to veto the bill Friday over unrelated issues, but even if the bill gets signed into law, this won't be the last battle over a gun-control measure under his administration—especially if the Democrats romp at the polls this fall, as expected.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

On Saturday, thousands of people will join in on the March for Our Lives, a nationwide rally calling for actual gun control measures after 17 people were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. But according to the superintendent of one Pennsylvania school district, the gun control measure his schools will be using can be found in a bucket.

"Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone," the Blue Mountain School District superintendent, Dr. David Helsel said, according to ABC affiliate WNEP. "If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks and they will be stoned."

Active shooter response training organization ALICE suggests "creating a dynamic environment [to decrease] the shooter's chance of hitting a target," in the event of a mass shooting, but only as a "last resort." Though it's not entirely clear how children pelting palm-size globs of sediment will keep someone from using an AR-15 machine gun, like the one Nikolas Cruz brought to Marjory Stoneman Douglas last month. One student told WNEP, however, "rocks are better than books and pencils."

"They're the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard, and they will create or cause pain, which can distract," Dr. Helsel said.

With Congress unwilling to budge on raising the legal age limit for purchasing certain firearms and the White House wanting to arm teachers with guns, schools around the country are at the very least getting creative with ways they can try to protect students. Some think that means arming students with rocks and fire extinguishers, while others, like the administration at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, think making students wear clear backpacks could do the trick.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

One look at these portraits of clowns and demonic masked figures is enough to send chills down your spine. No, they're not from a Juggalo yearbook or outtakes from a Slipknot album cover, but the work of anonymous artists and taxidermy enthusiasts, Mothmeister. Their Instagram account and Etsy store are packed with creepy masked characters, from goat men and sheep women to living ventriloquist dummies. Most of them pose with tastefully preserved animal carcasses. A new book called Weird and Wonderful Post-Mortem Fairy Tales compiles the most unsettling characters in their collection.

The Belgium-based duo describe themselves as, "passionate taxidermy collectors who portray anonymous, ugly masked creatures as a reaction against the dominant exhibitionism of the selfie culture and beauty standards marketed by the mass media." While travel bloggers and influencers exaggerate the most beautiful and hedonistic parts of their lives, Mothmeister have accrued nearly 160k followers on Instagram by focusing on the opposite extreme. Their macabre photos suggest a brutal world full of monstrous people traveling to haunting locales. Both are fantasy, but at least Mothmeister's subjects don't hide that their wearing masks.

Below is a selection of the mysterious artists' photographs, captured throughout the world over the course of five years.

Get Weird and Wonderful Post-Mortem Fairy Tales, from Marked Books and Lannoo, here.

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When we met John Meighan – founder of the Football Lads Alliance (FLA) – in June of 2017, we didn't know quite what to expect. Following a series of terror attacks that had rocked the UK, the Spurs fan organised a march against extremism that attracted tens of thousands of football fans onto the streets.

Perhaps it's inevitable when a bunch of mainly white blokes take to the streets to shout about Islam, but speculation was already growing among anti-racist groups: could this be Britain’s latest far-right street movement? The most recent group that looked anything like the FLA, the EDL, grew out of football hooliganism and had used opposition to "Muslim terrorism" as a half-arsed cover for their fairly naked general Islamophobia.

But there seemed to be something different about John, and about the FLA.

Racist commenters, we heard, had been systematically kicked out of the FLA's private Facebook group. There were no union jacks on demos – "I got a barrage of messages attacking me for that, you know, like, 'Are you not patriotic?'" Meighan told us in a pub near Liverpool Street station. The FLA had even contacted anti-fascist activists before their march in London to make them aware of their intentions and re-assure them they weren't fash.

We wondered: are anti-racists writing off a large working-class movement against terrorism just because some of them have skinheads or wear flat caps? Surely people should be able to march against terror without being accused of goose-stepping?

When we met, Meighan was adamant that the group wasn't a new EDL. He repeatedly said that the group is "not right or left". He gave a convincing enough story about how he was simply a loving parent shocked into action by his own kids' fears about terror. "I had tickets for the Summertime Ball, but I actually had my children prompt me to sell the tickets because they didn't feel comfortable going to it," he told us. "That was a moment which, to me, almost says that I need to do something… It makes us think to check on our children and make sure they’re OK and make sure they don’t think something’s going to happen to their mummy or daddy." This was to be a respectable movement. He talked of a private security team working with the police to root out troublemakers and make sure it was family-friendly.

But after a bit more questioning, it seemed that the politics of respectability was about as far as the FLA went. Despite saying he had lawyer friends who would help him "look at how we can put some petitions together to change laws and terror laws", it wasn’t entirely clear what changes Meighan even wanted.

More police resources was one demand – but that doesn’t tell you much, so what else?

"There needs to be a strategy to deal with people at risk," he said. Ah yes, a strategy. Why had nobody thought of that before? And what strategy might that be?

"What that is, I don’t know, whether it’s a tag system. I’m not saying to discriminate against them – they might be a risk or they might reform, but we need to look at how can we change these people. I think they need to get into communities and show that they can, they talk about us, show we can talk to them, they haven’t got to fear us." Go into communities and tell them they don’t need to fear us, but we might tag some of them?

At the time, a controversial policy option was on the menu: internment. The indiscriminate detention of suspected terrorists without trial was controversially used in Northern Ireland by a desperate British government. As well as being manifestly unjust, it ended up worsening sectarian tensions and actually increasing terrorist activity. This reactionary idea was being talked up by such controversialists as Katie Hopkins, then still a columnist for the Mail Online. Anyone half paying attention had to have an opinion on it, but when we asked John about it there was visible head scratching. "Er… you probably know more whether there's going to be government reforms," he flapped, "...definitely there needs to be some direction, the public needs to see that something is happening."

We left that meeting less concerned with the idea that Meighan was a new far-right Machiavelli, and more confused that someone who had created such a large street movement barely even had any opinions. We wondered where it might lead.

The FLA's next march took place in October, and by then they had a more defined political stance, including advocating for internment. Several speakers at the rally, including Meighan, suggested every jihadi extremist identified by the intelligence service should be locked up. As well as being more politicised, it was a lot bigger, at least double the size of the first.

The march was also the scene of some violence. As attendees headed down Whitehall, a small group of left wing, anti-racist campaigners attempted to hand out leaflets questioning the FLA leadership over some of the dodgy characters who had spoken at previous events.

It's fair to say that many people in the FLA crowd weren't happy about this: they threw coins and beer cans at the anti-racists. In a display of nationalism, some people started singing "God Saved the Queen", arms aloft. Then came the insults: "Fuck off you lefty cunts", "Lefty shitheads", "Who the fucking hell are you?", "You let your country down" and so on. One guy walking past muttered a threat to "find them afterwards".

Some tried to break through police lines to attack the group. One man made a show of being frustrated and perplexed at the implication that the march was racist. "Show me a racist! Show me a racist!" he shouted. He was recognisable as Roy Price, who was jailed for violence at a racist demonstration in Dover. While doing this, Price was standing next to his associate, Tony Hyam, who has a conviction for being a racist.

But that wasn’t the whole picture. While some marchers reacted angrily, many broke out into applause when they saw the banners reading "Football for all". Other members of the crowd looked on at the group of left-wingers simply confused – why would anyone call an anti-terror event "racist"?

It was clear that most people there didn’t consider themselves to be taking part in a right-wing or racist event, but protesting against extremism.

We went through photographs of both the July and October marches, as well as the FLA’s social media accounts, and found there had been FLA banners or wreaths for FLA marches made by supporters of 38 of the 92 professional football clubs in the UK, as well as several non-league and Scottish teams. This means the FLA had built up some presence at at least 40 percent of the major clubs in English football. It was a mainstream event, with a small-c conservative law-n-order agenda, mostly made up of middle-aged "common sense" dads, with a few racists hanging around fringes.

FLA founder John Meighan (Photo: Peter Manning / Alamy Stock Photo)

Since that march last October, the FLA seems to have moved from having right-wing policy positions and far-right hangers-on, to existing in a far-right milieu and spouting far-right rhetoric.

There's another FLA march this Saturday in Birmingham, and the speakers' list includes far-right agitators. Tommy Robinson's cohort of anti-Muslim activists is now all over the FLA, while failed UKIP leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters – who has described Islam as "evil" – has been asked to speak in Birmingham because of her "expertise on Islam". Aline Morars from the German section of ethno-nationalist group Generation Identity will be speaking. The "anti-extremists" of the FLA are now inviting members of white supremacist groups to speak at their events.

When Darren Osborne was jailed for driving a hired van into a crowd of Muslims outside Finsbury Park Mosque, the FLA didn’t come out to condemn him, which you might expect for a group at pains to show that it is against all extremism. Instead, the FLA's social media accounts called the BBC "twats" for questioning Tommy Robinson over his role in radicalising Osborne.

Last week, the Observer accessed the FLA's private Facebook group and revealed that it was "full of violent, racist and misogynistic posts targeting Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott, as well as playing down the crimes of the Finsbury Park mosque attacker, Darren Osborne".

This wasn't entirely surprising, given the kind of things the FLA has been saying and sharing publicly on social media since last October. They’ve shared posts which claim Western identity is under attack, question if Islamophobia really exists and describe migrants as "invaders". The FLA has also repeatedly shared posts supporting the unofficial shrine to Lee Rigby in Woolwich, which is maintained by far-right hooligans with links to the EDL and neo-Nazi groups. In one post the FLA expressed its support for a huge far-right protest in Poland where anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi slogans and banners were on display. It has also attacked three prominent members of the Labour Party regularly – Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan and Diane Abbott. Some of the abuse of Abbot from the FLA has been explicitly racist, such as an image they shared of someone blacked up to look like her at a darts event.

Meighan recently denied that the group was right-wing to the Observer. "We are not against moderate Muslims. We are worried about people carrying out extremist attacks," he said. He stated that people who "show any form of racism" are expelled from the FLA Facebook group.

The respectable image that the FLA tried to build is coming off in another way, too. The organisation has split, with a number of senior activists upping sticks and setting up the "Democratic FLA", which they claim is the original – or "true" – FLA. The split hasn’t been over political differences; it’s been about a perceived lack of transparency about where money has been going and what some feel is a lack of democracy.

At Saturday's march, it's likely that, once again, many attendees will not consider themselves to be part of a far-right event. We’re just marching against extremists, they will say, and who can say fairer than that?

But the FLA's apolitical anti-terror message has quickly seen them lurch towards supporting internment – an unjust, authoritarian measure that would further pathologise and disaffect British Muslims. It would unintentionally help Islamic extremists with the aim of eliminating the "grayzone", where ordinary Muslims can fit into society. It is a lesson in how "common sense" protests can quickly reinforce a damaging status quo. Not only that, but the far-right vultures are circling, waiting to get a piece of flesh out of Britain’s newest big street movement if the organisation eventually keels over and dies.

@SimonChilds13 / @jdpoulter

Correction: This article previously stated that internment in Northern Ireland was a policy of Margaret Thatcher's government. In fact it was used from 1971-1975, before Thatcher was in power.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

So you’ve been to the outermost reaches of the trippy multiverse in your mind, and now you just want to sit back, enjoy your high, and be bombarded with wonderment? I’ve been there, buddy. Beyond the best action movies and horror movies on Netflix, and even the platform's greatest shows to watch when you're stoned, I’ve compiled some special recommendations just for you.

Depending on your attention span, you might want to watch some trippy music videos on YouTube. (I recommend this fan-made Radiohead music video to kick things into gear.) If you’re looking for something noncommittal, Netflix also has original episodes of Bill Nye: The Science Guy, The Twilight Zone, and anime’s prettiest show, Mushi-Shi. But if you’re at that point at the beginning or tail-end of your trip where you just want to settle into a good story, keep reading:

Buster’s Mal Heart

I caught this sleeper hit at Tribeca in 2016, and certain elements have stuck with me ever since. Sarah Adina Smith’s austere, wry style captures a more dynamic Rami Malek than Mr. Robot. Shaheen Seth’s panoramic cinematography deftly captures his wobbly world, where every little thing you think is, isn’t. Smith’s film is sort of like if you combined the holistic elements of Primer, The Fountain, and Castaway, and threw in a little of Fringe’s "We're trying to plug a hole in the universe. What are you doing here?" vibes for good measure. Satisfying sci-fi.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule

Ahahahaha, just kidding. (Then again, if you’re the kind of person who likes being talked at, Zeitgeist is on Netflix, too. I also have a bridge to sell you...)

Donnie Darko

Professional mindblower Richard Kelly burst onto the scene with this time-traveling metaphor for growing up misunderstood back in 2001. While to this day it remains a cult classic for its frank takedown of suburbia in the late 80s and for having the second-best Jake Gyllenhaal performance (number one is Bubble Boy, obviously), something about Donnie Darko’s always felt bigger than its surroundings. I’m pretty sure one of the answers to the universe is in here somewhere.

Experimenter

Marjorie Prime director Michael Almereyda’s metaphysical portrait of the psychologist behind the boundary-breaking “Obedience to Authority” experiments of the 1960s is like a combination of a historical drama and an experimental film. It features Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, and John Leguizamo, and me—I’m actually in like three scenes (trippy huh???).

Full Metal Jacket

Stanley Kubrick's body of work is a successive series of stories about the apotheosis of man through the shedding of false protagonists (Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist's Maze does a great job of breaking this down). Gomer Pyle's descent into madness is a means for Private Joker's forged-in-flames path to enlightenment, similar to the way that the death of Dr. Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey presages the ascent and subsequent rebirth of Dr. Bowman as the Star Child. This cinematic metempsychosis is exactly the kind of shit you need to be watching when you're going up or coming down.

Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves

You're tripping—but not actually tripping—if you don’t immediately think this is a good idea.

It Might Get Loud

If you’re at the point where you just wish you were jamming with Jimmy Page, U2’s the Edge, and Jack White, you’re in luck. Let director Davis Guggenheim give you an intimate hang with three rock’n’roll idols and the six strings that unite them.

Moon

Sam Rockwell as Sam Rockwell in a movie about Sam Rockwells Sam Rockwelling on the Sam Rockwell. Oops! I mean, the Moon.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

There’s a part of every good trip where your mind unloads all the insecurities you carry all day long, and suddenly you’re this glowing, bouncy flower ball of playfulness and imagination, just like Pee-Wee Herman. Put this on while you’re waiting for whatever you’re on to turn you on. You’ll probably have to pause it halfway through for your own Big Adventure. But when you get back home, Pee-Wee will still be there, waiting patiently to bring you back down to Earth.

Slow TV: Train Ride Bergen to Oslo

From Norwegian State Railways’ official website: ”The Bergen Railway between Oslo and Bergen is considered one of the world’s most scenic train rides. There are four daily departures from Oslo and Bergen. The seven-hour journey brings you across one of Europe’s highest mountain plateaus, and takes you to through spectacular and varied nature.” Enjoy the trip, in full, from the comfort of your own home.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Cool World is on Hulu, not Netflix, but in my humble opinion, Netflix still has the best Robert Zemeckis film—and he’s the guy who directed Forrest Gump and Back to the Future. If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically a buddy-cop psychodramedy starring Bob Hoskins as a horny Columbo and an anxiety-riddled Bugs Bunny as Gollum. A trip of epic proportions.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In this new photo series, we're collecting some of our favorite photographs and want your help captioning them. Every week, we'll throw a new photo up on our Instagram and cull the best captions that capture the current mood.

This week, we featured a photo shot by Julian Master that tackles a divisive and emotionally charged facet of American life—air travel. At a time when airlines are failing their passengers, and our pets, this picture of a guy using VR mid-flight got more than 2,000 responses. Although all of them were awesome (and mostly porn-related), we could only pick a few to feature on VICE.com.

Here are some of our favorites:

• Sir it's time to put away all electron... THEY ARE MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT VIRTUAL REALITY GLASSES!!—@lheals79
• Now boarding to Cleveland... Bitch I'm already in Aruba.—@aciaccia
• When your crush passes by you and you try to act normal—@_ana__88
• They’re prescription, OK.—@meetyourcoach
• After discovering the last copy of SkyMall—@joanna_kulesza
• Define a "real emergency..."—@wmanville
• Todd has been hit by driverless cars in the past. He's not taking any chances this time.—@corlerwer
• The new radical emergency exit training protocol.—@jetsmyth
• I knew I shouldn't have had that cornea transplant in Singapore.—@two_coast_ghost
• It wasn't until 30,000 feet somewhere over the Great Lakes did Glen realize he needed to seek help for a porn addiction.—@mrjak1979
• Charging tablet for human Uber...—@chronic_cross
• They told him with his bonus flyer miles he could fly virtually anywhere in the world.... he just wished they had been a little more clear.—@lakesidejosh
• I still don't understand why nobody ever sits next to me.—@papa_demps

Check VICE's Instagram next week for our next installment. Check Julian Master's website and Instagram for more of his photos.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Last Thursday, March 15, during the first leg of one of his popular three-and-a-half-day seminars, motivational speaker Tony Robbins earned heckles from a crowd typically comprised of agreeable devotees after making comments some interpreted as critical of the #MeToo movement. Speaking in San Jose to a packed stadium of around 12,000, many of whom paid between $650 and $2,995 to attend his Unleash the Power Within (UPW) event, Robbins, a world-renowned life coach known for his profanity-laden approach to self-help, characterized #MeToo as a negative example of people attempting to gain “significance,” according to multiple audience members.

“A couple hours after Tony Robbins hit the stage we began an exercise to identify motivating factors in our lives,” UPW San Jose attendee Adisa Ramla told VICE over Facebook Messenger. "One of them was 'Significance.' It is one of the 6 basic human needs (according to Mr Robbins) and 90% of the audience agreed that it was a need and motivating factor for them. In this same vein, Tony went on to say, in a nutshell, that women in the #metoo movement were motivated by this same factor (to be significant)."

First-time seminar attendee Yifeng Tong agreed Robbins was critical of #MeToo. “He then mentioned the movement as a movement of attack and of victimhood,” he told VICE. “I think he focused on victimhood first, arguing specifically that a significant portion of the people who use the hashtag or participate in the movement are victimizing themselves.” Tiffany Auman, another UPW attendee, added in an email that Robbins “sounded very unsupportive” of the movement.

The 58-year-old Robbins has built a fortune and a self-help empire thanks in part to his confrontational, aggressive style. But his remarks last week in San Jose crossed a line even for some of his fans. One of the audience members, a woman from New Orleans named Nanine McCool, stood up and was given a microphone. The subsequent exchange was captured on video by an attendee who posted it to Facebook Tuesday afternoon.

"If you use the #MeToo movement to try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else […] all you’ve done is basically use a drug called significance to make yourself feel good.”
–Tony Robbins

McCool told VICE over the phone that she felt compelled to speak up after hearing Robbins’s remarks. McCool, who said she was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and physical violence herself, recalled what angered her: "What I heard him say was #MeToo is great and all, but it's being used by all these women who don't want to deal with their own problems and they think being a victim is a way to work out their pain by making their perpetrators suffer and that doesn't help them. It happened years ago and they need to let it go."

This brought out something in her. "I was horrified in a sense that, ‘Oh My God, Tony Robbins, this great guy, just has it all wrong.’ I stood up and started yelling, ‘You've got it all wrong!’"

As seen in the video, Robbins told her, “I’m not knocking the #MeToo movement, I’m knocking victimhood," and asked the audience to "consider what its impact is." He went on to say that "anger is not empowerment," adding, "Who should throw the stone? You shouldn't throw that stone if you live in a fucking glass house. Is there any one of us that hasn't done something that we prefer we'd not or that we're embarrassed by or that was hurtful even if we didn't intend it to?"

He continued: "If you use the #MeToo movement to try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else […] all you’ve done is basically use a drug called significance to make yourself feel good.”

McCool replied, “I hear you mischaracterizing the #MeToo movement. Certainly there are people who are using it for their own personal devices, but there are also a significant number of people who are using it not to relive whatever may have happened to them, but to make it safe for the young women […] so that they don’t have to feel unsafe.” After a round of applause, she continued: “And I think you do the whole movement a disservice by characterizing it the way you have. I just want to say, Tony, I love you.”

The two then went back and forth in an exchange where Robbins said, "I don't feel attacked" and that she was “using it differently than some other people.” He then did an exercise where he told her to hold out her fist, then pushed her fist with his own to make the point that “when you push someone else it doesn’t make you more safe, it just makes them angry.”

Of the pushing, McCool said, “I thought, 'OK, we're going to fist bump.' Then he started pushing me. I thought he wanted me to show how strong I could be and push back, but that's not what he wanted. He wanted me to move backward.” She went on: “[I was] thinking he's going to transform it into some kind of awareness. I don't know, it's Tony Robbins, there's going to be some lesson here that's gonna be useful to me. I initially started pushing back but he immediately pushed back harder. There was no way. He was going to knock me on my ass if I didn't step backward so I quit pushing against him, I just started walking backward. As long as he was pushing me, I was moving.”

Nine of the 11 attendees VICE spoke to brought up how Robbins’s larger size and his physical contact with her seemed almost intimidating. “He’s a very large man so she looks tiny next to him, and then he starts pushing her, not to be abusive but pushing her as an interaction,” recalled Logan Wick of Austin, who has been a follower of Robbins for eight years and has gone to four of his seminars. "In that moment, when you’re talking about #MeToo and you’re telling a woman and you’re pushing against her and you’re very large—no matter what size man you are, you shouldn’t be doing that in this context.”

At another point in his conversation with McCool, captured in the video posted to Facebook, Robbins said, "It breaks my heart—for women, not for men" before sharing an anecdote about a "very famous man, very powerful man" he had spoken with who felt unable to hire a woman because she was too attractive.

“He interviewed three people that day,” Robbins told the audience. “One was a woman, two were men. The woman was better qualified but she was very attractive and he knew, ‘I can't have her around because it's too big a risk’ and he hired somebody else. I've had a dozen men tell me this.”

When McCool called this “a lame excuse,” Robbins countered that she was, in fact, the one making excuses.

“You're giving an excuse. You're telling me that the more I push, the more I'm going to be safe. Is it true? It's not. Listen to me. There're plenty of women in this room and plenty of other points of view... I'm not asking you to take my point of view. I'm asking you to consider how you use anything—technology, #MeToo, anything.” He went on to say “freedom doesn’t come from more anger” and that "I think anyone who’s been hurt should be able to express it, they should be able to go get restitutions […] what I’m not supportive of is victimhood." He then asked the audience to consider that technology stressed people out while making them more productive, as an example of a double-edged sword.

In response to Robbins going on about this for a moment, McCool said, "You are a leader and an influential man, and you are doing a disservice in my opinion to the #MeToo movement," a statement that was greeted with applause from the audience.

Eventually, McCool admitted that she “misunderstood” Robbins, and the life coach said, “I'm not saying the movement's wrong. I'm saying everything has a consequence. Raise your hand if you heard me. And you want to use things in a way that doesn't addict you to your problems and you don't want to be a victim.” He then said he wanted women to be treated fairly and noted that his company is “70 percent women.” He went on: "I'm not criticizing any woman. I'm saying man or woman, if you get into a pattern of victimization, who's it gonna hurt? Nice and loud, whose it gonna hurt?" The audience responded with "yourself" and Robbins said, "That's right."

When someone in the audience yelled what sounded like, "Say you're sorry," Robbins laughed and said "I'm not gonna be inauthentic and say I'm sorry about something I'm not sorry about." Then Katy Perry's "Roar" blasted through the sound system.

Jennifer Connelly, a spokeswoman for Robbins, told VICE that in the full context of his speech, Robbins’s remarks about the #MeToo movement were not derogatory and offered the following statement:

“Tony Robbins is and always has been supportive of the #MeToo movement. He has devoted his life’s work, over 40 years, to help people end their pain and suffering and most importantly improve the quality of their lives. Tony is against abuse of any kind, to anyone, period.”

Robbins's team also offered to send further video of the seminar on the condition that VICE sign a confidentiality agreement and not report on the contents of the video, which we declined. They also declined to answer follow-up questions about the content of his remarks.

Not all the attendees were upset by the remarks.

“I have a pretty similar opinion as Tony,” second-time seminar attendee Elise told VICE. “What I took away from it is that the movement itself is a great thing—and Tony said that too, it's a fantastic thing—but if people use it the wrong way then it could potentially do a lot more harm than good.” Elise did feel that he could have handled the situation better: “He wasn’t clear enough about what his message was and I don’t think that it was the right example of people using something good to unintentionally create more conflict.”

First-time seminar goer Ryan Mutti recounted that many in the room did not seem to take offense to Robbins’s remarks. “People had reactions you’d expect, like, ‘Oh that’s fucked up. You’re taking away the substance of the issue by rendering it as playing the victim.’ But it was way more accepted than I thought. For example I looked around and there were a lot of women vibing, who didn’t flinch… I think at the end of the day everyone got that it was him bringing up the victim thing and being like, 'Playing the victim no matter what isn’t going to get you anywhere.'”

But others came away with a different take.

“The me too movement is not about women falsely accusing men of sexual advances, but instead bringing to light the massive problem that we have in our society of the type of behavior men deem appropriate," said Tiffany Auman in her email. "He refused to acknowledge this and just went on and on about how he will be authentic and will not support anything he doesn’t agree with.” She added, "I almost didn’t come back for day two…"

Wick said in an email that after he witnessed the “apparent sexism” of that dialogue, “the spell [had] been broken” and that he won’t be spending more of his money “on anything Tony Robbins until he makes changes to *actually* empower women.”

Following the Thursday seminar, a number of attendees took to social media and online forums to voice their displeasure at Robbins’s comments.

A closed Facebook group established for UPW San Jose participants by Tony Robbins's team spent the following days in a civil debate about what had transpired and the #MeToo movement as a whole, with some praising McCool for her bravery in standing up to Robbins, while others felt the spirit of his words had been misinterpreted. That thread has been deleted. Robbins's team did not respond when asked if they had deleted the thread.

“It was a wonderful conversation,” said McCool about the discussion thread. But when asked about her feelings about its deletion, her tone changed. “For the first time, I was angry. I had not been angry to that point. I was disappointed, you know, a little emotional letdown, concerned maybe about #MeToo and how Tony Robbins could really help it or hurt it. Optimistic even! Like, If we can get Robbins to see how he could have gotten it right maybe he could be a more powerful voice for the #MeToo movement, get behind some of the female leaders and lend his support, that could be awesome."

Despite her personal feelings on the exchange, McCool stayed for most of the three-and-a-half day seminar. "I still wanted to like him and I think I still do like him at some level," she told VICE. "He just had an off day, I touched a nerve." On Saturday, McCool posted a personal message to Robbins on YouTube, urging him to reach out and reiterating her respect for him as a person. She also wrote an email to Tony’s team, and says they have yet to respond.

When asked what Robbins could do to make the situation better, McCool replied, “He could say, ‘Let's talk about it.’ I get it: He's an intelligent man and he has a strong opinion. I don't have a problem with strong opinions but if it's an opinion that he's so devoted to that he's not willing to hear a different view, that's when I lose respect for that opinion and the person who holds it. I was willing to let him push me around in a stadium of however many people because I was willing to be uncomfortable to learn perhaps something greater about myself. Is Tony Robbins willing to do that? I'd like to see that."

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Raids on weed dispensaries have been panned by many as a waste of police resources, seeing as recreational cannabis will soon be legal. But recently, one Hamilton police officer broke down just how much of a strain they really are, noting that cops in that city are struggling to even store the illegal weed they confiscate.

Under federal law, no weed dispensaries are legal in Canada, but law enforcement officials in various municipalities have taken different approaches in dealing with them.

Vancouver has decided to give weed dispensaries business licenses in an attempt to regulate them, but Toronto police have taken an aggressive stance in executing mass raids such as Project Claudia. Despite the fact that vast numbers of charges issued in raids end up being dropped anyway, Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash has maintained that the raids are not a waste of time.

“The target is illegal businesses that are making large amounts of money, selling product of unknown origin that poses a health risk to people,” he previously told VICE.

He has also said it’s a mistake to look at weed raids as taking away resources from another area.

However, Supt. Ryan Diodati, head of Hamilton’s police’s investigative services, recently said the opposite is true for his force. Hamilton has at least 46 illegal pot shops, according to police, which is potentially more per capita than anywhere else in the province. In a report he presented to city council at the end of January, Diodati described in great detail just how difficult it is to shut down weed dispensaries—citing everything from a lack of storage for weed seized to the deep pockets that allow some dispensaries to re-open immediately:

Storage:

“The storage of evidence depending on the size of the dispensary is tremendous,” Diodati told council.

“We have limited space for our drug storage. As you can imagine there’s the venting considerations that we have, there’s a strong, pungent odour with processed marijuana, so we can’t just put it into any closet in our police facility.”

Diodati said storing the dank weed an an external facility comes with its own security challenges.

“We would be a target for a break and enter. It becomes cost prohibitive to store these exhibits off site.”

Time and costs of processing edbiles:

Diodati said processing edibles in particular is extremely time consuming for cops.

“We have to take pieces from each exhibit to prove there’s a cannabis component to it,” he said, noting the evidence must be sent off to Health Canada for testing. “Everyone is familiar with the size of a gummy bear. We could have thousands of gummy bears and if we were to properly sample them for Health Canada, we should be cutting off a leg or an arm of each gummy bear.”

He said cops could easily “be into the hundreds of hours” in processing evidence just for one dispensary. To save time, he said they are bulk storing a lot of the items.

Just one dispensary busted in December required 130 hours of staffing time, he said.

Court:

Diodati said court requires additional resources, including doing paperwork, processing evidence and attending court.

Cutting into fentanyl and other drug investigations:

Opioid-related overdose deaths have surged in Hamilton, with 75 residents dying from an opioid overdose from January to October 2017—an 80 percent jump from the 41 who died in the same time period the year before.

Per capita, the city’s fatal opioid overdose rate is almost double the provincial average.

“The people who are responsible for investigating these dispensaries are the same people who are responsible for investigating our opioid-based drugs as well, fentanyl, carfentanil, etc,” said Diodati. “And we only have so many bodies, so if we’re devoting all our staffing hours to dispensaries there’s something else that might be missing.”

Owners evade arrest:

Another issue, said Diodati, is even after all the time police spend executing one search warrant, they aren’t necessarily able to nab the owners or operators. Often, he said the people inside identify themselves as “volunteers.”

“The owner basically leaves the volunteer or staff member on their own and that person gets charged with a trafficking offence,” he said.

Dispensaries don’t quit:

While members of the public often assume cops can just execute a search warrant on a dispensary without much legwork, Diodati said it’s far more complicated than that, with a single investigation requiring resources from multiple teams in order to investigate the pot shop and gather enough evidence to make arrests.

“It’s not as simple just walking in looking around and seeing there’s marijuana in there, it takes more than that,” he said.

But he said even after police move in, seizing thousands of dollars in proceeds of crime, and weed, “in most cases they’re open that same day or the very next day, refilled shelves and ready to go for business.” They re-open with a new group of people purportedly in charge, he said.

In order to go back in and make arrests, investigators must start from square one, making observations and collecting evidence.

Despite the many challenges, Diodati said because dispensaries are still illegal, his force will continue to enforce the law. Under Ontario’s legalization plan, only government-run storefronts will be allowed to sell weed. It’s unclear what will happen to the hundreds of dispensaries currently operating in the grey market.

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As the two-mile procession of the Parkland, Florida, March for our Lives reached Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Saturday, student leaders asked the crowd to reman silent out of respect for the 17 killed. Chants of "They fly high as we march by" and "Enough is enough" lessened, shoes shuffled, and marchers whispered as they walked on.

As the crowd thinned that afternoon, some returned to the site of the February carnage to add their signs to makeshift memorials outside the school's perimeter. Five weeks of plastic windmills, photographs, medals, teddy bears, and heaps of flowers dry from the South Florida heat were gathered in emotional adornment. I watched Ellie Durban, who looked no older than six, leave a sign that read, "Keep me safe," among stenciled criticisms of US Senator Marco Rubio, calls to vote, and promises of "Never AGAIN."

While protests have become an increasingly regular pastime for people like me in New York, they're not such a big part of my memories of growing up in Broward County. I graduated from Deerfield Beach High School in 2007, a 30-minute ride east from MSD, whose students I met at sporting events and math competitions. I knew Parkland from sleepovers and birthday parties, for its affluent gated communities and proximity to the Everglades. The Parkland I returned to on Saturday was different, of course: new grounds in a long, tragic American story.

MSD High is now associated with its brave students who are transforming their grief and privilege into power and agency. As Krystin Anderson, who lives near MSD but attends Deerfield told me, "It's my city, it's people I go to church with, people who babysit my little cousins, it could've easily [been me]. I'm here so that it's no one else."

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On Thursday's episode of Desus & Mero , the VICELAND hosts watched a karate showdown that featured one badass roundhouse kick and one body hitting the floor. No disrespect to Desus and Mero, but we really just want to know what Mr. Miyagi would think about all this.

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.

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Police are investigating after a video showing a woman ripping up pages of a Quran and placing them on the windshield of cars outside of a Mississauga mosque was posted to Facebook last week. The video also shows the woman telling the attendees of the mosque that they worship Satan.

The woman in the 10-minute long video—which was filmed around 5 PM Thursday evening—identifies herself as Sandra Solomon and is one of Canada’s most prolific anti-Islam activists. This is but the latest stunt for Solomon who works with the well-known anti-Islamic and pro-Israel Facebook page Never Again Canada. The video has since deleted the video but several media outlets were able to attain the footage.

The video begins with her standing in front of Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre where she says that she is going to educate Canada on the evils of Islam and rails against Imams. Solomon rips up the Quran which she describes as a “Satanic, evil book” before placing the torn places (alongside one of her own flyers) on the windshield of the worshippers.

Solomon proceeds to go into the mosque while people are praying and rifle through books that are set up in the lobby. Solomon then demanded to some of the worshippers that she be allowed to see the Imam but was turned down and was told to leave. While she was leaving the mosque, Solomon yelled at the worshippers that they “worship Satan.”

Peel Police said Solomon conducted similar actions at two other mosques on the same day and that they are investigating but no charges have been laid.

In response to her actions, the Muslim Council of Peel held a press conference on Monday featuring Navdeep Bains, the federal minister of innovation, science and economic development, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Rabia Kehdr, the executive director of the Muslim Council of Peel, and several leaders from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Sikh communities. In a press release, the group asked Peel Police for the action to be investigated as a “hate incident.”

Solomon is no stranger to these types of stunts and that has turned her into something of a YouTube celebrity in Canada’s anti-Islamic and far-right circles. One of her videos saw her dress up a male friend in a burqa in an attempt to go “undercover.” Solomon was one of the most outspoken activists against M-103, the motion put forward by the Liberal government to research Islamophobia.

“This woman promotes hatred and tries to profit off it,” said Kehdr at the press conference. “This was just a stunt to get attention. Our Muslim community is not going to be fazed by someone like this who is trying to promote her own personal agenda of hatred.

“In fact, we feel sorry for anyone who allows themselves to be so consumed by hatred to resort to such actions. The sad reality is that people like this individual are promoting hatred like this online and profiting off it.”

Several other speakers at the press conference spoke to how Solomon fundraises off her anti-Islam views and stunts. On her website there are several fundraising options for Solomon—the lowest amount one can donate is $18. Much like other far-right websites, such as the Rebel Media (an outlet she is regularly featured on), Solomon fundraises off multiple campaigns at the same time, including donating to her tour across Canada, her group Never Again Canada, and legal assistance.

A donation page on Sandra Solomon’s website. Photo via screenshot.

“This is something that certainly that is concerning to us, to have a known Islamophobe come into our neighbourhood, trespass onto our property soiling the carpets on which we pray, disturbing the prayer services as they pray by yelling racial and bigoted epithets, desecrating a scripture in a house of worship,” said Ibrahim Hindy, the Imam of the Masjid Dar-al Taweed, at the press conference.

“I understand and respect that not everyone is going to agree with my religion and I pride myself on having difficult and honest conversations about that… Please do not mistake this assault on our mosque as an attempt for conversation or a critique of religion. This was a plain attempt to instigate strife and gain civic tension and profit off of all of it.”

Hindy added that this is not the first time people have trespassed at his mosque; in the past Hindy has received death threats and has had to contact police. Kehdr said that the Muslim Council of Peel has flagged Never Again Canada to Facebook but expect no action to be taken by the social media giant. She asked for the government of Canada look into “ways to regulate the platforms to prevent hate from spreading” and added that “there is simply no recourse for online hate.”

More fundraising options on Solomon’s page. Photo via screenshot.

The Facebook page of Never Again Canada has over 200,000 followers and posts solely anti-Islamic material which typically focuses on Canada. In her follow-up video recapping the events, Solomon described on Thursday her actions as the “first day of [an] International campaign against Quran”—her campaign is to get the Quran declared “hate literature”—and asked her followers to share her videos.

“This is what I’m going to be doing every day, as much as I can,” Solomon says in a recap video posted to Facebook, a few minutes later she begs her audience to donate to help her with her stunts. So far the police investigation hasn’t deterred her far-right following.

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Look upon basically every single thing in the world right now and despair, everybody. The year 2018 is off to a pretty dark start and the immediate future doesn't promise anything much brighter.

Let us take a quick survey for a second: The climate is shitting the bed with no sign of stopping, technology is either systematically eroding our ability at real connection or just blatantly gearing up to kill us all, and the news is just an unending stream of stories about how the leader of the free world got spanked with a magazine by a porn star or whatever. Our current reality feels like a spec script for Black Mirror, and not a particularly good one at that.

Last week, video footage of a small, tufted capuchin monkey in the Tianjin zoo started making the rounds on Chinese social media because of his bizarrely human face, Shanghaiist reports. And while, yeah, the monkey does sport some startlingly humanoid eyes, the thing that makes the clip feel truly familiar isn't the capuchin's features—it's the look of abject terror on his face.

Behold:

Do you recognize that expression on the tiny monkey's mug? The downturned mouth, the anxious eyebrows, the vacant eyes staring horrified into the abyss? The particular blend of shock, fear, and utter hopelessness?

Of course you do. It is exactly what living in 2018 feels like.

We may not know what specific horrors inspired that feeling in this tiny monkey, but it is a feeling we know all too well. It's the one we feel when we think about retirement and flat earth conspiracies and the fact that people think rocks and fire extinguishers can quell mass shootings. It's the face we make when we read about that guy who taught his fucking pug how to do the Hitler salute.

Your dread is all too familiar, sweet capuchin. Sorry your tiny pea brain is still large enough to be ravaged by the existential weight of our modern world. Just know you are not alone. We are right there with you, for better or worse.

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The first season of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy reboot taught us many things—namely how to elevate your drinking game from Mountain Dew margaritas to mojitos, and how to layer with short-sleeve button-up shirts. But the Fab Five aren't giving up their crusade to save men from themselves anytime soon. As Variety reported Monday, the gang is heading back to Netflix for an all-new second season.

According to Billboard, eight new episodes of the critically acclaimed tear-jerker are set to debut before the end of 2018. And although no release date has been announced, Queer Eye creator David Collins told IndieWire that he's been eyeing a different location for season two, hoping to bring the group out of Atlanta for a change of pace.

"I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, born and raised," Collins said. "I would like to go to the tristate region, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, because you can base in Cincinnati and go across the bridge to Kentucky and go up the interstate to Indiana. The corn-fed midwestern folk are where I’m from—and I love actually being from Ohio, it's a great place to be from."

With countless more beards to shave, man caves to declutter, and exes to reunite, the Fab Five—Bobby Berk (Design), Karamo Brown (Culture), Tan France (Fashion), Antoni Porowski (Food), and Jonathan Van Ness (Grooming)—will have their work cut out for them. And with such a quick turnaround schedule after being picked up for a new season just six weeks after the first debuted, it's probably a good idea to start getting a list of names together for new nominees.

"I'd just like to see us continuing to expand on the diversity of it. Helping different types of people from every walk of life, from every ethnicity, from every gender," designer Berk told IndieWire. "Just keep expanding on showing the world, and the differences in people that actually make them the same."

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I’ve been in love with the same person for 11 years. I say love, but it’s not really love, because our last significant interaction was about eight months ago when I trapped him in a loo. It was meant to be a grand gesture: in my mind I was going to ambush him, tell him that I wanted to have sex right-here-right-now-in-this-loo, and he’d be so bowled over by my nonchalant attitude that he’d finally love me back. But what actually happened is that he said no. And then I begged. Then he politely edged round me, unlocked the door and walked out. And the look of perfectly detached boredom on his face as he did it will haunt me until I die.

This boy, who I’ll call Alex, rejected me for the first time when we were 15. He came on my tights at a party in 2007, then abruptly stopped talking to me, and I remember it hurt so badly that the shock of it made me vomit all over my mum's carpet. I'd transformed two snogs, one pair of tights and zero solo-hangouts into a fully fledged relationship. In in his view, we didn’t know each other in 2007.

At 15, sobbing on the stairs with sick all over my face had been a dramatic escape from my otherwise boring teenage life. At 26, though – when you’re still chasing after the same boy (now man) – asking yourself what you’re trying to escape, and why, gets a bit more depressing.

When I switched from low-level enduring love of Alex back to full-on slavish obsession a few years ago, I was seeing a therapist for agoraphobia and general panic. But instead of using the time to talk about not being able to walk around outside, or not being able to get out of bed, or still living with my parents, I turned each session into an hour-long fantasy. I would lie on my back, looking up at the ceiling, and talk about Alex: what he might be thinking and feeling, and why he didn’t love me back. Sometimes I would tell lies – invent nice things he had said to me, or reasons to hope. Sometimes I felt too prickly and ashamed to mention him at all, so I’d talk about the other boys who I felt were rejecting me, and my therapist would say, "Oh, Kitty, I can't keep up!" – and I would feel, in that moment, that my life was pretty wild.

It’s this total abdication of emotional responsibility that makes unrequited love so weirdly pleasurable. Aisha, 27, explains why she has made a habit of pursuing doomed relationships with women who are straight: "Before I came out I was always in relationships with men, and pushing them away," she says. "It made me feel evil – either I was frigid, or I was a psychopath. I was constantly thinking, 'What's wrong with me that I don’t want them?'"

But for Aisha, pursuing straight women, though painful, was in some ways a relief. "If you're chasing someone who you can't have, you think very little about yourself – you're thinking about them. It's that distraction, isn't it?"

The thousand little humiliations of unrequited love – the pleading, the pity, the strangled 5AM Facebook calls, the locked loos – might actually be worth it for the escapism of pouring every disappointment, ambition and insecurity you ever had into one fixed, human point. If this person would just love you back, goes the fantasy, all your existential angst would be solved.

Psychotherapist and sex and relationships specialist, Dr Meg John Barker, tells me that unrequited love is rarely about the other person. "Frequently we simply don't know them well enough to really know that they are all of the things we think they are," they explain. "It may well be that this person represents important sides of yourself that you have disowned or repressed in your life. What the love feeling is telling you is that you need to embrace those parts of you in yourself, not in another person." There’s also a certain amount of objectification going on: "We want them to be something for us, rather than loving them in their full humanity. Putting people on pedestals is rarely kind – they often end up falling off and being hurt by the experience. Why would you do that to somebody you love?"

It's a vicious circle: you love them because you don't like yourself. And if you did, by some magical chance, trick them into loving you back, you'd probably hate them for it. Another serial unrequited lover, Mia, thinks about her addiction to the one-sided romance in terms of gay shame: "It's internalised homophobia. If I go out with a girl, I want them to be somebody that I'm so proud of. She needs to be unattainable. It's gross, but I wouldn't want to go out with someone second-rate, because I’ve got, like, homophobia about myself."

This is unrequited love in its purest form: when your whole body is taken over with pang-y, throbb-y want, but you can’t even properly masturbate about your crush because you love them so much it hurts to remember their features – and anyway, to imagine them having proper sexual contact with disgusting little you would somehow be to sully them.

The bus is a prime location for this kind of of loving. At 31, Mia still allocates specific journey-time to do what she calls her "scenarios". "I'll find a song I like and do this thing where I imagine me and the girl I love dancing to it and everyone watching us and saying, 'Oh my god those two are so hot.' At the moment it's 'Barking' by Ramz."

If you're born with a tendency to fall hopelessly in love with people who will never love you back, maybe you’re doomed for life. Until you become a more stable, emotionally responsible, shame-free human being, unrequited love might be your crutch. It looks like my fate is to spend the rest of my days fantasising about Alex on the bus.

But one under-appreciated way to break out of this cycle of pain would be to actually have sex with your love. Because the sex will almost certainly be shit. The thing about unrequited love is that there isn't any real sexual chemistry between you because, crucially, they don’t like you back. If there was, you'd be probably be together and putting a deposit down on a house right now. So in bed, you will be shit, because you will be nervous and fumbling and weird; and they will be shit, because they don't actually fancy you and they can smell your desperation. If you were honest with yourselves you would just stop, but you plough on, joylessly, and deal with the awkwardness and the regret in the morning. The excruciating shitness of this sex might just cure you.

Then again, if you are a seasoned unrequited lover, you – like me – will be delusional. In a few days you will have convinced yourself that it was actually "really tender". You'll have forgotten that you didn’t look each other in the eye even once, and be telling anyone who will listen that although you didn't actually cum you were really, really close.

@kitty__drake

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.